The Third Grace (11 page)

The whole congregation called her rebellious when she refused to attend choir any longer, that last year at home when she was so alone. She was probably depressed.

She officially changed her name down at the vital statistics registry office as soon as she moved to Denver. The bureaucrat who processed her application stank of onions and leaned too close when he pressed her fingertips into the printing pad and rolled them, one by one, over the form as though she were a common criminal. It took months before every document was changed—birth certificate, driver's license—but finally she was Mary Grace no longer. She'd purged herself, every official piece of ID now bearing her chosen name. The old was gone, the new had come! Until, that is, her mother mailed her a church bulletin with a prayer request for Mary Grace who was wandering as a prodigal in the wicked city, or she bumped into a schoolmate who failed to recall the day of reckoning—the day of Joel's funeral—when in her heart Aglaia put to death her old nature.

“For dust you are and to dust you will return,” the preacher says.

She hunkers on the front pew, staring at the floor between her shoes and blocking out the singing around her—“Rock of ages, cleft for me”—and the drone of the pastor with his promises of resurrection, this so-called hope held out to Henry and Tina and Mary Grace. But when he says that God is gracious in this hideous act of His sovereignty, she can keep silent no longer.

She pushes away from the hard bench and faces the other mourners and presses her back against that casket holding the stone-cold dead, the stench of the flowers nauseating her.

“I am Aglaia,” she exclaims, the name leaping to her lips from some subconscious cavern for the first time, each word of the sentence deliberate and spoken loudly enough to disturb the fat
Grossmama
dozing in the back row.

Tina plucks at her sleeve, hisses at her to settle down.

“Don't call me Mary Grace anymore,” she growls to the congregation. A pronouncement foams in her soul and forms on her tongue like a creed, and she fairly shouts it: “There is no grace!”

Her father stands then, his own rare tears dropping onto her hair as he takes her out to weep in privacy.

“ ‘Aglaia,' ” Naomi said.

Aglaia regained her sense of time.

“I'm sorry, I meant to call you ‘Aglaia,' though for the life of me I can't get used to that name.”

“It's okay. I go by either,” she fibbed, “now that I've recovered from my identity crisis.” Even as she said this, she knew it took more than an official name change to earn the graciousness and elegance she longed for.

“Have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Recovered.” Naomi chased her salad around the plate with her fork. “You're so self-sufficient here in your own apartment with your hoity-toity job taking you to exotic places. But for a while tonight it's been like old times with you, sitting together and sharing, until your eyes go hollow and you zone out for a while.”

Now they were getting down to the real motivation behind Naomi's visit, Aglaia thought—to harass her into the kinship they once had.

“It will never be like old times,” she said. She half wished she were wrong.

“I know people change, sometimes out of self-defense.” Naomi stuck a leafy forkful into her mouth and talked around it. “It's just that you're so pent up. Where did all the spit and vinegar go?”

“People
do
change, Naomi. They leave certain things behind them.”

“Like their family?”

Offended, Aglaia rose from the table, laying her napkin across her chair, and put the kettle on. Her family involvement was none of Naomi's business.

But Naomi was never one for tact and wouldn't let it go. “Don't you ever miss the farm, your parents? Don't you miss me?”

Aglaia's fist clenched around the kettle's handle. She willed herself to relax before turning back to Naomi.

“Do I miss you? Why, you're here right now,” she said with unnatural lightness, seething inside. Was Naomi completely devoid of subtlety, of the ability to respect boundaries? What was it with these women in her life?

“But
you're
not really here, are you?” A spark ignited Naomi's eyes and one corner of her mouth curled up and she asked, “Don't you ever just want to bust out and sing?”

She lunged to her feet then, threw her head back melodramatically, and opened her mouth like a baby bird for its sustenance. In that instant Aglaia knew what was coming, recognized the deep intake of breath and the posture they used to assume when they practiced out behind the spring, filling the skies with their melodious cries where no one but heaven could hear.

Sure enough, with operatic intensity Naomi began to belt out the clearest, craziest soprano Aglaia had heard since their youthful excesses.

“Come, thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace…”

“Stop it,” Aglaia hushed.

“Streams of mercy never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.”

“The neighbors will call the police, Naomi!”

But there was no stemming the flow once she got going. She cascaded all over the treble clef, grasping Aglaia's hands and swinging her into a drunken jive in disregard of the ankle.

Naomi towed Aglaia out through the open patio door onto the deck, her frizz bouncing all around her flushed cheeks as she howled. Her musical laughter was so infectious that, near the end of the song, Aglaia started to weaken and almost joined in on the last line herself.

Panting, Naomi stood facing Aglaia in the duskiness of the overcast evening. A car door slammed in the parking lot three stories below and Aglaia heard the clapping of one set of hands. She and Naomi popped their heads over the railing to determine their audience. Lou, dressed in a crisp navy pantsuit, stood in front of her burnished BMW.

