The Raising: A Novel Part 18

"I'm not wild for cats," Josie said. "I'm a dog person. Cats seem a little creepy. No offense."

Sh.e.l.ly sat down in the chair across from Josie, pulling her robe over her knees as she did. She'd forgotten her Starbucks cup on the kitchen table, and by now it was probably cold. She thought she'd just leave it. She had no idea what treacly beverage Josie might have brought her today.

"Wow," Josie said, looking around again. "I'm so used to living with a ton of other people-it would be weird, but really awesome, to have a whole house to yourself." There was a dreamy look in her eyes, as if she were actually imagining herself in the rooms of Sh.e.l.ly's house, ambling between them on her own, considering what it would be like if they were hers.

"Well," Sh.e.l.ly said. "It's definitely better than-"

"A f.u.c.king sorority," Josie said, and took another sip of her drink, looking demurely away from Sh.e.l.ly. She'd never said the word f.u.c.king in front of Sh.e.l.ly before-although, once, when the printer made three times the number of a long doc.u.ment than it was supposed to, Sh.e.l.ly had heard Josie shout, "s.h.i.+t!"

Sh.e.l.ly cleared her throat. "Well, do you have to live at the sorority?" She hated the sound of her own voice, and the frumpy way she was holding her robe around her.

At the gym, lifting weights, looking at herself in the mirror, Sh.e.l.ly felt physical, powerful, beautiful. She flushed easily, and knew that men were looking at her. But in the presence of Josie Reilly-in the presence of a girl whose body had been through only nineteen, twenty years-she knew that the kind of admiration she got from men at the gym meant nothing. Here before her, in the form of Josie Reilly, was the embodiment of beauty and youth. This girl had just barely emerged from the coc.o.o.n of childhood. In fact, Sh.e.l.ly thought she could see a film of something like dew on Josie's neck, on her chest, and she even thought she could smell something wafting off of her limbs like pond water-rank and sweet at the same time, so potent.

Why, Sh.e.l.ly thought soberly then, was she letting this happen?

Was this happening?

Never once had she thought of herself as the kind of old d.y.k.e who would sleep with a student, a girl. The only women she'd ever found herself attracted to in the past had been her own age, or older. She'd disliked the lesbians she knew who kept women half their ages, and paid their rent. It was so obviously nothing but physical-and wasn't part of the point, the point of being a woman who'd chosen women over men, to reject that kind of objectification? To reject that abuse of power?

She was, after all, Josie Reilly's boss. And the girl was less than half her age. But she was also radiating, indisputably, on Sh.e.l.ly's couch, her own inalienable power: She'd stretched out. One leg was extended luxuriously on the couch. Her fingers continued to move through her silky black hair. Her short top had made its way higher, and two lovely inches of white, flat stomach had been exposed. Under her arms was the downiest bit of unshaven hair. One of the straps of her tank top had slipped over her shoulder bone, and now the top of her right breast was exposed. It was painful to look at, and impossible not to stare. Josie rested her coffee cup on her crotch, and looked at Sh.e.l.ly and asked, "Do you have anything to eat? Like, a sandwich or something?"

36.

It was impossible not to stare at Professor Polson as she cooked. Like Perry's mother, she cracked the eggs with one hand, and then tossed the sh.e.l.ls into the sink. She didn't measure anything. Two burners were glowing blue on the stove at the same time. She grated cheese straight into the pan of scrambled eggs.

Professor Polson reminded him of his mother, but she was also like a girl Perry's own age-hair uncombed, falling around her face in a ma.s.s of curls and tangles. Her hands were full, so she used her shoulder to push the hair out of the way as she leaned over the stove. In her jeans and Indian-print s.h.i.+rt, she could easily have pa.s.sed for a college girl. She was thin. Even a little bony. You would not have known she'd given birth to twins. He imagined that she didn't eat a lot, because she also didn't look athletic. In Bad Axe the only women he knew who were mothers and weren't overweight were the athletes: the hikers and bikers and swimmers. Or the smokers. The alcoholics. Professor Polson looked healthy, but she did not look like someone who worked out at a gym or who spent much time outdoors. She looked, Perry supposed, exactly like what she was: a reader, a writer, a teacher. Someone who'd spent her life studying something very particular and obscure, and who'd become an expert on it because she was more interested in it than anyone else had ever been or might ever be again.

