City Kid. Mary MacCracken

a trial basis. Bernie’s agreed and picked the school and I’ve offered to supply the therapeutic tutors.”

      “What’s a therapeutic tutor?” I interrupted.

      “Somebody who’s good with kids. What else? You can hear it in fancy words later. So what do you say?”

      “It sounds like a good idea from what you’ve told me.”

      “No. Not that. Will you do it? Be a tutor?”

      “Me?” I couldn’t believe it. I answered instantly before he could change his mind. “I’d love to. Where do I go?”

      Professor Foster smiled at me. “Don’t you want to know about credits – hours?”

      I looked down, embarrassed and immediately shy. I had been too eager, revealed too much. I nodded.

      “Well, first there’ll be training sessions at the clinic. Then you’ll see your child three times a week for about fifty minutes each session. Eventually you’ll have three children.”

      In my mind’s eye, I could see the schedule of courses that I had just completed. Falls City was about twenty minutes from the campus; that would mean another forty minutes each time I went down. There wasn’t a day when there was a block of time long enough. Wordlessly I handed Professor Foster my schedule.

      He studied it briefly, then whacked it down on the table.

      “What the hell is this? How could you sign up for classes before you checked with me? Am I your adviser or not? Why didn’t you ask for advice?

      “Never mind,” Foster said after a minute, picking up my schedule. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to yell. Let’s see what we can do.” He studied it closely and then grinned at me. “At least you’ve got good taste, picking ‘Counseling and Guidance for the Handicapped’ – that’s mine. Unfortunately, it’s only a two-credit course, but at least that gives us a couple of hours to play with. Mmm-de-dum-dum.”

      Professor Foster hummed to himself as he flipped through catalog pages, checking them against course requirements and my own schedule. Finally, he looked up at me and said, “That’ll do it. Drop History of Ed and take Independent Study in its place and spend the time of my course at School Twenty-three and you’ll be all set.”

      “What’s Independent Study? And what do I do about History?”

      “Independent Study is whenever I want you to do something. I just write up a slip and send it to the dean. You’ll get your three credits.”

      “Power,” I said.

      “What was that?”

      “Nothing.”

      “Okay, now. Go on back to registration before it closes and drop that history course. You can always take it next year, there are plenty of sections. Here’s a note if you need it.”

      “Thank you,” I said as I stood up. “When, where will I start?”

      “Well, the other two tutors are both seniors with much more freedom in courses, so scheduling will be a lot easier for them. Let’s see your schedule again. Okay. You’ve got some time on Monday afternoons. We’ll meet down at the clinic at two.” He glanced out his door. Four pairs of blue-jeaned legs could be seen below the hall bench.

      “Ah. Gotta rush now, way behind. See you next Monday. Call the clinic to get directions down there. Sorry I can’t talk longer.” He was already standing, tucking in his shirt, smoothing back his hair.

      The line was still long at the student union. I went up to the guard at the door. “I’ve already registered. I just want to drop one course. Is it all right if I go in?”

      “Name, please.”

      “Mary MacCracken.”

      “MacCracken. M. That’s all right. Social security number?”

      “No. Look, I’ve already done this. I don’t need to regis –” it wasn’t any use. I was just wasting time. I sighed. “One four seven –”

      “All right. Step to the back of the line. No exceptions.”

      I went back. Six new people in line since I arrived, but I should have known better than to ask the guard. There were no exceptions on the lines, only in professors’ offices.

      But if the system bothered me, it couldn’t snuff out the small bubbles of excitement surfacing inside me. What kind of children would they be? What were we going to do together? Who would be my child?

Chapter 3

      It was cold, even for the end of January, and the fact that there was no snow made it worse. The campus looked bleak and bare, and the contrast with the remembered warmth of Christmas made it even more difficult for me to return.

      We had spent most of vacation and winter break at our house in the country. We cut our own tall, wonderful, scraggly Christmas tree and carried it up from the woods. We hung eleven stockings in front of the stone fireplace, ours and the children’s and the grandparents’ and friends’.

      The house was not meant to be a winter house. Cal’s parents had built it for summers fifty years before. It took days to warm the stone walls and floors. The small furnace worked valiantly, shedding soot as well as heat. Gusts of wind and small mice scurried through chinks in the stone walls to the inside warmth of the house.

      In the mornings we lay in bed and blew smoke rings of warm breath into the frosty air and then rushed from bed to shiver by the window as we watched deer leap across the meadow. We ate simple meals and trudged along un-plowed roads, chopped logs and read and talked quietly to each other. Happiness was almost visible that week.

      Vacation over, spring courses began. I wondered if every one had as hard a time coming back to school as I did. But I did have seventy-six credits now – five A’s and a B – and fifteen more credits coming up this semester. If I could just get through Statistics and Orientation to Psychological Testing and Background of Mathematics II, I’d have ninety-one by May. And now, thanks to Professor Foster, there would be children.

      Many of the faces in Background of Mathematics II were familiar, but instead of Dr. Kaiser, the teacher was a man in his thirties, wearing black horn-rimmed glasses – and there, sleeping beneath a grubby tennis hat, was Ian Michaels. My spirits lifted.

      I stepped over several pairs of blue-jeaned legs and settled beside Ian, who continued to sleep, or to pretend he did.

      On the board was written Background of Math II. Beneath this was the statement:

       A denumerably infinite set is one that can be put in a 1–1 correspondence with the set of counting numbers.

      Oh, no. Here we go again. I had thought we’d at least be to something like fractions.

      I opened my notebook and copied the statement down anyway; I could puzzle over it later.

      A familiar hand reached lazily across the page and scrawled an example.

       Ex: The set of multiples of 5 is a denumerably infinite set.

       1, 2, 3, 4, 5, … n …

       5, 10, 15, 20, 25, … 5n …

      I looked at what Ian had written. Okay, I see that. I smiled at Ian’s tennis hat.

      “Thank you,” I said, settling back in my chair. “The one thing I’m good at in math is knowing how to pick the right seat.”

      If classes at college were as frustrating as ever, our training sessions at the clinic were fascinating.

      The Mental Health Clinic was in the center of Falls City on the second floor of the Logan Building, and although the streets were littered and the surrounding buildings shabby, there was