Things Are Going to Slide - Chapter One Continued

Dede pokes me. I look over. She rolls her eyes. I nod and try not to laugh. Without a word passing between us, we agree. Sue is a piece of work. That she’s always perfectly dressed and coiffed is not the issue, although sometimes it annoys me, especially in these last ever more frumpy days of my second pregnancy. What’s most irritating about Sue Scanlon, though, is her unshakeable belief that she’s far smarter than the rest of us and that her way is the only way. She and I haven’t gotten along since she arrived last summer from Harvard Law.

I look at Dean Dody. Get up! Tell me what I’m dying to know! Last month, when the Chair was announced, the Dean privately assured me that I had his total support for the Chair. Still, I want to hear him officially announce the endowment to everyone else.
I sigh as Associate Dean Porter Larkin approaches the podium and takes Sue’s place. He pats his comb-over, glances down at his notes and smiles suddenly, his eyes opening wider, as if surprised to find the list of ASU faculty achievements in front of him, even though his only routine responsibility at every faculty meeting consists of singing our praises.
“Please congratulate Professor Ken Barber on his latest article which has been accepted for publication in the Vanderbilt Law Journal.” Porter looks up, squints, then begins to clap.

I wince but clap along with the rest of the faculty. When I was hired to launch the law school Legal Aid Clinic, the Dean gave me a two-year contract, but made clear that the contract’s renewal and any hope of tenure would depend on whether I’d published. Since then, I’ve written a number of draft essays on various Clinical Law topics, and titled them in a humorous fashion. Unfortunately, I haven’t come close to putting even one title into law review format much less one entire paper thanks to all-consuming teaching and family obligations. When the two-year deadline came and went several months ago, the Dean was kind enough to give me an extension until the end of the semester. Unfortunately, that falls smack dab in the middle of my maternity leave.

I didn’t plan to have a second child, at least not until I’d put the finishing touches on a law review article. But, as the result of one teensy-weensy moment of passion when my diaphragm was the last thing on my mind, my four-year-old daughter Ellie soon will have a sibling. What I had thought was passion turned out to be my swim coach husband Rick’s awkward attempt to break it to me gently that he was in love with his NCAA champion free-styler – William Larson.

As Porter prattles on about a Securities Law conference being held at ASU next month, I daydream about the things I’ll say when I’m standing at the podium: how honored I am to receive one of the few coveted Chairs, how thankful I am for the faculty’s support of my Clinic. And the things I won’t say: how I can barely wait to have the power and the platform to make an end run around Sue Scanlon who single-handedly squelched my proposal to represent the immigrants languishing at the nearby Department of Homeland Security detention facility.

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