A Gift Upon the Shore (33 page)

Grace bursts out, “Jeremiah, you couldn't do that to Miriam!”

And Esther: “It would leave her children motherless.”

And Enid, “But where would she
go
?”

“I don't care,” Jerry says dully. “South, I suppose, to find the other survivors from the Ark.”

Miriam is silent, staring at her half-brother as if he were a stranger who had just slipped a knife between her ribs. Jerry doesn't waver, but neither does he look at her. He says to the rest of us, “This meeting is over. Let us pray.” And he raises his locked hands, bends his head over them. “Almighty God, we pray that you will guide us in the ways of your love, that you will help us find understanding, one with another, that you will succor us in this our time of need. Amen.”

That is undoubtedly the briefest prayer he has ever spoken, and the women are caught short with their
amens
. He doesn't seem to notice. He looks up and repeats, “This meeting is
over
.”

It is still a few seconds before that pronouncement has any effect. Bernadette rises first, reaching for one of the candlesticks. She hasn't said a word throughout this confrontation, but the dispassionate curiosity that typically glints in her eyes has gone dull. She glances at me, shakes her head wearily, then: “Come on, Enid. Let's go to bed.”

Enid is dazed and at first seems deaf. Finally, as if she were weighted with invisible chains, she pulls herself to her feet and picks up a candle.

Grace, still indignant, starts to say something to Jerry, apparently thinks better of it, and gives me a look no doubt meant to be withering. “Miriam, you're not alone, Sister.” With that she joins Enid and Bernadette, who are already on their way out the backdoor.

Esther comes to her feet, silver tears streaking her bronze cheeks. Without a word, she picks up a candle and goes to the basement door. I hear her footsteps on the stairs as Miriam silently rises.

She takes a candle, turns to leave, and Jerry speaks. She stops.

“Miriam,
I
will conduct morning service tomorrow.”

That is not only foolish, it is inexcusable. He wasn't driven to that.

Miriam's only visible response is the marble pallor of her face. Her voice is uninflected, pitched low as she turns to Jerry. “I'll pray for you, Jeremiah.” She goes to the basement door, closes it softly behind her, leaving Jerry and me sitting at either end of the long table in the flickering light of the two remaining candles.

“Jerry, I beg of you, don't take the morning service away from her.”

He looks at me questioningly, some of the tension in his features dissolving. “You're kind and forgiving to ask that, Mary, but I must—”

“Kind and forgiving has nothing to do with it! She's been forced to her knees. It isn't necessary to add a beating.”

“
I
consider it necessary, and I'm Elder here. Mary, why are you standing up for her?”

“I'm trying to avoid a worse schism than we already have. Do you think she's just going to bow her head and meekly do your bidding from now on?”

“Yes! That's exactly what she's going to do.” He rises, frowning. “I don't understand you. I'd think you'd be more . . .”

“Grateful?” I take a deep breath, remembering how young he is, how little experience he's actually had with people. “Yes, Jerry, I'm grateful to you for defending me. But you did it for the wrong reason. You
had
to defend me, because Miriam made her attack on me an attack on you and your authority as Elder.”

“I did what I thought was right! What else could I do but defend my own mother?”

I'm too bewildered to respond to that, and he seems annoyed at himself. He comes to my end of the table, sits down in the chair nearest me. “I realize you wanted it kept secret, Mary, but I know all about it.”

I feel dizzied, as if I suddenly found myself on stage in the middle of a play and didn't know my lines or have an inkling of the plot.

“Jerry, what are you talking about?”

“I know, that's what I'm talking about. I know you're my mother.”

I'm too stunned to do anything but ask, “How could you
know
that, Jerry? Did . . . Luke tell you I was your mother?”

“Not in so many words, but he told me you bore his child. It was conceived in love, he said. He took me into his household after the woman who called herself my mother died, and sometimes at night I'd find him by the fire in the kitchen, and he'd be . . . crying. And he'd talk about you. He never talked about you to anybody else, and I knew then that I was the child conceived in love.”

