Read Joanne Dobson - Karen Pelletier 06 - Death without Tenure for Free Online

her onto campus with me? I shuddered. The academic bears were even fiercer. Especially now.
    “Connie, I can’t do it. I’m up for tenure. I have to watch every move I make.”
    “Is that so?” Her tone was dry. “Well, Sister, let me tell you something. You may be up for tenure, but I’ve been invited to Bentonville.” She said this with a reverent emphasis on the final word, as if she were announcing that she’d been invited to the White House or the Vatican.
    “Oh?” Where the hell was Bentonville? What was it?
    “Yes, Bentonville, WalMart headquarters in Arkansas. I’m a finalist for store manager. They want me out there for interviews and—if all goes well—training.”
    “Oh, Connie. That’s marvelous! Congratulations! I wish you the best of luck.” I was genuinely happy for her. Just because Connie and I have never gotten along doesn’t mean I wish her ill.
    “Thank you.” A pause. “So you’ll take her.”
    “No!” I could imagine the look on Sally Chenille’s face if she met my poor, stooped, confused mother in the English Department hallway. “No, I can’t possibly. Not now. Maybe later.”
    “Later’s too late.”
    But what would I do with Mom when I was teaching? Seat her in the back of the class? “What about Denise?” Our other sister.
    “Denise is drinking again.”
    “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” Poor Denise. “Well, listen. I’ll put money in the mail tomorrow.” I did some rapid calculations. How much could I send without bouncing the rent check? “I’ll send a thousand. That ought to help you find someone.”
    She didn’t say anything for a long moment.
    I heard my mother’s querulous voice in the background. “Are you talking to Karen? I want to talk to Karen, too.”
    Then Connie finally spoke. “Thanks a lot—Sister!” And she slammed the phone down.
    I was swamped with guilt; standing there in my sunny office, I was writhing with guilt. Even though there was no good reason I should be.
    Twenty years earlier, when my father had refused to shelter me from my abusive husband, my mother and two sisters wouldn’t, couldn’t, defy him. I remember with traumatic clarity that desperate phone call home: “Come get me. Please.” And my mother’s anguished whisper, “Karen, you know how he is. I don’t even dare tell him you called.” Standing there in the cold of a November morning, clutching the receiver of a public telephone on a desolate, wind-swept street in North Adams, Massachusetts, with Amanda crying in her stroller, I’d hit rock bottom. Twenty years old, with a two-year-old daughter and on the far side of the state from anyone I knew, I had nowhere to turn for help but to the Salvation Army. It was thanks to them that I found safe housing, that I got day-care for Amanda, that I’d begun to work my way through college. When I was most needy, my family had abandoned me; I’d sworn then that I’d have nothing to do with them, ever again. I can still feel the cold wind whipping around that western Massachusetts corner and the even colder silence of the cold phone receiver in my hand, and the cold determination in my heart to survive. It was a cold world, and I was on my own.
    Then Amanda, when she was in college, made a forbidden pilgrimage to Lowell and brought my mother and sisters back into my life. When my mother first saw me again, the hopeful expression on her much-aged face weakened my resolve, and I had to relent. Not that things were hunky-dory between us now—far from it. Connie and Denise thought I was an elitist intellectual snob, out of touch with the real world. I resented their hostility and chafed at the narrowness of their views. But…my poor destroyed mother…
    I started going to Lowell three, four times a year. My sisters and their families came to me only once, for an awkward Fourth of July picnic, where the food was too fancy for them, the company too snooty, and the music was all wrong. After that, Enfield became so far