Copyright © Tina M. Kukla, 2000.
This work may not be reproduced without permission
from the author.
Days in the Life
Epilogue
Part One
I set my cup of tea on the windowsill and leaned forward a bit, looking down on
the rain-drenched London street scene six floors beneath me. The rain had been
falling steadily since eight o'clock that morning, as I'd
noticed after shutting off the alarm clock next to me, and it didn't appear as
if it would be stopping any time soon. Pedestrians hurried along below,
concealed beneath a plethora of various colored umbrellas. A few unlucky souls had been caught in the rain without anything to keep over
their heads, so they were the most frantic of all, dodging drops for cover.
"Hmph…summertime in London," I murmured,
pulling the sides of my sweater closer around me. Just looking at all that rain
made me ache all over.
I heard the bathroom door open behind me, and then Mary Ann said, "Well, I
guess I'm off, Laurie."
Turning around to face my colleague, I smiled. "You have a nice flight
home, Mar."
Mary Ann adjusted the lace collar on her blouse in the mirror. "What time
are you leaving?"
"Midnight," I said, glancing at the two plane tickets on top of my
planner. "Pamela's supposed to meet me here at around five o'clock once
her exams are through."
"I hope she did well," Mary Ann continued, reaching for her purse and
jacket. "She sounded a little frazzled on the phone the other day."
"She'll be fine. You'd think after all these years of living with two
college professors she'd be used to a thing like that."
"And her Auntie Mary Ann, too!"
"Oh, of course--how could I forget? The person who
convinced her to go on this money-sucking year abroad!" I laughed.
"I'll be sure and tell her that her advisor said hello."
"Do, indeed…You take care, then, Laur."
"You too," I replied, looking at the wall clock. Three-thirty…Pam would
be calling me in about an hour or so.
Mary Ann closed the door behind her, and after a moment, I walked over and
secured the chain lock. Now I had nothing in the world to do except finish reading through the lecture literature I'd collected over
the past few days. All in all, things had worked out
just about perfectly for me that week!
I'd known it would end up
that way months and months ago when Mary Ann and I made our plans to attend the
International English Honors Society conference in London. The last day of the
four-day event fell on May 18th, a Thursday, the same
day that Pamela finished her study abroad semester at St. Priscilla's College
just outside of London. I'd arranged to keep the hotel
room for one additional day so Pam and I could fly out of Heathrow together
that night. And now, for the first time in a long
time, I had some much-deserved free time to myself without any hassles to worry
about. I wasn't going to teach any summer courses at
Dominican for the first time in nearly ten years, which would be a nice break.
I sat at the
writing desk in the corner of the room, moved my laptop computer to the side,
and flipped through the upcoming blank pages in my planner. Mini-calendar,
birthdays and anniversary page, time zones, zip codes, area codes, copies of my
spring syllabi from work, business contacts--A, B, C…
And there on the very last
page of the Z section, paper-clipped over Cora Zeiger's
old address in Bolingbrook, was that old photograph from so many years ago. The
white edges around the print had gone yellow ages
ago, as did the marks from the scotch tape I'd once
had on the back of it, but otherwise I'd tried keeping it in the best condition
I could.
Could it really
have been thirty-three years since then? I stared down at a very young Laurie
and Paul smiling back up at me from the mists of time. God…I could remember the
very moment that picture was taken as well as I remembered what I'd just eaten for lunch! We had been on that plane from New
York to California, and Paul had hidden behind a copy of Life for the first two
shots Ringo took… I was so young then! It was
almost like looking at a picture of the college kids and realizing rather
wistfully just how long it had been since I was twenty-one.
That picture had
graced the busy pages of my scribbled-in planners for over twenty years now. I'd kept it covered up pretty well--everyone at work and at
home knows that they are under penalty of death if they mess with it! The only
time anyone had ever taken a peek at the contents was
when Pamela was about four years old. We were at Jewel picking up a turkey for
Thanksgiving dinner, and Pam was playing with my planner as I wheeled her along
in the shopping cart. She was busily digging for the pocket calculator I kept
in the side pocket when she came across the picture.
"Mommy,
who's this?" she asked.
"That's one
of my old friends," I'd said calmly, expecting a berage of questions to come spouting out of her. By the
time I got the words out of my mouth, though, she had already found the
calculator and was busily punching the numbers and reading off
"One…two…three…five…six…eight…Mommy, there's no ten button…" I really
don’t think she even remembers it anymore, since it
was only mentioned in passing.
I closed the
planner and looked again at the clock. The green numbers shone a bright 3:37. Now
what would I do for the next hour and a half? I'd just
realized that I had nothing to keep myself occupied with!
