Chapter 24

Erica looked across the table and wondered for perhaps the twentieth time if she was crazy. She examined the man, also for perhaps the twentieth time. He had sat next to her in class, and introduced himself as Terrance Dotson.

She remembered it all very clearly. Her first reaction had been automatic, and it was to ignore him. She replayed it in her mind.

“You can call me Terry,” he said.

She glanced at him. He was smiling. He was looking at her face, and she waited for his eyes to slide down. When they didn’t, she thought of Bobby, for some reason. The man’s smile faded and something in his eyes told her he was disappointed by her frosty behavior.

“Erica,” she said, suddenly. “I’m from Granger.”

The interest came back into his eyes like light into a dark room. She thought it was amazing that she could see that. He didn’t leer.

“Been there one time,” he said. “I teach here, in Hutch, and I took my class there to see a musical.”

“Really?” She was surprised.

“Yeah. I heard about how the kids had dedicated it to a couple of handicapped guys, and I wanted my classes to see that. I teach Social Studies.”

“Me too,” she said.

“Really?” He smiled. “Small world.” They were still waiting for something to happen, so he kept talking. “So you probably know some of the kids who put that show on, huh?”

“Yes,” she said. She didn’t know whether to tell him who she was or not. She didn’t want to sound like she was bragging. “They’re wonderful kids.”

“You can say that again,” he said. “Because of them, my own students have adopted a nursing home and the VFW in town. They put together an extra credit plan, and they go visit people with disabilities.”

“You’re kidding!” she gasped.

“Not at all,” he said. “They were really motivated by that musical. I’d like to meet the person who thought that whole thing up.”

“They volunteered,” said Erica. She was on autopilot now, just going with the flow, because she had no idea how to proceed. He obviously didn’t know she’d directed the musical.

“Yeah,” he said. “I heard that, but somebody had to have the guts to let them do it.”

“That was Julia, our principal,” said Erica.

“Well she’s got balls.” He stopped short, and closed his eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t think before I speak.”

It turned out that talking to Terry was like that. It was refreshing, in a way, because he wasn’t all wrapped up in crafting each and every comment he made, to achieve a specific end. He just said whatever was on his mind. Sometimes it was a little unsettling, but more often it tended to lend itself to his credibility. There was very little guile to Terrance Dotson.

Now, as she sat in a small restaurant, and examined the man, she inevitably compared him to Bobby. That had started as soon as class was over for the day and he asked, “You want to get a bite to eat?”

A year ago she would have assumed he was pursuing some plan to get her in bed. She’d thought the same thing about Bobby when he had asked her if she wanted to go get something to eat. Of course thinking about Bobby was confusing. He had gotten her into bed. She had to remind herself, occasionally, that she’d had as much to do with the fact that they ended up having sex as he had.

“So, tell me about Granger,” said Terry, breaking her train of thought.

They’d already ordered, so there wasn’t anything for her to do except talk. “There’s not much to tell,” she said. “Chicago was driving me crazy, and there was a position in Granger. I went there. It’s a small town.”

“There has to be more to it than that,” he suggested, when she went silent.

“I support the women’s liberation movement,” said Erica. She figured she might as well get that established, right up front. “Granger isn’t exactly the bastion of equality. I don’t fit in there well.”

“My ex-wife is a libber,” said Terry. There didn’t seem to be any censure in his tone, even though he used a nickname she found objectionable.

“Is that why you divorced her?” asked Erica, feeling irritated.

“She divorced me, actually,” said Terry. “She said I was a male, chauvinist pig.”

“And are you?” Erica wondered why she felt like she had to be so confrontational.

“Probably.” He grinned. “I think she took things to extremes, though.”

“Why is that?”

“Well,” he said, “for one thing, she insisted that I wash my own dishes, and clothes.”

“What a shame,” said Erica, with acid in her voice.

“Oh, I didn’t mind that,” said Terry. “I just think it’s stupid for two people to use the sink and the washer, and do the grocery shopping and everything else, when one could do it with less confusion, and more economy.”

“Why didn’t you do it all then?” asked Erica. She clamped down on her emotions. He appeared to be an unrepentant bastard, but he was talking. That left room for him to be educated.

“I would have,” he said. “She wouldn’t let me. Said everybody had to do their share. She even split the bills right down the middle, and I had to pay half, while she did the other half. We had to have two bank accounts. She had her chair and I had mine. She wanted to change her name back to her maiden name. It wasn’t a marriage. It was more like living with a roommate.”

“Oh.” Erica had the now familiar feeling that she had, once again, jumped to an incorrect conclusion. She thought about Bobby again as Terry went on.

“I liked doing things with her, but it was impossible to do anything with her. She kept breaking everything down into her part and my part. She was trying to make everything as equal as possible. I thought it was stupid. I guess I shouldn’t have told her that.” He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Actually, I think the divorce was good for both of us. She seems to thrive under the yoke of the oppressive dominating male bastards who pay the bills.”

