Free Tenure Track by Victoria Bradley Page A

“save” instead.
     
    When Mandy met up with Blanca and Julie for a late-afternoon caffeine break, her roommates asked her how the cell phone lessons with “the ass” went. “Oh, he’s not such an ass,” she admitted, now regretting her previous word choice. “You should see how goofball he is over his wife. It’s really kinda sweet. Sorta like how I’d want some guy to feel about me someday.”
    “ Doesn’t she, like, live in another state?” Julie asked.
    “ Yeah, that part’d suck,” Mandy admitted. “It’s just a job thing.”
    “ Sorry,” Blanca interjected, “but someday if I got a job in another state, I’d ‘spect the man to come with me. None of this long distance crotte. That don’t even work in college.”
    “ Well, you better look for somebody who likes Cajun food if you’re plannin’ on draggin’ him back to Nawlins,” Mandy noted, in an exaggerated version of her friend’s accent.
    “ Cher, if he wants me, that’s the way it’s gonna be!” her confident young friend declared.
    Julie agreed with the sentiment. “What’s the point of bein’ married to somebody if you’re not gonna to be together? And you really can’t have kids. That would totally suck.”
    Mandy pointed out the exceptions. “But people in the military do it all the time. You said yourself that your dad’s sometimes deployed for over a year without leave. And when you go into the Navy you might be at sea for months. At least these guys see each other every few weeks.”
    “ That’s different,” Julie countered. “That’s separation in defense of your country.”
    “ Make war, not love!” Blanca interjected sarcastically.
    Mandy continued, determined to test her ROTC pal’s fortitude. “Okay, so someday if Gus becomes a famous director and decides to make a movie that has him livin’ far away for a long time, you’ll just pack up the kids and go on location with him?”
    “ Hey, it worked for Brangelina,” Julie quipped.
    Blanca interjected again. “But that won’t matter, ‘cause she’ll be off fightin’ wars. Gus’ll have to raise the kids himself.”
    “ Damn straight!” Julie announced.
    Their debate about the pros and cons of long-distance relationships continued with no real conclusion other than Mandy’s firm conviction that it seemed to be working for Lewis Burns and his wife. And that gave her hope that, despite the examples in her own family, some married couples could still be happy.

Chapter Five
    Confrontations and Avoidance
     
    “ The author makes a few good points, but failed to convince me with the comparison of colonial expansion to marital oppression,” one grad student noted.
    “ Oh, I thought that was one of his strongest points,” another countered. “The British male was trying to suppress the power of women just as he was trying to suppress the independence of colonial peoples.”
    Jane was only half listening to this discussion in her graduate seminar on “Gender Identity in Post-Victorian Britain.” Usually she enjoyed this type of banter as the would-be Ph.D.s tried to come up with impressive verbiage to illustrate how well they were mastering the skills of professional historians. Jane glanced around the room, trying to mentally assess how many of these students, if any, might one day be among the privileged few validated through tenure. Or would they be relegated to the masses of overeducated, underemployed minions who could wax eloquently about Descartes in between asking, “Do you want fries with that?” Would any find themselves in the position that Lewis Burns is about to face—a successful career potentially derailed by scandal? One mistake and years of work down the tubes?
    The bell rang upon the hour, but none of the students dared move until Dr. Roardan gave her consent. “Alright,” she sighed. “That’s time. Next week, read Smith and think about the continuation of the cultural trajectory leading to suffrage.”
    She slowly headed