"I have to go for a walk," he said. "I have to clear my head. And I need to call someone. Give me your cell phone."

"Sure," Craig said. "Sure. Sure." Nodding like a lunatic. Smiling like a little kid. He'd have given Perry anything at that moment. If they'd been standing on a rooftop, Craig could have flown right off of it. Not only had he been expiated from the worst crime imaginable-killing the person you love the most in the world-he'd also learned that the dead could come back to life. He handed his cell phone to Perry as he continued to cradle the flimsy postcard in his hands, the way he might an injured bird. He wandered out of the living room with it like a zombie, back to his room, seeming to be laughing and crying at the same time.

Perry didn't bother to put on his coat. He just turned up the collar of his shirt against the wind and dialed Professor Polson's phone number as soon as he was out of the apartment house.

Her office phone rang and rang, and finally he hung up before her voice mail clicked in. He'd have to call her at home. He didn't want to, but he had to know what to do next. Whom else could he ask? Still, he hesitated. The last time he'd called, a couple of days before, Professor Polson's husband had answered and said she was in the shower, and then hung up without saying good-bye, as if he were p.i.s.sed that Perry had called.

"h.e.l.lo?"

It was the husband again.

"h.e.l.lo. This is Perry Edwards, Professor Polson's-"

"Work-study," the husband said. "As usual, she's not available. I'll tell her you called again, pal."

He hung up with what sounded like the receiver slamming against a wall.

45.

Mira hadn't slept or eaten for a day and a half. For the first half hour, she tried to fake it for her cla.s.s, but that eventually proved impossible. Every time she stood up from the desk with a piece of chalk and headed for the blackboard, the blackboard telescoped away from her. She wrote the same thing on it twice without realizing that she had: Bachlabend Perchtennacht Bachlebend Perchtennacht She only noticed it when Karess Flanagan pointed out that she'd spelled it differently the second time. Then, Mira had turned around, and, indeed, there it was, misspelled the second time. She had no memory of having written it on the board the first time.

She was trying to conduct a cla.s.s on the subject of Frau Holle-Percht, the German Death Demon, the "Hidden One." It was usually one of her favorite cla.s.ses to teach. The students had been a.s.signed to read the translation of a fifteenth-century Latin ma.n.u.script from Tegemsee condemning the pagan practice of decorating houses in December to appease the Death Demon and the leaving of little cakes on the hearth for "Frau Holle and her seven lads."

It was an epiphany for eighteen-year olds, making the connection between Santa Claus and the fear of death. There was always at least one student in every cla.s.s who'd been afraid of Santa Claus as a child, and told a story of lying awake on Christmas Eve terrified.

But that day Mira got only as far as the custom of tossing little swaddled dolls into the darkness on December 24 (still practiced in a village in the Harz Mountains that Mira had visited her Fulbright year) to try to trick Frau Holle into believing she was being given the families' actual "dead" babies, and she began to tear up. Where were her own f.u.c.king babies right now?

She'd come home from an Honors College curriculum committee meeting later than she'd said she would Tuesday night because there'd been an unexpected challenge to the syllabus for her proposed upper-level seminar on Death and the Cultural Landscape. The chair of the committee wanted to know why Mira had chosen to subst.i.tute "field study" for one of the two required theses, and Mira had found herself having to explain that the field study was a precursor to the thesis, that the field study would be the foundation upon which a thesis would be written, and that it would be impossible to accomplish both in a meaningful way in fifteen weeks if she had to a.s.sign two papers.

Even Dean Fleming, who'd urged her to propose the course in the first place, had seemed skeptical, and the meeting ended with nothing more than an agreement to revisit the proposal at the next meeting, although it also managed to run an hour over.

