The Third Grace (13 page)

Well, she hadn't told the whole truth to either of the other women about the writing in the margins and the memories that bound her up—hadn't even told the whole truth to herself, she admitted. Even if delivering the Bible to François might be impossible, she wanted to investigate his thoughts. How could she leave the book behind when she wanted so badly to study those enticing scribbles? How could she be free in her soul until she faced her memories once and for all? She was embarking on a new phase in her vocation and getting ahead in the social world. It was high time for a sweeping change in her life, a sweeping out of her life. It was time to open the closet doors and air the linens, and the place to start was with a thorough reading of François's notations and a fearless remembering.

She leafed through the first few pages, rereading the notes in the margins in order and turning over the corner of each marked page for future reference (as she had done with the story of Artemis in the book of Acts) till she found the first missed one. He'd scrawled
le baptême
beside the crossing of the Red Sea, where the chariots of the enemy army had been hurled into the waters, the whole brigade sinking to the depths like a millstone. The eddies of her memory drew her in.

The water in the baptismal tank is not as cold as Mary Grace expects. How is she to know? This is the kind of thing, like marriage, you do only once. The white gown clings like pond weeds to her legs as Pastor Reimer preaches to the congregation on the meaning of the ordinance—the putting to death of the natural and the birth of the spiritual.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” he finishes, and plunges her backward and under and up again so fast it doesn't matter that she hasn't plugged her nose. Then like the others before her, she climbs dripping up the baptistery steps, clean and new and full of light. They'll all be watching closely—Mom, Dad, Joel. And François, of course. What will François think of all this?

Afterwards they eat in the church basement to celebrate—molasses cookies dipped in coffee and (though it isn't Christmas)
Päpanät
, the peppery, nut-sized goodies even the younger kids pop whole into their mouths. Elderly ladies with their hairnets and chin whiskers congratulate her on the testimony she gave before the whole congregation that evening, about needing forgiveness for her sin.

François doesn't mention anything about sin but tells her later, when they're alone after everyone else has gotten out of the car, that she looked like Aphrodite rising out of the ocean, born of the sea foam that boiled up out of the immortal flesh of the cast-off genitals of a castrated god, Father Sky.

François's graphic, provocative words make her stomach flip—it's too personal, too masculine for her to bear!

But then Dad, coming back out to see what's taking them so long, opens the car door and fractures the darkness.

Then here, in the pages of the Torah, after the disobedient children of Israel had wandered for forty years because they broke the commandments of the Lord, as Moses broke the tablets of stone upon which they were engraved, as she had been breaking that indelible law of grace written on her once-soft heart—here, where the High Priest stood with his censer of coals amidst the fragrant smoke of the incense before the blood-spattered atonement cover in the Most Holy Place—Aglaia read
branding
and remembered the day at a neighboring ranch.

“Sit tight! We'll make a man of you yet.” The stringy old cowboy is wielding the metal pole with his outfit's brand still smoldering red.

“But
monsieur
, the cow's moving!” François's eyes water as he squints up from the ground through the acrid smoke of seared hair, laboring to hold the animal still.

“Of course the calf's moving, son. You'd be moving, too, if that hot iron was burning your hide, which it will be if you don't sit heavier. And this is no cow, that's for sure. A bull calf about to become a steer, in fact.” Mary Grace notes the flick of a knife, the bawling of the calf, and the commiserating grimace of a city boy.

She laughs at him, satisfied that he'll have another story to take back to his homeland, another incident that ties him to her country, to her. He catches her laughter in his eyes and bounces it back at her, smudges of dirt on his cheek and cow dung on his jeans.

Where Aaron burned an offering as an aroma pleasing to the Lord, François had jotted
camp-out.

The coyotes are just over the closest dune, yipping and lamenting to a full June moon that is brighter even than the bonfire. She and the two boys have wriggled their sleeping bags into the sand and are roasting hotdogs, the flames slapping at the dripping fat.

“You eat this with
moutarde?
” François is leery but lets Mary Grace squirt it on liberally. It squishes from the bun as he bites, and she reaches out and wipes the yellow smear off his cheek. He grabs her wrist, holds it fast, and turns his mouth towards her hand to lick her fingers clean one by one.

