THE P.H.D.
It was August, 1992. I just accepted my first real job as a teacher in a college town.
I was 22 years old.
After the interview and acceptance formalities, the principal gave me a tour of the school. He also offered to help me find an apartment, which I thought was so kind, being only days away from the start of the school year.
He was much older, 33, but tall and I suppose handsome looking. It was October when he called me. I remember because we were on fall break, and he invited me over to check out his newly built deck or some stupid reason. I was flattered, of course, my boss inviting me to his house, so I accepted.
This turned into a weekly visit. I would get a call late afternoon on Sunday and would drive the two or so miles to his house and go home later that evening. At work I felt like Hester Prynne. We never so much as made eye contact at work, nor did we talk about what "we" were. He wouldn't take me out obviously, for fear someone from our relatively small town would see us, and I started to resent that.
He was born and raised in an even smaller town south of ours, and his parents still lived there. After over a year of this pattern, he finally took me to get sandwiches and sit out on a grassy hill overlooking his old town. I guess I considered it progress-- but at 23, I was ready for something more than this.
I felt trapped. If I broke it off, how would that affect my evaluations? If he wasn't ready to actually call me his girlfriend or whatever, and be seen in public with me, what am I doing with him? I was better than just a booty call.
This continued for another year, but we did become closer. Still, there were no proclaimations of love or commitment from him. It took his father dying of prostrate cancer to make the break.
Let me explain.
His parents moved into his house when his father was diagnosed. They found it easier for receiving care at our hospitals, and the long drive from the south took a toll on the aged couple, so he took them in. Weeks, then months passed, and our weekly rendezvous ceased to be. He thought my apartment was cute, but he couldn't imagine sitting (or even sleeping on) a futon. Plus, he was allergic to my cat. He would make up an excuse to his parents about picking up milk and the store and would just stop my to see me.
I never was formally introduced to his parents. They didn't know I existed. After three years of seeing this man, I was not marriage material.
I met his father on the day of his funeral. In the casket. I shook his mother's hand and sat down in the pew.
" His Eyes are on the Sparrow" played on the organ and I cried. Not because of his father--but because of this realization. I meant nothing to him.
The split came that spring. He was apparently "torn apart" by it. He took trips with the show choir teacher and her husband to New York City to get away, visited Martha's Vineyard with a Vice Principal (she tried to get me moved to the neighboring high school), and would not speak to me the rest of the school year.
That summer, he took a position as Superintendent at a school in the Chicago Region-- one of those snobby rich communities.
He also got married--to a girl that was his former student. She was in that same show choir--
and she was 11 years younger....
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