The Third Grace (10 page)

Aglaia was curious, at the time, about her own positive responsiveness towards the homey comfort, as if she missed the domesticity of farm and family more than she admitted. Most of her friends were of a different ilk altogether—working girls she met over drinks, who valued their independence and talked about the beaches at all-inclusive resorts in Cancun or the availability of men at their favorite clubs in the city. Then there was Lou, of course—but was she really a friend or was theirs another work-related association? Aglaia wasn't sure.

She turned the ice pack over on her ankle, which was numb but less swollen, and resumed her consideration of the issue of friendship. Now, Dayna Yates had been a surprise. They'd never formally met back in their teens, as Dayna was closer to Joel in age. But Aglaia hadn't forgotten the striking city visitor who cut such a wide swath as a teen in the village. She recognized her the day they met at the gym, when Dayna took her place on the stationary bike beside her and initiated the conversation

“Aglaia is an unusual name,” Dayna had said after introductions, “but I met someone with your surname once in a small town in Nebraska—a Joel Klassen. Any relation?”

She nodded. “He was my brother.”

“What a coincidence,” Dayna said, pausing to select the program on her bicycle. “He died, didn't he?”

Not many people asked such a question so directly, and it took Aglaia's breath away to hear it aloud. But Dayna looked Aglaia square in the face without apology or embarrassment and went on. “He was the nicest guy I met in Tiege. He once said something about wanting a girlfriend just like his sister.”

That was Joel, all right.

“But you didn't know him well. I mean, you were only around for that one summer, weren't you?” Aglaia asked

“Yeah—party season. That was quite the vacation,” Dayna said, pumping hard now on her bike so that the small towel hanging from her handlebar swung back and forth. “Joel asked me to that church club of his once, but I was too high and mighty then to risk my reputation.” She chirped out a laugh of self-derision. “I'd never known any guy to be so respectful of girls—opening doors for us and standing when we entered the room. He sure took some ribbing over that, didn't he?”

“But you invited him to one of your parties,” Aglaia said. She recalled Joel coming home early that night, leaving François to his mischief—whatever that was. “You were kind to include him.”

“I was a snot.” Dayna laughed outright at herself now. “I was only thinking that he was of legal drinking age and would chip in for the keg. I never invited him again. Do you know that night he never even drank one beer? He sat alone and nursed a cola. When a fight broke out over some girl, he tried to give her a ride home but she was pretty far gone by then. Way too happy.” Dayna shook her head. “Thankfully we all grow up eventually.”

At that, Aglaia pedaled faster. Joel never got the chance to grow up. Dayna must have understood; she changed the subject.

Since her reunion with Dayna at the gym, Aglaia thought, even before Lou came into the mix, their relationship took the same pattern. Dayna would approach a question head on—just put it out there and accept the response, along with any blame she herself might bear. But she wasn't afraid to place blame, either, as was evident when the subject of Lou Chapman came up a few days ago.

“Why do you spend time with that woman?” Dayna had asked. “She's full of herself and she's a user.”

Aglaia was taken aback by Dayna's criticism. “Isn't there some sort of loyalty you academics have for each other?” she asked.

“Only when it's earned,” Dayna said, shaking her head. “Lou's literary theory is flawed, she lacks a consistent hermeneutic, and she employs a moderated esotericism as the authoritative subtext informing the academy. Her revisionist presuppositions interfere with proper scholarship.” Aglaia thought Dayna noticed her lack of comprehension about this time because she dropped the lingo and explained, “I'm no proponent of religion, Aglaia—even if I do send our daughter to Sunday school. But Lou makes a point of emphatically denying the impact of Christian civilization on society. I find it absurd that she distorts the historical record like that—it can't hold water and it ends up bringing aspersion on our discipline as a whole. We don't need that kind of bias. Besides,” she added, “it's well known around the university that Lou oversteps her bounds with the students and even uses their research in her journal articles without crediting their work. It's just not right.”

Aglaia hadn't welcomed the information; it didn't line up with her perception of Lou's standing at PRU. Touchy subjects like Christianity and ethics seldom came up in her talking with Lou—at least, that was, before the unfortunate appearance of Tina in her apartment Thursday night. She and Lou tended to concentrate on the more neutral area of the arts, but now Aglaia hoped her decision about whether to pursue employment with the university wouldn't become be a matter of morality. She'd worked too hard at evading controversy to bungle it at this point, when she was so close to achieving success.

The kitchen phone rang. Aglaia limped over to pick it up, then headed to the living room couch. Who'd call at 8:45 on a Saturday morning?

