Page 7 of Learning Curves

Audrey entered Holman Hall with a spring in her step.

She had some free time to organize her notes for this afternoon’s class and grab lunch, and then she taught Ceramics II.

She was also hoping to spend some time working on a journal article.

It was important to get something published, and the sooner the better for making an impression on Stuart.

Tomorrow, she’d teach Women in Art. That was the class she’d been most anticipating, but after her morning ceramics class, she realized she’d already set the bar pretty high for herself because that class had gone amazingly well.

She walked upstairs to her second-floor office, surprised to see Dr. Thompson’s office door open. Since her arrival on campus last Monday, Audrey hadn’t seen her door left open a single time. Maybe Dr. Thompson would be more sociable now that the semester had begun?

“Good morning,” Audrey called as she unlocked the door to her own office.

“Good morning,” came the faint reply.

Audrey glanced into Dr. Thompson’s office to see her seated behind her desk, black-framed glasses perched on her nose, teacup in hand as she stared at her laptop.

Dr. Thompson’s blazer today was a black-and-white houndstooth pattern, worn over a black top, and combined with the glasses and the teacup .

.. well, it was a good look on her. A very good look.

Dr. Thompson raised her eyes, her expression perhaps slightly annoyed that Audrey was still standing there instead of going into her own office. Audrey was torn. She didn’t want to push, but it was killing her that things were so stilted between her and her former advisor.

“I hear you’ve been appointed to the Sustainability Committee,” Dr. Thompson said after a pause.

“Oh, really? I haven’t seen an email about it.

” Audrey had even checked this morning before class, not wanting to miss any last-minute instructions about the new semester.

She’d put her name in for three committees, and while this one hadn’t been her top choice, she was glad to have been picked for something.

“Wait, how do you know that before I do?”

Dr. Thompson sipped her tea before setting down the cup. “Because I’m also on the committee, and we voted last night. I imagine your welcome email will be coming anytime now.”

“Oh wow ... cool.” Audrey cringed internally, because she sounded the opposite of cool, especially faced with the perfectly poised Dr. Thompson, who was likely regretting her decision to vote for Audrey .

.. if she’d voted for Audrey, which maybe she hadn’t, since she didn’t seem thrilled to have Audrey around in general.

Dr. Thompson gave a faint nod, then dropped her gaze to her laptop.

Taking the hint, Audrey went into her office, leaving her door open too.

She sat and booted up her laptop, and sure enough, she had an email welcoming her to the Sustainability Committee.

The first meeting was this Thursday, which gave her a few days to get up to speed on what would be expected of her.

Too bad she couldn’t just ask the woman across the hall ...

But Audrey could tell when someone wanted to be left alone, and she tried very hard not to make a pest of herself.

She was excessively enthusiastic by nature, but she could control herself when needed.

At any rate, the committee should be a great way to get involved and prove her commitment to the university.

Her phone pinged with an incoming text, and she smiled to see her mom’s name on the screen, followed by a string of happy emojis in response to Audrey’s classroom selfie.

She’d also received a department-wide email from Stuart, the department chair, inviting everyone to a “welcome to the new school year” cocktail gathering at his house.

Audrey added that and the committee meeting to her calendar, trying not to think about the fact that Dr. Thompson would likely be at both events.

“Good afternoon, and welcome to Fundamentals of Art History. I’m Dr. Thompson.

” Michelle swept her gaze over the roughly fifty students in attendance.

This being an entry-level class that fulfilled the university’s art requirement, it was usually large and filled with students who had little to no interest in art or history.

As such, it was her least favorite class to teach.

And yet she got stuck with it, year after year.

Even worse, this semester it was being offered in a single three-hour Thursday-afternoon block. Right now, she just wanted to get through this first week of classes. It was always the hardest, a shock to her system after a quiet summer spent immersed in her research.

This summer, she’d spent several weeks in St. Ives, a seaside village along the southwest coast of England, in Cornwall.

