Chapter 12:

She unlocked the door to Ravenwood. It was odd how truly it felt like coming home. Elizabeth had never had her own house before, and all of her previous apartments had a decidedly ‘student’ feel that equaled a ‘temporary’ mindset. But Ravenwood was different. Even though most of the furniture wasn’t hers and she was on a monthly lease, it was home. And home smelled awful.

“What is that smell!?!” thought Elizabeth, her first thought being that some sort of animal had died and was rotting away in the wall. “No, no, that’s worse case scenario. Let’s think positive.” She reluctantly followed her noise towards the kitchen. The smell was emmenating from the fridge. She paused before the door – preparing herself for whatever was in there. She thought she had cleaned out any offensive products from the fridge before she left for vacation – at least she had checked it off her to-do list. So, what could be inside…? She whipped open the door and couldn’t stifle her scream. On the top shelf of her fridge lay some sort of bloodied dead animal, in a pan. “AHHHHHH!” She couldn’t stop – she slammed the fridge door shut and ran out the cottage door into the night air. She was shaking, she felt like she was going to faint. Then she realized she would faint very shortly unless she sat down. She looked around blankly and found no handy seat, so she collapsed onto the cool grass. “What was THAT and why was it in MY fridge?” She lay on her back and worked on slowing her heart rate and breathing. Just as she was beginning to calm down, Barrett came hurrying over to her. “Elizabeth! Are you alright? What on earth happened – I heard you scream.” Elizabeth sat up to explain: “There is some dead animal in my fridge – it smells horrible, and it scared me to death.” “Oh, that.” Barrett said, with a relieved smile and a chuckle. “That’s nothing – I thought you were hurt or something.” “Nothing!?!” Elizabeth looked at him as if he had gone crazy. “That is NOT nothing – that is the grossest, smelliest something ever. How did it get in my fridge?” “Well, I’ll have to admit I’m to blame for that – I put it in there a few days ago, because the fridge at the farmhouse was full of other game. I didn’t think you’d mind – but I never intended to forget it and I never expected you to see it.”

Elizabeth wasn’t sure what to think. She had no problem with Barrett going into her apartment when she wasn’t there – and she wouldn’t have minded him using the fridge – even if it was for dead animals – as long as he cleared it out before she came back. It did annoy her that he had forgotten such an important little detail like “Get the dead animal out of Elizabeth’s fridge before she comes home and wants to put fruit in it.” It seemed quite inconsiderate to Elizabeth, Barrett still seemed to think the entire incident was some sort of hilarious joke. Elizabeth was very close to deciding to chew him out, when she realized she had been traveling all day and her tiredness was likely affecting her judgment. So she stood outside to wait, and looked the other way as Barrett passed with the offending object. “I’ll be back in just a second to clean out your fridge.” “You really don’t need to – I can do it tomorrow” Elizabeth said wearily, thinking of nothing except sleep. “Nope – I won’t hear of it. You’ve had a long trip, go upstairs, unpack, get to sleep. I’ll work quietly down her, and lock up when I leave.” Elizabeth thought that sounded like a lovely plan- although it did seem a little inhospitable to leave him cleaning the fridge while she went to sleep, he had brought it upon himself, and she really didn’t want to do it in the morning. So she acquiesced, went upstairs, threw her suitcase at the foot of the bed, and jumped under her favorite down quilt to sleep.

A few days later, Elizabeth had finally got around to unpacking and was trying to get over her ‘post-vacation’ depression. As usual, having such a wonderful week away made her overwhelmingly melancholy and she was having trouble kicking it. She had her meeting with Dr. Nottim on Monday and Elizabeth couldn’t think of what she would say. It had been almost 3 weeks since they had their last tutorial together, which should mean Elizabeth would be bursting with questions, ideas, and writing. Not so. Instead she had spent the last week on vacation, and the two weeks before that getting ready for vacation. She felt guilty and it made her even less excited to give up her relaxed state and get ready for the morning breakfast meeting. Still, there was no “I give up!” option available, so Elizabeth went about the process of cleaning, dressing, and feeding herself like she did most mornings. She left extra time to walk into town for the train, because at the rate she was going the walk would probably take 45 minutes instead of the usual 30. Finally getting everything stuffed into her satchel which had recently seemed too small, she stepped outside. The weather had recently changed. It was subtle – but for Elizabeth it was an important change. Instead of stepping outside into the cool spring air, the temperature now seemed to be neutral – that is body temperature. As she started walking towards town, the wind was neither warm nor cold against her skin. “Yikes – I think I feel the beginning of summer!”

