This Wasn't Supposed to Happen

THIS WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN

I lay on my side, my elbow tucked under my head. The streetlights outside my window illuminated the naked back beside me. There were a few freckles and a couple of random moles, all surrounded by smooth, pale skin. Janice's shoulder rose and fell to the rhythm of her breathing as she snored softly.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

I resisted the urge to pull the sheet over her. Instead, I studied the sculptured lines of her shoulder blades and the rising curve of her hip, all the while thinking back to how this all began. None of it was planned; more than that, none of this had ever crossed my mind, nor hers, not once in all the years we worked together.

The day we met was chaotic. Janice and I, along with four other people, sat at a large table in the boardroom of the Civil Engineering Technology department at the city's polytechnic college. At the head of the table sat the seventh person, the Chair of the program. For a multitude of reasons, the department was replacing almost half of its teaching staff that summer.

The six of us were their replacements; all of us had training as civil engineering techs, except for the professional engineer among us who had a university degree. The rest of us were technologists with varying levels of experience. I had the most time out in the real-world, having spent over thirty years working for engineering firms. I was fifty-four, and the rest were at least twenty years younger than me.

Janice was in her mid-twenties and had only three years experience, but she had a teaching degree, which I'm sure helped get her the job.

We spent that day finding out what subjects we'd be teaching, what the office routine was, and what resources would be available to us. It became clear that most of the instructors we were replacing had been there far too long, and there was little in the way of material upon which to build our classes.

That first year was hard on all of us. I remember many, many nights being in the office until almost midnight, just trying to have my lesson plans and visual aids ready for the next morning. I was rarely alone; usually Janice was there, and at least one or two of the other new instructors. None of this was convivial, none of it was fun. It was an exhausting bag-drive just to keep up with lesson prep, marking, and the inevitable paperwork that was routinely tossed at us.

My introduction to post-secondary bureaucracy was enlightening. Everyone it seemed--from the president of the institution to the lowliest bean counter--had it in their heads that instructors were a bunch of lazy, sniveling gobs who just sat at our desks, picking our teeth. Their solution was to bury us in paperwork. Reports had to be filled out regarding lesson planning, formative and summative objectives, and teaching methodology, which they loved to call pedagogy because the word just sounded way too cool.

This constant harassment from idiots who never stepped into a classroom or lab was unexpected and I often wondered if I could make it through the year.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

All but one of the new instructors made it to the end of that first year, and we all breathed a sigh of relief as the second year became more manageable. Lesson prep was easier, and I found that I loved being in front of students. To my vague surprise, they seemed to like having me as an instructor.

The other thing that changed that second year was Janice's last name, from Hodgkins to Erikson. She spent a lot less time in the office late at night, because, well, husband. Her marriage surprised me because I never really thought about what anyone did outside of work.

My own life had been much the same for the last ten years. I was divorced--an amicable divorce, as people like to say--and motorcycling and building wooden ship models took up most of my free time. Romance, post-divorce was never something I aspired to. That doesn't mean I lived like a monk; I'd had a few friends-with-benefits and the occasional one-night stand along the way, but romance? Nope, no way.

Confronted with Janice's unexpected marriage, I looked at her--for the first time--to see what might make her attractive as a wife. To be honest, I really had no data regarding her personality or temperament, as we hadn't taught the same classes and really had little need to interact.

So instead I focused on the physical. She was young; she had blond hair down to her shoulders that paired nicely with her pale complexion; she was thin. Her tits were a bit of a mystery; they were small, and based on how they hung in her shirt, probably a bit saggy. I definitely approved of her hips, which flared nicely below her waist. I didn't think she was particularly pretty; her forehead was too high, her nose to thin and long, and her chin too pointed. My overall conclusion? Interesting, but not my type.

We both made it through the second year, and found ourselves paired for a team-taught class the next September. Engineering Materials was the most hated class among the instructors. It was so dry it was dusty; full of facts, statistics and minutiae that could liquefy the brain of even the most eager student.

