Part 22 (2/2)
But Mira hadn't slept, and by the time she had to leave to teach in the morning, she hadn't heard from Clark, and Clark's mother hadn't answered her telephone when Mira called. She considered calling the dean, explaining that she was having a crisis and couldn't teach her cla.s.s, but what would she do instead? Drive? Where? In what? Clark had the car. At what point did you call the police to tell them that your completely sane husband, a loving father, a house husband who spent more time with your children on a daily basis than you did, had gone somewhere with the kids without leaving a note?
And what did the police do then?
She brushed her teeth and ran a washcloth across her face, set her cell phone to vibrate mode in a little pocket in her blouse, over her breast, where she would feel it no matter what she was doing, and left a large note on the kitchen counter.
CALL ME. PLEASE. CLARK. I LOVE YOU.
Mira turned from the blackboard shakily to face the cla.s.s, and then had to steady herself to sit down, and then just told them the truth: ”I had a bad night. I'm sorry. I'd like to start this lecture again another day. In the meantime, can we have a cla.s.s discussion?”
The look on her students' faces-profound surprise and concern-made Mira's heart feel actually heavy. (How many cliches were more accurate in describing the eternal verities than anything poets could come up with? It never ceased to amaze her.) Her heart sank in her like bait at the end of a line, buoyed up only by reverse gravity again, and those expressions on her students' faces.
”Please, tell me what attracted you to this cla.s.s. Why are kids your age so interested in death?”
Mira wasn't even really expecting an answer, just trying to think of a way to manage the rest of the hour without completely dropping it. She knew that Dean Fleming was in his office. He'd certainly notice if she went back to hers before her cla.s.s could possibly have been over.
Jim Enright spoke first. He was a quiet guy from a small town up north. Mira had already pegged him as the Savior. He was the student who couldn't stand to see any of the other students stammer, or lose their train of thought. Once, another student had been trying to think of the word cremation, and Jim Enright had offered about ten possible words that he might have been searching for until the student landed on it.
Now Jim Enright said in a tentative tone, ”Because we're not afraid of it yet?”
Mira managed to nod.
Ben Hood said, ”Yeah. Or, like, we-”
Melanie Herzog jumped in: ”I'm afraid. I think it's just so scary, you know, thinking of never existing-so everybody wants to know about what might happen afterward. I mean, I think the cla.s.s isn't about death. I think it's about the afterlife.”
Mira couldn't help but feel revived then. These were interesting thoughts. They'd come up with nothing new, but they were earnest, and expressing themselves fairly well. She nodded, and then Karess (who had her long, smooth legs wrapped around each other a couple of times) scooted to the edge of her seat and said, ”You know, I think maybe we're still young enough that we might have it right. Like, we haven't given up hope. I mean, old people think it's scary to die because they've seen other people die, but we haven't, so we don't have all this baggage, so we still know you can, like, maybe, live after you die.”
There was a bit of laughter-mostly inspired by her California accent, Mira thought. Karess couldn't say anything without sounding like a character in a Disney sitcom.
”Well, okay,” Mira said, and folded her shaky hands on her desk. ”I guess I haven't asked this question yet, and maybe now's a good time to ask it. How many of you think you will live beyond your deaths?”
It took a little time (some people always took a bit longer to search their souls before answering such a question) but, eventually, every hand was in the air.
Mira looked at her cla.s.s.
The room was full of hands held above heads, acknowledging the saddest, most personal hope of all the sad, hopeless, personal hopes in this hopeless world, and this caused Mira to put her own hand over her mouth to keep herself from sobbing, or crying out, or even laughing. She shook her head a little, took her hand away, and said, ”That's all. Cla.s.s is dismissed. We'll meet here Tuesday to walk together to the morgue.”
46.
Karess Flanagan followed Perry out of cla.s.s, down the hall, and around the corner. He'd turned right when Professor Polson hurried out of the room, following at what he hoped was a considerate distance. He didn't want to annoy Professor Polson, but he also needed to speak with her. Often she stuck around until all the students were gone-erasing the board, packing up her things, turning off the lights, and closing the door behind her. But today there was something wrong. She'd said it to the cla.s.s, although she hadn't needed to. They could all see it in her expression when she'd walked in. Her eyes were puffy.
Perry thought of her husband and that angry slamming of the phone.
Something had happened-and besides wanting to talk to her about the postcard, about Craig (he had to ask her what he should do: was it okay to tell Craig about the photograph, about Lucas, about Patrick Wright?), Perry also didn't feel right not going up to her office, asking her if there was something he could do. He knew they weren't friends exactly, but he was not, any longer, just her student either.
