The Language of Paradise: A Novel (43 page)

Gideon watches these antics tensely.
M. treats baby like a toy
, he writes in the message book.
Don’t worry
, Sophy answers,
you can trust his hands
. In a way, Aleph
is
a toy for her brother. Micah was the youngest, everyone’s favorite, but isolated by his infirmity. She had been his only playmate, and she was four years older. She remembers how clever he was as a little child, how eager to learn. He talked early, as Mama predicted. He has been trying to catch up with himself ever since.

“You’ve tired him out,” Sophy says, after restoring Aleph to his cradle. “Now he’ll sleep all day and wake us in the middle of the night.”

Micah shrugs. Speech has become such an effort for him that he no longer wastes words on trivial matters. His stuttering has gotten worse since Mama died. Sophy thinks it’s the strain of being stretched between two households, each a fractured remnant of the family he once had. He is the only link between them, but however hard he tries, he can never mend what has been broken.

“We’ll talk later,” she says, releasing him to the garden, where Gideon and Leander are waiting. She has Micah’s unexpected visit and Aleph’s early nap time to thank for this rare respite. When the baby is awake, one of the men is always with her, and even when he sleeps they’re never far, keeping watch to make sure she doesn’t break the trust. Thus far, her transgressions have been too subtle to alarm them. Sophy spoke to her son when he was inside her, and she speaks to him now in her thoughts. Only a few short months have passed since he was bathed in her juices and lulled by the drumming of her heart. They are still close enough that he can hear her without words, but as he gets older he’ll grow away from her. She must find a way to do more while she can.

Lately she’s been bolder. When Gideon is lost in study or expanding on his observations in the journal, she will sometimes hold the baby close to her face and whisper in his ear, or shape an endearment with her lips and punctuate it with a kiss.

Sophy steals back to the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Aleph has thrown off his blanket and is sleeping on his back, one arm thrown over his chest. Soon he’ll be turning over, he’s right on the cusp. She’s restrained herself for so long that her throat closes; she manages a raspy “Ahhh” before his name emerges. “Mama,” she says, pointing to her bosom as if he can see her; then, risking, “Mama loves Aleph.” The baby stirs, whimpering, and her skin creeps with the certainty that someone is outside the door. She adjusts the coverlet and makes it snug around him. She had hoped to give him more, but he has three new words, at least, to add to the others that have slipped through the net. Leander’s exclamation when he was born. The doctor’s chatter when he examined him. The sentences they’ve all started, blurted out of habit before a warning finger cuts them off. Words that can’t be taken back. She counts them like coins. One day Aleph will open his mouth, and out will pour treasure.

Outside the door, the house is empty and still. It hardly matters. Leander haunts her, whether he is here or not. It is impossible, now, for her to stand aloof from him. The man has pulled a baby out of her. He has a knowledge of her that Gideon never possessed, even in the days when they still made love. Leander gave her the gift of her son and probably saved her life, yet she can’t thank him for it. She thinks instead, what more will you take?

MICAH HAS ALWAYS
had a hearty appetite, but lately he eats like a starving man. He has worked his way through two bowls of stew without resting his spoon, and has designs on a third. Sophy doubts there’ll be enough left in the pot for supper.

“You and James, you’re managing with the cooking?” Leander asks. They all try to pose their questions in a fashion that will be easy for him to answer.

Micah shakes his head. “N-n-nocooking. W-weeatwhat’shandy, m-m-moh, momohmoh—mostlycold.” Struggling up the slope, sliding down. Sometimes he never makes it to the top.

“The poor fellow is still grieving his losses. Sorrow upon sorrow. I would ask him to share a meal with us, but he would never come.”

And what wiles would you work on him if he did? Sophy thinks.

“H-h-huh-huh—” Micah grabs his throat, as if he would force the word out. She knows he isn’t choking, but the effect is the same. He brings up a resonant belch. Looks down at his plate, reddening, though no one is smiling.

“
Alliteratio
,” Leander pronounces. Sententious, a doctor naming a malady. “Moses’s curse. Also his blessing.”

