The Raising: A Novel Part 31

"Are you okay?" Kurt asked. "You are okay?"

It took Perry a moment to realize that Kurt was talking to him, and that the other three students were staring. He swallowed and said, "Yeah," and made a conscious effort not to look at the drain hole again, or speculate about its contents.

"Here we have the cabinet of the instruments needed for autopsy," Kurt said, pointing at a brilliantly shining silver cabinet. He reached into a metal bin and briefly held up what looked like a large, thick needle before tossing it back down.

"Here," Kurt said, "is chalkboard for recording data." Perry looked in the direction Kurt had pointed. It was the kind of blackboard Perry remembered from his first-grade cla.s.sroom in Bad Axe, before the whiteboards and the Magic Markers. What looked like a crude drawing of a torso was on it. A few dots were drawn around the neck. A1700 Wt NTD DB was underlined several times beside the drawing. Beside that was a list, checkmarks next to each word: Liver X Rt. Lung X Lt. Lung X Rt. Kidney X Lt. Kidney X Spleen X Thyroid X Brain X Apparently, the last autopsy had been completed.

"The word autopsy"-Kurt p.r.o.nounced the word as if it were one long vowel-"means 'see for yourself.' "

The students giggled a little at the colloquial quality of this. The simplicity.

"So . . ." Kurt said. (There was no overlooking the showman in him now. He had been waiting for this part. Back in Yugoslavia, he'd probably been an amateur actor, or a magician.) "See for yourself."

He pulled out a drawer by a handle that Perry hadn't even noticed was in the wall. It made a slippery tinny sound, and suddenly it was rolling into the room so quickly that the little group of them had to part to make room for it. And then the smell was exactly as he remembered it from Nicole Werner's funeral-Karess's sweetness as he slipped the gown over his head-and it took Perry several seconds to realize that there was a sixth person in the room suddenly: A person on a gurney.

A naked guy with bluish fingers and toes and a sheet thrown casually over his stomach, and what looked like some kind of crude embroidery over his throat, and Perry had to stop himself from saying anything, because the first thing that came to his mind to say was, "Lucas. What are you doing here?"

72.

T he cafeteria was steamy, a runny fog of it on the windows that looked out onto the G.o.dwin Hall courtyard, a wavering cloud of it hovering above the stainless-steel bins of pasta and Mystery Meat and soggy broccoli.

As always, Perry went straight to the salad bar with a little brown plastic bowl on his tray.

("How do I know how much dinner I want until I have my salad?" he'd say when Craig asked him why he didn't just get everything at once.) Craig got a pile of manicotti with a couple of slices of garlic bread tossed on top, a big cup of the broccoli, and a plastic gla.s.s of c.o.ke without ice, and took it to the table he and Perry always occupied when they ate together.

"Sorry, again," Craig said when Perry sat down across from him with his pale lettuce and a little stack of baby carrots drizzled with something one shade of orange darker than the carrots. "I hope you didn't sustain any emotional damage, witnessing me kissing Nicole's sweet little feet."

Perry sighed and picked up his fork. He seemed to be purposely avoiding Craig's eyes. Even though they'd been getting along so much better since the start of the semester, it still seemed to p.i.s.s Perry off royally when he found some article of Nicole's lying around the room. One time he'd whipped a pair of her pantyhose (admittedly, they'd been lying under his desk chair) at Craig so hard that, if they'd been made of anything other than that airy pantyhose stuff, Craig might have gotten hurt. He wouldn't have liked it any better, Craig knew, stumbling in on the half-naked foot-kissing scene.

"But you'll get over it, right? Okay, man?" Craig asked, stabbing his fork into the manicotti, which gave way like clay, some of it spilling off the plate and onto the table. "You hear me, Perry? I'm genuinely sorry about-"

"Drop it," Perry said.

Craig shrugged. "Whatever," he said. "But, you know, if you had a girlfriend, I think I'd-"

"Drop it," Perry said again.

Craig nodded, but he was trying to think of something else to say, something to change Perry's mind about being all p.i.s.sy. He had a hard time dropping things, he knew. He used to overhear conversations like this between his mom and dad, and it was always his dad who was saying, "For G.o.d's sake, can you just let it go?" and Craig would be thinking to himself, Yeah, why the h.e.l.l doesn't she just shut up?, as his mom went on and on and on with her grievance or apology or explanation. Now Craig realized how hard it was to just drop something when you had something left to explain.