Aglaia withdrew from the deck's edge. Lou must have seen and heard the whole thing, and now Naomi bowed to Lou in burlesque exaggeration. “A friend of yours?” she asked. “Let's invite her up.”

“No, I'll go down and find out what she wants,” Aglaia objected, averse to allowing both women into the same room at the same time, feng shui to meet rustic homestead. But Naomi was already yelling at Lou to join them, assuring Aglaia that the interruption wouldn't be an inconvenience at all and that she was dying to meet any of her chic acquaintances. By the time Aglaia slid the glass door closed behind her, Naomi was halfway down the hallway cheering Lou up the steps as though she were a long-lost buddy.

L
ou Chapman mounted the stairs of the apartment block, the private smells of the commoner curling out from under closed doors to assault her—cigarette smoke, fried fish, burnt sugar. The dumpling who'd been wailing and flailing on the balcony beckoned her in, introduced herself as Aglaia's best friend, and offered to take the folder out of her hands, even pulling at it.

“Thank you, but I'll give it to her myself,” Lou said, and snatched it back.

Her snub went unremarked by Naomi, who set about clearing the table of dirty dishes like a maid while Aglaia apprised Lou about the injury to her ankle. The news pleased Lou; she wasn't one for gratuitous pain, but the injury might work into her strategy very well. She decided to say nothing about that strategy just yet.

Aglaia's fine hair was blown about and her eyes shone with an unconscious freshness that now and again disarmed Lou. Despite Aglaia's studied indifference—the languid stance, the tilt of her head and how she crossed her arms and waited a cautious breath before answering—she couldn't hide a liveliness that leaked out when her guard was down, Lou thought.

“I didn't think I'd see you until I got back from France,” Aglaia said.

“I'm full of surprises. I can stay just a moment, but I wanted to drop off reading material for your trip—a few pieces I've written.” Lou was being modest. The half-dozen articles published in prestigious journals over the past couple of years represented the meat of her doctoral work and translated well into her pending monograph—though, of course, she'd written or co-authored scores of articles over the span of her career. Despite her recent publishing setback, she was convinced of the soundness of her research and the contribution it made to the sociological literature.

Aglaia skimmed the first page of a paper relating to Greek mythology and art. “You shouldn't have gone to such a bother.”

“I had them in my computer files,” Lou said. Educating Aglaia would take more effort than printing out a few articles, which at any rate wouldn't be fully comprehended by the girl, but it was a starting point. Aglaia had been receptive so far.

Naomi wiped her hands on a dishtowel and peered over Aglaia's shoulder with her nose wrinkled, no doubt scandalized by the illustrations of Aphrodite and her cohort.

“What interest have you in art?” Lou asked her. The answer was evident in Naomi's lack of fashion sense and Lou didn't care that she put the woman on the spot. That was what teachers did.

“Art? Well, I haven't taken any college classes on it, if that's what you mean. Nothing like this stuff.” She paused, then added, brightening, “But I began collecting plates a few years ago.”

Lou was puzzled. “Photographic plates from art books?”

“No, I mean dinner plates.”

“Oh, porcelain plates?” Lou asked, her curiosity piqued. Her own mother had inherited a fine collection, the value of which Lou came to appreciate only as an adult. Not that she'd laid her eyes on them in years.

“I don't know about porcelain. My kids got me started. They bought the first one at the drugstore as a birthday gift—it was decorated with peonies—and now I have about ten of them, all colors and sizes.”

How predictably lowbrow, Lou thought, smothering a snicker. The priceless set of antique Limoges plates of her memory, each individually hand painted and rimmed in gold, used to be displayed on the dining room wall above the wainscoting in the 6,000-square-foot house in New York, before the divorce. The plates didn't all survive Mother's temper. Had her sister salvaged any when she packed up for the house sale, kneeling alone in front of cardboard boxes and wearing stained sweats with her hair drawn back in a severe ponytail? Pity how Linda had let herself go. Lou shut the intrusive picture out of her mind and focused on the woman before her.

Naomi was not unattractive, she thought, just a bit bovine with her wide-set eyes and short, straight lashes. Her blouse strained over her bosom and the elasticized waistband accentuated the thickness of her torso, yet there was something generous about her that implied succor. Perhaps she was the perfect person to shed more light on their mutual acquaintance, Aglaia Klassen.

“What is it that you do in life?” Lou didn't veil her condescension but doubted Naomi would pick up on it.

The woman launched into an animated account while Aglaia stood away from them and kept her gaze averted, busying herself with the packet of articles but not reading them, Lou noted. Disassociating, perhaps?

“Byron and I grow grain and keep livestock, same as most everyone in the area. We live too far from the village for me to work outside of the home and, anyway, I have a full-time job with the kids, believe you me.” Naomi spoke with no chagrin and sprinkled many of her sentences with a merry laugh. “Seeding and harvest are pretty busy for me, though our two older sons help out a lot. They're fourteen and thirteen. Then we've got four younger ones.”

Lou thought her eyes must be glazing over. This talk of agriculture and children was unbearable, and now Naomi grabbed her purse from the counter. “I have family photos, if you'd like to see the kids.”

