Free My Education by Susan Choi

outside and she inside the very small room, where she opened the undersink cabinet and lifted out a tidy stack of thick, if slightly dusty-looking, towels. “Sorry,” she repeated, turning to face me with the pile of towels between us, as if she realized her shirt was transparent. “No clean towels upstairs.”
    â€œOh! I’m sorry,” I repeated, hardly aware that I’d said it, for here she was, the object of my avid curiosity, and I could hardly hook a noun to a verb—but I didn’t
want
to converse, I complained inwardly. I’d just wanted to see her.
    â€œWhy sorry? I assume laundry’s not part of your job.”
    I laughed disproportionately, and she added, as if politely hoping to inflate her joke to account for my outsize reaction, “Nicholas asks a great deal of his teaching assistants, but thus far I don’t think that he asks them to launder his clothes. You’re his new TA, aren’t you? Why else would I find you handcuffed to a chair with a red pen in hand? I’m Martha,” and here she extended her hand, and I took it in mine for a moment and quickly let go.
    â€œRegina,” I managed. “Gottlieb.”
    â€œYou’re a first-year?” I agreed that I was, and this seemed to explain something to her. She went on, kindly, “You must be happy the semester is ending. All my students tell me the first is the hardest. You’re still adjusting, and the winter’s setting in.”
    â€œI haven’t minded.”
    â€œThe semester? Or the winter? Let me warn you, the winter is just getting started. ‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.’” To save us both from a repeat of my oversize laughter she added, “Are you going home for the holidays?”
    â€œNo. Nowhere to go.”
    â€œOh dear.”
    â€œIt isn’t as bad as it sounds. My father’s dead and so my mother likes to travel. She’s spending Christmas in the Holy Land this year.”
    â€œAh. Really getting to the bottom of it.”
    â€œYes, going straight to the source. She keeps very busy.”
    â€œShe must have been happy with your father. She finds widowhood lonely.”
    â€œI think she does,” I said, entering thoughtfully into this unexpected mood of analysis.
    â€œThat’s nice. I mean, not that she’s alone, but that she was so happy with him.”
    â€œAnd they were an extremely odd couple.”
    â€œWere they? Now you’ve made me curious about them. Wait, let me guess.” Very bemused suddenly, she examined me over her pile of towels, her eyes walking like fingers all over me, taking my measure. “Mr. Gottlieb. I’ll guess the shy, quiet type. Germanic, obviously. Military? He must be, but I can’t guess which branch. He meets Miss X while he’s posted in Fill-in-the-Blank. For the hell of it I’ll say Jakarta. Miss X is vivacious—she’s going to spend her later years running around Palestine—and of course she must be beautiful. I’ll guess Mr. Gottlieb is adequately handsome—perhaps he’s not a heartthrob, but he has the kind of face that people like. An odd couple, they wed, and find enviable happiness, if it doesn’t last quite long enough. Their—two?—children are very fond of them. So how did I do?”
    Faintly, from far down the hall, I heard Laurence’s donkeylike laughter. “Army,” I supplied after a moment. “Not Jakarta. Manila. Just one child. Also, somehow you failed to guess that she has an extremely loud voice, and that he was half deaf. Points off for that.” We regarded each other with delighted dismay.
    â€œGoodness,” she said. “Points off or not, I’m impressed with myself.”
    â€œI’m impressed with you, too,” I replied, which was an extreme understatement.
    â€œWhat about the rest of my clairvoyance? Was Miss X a beauty?” Her first time voicing this