The Raising (26 page)

44

“L
et me get the mail,” Perry said, trying to grab Craig’s elbow as he turned from the window to the door, but Craig was already gone before Perry could stop him.

They’d been watching from the window together, waiting. Below, the mailman was finally crossing the street, his face down against what must have been a pretty stiff wind (a bright end-of-October day, not a cloud in the sky, but the bare branches of the trees were being whipped around mercilessly, and the wind blowing through the gaps between the window frames and the glass panes felt frigid to Perry). The mailman disappeared from view for a few minutes, presumably standing in the foyer of their apartment house, sorting and distributing. Then they saw him emerge and start to walk across the grass to the apartment house next door, a bright red leaf stuck to his blue cap, scores of other leaves catching to his black boots as he trampled through them.

Perry stayed behind in the apartment and listened to the stairs make their familiar groaning and rattling sounds as Craig slammed down them in his sneakers on his way to the mailbox. He could even hear the missed beat of Craig skipping over the seventh step.

A week earlier, someone’s foot had punched through that one, and there was a hole in it now that you had to avoid if you didn’t want to end up knee-deep in the stairwell on your way up or down. No one in the building seemed to know who it was who’d gone through it first, but since then, one of the girls next door had twisted her ankle, and she was on crutches, so Perry had left the landlord a message about the problem. When there was no response to that, he left a note at the top and bottom of the stairs himself (“CAUTION, HOLE IN SEVENTH STEP”), and when the girl on crutches found out that Perry was the one who’d put up the sign, she hobbled over with some cookies she’d baked, to thank him for his concern.

The cookies had tasted like cardboard, but she was a pretty girl—bright red cheeks and dyed black hair cut in a kind of bowl shape around her head. If she’d told him her name, Perry had forgotten it. A couple days after Perry taped up the warning, someone had written on the bottom of it, “Signed, Rumpelstiltskin.”

C
raig must have fished the mail out of their little metal box by now. Perry could hear him coming back up, taking the stairs two at a time. Maybe three at a time. He could hear what sounded like panting, and then Craig shoved the door open and stood there in the threshold holding another fluttering white postcard out to Perry in one hand, a handful of glossy pizza and sub sandwich flyers in the other.

“It’s her. It’s really her,” Craig said. “It’s another postcard from her.”

Perry took a step carefully toward him and took the postcard from Craig’s hand. It looked the same as the last one—one of those prestamped post office cards made of thin, pulpy paper. Perry looked at the address, reading Craig’s name there, and then he flipped it over.

He had to rub his eyes, and look again, and then rub his eyes again:

The
handwriting
.

Perry had been seeing that handwriting for years. Soft fat pencil on lined paper. Crayon signatures at the bottom of art projects. Invitations, exclamations pinned to lockers, notes he’d had to borrow, to copy, in Global Studies, in AP English, for classes he’d missed, and poems written out in this handwriting in a poetry workshop he’d taken with her in eleventh grade.

He rubbed his eyes again, but Perry would have recognized those loopy lowercase consonants anywhere, even if he didn’t know exactly the kind of poem she would have written to Craig on a postcard. Mr. Brenner had taught them about slant rhyme. He’d been especially harsh with Nicole (whose poems always rhymed: “What’s the point otherwise?!” she’d said) regarding her “moon/June predilections.”

She’d been a good student. She’d absorbed the lesson completely by the end of the quarter, and gone on to critique her classmates’ poems for exactly the same thing Mr. Brenner had said about hers.

I cannot tell you who I am now

I cannot say how sorry

You did not kill me, Craig, please know

My soul they cannot bury

“Jesus Christ,” Perry said, “Jesus Christ,” as he sank onto the couch, the postcard still in his hand. His heart was slamming against his ribs. He hadn’t been sure before, despite what he himself believed about Nicole and despite all Craig’s insistence. The last postcard had only said,
I miss you. N.
It could have been from anyone. It could have been a sick prank. Perry had said this to Craig, who’d seemed to take it in, but for the past two days, the way he’d been waiting for the mail, it was obvious he’d only been humoring Perry while waiting for another postcard from Nicole.

“Fuck,” Perry said, and he handed it back to Craig, and then he turned around, heart still slamming, and hands shaking. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

Until now, he hadn’t believed anything, had he? He’d been unable to believe anything. He’d been on a search for something, but he hadn’t expected to find it.

Now, Perry’s hands were trembling, and he felt his throat all but close in a kind of panicked voicelessness when Craig said, as soberly as Craig had ever said anything, “She’s not dead, Perry. Or. She’s—she’s
something.
”

Perry looked up at him, and found himself both shocked and not even surprised to see what he saw:

Craig was happy.

Craig didn’t even seem confused.