And at the same time that Professor Polson reminded him of women like his mother, his aunts, the mothers of his friends-and also girls like Mary, Nicole, Josie Reilly, even Karess Flanagan-she was also nothing like them.

She was neither young nor old, fas.h.i.+onable nor out of touch. Professor Polson existed somewhere in between the worlds of the mothers he knew and the girls he knew, and he could not take his eyes off of her as she peeled slices of ham out of a plastic package and dropped them onto a skillet, where they shriveled up quickly and filled the kitchen with the smell of meat and maple. He was, he realized, ravenous.

They'd talked for hours since he'd come back to the apartment, he guessed. He'd lost track of time. But it was pitch-black night when he'd returned, and now the sun was s.h.i.+ning through her apartment windows. Hours had to have pa.s.sed.

After the interview, when they'd left Professor Polson's apartment, Perry had walked Lucas back to his place, and then he'd turned around, intending to go back to his own apartment. But he'd found himself instead walking directly toward the Omega Theta Tau house.

The rain had stopped at some point during Lucas's interview, and now the streets were s.h.i.+ning with dampness in the moonlight. The sky was completely clear, looking as if some kind of blue-black satin had been rolled in enormous bolts all through the town. The moon was somewhere close to full, but not quite, and it turned the branches of the trees to a kind of parody of October-spooky, damp. Leaves had blown out of the trees during the storm and lay in tatters in the streets, and on the sidewalk, on the lawns. They caught at the toes of Perry's shoes.

He couldn't help himself.

He had to go there.

He had to stand outside the house.

He had a feeling, and when he'd had that feeling before, she had appeared, or seemed to appear.

Perry had already known, more or less, the story Lucas was going to tell Professor Polson, but it had terrified him anyway. The matter-of-factness of the account. The mundane details. Lucas's plainspoken, shamed recounting of events. It had required self-restraint for Perry to keep himself seated, listening. More than once, he'd had the urge to flee. He'd seen himself in his dark suit again, pictured himself in Bad Axe at the funeral, walking with the coffin on his shoulder, the terrible, solid, indisputable s.h.i.+fting of weight inside the coffin when Nicole's cousin stumbled as they carried her out of the church and into the hea.r.s.e.

And there were other things he remembered.

Back in his dorm room, in G.o.dwin Hall, just those few weeks before the accident.

Told you, didn't I?

Nicole had kissed him afterward, and stood up, and, as she was b.u.t.toning her s.h.i.+rt, had said, "Told you, didn't I? I knew you wanted to f.u.c.k me, and that you would." Then, she put on her clothes, closed the door behind her-somehow managing to leave her panties at the foot of the bed for Craig to find (although Craig didn't recognize them, and instead teased Perry mercilessly, pitifully, about his "mystery s.l.u.t"). Why had she done that? It could not have been a mistake. He'd known Nicole most of his life. She wasn't ever sloppy. Even in kindergarten she'd been the first one to throw her empty milk carton away, or fold up her nap mat.

At first, Perry had thought she might have been sending a message for Craig-but, later, he wondered if it had been something else, a way to discredit Perry, cast suspicion on him. Surely she could tell that he and Craig were starting to become friends.

He could see the light on the porch of the Omega Theta Tau house, but Perry couldn't tell, from where he stood on the sidewalk looking up at it, whether anyone was on the porch.

It was a flat town, a flat state, so it was that much stranger, eerier, that the sorority house was perched on a hill above the rest of the block.

Behind it, the memorial orchard sloped down to the wall between the sorority property and the smaller yard of the frat house next door. There were no leaves at all left on those cherry trees as far as Perry could tell-two skeletal rows of s.h.i.+ny, wet black branches and moonlight. From inside the house, there seemed to be only one light: a dim flickering in one of the upstairs windows. Perry couldn't tell if it was a candle doing the flickering or some shadowy figure pacing around by the window. There seemed to be lacy curtains, and they seemed to be closed. He supposed it wasn't so odd that all the lights were out at this time of night-or morning-in the middle of the week before exams. Omega Theta Tau was supposed to be one of the studious sororities.

