The Culper Ring of the Revolutionary War will finally come to an end, as AMC's 'Turn: Washington's Spies' confirms a fourth and final season renewal for 2017.
Woo Hoo!
I mean, I don’t love the “final” part, but at least we get a Season 4!
I feel sorry for anyone who follows me on Twitter. I've been tweeting nothing but #RenewTURN tweets for weeks. Idk what I'm going to do once the show gets renewed. Probably stop using Twitter again until it's time to am tweet about my shows next year.
The Plight of Anthropology, Chapter Twenty: Chemistry
“S-Selah,” Anna’s exhaled name set a cold silence free. The tall, thin man with dark hair and even darker, heavy-lidded eyes was looking at Edmund with something that looked like contempt. “When…when did you get out?”
“Today,” he answered, his voice sharp. “I called you. I called you fifteen times, Anna. What happened to our house?”
Anna stepped completely inside the apartment, closing the door behind her, her eyes fluttering over Edmund without offering any sort of clue as to how to behave. Surely Selah had seen them kissing; surely he knew already, based on the ugly glares he was sending to Edmund. “I sold it,” she answered. “I sold our cars too.”
“You – you had no right,” he snapped, stepping toward her, and Anna immediately retreated, away from him. The instinctive movement put Edmund on his guard. What kind of relationship warranted an immediate recoil from your husband, the one you haven’t seen in years? Why weren’t they embracing? Why were they speaking to each other like this?
“I had every right,” she retorted. “I had no money, no way to support myself. You were gone.”
“Thanks for visiting, by the way.”
Anna scoffed. “How did you even get in here?” she asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest. The familiar defiant stance made Edmund feel a little more at ease; she was in control again.
“Uh, that would be me,” Abraham’s quiet, chagrined voice came from the couch, where he had managed to remain hidden this whole time. “I tried to call you to let you know.”
“How did you get in here?” she asked again, this time directing the question at Abraham.
“Ben let us in,” Abe answered with a sheepish shrug. “I imagine he tried to call you too.” Anna’s hand fell to her pocket, where she had shoved her phone during Edmund’s story of Achilles and Patroclus.
She turned back to Selah, who was still regarding Edmund like a bacteria. “How?” she asked. “I didn’t even know your appeal went through.”
Selah shrugged. “Good behavior and a good lawyer. You would know that if you visited.”
“You didn’t give any indication you wanted me to visit you,” Anna replied, her voice softening. “There are only so many times that I can show up to the prison and get told by a guard that you don’t want to see me before I give up. What did you want me to do, keep coming back?”
“You’re my wife!”
“That certainly didn’t mean shit to you before you got sent to prison,” she slung back.
Selah clenched his jaw, and as the muscles worked, Edmund could see him run his tongue over his teeth beneath the skin of his lip. The movement was almost feral; when his eyes turned to Edmund, he wanted to take a step back. But Anna’s sigh strengthened him, and he held his ground.
“I guess that didn’t stop you from replacing me,” he noted darkly, nodding his head to Edmund.
“Do not look at him, your issue is with me,” Anna immediately stepped in front of Edmund, and he felt keenly like she was shielding him from a blow. He let his hand settle, unseen, on her lower back. She stiffened for a moment, and then relaxed. “You checked out on me when I lost James –”
“When we lost James –”
“When I lost James,” she roared, and even Edmund took a step back, away from her. “You didn’t feel him, you didn’t have to –” she broke off suddenly, and he could see her crumbling and trying to build herself back up at the same time. “You left me when you were all that I had left. You don’t get to be mad at me now.”
“You are still my wife,” he insisted.
“In name only,” she replied, her voice hoarse from her yell.
“Maybe I should go,” Abraham was already moving toward the door. Anna didn’t say anything; Selah’s eyes were on Edmund.
“Perhaps I should go too,” Edmund said, the statement alone leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. Anna’s arm stopped him.
“No, Edmund, stay,” she said firmly. “Selah is the one that should go.”
