The Raising (24 page)
S
o many years in an academic environment: that had to be the reason that Shelly’s first thought was, It’s not a dead metaphor.
Her blood really had
run cold
. It dropped twenty degrees in her veins as she looked up at Josie in the doorway, realizing that, because Josie never apologized for anything she did wrong in the office, this was something else. This was something bad.
Josie swallowed. Shelly could see it in the muscles on her neck, hear the little wash of spit in the girl’s mouth, as her own mouth went completely dry.
“What?” Shelly asked, curling her toes inside her suede boots. “What is it?”
“Oh, God, Shelly. You’re going to be so mad at me.” The girl was whining, but she also sounded strangely as if she were reading from a script. Without realizing it, Shelly found that she had stood up, and that she was stepping backward, as if to put some space between the two of them. “And I don’t blame you. But. Well. You know those pictures I took? With my cell phone? You know, when we—?”
Shelly raised an alarmed hand to stop Josie from going on.
No, the hand said. Don’t say it. No need to remind me.
Of course
she knew:
They’d been lying together in Shelly’s bed. Skin to skin. The top sheet and blanket were crumpled on the floor at the foot of it. Josie had been kissing Shelly’s neck, and her Cover Girl lipstick was smeared all over Shelly’s throat (something she’d noticed only later, at the bathroom mirror, with alarm, thinking at first that she was bleeding) and they’d been drinking red wine, and a splash of it had landed in a violent-looking slash across the bottom sheet. Shelly was a little drunk, and Josie had seemed more so. She’d giggled hard enough at a very stupid joke Shelly had told her (while licking the girl’s hip: “What do the hippies do?” “They hold the leggies on”) that she’d finally jumped out of bed squealing, “Oh, my God, stop it, Shelly, or I’m going to pee in the bed!” (Shelly had noticed that the more Josie drank the more her speech became less and less of the Valley Girl and more harder-voweled Midwestern.) After the bathroom, Josie had stumbled back to the bed with her cell phone and snuggled next to Shelly, and held the phone an arm’s length away from them, and then scooted down and sunk her sharp little front teeth pleasantly into Shelly’s nipple, and snapped the cell phone at the same time.
A giggle.
Shelly said, “What did you do?”
She knew, of course, about camera phones, knew her own cell phone had such an application, although she’d never bothered to learn how to use it, but it still took a few seconds for her to process that Josie was snapping photos, and in those seconds Josie had managed to snap another, and another, and then she climbed on top of Shelly, straddled her pelvis—the incredible warm-moist sensation of Josie’s crotch pressed onto hers—and held the phone at arm’s length again, and managed to get them both together, smiling and naked and, surely, from a distance, completely obscene.
Then Josie had snuggled back down to show Shelly the photo:
It took her breath away.
This miniaturized image of herself as a fit, creamy-skinned middle-aged woman holding a dark-haired sylph in her arms. She was lost, completely lost, and knew it, even as she took the phone from Josie herself and snapped a photo of Josie reclining, sloe-eyed, one hand cupped under her breast, and another of Josie’s dark hair floating around Shelly’s hips as she flicked Shelly’s clitoris with her tongue. After that, Josie took a photo of Shelly propped up against the headboard, legs spread, and Josie’s hand—thrillingly recognizable by the little gold and ruby ring she wore—between them. A single bright index finger disappearing inside her, and Shelly’s face registering the pleasure of it, her mouth a subtle
O
, eyes half-closed, the bliss of the moment, and the bliss of capturing it, perfectly and suddenly, like something snatched out of the air still buzzing and humming and coming and pinned to time forever with a tack.
If anything in this world had ever excited Shelly more, brought her more fully into this world, she could not have said what it was.
N
ow, as Josie stood before her in the Chamber Music Society offices, one half-naked shoulder raised in a tiny apology, Shelly recognized it, all of it, for what it was: insanity.
The undoing of her small, carefully constructed life.
Oh, how they would love it, too. After so many male professors had been taken apart, witch-hunted down for their dalliances with undergraduates, how satisfying and self-affirming it would be to chase a lesbian out the door.
“I was, you know,” Josie said, “going to email them to you, you know. I thought . . .” Shelly groaned a little, closed her eyes tightly. “They were on my computer. And my roommate saw them, and I guess she turned them in to the Omega Theta Tau Board.”
“Oh, Josie. Oh, my God. How could—”
Josie lifted her chin defensively, and shook her head so that the dangling pearl earrings she was wearing began to swing around in her hair.
“Well, Shelly,” she said, sounding petulant. “I’m really scared, too. I mean, I won’t tell them who, in the pictures, you know, I’m
with
. But I think there might be something about this in the by-laws. Like, maybe if I won’t tell them, and they think you’re a professor, or my boss, or something—”
Shelly put her head in her hands and went back to her desk chair, sank down in it. After a few seconds she said into her hands, “Please. Just let me have a few minutes to think. Alone. Please. Go.”
“Sure.”
It was said so brightly that Shelly looked up, and it was a shock to find that Josie hadn’t moved an inch, was still leaning against the doorjamb, was smiling down at Shelly, quite happily, it seemed, from a very great height.
