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I pulled myself out of that memory by focusing on that collar, on that small part of my physical appearance that just didn’t matter but was in the realm of my control. Or in theory, it was. And yet, there was nothing I could do about that collar. There was no resolving it. The material was set into place, and I had no iron or other useful tool at my disposal. So I was what I was: namely, bad about ironing or maintaining my appearance to an acceptable degree and stuck with the consequences of such. And while that sort of thing could be a setback professionally, I was at peace with that. Completely and totally at peace.
Or so I told myself as I frantically ran my hands down the front of my outfit yet again. The thick denim of my navy-blue jeans was forgiving. Or rather, it was practically my accomplice, masking my mistakes and sins by its very nature. The denim stood back and let the bright green of my blouse shine out. Which might have been a bad thing, actually. I didn’t think green was my color. I liked the way it looked. I liked its boldness. I liked the way it seemed to call the broader world to mind. It was almost like it was saying, “hey, forget about how goofy the wearer of this shirt is and think about the world around you that is so big, her goofy appearance really doesn’t matter.”
But despite the value of the diversion, the color itself seemed to suck some of the life from my face. In the absence of any mirror, I took out my phone and checked myself in the front facing camera. I didn’t look well. I looked pale and my cheeks seemed lifeless. The expression on my face, neutral but pensive, only drew attention to the bags under my eyes.
What was I expecting, I thought. I hardly slept at night. My mind would wander the wasteland of my thoughts endlessly as I laid in bed beside Chris or alone. It didn’t matter which it was. I would lay there, listening to the creek outside, trying to ignore how impossible it seemed that I could hear it given the distance and walls around me. But I knew what I was hearing, which unfortunately meant that either my walls were disturbingly thin or I was just hallucinating the sound of rushing water. The latter didn’t feel impossible, but it certainly wasn’t a good sign.
I took the water bottle off of my desk and poured a small puddle into my palm. Makeup would have been a better solution to mask the touch of exhaustion that lingered in my face. It would have been more convincing, more thorough, and lasted a lot longer, but a splash of water could give my cheeks a small bit of life. I hurriedly brought the small puddle to my face, spreading it and the chill that came with it unevenly. But as clumsy as my execution was, at the first touch, my breath caught, and I snapped into focus.
“You can do this,” I whispered to myself. “You can do this.”
Or so I wanted to believe. But really, it was a hard idea to wrap my head around. I wasn’t the sort of person who was particularly skilled at public speaking. Far from it. And as I settled back down from the small rush of the water, I sunk slowly into that dismay, into the thought of what lay ahead. It made for a rough landing. My feet seemed to be sucked into the ground below me, and as they slipped into oblivion, my lungs tightened in a panic. It wasn’t just my lungs, though. My entire chest collapsed and locked into that new, restrictive position. My caged heart beat all the quicker as it tried to come up with some means of escape, some way out of the prison it had found trapped within. As it did so, it banged around the prison walls, and each strike sent a way of pain through my chest.
Closing my eyes, I slowly lowered myself onto the chair. Sitting down steadied me, but there was a wave of energy coursing through my veins wanting to be used. And on that, I could compromise, I let my legs bounce up and down rapidly as a means of burning through the sparks flying up and down my body. Which helped. It was steadying as the water slowly evaporated from my face.
It was a gradual recovery, a slow return to the larger world in the minutes before Professor Evory knocked on my door, a large black instrument case firmly gripped in his other hand.
“Are you ready?” he said.
My head snapped up to look at him when he spoke. The movement was quick, likely jarring and unsettling in the speed I took it, but it was done and over before someone could register what they had seen.
Or so I thought, but Professor Evory noticed. His voice lowered when he asked me, “Are you okay?”
I nodded as quickly as I could, not realizing the mistake I made the first time. The speed released the lingering energy I hadn’t yet burned through. And that did help me, even if it created some other problem.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
He nodded instinctively, but he was still parsing over my response. “Are you nervous?”
I didn’t know how to answer that, but I tried to pull together a more neutral sort of answer. Gesturing at my outfit, I asked, “Do I look like a college kid?”
It was something I was worried about. It just wasn’t the dominant worry in my mind, but it was a safe one. It was one that Professor Evory could handle and might even welcome. As he did, with a small smile on his face.
“I think you look like you,” he tried to assure me.
But it was far from comforting in the classic sense. It only pulled me deeper into this specific anxiety.
“I don’t want to be mistaken for a student,” I lamented and looked back down at my outfit again.
It was the sort of thing I would have worn in college. But fashions change, and I knew that as a modern woman, I was supposed to be grateful that I was hardly aging. Youth was beauty, which was valued, after all. But right then, I needed to evoke some aura of wisdom and experience. Youth didn’t work well for that. It wasn’t exactly incompatible, but it came fairly close.
It didn’t help that Professor Evory was wearing one of his well pressed and tailored suits, specifically the navy blue one that brought out the kindness in his eyes. In that suit, he was exactly what he needed to be: an academic his students would tell their future kids about. And I was just me: a disappointment.
Professor Evory seemed unmoved by my plight and the related lamentations. I couldn’t be too surprised about that. This wasn’t the sort of thing a man would ever have to deal with.
He just shrugged. “No one’s going to notice,” he tried to say, but he had learned that his assurances had a nasty tendency of falling flat. “And if anyone does, just say you’re a student of life.”
I bit back my rebuttal. I didn’t want to fight with him, but it was tempting right then.
“You’ll be up in the front with me,” he then reminded me. “And I told the TAs you were coming.”
That still wasn’t as convincing as he wanted it to be. Realizing that, he stepped fully into the role of my mentor. He set his trombone case down against the visitors’ chair and came around the desk to me. Gently, he took my shoulders in his hand.
“You look fine,” he insisted with a calm and steady voice. There was even something musical about it, like he was hitting all the notes of a lullaby. “That color looks good on you, and you aren’t so formal as to be unapproachable. I think you nailed it.”
I tried to nod, but I felt constrained by my own fear. It wasn’t unlike what I had felt before, but this time it wasn’t my lungs held in a tight grip. It was my head and neck frozen in place. And that was more bearable despite the inconvenience.
“If you can’t do this, it’s okay,” he whispered.
And I knew he meant well by whispering. I knew he was trying to be calm and comforting. Because he didn’t want to seem mad, he was overcorrecting. He was trying to be the model of ease and stillness, but despite his intentions, I still felt smothered, like a small child held beneath a blanket while the rest of the world marched on. A pang of anger flooded my body, but with its appearance in the face of Professor Evory’s good will, shame was quick to follow. I bit down on my lip in punishment, but I knew I couldn’t let myself draw blood.
“I’m fine,” I insisted. “Nervous but fine.”
He nodded. “And it’s just like we went over. I’ll go first. Do my speech. Play my...”
He turned to the trombone as one would turn to a small child left unattended for a moment too long. But it hadn’t crawled away. It sat just as it was told to.
“Play my trombone,” he finished, turning back to me. “And then I get to brag about you for a few minutes, and finally I’ll turn it over to a Q&A.”
Professor Evory had a way with words. No one could ever deny that. Not that he had any detractors. I had never heard as much. I had never heard a single person breathe a word against him. But that part, that ability to calm the chaos of a students’ mind was unmatched.
For a moment, as he tried to say that this was all so simple and that everything would be fine because of that simplicity, I almost believed him. I wanted to believe him. But reality was never far from my mind.