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Stony River Page 20

How careful and methodical he was, journeying in Miranda’s eleventh year to the Isle of Labyrinths to seek advice from the magi there. They told him a sacred coupling would bear fruit only if it took place on the thirteenth day before Miranda’s thirteenth birthday: Bealtaine, as it happened. For two years they made ready, Miranda prouder and happier than she’d ever been, with James devoted to her preparation. He cast a spell to make her fertile. She recalls holding smooth stones he brought in from the mystical river behind their house and, when she was twelve, drinking a potion to initiate her menses.

  Frenetically now she undoes the remaining boxes but can’t locate the harp, the blade and the necklace. How could some items have found their way here but not those? The chalice, at least, has not been lost. Winding around its stem is the likeness of a faerie James said protected women from men. Its cloudy pewter surface is cool and smooth in her hands. “Peasant’s silver,” James called it. The chalice’s worth, he explained, was in its emptiness, representing as it did the vagina from which all nature is born. It held the favored position on their altar once Dagda and Danú had called them. James positioned the drinking horn below it to remind them that the wisdom that is Dagda would be prostrate at the feet of the love and compassion that is Danú. Miranda trembles at the realization that her great-grandmother, too, once lifted this very chalice to her lips and felt that first burning sip of wine.

  She extracts the wand, a hard, pale brown stick cut from a rowan tree in her great-grandmother’s native Donegal, with which James invoked Dagda and Danú. Miranda welcomed them with the tiny jingle bells. Holding the wand in one hand, jingle bells in the other, she closes her eyes and hears James’s robe brush the floor like a broom. Breathes in and out until her body is no more than a hum. Behind her eyelids, shapes billow outward—a jingle bell swelling until its keyhole-like openings rise into giant doors. Her feather self floats through one into a vast echoing chamber where James, in black robe and bare feet, lobs a metal ball against the walls, ringing the bell so loudly that Miranda must cover her ears with her hands. Her heart wants to explode with rapture. The chalice magically appears in his hand. He lifts it as to Heaven and chants, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you drink the blood of your mother, you have no life in you.” When Miranda reaches for the chalice a woman rises from it, naked and sorrowful, her arms holding out a tangerine. As Miranda tries to grasp the fruit, the woman falls from the chalice in a torrent of salt and blood. It carries her and Miranda away, through the giant bell door and into nothingness. Miranda is back in the ocean on that day she thought she might drown until James calls out, “You’ve always known how to swim!”

  She opens her eyes to Doris’s stricken face. And finds herself on the cool cement floor.

  FIFTEEN

  JUNE 22, 1957. Dearie stood up for Tereza and Herman for Buddy. Herman let them use the restaurant before it opened. They could’ve taken the big room, but Tereza chose the ladies’ lounge because it was cozy, plus she and Buddy could face the mirror and be their own audience. The lounge gave off that good clean ammonia stink. The only other person was the Justice of the Peace, a porky man in a light gray suit; you could watch the jacket ride up over his ass in the mirror as he spoke. Tereza wouldn’t have minded having Richie there, now that it was safe, but Buddy said Richie and his folks had vamoosed, like Ma, Jimmy and Allen. Tereza wanted Mary Lou, the Polaroid girl from the restaurant, to take pictures, but Dearie said the fewer folks the better so Herman brought his fancy camera from home.

  Dearie had made Tereza a sleeveless white linen dress with a scooped neck and a short veil that fell from a little crown of phony pearls. She’d swept Tereza’s hair back with fancy little combs. Tereza had bought herself satiny white shoes with four-inch heels so that Buddy wouldn’t have to bend down too far to kiss her. Herman showed up with a huge bunch of red carnations for Tereza to hold and one for Buddy’s lapel. They smelled like cloves. Buddy was in the same suit he’d worn at high-school graduation the week before. Dearie complained his black boots weren’t proper wedding gear, but Buddy said they were like a trademark.

  The ceremony was boss. Tereza nearly snorted when she found out Buddy’s real name was Eldon. The part she liked best was when he put Dearie’s “something old” silver wedding band on her finger. Tereza didn’t get to say “with this ring” for him because he said guys who wore wedding bands were sissies. When the JP said “You can now kiss the bride”—their first kiss—Buddy brushed his lips over hers so fast she hardly knew it was happening. Later, Herman popped a bottle of ginger ale.

