The Raising: A Novel Part 28

"Well," Perry said. "Not exactly. She-"

"Well, thanks for sparing me her fate, anyway. Now, would you get out of here, Mr. Bad a.s.s? I've had just about enough of you for one day."

It was mostly a joke, but Karess turned away from Perry and went to the window and looked out, and she made a motion with her hand for him to go, and Perry cleared his throat, trying and failing to think of something to say before he unlocked her door and stepped out into the hall, and closed it quietly behind him.

Now Brett Barber was trotting beside her, all but wagging his tail, and whatever Karess was talking to him about, it seemed to require no response on his part. He wasn't even nodding his head. Professor Polson was taking long strides, in knee-high, shiny black boots, across the parking lot, and the group continued to follow down through an alley, which grew narrower as they walked. Soon it was narrow enough that only one person could pa.s.s at a time, so they followed her in single file. A couple of people laughed nervously, looked at the people behind them, raised their eyebrows. "Where the h.e.l.l are we going?" someone whispered.

It surprised Perry, too. He'd expected the morgue to be its own building, bright and goofy like Dientz Funeral Home back in Bad Axe. Every holiday they decorated the front lawn-ribbons, flowers, wreaths, Easter eggs, Valentine's hearts-except for Halloween.

But the university's hospital morgue seemed to be sequestered exactly where you'd expect a place where dead bodies were kept to be hidden away: in a dungeon. Out by the hospital Dumpsters. No sign out front welcoming them with a smiley face. No euphemistic directions to CARE CONCLUSION FACILITY, or MEDICAL OUTSTAY LABORATORY.

Professor Polson kept going, and they kept following, past Dumpsters and chain-link fencing and No Trespa.s.sing signs, and on to a point beyond which it seemed they would find no entrance to anything, and certainly past the point where anyone would wish to trespa.s.s, and then Professor Polson was descending a long flight of stairs to a dark alcove and a windowless brown fire door on which was stenciled, in large caution-yellow letters, MORGUE.

63.

The dean of the music school was leaning back in his upholstered chair, twiddling his thumbs, when Sh.e.l.ly stepped in. He was the picture of calm self-possession, except that he was blushing. His secretary had announced Sherry's arrival, and then Sh.e.l.ly had been left to sit in the hallway outside his office for fifteen minutes. He'd had ample time to compose this reclining, twiddling facade, but he couldn't hide his heart rate, which had been raised either by fear of an impending conflict or by simple embarra.s.sment.

"Ms. Lockes," he said.

Sh.e.l.ly shook her head. She saw no reason to continue to play this game. "You can call me Sh.e.l.ly," she said sadly, "as always, and if it's okay, I'm going to keep calling you Alex. I've known you for twenty years, Alex. I'm not here to talk about my job."

The dean's cheeks flushed an even deeper shade of hot pink. He was a pale, porcine man. Not having met him earlier in his life, Sh.e.l.ly had always a.s.sumed he'd reached his portly state with middle age, but, for the first time, she found herself able to picture him as a rotund seventh-grader being hounded by lanky boys on a playground. Panting. Fighting back tears. His cheeks would have been exactly this color.

Alex sighed, and sat up and put his hands under his desk where she could no longer see them.

"I'm sorry, but I'm here to ask you a favor, Alex," Sh.e.l.ly said. She could see his chin twitch then, nearly imperceptibly, and she raised her hand as if to ward off something he would never have been able to bring himself to say anyway. "Don't worry," she said. "Again, it's not about the job, and I'm certainly not planning to ask you for a reference, or anything that would put you in any kind of an uncomfortable position, ever, Alex. This has to do with something else. University business, you might say. Do you remember the accident last spring? Nicole Werner? The student from Bad Axe. The freshman."

The dean nodded slowly, without opening his mouth, eyebrows raised as if he feared it might be a trick question. Sh.e.l.ly waited, looking at him, until he finally said, "Yes. Of course."

"I probably never had any reason to tell you about this. I don't remember seeing you much last spring at all, and it didn't concern you-and, despite my efforts, my involvement never even made the newspaper, so you'd have had no way of knowing, but I was the first one on the scene. I was driving home from the gym. I was the woman who called nine-one-one."

"Oh," he said, "my." He seemed intrigued, but also as though he were trying to hide his interest, to make it clear that nothing Sh.e.l.ly said could draw him in, lest she be drawing him in to some legalistic or psychological or academic trap.