He said, after a few moments of silence, "I wish you'd loosen up about Nicole, man. She's my life. I'm your roommate, so it's sort of like-"

Perry put his fork down loudly on the table. It startled Craig, but he couldn't stop.

"I'm going to marry her, man," Craig said, looking up from the fork to Perry's stony expression. "This isn't just any college f.u.c.king-around kind of thing. This is love, and I-"

Perry pushed his salad bowl away, and it slid toward Craig. It might have landed in his lap if Craig hadn't put a hand up to stop it.

"What the h.e.l.l's the matter with you, Perry?"

Perry leaned across the table then. Maybe it was just the humidity in the cafeteria, but his cheeks looked strangely flushed, and there seemed to be a light film of sweat at his temples and on his forehead-and then, as if he'd been thinking about it for a long, long time, Perry said, "Look, Craig, if you're not going to drop it you're going to have to hear something you don't want to hear, okay? I've been keeping my mouth shut, but if every time we have dinner you're going to start in on me about how uptight I am, and how Nicole's this innocent virgin, and how you two are so madly in love, I'm warning you, man, I'm going to tell you something you do not want to hear."

73.

"Did you get my message?" Mira said, bursting into the apartment. "I'm so-"

Jeff raised a hand to silence her. He was sitting cross-legged on the shabby Oriental rug on the floor of the apartment. Andy was at one of his knees, Matty at the other. They glanced at Mira, and then back at Jeff. "Listen," Jeff said, and Mira could hear the intensity in his voice, so she stopped, although what she had to tell him hardly felt like something that could wait.

Slowly Jeff lifted one finger of the hand that was raised, and moved it in front of the twins' eyes.

"One," Andy said.

Matty nodded. "One."

Jeff didn't look up at her. If he had, he'd have seen her stagger backward, a hand to her mouth. Mira had never heard either twin speak a recognizable word. Not Mama, not Papa, not one single word.

Then, like a magician preparing for a trick, Jeff put the hand behind his back and brought it around again with two fingers raised.

"Two!" the twins shouted in unison.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Mira cried, holding her face in both hands.

This time there was no goofing around. Jeff raised the third finger, and before they even saw it, they screamed out, "Three!" and he turned to Mira, laughing. "Mira, they can get up to ten, no problem. I don't know what language you guys have been teaching them, but they have no problem with mine."

It took Mira a long time, a lot of hugging of the twins on her knees, and the repet.i.tion of the trick over and over, up to five, up to eight, up to ten, before she had the heart to set the blocks out for them and say, "Mama will be right back."

Jeff stood up, grunting a little as he did (clearly he'd been sitting crossed-legged on the living room floor for a long time) and followed her into the kitchen, where, as soon as she was sure the twins couldn't see, Mira turned and threw her arms around his remarkably large, soft torso (how was it she'd always thought he'd looked so solid? In her arms he felt plump and pliable) and hugged him with her face pressed into his over-warm chest as he patted her sweetly between her shoulder blades. Mira could have stayed like that forever, breathing in the tavern and car and fast-food cologne of him. She would have liked to stay like that, and maybe have wept, and maybe taken him afterward to her bed, where she would have slept for hours in his arms, but she had to tell him what had happened. Still with an arm around him, she led him to the table, sat down, and began: First, the morgue.

She had been trying to reach the office of the dean, to return his call, in a panic about what his indecipherable voice mail message to her could possibly have been about. She'd been pacing in the alley, punching numbers, holding the f.u.c.king phone to her ear, and every time his secretary answered, either the secretary couldn't hear Mira or Mira couldn't hear the secretary, or they were simply, abruptly, cut off. Mira had been inching away from the building, closer to the street, hoping to get better reception, but also afraid to stray too far from her cla.s.s, when she heard the morgue door open, and turned to see Perry running into the alley in his mint green booties and scrubs, ashen-faced.

"Professor Polson, Professor Polson, Lucas is in the-"

She'd been alarmed by his expression, although she didn't understand what he was trying to tell her. She'd dropped the phone into her bag and followed Perry back, and hadn't bothered with the booties and scrubs, just burst through the doors, pa.s.sing Kurt, who said to her as she pa.s.sed, "You knew of this student?"