Gideon sends her a look across the table. Papa’s dinner-table sermons on the subject of Micah’s stuttering are lamentably fresh in both their minds.

“Moses flings himself at the first letter again and again, begging entrance to the word, but there it stands like the angel at the gate, waving its flaming sword whenever he comes near. With each attempt, he puts his whole soul into the struggle. Eventually his pleas reach the ear of the Almighty, who hears a prayer like an incantation, a rhythm that transfixes like a spell. ‘So,’ says the Holy One, ‘here we have a man who loves my letters so much he can’t let them go. Such a man will I send to lead my people out of Egypt.’ When Moses protests that he is slow of tongue, the Lord tells him, ‘My boy, you’re already a magician. All you need are a few tricks to impress the elders.’”

He plants his forearms on the table and leans close to Micah. “You suffer because your tongue is slow, but we are the ones who lag behind. Words come easily to us, so we use them carelessly. We spit them out like apple pips and never look to see where they land. You value each syllable for its full worth; you test your strength against it and respect its power. When our experiment begins to bear fruit, you will be holding Aleph by the hand, striding ahead of us to the Promised Land. In fact”—he reaches two fingers to tap Micah’s wrist—“I have been thinking you ought to consider moving in with us. The second floor could be yours, for now. Do the finishing work and claim it as your kingdom. You would blossom here—and I don’t have to tell you that we could use your skills.”

Micah chews his lip. He looks to Sophy.

“How would James manage?” she says quickly. “He is our brother. We can’t leave him to cope with the house and farm by himself.”

“It might be the best thing for him,” Gideon says. “The church is his family now. I had the impression that Entwhistle is a little jealous of him. He’s become Mendham’s pet, your sainted father without the manner. If you were to leave, Micah, he’d be more likely to find the good Christian wife he should have courted to begin with, and start again.” Seeing Micah’s face, he added, “Not that you’re a burden to him. But James is a brooder, he clings to the past. You tie him to his old life.”

Sophy is startled by Gideon’s quick assent. Usually he takes a while to assimilate Leander’s swerves and leaps. He said once that Micah would always be part of their family, but that was before he had a son of his own.

“Micah is reaching an age where he can make decisions for himself,” Leander says. “How many years are you, boy?”

“S-s-sixteen.”

“Almost a man! By the time I was sixteen, I had already plotted my escape. I ran away to the nearest port to be a seaman on a merchant ship, but my father had a long arm and fetched me back.” He peers at Micah under heavy lids. “When it comes to making plans, it is sometimes a great impediment to have a parent.”

THEY HAVE THEIR MOMENT
alone later in the afternoon. Lem arrives to consult with Gideon and Leander about building a stone wall around the house, and at first sight of him, Micah takes refuge in the glasshouse to help Sophy with the potting. Spring is fickle in Massachusetts; they are starting some plants indoors in case the cold comes back again. She finds it satisfying to bed the wispy seedlings, pat fresh earth around them with fingers practiced at tucking in. Leander is convinced they’ll sprout like Jack’s beanstalk and sprint up to the ceiling by summer’s end. Sophy doesn’t want these babies to grow up too quickly. She hopes for cloudy days and cold spells—any whim of nature that will preserve her view.

“Would you actually come here?” She hushes her voice by instinct now. “They don’t know where your loyalties lie. Keeping you near is their way of making sure of you.”

Micah shakes his head. “J-J-James w-w-w. . .”

If she waits for him to expel the words banking in his throat, there’ll be no time to talk. The message book is too risky. Scanning the room, she lights on her old sketchbook, stowed in a corner alongside her paintings. The last used page is filled with her failed sketches of Leander. She turns it over quickly. One way or another, he is always watching.

Micah writes with his wrist curved inward, fencing the letters in as he shapes them.
James will never let me go. Thinks y’r house is curs’t.

“How cursed?” Sophy asks.

Some folks at meeting say L. keeps you all Mezmerized. Ask where is Sophy? Baby never baptized. Gossips talk Devil worship. Stupid women but James listens
.