Selah’s eyes settled on Edmund, this time latching on with the intention of engaging. “So you’re the new guy she’s fucking? I have to say, I thought Abraham would last longer.”
“She – we are – that is, we are not –”
“We aren’t sleeping together, Selah,” Anna replied sharply. “And it isn’t any of your business.”
Selah’s eyes ran up Edmund quickly. “Yeah I supposed you would’ve had better taste than him.”
Edmund flushed, but it was Anna that snapped back. “I thought I just told you to get out.”
“I live here,” Selah shot back.
“No, you lived in our house, which a nice old couple owns now,” Anna argued. “I live here, and I don’t want you here.” She gestured toward the door, and even as Selah looked at it, Edmund knew he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Where do you expect me to go?” he asked. “I just got out of jail, Anna.”
“You have family,” she said coldly.
He glanced toward the door again, and Anna moved out from in front of Edmund to yank it open. “You’re supposed to be my family.”
“I can’t,” she breathed shakily, and her hand tightened around the frame of the door, her knuckles white. “I cannot do that anymore. Go.”
Selah moved toward the door and paused on his way out, leaning toward Anna for a kiss. She allowed it, her shoulders stiff, until Selah’s hand tightened around her upper arm. She wrenched her shoulder back, stepping away from him.
“Go,” she said again. When he didn’t move: “Please.”
As the door closed behind him, she leaned her forehead against it, breathing heavily, letting the anger flow out of her, taking her strength with it. Gently, Edmund took a tentative step forward and placed his hand on Anna’s shoulder. She flinched violently, and with a start, he withdrew his hand.
“Sorry,” he said quietly. She sighed, an exhausted, heavy sigh, and shook her head.
“It’s not you,” she muttered. “Don’t apologize.” He wanted to reach out to her again, to feel her skin, her pulse, something, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it again. She sighed again, this one much shallower than the last, and locked the door.
Where did they go from here? Edmund followed her as she swept into the living rom, finally pressing the power button on the top of her phone. She let herself fall gracelessly onto the couch as the phone booted up. He followed suit, perching himself awkwardly on the edge of the spot he always occupied.
“Eleven messages, twenty-five missed calls,” she groaned, putting the phone away without checking any of them. As she marinated in the silence and Edmund continued to struggle to find the right words, she let her gaze fall to him. She surveyed his face, digesting whatever his visage held, and reached for his hand. “Do you hate me now?” she asked, her voice suddenly so much younger. “Now that my –” she hesitated over the word, “husband is here, and you’ve seen how I treat him –”
Her voice fractured around the word, and Edmund’s hand tightened around hers.
“I don’t hate you,” he said simply. I love you, he thought, but he wouldn’t, couldn’t say that right now.
“You should,” she said quietly, “I’m an adulteress.”
Edmund grimaced at the word. “You are,” he agreed. “But I still don’t hate you.” He swallowed thickly. “I knew you were married when I…when I pursued you,” he said slowly. “I just – never considered this,” he motioned to the room, the situation, “as a plausible turn of events.”
Anna seemed to sense that he wasn’t done. “And?” she prompted.
He sighed. “And I’m just…not sure how to navigate this. I don’t know.”
Her exhale was a breath against a sob, and she clung tighter to him. “I never wanted you to have to deal with this,” she said softly.
“I know,” he soothed.
And he did know; he could see it in the shake of her shoulders as she struggled to keep her tears in. But he wasn’t sure how she would have handled this situation if he hadn’t been here. Would Selah still be in her apartment? Would Abraham have been the one enduring the venomous looks that Selah had shot at him?
The way she flinched away from her husband still troubled him. It was such an animalistic movement, a natural reaction, he had to wonder.
“Anna,” he began cautiously. “Has Selah ever…I mean, I saw the way you – you flinched, and –”
“Selah isn’t abusive,” Anna answered easily. “He’s just…he can get a little scary when he’s angry.”
It was a relief to hear, but it gave Edmund less to hold against the scorned husband. He wished, for one horrible moment, that he had done something terrible, if only so Edmund could hate him unabashedly, with vigor. But Selah was just…another lost man who had nothing left. He had no wife, despite the woman who still bore his name, no house, nothing to really come back to. It was sad, to him.