“I knew you'd be awake. You can take the girl out of the country but you can't take the country out of the girl, eh?”

“Good morning, Naomi.”

“I'm trying out this new cell phone Byron bought me. He made me take it in case I break down along the way, but I think it's actually so he can get hold of me when he can't find the formula for the baby. I weaned him last week—the baby, that is, not Byron!” Her laugh was a gurgle. “I'm calling to make sure that we're still on for tonight. Can I pick anything up for you?”

“Would you mind stopping by a bakery to get a baguette for supper? Oh, and I need some toothpaste. I won't be leaving the apartment today.” Aglaia explained her injury and Naomi offered to drive her to the airport the next morning before departing for home. That way, Aglaia could save airport parking fees and have help with her luggage. Naomi hung up after promising to be there by six.

Aglaia, restive, tapped a rhythm with her good foot against the leg of the coffee table. She wasn't used to sitting still. The television held no interest for her and she could almost recite her guidebook to Paris word for word already. Hitting the gym one last time before she squeezed into her new jeans was out of the question—her ankle had to stay elevated. It was going to be a long day.

From her spot on the couch she could see the suitcase and there was no excuse left for avoiding that Bible—François's Bible with those two dangerous phrases handwritten by him into the margins of Genesis. Since she'd decided to take it along with her to Paris, she couldn't very well hand it over to him unexamined—even if the thought of opening that book rang alarm bells in her mind. She should at least take a look at it, and she'd just make sure to ignore the text itself.

W
ith Zephyr warming her lap, Aglaia opened the Bible for the first time since it came in the mail three days ago.

She'd been right in her suspicions. François had written notes into the margins beginning at the first chapter of the first book. In formal lettering, he'd transcribed themes beside each book's title, as she had done in her Bible at the same time, following Pastor Reimer's spidery outline on the chalkboard in the church basement:
Exodus, thirst in the desert; Deuteronomy, rock of salvation; John, light shining in darkness; Philippians, joy!
But below these careful words copied on the onionskin pages were bits of scrawled commentary, some of it in French—François's personal notations.

Beside the story of Noah and the flood, for example, he'd written
arc-en-ciel
. As he made that note, was he imagining his first sighting of a prairie rainbow, stretching unbroken from horizon to horizon without the interruption of buildings or light standards? She remembered the two of them lying on their backs in the damp summer grass, his quick gasp, his quiet awe.

“You know how the rainbow came to be, don't you?” he asks.

That's a straightforward question for a girl raised by parents who read the great stories of the Bible to her at bedtime.

But as she opens her mouth to answer that it's God's memento of promise, he interrupts her to tell how Iris, the cupbearer of the gods, lifted the waters of the oceans up into the clouds to connect heaven and earth, dressed in a rainbow woven by the Three Graces.

He sighs. She hasn't ever heard a boy sigh for the sake of beauty, and the radiance of his rainbow shines inside her, too, so that she doesn't correct him.

And again, here, where the nomads trod the ceaseless desert seeking the Promised Land, he'd written
singing sand
. He was thinking, she was sure, of the two of them standing on the crest of the dune out in the east pasture, catching the faint, far-away tinkling of the wind-blown sand, like bells or the call of a pan flute, wafting at the edge of their hearing. A few pages later he'd written
windmill
. What could he have meant but their drive to the north quarter that blistering day to put minerals out for the cows?

Mary Grace describes the mechanism to him. “So the wind turns the blades and rotates the gear to drive the rod attached to the plunger in the cylinder, which sucks the water through the sand point up the pipe, bringing it to the surface from below the dune,” she says, proud she doesn't need Joel to prompt her.

She's glad to be alone with François for once, out from under Joel's protective eye. He can be smothering sometimes. Dad's been too busy to notice her moods lately and, thankfully, Mom hasn't yet figured out that François can make her spine tingle.

François's eyes follow the pointing of her finger from the top of the windmill down the wooden structure to the large metal trough, where the dribble from the spout makes ripples on the surface of the water, cool and inviting.

“On y va!”
he blurts. He bolts from the truck's cab and yanks his t-shirt over his head and kicks the tennis shoes free from his feet despite her shouted warning to watch out for cactus. He startles the cows gathering around the blue salt blocks, and they scatter upon his whoops as he jumps, waist deep, into the icy pool.

She pursues him too closely and he slaps a handful of water up over her. Shrieking, she retaliates, and soon they're wet to the bone with their teeth chattering in spite of the sun.

Aglaia flipped over half an inch of pages to Esther, where his unruly hand had circled
beautiful young virgins
and
harem
and
concubines
. Aglaia squinted to make out the letters of his comment: Had he written “Mary Grace” here? No, it said
J'adore les Grâces américaines
. She read it again, to be sure.