  Tereza had been dumbstruck when Buddy asked her to marry him, especially since he’d been in a funk for a couple months and had stopped going to the movies with her. But then his boss told him A&P was looking for smart, hard-working guys to work their way up and that there was no reason he couldn’t manage a store one day; there were over four thousand. Dearie said that would be the ticket to show Buddy was the respectable type, not one to be getting in trouble, and Buddy had bucked up a little. When he found out that A&P liked their managers to be married, Dearie said why wait, do it now, otherwise Tereza was going to have to move out. Dearie wasn’t blind: she’d seen her mooning over Buddy and that spelled jailbait. Tereza thought she should become a star first, but Dearie pointed out that A&P had stores in California and Buddy could be transferred to Hollywood someday. In the end, Tereza decided it would be cool to have a husband.

  She wasn’t old enough to marry, but Dearie knew somebody who made up a phony birth certificate that said Tereza Ladonna Lange had turned sixteen in April. “One year’s difference won’t make no never mind,” Dearie claimed. Even so, she was nervous enough about it to not want a crowd at the wedding. The certificate got the month, day and state right, at least. Ma had told her she’d been born in Broken Arrow, North Dakota. Dearie found out there was no such place and figured Ma had been making a funny, so the certificate said Fargo.

  They spent the night in the hotel Tereza had tried to get into on Halloween a couple years ago. Buddy had said, “Where’d you like to go?” and Tereza knew right away. Herman booked it for them. A different guy was at the desk when Buddy signed them in as Mr. and Mrs. Eldon Jukes, both still in their wedding clothes so they’d look legit. The guy didn’t ask for their marriage license or any other ID. Just said, “We value Mr. Schottler’s business.” The room wasn’t as big as she expected but nicer than she’d ever seen, with curvylegged white furniture and a high bed. Buddy called down and asked the color of the carpet, drapes and bedspread because she wanted to know and they said “champagne.” He filled the ice bucket with water and put her carnations in it. Red and champagne looked boss together.

  They ordered room service: a steak for Buddy and for Tereza chicken à la king that didn’t live up to its royal name. Tereza had brought along strawberry-shortcake-scented bath crystals but Buddy said bubble baths weren’t manly. He agreed to watch her take one (she’d pinched the idea from True Confessions), but seeing her naked didn’t get him excited. She put on the short black nightie Dearie had bought her and said, “Hold me over your head with one arm like Richie said you could do.” He did, stripping down to skivvies first, and she felt dizzy with desire.

  They were laughing when he tossed her onto the swanky, satiny bedspread. He straddled her, bent his head and kissed her gently, his lips as soft as Wonder Bread. She pried them open with her tongue. He pulled his mouth away and rolled off her. “The human mouth is a petri dish,” he said, whatever the hell that was. He switched on the TV, said, “Look, Gunsmoke is on.” Propped up the pillows and gestured toward them. “M’lady?”

  Tereza was still on her back, staring up at the dangly lamp with bulbs that looked like candles. She took the hand Buddy held out. They sat in bed, hands on each other’s crotches, watching TV. Buddy’s balls were beanbag squishy even though she was squeezing them half to death. She pulled his limp dick through the opening in his skivvies, ducked down and put it in her mouth. He pushed her head away roughly. “W
hat are you doing?”

  “Trying to make you feel good.”

  “Don’t. It’s degrading.” He pulled away, stood and tromped to the TV. Turned it off.

  “What’s degrading mean?”Tereza thought about all the guys she’d done at Tony’s. Nobody’d ever complained before.

  “Shameful. Unbecoming a wife.”

  “Well, if you don’t get stiff, you can’t stick it in me.”

  “What kind of talk is that?” He stood by the TV popping his knuckles.

  “So, what do you want me to do?” Buddy was starting to piss her off.

  Then it was like somebody had flicked a switch on him that said Act Cool. He hunched his shoulders and stuck his arms straight out in front, hands pointing down. He staggered stiff-legged toward her. “Frankenstein vill show you,” he said.

  She laughed and screamed in mock fear. In The Creature Walks Among Us the horny man-fish monster breaks down a door to get to the blonde actress. Buddy was much better looking.