She was watching him again, her eyes large and fathomless. He could see the remnants of the tears she’d tried to hard to hide at the corners of the windows to her soul that he was so disarmed by.
“I do want a divorce, Edmund,” she said without prompting. “I have since he went to prison, but I couldn’t just –” she struggled with the explanation. “He didn’t have anything left, and neither did I, and I didn’t…I didn’t want to take it from him.”
“I know,” he soothed once more.
She sniffed, the sound twitching her tiny nose. “But I have something now,” she said, and he could hear the significance in her voice. She was talking about him. “I have something to live for, and I have someone who showed me that I could live for myself.”
It wasn’t an I love you, but it sure felt like one.
***
“You want me to what?” The janitor, a fragile looking older man, stared wide-eyed at Robert, who took a deep breath and prepared to begin again.
“I just need you to open that door,” he said again. “I left my rough draft in there and the final draft is due tomorrow, and I can’t fix it if I don’t get it, please,” he held out a twenty-dollar bill, and the man’s eyes brightened. “I can’t fail this class,” he prompted, wiggling the money just slightly.
The old man’s eyes rose to Robert’s again, narrowed in suspicion. “I could get fired for this,” he said significantly.
“I could never tell on you,” Robert promised. “I don’t even know your name.”
“And I don’t know yours,” the man answered.
“And we can keep it that way,” Robert pressed the twenty into the man’s chapped hands, dry and cracked from cleaning fluids. “All you have to do is unlock the door and walk away.”
The old man’s eyes glanced up and down the hallway and closed around the money. “Professor Simcoe has never been kind to us,” he confided, his Spanish accent more pronounced when he whispered. Robert nodded understandingly as the key slid into the lock.
He closed the door behind him and sat at the desk, careful not to move anything, even the chair’s alignment, while he searched. He carefully opened the same drawer that he found the poetry in and searched more thoroughly.
Gradebooks were stacked on top of that leather bound journal, one with this semester’s dates on them. Carefully, he removed them and scanned the grades.
There were the occasional scratches, where he had clearly made a mistake, wrote a 78 instead of a 79, and his penmanship was truly awful, but most of the scribbles were beside the name Anna Strong.
Her first paper had been an 89, the second a 45 that he had scratched out and changed to a 60. That placed her at the edge of a C. Her pop quizzes ranged from 80 to 40 to 0, the 0 the most recent pop quiz, given almost a month ago. Her most recent paper grade had been a 55, which he had scratched out and changed to a 0; but hadn’t she said that Hewlett had helped her correct that paper? That she had gotten a higher grade on it? Robert had seen it, sitting on her desk, with the date across the top. The written grade was an 88.
So he had been lying about the grades he put on her papers, and was putting bad grades to keep her from passing in his gradebook.
She was failing because of that 0.
Carefully, Robert pulled out his phone and snapped a picture of it.
He placed the gradebook back where he’d found it, closing the drawer cautiously, listening for any approaching footsteps. When he heard nothing, he moved to the other set of drawers. The top drawer held a large pocket knife that drew a shiver from Robert. The second held packages of highlighters and markers for the board in his classroom. It was the bottom drawer, again, where he struck gold.
There were arbitrarily folded papers in there, most of them receipts from Starbucks and the occasional Domino’s pizza order. But tucked into the back corner, with distinctly important lettering, was the evidence Robert needed.
He unfolded the papers, scanning the top.
CHRISTUS SPOHN HOSPITAL SUMMARY:
His eyes dropped lower on the document: “examined for a dislocated shoulder, sustained during a car accident. Once reset, the doctor prescribed oxycotin for the pain and sent patient home. No overnight visit necessary.”
And, at the very bottom: “Blood alcohol level just above the legal limit.”
Forgoing all caution, Robert creased the document once more and shoved it into his pocket. He was seething; the man couldn’t even claim that he was blackout drunk. He was just barely over the legal limit when he attacked Anna. He had been aware of his intentions, of his actions. He shoved the drawer closed, relishing in the loud bang that came from it, and left, taking great care to make sure the door was locked behind him.