"The newspaper reported that I didn't give directions to the scene, and that I left the scene, and a hundred other erroneous details about the accident-all bogus. Until now, I didn't understand. I thought it was incompetence. I thought the local newspaper simply couldn't get their facts straight, that they were such hick reporters and such a slipshod operation that I couldn't even get a letter to the editor published. But now I understand that that was what they wanted me to believe. Now I know that it's really quite the opposite. They're a very well oiled machine, the slickest of the slick, and the university is controlling them. I don't know how, or why, but-"

Sh.e.l.ly found herself momentarily stalled by the dean's expression. It would have been an exaggeration to call it horror or repugnance, but the emotion it revealed sprang from the same source as those emotions: He thought she was crazy.

He thought she was, perhaps, a paranoid schizophrenic.

He was going backward in his mind through all the years he'd known her, and what the early signs of this might have been. There must have been some: The insistence on the superiority of Handel to Mozart. Her lesbianism. The picture of the cat that she kept on her desk. He was no longer blushing. He no longer needed to feel embarra.s.sed, she realized, because he no longer believed he was with a peer, a colleague, or even a former employee. He was in the presence of a lunatic.

Sh.e.l.ly sighed, fighting back tears. She swallowed, and said, "You don't believe me. But I'm not even asking you to believe me. I've been in your employ for a long time, and I'm asking something very simple from you, and it's something only you can do: I need, very much, for you to ask for an inquiry into the disappearance of a young woman from the university here. She was a student in the music school. A violinist. A member of the Omega Theta Tau sorority. She's been missing since last winter, and as far as I can tell, from what I've read on the Internet, there has been no investigation by either the local police or by the university.

"Surely, as dean of the music school, you must want to know what happened to this girl? We can't have soph.o.m.ores from the music school simply disappearing, can we?"

From the look on his face, Sh.e.l.ly could tell that he'd never even heard about the missing violinist, and he didn't want to be hearing about her now. Still, he'd moved beyond his concerns regarding Sh.e.l.ly's sanity to far greater concerns regarding his accountability, his reputation, his exposure. He was, to Sh.e.l.ly's relief, taking a pen out of his pocket, pulling a legal pad from the corner of his desk to the center of it, nodding for her to go on.

"What's your concern about this girl? And how do you know about it?"

"She was a sorority sister of Nicole Werner's, and also of Josie Reilly's, and it just seems too much, to me-just so many coincidences. Where is this girl, and why hasn't anyone come forward with any information about her?"

"So," he put down the pen. "You don't even know if she's still missing. She might be back in school for all you know, or back home with her folks?"

Sh.e.l.ly nodded. "I don't know."

"Well, I'll look into it, but who knows. I don't see what this has to do with anything."

"Thank you. I'm just asking you to look into it. And, can I ask you"-she started before she realized she'd been planning, all along, to ask the question-"how was it that Josie Reilly was sent to me for the work-study position? She wasn't a financial aid student, was she? Those positions are for students in need."

The dean closed his eyes and cleared his throat. He winced then, as if something he'd seen with his closed eyes had given him physical pain. When he opened his eyes again, he sighed and said, "Well, that in itself, Sh.e.l.ly, is part of the whole unfortunate situation. The student wasn't even being paid. She simply wanted the experience, and was willing to work for free because she knew she couldn't get the job without the work-study scholarship. So, I saw to it that she was sent your way. First of all, because she was such a lovely, fine student, and also because her mother and my wife are friends from their own college days. Sorority sisters, as it happens."

64.

"You're kidding, right?" Craig said. He was holding her in his arms. She was wearing a bra with orange daisies on it, and matching cotton panties. It had been her idea to take off her T-shirt and jeans: "I want to feel as much of your skin against mine as I can, without-"

She hadn't needed to say more.

He knew what she meant.

He'd agreed he'd never press the issue again after a night after winter break when he'd begged and pleaded with her to let him kiss her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Finally, she'd nodded in a manner that had seemed almost ceremonious-the crucifer on the altar nodding to the priest-and Craig's heart had nearly exploded in his chest.

But when he'd propped himself up on his elbows to unfasten her beautiful pink lace bra, he realized that she was crying, that there were matching tears sliding sideways down each of her cheeks, zigzagging into her golden hair, where they disappeared, and he pulled his trembling hands away from her bra as if they'd been burned. He let them hover in the air over her for a moment before he sagged beside her on the squeaking mattress of his bed, put his head in her neck, and said, "No, Nicole. I'm sorry."

