Laura Kasischke - The Raising

“Mom?”

“Perry . Honey. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for days. Is everything okay there?”

“I’ve just been busy, Mom. I’m sorry. I started a work-study job for one of my professors, and I’ve been researching and interviewing. I lost track of how long it had been since I called.”

“Oh, Perry. Don’t let a job get in the way of your school work. That’s why you’ve got that scholarship, sweetheart, so you have time for studying, not—”

“This is like studying, Mom. It’ll be good. My professor’s writing a book. I’m getting academic credit for it, too. Really, it’ll be—”

“Okay. I believe you. I just worry when I don’t hear from you. I don’t want you to overload yourself. You don’t sound right, sweetheart. Are you sleeping? Are you okay? Is Craig okay?”

“Craig’s okay. I’m fine. I sleep.”

There was a silence and, in it, Perry thought he could hear the second hand on the clock on the kitchen wall in Bad Axe make its little snapping sound, traveling between the black dashes between numbers. He closed his eyes, saw that clock over his mother’s shoulder, and in that moment he considered, briefly, telling her everything.

Nicole. The photo. Lucas.

He imagined asking her—what? To pray for him?

To come and pick him up?

To tell him he’d lost his mind, or that, yes, this sort of thing, it happened all the time.

Girls died, and they rose from the dead.

Did he think his mother would tell him, Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. You’ll figure it all out in good time.

No, she would be stunned into silence. She would panic. She would cry. He cleared his throat, instead, in the silence, and his mother said, “Good, sweetheart. That’s good. You just be sure to get plenty of sleep and eat right, okay? And tell Craig we said hi. I sent some cookies for both of you. They should get there in another day or two.”

Perry rubbed his eyes. He said, trying to sound rested, well fed, sane, “Thanks, Mom. How’s Dad?”

“Dad’s fine. We’re both fine. Can you come home for a few days before Thanksgiving, or won’t we see you until then?”

“I’ll work on a ride,” he said. “I’ll let you know. I have to check my calendar, and with my professor.”

“Sure. We just miss you. That black bear is back.”

“Really?” Perry asked.

“Really.”

“Wow.”

The summer before, there’d been a male cub wandering around in the backyard. They’d decided it must have been orphaned. There’d been an article in the Bad Axe newspaper about a black bear found shot in a cornfield outside of town. (Someone had taken the bear’s head, and left the body, and the farmer who’d found it had called the Department of Natural Resources.) Everyone knew there were bears in the area, but there were not so many that it didn’t make the news when one was found shot and beheaded.

“You’re sure it’s the same one?” Perry asked.

“Well, it’s a lot bigger this year, and it’s got a chewed-off ear, but it has to be the same one, don’t you think?”

“Sounds like it. Is it causing trouble?”

“It figured out how to take the lid off the trash can without making any noise—but, no, otherwise, no trouble. Dad got a chain for the lid. Tiger doesn’t want to go outside much, though.”

They laughed. Tiger was the world’s most timid tom. He’d sit outside on the back steps for a few seconds every day, and if a squirrel or a bird landed in the yard, he’d start scratching at the screen door frantically to get back in.

“I saw Nicole’s parents at church last Sunday, honey.”

“Oh. How are they?”

“Not well at all, Perry. Mrs. Werner’s ill. They don’t know what’s wrong with her, but Mr. Werner talked to your dad, and told him it’s a ‘wasting disease,’ which means, I guess, that she’s losing weight and they don’t know why. I thought he looked as weak as she did. His hair’s all fallen out.”

“Oh, man.” Mr. Werner hadn’t even been balding when Perry last saw him. “Is it cancer? I mean, Mrs. Werner?”

“Well, of course that’s what we all think, but I guess the doctors say no. They’ve even been down there, to the university hospital, for some tests, and they wanted Jenny to come back in six weeks, but Mr. Werner said they couldn’t go back. They just can’t be in that town, because of—”

“Of course.”

“And I saw the baby. Mary’s baby.”

It took Perry several seconds to realize who his mother was talking about. For a startled second he thought—when she said, “baby,” “Mary” — of his imaginary friend, and the sister who’d died as a baby before him. “Baby Edwards.” But then he remembered, both with relief and a stab of bitter pain: Mary.

“How is she?”

“Well, she’s living with her sister now. The father, you heard what happened?”

It occurred to Perry then that his mother thought Bad Axe news made the news all over the state. “No. What?”

“Oh, he was injured. Brain damaged. He was in a hospital in Germany until last week, and now he’s in North Carolina. One of those crazy bomber people.”

“God,” Perry said, and could think of nothing more to say.

“Perry, you still don’t sound right.”

“I’m fine, Mom.” He rubbed his eyes with the hand that wasn’t holding the phone, trying hard to sound “right.” “Look, I’ll call you in a few days about when I can come home. I just have to check on some things, okay?”

“That’s fine, darling. You just keep up with your studies. That’s what matters. You’re keeping up?”

“Yeah, Mom. I’m doing well.”

“I knew you would be. I knew you would. I love you, Perry.”

“I love you, too, Mom.”

“Bye, baby. Talk to you later.”

Perry had put the phone in the cradle and was headed to the fridge (peanut butter? crackers and cheese?) when the apartment door slammed open, and Craig burst in, hair wild around his face and his eyes wide with—what? Horror? Awe? Joy?

“Read it. Read it,” he said, holding a small square of paper out to Perry in a trembling hand.

The dean of the music school and his administrative assistant were waiting for Shelly in his office when she arrived.

Shelly hadn’t slept that night but she’d run enough scalding hot water, followed by freezing cold water, over herself in the morning, and then consumed enough caffeine, that she thought she might at least look like someone with a heartbeat. She’d worn her gray suit, which hadn’t been out of the dry-cleaning sheath in the closet for two years, and some pastel makeup, brown mascara, eyeliner. She was trying to look sexless, she supposed, but not like a sexless lesbian. Low-heeled pumps. Pantyhose. Some lace along the collar of her blouse. She’d painted her fingernails peach. She reached out and put her hand on the threshold of the dean’s doorway before stepping in, and tried to breathe slowly—in through her nose, out through her mouth, counting to four, although she forgot to stop at four, and found that she had been exhaling a long time before she realized she was still counting, and that the dean and the administrative assistant were looking up at her gravely.

The dean seemed to be choking with embarrassment in his necktie. The administrative assistant, who was very young and very pretty and new enough in her position that Shelly hadn’t met her in person yet, looked up, but not at Shelly. Her blue eyes traveled across the wall and fixed on the ceiling. She folded her cool little hands on a yellow legal pad in her lap.