he’d taken a part-time job at a shoe store in the local mall. Naturally all of this cut into the time he had for his own studies, and being sleep-deprived wasn’t helping him either. In the early mornings Laura watched him stagger through their apartment, which was now crammed with the baby’s furnishings, to sit at the kitchen table, and fall asleep over his books, and she knew he was falling behind. At the same time he was becoming fixated on the idea that he needed to get his doctorate as quickly as possible.
“Then I can start making a decent salary and we can get ourselves out of this miserable little apartment. You have to go back to school and get your degree too. We don’t talk about that anymore but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten it,” he said. “And the baby is growing out of her clothes every few months. We have to have more money.”
Poor Robby. He wanted to take care of his own so badly. He wanted to prove his father wrong and he wanted to show Theo and Iris that Laura hadn’t made a mistake when she married so young and had a child so soon. But Laura knew he was pushing himself too hard. Throughout that first year, she tried to convince him not to rush. He needed to study at his own pace, she said. To ease the financial pressure on him, she went out job-huntingagain and finally landed work as a waitress. But she quit after a few weeks because it was costing more to pay for a babysitter than she was earning in tips.
At the end of their first winter, Robby summed up their situation. “We’re living in an apartment that would have been small for one person, let alone two people and a baby. We don’t have even a small backyard for Katie and Molly to play in. And you still aren’t going back to college, Laura. Some success I am!”
And nothing she could say would change his mind. So when summer came around, and he said he wouldn’t go back to Professor Hawkins’s dig because he could make more money at the shoe store, she didn’t argue with him, even though she knew he’d be losing a valuable credit on his résumé.
It was so frustrating, it seemed as if every time they turned around, the lack of money was stopping them from doing something. And in Robby’s mind the only solution was for him to get his doctorate. Laura watched this obsession grow and she was afraid for him. But again, he wasn’t listening to her. When he began his third semester at the university, he announced that he would be taking his oral exams that year. The orals, as they were called, were the all-important first step to his coveted PhD, and he felt he couldn’t wait another minute.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise when he failed. The exam was essentially a verbal grilling of a doctoral candidate by a team of professors from his department, and under the best of circumstances it was a grueling ordeal. For Robby, who had made the stakes way too high for himself, the pressure was too great. And the truth was, as Laura had feared, he wasn’t as well prepared as he should have been. When the first question came at him, he froze and he never recovered.
Robby was shell-shocked. He was used to being the brightestboy in his class. Now he felt he was the class’s biggest failure. For days he refused to go out of the apartment for fear of running into one of his fellow grad students.
Laura tried to reassure him. “You’ll have a second chance at the exam, everyone gets two tries.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But next time will be different. You’ll see …”
“Really? And exactly how is that going to happen?”
“You’ll study until you feel completely confident …”
“How? I’m asking you, Laura. How am I going to do that when I have to have three jobs?”
“I’ll get a job instead.”
“We tried that, remember?”
“We’ll find a way. We’ll make sure that next time you take the exam you’re rested and you’re not pressured, and—”
“Will you stop it?” He was
“Then I can start making a decent salary and we can get ourselves out of this miserable little apartment. You have to go back to school and get your degree too. We don’t talk about that anymore but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten it,” he said. “And the baby is growing out of her clothes every few months. We have to have more money.”
Poor Robby. He wanted to take care of his own so badly. He wanted to prove his father wrong and he wanted to show Theo and Iris that Laura hadn’t made a mistake when she married so young and had a child so soon. But Laura knew he was pushing himself too hard. Throughout that first year, she tried to convince him not to rush. He needed to study at his own pace, she said. To ease the financial pressure on him, she went out job-huntingagain and finally landed work as a waitress. But she quit after a few weeks because it was costing more to pay for a babysitter than she was earning in tips.
At the end of their first winter, Robby summed up their situation. “We’re living in an apartment that would have been small for one person, let alone two people and a baby. We don’t have even a small backyard for Katie and Molly to play in. And you still aren’t going back to college, Laura. Some success I am!”
And nothing she could say would change his mind. So when summer came around, and he said he wouldn’t go back to Professor Hawkins’s dig because he could make more money at the shoe store, she didn’t argue with him, even though she knew he’d be losing a valuable credit on his résumé.
It was so frustrating, it seemed as if every time they turned around, the lack of money was stopping them from doing something. And in Robby’s mind the only solution was for him to get his doctorate. Laura watched this obsession grow and she was afraid for him. But again, he wasn’t listening to her. When he began his third semester at the university, he announced that he would be taking his oral exams that year. The orals, as they were called, were the all-important first step to his coveted PhD, and he felt he couldn’t wait another minute.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise when he failed. The exam was essentially a verbal grilling of a doctoral candidate by a team of professors from his department, and under the best of circumstances it was a grueling ordeal. For Robby, who had made the stakes way too high for himself, the pressure was too great. And the truth was, as Laura had feared, he wasn’t as well prepared as he should have been. When the first question came at him, he froze and he never recovered.
Robby was shell-shocked. He was used to being the brightestboy in his class. Now he felt he was the class’s biggest failure. For days he refused to go out of the apartment for fear of running into one of his fellow grad students.
Laura tried to reassure him. “You’ll have a second chance at the exam, everyone gets two tries.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But next time will be different. You’ll see …”
“Really? And exactly how is that going to happen?”
“You’ll study until you feel completely confident …”
“How? I’m asking you, Laura. How am I going to do that when I have to have three jobs?”
“I’ll get a job instead.”
“We tried that, remember?”
“We’ll find a way. We’ll make sure that next time you take the exam you’re rested and you’re not pressured, and—”
“Will you stop it?” He was
Similar Books
