The Raising Read Free

ASSIST , on it in alarmingly large black capital letters. What event? What assist? Craig would also learn later that this was the standard T-shirt worn by Perry’s Scout troop when they helped out in the parking lots of state fairs and Civil War reenactments. He just liked to wear it, whether he was assisting any events or not, and at the moment, it struck Craig as disorienting.
    “Hello!” Perry said, closing his book.
    “Hey,” Craig said, and then, “I guess I’m your roommate,” shrugging, feeling noncommittal, but Perry stood up quickly and offered his hand to Craig, shook it firmly, and then went around the room shaking the hands of each of Craig’s family members—even Scar, shaggy bangs falling across his face, who stood openmouthed before this new breed of human being. Had Scar ever seen a person under the age of twenty-five shake another person’s hand, except on television, or as a joke?
    Had Craig ?
    “Welcome,” Perry said, and then, without a hint of irony, gesturing around, “Sorry the place is such a mess.”
    They all looked at the room at once:
    Four bare walls, a dustless linoleum floor, two closets with doors closed. Perry’s bed was made. (A green comforter. A pillow in a plaid pillowcase.) Where was the mess?
    “Where are you from?” Craig’s mother asked Perry in a tone that suggested she fully expected Perry to admit that he’d been assembled in a laboratory, or that he’d grown up on the moon.
    “Bad Axe,” Perry said, as if everyone would be familiar with “Bad Axe.”
    “No way,” Scar said, sounding sincerely astonished.
    “Yeah,” Perry said. He held up his hand and pointed at his thumb, as if that might explain something. “What about you?”
    “New Hampshire,” Craig’s mother said. “Via Boston,” she added, as she always did, and Craig’s father stiffened, as he always did—but Craig could tell, by looking at Perry, that none of this meant anything to him.
    N ow, obviously, a year later, Perry had given Craig the better room in the apartment. The closet was large, and the window faced the backyard instead of the street.
    “Don’t you think?” Craig’s father asked. “I mean, that it’s a great apartment? A lot better than the dorm?”
    “Yeah,” Craig said, trying hard to sound appreciative. “It’s great.”
    “We were pretty lucky,” Perry said. “Leaving it so late. It’s got a good view.” He walked across Craig’s room to the window and gestured out. Craig and his father followed, looked down into the backyard, where two girls of the bed-head-and-belly-button-ring variety were lying in bikinis on towels. Glistening in the sun. Their hipbones seemed to glow under their tanning skin. Craig looked away fast. His father and Perry looked at him, and then both cleared their throats at the same time.
    “So. Shall we get something to eat?” Craig’s father asked. “Before I head back to New Hampshire?”
    “You’re going back already?” Perry asked. “We can put you up for a night, Mr. Clements. Or for as long as you like.”
    “No. No,” Craig’s father said, shaking his head, making the expression of someone who’d just been offered a lifesaving drug but who didn’t want to bother anyone to go to the cupboard to fetch it. Clearly he wanted to escape. “I really need to—”
    Perry nodded, pretending Rod Clements had finished the sentence with something that explained it—although Craig knew that there could be nothing his father needed to get back to New Hampshire for so fast. His father was a writer. He was in the middle of writing a one-thousand-page sequel to his last novel. He hadn’t sat down at the computer to work on it since Christmas.
    Craig knew precisely why his father wanted to get out of there as quickly as he could. If there was anything Rod Clements couldn’t stand, it was to see anyone he cared about suffer. Even as a child, Craig had intuitively understood that it would have been easier for his father to shoot