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It was the last Saturday in August. Ed and his live-in, Megan, took the train down to the beach in San Clemente. It was an easy deal, they wore their swimsuits under their street clothes, and the train stopped right on the beach, so there were no hassles with parking. It was a last chance to relax before the school year started.
The graduate assistants had a big meeting scheduled even before Labor Day, and Megan was flying to the UK to spend the year at Oxford.
That had come as a surprise to Ed. Another surprise was that someone had come with them on the trip to the beach. Bridget was a former nun who’d left the convent and decided to go to graduate school instead. Not only was she a former nun, but she was a former nun from Ireland. Ed was having a hard time understanding why she was along when the beach trip was supposed to be private time between him and Megan. On the other hand, there were, by this date, many subjects that the two of them couldn’t discuss.
Tiny issues would metastasize into vast areas of subject matter, whole centuries in a sort of Dewey Decimal System of conversational taxonomy, that couldn’t be discussed. One of the biggest, in fact, was Megan’s upcoming year at Oxford. She’d won the graduate student of the year award, more properly called the Gustafson Prize, which came with the fellowship to Oxford attached. This naturally was thought to be propitious for the career of the recipient.
That had indeed been a surprise. Ed had developed the habit of mind, inculcated primarily by Megan herself, of trying to reflect on whether any such surprise was the result of an instinct to deprecate Megan’s accomplishments. Her grades, however, were indifferent, and at the end of every semester, she had several days of hysteria over the student evaluations in her comp classes. Indeed, the editors of the student course guide consistently listed her sections among those to be avoided, a circumstance on which Ed had long since found it convenient not to dwell.
He remembered that a month or two before the big surprise, she’d come home from campus with a story about how a respected prof had called her into his office, using the words “soggy” and “desultory” to describe her prose, and had closed the door behind them. Considering her usual hypersensitivity to even unintentional criticism, her equanimity was remarkable. If Ed had had the temerity to make such observations - but who says such things to a live-in? - her reaction would have been to cover her ears with her hands and scream. Instead, she seemed oddly giddy at having had the prof’s attention.
On the other hand, her selection may simply have been due to the English Department’s wish to put the editors of the student course guide in their place. Or the normal inability of professors to find the sharpest knives in the drawer. Or for that matter, simple clerical error. Ed knew nothing more, since Megan had subsequently closed off discussion, and nobody else was talking.
Nor could they discuss what the year with Megan in Oxford and Ed back home meant for their relationship. The most Megan had eventually offered was the day at the beach just before her departure, but now it was plain that, with Bridget along, they wouldn’t be able to talk about much then, either.
Ed had been raised a Presbyterian, not a denomination that much troubled itself with nuns or monks. Maybe it was from reading too many magazine stories, but he’d developed the impression that a Catholic religious leaving an order was always the result of some recondite spiritual fastidiousness. On the other hand, he and Megan both had the example of The Rev. Edgar T. Murray, SJ, the Jesuit who lived in the apartment just upstairs.
Every Sunday afternoon he had a visit from a tastefully gotten-up blonde who drove a Jaguar. About an hour later there would issue a fearsome pounding and clatter from the bedroom just above theirs, leading to no misunderstandings about the purpose of the visit. Eventually Murray left the Jesuits, with spiritual fastidiousness apparently having little to do with the decision.
Ed still found the idea of a former nun in a swimsuit incongruous. Her flesh proceeded from its edges in billows, a prospect not completely unenticing in a Rubensesque kind of way, though it certainly looked to be an acquired taste. But he also began to develop a sense that this was the result of a careful calibration on Megan’s part. Bridget wasn’t going to win many swimsuit contests. But then, Megan wasn’t going to win all that many more herself. All she had to do, it seemed, was be able to win a few more than Bridget, and she could come back and pick up where she left off.
But precisely how did one chat up a former nun? “Did you find the daily offices especially tedious? I must confess I’ve sometimes wondered about that.” Or the direct approach: “So, why did you leave the order?”
“I got really randy.”
“I have something that can fix that.” But actually, the way to do it would have been pretty much the way you scored with any graduate student: you pontificated for a while, “Blah blah blah, the Republicans, blah, blah, whereas the Democrats, blah blah blah,” until someone’s notion of decency had been satisfied, and then you made your move. But that would be work, and if it came to it, why was he even thinking about doing this? Because Megan wanted him to?
What was on offer, Ed suddenly realized, was a sort of deal on a year’s sublease.
Megan would be off to the UK in a day or so. There’d be no other chance for discussion or renegotiation. This was the opportunity she’d promised for the last Saturday in August. Take it or leave it.
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