Laura Kasischke - The Raising

“What the hell is going on there?!” Craig had shouted over the phone to Scar one Saturday afternoon in January. He’d called home to demand more answers from anyone who would give them. He had actually been calling for days by then, nonstop, but no one answered the fucking land line or any one of their cell phones since his father had called to give him the news:

“Your mom’s leaving me, son. She thinks life’s too short to spend it with me.”

A few hours after that, his mother had called, either to try to soften it (“We’ll just take things a day at a time, and see what happens”) or to deny responsibility (“I know your father says this was my decision, but I’m sure it’s no surprise to you, or any one else, that this has been coming for a long time, and it’s no one’s decision ”).

Well, it had come as a Big Fucking Surprise to Craig, who’d been planning to spend the weekend in a blissful state of sleepy love with Nicole in his room, since Perry was going back to Bad Axe for somebody’s baptism. The last thing in the world Craig had considered was that he’d get news like this from home. Home was supposed to just stay home.

“How the fucking hell did this happen?!” Craig screamed at his little brother over the phone.

“I don’t know,” Scar said, sounding stoned—although, before Craig had left for college in the fall, at least, Scar had been vehemently opposed to smoking weed. (“Why would anyone want to get stupider ?”) But Craig also knew that their mother was pretty excited about all the new psychopharmaceutical miracles taking place in the world, and she was always suggesting to her friends some cure for malaise, or annoyance, or mild anxiety. Maybe now she had Scar on something for his mild anxieties, which Craig thought were pretty normal for a kid that age and would go away on their own in time, like his scar, which, in its fading, had begun to look like only the vaguest shadow of a crucifix dug into the skin on his back.

He’d been in sixth grade when he’d gotten that. It was after school, and he was walking home along Mill Creek, probably listening to Nirvana on his iPod, when a kid a year older jumped out of the bushes, wrestled Scar to the ground, pinning his face into the grass between the sidewalk, and, without saying a word about anything, let alone why , lifted up the back of Scar’s SKI PURPLE MOUNTAIN T-shirt, and cut a crucifix into his back . Then the kid jumped off Scar, ran into the road, and flagged down a passing motorist—a hippie lady in a van, lost off the freeway, looking for a coffee shop.

The kid (Remco Nolens) had pointed over to Scar and said to the woman, “He needs help!” before sprinting back to his house, where the cops came and picked him up an hour later.

Apparently, Remco had been tripping on bad acid when he did it, and couldn’t tell anyone why he’d been hiding in the bushes, or why he’d jumped out with the knife, why he’d cut a crucifix into Scar’s back. Remco was sent to live with his grandparents in Florida after that, and part of his punishment was that he had to send Scar an apologetic letter every year.

These letters were cause for general hilarity at the Clements-Rabbitt household, as they were so stiff, and so clearly unapologetic: “I wish to tell you again that I am sorry for scratching your back with my pocket knife.”

In the end, the wound wasn’t life threatening—although it was also more than a “scratch.” The nickname had been an attempt to make the kind of light of it Remco had made—as if by calling him Scar they could pretend that what had happened wasn’t much worse than having a tooth knocked out by a Frisbee.

But to Craig, it had seemed much worse; for months afterward he’d woken from dreams in which he was wrestling his little brother’s limp body away from some winged black thing he recognized as Remco. Still, if it bothered Scar, he never said so.

“You better talk to Mom or Dad about that,” Scar said on the phone. “It’s not really any of my business if they’re splitting up.”

“Not any of your business ? Huh? Last time I checked, they were your parents too, pal.”

“Don’t call me pal when you’re yelling at me. It’s just like Dad.”

“ What? What are you talking about? Since when does Dad yell at you?”

There was a silence on the other end of the line. Craig couldn’t figure out whether that was a validation of his point that their father never yelled at Scar (never yelled at any of them), or something else—some hint that there was a new family dynamic now, that their father was yelling, that their father had something to yell about.

“Just don’t ask me about Mom and Dad,” Scar finally said. “Ask them if you have to—but personally I think you should just forget it.”

“Forget it ? Just, like, forget that my parents are getting divorced?”

“Come on, Craig,” Scar said, still sounding dopey, far away. “You’re a big boy now, get—”

Craig hung up on his brother then, and didn’t speak to him again until he was brought back to New Hampshire in March, with only a vague idea of who the boy with the shaggy hair in his eyes was. And then it was weeks before Craig could spontaneously remember the kid’s name, and another week before he really understood what it meant that Scar was his brother.

“Lucas!”

Perry recognized the ponytail and the long lopsided gait from a block away, and he jogged up behind Lucas on the sidewalk, and then next to him. “Hey.”

Lucas jumped and spun around. He had apparently not heard Perry calling his name until he was right next to him. “Jesus Christ, Perry,” he said. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry. I thought you heard me.”

“I didn’t,” Lucas said. He was panting. His face, in the bright autumn sunlight, looked strangely haggard, much paler than it had even the week before, when Perry had last seen him. He looked like he’d been stoned for days, and maybe like he hadn’t slept more than a few hours the night before, and maybe like he was losing weight, rapidly.

“I wanted to tell you something,” Perry said.

Lucas stopped. He turned to Perry, although he was glancing to his left and right at the same time, as if looking for someone, or wondering who might be nearby to overhear them. But there was no one on their side of the street. All the students were flooding in the direction of Main Campus, hurrying to make their morning classes on time.

Lucas was carrying a bag. It looked like maybe he’d just come out to go to the store and buy a six-pack, and was headed back to his apartment.

“Is it about her ?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” Perry said. “It’s about my professor. Professor Polson. I’m taking her seminar.”

“The Death one?”

“Yes.”

“I thought that was for freshmen.”

“Yeah, well, she let me in.”

“Why?” Lucas asked. He looked expressionless and suspicious at the same time.

“Because I asked her to make an exception. I wanted—”

“Because of her ?”

“Partly,” Perry said. Lucas had made it sound like some kind of accusation, and Perry felt defensive. “Also, Professor Polson is working on a book about—”

“Why are you talking to me about this?” Lucas asked, suddenly animated, waving his free hand as if to shoo Perry away. “I don’t want to hear about this.”

“Because she wants to talk to you, Lucas. Professor Polson wants to ask you some questions. About Nicole. I told her what you told me. And about Patrick, too. And what I’ve seen. She’ll believe you. She needs to interview you, though.”