Dr. Nottim looked just as elegantly put together as she always did. She sat at the small wooden table in the corner, looking fantastically out of place. Elizabeth had no trouble spotting her as soon as she walked through the door. In a smoky room full of chubby men, the tall academic in the corner with her mobile held to her ear would have been noticeable even if she hadn’t been wearing a pale green, feathery boa over her sweater. “She obviously doesn’t think its summer yet.” Elizabeth felt frumpy in the t-shirt she had chosen for the day. She greeted Dr. Nottim, who stood to give her a little hug. “Hi, dear, you didn’t have any trouble finding the place, did you?” It had been Dr. Nottim’s latest great idea of where to meet – another literary monument in Oxford, the Eagle and Child pub. “Also nicknamed the Bird and Baby by some authors who frequented it” Dr. Nottim had explained to Elizabeth on the phone. Dr. Nottim had sounded so excited about it that Elizabeth hadn’t the heart to suggest that they might, for once, try meeting in a more traditional environment, perhaps her office. So she had dutifully taken down the directions to the Pub, and wandered by to make sure she knew where it was ahead of time. So she could quite truthfully answer Dr. Nottim’s question: “Nope, I found it easily. You’re here early though; I thought I would be here first.” Elizabeth was concerned at Dr. Nottim’s sudden breaking with her ‘always late’ pattern – was something wrong? Dr. Nottim laughed loudly, causing more than a few of the men sitting in the room to turn around, and patted Elizabeth on the shoulder, “I can be on time when it’s important.” Elizabeth wasn’t sure if this was supposed to be a compliment to her, because Dr. Nottim was on time today, or a little slur about how she had been late to every other session. Elizabeth realized it was time to stop analyzing. She pulled out her notebook, and got ready to glean knowledge.

A few hours later, the lunch time crowd had cleared out of the Eagle and Child, so Dr. Nottim and Elizabeth had the front room to themselves. The fire was still crackling in the fire place, but since Elizabeth had officially decided summer had started, she felt oppressed by the fire instead of warmed. She tried not to think about it so much, and instead try to concentrate on what Dr. Nottim had been telling her about how to research graveyards. Most of it Elizabeth already knew, but she had a sense of awe for her tutor, and had no desire to stop her and say “I already know that!” So instead she listened with one ear, and tried to stay awake. Dr. Nottim was perceptive enough to notice the drooping of her pupil’s eyelids, and she suggested they call it a day. As much as Elizabeth enjoyed her tutorials, she had no desire to argue, so they packed up the various stationary scattered around the table, and left the pub. “Are you going back to the college? We could walk together.” “That would be lovely.” Elizabeth had actually been planning on going to the library, not to Magdalen, but she thought it would be a good chance to talk with Dr. Nottim about non-Raymond topics.

“How did you decide to become a professor?” Elizabeth felt compelled to ask the first question and get the conversation started. Dr. Nottim was quick to pick up the thread, “Oh, I started on much the same path as you. I thought I wanted to get my Master’s in Medieval Literature, mostly for fun. Then I planned to go on to get a non-academic job. However, the more I studied, the more I loved learning. It became a kind of obsession, and I couldn’t give it up. I had the chance to, you know. I was engaged to a lovely fellow, a simple man, who wanted to move to the North, buy a house, and start a family. I would have loved it, but I didn’t think I could love it as much as my academic life, and so I said “no” to that life path and have since been fully committed to my work here, going from Master’s to Doctorate to teacher’s assistant to professor. And I’ve never looked back.”

They had stopped to wait to cross the intersection, so Elizabeth was watching Dr. Nottim’s face closely when she said this. Elizabeth saw clearly the clenched jaw and determined set eyes that made her realize that Dr. Nottim had not looked back mostly because she had decided not to. There seemed to be a flicker of doubt about the surety with which she proclaimed her happiness with her chosen path. Dr. Nottim must have felt the eyes studying her, because she turned to look at Elizabeth closely. “I’m not always sure I made the right choice, you know. There’s many days when I would love a simpler, cozier life. I often think I’d like to trade in the late nights and the solitary holidays for a warm family and an easy day job. But then I realize if I spend my life second guessing my choices, I miss out on my life. I guess that’s the best advice I can give to you. Take all the time you need to carefully consider your choices before you make them. But as soon as you’ve set your foot down a path, don’t look back, not even for a moment. Even a glimpse back is stealing from the life you have chosen. I suppose that’s my secret to contentment.”