Perry stood staring up at the house until he was sure there was no one on the porch, and then he stepped off the sidewalk and onto the gra.s.s. He wanted to get closer, but he thought it was a bad idea to go straight up the front walk, which was bathed in porch light. He didn't know why. He had no idea yet what he thought. Did he think Nicole was in there? And, if so, how? And if she wasn't, what was he afraid of? And if she was, what then?

He stayed in the shadows, and made his way up the side of the lawn. The ground was soggy, slippery, carpeted with fallen leaves. He walked slowly, with no idea what he planned to do when he reached the porch. (Knock on the back door and ask to see Nicole? Peer in the windows to try to catch a glimpse of her?) He stopped. Looked behind him. Looked in front of him. He looked toward the porch, and just before he saw what he thought was a man in some kind of dark suit or uniform, the light switched off and Perry was left standing on the lawn in the dark, and then he heard what sounded to him (so out of place here that it took him more than a few seconds to recall it from duck hunting with his dad at Lake Durand, or deer hunting in the national forest with his grandfather, from the hundred or so Boy Scout rifle compet.i.tions he'd attended at the Bad Axe Rod and Gun Club) like the slide of a shotgun being racked, and he crouched down and, holding his breath, made his way back across the lawn, away from the house, as quickly and as quietly as humanly possible.

It was blocks later that he realized that he'd run all the way back to Professor Polson's apartment, the outside entrance of which had been propped open so that he didn't have to buzz her, and that he'd run up to the stairs to her door, and he was knocking on it.

She opened the door as if she'd been expecting him.

Clearly, he hadn't woken her. She was still in the same top and jeans she'd been wearing during Lucas's interview. Her eyes looked watery, as if she had been either crying or coughing. Her hair was a little more mussed. (Perhaps she'd been lying down?) But when she saw that Perry was nearly doubled over, out of breath, standing in her doorway, Professor Polson pulled him into the apartment without asking any questions, and led him to the couch.

"I'll get you some water," she said. "Try square breathing. You know what square breathing is?"

He knew what square breathing was only because she'd told them about it in cla.s.s, in preparation for their trip to the morgue-had told them that if they began to feel faint during the visit, or to feel as if they might be sick, or hyperventilate, they should close their eyes and do square breathing.

("Breathe in through your nose to the count of four. Hold the breath to the count of four. Exhale to the count of four." She'd had the whole cla.s.s practice. "I used to lose at least three students to the linoleum every field trip until I taught square breathing.") As Perry sat panting on her couch, and Professor Polson went into the kitchen, he tried it: One. Two.

The apartment looked different in the dark.

Three. Four.

She came back to the living room with a sweater draped over her shoulders and a gla.s.s of water for him, three ice cubes bobbing in it. She turned on the light beside the couch and handed him the gla.s.s, and then sat down on the chair across from him, perching on the edge of it, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, and asked in a soft, concerned voice, "What is it, Perry? Can you tell me?"

The square breathing, or something, had worked. He was calm now. He didn't even feel winded. He told her what had happened. The darkness. The candle. The man he thought he saw in the shadows, and the sound of a shotgun being racked up, and how he'd run, not realizing he was here again until he was.

Professor Polson had seemed to think for a long time about what she was going to say before she spoke, and then said, "Perry, I think maybe we've already taken this too far. I think I've encouraged you in some-" she pulled the sweater off her shoulders and onto her lap, and then gathered it in her hands, brought it to her face, seemed to breathe it in for a minute before she continued, "unproductive thinking. When the imagination-and I'm not talking here about your imagination per se. I'm talking the collective imagination, the occult imagination-when it's stimulated, many things that aren't real can come to seem to be real. Perfectly sane people, people who-"

"No," Perry said.