In two years Janice and I had probably only exchanged a few dozen words. Now suddenly we were closeted in one of the prep rooms, trying to find a way to teach this class without driving our students, and ourselves, mad. I may have been the old hand, but I also knew that experience didn't necessarily translate into brilliance in teaching. Janice--with her education degree--threw ideas at me so rapidly I had trouble keeping up.

She wanted to kick-off the class with a project that would see small groups of students build some kind of do-dad. Once they were done, each group would explain to the rest of the class what the do-dad did and why they had selected the materials used. I was stodgily skeptical and raised all kinds of objections, only to discover that Janice had a much more forceful personality than I anticipated. She got her way, as she would get her way with so many other cockamamie ideas over time.

Should I mention that the project was a rousing success?

This wasn't supposed to happen.

The next year Janice and I were told we would be teaching Materials Estimating. I sat at the staff meeting where this was announced and prayed that one of Father Odin's thunderbolts would strike me, leaving my pen floating in midair while my ashes settled onto the carpet. The one thing I had always managed to avoid out in the real world was estimating. I hated it with a passion because it involved algebra, something I absolutely sucked at. Yes, I could do geometry like a damn, and even calculus when backed into a corner like a dog, but algebra? Oh no, not that, anything but that!

So you can imagine my horror when Janice came to me about setting up our classes and I discovered she was almost peeing herself with excitement because--wait for it--she loved algebra! We weren't going to be team-teaching this, but we needed to work together to keep the curriculum uniform. The next thing I knew, we were back in one of the prep rooms, and she was teaching me all the fiendish mysteries and supernatural magic of algebra. Her efforts paid off; I almost enjoyed teaching estimating.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

Janice and I got along well enough; we had minor disagreements, but nothing that ever turned into a knock-down drag-out. I respected her intelligence and creativity in the classroom, even though her knowledge of civil engineering was spotty in places. She respected my experience, and was always quick to ask questions when we were going over things she wasn't up to snuff on.

We never talked about anything outside of work, though even I--oblivious as I am--realized toward the end of the year that she was pregnant. She took maternity leave that June, and soon added a son to her family.

When she came back from her year away, Janice seemed distracted and worn out. There were dark circles under her eyes, she didn't smile much, and some of the grit had disappeared from that forceful personality. Remembering the toll my two sons had taken on me and my ex, I decided that was the problem.

That was until the day we were in one of the prep rooms reviewing the new syllabus our byzantine overlords had foisted upon us for estimating. The upbeat and cheerful Janice I had worked with for six years seemed distracted, maybe even irritable. Of course, me being me, I neglected to factor this into our discussion. I was somewhere beyond pissed that we had to redo so many of our lesson plans, and I started to vent, obstreperously.

"For fuck's sake Blair, shuddup!" Janice yelled. "Bitching about it isn't going to get it done."

I sat back, stunned. For a moment, just a moment mind you, I contemplated yelling back at her, but this was Janice, not some whiny-ass student or window-licking bureaucrat. I managed to reroute my instinctive hostility into a question.

"Okay Janice, I'll shut up." She looked at me, obviously mortified at her own outburst. "But, I need to ask you something that's been bothering me for a of month now. What the fuck is going on?" She stared at me with an intensity I wasn't prepared for, so I added, "I don't know you well, but I know when something is seriously fucking wrong."

The intensity of the stare increased, and I fully expected to get yelled at again. Instead, her eyes filled with tears, and she dropped her chin to her chest. Instinctively I reached into my pants pocket and got out my handkerchief. Just as well I pulled a fresh one out of the drawer this morning, I thought as I held it out to her.

She finally looked up, accepted the hanky and dabbed her eyes. There were no sobs, no ragged breathing, just tears.

"Has it been that obvious?"

"Seriously?" I replied.

She stared at the wall for a few seconds, maybe as long as a minute. I said nothing; unusual for me.

Janice finally looked at me. "Things are going to shit at home," she said. "Evan has decided he wants out."

