Teasers from A Cleft in the World
The half-mark of the rally. Raphael Saadiq’s “Keep Marchin’”pumps from the speakers. Just gotta keep, keep marchin’. Keep marchin’ on. The girls dance down from the library porch with the signs they made and hand them out to participants who didn’t make or bring their own. Many of the placards read, Where There’s a Willa, There’s a Way, like our T-shirts, but other clever ones catch my eye: I am girl-cotting This Closing, What Would Willa Do?, and my favorite, We Don’t Wear Pink Hats, Willa Cather Women Wear All the Hats.
I wait for the speeches to begin—bouncing on my toes to the music, my heart racing with hope—next to Truman and my friends, while monitoring the buzz at the donation tables. Someone from on the ground behind the platform calls, “Dudes, bring out that last cooler of water bottles,” and from there, in a tarp shadow so deep my eyes almost skim over them, stand Laurel and Trask locked in an embrace so intense that I touch my breastbone and gulp. Trask seems to speak into Laurel’s ear. Last minute words of inspiration, love? God bless these terrific kids.
My fingers come away damp from where I’ve touched my T-shirt. Am I sweating that badly? Rubbing them together, I look down. Merde, it’s mustard! A long swath of it paints a yellow exclamation point after the word Willa. I wipe my fingers on the dark denim of my skirt. I have to face Truman’s mother like this? My chagrin makes giddiness bubble up inside me: Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon?
To our right, Elizabeth Pattison parts the sea of people like the prow of a ship, Isabelle striding in her mother’s wake in cork-soled platform heels. I tear myself away from the mustard stain to look at Laurel and make sure she catches sight of them. She does and turns from Trask to join them at the steps.
Keep on, keep on, keep marchin’. . .
Forgetting my appearance, I take a deep breath for both of us.
From Chapter Two:
Stepping forward, the board chairman Beau Duffy pulls a slight smile, accepts the clip-on mic from Susan and attaches it to his navy and red striped tie. He clears his throat.
Lina pokes my thigh.
A local pediatrician, nearing retirement and the kind of guy who would come over and roust a mouse from your house, Beau surveys us a moment. He peers at his notes. The room has the preternatural hush of a moon. My own deodorant is breaking down, my armpits growing slick.
“I’m not going to dance around this,” the chairman begins, the microphone fuzzing his words for a moment. “In the last two years, Willa Cather’s endowment—that which keeps us in the black—has dropped sixteen million dollars.” Alarm pricks at my skin like an incipient rash.
The chairman motions to the CFO, Sawyer Hays—who resembles a formal Pierce Brosnan—holding a stack of papers to his chest. Agendas? Sawyer’s face and hands are deeply tanned, as though he’s spent a month on his cruising sailboat, The Willa. Considering the state of our endowment he hasn’t been commanding our helm.
The chairman speaks again. “Coming to you are the exact figures.” All heads turn to follow the passing of the stack. The only sounds are the rustle of paper, the creak of metal chair. “As most of our endowment is restricted—it must be used to fund scholarships or faculty salaries and the like—we have been forced to draw from the unrestricted portion for operating expenses.”
I look at Lina as she passes the stack to me, her hand the chill of granite. She murmurs her Italian version of what the hell, “Che cavalo?”
Beau’s ruddy complexion deepens. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are twelve million dollars in debt.” Fear nibbles at my core.
The math instructor fumbles the stack. Pages drift and slide on the marble floor. No one moves to help. A voice rises from near the front, and then a surf of questions break.
“Why are we just hearing about this?”
“Two years?”
“What does this mean for salaries?”
Beau raises his hands like a bank teller in a hold up. “Please. Let me finish.”
A gust of wind carrying breath mints and alarm brushes the back of my hair, as people behind us bend and shuffle to grab up the scattered pages.
“The board has voted to create a new position—a one-year interim position—of vice president of finance and administration. Truman, will you stand?” Truman. That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. The man stands and turns to face the faculty. My chest tightens the way it did when I once narrowly missed getting t-boned on Fourth Street. “Truman Parker comes to us from Emory University and Columbia Business School. He . . .” The chairman’s voice echoes in the suddenly airless, book-lined room, and bounces off the ceiling.
“The Ivy League to the rescue?” I think I hear Lina whisper over the blood pounding in my ears.
Truman Parker smiles and buttons his navy suit coat, his blue eyes giving off sparks in the dim, old room. Something breaks loose near my heart. The rest of the board chair’s introduction is lost on me. I don’t remember losing my first tooth, the Christmas I first understood that Santa wasn’t real, or what I wore for a Halloween costume in fifth grade. But I’ll never forget the first time I saw the fourteen-year-old strawberry blond, the first boy to capture my heart.