She said nothing.

"I won't ask again," Craig said.

"I love you," she said-and, as every time she had said it since the first time, something seemed to catch between Craig's soft palate and his throat. He couldn't speak. He'd made a thousand declarations of love to her since October, but he could never say it in response to her declaration-because of this sharpness that caught him as quickly as a fishhook every time.

Nicole smiled, seeming to understand. He didn't have to say it. He loved Nicole. He loved her. Nicole knew how much he loved her.

That had been six weeks ago, and since then he'd held her in his arms in her bra and panties a dozen times, and kept his promise not to ask for more.

"Tell me this is a bad joke," he said. "Your sorority doesn't really do this s.h.i.t, right?"

"It's not that weird," Nicole said. "Secret societies have rituals. This happens to be ours."

Craig couldn't stop himself from snorting, but then he muttered an apology. He said, "Sorry. I guess I just don't think of your sorority as a secret society. I mean, I thought it was about formals and decorating floats and making cookies and maybe helping each other clip in hair extensions. I never thought you'd have a coffin in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and-"

"Shhh-be quiet," Nicole said, and she actually glanced around the room as if someone might have overheard, although they were half-naked and completely alone in his dorm room. Perry was at his afternoon Poli-Sci lecture. Even the curtains were closed.

"Nicole," Craig said, but didn't bother to continue. It was cute, really, he thought. It reminded him of the way girls back in elementary school would get all excited about their own meaningless secrets, pa.s.sing notes to one another, freaking out if some boy grabbed a note out of some girl's hands, although those notes had never said anything more exciting than Deena likes Bradley!!! Like anyone cared.

"Well, the Pan-h.e.l.lenic Society could have our house closed if they found out. This is considered hazing."

"How often does your sorority have these . . . raisings?" Craig asked, trying to make it sound like a serious question, trying not to make air quotations around the word.

"Twice a year," Nicole said. "They did it back in November, but we-the new pledges-had to wait upstairs. They don't let us attend until the Spring Event."

Then, Craig couldn't help it. He laughed out at her calling it the "Spring Event." Basically they were getting sorority sisters drunk on tequila, having them hyperventilate until they pa.s.sed out, putting them in a coffin, and "bringing them back from the dead," all newly risen in the Omega Theta Tau sisterhood. It hardly fit, in Craig's opinion, under the kind of seasonal "event" cla.s.sification the Rotary Club might give to an Easter egg hunt or a skating party for kids with Down syndrome.

"Craig," Nicole said, and punched him softly on the arm. "You said you wanted me to tell you everything. And you swore you wouldn't tell anyone."

Craig held his hand over his heart and said, "I swear. I mean it. Your secret society's secret is safe with me. But don't go brain dead on me or something, okay? You're sure this s.h.i.t is safe?"

"It's so safe," Nicole said. "Hundreds of girls have done it since the fifties. Nothing's ever gone wrong."

"Yeah, but what if it does? You read about this stuff all the time. People with heart conditions they didn't know they had, that kind of thing-"

"Well, we have a dozen founding sisters present at the event. And this year I'm just a celebrant. I don't get to be raised until next year."

"Well, that's good," Craig said, although it still vaguely alarmed him. (For one thing, who were these blue-haired old ladies from the fifties who showed up for this weirdness, and why? Jesus Christ, would Nicole still be doing this stuff when she was eighty years old?) "I love you," he said, "but the idea of wiping the drool off your bib for the rest of your life is less than s.e.xy. Still, I'd do it."

"Well, you don't have to worry. Anyway, we have our own EMT. The sorority pays him to be at the events and-"

"That guy," Craig said, and propped himself up on his elbow. "That guy. You said you didn't know who he was."

"What guy?"

"The one who's always hanging around your sorority. I pointed him out. I said, 'He's got a patch on his pocket that says EMT,' and you were like, 'What's EMT stand for?' "

"Huh?" She pulled Craig back down to her and kissed his temple. "Your eyebrows are all furrowed, Craig. I hate that."

She'd said that a lot-that she couldn't stand to look at him when his eyebrows were "furrowed," and when he'd tried to explain to her that it would be his forehead that was furrowed, because furrows were lines and you couldn't have furrowed eyebrows, she'd said, "I don't care. I can't stand that face you make."

