Guess That Is How I Know You

Chapter XI

June 1, 2016

A few days ago, when I was in one of my private lessons, with Professor Mace, she asked me what I saw myself accomplishing after law school.

I told her I had no specific plans yet—I still struggle with my choice, whether it was the right one and that was probably the main reason I had not thought so far ahead, which meant I honestly had no idea whatsoever on what was expecting me once I was done, lucky for me, I still have some time to figure that out.

The look she gave me, I knew it too well, it was pity, but also, disappointment. After that Evelyn made it her job to try and help me figure out what it was that I wanted to do once I was done with school.

At first, I thought Professor Mace was taking so much interest on helping me to clean up Cecilia's mess somehow, but the more I got to know her the more I understood her reasoning.

She came from a protestant family and had married her high school sweetheart once they found out she was pregnant. At seventeen she had had her first child, a girl who was just a year or so younger than me.

It was only once she divorced her first husband and met her second one that she got her degree.

The second husband happened to be a kick-ass corporate lawyer. He had paid for her studying and everything else that had to do with helping her become who she was meant to be.

Some people say that those who cannot do, teach, well, that was not Evelyn's case. Apart from everything she did around campus, she was also a partner on the same firm her husband worked at when they first met. Eventually she reached senior partnership, before he did, I may add, and he had a ten-year head start on her.

The motherly attribute did not come from being a mother at a young age. Husband number 2—as I like to say—had a son about the same age as her daughter. They met when the kids were five, and the boy's mother had left the scene without ever looking back. Evelyn raised the boy as her own, and apparently it was their bond that changed her.

She told me the first couple years the little boy who would eventually come to identify himself as her son, would not trust her to come back home whenever she had to leave the house, so he would look completely panicked when she walked out the door, unaware of what to do with himself.

I guess I reminded her of her son in ways I could not quite grasp.

Once Professor Mace figured out, I was not a complete lost case when it came to Family Law, she decided it would be good for me to join some extracurricular activities the university had to offer.

I tried to get out of it, but she was having none of my excuses.

By extracurricular, she meant I could choose between being swamped with endless theoretical research, or I volunteering to assist one of the mediators at the mediation center.

When I refused to choose, she just figured she would do it for me instead.

I am not sure what was behind her intentions, but after a couple calls, she managed to get me assigned to the last available assistant position.

It would definitely not make me any more likable around my peers.

One did not have to know much about the extracurricular activities around campus to figure out I had skipped more than a few obligatory steps to get that position.

I had not applied, I was not part of any waiting lists, nor did I ever really shown any interest to be part of the mediation center.

It turned out the one position that was left unoccupied, was to assist the one professor no one seemed to be able to stand for more than a couple months.