Joel ignores them—at least, he pretends to, though this last while he's increasingly been finding ways to interrupt. François's flirtation is becoming more brazen each day. Perhaps soon her parents will see it, too. For now, she lets François pull on her fingers like a suckling lamb orphaned by the ewe, and his adoring gaze is as intense.

In this manner, sitting in the plane on her way to Paris, Aglaia buried herself in the Scriptures—or rather in the coffin of memories made by François's words—and the time passed unnoticed.

L
ou returned to her seat from the airplane toilet—filthy cubicle!—cursing silently that she hadn't insisted on an upgrade to first class, for herself at least. She was owed the higher quality of service, considering her frequent-flyer points. What with her recent belt-tightening, she couldn't justify paying the extra herself and, though her university research fund covered some travel costs, she doubted PRU's admin department would let her get away much longer with her refusal to itemize expenditures. She shook her head; Aglaia hadn't even thanked her for the sacrifice she was making.

The coup at the airport in Denver went off better than Lou anticipated and Aglaia, out of sight now behind the bulk of her seatmate several passengers ahead, had recovered her balance nicely. She'd be in top form by the time they landed for their connection in New York City within the hour, left alone for the whole flight while Lou gave herself over to one of Colette's novels. The girlfriend Naomi, however, had appeared disapproving about her accompanying Aglaia.

Lou was apprehensive about that Enns woman. She could be problematic, with her simplistic take on life, her either/or thinking processes. Naomi was obviously a literalist without any symbol system in place to help her nuance imaginal discourse, unlike Aglaia who always had her head in the clouds.

Naomi treated Aglaia like a younger sister, and Lou recognized the suffocation because she'd put up with her own older sister's wheedling ways for too long.

The latest e-mail Lou received from her sibling, which she deleted as usual without reply, said something about Mother starting to fail. She didn't know what Linda expected her to do with that information anyway. It wasn't as if she could change all her arrangements on a whim and fly out there every time Mother had another little health scare. One of these days it would be over, and they'd be planning a funeral.

Given Linda's shyness and her own facility as a speaker, Lou expected to be asked to say a few words. What eulogy might she give Mother? She wouldn't lie and pretend filial affection, and she couldn't very well tell the truth—that she'd been waiting for the day so that she could collect her inheritance and ease the strain of her overextended lifestyle.

Linda might challenge her claim to the estate; she was a do-gooder and, when both sisters had received a bequest upon their father's death four years ago, Linda donated hers to charity, critical of her sister's spending habits. So Lou wasn't looking forward to the details of dividing Mother's assets.

There was some mercy in death, she granted, at least for the dying one who slipped into the void of nonexistence. But it was rather more difficult for those left behind, sweeping up the ashes of a life gone by.

Lou looked down at the postcard of Pradier's carving clipped to her sheaf of papers. She was withholding it from Aglaia, saving it for the right moment, as it seemed to have some effect on her. Lou wasn't clear yet in what capacity she could employ it, but she was always on the alert for that teachable moment, using whatever educational tools were at her disposal.

Lou was curious about how her young friend was coming along with her assigned reading. She probably began with the article on mythology that first caught her eye. The subject also fascinated Lou, with its epitomization of woman as sexual goddess, and fed her theories on pluralism in the current ethos. How better to further the harmonious meshing of today's plethora of worldviews than with a unifying narrative constructed upon the polytheism of ancient oral traditions?

All myths sought to explain the origins of the universe in emblematic form, and she'd found the application of the goddess as a type helped shake loose the postulations of more orthodox scholars who saw the arts as a reflection of some greater creation by one omnipotent Creator—an outmoded idea.

Take the Three Graces, Lou thought, glancing again at the card. As a literary person, she'd known about them generally and their place in Greek literature long ago. But since Aglaia's interest in them became apparent to her, she'd undertaken some of her own research.

The Titans of antiquity, elder gods ruling the universe, were said to have been overthrown by the twelve Olympians, who took over the affairs of man and of all other creatures such as nymphs and centaurs and gorgons that resided above the earth or on the earth or in the underworld. Up in the elementary aether, the lesser gods cohabited with the twelve in a cacophony of dissonance, with the Three Graces applying their soothing ministrations as they were able.

Now, the Graces were often mistaken for the Muses, those goddesses who inspired the poets and stimulated the creative process of all the arts, written about by Homer and Chaucer and extending even to the Puritan writings. Some mistook the Graces for the Three Furies (who were daughters of Mother Earth and who took revenge on crimes against conscience) or the Three Fates (who wove the web of life, measured its length, and cut it off at the predetermined point).

