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young parents then, and we talked about children, had lunch now and then. But they moved his office across campus when they built the new computer lab, and now I only see the back of his head (hair thinning) during all-faculty meetings twice a year. I've taught here for nearly two decades. Who else? Why now?
    Am
I excited?
    Well, if I am it isn't something I wanted Sue to notice. Saying it,
Sherry, you sound excited,
seemed somehow intrusive.
    But how could Sue, my best friend for two decades, the person on this earth who knows me best—and knows
everything,
because I've
told
her everything (how many hours on the phone, how many cups of coffee, how many long whispered conversations in the hallway, in the women's room, at the mall, in the car?)—
intrude?
If my secrets had been hoarded somewhere in a vault, I would have long ago handed Sue the key. If there had been some easier way to share all of my longings and desires and shame with her (a computer chip, say, on which I could have stored it all and given it over), I'd have already done it. I'd only parceled it out in words over these two decades because there was no quicker way to do it.
    And what a joy, to have someone all these years with whom it could all be shared! What a relief! Sometimes I'm not even sure I've felt what I've felt, or seen what I've seen, until I've described it to Sue.
    "It's okay, you know," she said. "You can be excited. I would be excited. I've
never
had a secret admirer."
    Still, I refused to tell her I was excited.
    If I am, is it something I can even admit to
myself?
    Should
I be excited?
    Or should I be offended? Annoyed?
Afraid?
    How many stalkings, how many harassments, begin with a series of notes like this?
     
    All day there's been a bright blue sky, and the snow's begun to melt in shiny patches on the lawns, a few luminous rivulets running freely along the shoulders of the roads, the military spangles and insignia of winter starting to wash away. Walking from the car to the Liberal Arts Building, I could smell mud, and there were some crows in a puddle in the parking lot. When I walked by, they flustered and flew off, and a drop of water landed at the center of my forehead—some bit of melted snow falling from the wing of a crow as it flew over, and I felt as if I'd been baptized by a priest of spring.
     
    A CALL at the office this morning from Summerbrook:
    Dad's had another "little stroke."
    Tomorrow I'll drive to Silver Springs to see him and try to be back Sunday morning in time to pick Chad up from the airport with Jon.
    Jon says, "Sherry, we can't drive across the state every time he has some little thing. They only call you for liability purposes, not because there's anything that can be done."
    Fine, I said. Easy for you to say. He's not your father. And who asked
you to
go?
I'm
the one going.
I can't bear it,
I should have told him. My
father.
If all I can do is touch his hand here in these last years of his sad life, I will not miss an opportunity to touch his hand.
    Jon, who didn't have a father, has no idea....
    And without Chad here, I realized suddenly, I don't need
anyone's
permission to go
anywhere
anymore. In the paper last night I saw an ad for cheap tickets to San Antonio, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and I thought, I could buy a ticket. I could just go. After eighteen years spent planning lunches, dinners, rides to soccer practice, who besides Jon would notice if I canceled classes for a few days and disappeared? Why
not
go to Silver Springs, whether or not anything can be done? What do Jon and I do on the weekends that can't be missed anyway?
    I go to the gym. He putters around in the basement or naps on the couch, shoots a sandbag with a .22 in the backyard. I pay bills, go to the grocery store. Last Saturday we rented a DVD about a woman who killed her children. All day Sunday I tried to shake the feeling of dread and despair that the movie had settled on me, the aftermath of that horror. All day I felt as