Over the next twenty minutes I discovered that Evan had decided that the reality of being a husband and a father was not what he'd signed up for. I couldn't help thinking that five years in was a little late to be deciding this. Janice told me he filed for divorce about the time his son turned three months old. He was insisting on joint custody. This apparently noble gesture just told me that he wanted to maintain the appearance of being the proverbial good dad, without having to see his kid any more than he absolutely had to.

I had no advice to give Janice because my divorce had been the result of a gradual growing-apart, a mutually agreed upon parting of the ways, and both of my sons had been in their twenties when it happened.

I listened carefully, hoped I was making the appropriate sympathetic noises in the right places, and was smart enough not to tell her everything would be alright or that she would get through this. Most importantly, I promised that I would tell no one else in the department.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

The next nine months went by, and Janice did her best to put on the proverbial brave face. She worked hard at being more cheerful and more present in the office, and occasionally I would--as gently as I could--ask how things were going.

The divorce went through that summer, and after six years, Janice was single again, albeit now with a son to care for. I never asked her what the custody agreement was between her and Evan; it wasn't my business.

The next year started, and soon Winter Break was upon us. Janice mentioned during one of our meetings that for the first time in ten years she was going to be alone over the holidays. She had always been at her parents place or with her husband and kid. With her parents living in Winnipeg, she wasn't in any position to spend Christmas with them.

I found out Evan had swung a pretty sweet deal where custody was concerned; he got the kid for Christmas, Spring break, and Summer holidays, and Janice got them the rest of the time. Being the epitome of diplomacy that I've always been, I whistled and said, "Wow, that's great. He gets them for all the fun times when there's no pressure, and you get to deal with all the shit from school, daycare and the rest of the crap."

A look came over Janice's face I'd never seen before, and she stared at me for a while before she said, "that's about it."

I only understood later that face she'd made was her realizing that I thought the deal was as crappy as she did.

Janice's predicament played on my mind; I often spent Christmas with one or both of my sons, but the last couple of years I'd just gone solo. It wasn't a big deal to me; I'd had decades of Christmases surrounded by friends and family. But it grated on me that someone who was barely into her thirties was having to deal with the reality of Christmas without her kid.

So the next day, I did something so out of character that poor Janice's jaw dropped. We were alone in the coffee room.

"Look," I said, having had my first cup of coffee and deciding to rejoin the human race for the day, "I've spent the holidays on my own-some for a while now, and I've gotten into the habit of going to The Carvery for Christmas dinner. Don't look at me like that; they're open Christmas day for a limited sitting. They do a proper roast turkey with all the trimmings." Then I added what I considered to be the coup de grace. "And for dessert they always have plum pudding with hard brandy sauce."

I'm pretty sure it was the jaw dropping thing that prevented her from asking what the hell hard brandy sauce was.

She sputtered and made excuses. I let her ramble on for a minute then cut her off. "Think about it," I said. "You're welcome to join me, and it beats hell out of eating a Swanson TV dinner while binge-watching Netflix." She stopped protesting and said she'd think about it.

Which is how--on Christmas day of 2019--I found myself sitting in a cozy little alcove in The Carvery, complete with Christmas decorations and romantic lighting, with a woman half my age. I almost expected some asshole sitting nearby to say something snide like, 'isn't it nice to see that old man taking his granddaughter out for Christmas dinner?'

Knowing The Carvery to be one of the premier restaurants in town, Janice had gone all-out. She wore the quintessential Lothario-killer, an LBD, complete with matching high-heels and a single string of pearls. I'd never seen her wear makeup before, and it looked stunning; deep purple eye-shadow that glittered with silver, black eye liner, and murderously red lipstick. I paid attention.

I'd set ground rules before we went; no talking about Evan, no talking about my ex, and no talking about work. Instead we reminisced about Christmases long ago, places we'd traveled, and talked about things we wanted to do in the future. In the midst of all this, Janice got to discover good ol' English plum pudding and hard brandy sauce.

We sat and talked for at least three hours, drinking far more wine and liqueur that we should have. It made the evening go by relatively painlessly, for both of us.

