Chapter 3

Portrait

It was really past time she should make the call, Carolyn Pierce thought, but the twins had been going through successive growth spurts. Being a new mother was more than a full-time job; being a student on top of that had been too much to ask. But, if she wanted her degree in ‘74, she would have to act soon.

Prof. Kindle answered his phone. She still knew when his office hours were.

“Professor? This is Carolyn Pierce.”

“Yes, Mrs. Pierce. I was afraid that you had forgotten us.” Forgotten him? She’d sent him a draft of her dissertation two weeks before going into the hospital.

“I hadn’t forgotten you. I just couldn’t cope with anything but the babies for the past month. Anyway, did you get my draft?” Bill had delivered it personally, but it was better to ask.

“Yes, and I had some suggestions.” Of course, he had suggestions. The soup always tasted better to the advisor after he’d pissed in it. “Do you want to make an appointment to discuss it?”

“That’s the thing. If you could come here for dinner Saturday, Bill, my husband, will be able to manage the boys. If that’s not acceptable, I’ll get a sitter for the time you want.” Though sitters while high -school classes were in session were scarce as rubies, and twice as expensive.

“Are you inviting me to dinner? That is quite kind of you. What time?”

“Would six-thirty be convenient? We’re used to eating around then, but that’s merely a habit on Saturdays.” Actually, the boys were used to eating before then, which made his coming then remarkably convenient.

“Six-thirty this Saturday. I’d be delighted.”

She figured that Kindle deserved lamb chops. Bill drove her to the butcher’s shop -- she wasn’t going to depend on a butcher’s department in a supermarket when her dissertation’s acceptance might hang on the taste of the meal -- on Friday. He did what he could to give her time in the kitchen to do the cooking. Bill was being very cooperative.

The same couldn’t have been said of his sons. They got their schedules off, and -- try as she might -- kept them off. She was nursing Paul when the bell rang. Bill answered it carrying John. He was hungry, too, and telling the world. Bill left Kindle in the living room to trade babies and burp and change Paul. Then he went back. She changed John -- for guys whose only talents were sleeping, eating, and eliminating, they sure could multitask -- before coming out to greet Kindle.

Wonder of wonders, the professor was human. He had Paul on his arm, quite safely, too. The head was tucked into the inside of his elbow as if he’d done this before. He was talking baby-talk. Paul had someone new to hold him and looked like he was listening. He’d look the same way if Kindle had delivered an economics lecture. She suspected that the gold-rimmed eyeglasses were Paul’s real interest. She handed John to Bill and went to wash her hands.

When the kids were in their cradles with mobiles to amuse them, the adults sat down to dinner. Kindle asked about the children before discussing the dissertation. If he noticed the meal she’d taken such pains to prepare, he gave no indication. On the other hand, he sure had noticed the boys, and she’d taken even more pains with them -- and received much more pain from them.

“The details may seem niggling,” Kindle said. “They are, in fact, niggling, but the audience for that dissertation, tiny as it is, will be very important to your future, and they will frown at any imprecision. The difference between absolute clarity, clarity for your professional peers, not for the general reader, who won’t ever take the opportunity -- will never have the opportunity -- to read it, and enough clarity for them to understand what you meant even if you didn’t quite say it, is the difference between their occasionally citing you when they need a particular fact and their referring to you as an exemplar of how the facts should be gathered and presented.” German students were reported to applaud when one of their professors kept a single sentence going for more than a minute. Kindle was definitely teaching in the wrong country.

“You think these last changes will make it acceptable?”

“My dear, it’s acceptable now. These last changes will make it exemplary.” In the event, that she went through two more drafts before she presented it. It did, however, sail through the dissertation committee. All of the others were Kindle’s juniors in the department. She got her degree in June. Bill got the day off; she expressed two bottles; her men sat in the audience and watched the -- interminably dull, when you think about it -- ceremony. Well, Bill watched when the boys weren’t distracting him. They couldn’t focus beyond a yard yet.

Bill had bought a camera before the birth. He already had enough snaps to fill an album. He insisted of taking a picture of her in her robe holding the twins. That was fine. She only insisted that the pictures of her breastfeeding were kept out of the album. He wanted to go further, though.

“You can keep the robe another few days, can’t you?”

“Bachelor’s robes are rented. I purchased the doctoral robe. We wear them again. Didn’t you see all the faculty in the parade?”

“Great! Now, what I want to do is to get a real portrait-style photo of you in the robe with the twins. We can go to a studio where the guy will do it right.”

“Why?”

“Because my snapshots are just that. We want a professional job.”

“Why? I mean, not why the professional will do a better job than the amateur,” -- although it would be convenient if he accepted that in economics, instead of thinking that his MBA training trumped her years of specialization -- “but why do you want the picture at all?” Where did he get that ‘we’ wanted it?

“Because it puts together your successes of this year. You know, you academics think of the doctor’s degree as one rung on the ladder. Doctor Smith is inferior to Assistant Professor Jones. But we think of it as a high point. Even if not, and I want the picture for my friends not for your fellow faculty, you aren’t going to have a baby -- let alone twins -- the year you make full professor.” She wasn’t going to have a baby, let alone twins, ever again. But it was too early to discuss that. Anyway, you had to give Bill points for wanting a family portrait which didn’t include him and focused on her accomplishments. Was a baby an accomplishment? Twin babies were more like a disaster. Well, getting a doctorate while bearing twins was an accomplishment.