Craig had a bright look on his face that Perry hadn’t seen there since before the accident. He looked, Perry thought, like the girls at Confirmation Camp right after the Final Acceptance of Christ into Our Hearts ceremony: shiny-eyed, full of faith, seeing beyond this world and its flimsy trappings. Ecstasy. That look was ecstasy.

He had to tell him. He had to show him the photograph. He had to tell Craig about Lucas, and Patrick Wright, and Professor Polson. Until this, it had seemed too crazy, too cruel. But now—now Craig had to know.

But first, Perry had to call Professor Polson. He had to ask her advice. He had to tell her about this.

“I have to go for a walk,” he said. “I have to clear my head. And I need to call someone. Give me your cell phone.”

“Sure,” Craig said. “Sure. Sure.” Nodding like a lunatic. Smiling like a little kid. He’d have given Perry anything at that moment. If they’d been standing on a rooftop, Craig could have flown right off of it. Not only had he been expiated from the worst crime imaginable—killing the person you love the most in the world—he’d also learned that the dead could come back to life. He handed his cell phone to Perry as he continued to cradle the flimsy postcard in his hands, the way he might an injured bird. He wandered out of the living room with it like a zombie, back to his room, seeming to be laughing and crying at the same time.

P
erry didn’t bother to put on his coat. He just turned up the collar of his shirt against the wind and dialed Professor Polson’s phone number as soon as he was out of the apartment house.

Her office phone rang and rang, and finally he hung up before her voice mail clicked in. He’d have to call her at home. He didn’t want to, but he had to know what to do next. Whom else could he ask? Still, he hesitated. The last time he’d called, a couple of days before, Professor Polson’s husband had answered and said she was in the shower, and then hung up without saying good-bye, as if he were pissed that Perry had called.

“Hello?”

It was the husband again.

“Hello. This is Perry Edwards, Professor Polson’s—”

“Work-study,” the husband said. “As usual, she’s not available. I’ll tell her you called again, pal.”

He hung up with what sounded like the receiver slamming against a wall.

45

M
ira hadn’t slept or eaten for a day and a half. For the first half hour, she tried to fake it for her class, but that eventually proved impossible. Every time she stood up from the desk with a piece of chalk and headed for the blackboard, the blackboard telescoped away from her. She wrote the same thing on it twice without realizing that she had:

Bachlabend Perchtennacht

Bachlebend Perchtennacht

She only noticed it when Karess Flanagan pointed out that she’d spelled it differently the second time. Then, Mira had turned around, and, indeed, there it was, misspelled the second time. She had no memory of having written it on the board the first time.

She was trying to conduct a class on the subject of Frau Holle-Percht, the German Death Demon, the “Hidden One.” It was usually one of her favorite classes to teach. The students had been assigned to read the translation of a fifteenth-century Latin manuscript from Tegemsee condemning the pagan practice of decorating houses in December to appease the Death Demon and the leaving of little cakes on the hearth for “Frau Holle and her seven lads.”

It was an epiphany for eighteen-year olds, making the connection between Santa Claus and the fear of death. There was always at least one student in every class who’d been afraid of Santa Claus as a child, and told a story of lying awake on Christmas Eve terrified.

But that day Mira got only as far as the custom of tossing little swaddled dolls into the darkness on December 24 (still practiced in a village in the Harz Mountains that Mira had visited her Fulbright year) to try to trick Frau Holle into believing she was being given the families’ actual “dead” babies, and she began to tear up.
Where were her own fucking babies right now?

She’d come home from an Honors College curriculum committee meeting later than she’d said she would Tuesday night because there’d been an unexpected challenge to the syllabus for her proposed upper-level seminar on Death and the Cultural Landscape. The chair of the committee wanted to know why Mira had chosen to substitute “field study” for one of the two required theses, and Mira had found herself having to explain that the field study was a precursor to the thesis, that the field study would be the foundation upon which a thesis would be written, and that it would be impossible to accomplish both in a meaningful way in fifteen weeks if she had to assign two papers.

Even Dean Fleming, who’d urged her to propose the course in the first place, had seemed skeptical, and the meeting ended with nothing more than an agreement to revisit the proposal at the next meeting, although it also managed to run an hour over.

It was raining when Mira finally got out of Godwin Hall, and she had no umbrella. She was ruining her shoes, she knew—nice Italian leather pumps she’d bought on sale a few years before—but she couldn’t risk calling Clark for a ride. He’d have had to bring the twins out with him in the rain, and all the car seat stuff, and he’d specifically asked Mira to get home as early as she could because he wanted to go to a meeting of the Armchair Philosophers, a book group recommended by one of the mothers from the regular Espresso Royale play dates. This mother, too, had been on her way to a degree in philosophy (“The real thing,” Clark had said of her, “studying with Kurdak at Princeton”), which had been derailed by a baby. The group she’d talked Clark into joining sounded to Mira like exactly the kind of thing Clark would despise, but he seemed to want to go.