It was raining when Mira finally got out of G.o.dwin Hall, and she had no umbrella. She was ruining her shoes, she knew-nice Italian leather pumps she'd bought on sale a few years before-but she couldn't risk calling Clark for a ride. He'd have had to bring the twins out with him in the rain, and all the car seat stuff, and he'd specifically asked Mira to get home as early as she could because he wanted to go to a meeting of the Armchair Philosophers, a book group recommended by one of the mothers from the regular Espresso Royale play dates. This mother, too, had been on her way to a degree in philosophy ("The real thing," Clark had said of her, "studying with Kurdak at Princeton"), which had been derailed by a baby. The group she'd talked Clark into joining sounded to Mira like exactly the kind of thing Clark would despise, but he seemed to want to go.

"I don't know," he'd said noncommittally, "probably a waste of time, but she said these were serious people, and that the group might save my life."

Clark snorted then at his own words, but Mira could tell that he'd confided in this coffee klatsch companion that his life needed saving, and that her advice meant something to him. Mira might have been suspicious of Clark's relationship with this female philosopher, except that a few weeks earlier, on the street outside the hardware store, Clark had introduced Mira to her (Deirdre), and Mira had seen that not only was Deirdre pregnant again-seven months-but that the rolling enormity of that pregnancy was on top of what appeared to be already a lot of excess weight. His interest really was, it seemed, solely in the club, and the idea that Clark might rekindle his pa.s.sion for philosophy filled Mira with a kind of hope that also felt like panic. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed that Clark-the one with the books piled up beside the bed, the one with the pencil tucked behind his ear.

So, now she was filled with grief for the lost opportunity of the Armchair Philosophers as she ran for their apartment, her shoes filling with water (she could literally feel the fine st.i.tches and the glue that held them together melting around her feet), knowing that it was too late. Even if she'd gotten home ten minutes earlier, Clark could not have made it across town to the meeting in time, and he was not the kind of person who showed up at something like this late. He would be furious, probably. Relieved, too, but he would be angry at her for that relief. He hadn't spoken to her since their fight the night before, except to remind her to get home on time so he could make it to the "book club for would-have-beens," and she'd a.s.sured him that she would do her best.

Mira ran through the parking area outside their apartment house so quickly that she didn't notice that their car wasn't parked in its usual s.p.a.ce, and when she found that the door to their apartment was locked, she a.s.sumed he'd done it to frustrate her, to make her have to fish through her bag to find her keys. She felt so guilty about being gone that it didn't occur to her to be furious. He was probably on the couch with the newspaper, listening to her struggle with the lock.

Then, when she'd finally gotten herself into the apartment, thrown her bag on the floor, and called out, "Clark?" and he hadn't answered, she figured he was in the bedroom, fuming, that she'd find him on his back in their bed, staring at the ceiling, an angry little lecture all prepared-or, he'd simply put on his shoes, walk past her without a word, wearing his running shorts, heading out into the rain, refusing to turn around when she spoke to him.

But when Mira went in the bedroom and he wasn't there, she put a hand to her mouth, her first thought being, Jesus Christ, he's gone to his f.u.c.king meeting and left the twins alone in the apartment.

"Andy? Matty?"

They weren't in their room. The Thomas the Tank Engine sheets were on the floor, and the dresser drawers were open: Clark had taken them with him to the meeting, she thought, and she almost laughed out loud with relief. She went into the kitchen, looked on the counter.

No note.

Typical.

He wanted to punish her. But that would be nothing compared to the guilt he'd pile on her when he got back, and told her how the twins had ruined the meeting for everyone.

Or, maybe not. Maybe Deirdre's husband was watching the kids? What was her last name? Had Clark ever mentioned it?

Mira opened the phone book, but soon realized there was no point combing it for a Deirdre. She'd simply have to wait for her punishment. She'd make it up to him with a loaf of Irish soda bread. It was her specialty. Clark loved it. Or, he used to love it.

Mira poured herself a gla.s.s of wine from a bottle they'd opened a week before, wrestled off her ruined shoes, and tossed them in the closet. She mopped up the floor with a paper towel where she'd tracked in water, and then opened the cupboards and took out the canister of flour, the little yellow box of baking soda.