Sophy’s eyes sting. These are the people she grew up with. Papa’s congregation, the wayward sheep he chastised on Sunday. She has always been a trifle strange in their sight—she will own that—but still the Reverend’s daughter, secure under the Hedge mantle. Now they suspect her of dancing with the Devil?

“Leander is often in the village, and Gideon goes there to teach. Is it really so odd to keep a newborn at home during the winter?”

Folks fear what they don’t see. Come to meeting. I’ll bring you myself.

“You know they won’t let me take the baby. I can’t leave him, he’s too young.”

But she is blinking tears now at the thought of sitting beside Micah in the wagon, wheels jouncing under them as the horse picks its way over rough road, the trees thinning to meadow as they approach the village.
Come to meeting
, he writes, as if she could put on her bonnet and waltz through the door. How many months have they kept her in this house, confined her to their company? She and Aleph might as well be prisoners. The idea shocks, as if another mouth had spoken it. Absurd to fling such a term at a woman living in a fine house with her husband and son, comfortably secluded. But what other name for those who aren’t free to leave?

She’s thought of escape before, but always as a distant possibility, an extreme remedy should the sickness turn mortal. For the first time she wonders, where would we go?

“Does James . . . ask about us?” She trusts Micah to tease out the other questions embedded in this one. Does he look upon me still as his sister? If I turned up at his door with Aleph, would he take us in?

Micah writes:
Asking is not James’s way.
He thunders about school Leander promised, believes himself fooled. “House sewn in corruption, corrupts all within.”
Gideon & Leander are giv’n over, but you are family, w’ld save you and baby if he c’ld.

She smiles at “sewn in”—a more apt description of their circumstances than he knows. “I must be fallen very low if James thinks I need saving. I’m not sure I could bear being the Prodigal Sister. It would be too grim to be grateful for my brother’s charity and put on my church face every day at home—or what passes for home without Mama.” True as far as it goes, though it’s her own mother’s fate she’s thinking of. “If I have to choose between jails, maybe I’m better off where I am. But I’ll go if I must, for Aleph’s sake.”

He starts to write, bearing down so hard that the lead in the pencil breaks. He tosses it aside. “N-n-n-never go back, Sophy! Nojoy. No JOY!”

She understands, finally, what he swallows each day in patient silence. An ocean of words and thoughts, phrase after phrase gulped whole like Jonah, alive but undigested. The steady trickle of condescension from those who presume his mind is as slow as his speech. Grief and more grief, his parents dead in quick succession, his sister in jeopardy, the lively household of his childhood reduced to a rigid overseer who used to be his favorite brother. The daily bread of solitude that sustained him all the years of his growing up pinched to loneliness.

Sophy opens her arms and he comes to her, just as he did when he was small. He is tall and large-boned like Mama, but thin for his frame—nowhere near the girth of a man, whatever Leander says. His wing bones are as sharp as elbows, she can feel his ribs. His big, tousled head flops over her shoulder, too heavy for its slender stalk. A body like this—how much can it hold before it breaks?

CHAPTER 35

____

LAYING STONE

O
NE ON TWO, TWO ON ONE
.
THE METHOD FOR BUILDING A
stone wall was as elemental as the material. Leander would not stop trilling about the simplicity and economy of the process, the generous New England soil that spewed up stout rocks each winter, to be collected and stacked in orderly piles around the cleared land. “Such a marvelous efficiency on nature’s part to give us the means to protect our gardens.” He had even made a rhyme of it, which he persisted in singing in a booming bass: “ONE on two, TWO on one, pile the stones ’til our wall be DONE!”—rather, Gideon thought, as if he and Micah and Lem and his brother, passing rocks from hand to hand, were Nubian slaves chained at the ankle. If only the relentless rhythm had a numbing effect, it would be tolerable, but pain grooved deeper in his back and shoulders with each bend-and-lift, and the hinges of his arms felt as brittle as a marionette’s. He would be as lame as a man twice his age by the time they finished.