I stiffen. That was the day I caught Dr. Evil borderline fondling his new flame in our shared broom closet.
“That was one time!” I protest.
“That’s not the point, and you know it. I’m sorry, Stella, but I can’t in good faith add to your workload while you’re clearly treading water.”
You try sharing an office the size of an outhouse with your ex’s fiancée, I want to scream at her. But Cynthia didn’t leave me for a tiny Texan who says things like “bless your heart.” She didn’t cheat on me after two years together and have the nerve to blamemefor being avoidant and unreachable.
“You’re clearly distracted,” Cynthia says as she takes another large bite of the bran muffin on her desk. “And the quality of your work is suffering. The last thing you need is more responsibility on your plate.”
Wrong. More work is exactly what I need—it’s why I applied for the role in the first place. I need a distraction. A motivator. A transfer to a new part of campus. Anything to get me back in the game after four months of wallowing in my own self-pity. Because I am not the girl who folds in the face of a set-back. I’m the one who works her ass off. Who doesn’t let anyone get in her way.
At least, I used to be.
“So what, you’re going to give it to Greg?” I nearly whine. “The guy whose desk is covered inultimate frisbee trophies?”
“Look, this is as hard for me as it is for you.”Doubt it.“And trust me, if I could do something about the blatant injustice of a tenured male professor working his way through our female fellow pool, I would. But you’re slipping, and it’s getting harder and harder for me to advocate for you. I think it’s best for everyone if you take next semester off.”
I blink at her. Blink alot. Suddenly I’m in one of those action film scenes where a bomb goes off and the dashing, pleather-skirted secret agent can hear nothing but the ring of her own obliterated ear drums. Semester…off?
“You’re pulling my fellowship?”
“Suspending,”she reiterates as if she isn’t simply sugarcoating what I just said. “Just temporarily. The department can’t keep paying you for a job you’re not doing. This will give you time to focus on actually finishing your dissertation. And, you know, put this Dr. Vandenholt business behind you.”
I cringe as she says Dr. Voldemort’s name. Five minutes ago I thought I was coming in here to receive my class roster for next year. Now she wants to pull myfunding?
“Please,” I beg her, myElle Woodspersona crumbling faster than Cynthia’s muffin. “You don’t have to do this. I’ll get you new research pages. I’ll send that kid an apology!”
“Stella, I’m sorry. It’s already done.”
My whole body sinks into the chair like spent candlewax. It’s not even the suspension that kills me. Not the embarrassment of failing at the thing I’ve dedicated every waking moment to for the last four years. It’s that everything I’ve worked for, every concert I’ve skipped and holiday I’ve spent bent over a laptop, disappeared in a blink because of aman. One I stayed with two years longer than I should have because it was convenient. One who’s now engaged to a woman he’s known for less time than it took me to choose my car insurance provider.
I can practically hear Georgia O’Keeffe rolling in her grave.
Cynthia reaches over her desk, her petite arms barely making the trek to pat me condescendingly on the shoulder. I shrink away.
“Stella, this doesn’t need to be a punishment,” she says pityingly. “Think of it as a reset. Why don’t you use this time to do something for yourself? Go on a vacation! Hit the reset button on some hot sandy beach before you have kids and dogs and other responsibilities to slow you down. I saw United’s having a sale to the Bahamas!”
Fantastic, Cynthia. I can’t wait to be broke, miserable,andsunburnt. But I just smile at her, like a sociopath, while everything I’ve worked for the past four years shrivels faster than the neglected basil plant next to my sink.
“Awesome. Great. I’ll check it out.”
2
THREE WEEKS LATER
When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being an artist.
ForgetPicasso and Michaelangelo—I was going to be the greatest painter who ever lived. While my sister, Jules, would become a dolphin trainer, I would spend my life with a dozen rescue dogs and an easel by the sea. Ask any little girl what she wants to be when she grows up and I promise you, she won’t think twice. President, actress, marine biologist— by the time she can read, the dream is woven in so deeply it dances with her DNA. Often, it becomes hard to separate her identity from her ambition: the thing that she knows, deep in her heart, is meant for her.
I can still remember the first paint set my dad gave me. I was six years old and he’d just caught me defacing the backseat of Stevie: the rust-colored camper van he’d been hauling around since 1982. But instead of losing his marbles at the stick-figure mermaids all over the upholstery, he came home the next day with a workbook and a set of watercolors of my own. And not those cheap kid paints that smell like plastic, either. He insisted I was worth more than make-believe.
From that day on, art became my addiction. For some, art is a hobby, but for me, it was a portal to anotherworld. Somewhere an awkward, pathologically responsible girl could be completely herself: fully engaged with the magic of being alive. I sketched the way most girls keep a diary; immortalizing every beautiful scene I witnessed in the pebbled pages of my sketchbooks. I gave myself sharpie tattoos and covered every inch of my homework in wild orchids and ink-scaled dragons. And when I was ready to move on to bigger projects, Dad even let me paint the outside of our van: this time, for real.
It was my dad who made me believe that art was magic. So when he got sick my senior year of high school, I filled his hospital room with seascapes and wildflowers and sunlight on the North Cascades. Like if somehow I could bring the world to him, he might have the strength to return to it.
It didn’t work, though. In the end, I think all it did was remind him he wasn’t coming out.
There is a moment in every kid’s life when reality comes knocking. When the fairytale crumbles and the castle grounds are revealed to be astroturf. Inevitably, she discovers that marine biology is two thirds lab work and zero thirds talking to dolphins. That Prince Charming is clearly face-blind and obsessed with feet. She learns, perhaps most importantly, that girls with financial aid and a teenage sister to care for don’t always have the luxury of becoming professional artists.