Professor Polson nodded as if she'd expected him to object, but she went on: "Let me tell you something," she said, and she told him, then, a story about her childhood. Her mother. A kind of transformation in a pantry. A white coffin, and her own realization, staring into it, of what the unconscious was capable of. The imagery that informed this life, this culture.

"You can pretend you aren't superst.i.tious," Professor Polson said. "You can imagine that you are not religious. You can be certain that you don't believe in life after death, if that's what you want. But, Perry, it doesn't stop the fact that we are in a very strange position here. We humans. With such a clear knowledge of how it will end, and no idea what will happen afterward-just some symbols, some music, some stories to show us the way.

"Of course you believe your friend is alive. That she lurks around every corner. That her death could be something as alive as her s.e.xuality was, as your own. You're nineteen years old. Who dies, Perry? Who believes in death at your age? People with a lot more life experience than you have believed stranger things. Have seen stranger things. Folklore is full of-"

"I'm sorry, Professor Polson, I know what you're saying. But it isn't folklore. This. It-it isn't."

There was a kind of sad understanding in her eyes, but she was shaking her head at the same time.

"Perry, folklore doesn't mean something doesn't make sense. Or doesn't seem real. Truly, it's the opposite. Beliefs-traditional and superst.i.tious beliefs-arise and are pa.s.sed down for coherent, substantial reasons. They're based on psychological and physical data, real or not. Shared experiences. In the field we call this elegant rationale. There's often an elegant rationality to even the strangest beliefs. But it doesn't make them real. Being based on fear, inspired by hope, they can be dangerous, Perry, and I think we're headed in that direction, and that we need to stop what we're doing now, before it leads to something-"

"Please," Perry said. "No. Please. I'll talk about it any way you want me to. We can call it elegant rationale and campus folklore if you want to. But, please. Don't stop . . . listening to me. Professor Polson-"

She reached across the coffee table and took his hand. She held it in her own for a few seconds, and he could feel for himself how cold his own hand was. She squeezed it before she let go, and said, "I know. I know. Okay."

"Thank you. I-"

But she held up a hand to stop him from saying anything more. She stood up then and gestured for him to follow her into the kitchen, where he leaned against the wall as she made him a cup of tea, and they talked about cla.s.s, about the article on apotropaic magic they had been a.s.signed for the next week and which Perry had already read. She told him about her travels during her Fulbright year, the village in which she'd stayed a few nights, where every house and every inn, every restaurant and church, kept nailed to its door a piece of a broken mirror that had once hung in the ladies' room of the local cathedral, until the cathedral had been bombed.

There had been only one woman in the cathedral at the time-an old deaf lady who hadn't heard the air raid sirens. She'd been blown into too many pieces to gather and properly bury. The mirrors were nailed to the doors to keep her from stopping by.

They discussed the section of the essay on the motif of harmful sensations. The Sirens. The Lorelei. The Harp of Dagda. The Hungarian Suicide Song-a song, it was believed, that to hear would cause the person who heard it to commit suicide.

He told her that when he was in high school, a rumor had gone around that there was a YouTube video posted on the Internet-a body swinging from a rope tied to a tree-that, if you watched it, would cause you to hang yourself within three days. Girls had gone around Bad Axe High School frantically whispering about who had been reckless enough to watch it at the last slumber party. He'd even witnessed some tears in the hallways, and the princ.i.p.al eventually wrote a note home to parents letting them know about the rumor, urging them to talk to their children about it.

"Yes," Professor Polson said, smiling, excited. "This is exactly the kind of thing we want for our study, Perry. Exactly."

Perry was still hearing her words our study in his head, and the little thrill of that, when she said, "I think it's time for breakfast. I don't know about you, but I've got to get to the cla.s.s your parents are paying me to teach, and teach it." They both looked at their watches at the same time, and then they sat down to eat the eggs that had grown cold on the table as they'd talked, but which were still delicious.

Part Three.

37.

Josie was wearing flip-flops even though the temperature outside could not have been over forty-five degrees. It was one of those deep-pewter late October days during which morning lasted until it finally bled without a whimper into twilight. Sh.e.l.ly had, herself, pulled her suede boots out of the back of her closet for the first time that year. Not only was it too cold for flip-flops, but flip-flops had been the one item of clothing Sh.e.l.ly had asked Josie, when she'd first hired her, not to wear to the office.