The wine tasted like vinegar and rainwater and reminded her of a train station in which she'd once had to spend the night. (Was it Albania?) The station was in a small village with no hotels, no restaurants, and no one to tell her why the last train of the night hadn't arrived, or when it would. Luckily, there'd been an old man selling loaves of bread and bottles of wine to the few pa.s.sengers who, like Mira, had shown up for the train but who, unlike Mira, did not seem surprised when it didn't arrive. So, she'd drunk the entire bottle of wine, which was sour and warm, and eaten the bread, and listened to the rain until she fell asleep, and in the morning, the train blew its whistle outside the station, and the pa.s.sengers who'd waited all night for it simply handed over their tickets, and got on.

She mixed the flour and water and baking soda, and listened to Mozart. She drank a second gla.s.s of wine. The bread came out of the oven looking perfect, but, Mira thought, she wouldn't slice it until Clark got home. It would be her peace offering. She'd pour him a gla.s.s of wine, ask about the meeting. It was late, and the twins would go right to sleep if they weren't already asleep in his arms when he walked in.

It wasn't until midnight that her own stupidity began to dawn on her, the time she'd wasted baking bread, the short-sighted relaxation of the wine (how had she allowed herself the evening to relax? Who had she thought she was?) and went back into the twins' room and realized that the dresser drawers were open because Clark had packed the twins' clothes when he left with them, and that the sheets were on the floor because he'd taken their blankies with him, too. She stood staring at the room while her heart caught up with her mind, beating wildly, and then she turned to the doorway with her hands held out, empty.

What was she going to do now?

Stupidly, she thought of the cell phone plan she'd intended to sign them up for but hadn't gotten around to, getting two phones for the price of one. They had only one cell phone, and it was in her purse.

Mira stumbled into the living room and, after some frantic searching through sc.r.a.ps of paper in the junk drawer, found Clark's mother's phone number, and punched the digits in as quickly as she could with her trembling hands.

Her mother-in-law sounded startled out of a drug-enhanced sleep when she answered-panicked, confused, panting. "Kay," Mira said, "it's just me. Please, is Clark there? Are the twins with him?" After much stammering, Mira finally managed to explain, in the mildest terms and tone she could muster, that she and Clark had argued, that Clark had left with the twins, that Mira supposed they were on their way to Kay's. "Has he called you?" she asked.

"No," Kay said, but managed, even in her half sleep, to muster the maternal energy and clarity to comfort Mira. "But he'll call in the morning, honey, if he's not home before then. He's probably bringing the boys here, but it got too late, so he stopped at a motel. You two will make it up. Believe me, sweetie, if I had a dollar for every time Clark's daddy and I had a fight like this-"

The tone of her voice, quaveringly compa.s.sionate, and the image in Mira's mind of Clark's mother, her thin hair a mess on a flowered pillow, her slack cheeks creased with sleep, lying on her side talking into a telephone in the dark, wearing a ratty polyester nightie, trying to make her feel better, caused Mira to whimper, audibly, into the phone, and then Kay sounded alarmed, suddenly fully awake.

"Honey? Honey? Don't worry. Clark's not going to do anything. Clark's not like that. Clark loves you, and he loves the babies, and tomorrow you two will talk this out. Now, you get in your bed, okay, and you call me the second you hear anything, and I'll call you, too, and in a year we'll be laughing about this. I'm a lot older than you. I know about this stuff. Okay? You're listening to me?"

"Yes," Mira said. She held the receiver away from her mouth so Kay couldn't hear her voice trembling. "Thank you."

"Yes, of course. Now, you call me if you need me, but you try to sleep, okay?"

"Okay."

"Everything's going to be fine."

"Thank you, Kay."

"Good night, sweetheart."

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 shirt, 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 blushing, 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?"