And, indeed, there he was-poor, sad, scroungy, familiar Lucas laid out under a sheet up to his shoulders, with what might have been a rope burn around his neck, his eyes closed.

"You knew of him," Kurt repeated, and Mira, fighting the urge to bolt from the room, could not even manage to nod. She put a hand to her mouth, and stifled what might have turned into an actual scream if she hadn't. Except for Perry, the other students had already left the room, thank G.o.d, but they were still out there stripping off scrubs, putting scrubs on, some still waiting to get their chance to see the autopsy room.

"Jesus Christ," Jeff said. "Lucas?"

They talked for a while about Lucas and how, if there had been a most-likely-to-hang-himself award on campus, Lucas might have won it. The drugs. The posture. The delusions. The nihilistic books and music. All that world weariness carried around in his hemp backpack. Still, Mira couldn't help but ask, "Do you think it had to do with Nicole Werner, with-"

"s.h.i.t yes," Jeff said. "A kid thinks he's had s.e.x with a dead girl? Either he was mentally ill beforehand or he would have been after."

Mira told him then about the cryptic, urgent call from the dean.

"I haven't called him back yet," she said. "It's something urgent. What do you think he wants?"

"Nothing," Jeff said. "Staples-you're missing a couple. Or he wants to know if you need more. I know you don't have tenure yet, Mira, and I'm familiar with all the fantasies a person without tenure has, but, believe me, Dean Fleming is just calling to ask you if you like his new tie or something. Go in and see him. The sooner you get it over with the better."

Mira felt such a rush of warmth again she was afraid she'd melt into tears. She'd desperately missed-without even knowing it-having an adult male tell her that everything would be okay. How direly she'd needed a man who, despite the obvious flaws in his personality, seemed competent, and sane, and full of goodwill toward her. All Mira could manage was to stare at him in wonder, and grat.i.tude, and then Jeff was standing up, handing Mira the purse she'd dropped on the table.

"Go," he said. "Get thee to the dean. I have two hours before your little urchins destroy me with the secret linguistic and mathematical knowledge I was so foolish as to impart to them."

"Oh, Jeff."

" 'Oh, Jeff' nothing. Go."

He pulled her up from her chair by the arm and pointed her toward the door.

74.

"Well, go ahead and f.u.c.king tell me, man. You think I can't handle it? What? Are you having regular wet dreams about my girlfriend? You think I don't know you have a hard-on five miles long for Nicole?"

"f.u.c.k you, Craig."

"No, f.u.c.k you, Perry. Just tell me. You know you've been just s.h.i.tting your pants and swimming in your own p.i.s.s since I started dating Nicole, so why don't you just get it over with, you jealous f.u.c.k? Spew your guts. You and your f.u.c.king Boy Scouts back in Bad a.s.s-did you used to sit around in your tents and jerk off to her yearbook picture or something? Nicole told me all about how some other dude knocked up your hometown girlfriend, so maybe you couldn't get it up, or-"

Perry shoved the table into Craig, and the salad he'd been eating and the manicotti that had been congealing on Craig's plate splashed over the edge of the table, splattering onto the linoleum with a sick wet-c.r.a.p sound, and then Perry was over the table, not knowing how he'd gotten there, and his left hand was full of Craig's T-shirt and the other one was a fist making contact with Craig's nose, and then they were down on the ground, Craig's back slapping onto the manicotti and salad, and then Perry was staring into his roommate's b.l.o.o.d.y nose and hearing himself shout, "I've f.u.c.ked Nicole, you f.u.c.king fool. Half of f.u.c.king G.o.dwin Hall has f.u.c.ked your virgin girlfriend, you stupid, stupid, deaf, blind, f.u.c.king idiot."

With each of the last six words, Perry lifted Craig off the floor by his T-shirt and pushed him back down, and then they were panting and bleeding and staring into one another's eyes, and something so horrible and honest and intimate pa.s.sed between them at that moment (even worse than Perry's sudden realization that they had become, somehow, at some point, friends) that, for a horrible moment Perry felt that he was Craig, looking up, seeing his own face looking down-that they had switched places, switched faces, and bodies, and selves, and become each other.

Then some beefy guy in a steamy white ap.r.o.n hauled Perry up by the back of his shirt and shoved him toward the cafeteria exit.

75.