Scrounging
through my purse, I found a few pound notes and figured I could go down to the
book shop in the lobby and find a magazine or newspaper to keep myself occupied
with as I waited for the phone call. I shut off all the lights, remembered to
pocket my room key, and went down to the ground floor to buy some reading
material in the little store.
The book store had a long rack of international publications
available for purchase, and I flipped through the back issues of People
magazine stacked on a lower shelf of the display--and then I saw Paul's face on
the cover of one of the issues from about a month earlier.
Yep, there he
was, arm in arm with Heather Mills, his new love. I'd
remembered receiving a couple emails from Pam telling me that Paul had some new
girlfriend, and now it was pretty much confirmed. I'd laughed heartily as Pam
typed in the little angry faces in the subject -- >:(
. She'd had a bit of a crush on Paul since she was about eight years old and
I'd found her dancing around the living room to my Beatles records, and this
was not good news for her. I, on the other hand, hadn’t
given it much thought. I was in the middle of grading final papers and reading
the cumulative essay exams the senior English majors took a few weeks before
graduation.
I bought the
issue, planning on giving it to Pam for her collection
once I met up with her, and hurried back upstairs just in case there was the
slimmest chance that she might be calling me early. Sure enough, I was rushing
down the hallway when I heard the phone in one of the rooms ringing--probably
mine!
Unlocking the door
and flinging it open so hard I was sure I'd left a dent in the wall, I dove
across the bed and picked up the receiver before the caller would get impatient
and hang up. "Hel-hello?" I breathed.
Christ—I had to slow down in my old age or I’d snap a
bone!
"Uh…Mom?"
"I just
finished my exam on the Romantics," she said quickly. I could tell she was
on a lousy pay phone in those dorms again; the connection kept cutting out
every few seconds.
"And? How did we do?"
"Well, I'm
sure I passed…whether or not I'll be making high honors this semester is
another issue altogether," she said. "Maybe I'm overreacting…I think
maybe I got a B."
"Hey, that' s fine," I said. "That syllabus you showed
me was pretty hefty. How did your Shakespeare class go?"
"Oh, I'm
sure I aced that one."
"Great…so,
are you on your way?"
"Um…yeah--could
you hold on for a minute?" she said.
"Mmm-hmm."
"Five."
"Oh…uh,
well, um--god--you didn't make reservations for dinner or anything, did
you?"
"No,
honey.
Actually, I figured you'd be worn out from cramming
all night and hit the sack as soon as you got here. It might do you some good
to get a little rest before the flight--you know how little sleep you get on
planes."
"Oh,
okay…'cause I want to bring someone over there for you to meet."
Ohh go-o-od…I
could just tell what she was getting at from her halted speech! She'd done this a few times before. She had a new boyfriend!
Leave it to Pam to fall in love with someone during her last month in a foreign
country!
"All right,
love--bring him over."
"How did you
know it was a him?"
"Honey, I’m
your mother--I can just see the look on your face right now," I
explained. I really could! She probably had the phone cord twisted around her
arm as she fidgeted with it nervously. "Just bring him with…as long as it
isn't Mr. Welsh what's-his-name from Great Expectations that Michelle's
in love with."
Pam snickered.
"Oh, yeah, right. Like I'd dare steal Ioan
from her," she muttered. "She'd kill me first and ask questions
later…no, it's not him…So, I should be there in about forty-five minutes,
okay?"
"That's
fine. I'll be here."
"And maybe
we could go to dinner somewhere…nice and quiet?" she said more like a
question.
"Sounds like
a welcome relief. See you in a little while. Just ring the phone when you get
here and I’ll head on down to the lobby."
"Okay;
bye."
I hung up the
phone and sighed. I really didn't want to spend my
evening meeting yet another one of her boyfriends. She'd
had some halfway-polite ones during high school and college--but she'd also
dated some of the students in my Composition classes that I wished would fall
off the face of the earth! Now that has to be the strangest
thing in the world: having one of your students show up at your house two hours
after class to pick up your daughter for a date!
And I ended up spending the
remainder of my hour of free time choosing a nicer outfit from my suitcase and
trying to do something nice with my hair. I'd recently
had it cut short, the blonde ends curling just below my jawline,
and there wasn't a thing I could do with it! I'd been
used to longer hair for such a long time. After a while, I just abandoned my
efforts and pushed it back with a headband. Hell, it wasn't
like I was going to dinner with the Queen.
Copyright © Tina M. Kukla, 2000. This work may not be reproduced without permission from the author.