“I don’t know,” he’d said noncommittally, “probably a waste of time, but she said these were serious people, and that the group might save my life.”

Clark snorted then at his own words, but Mira could tell that he’d confided in this coffee klatsch companion that his life needed saving, and that her advice meant something to him. Mira might have been suspicious of Clark’s relationship with this female philosopher, except that a few weeks earlier, on the street outside the hardware store, Clark had introduced Mira to her (Deirdre), and Mira had seen that not only was Deirdre pregnant again—seven months—but that the rolling enormity of that pregnancy was on top of what appeared to be already a lot of excess weight. His interest really was, it seemed, solely in the club, and the idea that Clark might rekindle his passion for philosophy filled Mira with a kind of hope that also felt like panic. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed that Clark—the one with the books piled up beside the bed, the one with the pencil tucked behind his ear.

So, now she was filled with grief for the lost opportunity of the Armchair Philosophers as she ran for their apartment, her shoes filling with water (she could literally feel the fine stitches and the glue that held them together melting around her feet), knowing that it was too late. Even if she’d gotten home ten minutes earlier, Clark could not have made it across town to the meeting in time, and he was not the kind of person who showed up at something like this late. He would be furious, probably. Relieved, too, but he would be angry at her for that relief. He hadn’t spoken to her since their fight the night before, except to remind her to get home on time so he could make it to the “book club for would-have-beens,” and she’d assured him that she would do her best.

Mira ran through the parking area outside their apartment house so quickly that she didn’t notice that their car wasn’t parked in its usual space, and when she found that the door to their apartment was locked, she assumed he’d done it to frustrate her, to make her have to fish through her bag to find her keys. She felt so guilty about being gone that it didn’t occur to her to be furious. He was probably on the couch with the newspaper, listening to her struggle with the lock.

Then, when she’d finally gotten herself into the apartment, thrown her bag on the floor, and called out, “Clark?” and he hadn’t answered, she figured he was in the bedroom, fuming, that she’d find him on his back in their bed, staring at the ceiling, an angry little lecture all prepared—or, he’d simply put on his shoes, walk past her without a word, wearing his running shorts, heading out into the rain, refusing to turn around when she spoke to him.

But when Mira went in the bedroom and he wasn’t there, she put a hand to her mouth, her first thought being, Jesus Christ, he’s gone to his fucking meeting and left the twins alone in the apartment.

“Andy? Matty?”

They weren’t in their room. The Thomas the Tank Engine sheets were on the floor, and the dresser drawers were open:

Clark had taken them with him to the meeting, she thought, and she almost laughed out loud with relief. She went into the kitchen, looked on the counter.

No note.

Typical.

He wanted to punish her. But that would be nothing compared to the guilt he’d pile on her when he got back, and told her how the twins had ruined the meeting for everyone.

Or, maybe not. Maybe Deirdre’s husband was watching the kids? What was her last name? Had Clark ever mentioned it?

Mira opened the phone book, but soon realized there was no point combing it for a Deirdre. She’d simply have to wait for her punishment. She’d make it up to him with a loaf of Irish soda bread. It was her specialty. Clark loved it. Or, he used to love it.

Mira poured herself a glass of wine from a bottle they’d opened a week before, wrestled off her ruined shoes, and tossed them in the closet. She mopped up the floor with a paper towel where she’d tracked in water, and then opened the cupboards and took out the canister of flour, the little yellow box of baking soda.

The wine tasted like vinegar and rainwater and reminded her of a train station in which she’d once had to spend the night. (Was it Albania?) The station was in a small village with no hotels, no restaurants, and no one to tell her why the last train of the night hadn’t arrived, or when it would. Luckily, there’d been an old man selling loaves of bread and bottles of wine to the few passengers who, like Mira, had shown up for the train but who, unlike Mira, did not seem surprised when it didn’t arrive. So, she’d drunk the entire bottle of wine, which was sour and warm, and eaten the bread, and listened to the rain until she fell asleep, and in the morning, the train blew its whistle outside the station, and the passengers who’d waited all night for it simply handed over their tickets, and got on.

She mixed the flour and water and baking soda, and listened to Mozart. She drank a second glass of wine. The bread came out of the oven looking perfect, but, Mira thought, she wouldn’t slice it until Clark got home. It would be her peace offering. She’d pour him a glass of wine, ask about the meeting. It was late, and the twins would go right to sleep if they weren’t already asleep in his arms when he walked in.