The area had long been a hub for local artists, playing an important role in the development of British modernism after the war.

While she was there, Michelle had become fascinated with the artist Eliza St. Claire.

St. Claire’s paintings embraced the Romantic style of the late 1800s, often-stormy seascapes with figures reaching for each other over the waves, and she exhibited a preference for dark, moody colors.

While her paintings focused on nature, when she included people, they were always female figures.

What a fascinating woman she’d been and rumored to have been a lesbian as well.

For obvious reasons, the sapphics were always Michelle’s favorites.

How she longed for the opportunity to teach St. Claire’s work to a room full of eager students. Michelle’s fingers clenched against the lectern as she forced her thoughts back on topic.

“We’ll begin today with a brief look at some of the earliest art known to man, a fascinating peek into human lives some forty thousand years ago.

Even more interesting, it’s up to us to interpret what we believe these cave markings mean, using historical clues.

Just as scientists must imagine what dinosaurs looked like based on their fossilized skeletons and other scientific data, historians have to make an educated guess as to why someone sketched ancient horses and deer in a cave in France. ”

Michelle paused, unsurprised to see that many of her students were looking down, probably playing on their phones. The rest stared blankly in her direction, looking like they’d rather be anywhere but here. She held in a sigh. New semester, same problems.

Nonetheless, she carried on, taking them through a variety of ancient carvings and paintings.

This lesson wasn’t her favorite either. She preferred more recent periods of history, when she could sink deeper into the artists behind the art, especially the often-overlooked women like Eliza St. Claire.

Michelle might not get to teach Women in Art, but she’d always included as many female artists in her classes as she reasonably could or, at least, as many as she was allowed.

In the beginning, her classes had featured closer to an even split, which seemed only fair, in her opinion.

Male artists were often the most famous.

They tended to get all the attention, but women throughout history had been creating art that was just as magnificent, and she wanted her classes to reflect that fact.

But there had been complaints. She’d been asked to adhere to a more traditional curriculum. So here she was, teaching about the same overrated male artists everyone had already heard of. It was infuriating ... and disillusioning.

As the class exited the room at the end of those interminably long three hours, Michelle began to pack up.

She thought idly of the exuberance on Audrey’s face this morning as she’d headed off to teach a class.

If she really focused, Michelle could remember when she herself had been that enthusiastic, probably around the time she’d had Audrey as a student.

If only her students now were as engaged as Audrey had been then.

“Great class, Dr. Thompson.”

Michelle looked up from her briefcase to see a silver-haired woman giving her a thumbs-up as she passed the lectern. She’d noticed at the beginning of class that she had a mature student in this session, but it had slipped her mind once she began her lecture.

“Thank you,” Michelle told her.

The woman, whose name escaped her, waved as she left the lecture hall.

Michelle enjoyed having older students in her classes.

They tended to be people who were here because they wanted to learn, whether they were working toward a career change or fulfilling a dream of attending college that they had been denied earlier in life.

This woman seemed to fit that mold, and Michelle was curious to learn her story.

She made a mental note to remember the woman’s name after her next class.

She walked outside into a light rain, grateful for her umbrella.

As she entered Holman Hall a few minutes later, Michelle saw Stuart walking in her direction.

“Good afternoon, Michelle,” he said. “How’s your semester going so far?”

“It’s fine.” She shrugged, but then curiosity got the better of her. “I was surprised to learn that Audrey’s teaching Women in Art. I thought you were opposed to offering that class, since you kept turning down my proposal?”

“Ah.” He rocked back on his heels. “I probably should have spoken to you about that before the start of the semester. I apologize for not doing so. Time got away from me.”

She kept her expression neutral, waiting for him to answer her question.

“I was never opposed to the class,” Stuart said, his expression apologetic.

“Your proposal just never stood out to me. Audrey’s did.

Her proposal felt fresh and exciting. She’s incorporating some modern elements into her syllabus to really bring the history alive, and since she’s new here, it felt like a good time to give that class a trial run. ”

Michelle blinked, stung. “Oh.”