And she was over an hour late.

"Hey," Josie said breathlessly, pus.h.i.+ng open the door to Sh.e.l.ly's office with her hip. "Sorry I'm late!"

Sh.e.l.ly tried to look away as nonchalantly as possible, returning to her computer on which she'd managed to call up a blank Word doc.u.ment as soon as she heard what she'd a.s.sumed was Josie coming up the stairs.

"You're not mad, are you?" Josie asked, but she was out of the door's threshold before Sh.e.l.ly could turn around and say anything, her flip-flops making a husky whisper as they slapped against the heels of her small white feet as she sauntered down the hallway toward the restroom.

It had been two weeks since they'd first slept together, and there'd been two dinners (both at Sh.e.l.ly's house, cooked by Sh.e.l.ly) since then. Three other times, they'd left the office together, gone back to Sh.e.l.ly's for drinks, and ended up in bed. These a.s.signations had been initiated casually enough by Josie ("Hey, Sh.e.l.ly, are you up for a gla.s.s of wine after work?") and, after each time, Sh.e.l.ly swore to herself that she wouldn't let it happen again.

Too risky. Too risque. Too unseemly.

But simply saying no seemed impossible. At least once or twice a day now, Sh.e.l.ly found herself nearly doubled over with longing for the girl: The small hard nipples under her hands. The soft palpitating at the base of her throat. The way Josie (who required sometimes a steady, blissful hour of tongue and fingers to reach an o.r.g.a.s.m) would throw her head back in the final seconds, and Sh.e.l.ly could glimpse just the bottom of her bright white front teeth between her parted lips, and a hissing sound would escape from Josie that sent what felt like a shockwave ripping through Sh.e.l.ly's body, bringing her to her own climax without even needing to be touched.

It was only when they were in bed that they discussed the fact that they had ever slept together before or that they ever would again, so each "date" was like some kind of extreme sport-the rush of not knowing what would happen next.

In the meantime, Josie's work ethic had dwindled down to nothing. She'd stopped bothering even to apologize for leaving early. She simply announced that she was leaving. Twice, she called in sick, depositing scratchy-voiced messages on the voice mail, having clearly timed her calls so that Sh.e.l.ly wouldn't be in the office to actually answer the phone.

This morning, the flip-flops. Late again.

It didn't surprise Sh.e.l.ly. (Why would it? Josie had been a bad work-study student from the start.) But it frightened her. She knew that the s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p meant she was no longer in a position to reprimand Josie, or even gently critique her. That first morning, after that first night, Josie had s.h.i.+mmied her jeans on, zipped up her hoodie, and said, before sliding out Sh.e.l.ly's front door, "Sh.e.l.ly, I'm going to have to make up tomorrow for missing my Chem Lab yesterday afternoon, 'kay? So, I won't be in. But I'll see you soon?"

Sh.e.l.ly had found herself unable to remind Josie that she had responsibilities related to the St. Crispin Quintet concert the next day. Someone needed to walk them from their hotel to Beech Auditorium (because it was written into their contract that the St. Crispin Quintet did nothing without an escort), and it was the work-study's job to attend to these details. It was, in fact, the whole reason Sh.e.l.ly had been given a work-study student in the first place, because the experience of rubbing elbows with these professionals was supposed to be so beneficial to the student's education.

But that morning Sh.e.l.ly had stood in the doorway holding her robe closed around her and said, "Okay," to Josie, while any last shred of denial about the new dynamic between them dissolved as Josie c.o.c.ked her head and blew a kiss in Sh.e.l.ly's direction. Sh.e.l.ly could feel herself flus.h.i.+ng, but also could not stop herself from reaching out the door (in full view of the mailwoman across the street) and taking hold of one of the dangling pompoms on Josie's pink hoodie, and gently urging her back inside.

