Part 20 (1/2)

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.”

”G.o.d,” 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 b.u.t.ter? 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.

41.

The dean of the music school and his administrative a.s.sistant were waiting for Sh.e.l.ly in his office when she arrived.

Sh.e.l.ly 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 s.e.xless, she supposed, but not like a s.e.xless 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 a.s.sistant were looking up at her gravely.

The dean seemed to be choking with embarra.s.sment in his necktie. The administrative a.s.sistant, who was very young and very pretty and new enough in her position that Sh.e.l.ly hadn't met her in person yet, looked up, but not at Sh.e.l.ly. 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, Sh.e.l.ly 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.

”h.e.l.lo,” the dean said, rising from his chair just long enough to get his b.u.t.t 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 a.s.sistant. ”This is Allison. She'll be taking notes. Have a seat, Ms. Lockes.”

The dean hadn't called Sh.e.l.ly ”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. Sh.e.l.ly had insisted on her own a.s.sessment: 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, Sh.e.l.ly. 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.

Sh.e.l.ly 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?”

Sh.e.l.ly nodded, but he seemed to be waiting for her to speak. ”Yes,” she said, and the administrative a.s.sistant scratched lightly across her pad without looking either at Sh.e.l.ly 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.

Sh.e.l.ly 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 embarra.s.sed 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,” Sh.e.l.ly 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,” Sh.e.l.ly 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 a.s.sistant 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 acc.u.mulated tears, if she didn't ask for a tissue-that Sh.e.l.ly finally looked up and saw that the administrative a.s.sistant 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 Sh.e.l.ly were very far away from him, or incomprehensible in every detail, and then he said, like an actor stepping off a stage, ”Sh.e.l.ly. Jesus. What the h.e.l.l happened here? How did this happen?”