"You know perfectly well what EMT stands for," Craig said. "Do you play dumb with me a lot, Nicole?"

"So, like, are you asking if I'm playing dumb or just actually dumb?"

He laughed, and she kissed his forehead.

"Don't make fun of me," Nicole said, but she wasn't angry. She licked his forehead then and nuzzled into his neck, and he let his hands drift around the safe, soft, bare skin of her torso.

65.

Kurt embraced Mira in front of the students with all that Eastern European physicality she remembered from her year in that part of the world-smelling strongly of cologne, literally lifting her off her feet.

"Mira!" he said, and set her back down.

When she turned back around to her cla.s.s, they were staring at her with what could have been alarm, but mostly, she supposed, they were registering their surroundings (the starkness, the coldness) and smelling the lively, corporeal presence of Kurt against the antiseptic smell of the autopsy room on the other side of the sliding doors, from which he'd emerged wearing his white smock, red hair tucked up into a gauzy blue cap, big grin sans one front tooth.

"Mira," he said again, and then looked at her students looking at him. He raised a hand to them and said, "Welcome to the morgue."

There was a burst of laughter, followed by nervous silence. The students nodded back with more energy than usual. Mira could already tell which of the girls were hoping to faint-although these were rarely the ones who actually fainted. The actual fainters were usually the tough guys or the serious young women who'd always wanted to be surgeons.

"We'll be entering the 'Waiting Mortuary' in a moment," Mira said, and gestured for the cla.s.s to follow her through the sliding gla.s.s doors. "This is the part of the morgue that was specifically designed for the purpose of confirming that a dead body was actually deceased. Until very recently, as we've already discussed, there were no trusted methods for verifying death, and people had sincere fears of being buried alive. The Waiting Mortuary was designed to house the dead for a period of time during which attendants would be on alert for any sign of life. Right, Kurt?"

Kurt nodded sincerely. He was nothing if not sincere. When Mira had first met him, they had been leaning over a grave full of Serbian dead together, peering down.

Skeletal remains. Some sc.r.a.ps of clothing. A couple of wrist.w.a.tches. A ring.

Kurt had turned to her, looked at her for what seemed like a long time, and then he'd reached over and put his hand over her eyes.

Since his move to the States, Mira had seen Kurt only during these visits with her cla.s.ses to the morgue. She'd asked him to have coffee with her once, but he'd said he was busy. She invited him over to dinner once, but he'd declined.

"Your husband wouldn't like it."

"No, he would like it," Mira insisted. "Clark would like to meet you. He's heard so much about you."

"No," Kurt said again. "I am a single man. He looks at me one time. He knows I feel for you. I am a shy man, Mira. Large, yes, but timid. I do not want to fight your husband."

"Fight?" Mira had exclaimed, and laughed out loud, but Kurt was serious, and she realized that because of this seriousness, there could be no dissuading him without insulting him, without implying that her husband would never have considered him a rival, that there would be no fight. So she hadn't argued-although, when Clark had laughed and laughed after she told him about Kurt's fears, so adamantly amused, she'd briefly considered telling him, that, actually, Kurt had been a figure for quite a while in her s.e.xual imagination.

His large Eastern European presence with his scent of cologne and his experience of the world, and war, and hardship, and death.

Kurt bowed a little to Mira's students then and said, "You must be very quiet, although of course the dead cannot hear." (Again, excited and uneasy laughter.) "But because, you know, the word morgue, it is a French word. It means, at one and same, 'to look at solemnly,' and 'to defy.' " Kurt waited for this to sink in, and then said, "You see, the sameness? And the strangeness?"

They were all nodding by this time. Perhaps they did understand, or maybe they were starting to feel as if their lives depended upon the goodwill of this man, their diener.

They stopped at the sliding gla.s.s doors. Mira turned and said, "Here we are in what the Victorians quaintly referred to as the Rose Cottage. At children's morgues, they called it the Rainbow Room. And though these euphemisms might be charming, and funny, we have to remember that eventually most of us will find ourselves in a morgue, not viewing, but viewed."

"Too-day," Kurt said, "we have a man who has had a brain aneurysm. We have a woman of old age. We have a suicide. But I must warn you, because it is disturbing, there are a family, two children, father, grandmother, they were hit by a head-on. It is a busy day at the morgue."

One or two of the students took a step backward, and began to look around as if in a panic to find the exit.