“No, thank you,” Lou declined with alacrity. Naomi froze for an instant at the rebuff and then replaced her purse, still smiling but now fingering the silver cross of her necklace. The woman went on with her trite monologue. “I also have a huge garden and put up lots of peas and tomatoes and beans,” Naomi said. “It helps make ends meet.”

“Lou knows all about farming, don't you, Lou?” Aglaia's interjection, delivered in a derisive tone abnormal for her, proved she was listening in after all.

“Really?” Naomi asked.

“Yes, she tells me she grows herbs in her window box.” Lou heard Aglaia's passive-aggressive scorn as the first indication of any real alliance she felt with Naomi. Apparently her friend didn't pick up on Aglaia's sarcastic tone.

“Parsley?” Naomi asked. “Dill? I have a great
Borscht
recipe, if you'd like it, Lou.”

“I don't cook much,” Lou responded. The woman truly was vacuous, she thought. “I cultivate herbs such as tarragon and rosemary for flavored vinegars, and grow many for their healing properties, to stimulate my chakras and energize my aura. I grow calendula, shiso, and lemongrass for hot infusions—”

“She means tea,” Aglaia interposed. Lou was amused by Aglaia's compulsion to interpret her to Naomi, and she questioned how close the women truly were.

“So you two have known each other for a long time?” she asked.

Aglaia, sulking, shoveled the papers back into the manila folder, but Naomi answered amiably, “Forever. We were delivered by the same doctor, went to the same country school. I even married her second cousin.”

“You're shirttail relatives, then.” Not surprising, Lou thought. She'd learned enough by now to deduce the communal atmosphere under which Aglaia had been raised.

“Practically everyone around Tiege is related,” Naomi confirmed. “Byron was the best I could do after I was jilted by Joel Klassen, her brother, when I was nine.”

Lou noticed that Aglaia was chewing on her thumbnail.

“You must have a lot of stories to tell on her, then,” Lou said, trying to coax out an anecdote or two. This was the first she'd heard about a brother; she thought Aglaia was an only child. “Sneaking a drink from Daddy's liquor cabinet,” she suggested, “or meeting the boys in the bushes behind the school?”

“No liquor cabinet,” Aglaia said.

“Well, in our church youth group—” Naomi began with a conspiratorial grin, but Aglaia broke in. “We went our separate ways before there was much time for that, didn't we?” Aglaia frowned a warning at Naomi as she kicked away from the table and headed for the kitchen counter. “Decaf, anyone?” She pulled three mugs from the cupboard with such force Lou thought they'd chip.

“Continue,” Lou said to Naomi, ignoring the interruption. “Aglaia promotes herself as the model of piety.” Tight-lipped Aglaia had intimated no such thing and Lou didn't anticipate great revelations from Naomi, but she found the tension delicious.

However, Naomi was at last picking up on Aglaia's distress and looked from Lou to Aglaia and back again.

“We've been out of touch for years and just reconnected,” Aglaia said.

Was she defending Naomi or distancing herself from the woman? Lou surmised there was more here than two girlfriends getting reacquainted, but she didn't have time to explore that now.

“I'd better run along and let you get on with your visit, I suppose,” she said. “I need to stop at the mall before it closes, and you two will need your beauty sleep.” She wished Aglaia
bon voyage
in what she knew was a flawless accent, and gave her an impetuous peck on the cheek. Aglaia cringed and looked sullen at Lou's parting shot: “Naomi, do ask Aglaia all about the special book delivery she's making in Paris.” She bet Aglaia hadn't gotten around to that topic yet. It should cause a dither. Too bad she wasn't able to stay and listen in to the trouble her words would stir up.

Lou let herself out of the apartment and was still smirking when she slid into the leather driver's seat and touched up her lipstick in the rearview mirror. What a contrast between her polished reflection and the dowdy Naomi Enns, but more than looks differentiated them. She'd encountered many women like Naomi in past years—research subjects or relatives of students or just the great unwashed. Insipid, slavish things trapped in a web of negative relationships by domineering men or poverty or religion. Granted, Lou thought as she blotted her lips, Naomi didn't appear to be unhappy. That was the irony—these women were unaware of their own misery.

But fun as it was to provoke a little dissension between Naomi and Aglaia, Lou's greater concern lay with the woeful state of education regarding gender rights, most women not understanding their own power. They, like Naomi, were blind to the incredible influences that shaped their culture and determined their destiny because they wouldn't speak up and change their situation, passively accepting the hand dealt to them by their circumstances and history.

Considering how Aglaia squirmed tonight, she was evidently not at ease with her past—a healthy sign of her growing self-awareness. The sooner she made a complete break with the inhibiting traditions of her background, the better. Narrow-minded friends like Naomi bog a woman down. Aglaia needed to get away from that one—needed protection, almost. She merited much higher company.

Well, Lou thought as she wheeled out of the parking lot, she'd do everything in her power to remedy Aglaia's plight.