THE RATLIFFE HOUSE – Chapter Ten
THE RATLIFFE HOUSE – Chapter Ten
By some miracle, I actually woke up on time the next morning. It was definitely not thanks to my computer, which I quickly discovered was still set to Chicago time. Whoops. But thankfully the morning sunshine pouring in from the edges of the curtains was enough to get me up … at 5:00 a.m. local time. Holy cow was it bright! I rolled out of bed, groggy from a whopping six hours of sleep, and dragged myself to the bathroom to get dressed and ready for the day.
When I arrived in the kitchen to see if I could dig up something for breakfast, there was Mr. Ratliffe, leaning over the counter with a book in his hand. I had begun to turn and head right back to my room, but he caught sight of me first.
“Good morning, Miss Steppenwolf,” came the cool tenor behind me.
Darn! “Hi,” I said, turning back again. Was I supposed to call him Mr. Ratliffe? It didn’t appear to make a difference whether I said anything or not. He set down his book and picked up a PDA—looked like a Blackberry—and started tapping on the tiny keys.
“It’s Miss Lucy, now,” I heard Mrs. Scott saying as I hesitated on the kitchen threshold, where I had been debating whether to enter until I heard her friendly voice. Thank goodness it’s not just him here. She caught my eye and gestured me forward into the room.
“Oh, Miss Lucy.” Mr. Ratliffe said, not even bothering to look up from his phone. “Are you sure it isn’t Ms. Lucy? She might be particular.” He smiled to himself, tapping away all the while.
I’m right here. “Whatever is fine. Or just Lucy,” I said.
“I prefer Miss Lucy to ‘whatever.’” He glanced up at me like it was some kind of joke.
Ugh.
Mrs. Scott cut in. “Now both of you, go have a seat in the snug. I’ll serve your breakfast.”
Before I could ask what the “snug” was and feel revolted by any association of the word with Mr. Ratliffe, he tucked his phone into his pocket, grabbed his book and crossed the room to the little table by the window I’d seen the night before. I followed just behind. Sitting right across from him felt so awkward, even though his face was mostly hidden behind the cover A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Wolfe. I pretended to study my fingernails instead of looking at him while Mrs. Scott brought over breakfast on a tray: Two cups of tea, sugar and milk, and two plates stuffed with sausages, scrambled eggs, toast, and … baked beans?
“Mrs. Scott, what’s all this?” Mr. Ratliffe said, setting down his book to frown at the plate Mrs. Scott set in front of him. “You know I have only toast and tea in the morning.”
“But you need a full breakfast before the first day of your classes,” she said, with unloading the rest of the tray onto the little table.
“More likely fall asleep from an overstuffed stomach,” he grumbled, but set about eating it anyway after he added sugar and an obscene amount of milk to his tea.
If she heard him, which I could hardly doubt she did, Mrs. Scott was indifferent to his complaint, and instead hummed cheerfully to herself as she set about cleaning up the kitchen. I took another look at my plate, sighed, added about five spoonfuls of sugar to my tea, and picked up my fork to begin pushing the eggs and sausage to the side of my plate, hoping quarantine them from the bean juice.
Across the table, I watched the fork in Mr. Ratliffe’s hand pause for a moment in mid-air, then rest on the edge of his plate. I looked up just in time to see him leaning slightly forward, one eyebrow raised, staring at my plate.
“Something the matter with your beans?” Mr. Ratliffe asked me.
“Uh, no. It’s fine.” Grr. Another unwritten rule. Now that I saw I would have to eat them whether I wanted to or not, I quietly kicked the floor in spite and took a bite of toast while I tried to psych myself up for this disgusting dish. Come on, Lucy, you’ve had worse. McRibs, undercooked bacon, gluten-free brownies. Just take two bites and they’ll be satisfied. I gave my head a little shake like a batter after a bad pitch, then dug in again, starting with the sausages on the far side of the plate.
Aside from the sound of Mrs. Scott’s humming and the scraping of our silverware, the kitchen was quiet. I tried to eat quickly, hoping to escape before having to talk much more with Mr. Ratliffe, who, after a moment, traded his fork and knife for long drafts from his tea mug and staring out the window. But I soon found out that silent meals weren’t exactly his forte.
The man drew a long breath, set down his mug, and folded his hands together on the edge of the table.
I gripped my fork a little tighter. Uh oh.
“Do you know, Miss Lucy, I’ve been skimming some of the texts for this Women’s Studies course,” he started abruptly.
Great. Here we go.