Dr. Nottim ended her speech quietly, and seemed caught up in her own thoughts just as Elizabeth was. They continued on past the Radcliffe and St. Mary’s church where Elizabeth had her first coffee with Browning. They turned onto Cornmarket, where the noise of the traffic shook them both from their introspection. Conversation picked up on a lighter note, and shortly thereafter they said goodbye at the gate to Magdalen.

Elizabeth had no plans for the rest of the day, and she was still brooding from Dr. Nottim’s speech. She stood at the end of the pathway leading to Magdalen and tried to think of what she should do. No clear answer was found, but she did notice the Botanical Gardens across the street and took it as a sign. “That will be a lovely place to sit and think. Then maybe after an hour I’ll have figured out what I should do.” Elizabeth often got frustrated with her inability to make simple decisions, like what to do next. It seemed to take up so much of her day, going around in circles, figuratively or physically. So she stood at the street’s edge to wait for the right time to jaywalk across. Then she wandered through the gardens until she found the bench that was in the quietest corner, and seemed the most bird poop free.

An hour later she awoke with a start. A small child had just run past screaming like a criminally insane convict. “And that’s why I don’t want to have children” she thought to herself, pushing herself up from the slouched position she had adopted. “I can’t believe I fell asleep – I was supposed to be pondering. Well, I suppose I ponder too much anyway. Heh, I’m starving.” She glanced at her watch. 6:41. “Mmmm. I think I can justify an early evening. I deserve to skip the library tonight and curl up in my cottage with my British telly!” She stopped at the commuter’s Sainsbury’s to pick up some appropriately unhealthy comfort food to make her evening truly indulgent. “Really, I think this occasion warrants a chocolate cake. I won’t eat all of it - I’ll give the leftovers to Barrett!” Then, laden down with calorie-rich foods, she made the trek back from the center of Oxford to the center of her couch, where she spent a lovely evening of mental relaxation – letting overly-emotional BBC dramas replace her inner dialogue.

Two days later, Elizabeth was still occasionally thinking about what Dr. Nottim had said. She sat on the train home, surrounded by a crowd of late-night London commuters, and she watched the sun setting over the various stages of fields they whizzed past. The scene was worthy of a Coleridge poem, with a glorious golden light sheathing all the trees, the small streams, the flocks of sheep, and the occasional little cottage. But the scene didn’t have the usual euphoric relaxing effect on her. Elizabeth felt a sense of heaviness laid over her, knowing that she had the same pull of two paths that Dr. Nottim faced. However, the two women were on two different sides of the fork in the road. She had two pieces of advice to go on. One was a favorite quote of her college history professor: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” The other was Dr. Nottim’s advice about fully considering her decision, choosing, and then never letting herself turn back. “It’s so much pressure” whined Elizabeth to herself. “I don’t want to have to choose.” Elizabeth’s choices were less clear cut than Dr. Nottim’s as well. She was already feeling sad about the fact that she could only afford to stay at Oxford until she finished writing her thesis. Financially, it made no sense to wait around spending so much money on her rent at Banbury, food and transportation; when she could just as easily do the editing and review process from a much-cheaper base in Canada. The idea of ‘going home’ seemed more like being forced to leave home. She felt like she had stumbled upon the life of her dreams and was in the process of making it her own. How could she give it all up, her Charlbury retreat; her new friends in Abby, Barrett, Browning and Meg; her engaging tutorials with Dr. Nottim and her beautiful days spent discovering knowledge in the lovely libraries? Go back to a cheap apartment next to Wal-Mart to find an office job and lonely TV dinners? It didn’t seem like a “path in the woods” it sounded like a jail sentence. Elizabeth felt like crying, but the train was not the best place to do so. She waited until she unlocked the door, put on her pajamas and settled in front of the couch to let the week’s stress and the problems of the future send her to tears.