Josie had smiled sleepily, dreamily, allowed herself to be lured back through the screen door and into the foyer, where she kept her eyes open as Sh.e.l.ly pulled her to her and put her hands in the silky black hair and kissed Josie's lips with as much restraint as she could (and still found herself trembling, making little noises in her throat, her tongue running over those perfect little teeth, her hands, as if they belonged to someone else, traveling up to Josie's waist to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s again, running clumsily over them as Josie sagged pa.s.sively, pliantly, against the screen door and let it all happen). When Sh.e.l.ly had finally managed to step back, there was what could almost have been a look of triumph on Josie's face.

She'd narrowed her eyes and licked her lips, sighed, and reached out to touch Sh.e.l.ly's throat, and then said, "See you next time," before turning and leaving (for real this time), swaying down the walk, surely aware that she was being watched, without turning around once to look at Sh.e.l.ly in the doorway.

In the other office, Sh.e.l.ly could hear her talking on the phone. Every sentence ended with the sound of a question.

"And then we went to the bar? And Crystal and Stephanie were there? And so anyway I guess tonight we're supposed meet back at the house and take away their privileges, you know? And after that, we'll vote? So, like, tell them not to wear any shoes, okay? Everybody else can wear shoes?"

Jesus, Sh.e.l.ly thought. What could Josie be talking about, or did she even want to know? Was this some sort of hazing? No "privileges"? No shoes?

Maybe a punishment for having been at the bar when they were supposed to be home making doilies for the Founders' Tea?

It was, Sh.e.l.ly thought, possibly Trials Week-which had been renamed Spirit Week by the Pan-h.e.l.lenic a.s.sociation after the scandal a few years ago when a drunken sorority sister had been driven forty miles out of town and left on the side of a rural highway.

It was, apparently, a common prepledge trial these days. You were taken to a party, where you were prompted to get drunker than you had ever been before in your life, and then your sympathetic older "sisters" pretended to insist on driving you home because of their great concern for you-but, instead, they dropped you off in the middle of nowhere and told you, as their car sped away, to find your way back to the house.

Maybe most of the girls did make it back to the house, and lived long enough to inflict this trial the next year on a new generation of sisters. But one year, a victim panicked and tried to chase the car that had dropped her off, managing to run fast enough to toss herself against the b.u.mper and hit her head and die.

The administrators and the parents and the Pan-h.e.l.lenic a.s.sociation swooped in screeching, as if they hadn't known perfectly well that this kind of thing was taking place on a regular basis. There was a great deal of "shock" and "outrage" among the university community-especially since this was a sorority. "Girls Hazing Girls!" was the headline, as if it were news.

Not a single woman Sh.e.l.ly knew was surprised by the ruthlessness of girls toward one another-and certainly no one Sh.e.l.ly knew who'd ever been in a sorority could manage much more than the raising of an eyebrow, if not a stifled yawn, at the news that sorority sisters were dropping each other off in the dark, drunk, and laughing as they sped away. Sh.e.l.ly herself had never been dropped off drunk on a highway, but she'd had to go two weeks without brus.h.i.+ng her teeth, and was required to arrive every evening on the front porch of the Eta Lambda house to have the sc.u.m on her enamel approved.

Over a cup of tea after their third time in bed together, Sh.e.l.ly had asked Josie if sororities still did things like that, and Josie had laughed pretty hard while recounting how, as a newbie, she'd had to wear the same underpants every day for four weeks-period to period-and take them off in the living room, standing there bottomless in front of the Pledge Board, while they pa.s.sed her panties around and either sniffed them or screamed about them and threw them from one sister to the next until they were given back, and Josie had to put them back on.

"I cheated," Josie said. "I washed my panties out in the sink a few times, and then I put toothpaste on the crotch to make it look really yeasty, so they just freaked when they saw it, and didn't smell it-luckily, since it smelled like mint!"

"Jesus," Sh.e.l.ly had said, rubbing her eyes.

Although, as a hazing practice, this sort of thing happened only during the prepledge part of sorority life, the spirit of it was part of the very air they had breathed in the Eta Lambda house. Every few weeks some sister would find your hairbrush matted with hair on the bathroom sink, or some clump of something crusty in the shower after you'd just gotten out, and she would scream Ee-w-w-w! for everyone to hear.