“It’s nothing personal.”

“Of course not. Thank you for your honesty.”

She turned and strode down the hall, reeling, because that wasn’t the response she’d expected.

She’d thought he might feed her a line about how adding a new professor to the department had allowed him to widen their course selection, but no .

.. he’d thought Audrey’s proposal was better. Fresher. More exciting.

She forced herself to unclench her fists, blinking away the dampness in her eyes.

In that moment, she hated this university and everyone in it with such vehemence, her skin flushed hot.

This place just kept pushing her down, and it hurt.

So much. Her throat ached, but she would not cry.

If her mother had taught her anything, it was how to control her emotions.

Michelle shut herself in her office for a much-needed cup of chamomile tea because her day wasn’t over. The first Sustainability Committee meeting was this evening, and it promised to be a fittingly tedious ending to her awful day.

After taking a few fortifying sips of her tea, she opened her laptop to check her email.

There was nothing of interest in her university account, but she’d received a message from Kate Fisher in her personal email.

She and Kate went way back, having met when they were assigned as roommates their freshman year at Oxford.

After graduation, Kate put her career on hold to start a family, while Michelle followed Kelly to the States for her graduate studies.

These days, Kate was married with three mostly grown children, still living in London, but she and Michelle had kept in touch on and off over the years.

It was nice having someone from home to talk to, even if they didn’t have much in common anymore.

Kate’s email was ebullient, as her oldest had just gotten engaged. Michelle sent off a quick reply, extending her congratulations on the engagement. To her surprise, her phone began to ring almost immediately with a call from Kate.

“Figured I’d catch you while I knew you weren’t teaching,” Kate said when Michelle connected the call. “How’s the new semester?”

“It’s been ... frustrating, but that’s nothing new.” Briefly, she considered venting about what Stuart had just told her, but she found she didn’t want to think about it anymore, let alone talk about it. “Tell me more about Gemma and Amir’s engagement. Have they set a date?”

“They’re looking at next summer,” Kate said. “Can you believe I’m about to be the mother of the bride? At our age?”

“I can’t,” Michelle admitted. Kate had married young, and now it seemed her daughter was following in her footsteps. “But it’s wonderful news.”

“I’m over the moon about it.”

Michelle sipped her tea as Kate told her every detail about the engagement, grateful for the distraction from her tumultuous thoughts.

They’d always been this way. Kate was as chatty as Michelle was reserved, and so, Michelle tended to listen while Kate talked.

It might make them unlikely friends, and yet somehow, it just worked.

Last year, Michelle had allowed Kate to talk her into seeing a therapist after the divorce, and in hindsight, she could reluctantly agree that it had been a good idea.

Her therapist had opened Michelle’s eyes to the emotional damage Kelly had caused, how much her belittling comments had eroded Michelle’s self-esteem.

But outside those sessions, Michelle generally disliked talking about herself.

By the time she ended the call, Michelle felt somewhat calmer. She stood with a sigh. This meeting would likely be twice as long as it needed to be, dominated by men who talked too much. At least, with Audrey’s inclusion, Michelle would no longer be the only woman on the committee.

As she exited her office, she saw that the door to Audrey’s office was open. Audrey stood behind her desk packing up, about to begin the same walk.

Common courtesy said Michelle should wait so they could walk over together. But Michelle was still smarting from the knowledge that Stuart thought Audrey’s class was better than hers, and she couldn’t face Audrey right now. She just couldn’t.

Audrey looked up and spotted her, and Michelle had a glimpse of Audrey beginning to hold up a hand to ask Michelle to wait for her before she turned away, hurrying toward the stairwell.

As she exited the building, Michelle exhaled in relief to have made her escape.

Her chest loosened in anticipation of a quiet walk alone, and yet she still felt a slight pinch of something she refused to put a name to as she imagined the hurt look on Audrey’s face when she realized Michelle had left without her.