Erica’s eyebrow went up.

“She’s a secretary,” he explained. “We dated in high school. I went to college and she went into the work force to make money right away. Now she has no skills, but still thinks her boss should make her a partner.”

“She has skills,” objected Erica.

“I guess so,” said Terry. “She’s just in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’d have made a very good farmer’s wife. In a family like that both people have to work hard to make a go of it.”

“I suppose so,” said Erica. He obviously wasn’t going to be interested in her any more. She wondered, briefly why that seemed to bother her.

“Anyway,” he said. “The last thing I want to do is talk about my ex-wife. What about you? Are you one of those extreme types, or do you just want a fair shot at things?” He seemed to think there were only two categories.

“I just think women should be recognized for their capabilities,” she said. “Equal pay would be nice too.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” he said.

She was both shocked by his comment, which was delivered in the same voice he’d been talking in, and distracted by the delivery of their food. It was a few minutes before she could respond.

“I thought you were bitter about feminists,” she said.

“Not at all,” said Terry. “I just believe in moderation. She loved feminism more than she loved me. I don’t mind being fair, but I’d sort of like to still be able to be a man without having to apologize for it all the time.”

“It’s men who have denied women an equal shot at things,” she said.

He stopped eating, and looked at her. “Other men,” he said. “Not me. I’d like an equal shot at things too, and if women stereotype me, I don’t get that.”

“Feminists are stereotyped,” she said. “Men think about women stereotypically all the time.”

“Then you know what I’m talking about,” he said. “Why do you think I asked you what kind of feminist you are?”

“Asking that sets me up for failure,” she argued. “If I say I’m strident, then suddenly I’m an uncaring bitch. If I say I’m moderate, then you won’t take me seriously.”

“You’re assuming I won’t take you seriously,” he said. “You’re stereotyping me.”

“What was the first part of me you looked at?” she asked.

“I know where you’re going with this,” he said. “You might be surprised to find out I looked at your hair.”

“My hair?”

“Hair can suggest lots of things about people,” he said. “At least that’s a theory of mine. Some women - men too - spend a lot of time on their hair, making it look just so. They use stuff on it, sprays and gels and all that kind of thing. Why do they do that? I think it has something to do with making a presentation. They want a certain response, whatever that may be. But I don’t want to touch hair like that. It looks all hard and fake. At the other end of the spectrum are people who don’t wash it, or cut it, or take care of it at all. I’m not sure what that means, but it rubs me the wrong way for some reason. I don’t want to touch that hair either. It’s not really fair, but it’s just the way I feel. I’m working on that.”

She started to respond, but he held up a hand.

“And then there are those of us who are in the middle somewhere. We wash our hair, and keep it clean and healthy. We don’t put a bunch of chemicals on it to make it better, or special, or eye-catching. It’s just a part of us, and we’re okay with that. It’s hair that looks like it might be nice to run your fingers through. My theory is that those people are the most level headed, and the ones I’m most likely to get along with.”

“All stereotypes,” said Erica.

“I know,” he sighed. “It’s really hard not to use them.” He went back to eating.

Erica began eating again too, but her mind wasn’t on the food. He had basically just said that he wouldn’t mind running his fingers through her hair. But he’d said it in a way that wasn’t chauvinistic. She looked at his hair. With a tinge of dismay she realized that he was right. Under the right circumstances, the idea of running her fingers through that hair wasn’t objectionable at all.

She didn’t buy into all his opinions. But the way in which he’d presented them didn’t bother her either. He just said what he was thinking.

“I don’t agree with everything you said,” she said.

“I’d hope not,” he said, smiling. “We’re different people, after all. It would be boring if we agreed on everything, don’t you think so?”

They ate a few minutes longer. She had another question, but she wasn’t sure it was one she wanted to ask. She couldn’t resist, though.

“What was the next thing you looked at?” she asked.

His fork paused, halfway to his mouth.

“You sure you want to know?”

She wasn’t, even more so now, but she was stubborn. “I asked, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but why did you ask?” He waved his fork. “Never mind. It was your face, and then I looked at the rest of you. Happy?”

Actually, what Erica was feeling was the tension of conflicting concepts. After Bobby, she couldn’t help but think about men a little differently than she had in the past. She still had values. Her feminism was still important to her. But that didn’t seem to threaten this man. He was behaving like a male ... sort of. There were at least male components to his behavior. He’d admitted he looked at her body. Something in her liked that. That was one of the things Bobby had made her think about ... like being perceived as a female. Under the right circumstances, it wasn’t as objectionable as it had been in the past. She looked at Terry. He was waiting for her answer, even though his question could have been perceived as rhetorical. He was looking at her face, instead of her breasts.