We wound up standing in the snow covered parking lot, having one of those conversations that you know has to end, but you're trying like hell to prevent it. Janice finally called an Uber to stop the madness. As her ride pulled into the parking lot, I glanced down to dig my keys out from my parka pocket. A distinct, warm, moist phenomenon suddenly manifested itself on my left cheek. All relevant data suggested I had just been kissed. I looked up to see Janice hurrying toward her Uber.

Have you ever seen the movie Cabaret; that last scene where Liza Minnelli kisses Michael York and then hurries away to catch her train? It was just like that, complete with the little wave she gives without ever looking back.

This DEFINITELY wasn't supposed to happen.

I moped through the rest of the holiday season, and spent New Year's Eve on the couch watching the celebrations from Toronto on TV, while drinking a cheap bottle of sparkling wine.

Once we were back in the office in January, nothing changed. Janice and I didn't talk about Christmas dinner and we definitely didn't talk about that kiss. That doesn't mean I didn't think about it often.

Things continued at work like they always did, until they didn't. We learned a new word--COVID--and I discovered I would henceforth be teaching on line from my crappy little apartment.

I spent the next two weeks learning six new computer programs on the fly, and trying to figure out how to replace an entire college's worth of resources with my old textbooks and a cranky laptop. The idiots managers at the polytechnic closed my building immediately and I had to mount a covert black-ops mission just to pick up some references I couldn't do without.

It all worked, thanks more to good luck than support from my superiors, but as the clock ran out toward the end of May, I was having a hell of a time figuring out the software for giving final exams. Who did I call? No, not Ghostbusters; I called Janice.

I had not mastered video calls on Zoom but I could, if I held my tongue just right and the wind was blowing from the northeast, make them work. Janice patiently coached me through the basics of the exam software; it took two hours between interruptions from her kid and my own innate stupidity. When that two hours was over, I was still in a hopeless muddle.

"Gimme about ten minutes and I'll call you back," Janice said. I agreed and logged off, wondering if she had some secret panacea somewhere in her house that would solve my problems. Well, in a way, she did. She called back.

"I've got my next door neighbour coming over to watch Aiden tomorrow. I'm going to come over and show you how to do this."

Did I panic at the thought of Janice on my doorstep? You're damn right I did. No one was supposed to be visiting anyone, my place looked like a pig sty, and I hadn't done laundry in three weeks. I couldn't give a rat's patootie about the COVID virus, but those other things mattered!

It had escaped my notice that somewhere along the way, Janice had reinvigorated that forceful personality of hers. I found myself giving her my address, telling her where she could park, and being given a time in the early afternoon when I could expect her.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

Let's not talk about the next several hours. The good news is that my vacuum cleaner still worked and I wasn't out of laundry detergent. Oh, and I wasn't out of toilet paper either.

Janice arrived at 2:00 pm dressed in jeans and a sweat-shirt. I told her to leave her runners on, because I couldn't vouch for the wildlife inhabiting the carpet. We spent the next three hours huddled in front of my computer as she explained everything to me step-by-step, the way you would explain it to a very dim five-year-old. I took copious notes, and when it was all done she forced me--kicking and screaming--to prepare a mock exam. To our collective relief, I did it.

I looked at my watch. "It's getting on six o'clock," I said. "You're son will be dying of hunger."

"Nope, he's fine. Mrs. Dunston said she'd make supper for him."

"Okay, then you must be dying of hunger."

"Maybe," Janice said, carefully enunciating both syllables.

I ordered Greek food and had it delivered. We sat on the couch and watched The Blacklist on TV. To this day I cannot tell you what nefarious evil-doer Red Reddington foiled in that episode, nor how he did it. I was far too distracted by the warm, fragrant woman sitting beside me. We weren't snuggling, certainly not, but you couldn't have fit a piece of paper between us. Somewhere in the snowy static filling my head, I realized that Janice was no longer a coworker; she was a friend. To say that I was unprepared for this revelation would be like saying Montcalm wasn't really expecting visitors on the Plains of Abraham.