He loved the American
Graces
—plural? Aglaia leaned her head back on the couch, confounded. There was no denying that François had been a healthy, red-blooded young man. He must have been eyeing up all the girls in Tiege, and there were some cute ones. But somehow, back then, she convinced herself she was his sole focus. A niggling jealousy gave her a slight cramp in her belly all these years later. Just reading the disturbing sentence brought back teenage insecurities, but this was still early in the Bible, early in the summer. Perhaps he'd written it before anything got started between the two of them.

She turned a couple hundred pages till she came to Song of Songs—a book that captivated her long before she met François Vivier, introduced at a sleep-over with other girls whose mothers, like hers, checked through school backpacks to ensure that no romance novels entered their homes. They missed the sexiest one, right under their noses in their own Holy Bibles! Now it appeared that François, as well, found the poems of interest.

Aglaia saw she was correct in her assumption that she'd discover something informative in this book of love; François was a lover, and Song of Songs would have appealed to him. He'd underlined many verses:
How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful!… You have stolen my heart with one glance from your eyes… Love burns like a blazing fire, like a mighty flame.
In the margins François had written
Aphrodite, déesse de l'amour
, the phrase likely meaning “goddess of love” in English. Aglaia knew all about her, this patron of courtesans—manifestation of the planet called Venus, the evening star—who maddened men with amorous passion as dusk fell. In the aphrodisiac of her own imagination, Aglaia pictured her now, adorned by her handmaiden Graces in twinkling jewelry forged in a furnace worked by the great Cyclopes.

She went on to read more of Solomon's words:
You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain.
Here François had written
at the spring.
Aglaia's mind flashed back and she closed her eyes to savor again her very first kiss.

Under the close cover of the night, with his palm coupling hers, they drift down to the spring-fed pond behind the barn where the prairie grass grows like wool and scratches her legs. The aspens, roots drinking deeply of the sweet, scarce water, tremble above them like guardians of her innocence, and the buffalo-berry bushes sigh in the breeze.

The moon-washed water, embossed with circles of insects alighting, reflects their two forms tilted towards one another, shoulders touching. She quivers, taut with anticipation. He hasn't held her hand until tonight, hasn't stroked her hair or touched her face. Now his breath is hot on her cheek as she turns to see his longing eyes.

“Graceful Mary Grace,” he whispers, and then his lips press on hers—on her virgin lips—and that's all. But it's enough for her.

Aglaia frittered the Saturday away between the sofa and her bed, leafing through the Bible, honing in on his faded lettering in Luke and then skipping back to Kings or Micah, reading at random and envisioning the scenes behind François's comments. In other words, she spent the day at the farm with him. It made a confusing collage in her mind. Perhaps if she began at the front and progressed through the whole thing chronologically, she'd sort out the mayhem of memories that have for years now flitted around her imagination like impish sprites, shadows glimpsed and never laid hold of.

By late afternoon Aglaia's ankle was almost normal, and supper was ready when Naomi rang to be let in. Her childhood friend deposited an overnight bag on the floor before wrapping Aglaia in a matronly hug. Her back had the soft folds of a more mature woman and her hair was over-processed, nothing like the lustrous tresses she kept as a girl, but her dimples were as deep as ever, her hazel eyes as quick to light up with cheer.

“You've lost weight again,” Naomi said. “Scrawny thing. How do you ever plan to catch a man?”

Aglaia opened her mouth to retort but Naomi went on. “I have good news from the doctor.” Aglaia had forgotten that Naomi was expecting some test results at her follow-up appointment today. “He says the biopsy showed no cancer after all.”

She clapped her hands in delight, her mouth open in a wide grin as though bringing news Aglaia must have been waiting in agony to hear. Naomi had never been as pretty as Aglaia, a fact she freely admitted as a teen. But she still wore joy on her face like a makeup.

“Congratulations,” Aglaia said with false optimism, cautious about celebrating. Naomi's mother had died young and her own longevity was doubtful; her hope seemed ill founded. But Naomi was always so full of hope.

“Tell me all about your trip,” Naomi urged after she gave Aglaia an unasked-for update on her children's progress in school and how she was thinking that maybe she should take them all out of class and teach them at home for a few years. “Your mother filled me in last week about how you had to rush your passport application through to get it approved in time. What have you sewn?” she asked. “Let me see it all!”