“But no one actually told you I was your mother, did they?”

“No. People at the Ark didn't talk about you. But I knew.”

He looks at me with a trusting smile, looks at me with Luke's eyes, and I'm tempted to let him go on believing what he wants to believe. And I wonder if it wasn't in the depths of grief for his mother that he decided to be the child conceived in love whom his father loved.

So, what do I tell him now? I've never lied to him, to any of these people, unless it seemed absolutely necessary. When you speak to a child, you speak as a child. But I can't bring myself to lie to Jerry about this, however childlike he seems now.

I take his strong, muscular hand in my weak, ugly one. “Oh, Jerry, I wish . . . I wish you
were
my son. I look at you and see Luke in you, and I wish I were a part of you. But I'm not. Jerry, you . . . you're not my son. You were over a year old when I came to the Ark.”

He looks at me with the incredulous denial of a man told he is about to die. His head moves back and forth slowly, and finally, with a muffled cry, he pulls his hand away from mine, lurches to his feet, and in his eyes doubt turns to accusation. “But . . . why didn't you
tell
me?”

And I recoil from his accusing gaze with the hurt welling from deep within me, and it takes the shape of anger. I didn't want the childish assumptions and expectations he created for me.

“How
could
I tell you? I didn't know you thought I was your mother. And what difference does it make? Are you different because I'm not your mother? Is your life different than it would've been? Aren't I the same person you've known all these years?”

He retreats from me, shakes his head again in mute response to emotions he can't verbalize, until at length, he forces out, “It
does
make a difference! I—I've been a fool. And you . . . I
loved
you, Mary.”

“You weren't a fool to think I was your mother. That was just a misunderstanding. But you
are
a fool if you think love depends on sharing common genes.”

He's too full of his disappointment and pain to hear me. But I have disappointment and pain of my own to deal with. I told him he had defended me for the wrong reason, but I didn't know there was another reason beyond Miriam's challenge to his authority. He thought he was defending his mother. And both reasons are so petty in light of the principle involved in that confrontation that I feel sick with disgust.

“Jerry, you need to do some thinking. Some soul-searching. You have a lot to learn about people, about life, and especially about love.”

He opens his mouth as if to speak, but he doesn't. He picks up a candlestick, nearly quenching the flame in his haste, then stalks away toward his room. I hear his door slam. For a while I sit in the light of the last candle, listening to the silence, remembering the years of silence I spent here before Jerry and the others came. No, not utter silence. I always had the sea.
I am here
. . . .

Shadow comes out of the darkness, nudges my arm, and asks to be petted. I oblige her, sighing for the simplicity of her affection. I have in my life often been as alone and vulnerable as I am now, but never so bone-weary.

But there will be no rest for these weary bones.

I am a slightly ridiculous, sad, old, distaff Quixote going out to do battle. For the future, because I am a human being, and my species discovered the future, and I can't free myself of its hold on me.

Miriam hasn't surrendered, and neither have I.

Jerry gave a moving sermon at the morning service, so Enid told me. His text was from the Beatitudes:
Blessed are the peacemakers
.

On the morning after the confrontation at the family meeting, the adult members of the family are assiduously behaving as if nothing has happened. We make conversation over breakfast about the weather—no rain, but the barometer is falling—about the livestock, the garden, the tasks that need to be done today. Miriam is the exception to the business-as-usual attitude. She remains silent, unless directly addressed, watching the rest of us with eyes that seem dead, as if the fires of anger had been so thoroughly banked, not even an ember glows.

She is playing a game with us today. Having been stripped of part of her power, she has abdicated the rest of it. She gives no orders, tells no one what should be done. This forces the other women to ask her for instructions, but, with a show of humility, she tells them to ask Jerry. At first, Jerry doesn't recognize the game and tries to make decisions on matters he knows little about, which leaves him looking inept.

But on the surface, all is well, which is to say there are no overt disagreements, no reminders of what happened last night. The surface harmony is for the children. At least, if I asked the adults, that would be their answer. But the children aren't deceived.

