Page 5 of Learning Curves

But increasingly, that joy was tempered by a harsh reality.

Many of her students paid more attention to their social media than to her .

.. if they even bothered to stay awake.

The moment she dimmed the lights and put up a slide for them to discuss, half the students fell asleep in their seats.

They didn’t care about art history. Frankly, she wondered if their generation cared about anything but TikTok.

Maybe she should give her art history lectures on their preferred platform, in bite-size video snippets.

Perhaps that would get their attention. Michelle snorted at her own absurdity as she slid behind the wheel of her BMW.

As she began the drive home, the rain picked up, a manifestation of her mood.

At home, she poured herself a small amount of whisky, picked up her laptop, and brought both with her onto the screened-in porch.

This was her favorite feature in her new house.

She’d moved here last summer after her divorce was finalized.

The house itself was small and unremarkable, but it boasted a stunning view of the Green Mountains in back, and the covered porch allowed her to enjoy it while being sheltered from the rain and the bugs.

The porch might be her favorite outdoor feature, but she also enjoyed the network of dirt roads that surrounded her house.

They were perfect for riding her bike. During the warmer months, she tried to get in about five miles every morning to start the day, as well as frequent hikes on her property.

Since the divorce, she’d been more committed to her mental and physical health, trying to better herself for her own sake.

Kelly’s degrading comments had taken a toll, and only now, after a year of therapy, was Michelle beginning to find her way back to herself. She had a long way to go, but that was fine. There was no hurry. These days, Michelle had no one to please but herself.

She hadn’t reinstalled her university email account on her mobile phone yet—she removed it every summer to give herself a bit of distance—and consequently, she hadn’t checked it since yesterday.

She was waiting to hear back about an article she’d submitted for publication on one of her favorite artists, Mary Cassatt, detailing how Cassatt had changed the way women’s lives were portrayed in art in the late 1800s.

Frankly, Michelle had had a difficult time constraining herself to a handful of pages.

She could have written an entire book on the subject.

In fact, she’d often been tempted to do just that, but she’d never managed to find the time.

Instead, she continued to publish her research through the journal articles that were so revered in academia, the kind that everyone loved to talk about but few actually read.

At least, if her piece on Cassatt was accepted, she could cross an item off her to-do list for the fall semester.

Michelle settled on the sofa on her porch, placing the laptop beside her.

She put her feet up on the ottoman and sipped her whisky, exhaling as the tension began to recede from her muscles.

Somewhere over the years, she’d started to dread department meetings and not just because Stuart talked too much.

Truthfully, most of the faculty were afflicted with the same problem.

The meetings became tedious, people talking over each other, all convinced their ideas were of utmost importance when, in her opinion, they rarely were.

Just today, they’d spent thirty minutes debating whether they needed a new coffee machine for the break room while Michelle quietly browsed for new throw pillows for this very sofa under the pretense of taking notes on her phone.

On the plus side, she’d ordered a set of lovely orange-patterned pillows that ought to complement her slate-colored sofa quite well.

With a sigh, she took another sip of whisky, gazing out at the mountaintops in the distance.

Soon, they would begin to change color, the endless thatch of green treetops transforming into a tapestry of reds, golds, and yellows.

It was her favorite part of living in Vermont, except for it coinciding with the start of the academic year.

A soft noise behind her alerted her to Muse’s presence on the porch. Of course, the cat had followed her out. While Muse might not be fond of Michelle, she did love this porch.

“Hello, Muse,” Michelle said as the cat strolled past.

Muse, as expected, ignored her as she hopped up onto the perch Michelle had put out here for her comfort. She’d probably been waiting for Michelle to get home so she’d have access to her favorite part of the house, since Michelle kept the door to the porch closed and locked when she wasn’t home.

The cat settled on her perch, then pointed her right hind leg to the sky and began grooming herself.

Michelle rolled her eyes. Neither she nor Muse had been pleased when Kelly left them.

Muse had been Kelly’s cat, so when Kelly announced somewhat unexpectedly that she’d had enough and was moving out, Michelle had expected her to take her cat with her.

She hadn’t. She’d abandoned both Michelle and Muse to pursue greener pastures in New York. The last Michelle had heard, Kelly was already living with someone else, madly in love and so over the wife she’d left behind. Michelle’s mood darkened, becoming the same hostile gray as the sky overhead.

Muse pricked her ears, looking at something outside, and Michelle noticed two deer grazing at the bottom of the hill.

Beautiful. Deer always had a calming effect on her.

They were so quiet, so graceful when they bounded in and out of the trees.

Muse shifted forward, poised as if to pounce, as if she weren’t confined to the screened-in porch and infinitely too small to take down a deer regardless.

Muse’s fur was a striking combination of black and white, a color pattern that earned her the distinction of being called a tuxedo cat, mostly black with a white patch on her nose and chest, and white markings on her legs.

Somewhere—probably in one of the boxes in the basement—there was a photo of Michelle and Muse posing together when Michelle wore her own black tuxedo, taken before she and Kelly attended a friend’s wedding.

Kelly had loved that photo, said it was one of her favorites, and yet she’d left it behind too.

Recognizing that she was heading into what her therapist would call a negative thought pattern, Michelle set down her whisky and opened her laptop.

She loaded her university email, frowning as her screen filled with unread messages.

Somehow, she always forgot how much correspondence came with the start of a new academic year.

She saw a reminder for today’s department meeting that she quickly deleted, an email confirming her continued participation on the Sustainability Committee, a meeting request from the Pride Coalition, several emails from the IT department with new procedures and login information, several more emails from other professors in the department, and tucked in between them all .

.. a response from the academic journal about her article submission.

Unfortunately, your topic is not a good fit for our upcoming issue ...

The phrase jumped out at her, and her shoulders slumped.

She’d put a lot of work into that article.

Maybe she could find another publication to submit it to, because she didn’t want to have to start over.

It irked her that she was expected to put so much effort into these articles, as if they somehow proved her merit as a professor. All a waste of time, if you asked her.

Again, not that anyone ever did.

But that was a problem for tomorrow. Tonight, Michelle would respond to her emails and prepare for the first day of class. When she was in a mood like this, it was best to take each day as it came.

When she did allow herself to look ahead, she saw only continued misery at NU. The day was coming when it would be time for her to take a hard look at her future and where it might take her, possibly far away from Vermont.