  Frankenstein grabbed her ankles and yanked them till she was flat on the bed, nightie scrunched around her waist. “Don’t move,” he said in a monster-perfect voice and made his face go blank. He straddled her, put his hands around her neck and squeezed gently. It scared her a little but it felt good, too. His dick rose through his skivvies like a tent pole. She waited for him to rip her nightie off. But he kept squeezing her neck, harder and harder, until she thought her eyes would pop out. When a little strangling sound came from her throat he pulled his hands away. He flopped onto her like a dying fish and rubbed his dick up and down against her leg.

  True Confessions had stories about guys who liked doing it crazy ways. Dearie said her wedding night had been full of surprises. You had to have an open mind.

  JULY 9, 1957. Linda would get to tell tomorrow’s flannel-board story at Summer Vacation Bible School. Eleanor Judge, the minister’s young wife, who had the loveliest honey-colored hair and didn’t need a lick of makeup, had already coached her to focus on the lesson, not the figures.

  “Don’t say, ‘Look at Noah’s bright robe and his big beard.’ Say, ‘See how Noah obeyed God and went into the ark.’” To Mrs. Judge, Bible lessons all came down to this: when we get too full of ourselves and forget God’s in charge, it turns out badly.

  Today’s lesson was about the pitiful Job. Because the Sundayschool rooms trapped the heat, leaving her charges whiny and listless, Mrs. Judge had taken the eight boys and twelve girls into the cooler sanctuary where they sat, cross-legged, on the burgundy-carpeted dais below the altar. Linda and Mrs. Judge presided on altar chair thrones, the flannel board on an easel between them. Had Linda known they’d be entering the sanctuary, she would’ve worn a dress like Mrs. Judge, not her irreverent Bermuda shorts and peasant blouse.

  As Mrs. Judge recited Job’s story, Linda placed the flannelbacked paper people, animals and objects on the soft cloth board. Some figures appeared in more than one story. Add paper crown and sword to Joseph, for example, and he doubled as the clever King Solomon whose proposal to slice a baby in half made children gasp in horror. The figure Linda put up now, a kneeling man in a loincloth whose paper face was spotted with boils and whose hands were raised to Heaven in perpetual anguish, could only be Job.

  “Ooh,” the children’s sad voices said when God let Satan take away all the animals that had made Job the richest man in the land. They had to pretend that the single woolly sheep Linda placed on the board was equal to seven thousand, the camel to three thousand, the ox and donkey to five hundred each. “Yay!” they said at the end when God rewarded Job with twice as many animals as he’d lost. All because he finally got it: don’t question God. He’s the most powerful being in the universe. He gives and takes away because He can.

  “Twice as many,” Mrs. Judge said with awe in her voice. “Can anyone imagine such a number?” The nine-year-old daughter of Hungarian refugees the church had sponsored last year raised her hand. “Bless your heart,” Mrs. Judge said.

  Old Mrs. Lambert banged away at the ancient upright’s sticking keys—the organ was only for Sundays—as everyone sang “This Is My Father’s World.” The words in the rustling grass I hear him pass; he speaks to me everywhere made Linda tear up because God had never spoken to her and she wanted Him to so badly.

  Job’s lesson, Mrs. Judge said, was that we should accept suffering with patience, trust and humility. “God lets us suffer because He loves us and wants us to be lovable to others, too,” she told the children. “Imagine your mom and dad gave you a puppy.”

  A boy in the front row clapped.

  “Thank you Jeffrey. Now, if you didn’t train it to behave, no one but you would love your puppy and want to be near it. So, if you’re suffering, it’s because God’s training you to become more lovable.”

  Was God training Betty Wise?

  The two weeks of Vacation Bible School were up Friday. Linda would be stuck at home listening to things that made her want to cut her ears off:

  He seemed happy enough to leave, didn’t he?

  When you’re married, men have certain demands. They don’t care if it hurts.