I remember there were times when Rachel and I had disagreements, when resentment accumulated until it became explosive. Our answer—one never verbalized—was to maintain surface appearances, going about our daily chores as if nothing was wrong, until our tempers cooled, until finally the time came around right, and we would talk out the sources of dissension and embrace in renewed love. Something similar is going on in the family now, but it won't work.

Miriam won't let it work.

She will pry at the cracks in the familial foundations until they collapse. But she won't be blamed. I will. Already, I can see open animosity for me in Grace's eyes, and in Enid's eyes, a profound doubt. Esther is still bewildered, more than doubtful. And Jerry? His resentment for Miriam and for me seems equal, and it is underlain with confusion that prevents me from feeling the same resentment for him.

After breakfast I go out into the greenhouse. The tomatoes are doing well this year, and Bernadette's arcane garden is flourishing, including the thick-leafed aloe that is a scion of the plant Rachel had growing here when I first came to Amarna. The poppies are beginning to bloom, unfurling crumpled silk petals of burning red around charcoal centers. They grow remarkably well in this artificial environment.

“Pretty things, aren't they?” Bernadette comes into the greenhouse from the north door. “I wonder sometimes if they aren't trying to tell the world they're full of miracles. Full of sleep for the sleepless, comfort for those in pain. Full of death.”

She doesn't wait for a reply or expect one, but goes to the worktable, takes up a small pestle, and begins grinding dried leaves in a bisque porcelain bowl. I approach the table and ask, “What's that, Bernadette?”

“Comfrey. Can't you smell it?” She hands me a dusty-scented leaf. “Good for vitamin
B
₁₂
. I'll fix you some comfrey tea later. You're looking sort of peaked, Mary.”

“Am I? Well, I'll take your expert word for that. Besides, I rather like your comfrey tea.”

“Little honey in it. That helps.”

She continues grinding, and the soft growl of the pestle seems to follow me as I cross the greenhouse to the sliding door on the south wall that opens into my room. I'm at the door before she speaks again.

“Mary . . .” I turn, find her studying me intently. She says, “Be careful, Sister. You're an old woman. Old women are apt to die.”

Those words strike with a chill incongruous in this tropical pocket of space with its sun-drenched banks of foliage.

Yes. This old woman's death would certainly solve Miriam's problems. I hadn't considered this alternative. It hadn't occurred to me that Miriam might rid herself and the family of my evil influence by the simple expedient of ridding herself and the family of me. But it has occurred to Bernadette, and I trust her judgment.

“Thank you, Bernadette.” I go into my room to get the books I'd set aside for school. It's almost time.

Miriam's children seem glad to be back in school, but I find it difficult to concentrate. We practice addition and subtraction, recite multiplication tables, and Jonathan demonstrates some simple algebra. We study history; we're up to the dark ages in Europe. We read poetry. “My life closed twice before its close. . . .” We gather around the globe for a game of Where-in-the-World. We talk about crustaceans; Stephen brought a hermit crab from the tide pools. And at the end of our allotted time, I'm not sure what I've said or the children have learned.

Afterward, Shadow and I set out for the beach, and when I reach the foot of the path, I realize the tide is nearly high. I should've known it would be. I pick my way over sea-smoothed cobbles, then walk north on the margin of sand still above the reach of the waves. The surf has a throbbing rumble that I don't so much hear as feel. The breakers have whipped the foam to a creamy froth, and Shadow spatters through the scallops of incoming waves until she's belly-deep in foam, making small blizzards as her headlong gallop shatters the ivory mounds.

And I consider my own murder.

Is Miriam capable of murder? Probably. It wouldn't be murder in her eyes. She'd be ridding the world—her world, small as it is—of a source of evil, a purveyor of blasphemy, a corruptor of children's souls.

And my death would be her ultimate justification.

At least, it would be if it seemed an accident. An act of god. For Miriam's purposes, my death must be an act of god.