Laura Kasischke - The Raising

“What about the gym?” she’d asked.

They’d joined the nicest one in town because Clark insisted he needed a place with Nautilus machines and childcare. Mira rarely got to this gym herself, but on the occasions she did, she couldn’t help noticing that the parking lot was full of BMWs. You cannot afford this membership , the BMWs said to her.

“And what about Espresso Royale—?” where Clark met a gaggle of stay-at-home mothers many afternoons, and where, as far as Mira could tell, they just let their children climb around on the upholstered cubes in the Kid Corner while they drank coffee and complained.

Clark looked at her blankly. “I need the bath ,” he’d said.

“Professor Polson?”

This time Mira turned around, recognizing, finally, even in her sleep-deprivation and distraction, her own last name.

How long had he been running after her? The boy was sweating. He had the clean-shaven, buzzed-head look of an ROTC student, or maybe a member of College Students for Christ. But these kids could fool you. Sometimes the conservative look was an ironic statement, right down to the pressed khaki shorts. He could be the lead guitarist in some bad college band. She’d seen flyers around Godwin Hall for an upcoming performance by the Motherfuckers.

“Professor Polson,” he said. “I saw you, and I wanted to ask—” He gasped for breath. “I wanted to ask if I could get into your seminar.”

“I’m sorry. It’s full,” she said, and started to turn from him as quickly and unsympathetically as she could. She always felt bad, sending students away, but these late registers would keep demanding entrance into the class for weeks into the semester if she didn’t stand firm. This was a first-year honors seminar, and Mira couldn’t teach it well with more than fifteen students in it because of the amount of writing and discussion she required. The seminar was called Death, Dying, and the Undead. A lot of students wanted in. It was the most popular seminar in the college. This was, Mira supposed, because they were only eighteen, so the death and dying part didn’t faze them—what eighteen-year-old believes in death?—and because they wrongly imagined that the “Undead” part would mean vampires, when that was only the thinnest (and, in Mira’s opinion, the least interesting) thread in the vast tapestry of Undead material.

“But—”

“I have a waiting list,” Mira said. “Twenty-seven students are on it before you, and there’s not a chance that any one of them will get in, but I’ll add your name to the bottom if you insist.”

“Can I just tell you one thing?”

Mira inhaled, but stopped walking. She looked at a spot over the boy’s shoulder so she wouldn’t seem to be encouraging a long explanation of his scheduling problems or credit deficits or financial aid requirements. They were the only two people in the hallway, and the stone floors beyond him were gleaming in the September sunlight as it shone through the windows. Godwin Hall was the oldest building on campus, and where it showed its age most was in its windows, which were an intricate crisscross of glass diamonds and molten lead. The panes were multicolored, warped, and one or two had been cracked and not yet replaced—but these cracked ones added to the prismatic blues and golds when the sun hit them and made dazzling patterns of light and shadow on the walls and floors.

“I’m a sophomore,” the boy said.

“Well,” Mira said, no longer as reluctant to reveal her impatience. “In that case, you’re not eligible for a first-year seminar anyway.”

“But I don’t want to take the class for credit. I just need to sit in. For personal reasons.”

This time Mira looked at him, directly into his eyes, which were dark brown and long-lashed. His hair was so short it was impossible to know what color it was, but she imagined it must also be dark, although his skin was fair. His cheeks were still flushed from him running after her.

“Why?” she asked, but then she stopped herself—why bother to encourage his explanation or excuse?—and held up a hand. “Just so you know, I’m against auditors. I find they’re an intrusion in the closed circle of a seminar, and often they have very little stake in the class. And, the class is full. ”

Still, she tilted her head, to show him she was listening. It was rare, but there were the occasional students who took Death, Dying, and the Undead because of a trauma in their backgrounds. A car crash involving high school pals. An older sibling who had committed suicide. Twice, she’d had students who’d had childhood leukemia and been cured, but the experience of it had left a strange gray haze over the landscape of their lives. The year before, there’d been a girl in the class who’d revealed, only a few weeks before the end of the semester, that her mother had been murdered by her father:

That, in itself, was enough of a story, but this girl had been in utero when the murder took place, and had been delivered two months prematurely at the Emergency Room in the same hour her mother had died. The girl had been raised by wealthy grandparents who’d told her that her parents had been killed in a tragic car accident when she was a baby—of course, is there ever any other explanation for such things?—but the student discovered the truth on the Internet, her grandparents being of a generation that hadn’t anticipated that one day, thanks to Google, no family secret would be safe.

The boy was still breathing heavily. He said, “I would participate fully, Professor. I’m a straight-A student. I’ve—” He stopped. A cool, rose-colored diamond passed over his eyes through the broken windowpane—a cloud traveling across the sun—and he blinked it away. “I’ve never gotten a grade lower than an A.”

“That’s impressive,” Mira said. “But it’s a first-year seminar, and if you audit you won’t get a grade anyway, so your special interest in the subject is…?” She waved her hand through the air to indicate that he needed to continue, and then shivered. She was wearing a silk dress—catalog stuff, deeply discounted—and it had short cap sleeves. She knew it looked good on her because Jeff Blackhawk, the poet-in-residence in the Honors College, had nearly spilled his coffee when he saw her walk into the faculty lounge. He was the kind of man who was completely undone by a woman in a sexy dress, or a low-cut blouse, or a nicely tailored pair of black slacks, and Mira was glad, almost relieved, that she’d caught his attention. Still, the dress was too light without a sweater, a cool-weather one, and autumn had come on before she’d expected it—only the first week of September, and that morning the sky had been full of the kind of fat blue clouds Mira associated with snow.

The student inhaled, and wiped a hand across his brow. He said, “I was good friends with Nicole. Nicole Werner. I grew up with her. And Craig Clements-Rabbitt was— is —my roommate.”

Nicole Werner.

And that horrible rich boy who’d killed her.

Mira had known neither of them personally, but of course she knew the story. Everyone did. It was last year’s Tragic Incident. Most years, there was at least one, and this year the victim had been perfect for the leading role: Virgin. Girl Scout. Sorority pledge. A devout Christian from a small town. Two married, devoted parents. The youngest child. The baby. A straight-A student, but full of goodwill and vivacity, too. In her spare time she tutored illiterate children. She’d been beloved by her professors and her classmates alike. Until the end of the spring semester, the whole of Godwin Hall had been draped in black.

Mira hadn’t, herself, attended the memorial service in the auditorium, but another professor at the college told her that the girl’s mother had wept so piteously throughout the service that no one could help but join her in sympathy until the four hundred and fifty people gathered around the high school senior portrait of the dead Nicole Werner were sobbing.