Conscientious Objections

Kate instinctively dodged the crumpled ball of paper as it sailed toward her head.

“You are such a bitch,” Roger screamed at her “Just because Daddy is a big wig professor, you think you can dick around with peoples’ lives!”

“I’m not the one who cooked the project’s books! You probably ruined Andre’s research.” She yelled over her shoulder as she slammed the door behind her. The way he shattered his buddy’s nose outside a nightclub after an argument, attested to his ugly temper. He had never turned on her but, starting today he was out of a job and expelled from the University of Miami with little chance of landing elsewhere. She knew better than to stick around.

Kate’s brain felt sluggish as drove to her parent’s house where her father worked from his home every Friday. As tenured faculty for twenty plus years who currently served as department Chair, he made his own hours. Her hands, unusually sweaty even for the thick South Florida air, nearly failed to grasp the slick steering wheel as she parked on the swale’s edge. She tipped her face skyward when she heard a commotion, and caught a glimpse of the local parrot tribe squawking through the air. Their ancestors escaped the zoo, and while they didn’t normally grace the sky over Coral Gables this close to campus, today they flashed bright greens, yellows and reds overhead.

“Hey Dad – it’s me!” Kate announced as she mounted uneven concrete steps and entered the pastel pink bungalow, circa 1924. This morning, she craved the soothing balm of her father’s empathy, and meant to ensure her father knew Roger had gotten his comeuppance. No one answered, and she made the sharp right into the sunroom Dr. Baker used as his study. Over the years, enormous palms and mimosa trees rose to dwarf the house and plunge the room into deep shade. Shivering, she stepped onto the well worn marble tile floor, and droplets of water clustered in the windowpanes’ corners confirmed the AC was set to deep freeze. Her father sat hunched over his desk, holding his head in his hands. Several official looking pages lay open before him.

“They’re defunding Andre’s project.” He mumbled through his fingers. Kate knew ‘they’ were the National Institutes of Mental Health, known as NIMH to academics in Psychology, whose careers were made or broken by the institution’s funding decisions.

“I’m so sorry, Dad.” She sympathized, suddenly feeling like an adult. Normally, it was him offering comfort to her. He was left to raise her after his wife’s accident, and she matured into his friend and confident, which was why his next words left her stunned.

“This is your fault!” he growled as he dropped his hands and glared.

Kate stared into his hardened eyes, her thoughts racing so fast none of them made it to her tongue. She had only reported the problem, which was different than causing it.

“But – Roger, if anybody, he -” She stammered, not able to arrange the words.

“No, you!” her father barked at her, “What in God’s name made you turn in that report to the Feds?  You should have talked to me first.”

“I did talk to you, remember? Six weeks ago I told you what Roger did. You said - .”

“I damn well know what I said. Andre assured me you misunderstood. He’s a well-respected researcher. Why wouldn’t I trust his explanation? Did you and Roger have a lover’s spat and you wanted revenge?” Her father snatched up the censure letter and shook it inches from her nose. “I can’t believe you would be so immature, you should know better.”

“I was doing my job as the project manager. Why would NIMH ask for a biennial report if they didn’t want to know the status?  I only wrote there were data irregularities. How was I supposed to know it would trigger a site visit and audit?” She defended.

“Evidently you have an overinflated idea of your own importance. How did you send this in without Andre’s sign off? You would have had to forge his signature.”

“How could you even think - of course I had Andre sign, but you know what he’s like. I’m lucky if I get his attention for thirty seconds to deal with project business. He barely glanced at what I wrote, and just scribbled his name next to the ‘sign here’ label,” she sputtered.

“Then that’s when you should have come to me. Andre is furious with the both of us. I don’t blame him.  He and I have a meeting with our Dean to discuss how to salvage that funding, and both our careers if that’s possible.”

“I can’t believe this! I did the right thing, I reported the state of the project so far. How can that be wrong?”

“You’re too old to be so naive. Didn’t you learn anything growing up in this house? I don’t have time for this. Go, just go,” He commanded with a sweep of his hand.

He had a talent for making people invisible by simply ignoring them, and could see this was one of those times. It was pointless to stay and try to argue. It felt like her car was on autopilot; she didn’t remember driving home, she was just suddenly in front of her housing complex. Before climbing the stairs in South Miami apartment, she grabbed her mail. She almost binned it, likely it was only junk. As she tossed the stack on her kitchen table, one envelope fell to the floor and she scooped it up. The return address shoved her stomach north; the psych department at the U. Given the events so far that day, she knew it couldn’t be good. Kate eased into the fake vinyl kitchen chair, and ripped it open.

