Maybe observing her in action would help Audrey answer that question. Michelle’s class was held in a large lecture hall on the first floor. Since this was a class many students took to satisfy a graduation requirement, it tended to have high enrollment. It was three fifteenby the time Audrey made it to Michelle’s lecture hall. The class would be more than halfway through at this point, but Audrey was looking forward to catching the end.
She opened the door as quietly as possible and slipped inside, hoping it was dark enough at the back of the room that Michelle wouldn’t notice her. Not that she wanted to keep her presence a secret, but she wanted to see Michelle as her students saw her.
“What you see here is a scene from the Bayeux Tapestry,” Michelle was saying. The screen beside her depicted riders on horses charging into battle, letting Audrey know the students were learning about Romanesque art today. This era wasn’t her favorite, but she appreciated it for the period of history it portrayed.
Michelle used her pointer to highlight a man on a black horse at the center of the screen. “Here we see Odo, the bishop of Bayeux, as he rode into the Battle of Hastings in 1066. In the corner, a horse is falling, and here”—again, she pointed—“a rider has been pierced with a long spear. The overall effect of the tapestry gives us not only a visual of the battle but also the cruel consequences for its participants.”
Michelle spoke clearly and succinctly, as she had during the Sustainability Committee meeting last week, but she didn’t sound interested in her own lecture. She looked like she couldn’t wait for the class to end, so it was no surprise that the majority of her students seemed to feel the same way.
Most of the people Audrey could see were looking at their phones or even nodding off in their seats. A few students in front were listening attentively, the art enthusiasts or all-around nerds like Audrey had been, those who wanted to soak up every drop of knowledge or who needed top grades for wherever they were going after college.
Maybe Audrey had entered the room during a slow spot in the presentation. After all, how interesting could a tapestry about men going to war really be?Twelve years ago, she would have made it seem like the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen ...
Audrey wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. She stayed in her seat, watching as Michelle took the class through a variety of Romanesque art. Even the pieces Audrey recognized, the ones she remembered Michelle teaching her back in the day, sounded uninspired now. And Michelle hadn’t included nearly as many female artists as Audrey expected.
She remembered this class being a million times more interesting and inspiring than what it had become, and she didn’t think she was just looking back with rose-colored glasses. Michelle had changed. This wasn’t the woman who’d inspired Audrey to become a professor.
Disappointment sat heavy in her chest. Had Michelle gotten bored after teaching the same class for so many years? Surely there was more to it than that. Maybe she was reaching, but Audrey felt like she’d glimpsed something darker behind Michelle’s aloof veneer over the last few weeks—sadness or loneliness, maybe both.
Did Michelle’s recent divorce have anything to do with her attitude change? Audrey wanted to know the answer, even though she had no right to that knowledge. The more closely Audrey watched her, the more she felt like Michelle was going through the motions, like life had worn her down until she’d just quit caring.
Michelle didn’t seem to have any friends in the department, which made Audrey all the more determined to become one. Audrey wanted to make her smile. She wanted to see Michelle come alive again the way she had on Friday night when they’d talked about their favorite artists.
“That’s all the time we have for today. The assigned reading is listed in the portal, and I’ll see you back here next week. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
Audrey’s stomach pinged at those final words.Enjoy the rest of your day.Michelle had said the same thing at the end of each class when Audrey was her student, and it gave her the best kind of nostalgia.
Michelle turned up the lights now that she was finished with her presentation, and Audrey saw the exact moment Michelle spotted her, sitting in the back row of the lecture hall. Her eyes locked on Audrey’s,and a smile tugged at her lips, the same little smile she’d given Audrey when she first saw her at the party on Friday.
Audreylovedthat smile.
It might be small, but it packed a punch because it felt genuine, and Audrey wanted to bask in the warmth of it forever. Michelle looked away, directing her attention to several students who’d gathered at the front of the room to speak to her.
Audrey left her seat and made her way to the front of the room. The woman Michelle was talking to now looked like she was Audrey’s mom’s age, with short silver hair. She wore a hot-pink T-shirt that read “Masters of Mischief,” and had the kind of smile that made Audrey like her immediately.
The woman was showing Michelle something in her textbook. Michelle nodded as she listened, then seemed to answer the woman’s question, becoming more animated when she spoke. She was mesmerizing when she gave someone her full attention. In this quiet moment with her student, Audrey again glimpsed the woman who’d been her mentor.
Michelle spent a few more minutes answering questions, until finally she and Audrey were the only ones left in the lecture hall. Michelle walked behind the lectern to begin packing up her laptop. She looked over her shoulder at Audrey. “Feeling nostalgic for my art history class?”
“Always.”
“It must be a bit of an adjustment, teaching at your alma mater, not that I would know. I’m teaching on an entirely different continent from where I attended uni.”
Audrey swooned just a little bit at the British term. She’d always loved Michelle’s accent. “What brought you to America?”
“My wife,” Michelle told her as she picked up her briefcase. “We met at Oxford, fell in love, and moved here to attend graduate school together in New York. It’s where she’s from.”
So Michelle had moved here for a woman. That was unexpected ... and unexpectedly romantic. Audrey still remembered how stung she’d been when her college boyfriend told her he’d accepted a spot at a grad school in California without even checking in with her about it. He’d just assumed they would break up after graduation, and maybe she had too. The idea of Michelle crossing an ocean for the woman she loved at such a young age sounded like something out of a movie. Too bad it hadn’t had a happy ending. “How did you wind up in Vermont?”
Michelle’s features tightened. “Kelly again ... my ex-wife. She’s in pharmaceutical sales, and she got a job offer here. She’d always wanted to see Vermont, although we only intended to live here a few years. But once I received tenure at NU, it only made sense to stay.”
“Tenure’s a great motivator that way,” Audrey agreed.
Michelle nodded. “Are you headed back to Holman Hall?”
“I am.” And she was thrilled that they could keep talking while they walked together. Outside the lecture hall, the woman Michelle had been speaking to was sitting in a chair in the hallway, looking at her phone. “I love your T-shirt,” Audrey called out to her, pointing at the “Masters of Mischief” slogan on her chest.
“Thank you,” the woman called back with a bright smile. “It’s what my friends and I call ourselves ... and we try very hard to live up to the name.”