And the look on her face: her hand over her mouth, staring back at the cla.s.s. He'd wanted to stand up right then and go to her. He'd imagined, so easily, putting his arms around her, maybe kneeling in front of her, taking her heart-shaped face in his hands.
He hadn't, of course, but he'd followed her out of cla.s.s. After all the other students had turned left out of the cla.s.sroom, Perry headed to the nearest stairwell, the one that led to the hall where Professor Polson's office was (she was still close enough that he could hear her heels clicking on the stairs), and because the others were leaving from the other direction, Perry couldn't help being aware of Karess behind him, her pointy black boots striking the linoleum sharply, in quick succession. She was hurrying after him, it seemed. Perry began to walk faster himself, and it occurred to him that if he turned around he might find that Karess was actually running to catch up with him. He hoped not. He had absolutely no interest whatsoever in having any kind of conversation with Karess Flanagan at the moment.
”Hey!” she called out just as he reached the foot of stairwell. The heavy fire door was propped open. ”Hey. Perry! Can I talk to you a sec?”
Reluctantly, he stopped and turned around.
There she was, the whole glittering thing of her, only a few feet behind him: Karess Flanagan in some kind of purple leggings and thigh-high boots, some kind of blousey top that was half s.h.i.+rt, half dress. Her hair was floating around her shoulders in luxurious curls, ablaze with expensive highlights and lowlights and whatever else brunettes like Karess got done to their hair to make it too dazzling for mere mortals to behold. She had tiny silver half-moons dangling from her ears, and was wearing a sheer red lip gloss that made it look as if, recently, she'd been kissing a raspberry patch so deeply that her lips had begun to bleed. ”Okay?” she asked, stopping, taking a step toward him. ”Can we talk?”
Perry didn't answer. He tried to look at her as if he didn't understand her, as if that might make her go away, but it didn't. She stepped closer.
”Like, can I ask you what's going on?”
She said it in the same tone in which she said everything: ”Do we need, like, a blue book?” ”Are we supposed to, you know, have a t.i.tle page?” ”Is there, like, a special font or something we're supposed to type in?” ”Is the universe, like, expanding?” No matter what she said in cla.s.s, she always sounded half-exasperated, half-confused, and pretty stupid. Apparently she sounded that way outside of cla.s.s, too.
”What?” Perry asked.
”Well?” Karess said, holding up her palms. They were pale, and for a crazy second Perry considered looking into them, and felt pretty sure that if he did they would be completely unlined. ”What's going on with you, and this cla.s.s?”
”I have no idea what you're talking about,” Perry said, although he was afraid he might.
”First, like, why are you in this cla.s.s? It's a freshman seminar. You're not a freshman.”
Perry just stared at her.
”I mean, maybe it's none of my business, but-”
”Maybe it's none of your business?”
She laughed good-naturedly about this, maybe even blushed a little. She was wearing so much blush already that it was hard to tell, but he gave her credit for it. He'd sounded hostile, even to himself, and she seemed unfazed. Or maybe a little genuinely embarra.s.sed by herself.
”Okay,” she said, ”it's definitely none of my business. I'm just, I guess, really curious. I don't expect you to tell me, since, like, why would you, since we don't even know each other, but something really weird seems to be going on here. I mean, I don't necessarily believe it, but a lot of people in the cla.s.s think you're sleeping with Professor Polson.”
Spontaneously, Perry choked out a wild little laugh, and then he could feel himself blus.h.i.+ng, a rising burn from his chest to his scalp. Karess shrugged and made a wistful little smirk, as if she'd caught him at something and felt a little bad about it. She crossed her arms, waiting, it seemed, for him to speak, but Perry couldn't even take a breath. Finally, she cleared her throat, and said, ”Well, that was awkward.”
Tucking a dark ringlet behind her ear, Karess licked her lips and went on, ”Well, I'm not saying anyone cares. You're a big boy, and she's obviously got some domestic issues, but between that and all this s.h.i.+t in the dorm about Nicole Werner and Alice Meyers and that girl who ran away”-she emphasized every few words with both her intonation and a rolling motion of her hands, as if to churn the air around each new item on the list-”and all the Internet photos of Nicole Werner's roommate having metro-s.e.x with the music prof, and then this weird-as-f.u.c.k cla.s.s, going to the morgue next time, and Professor Polson having, like, a nervous breakdown in front of us today. I for one am starting to wonder what the h.e.l.l kind of college this is. I mean, I got into Columbia. I came here because I thought it would be calmer.”
”Josie?” Perry managed to ask after moving backward through her monologue, searching it for meaning.
”What?” Karess asked.
”Nicole's roommate. Josie?”
<script>