It wasn’t until midnight that her own stupidity began to dawn on her, the time she’d wasted baking bread, the short-sighted relaxation of the wine (how had she allowed herself the evening to relax? Who had she thought she was?) and went back into the twins’ room and realized that the dresser drawers were open because Clark had packed the twins’ clothes when he left with them, and that the sheets were on the floor because he’d taken their blankies with him, too. She stood staring at the room while her heart caught up with her mind, beating wildly, and then she turned to the doorway with her hands held out, empty.

What was she going to do now?

Stupidly, she thought of the cell phone plan she’d intended to sign them up for but hadn’t gotten around to, getting two phones for the price of one. They had only one cell phone, and it was in her purse.

Mira stumbled into the living room and, after some frantic searching through scraps of paper in the junk drawer, found Clark’s mother’s phone number, and punched the digits in as quickly as she could with her trembling hands.

Her mother-in-law sounded startled out of a drug-enhanced sleep when she answered—panicked, confused, panting. “Kay,” Mira said, “it’s just me. Please, is Clark there? Are the twins with him?” After much stammering, Mira finally managed to explain, in the mildest terms and tone she could muster, that she and Clark had argued, that Clark had left with the twins, that Mira supposed they were on their way to Kay’s. “Has he called you?” she asked.

“No,” Kay said, but managed, even in her half sleep, to muster the maternal energy and clarity to comfort Mira. “But he’ll call in the morning, honey, if he’s not home before then. He’s probably bringing the boys here, but it got too late, so he stopped at a motel. You two will make it up. Believe me, sweetie, if I had a dollar for every time Clark’s daddy and I had a fight like this—”

The tone of her voice, quaveringly compassionate, and the image in Mira’s mind of Clark’s mother, her thin hair a mess on a flowered pillow, her slack cheeks creased with sleep, lying on her side talking into a telephone in the dark, wearing a ratty polyester nightie, trying to make
her
feel better, caused Mira to whimper, audibly, into the phone, and then Kay sounded alarmed, suddenly fully awake.

“Honey? Honey? Don’t worry. Clark’s not going to do anything. Clark’s not like that. Clark loves you, and he loves the babies, and tomorrow you two will talk this out. Now, you get in your bed, okay, and you call me the second you hear anything, and I’ll call you, too, and in a year we’ll be laughing about this. I’m a lot older than you. I know about this stuff. Okay? You’re listening to me?”

“Yes,” Mira said. She held the receiver away from her mouth so Kay couldn’t hear her voice trembling. “Thank you.”

“Yes, of course. Now, you call me if you need me, but you try to sleep, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Everything’s going to be fine.”

“Thank you, Kay.”

“Good night, sweetheart.”

But Mira hadn’t slept, and by the time she had to leave to teach in the morning, she hadn’t heard from Clark, and Clark’s mother hadn’t answered her telephone when Mira called. She considered calling the dean, explaining that she was having a crisis and couldn’t teach her class, but what would she do instead? Drive? Where? In what? Clark had the car. At what point did you call the police to tell them that your completely sane husband, a loving father, a house husband who spent more time with your children on a daily basis than you did, had gone somewhere with the kids without leaving a note?

And what did the police do then?

She brushed her teeth and ran a washcloth across her face, set her cell phone to vibrate mode in a little pocket in her blouse, over her breast, where she would feel it no matter what she was doing, and left a large note on the kitchen counter.

CALL ME. PLEASE. CLARK. I LOVE YOU.

M
ira turned from the blackboard shakily to face the class, and then had to steady herself to sit down, and then just told them the truth:

“I had a bad night. I’m sorry. I’d like to start this lecture again another day. In the meantime, can we have a class discussion?”

The look on her students’ faces—profound surprise and concern—made Mira’s heart feel actually heavy. (How many clichés were more accurate in describing the eternal verities than anything poets could come up with? It never ceased to amaze her.) Her heart sank in her like bait at the end of a line, buoyed up only by reverse gravity again, and those expressions on her students’ faces.

“Please, tell me what attracted you to this class. Why are kids your age so interested in death?”

Mira wasn’t even really expecting an answer, just trying to think of a way to manage the rest of the hour without completely dropping it. She knew that Dean Fleming was in his office. He’d certainly notice if she went back to hers before her class could possibly have been over.

Jim Enright spoke first. He was a quiet guy from a small town up north. Mira had already pegged him as the Savior. He was the student who couldn’t stand to see any of the other students stammer, or lose their train of thought. Once, another student had been trying to think of the word
cremation
,
and Jim Enright had offered about ten possible words that he might have been searching for until the student landed on it.

Now Jim Enright said in a tentative tone, “Because we’re not afraid of it yet?”