“M
om?”
“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.
T
he 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.
Looking at those lily-white hands, Shelly reminded herself, inhaling, that she must not faint. And she must not cry. And she must not let her voice shake. And she must not put her own hands over her face and stifle a terrible little sobbing scream—although she’d done this at least once each hour since getting the news that a formal grievance had been filed against her, and that she should probably consult with a lawyer.
“Hello,” the dean said, rising from his chair just long enough to get his butt a few inches off the seat before setting it back down, tightening his tie as if to hang himself, and then gesturing with a flat open hand to his administrative assistant. “This is Allison. She’ll be taking notes. Have a seat, Ms. Lockes.”
The dean hadn’t called Shelly “Ms. Lockes” since he’d hired her. Although she would not have called him a personal friend, they had known each other a long time now. She’d watched him go gray. She’d sent cards to his children when they graduated from this or that, and a bouquet to his house when his sister died. He’d always liked her, and she him. They had, she thought, seen one another as occupying together an island of good taste in a sea of philistinism. Early on, he’d complained bitterly to her about the new Jazz Department, but that turned out to be nothing compared to the folk/rock, and then the pop/rock, course offerings that followed with the years. Their only disagreement when it came to music was about Mozart, whom Dean Spindler saw as superior to Handel. Shelly had insisted on her own assessment: that Mozart was a youthful machine, brilliant but soulless, and that Handel was a mortal who’d gotten a glimpse of eternity and put notes to it. Dean Spindler had charmingly pretended to be offended, but for Christmas she’d given him a recording of
Giulio Cesare
, and during Christmas break he’d emailed her telling her he’d been listening to it nonstop:
You’ve nearly convinced me, Shelly. I am surprised, and grateful, for this late-life awakening. I hope we have many years as colleagues ahead.
“Did you bring your lawyer?” he asked.
Shelly shook her head. She sat down in the empty chair across from him. “I don’t have a lawyer,” she said.
“But you
were
advised to seek legal counsel?”
Shelly nodded, but he seemed to be waiting for her to speak. “Yes,” she said, and the administrative assistant scratched lightly across her pad without looking either at Shelly or at the words she was writing, as if she were trying to take notes without being accused of taking notes.
“We need to have that for the record—that you were advised to bring a lawyer, and chose not to do so,” the dean said.
Shelly nodded.
“Also, we need to have it on record that you understand what this disciplinary action is about.” He cleared his throat then, but he seemed less embarrassed now, emboldened by the high moral ground on which he safely stood. “So, do I need to show you the photographs, or can I simply describe them, and you can tell me whether or not you’re one of the subjects in them?”
“You don’t need to do that,” Shelly said. There was no way to keep her voice from cracking. It was as if it belonged to someone else.
“Actually, I’m required to do that. Believe me, I’d rather not. But if you don’t confirm that the photographic evidence we’re using is the same evidence you’re familiar with, later you could claim confusion, and this could go on forever.”
Now he sounded bitter. Put out. She was, she knew, probably adding all sorts of tedious tasks to his day, not to mention the discomfort, the unsavory nature of this.
“It won’t go on forever,” Shelly said, “believe me,” and then she put her face in her hands and began to weep, exactly in the manner she had vowed not to. With hysterical abandon. With deep wrenching sobs. With bottomless grief and self-pity and self-loathing. She had no idea what the dean and his assistant were doing as she wept, but no one said a word, or seemed to move, stand, leave the room, sneeze. It was as if they were frozen in time, and in horror, somewhere beyond her weeping. She wept and wept, and it was only when she realized that she had no choice—that she was going to drown right there in her own palms, her accumulated tears, if she didn’t ask for a tissue—that Shelly finally looked up and saw that the administrative assistant was gone.
The dean, it seemed, had been paralyzed into silence. He managed to hand her a tissue, but the expression on his face as he did so was that of someone who’d been staring into an abyss of shame so long that its reflection was permanently etched on his face. She took the tissue from him, and then he handed her the whole box. He was squinting, as if Shelly were very far away from him, or incomprehensible in every detail, and then he said, like an actor stepping off a stage, “Shelly. Jesus. What the hell happened here? How did this
happen
?”
She opened and closed her mouth, but finally quit trying to speak. There were tears running off her lips. She could only imagine what her face looked like.
“You do understand,” he asked her, “don’t you, that this means the end of your employment with the university? And that’s the best-case scenario. Who knows what other complications could follow? Lawsuits? Investigations?”
Shelly nodded, and he rubbed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, addressed the ceiling:
“You can have a day or two to clean out your office, and until the final paperwork, all of that, and the various committees, et cetera, you’ll officially be on leave, with your salary. Again, you can get yourself a lawyer, but I have to tell you in all honesty, especially with our new policies regarding inappropriate use of power in student/faculty and employer/employee relationships, it’s—”
“I know,” Shelly said. “I know. I know.”
He looked at her again, and then he nodded gently toward the door, and Shelly stood.
He said good-bye as she stepped out the door, but she couldn’t turn around.