"I think," Dean Fleming said, making a motion in the air in front of his face as if trying to coax the words out of his own mouth, "some of this is, at best, questionable. Or, I should say"-more coaxing-"it raises questions. Or, at least, one could see how questions might be raised."

Mira nodded. She had no idea what he was trying to say.

She was having a hard time concentrating on his face, which seemed oddly distorted by the pale sun shining through his window, directly onto him, as if he were standing in headlights. She tried to appear as if she were carefully considering his words as she glanced around his office. For some reason, which she felt sure was not intended to be ironic and also had nothing to do with the Edgar Allan Poe poem, Dean Fleming kept a taxidermied raven on his bookshelf, just over his left shoulder. It had the beady eye of Poe's bird, and Mira could easily have imagined it squawking, "Nevermore!" except that part of its beak had crumbled away and one of its wings was mostly sawdust. Mira couldn't keep herself from staring at it. Dean Fleming had pulled a copy of her first-year seminar syllabus out of a file drawer and placed it on his desk between them. Now he was directing his comments to the syllabus, as if those six stapled pages could hear him.

"I've received a number of such questions from parents, which is, of course, of less concern to me than the concerns raised by the students themselves-"

Mira recognized instantly the reference, the deference, the dean was making to a recent Honors College meeting, during which numerous professors had excitedly, resentfully called for a moratorium on what was called "parental meddling." Implications had been made that the dean was pa.s.sively encouraging this meddling by not actively putting a stop to it. It had been generally agreed upon by Honors College faculty that this generation of college students had parents who were over-involved. That the students were "adults," and that when it came to issues of curriculum, grading, et cetera, the faculty should not have to answer to parents, was the subject of several long monologues during that meeting, during which Mira had watched the clock with a rising sense of despair and panic because she had told Clark she'd be home a half hour ago.

Now she nodded to the raven, and Dean Fleming continued to speak to her syllabus on his desk.

"I think we need to reconsider," he said, "not only the direction your teaching is taking, but also your research."

This time Mira was surprised enough that she looked straight at him, hard enough that he had to look up and meet her eyes. The light was pouring down baptismally on his head, and she noticed that either he had a bald spot that was just sprouting new growth or the cold November light was somehow singeing away a round place in his full head of hair. She tried to think about how to say what she was about to say before she said it, but her heart had started to race, and she simply blurted out, trying to keep her voice from shaking, "I felt that you seemed quite supportive of my new project when we last-"

Dean Fleming waved his hand. Mira noticed, for the first time, a small dark ruby on his pinky. He seemed to notice her noticing it, and he tucked the hand away beneath his desk.

"I was laboring," the dean said, "under a false impression."

Mira leaned forward. "Which was . . . ?"

"I didn't realize it was so, so, so-death-laden, so popularist. Of course this sort of thing can work in some cases, but those cases are rare. We're a research inst.i.tution, Professor Polson, one of the most formidable in the country" (how many times had Mira heard this since her first on-campus interview here?) "and the field of anthropology is not, it seems to me, particularly well suited to the, the, the . . ."

Mira wiped her sweating palms on her knees, feeling the heat through the black tights she was wearing, as if her hands could burn straight through her clothes, melt her flesh into her flesh.

"Anyway," he said, "it's beside the point. The point is we can't have you teaching Death Studies in our college, or doing 'exposes' concerning university tragedies of the magnitude of the Nicole Werner incident. I'm sure you see, yourself, how unseemly it is. How, how, how . . ."

"Dangerous?" Mira sputtered, unable to help herself.

"Yes," Dean Fleming said defensively. "Yes, well, dangerous. But also unseemly. As I said. It isn't done. For one thing, this fascination of yours is not material for a serious academic project. The sort of research you're doing, and the teaching is, is-"

"-is what I was hired to teach, and to research. You were on my hiring committee, sir. Except for some improvements, the cla.s.s I'm teaching follows the exact syllabus I presented at my interview, the one I recall you praising for its rigor. You said, and I believe it's in my evaluation from last semester, that I brought something both to the college and to my research that was 'dynamically different.' "

"That was prior to the Nicole Werner work."

"The Nicole Werner work? What do you mean?"

"I'm talking about the suicide of one of our students, Professor Polson. You must certainly understand the seriousness of this, that-"

Suddenly, she understood: Lucas.