***
When Caleb had suggested a night in with Ben, he had not anticipated a visitor, bunking in their dorm, watching them with heavy eyes that always reminded him of a bloodhound. But Abraham had called Ben, who had told Caleb, and Selah was now, against Caleb’s will, sitting across the room from them.
“So tell me about this Hewlett guy,” he said, and Caleb narrowed his eyes.
Ben’s eyes slid to Caleb’s for just a moment. “I don’t…I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said carefully. “You just got out of prison – let’s not cause too much drama too quick.”
Selah laughed a mirthless laugh that didn’t bring smiles to anyone else’s face. “Benjamin, I didn’t go to prison for murder.”
“Well, you kind of did,” Caleb pointed out. Selah’s eyes landed on him.
“Not the kind of murder I’m likely to repeat,” he answered.
The silence that followed was long and awkward; Caleb turned to Ben and widened his eyes, trying to communicate with his boyfriend nonverbally. Unfortunately, nonverbal communication was not his strong suit, and soon, his careful get him out of here had dissolved into a series of angry faces that made Ben look confused and slightly amused.
“Come on, Tallmadge, I just want to know what the guy’s like,” Selah prompted, drawing Ben’s attention back to him. “I know that Anna and I have no chance.”
“Do you?” Caleb blurted.
Selah turned his eyes back to him. “How can I be sure if I don’t know anything about this guy?” he asked. “So, come on. Is he better than Abraham? I always figured I’d lose her to Abe.”
His voice feigned nonchalance, but his hands were clenched tightly into fists. Caleb’s eyes landed on them, noting the nervous, angry tell. Selah looked expectantly at Ben. In their childhood, Caleb had always been the friend that called Selah on his antics while Ben had always been afraid of him; Selah had been best friends with Samuel, Ben’s older brother, who had died in Iraq. Now, Ben constantly looked at Selah like he was simultaneously the brother he’d lost and the man that took him away.
“Abe started dating Mary Smith,” Ben finally said. “Anna told him to choose between the two of them, and Richard pushed him toward Mary. That was pretty much the end of Anna and Abe. And then she met Edmund.”
“Edmund?” Selah repeated with a laugh. Caleb tensed.
“Yes,” Ben sighed, letting his hand fall to Caleb’s forearm to keep him in place. “Edmund Hewlett, a British law professor.”
“A professor?” Selah exclaimed. “Well, I suppose he had that pasty nerdy look.”
“Edmund Hewlett is an honorable man,” Caleb snapped.
Selah held up his hands in mock surrender, but his brows had furrowed. “Alright, Brewster, calm down.”
“If you want an indication of intensity, he was the only one that could calm her on March 23,” Caleb replied coldly, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. Selah’s face turned from amused to stricken. “As far as I can tell, he’s the only thing that’s held her together, with everything that’s happened.”
“Everything that’s happened?” Selah repeated. “What does that mean? What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Ben interrupted. “Just…the usual.”
“He already told her that he loves her,” Caleb butted in again, his voice growing in belligerence. “And if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say she loves him too.”
Selah’s eyes rose to meet his, but he didn’t move from his spot. “Are you sure it isn’t you that loves him, Brewster?”
With a rush of heated movement, Caleb wrenched Selah up from his spot and shoved him against the wall by the front of his shirt.
“Look you flippant little shite,” he spat, “Edmund Hewlett is one of the nicest men I’ve ever met, and he hasn’t committed enough sins to be cursed with you. You left Annie when she needed you, and he helped pick her up. You don’t get to claim her like a piece of discarded clothing. Not anymore. And if you hurt Hew, I’ll make sure I hurt you so bad I get put in the same cell they just released you from.”
“Caleb, stop!” Ben shouted, grabbing him by the shoulders. He wrenched him away from Selah, whose face was flushed dark red. With a grunt that sounded like a growl, Caleb extricated himself from Ben and stalked out the door, slamming it behind him.
