Class - Cecily Von Ziegesar [38]
Professor Rosen studied the poem again. “It’s very good,” she remarked. “It shows your curiosity about him. I like the dichotomy that someone we grew up with and should know so well can be a complete stranger to us.”
Shipley nodded eagerly. She hadn’t thought about any of that when she wrote the poem, but what Professor Rosen was saying made her sound insightful and wise.
Professor Rosen removed a red pen from the chipped mug on her desk and scribbled a giant capital A below the last line of the poem. Then she tucked the piece of paper back into the manila folder. “You might want to think about East Anglia for your junior year. They’ve got a great poetry program.”
Shipley gazed blankly back at her.
“It’s in England. We have an exchange program.”
“I haven’t really thought about it,” Shipley said. “My junior year.” She tucked her hair behind her ears.
“No, of course not.” Professor Rosen drummed her fingertips on the cover of her old address book, looking distracted. A collection of crystal prisms hung from the windowpane. The sun came out from behind a cloud, casting trippy rainbows all over the puny room. Was the meeting over? Shipley wondered. Were they finished?
Professor Rosen pursed her lips. “I didn’t like that trick you pulled at orientation, but you seem like you’ve got your head screwed on right after all. You come to class. You do the reading. You write very nicely.”
Shipley waited for the catch—surely there was one.
“While I’ve got you here, I may as well ask. Do you happen to babysit? Our regular sitter just got sent home with mono and we have tickets to see a play in Augusta Sunday night. I wanted to eat out afterwards.”
The professor leaned forward in her chair, the waistband of her olive wide-wale corduroys stretching tight across her flat, wide hips. “I asked Eliza and she said, and I quote, ‘I’m not into being nice to mutant gremlins.’” She shook her head. “What a character. But at least she was honest.” She smiled at Shipley. Her teeth were long and crooked. “Don’t tell me you don’t like kids either. Our guy’s only six months old. He’s a peach.”
Shipley smiled back, an image forming in her mind of Professor Rosen’s charmless brick house, her nerdy clean-cut husband from the Computer Department, and their bucktoothed, spikyhaired baby, a mini version of Professor Rosen. A lot of the girls at Greenwich Academy had babysat; she’d just never been asked. The baby would probably sleep the whole time anyway. She could eat donuts and watch Pretty Woman on HBO.
“I could if you wanted me to,” she offered.
Professor Rosen slapped her palm on the desk. “Good. We’re in the directory. Just swing by around six. There’s a good chance I won’t be there because I’m supposed to be rehearsing my one-act. That is, if I can find someone to play the other lead. It’s a pretty demanding role. Pretty far out. I don’t know what it is about the boys this year, but I can’t find anyone to do it.”
She cocked her head, her murky hazel eyes widening.
“Hey, what about that hunky boyfriend of yours? What’s his name? Timothy? He’s big enough to scare the living daylights out of people.” She faltered. “When he gets fired up, I mean.”
“Tom?”
Obviously the play had something to do with the zoo. Shipley tried to imagine Tom and Adam flitting around onstage together wearing black unitards, their faces painted like mimes as they pretended to be tigers or gorillas or boa constrictors. She’d slink onstage wearing a black cat suit and lick her paws seductively while they fought over her, waiting to be claimed by the last beast standing.
Tom didn’t seem like the theater type, but Professor Rosen was just starting to warm to her and Shipley wanted to give her everything she could give. Besides, Tom’s grades were terrible. He could use the extra credit.
“Sure, why not? He’d love it.”
“Tell him I want to start rehearsing as early as tomorrow if we can.” The professor pulled on her earlobes and looked at her watch. “The show’s at the end of term,