A Skeleton in the Family Read Free Page B

work, I would have loved one more. Six sections would have meant full-time pay and benefits, even if I wasn’t in a tenure track job, but with five, I got nearly as much work without any benefits. If I weren’t living in my parents’ house, I’d have had to teach online courses, too, just to make ends meet.
    At least Parker didn’t try to play games with my pay—prices for adjunct faculty are standard, and in no way dependent on experience or level of skill. I’d make the same pitiful amount per credit hour if I was still working on my dissertation or if I’d been teaching for twenty years.
    After that lukewarm welcome, Parker sent me to the university human resources office to deal with the requisite paperwork, and after a solid hour of filling out forms, I was officially McQuaid faculty. I stopped at the school’s Hamburger Haven, making use of my brand-new faculty ID to get a discount. The food was fine, but I was almost certain I detected a sniff of disdain when the cashier saw
ADJUNCT
on my ID.
    I keep expecting some college to adopt the idea of a big red A embroidered on the bosom of each adjunct. It would be both demeaning and literary, which was a rare combination.
    While eating, I read over the packet labeled
Welcome Aboard, Adjunct!
In a cloying style, it told me how glad McQuaid was to have me and outlined the responsibilities and benefits of the job. There were far more responsibilities, of course, with required office hours and time sheets to be filled out weekly and grades to be turned in seconds after the last class ended. The benefits section mostly described the food discount I was already taking advantage of, the faculty parking hang tag that could be used by me and nobody else but me, and my choice of desks in the office I’d be sharing with the university’s other adjunct faculty members.
    The adjunct office was my next stop. It was in the basement of the student center, a location that was equally inconvenient for all departments. The door was wooden, with a small panel of translucent glass and a badly printed sign. There was a battered coatrack on one side of the door and a row of office mailboxes on the other. Judging from the wide variety of name labels stuck, taped, and stapled onto the mail slots, apparently I was going to have to provide my own.
    I stopped to look at the names, hoping for a few familiar ones. A bonus to being an adjunct was that I rarely worked at a college where I didn’t know somebody, or at least have connections. In this case, I recognized the names of four friendly acquaintances from previous jobs before I realized somebody was standing next to me.
    â€œDr. Thackery,” a man said in a pleased baritone. “What a delightful surprise.”
    â€œDr. Peyton. You’re looking as dapper as ever.”
    Dapper
isn’t a word I use every day, but it’s pretty much the only way to describe Charles Peyton. He was wearing a tweed suit and vest with an honest-to-God watch chain hanging out of one pocket. His hair was perfectly arranged without visible use of product, and the streaks of gray only added to his look of distinction. His shoes were shined to a blinding gloss, and his mustache was neatly trimmed. In a word:
dapper
.
    He made a slight bow that would have looked either mocking or coy if performed by anybody else. “A man does what he must in order not to be completely overshadowed by beauty like yours.”
    â€œCharles, you are a boon to womankind.” That’s the kind of guy Charles is—he had me using the word
boon
. “If I’d known you were teaching here, I’d have come sooner.”
    â€œDear lady, you make my day complete.”
    â€œWhat classes did they stick you with?”
    â€œHere at McQuaid, two sections of Colonial American, one Revolutionary American. At Joshua Tay University, I’ve got one Vietnam era, and one Scandinavian.”
    Charles was a historian who