By the time she finished reading, she too cradled her head in her hands. As of yesterday she was no longer a research assistant in the department. A second letter enclosed alongside, announced that Andre had fired her and dropped her as an advisee. She didn’t even have to wonder – no other faculty member would pick her up after this debacle. Three years of classes and thesis research down the tubes.

‘So much for integrity’ she thought. The Psych department required all the graduate research assistants to complete a six week ethics course. Evidently they didn’t actually expect faculty and grad students to follow the profession’s code of conduct. Like so much else in Miami, just fluff and glitter. Unable to will herself to move, she remained seated as tears wet her cheeks. She wept every ounce of feeling out of herself, flowing forth along with her tears. Without sentiment, she found the couch while she reviewed  twenty eight years’ worth of memories, attempting to figure out what brought her to this moment. A beam of sun migrated from one side of her living room to the other, while she examined her situation and what do next. Graduate school should have been a refuge from the world. It was meant as safe harbor from two years of real world experience that wrecked her and sent her fleeing back into a familiar environment. The academic world thrived on knowledge as capital, and until today she thought she had understood it. Ironically, academia was also a political snake pit; as the damp pages strewn across her kitchen table attested. Kate had always been bright – she knew that much about herself. Why then, she asked herself, did she persist in the illusion that intelligent people were smart enough not to play petty games?

Radiant sunlight mellowed into languid shadows as evening approached. She drifted in and out of restless sleep, recalling how chuffed she had been to get into that graduate program, and the happy hours spent in seminars, discussing theory with her classmates, managing Dr. Garcia’s – Andre’s research project, and developing her own doctoral thesis. Two miserable years in the working world drove her return to school, and she had been counting on building a career in academia. Now it was gone, all the work, all the learning, all the everything, including Roger. It was as if her life had been swept into the Gulf Stream grazing Miami, and any semblance of life as she knew it was irretrievable. Kate kicked the stack of books next to her chair where she’d spent hours reading Psychology literature and writing early drafts of chapters in her dissertation. Her phone vibrated and played the theme to ‘Get Smart’. Friends gave her grief over such a retro choice, but she loved the old reruns.

“Kate, I just heard! What in the world happened? It’s all over the department. The grad lounge is buzzing with rumors. Is it true they fired Andre?”

“Why would I know, Jackie?” she growled, annoyed that all anybody ever wanted was the inside track on department gossip.

“I’m sorry, I just thought - ”

“I was the one that got fired, and Roger too. My father won’t even hear me out.”

“Really – they bounced Roger? But he’s the superstar grad student, already co-published with faculty and on track for a fellowship.”

“Thanks for your concern. Did you hear me say they fired me too? I seriously doubt Roger will get a postdoc fellowship now. I don’t know about Andre, he’s probably OK, but he’s in it up to his eyebrows. NIMH will probably put him on probation and block him from applying again for a while.”

“What are you going to do?” Jackie asked.

“Not sure, I haven’t had time to think. The department pushed me out too, I’m not enrolled anymore.”

“Holy shit – really? Can’t your dad do something?”

“I told you, we’re not speaking. It’s hilarious that his signature was on the dismissal letter.”

“Let me know if you want to get together,” Jackie offered before she hung up.

Kate was aware any capital she had with Jaquelin had evaporated. She was pretty certain her number would disappear from her classmate’s phone, now that she wasn’t a source of department intelligence. Over the past couple of years she had spent a fair amount of time with Jackie in the same seminars, and once sharing a hotel room so they could afford to travel to the annual professional meeting. Conference attendance was critical for students if they aspired to careers in academia. The meetings were a chance to watch giants in the field their intoning wisdom, hear competing theories argued, and if you were lucky, see a slug fest between two silverbacks on stage.

Darkness quieted the birds while it animated the insects, and the soft night air thrummed with their dynamic activity. Most others in Kate’s position would head to South Beach in search of a club and the distraction of a loud dance floor, along with the competing attentions of well-muscled party boys. Though she would kill for some sushi, ambition to do anything had already flowed out of her and puddled in her feet, weighing her down. Changing into sweats seemed a major accomplishment. Her thoughts returned to the morning’s events, sitting on one side of her father’s desk, across from a man she didn’t recognize.

She had come to think of him mother and father combined into one amorphous ‘parent’, though he had remarried when Kate was four. Her step mother was a Liberal Arts College Dean at a private university in the suburbs and labored under heavy responsibility. Kate’s father had always been more accessible. Each in their own way groomed her for an academic life, and she absorbed their passion for learning and by extension, their dedication to excel at whatever they attempted. From early on they talked to her as an adult, and expected her maturity to exceed her chronological years. They prioritized a well-rounded education, supplemented with travel every summer. Kate felt lucky to have seen much of the world in her first quarter century. The catalogue of her misadventures never failed to get a mention at family gatherings.