“Fascinating, really. I had no idea that, even in modern civilized society, women were so oppressed.” He paused and cleared his throat, then asked, “Do you believe in the patriarchy?”
I gulped a forkful of egg.
“Uh, yeah, I guess.”
“Then you consider yourself a feminist?”
“Sure.”
“So, in what ways do you feel yourself oppressed? I’m honestly curious. Being a man, you see, I’m clearly part of an oppressor system and can have no say.”
“Um …”
“For instance, here you are, at a university, earning credits to a degree, and probably able to pursue any career you wish. Was this difficult for you? Did you encounter men who tried to discourage you?”
“Not personally… but I know a lot of women get discouraged from doing careers in math and science.”
“But you’re not studying maths or science.”
Maths? What is maths? The word made my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth.
“Did you want to study those subjects?” he pressed.
“Well, no.”
“But if you had, you feel that you would not have been supported?”
“I … I mean personally, I guess it would have been okay.”
“Now you see, you keep referring to your personal experience as though it were an exception to general circumstance. But one of the texts I read last night proclaimed that in feminism, the personal is political. So, it follows that if your personal experience does not bear out this theory of widespread prejudice, does the widespread prejudice really exist?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but Mrs. Scott cut in by bustling over to the table and taking away Mr. Ratliff’s plate.
“I hadn’t finished yet,” he protested.
“Of course you have,” she said brightly, returning to the kitchen sink. “You said yourself, you don’t want to get sleepy on an overstuffed stomach.”
He grumbled, excused himself, and took away his book and tea mug toward the direction of his office.
Relieved to be alone, I pushed around the beans on my plate, and finally took a little bite. They actually weren’t bad. The ketchupy taste blended with the eggs in kind of a soft, salty mash. I took a few more bites and washed them down with the rest of my tea, suddenly feeling more awake than I had all morning. Sheesh, what was in this stuff? I was going to be more wired than a chihuahua at this rate.
I carried my plate over to Mrs. Scott at the sink and thanked her for the meal.
“Now, do you know where to find your lecture this morning? Mr. Ratliffe could walk over with you, if you like. I think he’ll be leaving himself any moment.”
“Oh, no, I’m good. I think I’ve got it figured out.”
Whew. Dodged a bullet there. I would just hang out in my room with the door open to listen for when he left. I checked the clock. I still had an hour until class started at eight. I could chill and get my stuff together. I mean, it was only going to take, like, fifteen minutes to walk to campus, tops.
While waiting, I flipped through the orientation packet and the syllabus Dr. Mosely had given us yesterday. The schedule said “seminars” were in the morning until noon, Monday through Friday, for the next eight weeks. Tuesdays and Thursdays I would have “tutorials” with two or four students and a tutor in the afternoon to review our essays and do some deeper studying. Saturdays would be “excursions”—guided field trips to literary destinations like Westminster Abbey. The clincher seemed I was going to be doing a lot of reading and writing on my own, and all my grades would rest on the essays—no tests, no quizzes, no extra credit. Was this really better than Barker’s Burgers? I could have been earning some decent cash by now, and not eating beans for breakfast. But no. I had made up my mind. Sure, there had been some hiccups, but I was going to make this work, even if it broke me. Forget the fact that I was already broke. Sigh.
I cleared out space in my backpack for all the books I was going to have to pick up at the bookstore, and heard the front door open and shut. Good, Mr. Ratliffe’s gone. Now I could relax and take my time walking to campus, maybe even explore a little bit. I pulled out my map, found the location of my seminar class and circled it with a pencil. Now to figure out how to get there.
Unfortunately, the map of campus was exactly that: a map of campus. It didn’t show where the town or anything off campus was, and certainly not the Ratliffe House. I felt a little panic rising. Deep breaths, you can fix this. I would use my computer for a map search. I sat down at the desk, ready to type in the address of Ratliffe House when it occurred to me that I had no idea what the address here was.
I could ask Mrs. Scott, but I couldn’t think of an excuse to do so without looking like an idiot. Besides, it sounded like she had already left the kitchen.Great.It was too late to try and tail Mr. Ratliffe, not that it was a good option. He’d definitely make fun of me if he noticed. Finally, I closed my eyes and tried to remember the way Dr. Mosely had led me from the university yesterday.Let’s see… a left past that street with the little grocery store, and then a right onto the lane with the pink flowering tree…Feeling better, I grabbed the blue-ribboned key from the drawer, slung my book bag over my shoulder, and headed out.
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