Aglaia protested that her bag was already packed, that she hardly had time to make anything new, but Naomi opened the suitcase and used the couch for her display rack as she spread the pieces out, one by one. She admired the khaki jacket, the sateen skirt printed with papyrus, and the hemp knit top. Aglaia's little black dress made of silk velvet burnout, set off with cobalt-blue enameled Japanese buttons purchased at an estate sale, almost sent her into convulsions.

“Fabulous! With that neckline, you'll have the Frenchmen drooling.”

Aglaia wanted only one of them to drool, but she didn't mention this to Naomi. “I can't imagine I'll need anything so fancy, but it packs well,” she said. Naomi remarked on the obvious attributes of the clothing, such as color and sheen of the fabric, but of course she couldn't appreciate the less visible quality behind the handiwork—the anchoring stitches holding seams to lining, the initials embroidered into a cuff. Aglaia smoothed out the white blouse collar of the shirt that went with her charcoal worsted blazer and pencil skirt. “I'll wear this suit for the day I meet with the museum people.”

Aglaia expected to live in her jeans most of the time she was in Paris, but she recalled the memo from head office about arrangements for media coverage at the gallery. Montreal viewed the delivery of the costume as a great photo opportunity encouraging francophonic relations, not to mention the international advertising it afforded for Incognito. Her boss, however, was disgusted over the antics of headquarters to pander to the expectations of the snobs in France, but Eb knew what side his bread was buttered on, he said, so he didn't air his opinions to his employers. Had it been left up to him, he'd have forgone personal delivery and simply sent the costume overseas by FedEx. He couldn't be bothered with the fanfare but acted relieved by Aglaia's interest in jumping through these hoops.

Eb's Canadian overseers had been hounding him lately, and not just about the Paris enterprise. Eb was a deferential manager who didn't enjoy—or employ—micromanagement. As she repacked her bag, Aglaia wondered what was up. It might have something to do with that movie he mentioned a few weeks ago. Incognito Denver occasionally contracted out its designs and labor for cinematographic projects, but most were local shoots that Eb supervised himself—happy enough to support the popular literature of the people in this increasingly illiterate world, as he said. The current movie, whatever it was, involved a larger film company from California, earning the special attention of the CEO in Montreal. When she returned, Aglaia would have to ask Eb about the movie and their role in it.

Meanwhile, Aglaia concentrated on Paris, and she was committed to doing Eb proud. The assignment confirmed her worth within the company. Her boss thought she was up to it, so she'd swallow her qualms and rise to the challenge. She had no idea about comportment in such grand circles, but she'd have to wing it. If only she had Lou's self-assurance!

Dinner with Naomi started out well. Aglaia served a crisp Caesar salad and garlic bread alongside the bubbling lasagna, which was cheesy and spiced with nutmeg. But when Naomi insisted on praying before the meal, Aglaia thought it was a good thing she hadn't opened the bottle of wine she'd picked up to have on hand. Something twigged in her memory about Naomi not touching alcohol these days for religious reasons, though that hadn't always been the case. The unopened bottle sat on the counter. It was a red from the Napa that had attracted Aglaia because of its label bearing a sketch of the Three Graces, and named after one of them—Euphrosyne—which was fitting in light of that Grace's personality as the embodiment of mirth and merriment. Well, she'd save the merriment for more appreciative company, she thought.

As the meal progressed, Aglaia realized afresh why she didn't want to get too close to her old friend. The woman was too self-righteous.

“Isn't it terrific how God has brought us back into one another's lives?” Naomi's question was predictable, the subject of God's goodness being the evangelical fallback to any lagging conversation.

Aglaia replied tartly, “It seems to me
you're
the one that's brought us back together.” If you can call this together, she thought, a forced evening between the city mouse and the country mouse.

“Friendship is worth a bit of work, Mary Grace.”

There! On top of it all, Naomi persisted in calling her by the old name, left behind for a reason.

Throughout Aglaia's childhood as Mary Grace, she'd heard the family stories about her namesake,
Taunte
Maria—that venerable missionary to the lost who forged inroads into the jungles of Bolivia with the voice of an angel, with songs that spanned the gap of misunderstanding between God and her transfixed listeners in loincloths. The elders at Aglaia's church held Maria in high esteem. Her great-aunt had passed along to her the gift of song, they surmised; would she someday follow in her footsteps? These were big shoes to fill and Aglaia had
wanted
to fill them as a girl, until it dawned on her that she'd be trading the farm for even more remoteness—the isolation of the sanctified. As for her middle name, it was ludicrous. She'd always felt graceless, never more than as a teenager going through her clumsy stage. What had her parents been thinking? Altogether, “Mary Grace” was such a mouthful. There was no diminutive for it, no nickname.