Part 18 (1/2)

”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.