I pulled out the first paper and determined to focus on my grading.
This indiscreet way my mind was wandering was simply a result of stress. The selection for Department Chair was coming up, and I wanted it to be me.
But without wanting to in any way, my eyes drifted to the house next door.
Now why did Indigo insist on always leaving all her curtains just flung open, so anyone could see into her kitchen and living room? After all, some creeper might come into Applewood and peek in her windows.
We were divorced and I had moved on. I didn’t need toseeher this much.
Hell and damnation,whyhadn’t she moved away?
She was a distraction.
I threw up my hands as she came outside in nothing but a tank top, no bra, and tiny tight shorts.
She had very large, voluptuous breasts, and to my irritated eye, they seemed to have almost doubled in size since she got pregnant, bouncing gently with each step, her overflowing curves bursting out of her tank top. Her rounded belly peeked out from underneath the hem, swelling the band of those shorts.
It was just disorienting, because for years I’d wondered what she’d look like pregnant, and now shewaspregnant.
With someone else’s baby.
My jaw set as she filled up her watering can and waved to the mailman.
Washethe father?
It would bejustlike her nonsensical free spirit love and peace ways to be impregnated by the mailman.
Angry at myself, I picked up the phone to call my 75-year-old mother. She and my father lived in the next town over and we talked every day.
She was still absolutely sharp as a tack and the best person to run any problems by.
“Harold!” she called out to my father as soon as she picked up. “Turn down that golf, Harold. . .Harold! The television! It’s too loud! It’s myboyon the phone and I want to be able to hear him.”
First, I updated her on the latest news about my efforts to become Chair of the Archaeology Department. Dr. González, the current Chair, was taking a few years off to lead an archaeological dig and Mother and I agreed I was the clear choice for his successor.
Then we got to the meat of the matter.
“Something interesting has happened here,” I said, clearing my throat. “It appears Indigo is pregnant.”
“Tch,” she humphed disapprovingly. “Of course! It sounds like something shewoulddo, run out and get pregnant by some bum just because she’s jealous of you.”
“Now, Mother, we don’t know that. It has nothing to do with me, after all.”
But privately I did feel aggrieved.
How the fuck had Indi gotten pregnant?
“It happened on the first try,”she had said, with her eyes shining.
And we had done it for months without success.
It was like she was taunting me with her voluptuous overflowing fertility.
“Everyone has always been jealous of you, Ambrose,” my mother said. “Ever since you were a little boy. It was because you were cleverer than all the other children. Even in kindergarten, it was clear you were destined for greatness. I saw the makings of a university professor in you even then. And of course at that age everyone else’s children were still eating theirnasal secretions, while you were already reading advanced books.”
“Oh, now,” I laughed. “I was like any other child my age, I’m sure. Although I do remember my bafflement when the kindergarten teacher told me the rest of the students weren’t ready for the sonnets of Shakespeare.”
“I do remember that,” she said. “And many other similar occurrences all throughout school. And if you recall, I was always against your marriage with Indigo. The way you met was so irregular, my darling! And of course you were never on the same plane intellectually. Astrid is so much more suited. I cannot wait until she’s my daughter-in-law and I will be the grandma to a little princeling.”
