The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story Read Free Page B

into a balled-up paper towel as quietly as she could. From fear, and for Brendan Thorne, who had kissed her and then changed before her eyes into … what?
    She didn’t know.

E velyn Morgan, Ph.D., glanced at herself in the rearview mirror. Hair pulled back, lipstick a professional shade of mauve. In her briefcase were extra copies of her CV and the chapter she had submitted with her application. She had been right to wear the gray suit. Her mother had insisted on buying it for her. “You’ll look so professional,” she had said, and Evelyn had to admit she’d been right.
    She was grateful for the interview at Bartlett College. She’d been teaching for two years as an adjunct at Columbia, ever since finishing her doctoral degree. She knew she wasn’t the easiest sell: a medievalist who had chosen to write not about Chaucer or another author who would actually be taught in medieval literature classes, but on the legend of the Green Man.
The Green Man in Medieval Europe
had taken her eight years to write, and now she didn’t know what to do with it. She’d already gotten an article out of it, which probably explained why she’d been granted an interview at Bartlett. But she didn’t think the dissertation itself was publishable. It was too strange, too idiosyncratic. And her only other publication was the book of poems she’d written years ago.
Green Thoughts
.
    She’d written it the year after that week in Clews, where she had met Brendan Thorne—she still remembered his name—in a bookstore. Where she’d had that—incident. She’d always felt bad about that, always wanted to apologize. Tell him it wasn’t his fault. He must have wondered if he’d done something wrong.
You’re fine
, she’d wanted to tell him.
It’s me. I’m a nut case, that’s all
. Although Dr. Birnbaum wouldn’t appreciate her describing herself that way. Once, several years afterward, she’d sent Brendan a letter, apologizing. She hadn’t known where he was living, so she’d usedthe address for the bookstore. But she had never heard back.
    After she’d come back from Cornwall, she’d been on the medication again for a while, but there were no more incidents, and Dr. Birnbaum had told her that she finally seemed stable. Her life had been stable for a long time now. Even her one serious relationship had been a model of stability. David Aldridge had been working on a Ph.D. in art history at Columbia. A friend had introduced them at a party benefitting the Metropolitan Museum of Art that she’d attended reluctantly, after her mother had insisted on sending tickets. His father was a client of Morgan & Leventhal, and his family owned a house on Cape Cod, right on the water. She had brought him home for Christmas, and her parents had obviously approved. All their friends had assumed they would get married. But one morning, shortly after his dissertation defense, while pouring a cup of coffee in the apartment they’d shared for several years, he said, “Evelyn, I don’t think this is going to work out. I want to be with someone who’s in love with me, and you’re not. Are you?” He’d looked so vulnerable, standing there in his pajamas holding his coffee mug, that she had wanted to say yes but hadn’t been able to. Instead, she shook her head. A week later, he’d joined the Peace Corps. The last time she’d heard from him, he was somewhere in Central Africa building an irrigation system.
    She pulled into the parking lot. At least the buildings were attractive: old brick with white columns and ivy growing up the walls. She had some doubts about moving to Virginia, but so far it looked perfectly civilized. Her father hadn’t wanted her to move so far away. New York had been bad enough. He’d been willing to pay for graduate school, even to finance a Ph.D. in English literature, if she agreed to stay in Boston, attend Tufts or Brandeis. But she’dearned that full scholarship to Columbia—it had been her accomplishment.