“Do you remember the snorkeling trip in Australia, Kate, when you were stung by jelly fish, and the boat captain urinated all over your legs to stop the sting?” Her father guffawed.

“Kate, remember when the hippo charged us on safari in Botswana, and you scrambled into the Land Rover so fast you kicked the one guy in the balls? Really hard. He wouldn’t share our Rover for the whole trip after that!” laughed her step mother, while her father and brother cringed.

“Hey Kate, what about the day we helped rescue whales in Mexico, but you put your wetsuit on inside out and didn’t know why the trip leader kept picking other people? You sat on shore for the entire four hours while everyone else was in the water,” offered her brother Alex.

“To be fair Alex, you could have told me. In fact, you zipped me up if I remember. Did you do it on purpose?” she retorted. He smirked and shoveled another forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth.

Grades were never an issue, but four years at Cornell where she strived to be the best at everything had erased her fortitude. After graduation, a malaise overtook her and when the inevitable summer heat seared South Florida, she used it as an excuse to lounge on the couch all day. Everyone else was out of the house early, hoping to get ahead on their workload so their annual six weeks abroad wouldn’t bury them on their return. Her brother, five years younger and already in graduate school at U Penn, somehow became the role model her parents pressured her to emulate. Their argument about a gap year went on for weeks. Her father maintained the whole idea was cooked up by loser frat boys who only wanted to extend the party on their parent’s dime. He finally relented when she promised to get an apartment and a job to cover the rent to prove she could ‘adult’.

Endless shifts of caramel macchiatos, swabbing coffee stained floors, and dealing with arrogant rich kids at an indie coffee bar lasted two years until she relented. They reached a compromise and she agreed to go to U Miami where her tuition could be almost entirely covered by a graduate research position. She could build some capital with conference papers, and after a few years, she would transfer to a better school. The plan was to snag a training grant and offer to relocate her research, to sweeten the deal at one of the Ivies. ‘Ha!’ she thought ‘I guess that’s the end of that.’

When she opened her eyes, unsure of the time, her phone’s screen attracted her attention. The displayed glowed 11:13 PM, and she pulled up her contact list and dialed Alex. Though younger, his insight was usually spot on. She hoped he’d still be awake and was relieved when he answered, sounding vibrant. If he had been asleep, he would sound goofy and confused, she recalled from his childhood. Evidently he’d already spoken with their father, since he knew all about the incident, but wasn’t having her self-pity.

“I agree with him, Kate, you should have known better.”

“I thought you at least would be on my side,” she told him “I did what I thought was right.”

“You should have taken some philosophy courses in college. If you had, you would know that ‘right’ can be a squishy subject. And loyalty eats ‘right’ for lunch. I can’t believe you didn’t realize the fallout would create a shit storm for dad.”

“Well it didn’t. If you can’t be supportive, then fuck you. Come to think of it, you were always a righteous little prick!” She yelled into the phone before smashing her thumb down on the disconnect icon. She ached to hurl the phone to hear it smash against the wall, but didn’t want the hassle of a shattered phone.  

‘That certainly didn’t go well,’ she thought, as she sandwiched her head between two throw pillows as if preventing her brain from exploding. Flickering pink light from a heat stricken street light flooded her living room. Her brief nap earlier had relieved her immediate exhaustion, but not quenched her fatigue, and now she faced a long night. Packs of college students roamed past her building as they sought out Thursday night  drink specials in the neighborhood bars. Some of them would return to campus for Friday morning classes, but many more would head South Beach in order to extend the party into the  weekend.

A heaviness descended on Kate, much like she had swallowed liquid cement that was now setting. She had been born in Miami and her one hiatus had been college in New York. Now, some long buried part of her sparked into action. Clearly, staying close to family in Miami was pointless; they had brusquely abandoned her. She was unsure if her step mother knew the situation, but ninety percent of the time she closed ranks with her husband. Since both her father and brother offered patent rejection, it was unlikely Claire would stand by her.

Her neck ached and she realized it had been awkwardly cricked between the pillows. She held the phone’s calendar up to her face without rising. Three days left in the month. It was plenty of time to notify management her apartment would be available, and pack her things. For once, she was grateful for the tiny square footage of the studio, it forced frugality. How long had it been since she talked to  Gran in Lima? Not much lately. Their connection had been largely confined to biennial gifts from her mother’s mother, and Kate’s returned expression of gratitude. Wishful thinking or not, she convinced herself that this branch of the family would understand her action, and the reason behind it. Two days later after checking her bank account balance, she and two hefty suitcases were on their way to Peru.