  Mom stayed upstairs when Daddy visited, and would later ask, “What did your father have to say for himself tonight?” Linda would shrug, go to her room, eat cookies she’d stashed under the bed and add to her list of those worse off than her: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s kids, Anne Frank, the Hungarian refugees River Street Methodist wasn’t able to sponsor, most colored people, lepers, kids with polio. All worse off than Betty Wise, too. Linda had tried to nudge her mother toward more positive thinking with magazine articles about people who’d overcome terrible odds, like the armless woman who painted landscapes holding a brush in her teeth, until Mom had said, “I know what you’re doing. You and your father think everyone has to be useful, like a potato peeler. Well, I’m not a potato peeler.”

  After the flannel-board lesson, Linda herded the kids into the main hall where they drew pictures of Job’s animals until their parents arrived to pick them up. Mrs. Judge sent Linda off with Rice Krispies squares left over from the mid-morning snack. Yesterday it had been chocolate chip cookies; the day before, brownies. “For your mom,” Mrs. Judge would say, but Linda would gobble them all on the way home.

  Today she’d take the longer route past the A&P. They were out of bread and tea bags. She’d rather get Job’s boils than shop at Rolf’s. The A&P was next to a soda fountain where she planned to sit at the marble counter on a swively red-padded stool and order a cherry Coke. She wasn’t in a hurry.

  When Linda got home, Mom would be in her room, lying primly on her chenille bedspread, ankles crossed, fanning herself with The Ladies’ Home Journal. She’d moan about how “boiling hot” it was, as she’d done for the past three days. Linda would have to adjust her eyes to the dim light; the drawn curtains created a permanent dusk. She’d sit on the dressing table bench while her mother went into revolting detail about constipation and stool softeners. She’d count the hours until Daddy stopped by for their nightly chat. He’d hug her as though he hadn’t seen her for weeks. They hardly ever ran out of things to say to each other; when they did, they watched TV.

  It would take forty minutes to get to her front door.

  Forty minutes to remind herself God was in charge.

  BETTY SPRAWLED on the sagging couch, one shoeless foot on the floor. She was recovering from taking the bus in boiling heat to and from Lou’s office and having talked him into giving her a job. Golly, where she’d gotten the gumption she didn’t know. Her heart was still banging around in her chest.

  She hadn’t gone to her appointment with a job in mind. But while Lou Pierce’s nurse, Rose, was taking her blood pressure and complaining about having to work overtime, the idea leaped up and shook hands with Betty’s brain. “He pays me for the time,” Rose said, “but I’m a nurse, not a bookkeeper. And I need to be home with my kids more.”

  “Why doesn’t he hire someone else?”

  “He’
s tried. Can’t find anyone willing to come in the odd hours he needs them.”

  Betty had worked as church secretary after she came to New Jersey. That was how she’d met Roger. “Why not hire me?” she asked Lou later, quaking inside at her own temerity. “I can type, keep accounts. And I’m free to come in anytime you want, provided the bus is running.”

  “Heart’s good. Lungs are clear,” he said, pulling the stethoscope from his fleshy ears. “What about the pain?”

  “You told Roger it’s all in my head, right? Maybe I just need to be busy. How about it, Lou? Put your money where your mouth is.”

  She got him good with that one. His wide, normally pale face went strawberry.

  She’d start on Thursday. Wouldn’t Linda be surprised!

  Betty had known Lou for years; he’d seen Mother Wise through her cancer. She’d only come to like him since Roger left. She got so much more out of talking to him without Roger circling about, jumping in to contradict her. As if she didn’t know her own pain or how little she slept. She’d convinced Lou to stop giving her pills that made her dopey. She needed to be alert for Linda’s sake, get her back to eating better.

  When Roger left, a great silence had fallen over the house, awful and swell at the same time. For the first few days, Betty was afraid she’d balled up the works for Linda and herself. But something she couldn’t name had been writhing to get out of her. She’d dreaded Roger’s footsteps on the stairs to their room when he got home from work, the twist of the doorknob, his infuriating “How’s my Sleeping Beauty today?” He knew she rarely slept, even at night. The certainty of pain kept her as vigilant as a new mother. Even now the area around her rib cage was tight, causing her to take baby breaths and pant like a dog. She never knew when the tightness would work its way down to her pelvis and turn into fire.

  Reverend Judge had come to pray over her shortly after Roger moved out. He said pain’s divine purpose was to shatter the illusion that we were self-sufficient, to remind us we must submit to God’s will. His words were no comfort at all.