In fact, Lou thought, classical literature took liberties in mixing up the roles and tales of all the divinities—gods and goddesses alike—so that the whole body of myth became one jumbled, happy, incestuous mess.

But Lou knew it was certainly the Three Graces who traveled in the retinue of Aphrodite, present at human and divine marriages to enliven the wedding feasts. It was the Three Graces who dressed the gods in the finest of clothing for their sumptuous banquets and brought luxury to the pantheon of deities, making merry their celebrations with song and dance. In art and literature, the Three Graces always appeared as a triad, a composite without individuation, and one Greek philosopher described them as standing for the three-fold aspects of generosity in the giving, receiving, and returning of gifts. Lou preferred the lustier application of the Graces as the three stages of love: beauty, arousing desire, and fulfillment. They personified splendor and festivity, as effective today at explicating metaphysical concepts as when they were first conceived for religious veneration by pre-modern humanity.

For example, a primitive history told of three meteorites that fell from the skies onto a Grecian hillside, dropped by the gods in jest to perplex poor humans about the mystery of the aeons. This initiated the building of a sanctuary for the cult of the heaven-sent stones, taken to be a visitation of the Three Graces themselves.

By the early nineteenth century, the subject had been explored by artists of many media. Lou studied the postcard again. Pradier's statues depicted the Grace on the left-hand side of his grouping as goddess of the harvest, holding a swath of blossoms, her eyes lowered towards the earth from which sprang her bounty. The middle maiden raised her face towards the skies, with her toe resting atop a jewel box overflowing with glittering gems, signifying radiant beauty. The Grace on the end, with head tilted onto her companion's shoulder, was the goddess of gaiety, of cheer. Lou theorized that the three beauties gave rise to the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love, despite theologians' blustering about its being the Jewish God through divine revelation who first delivered the virtues world systems subsequently imitated.

It made no difference to Lou. The point was that these tales were useful to remythologize women's lives away from the tyrannical imperialism of Western monotheism. We incarnate the Graces ourselves by becoming them, she thought, becoming splendid and festive ourselves with the whole of womanhood a trinity of reciprocity, a perception in each other of our own inherent deity. For Aglaia, this was played out through her aesthetics, her needlework becoming the experience of creation itself.

Of course the girl, reading the articles right now a few seats up the airplane aisle, wouldn't have a clue about the significant contribution Lou's work made to academia. Aglaia was drawn to Lou's thesis without understanding it. How enthralling, then, that she could be so tuned in to their gifts of the arts, so artistic herself.

But what Aglaia needed was a new job, closer in proximity to Lou herself. The subject hadn't come up again since she'd mentioned, at the girl's apartment a few nights ago, that she'd been campaigning for Aglaia at the university. She'd been doing more than that, of course. Besides the deal she cut with Oliver Upton, Lou had put in motion her political connections to ensure the position of wardrobe consultant would be partly supported by arts funding boards at the county and state levels, outside the jurisdiction of the university itself. This endowment wouldn't go far—it was more honorarium than actual income—but Lou's success in obtaining it signaled the validity of her proposal as Aglaia's benefactor. And maybe it would help catch the attention of the tenure committee as well as Aglaia's trust.

That's what Lou needed to concentrate on during their short time in Paris—Aglaia's intimate trust, which could be acquired in any number of ways. She'd like to somehow milk Aglaia for information about the movie bid that she, as an employee of Incognito Costume Shop, could provide. But more importantly Lou hoped to inveigle Aglaia, to make the girl beholden to her on the social level, by convincing her that they made a good team. But, Lou reassured herself, she had Aglaia's best interests at heart as well, didn't she?

Lou unclasped her seatbelt, deciding to check up on Aglaia before they landed and maybe clarify any unfamiliar terms she'd encountered in the literature. But when she was close enough to the girl's head bent over her reading, she saw that it was not sheets of stapled paper that held Aglaia's attention but a bound book opened on her lap. So she'd brought that Bible after all! Lou held her breath and watched Aglaia's finger running along beneath the letters of a sprawling notation scribbled on a page in the book of Joshua:
Land of milk and honey—sa peau, ses lèvres
. Would the French be too difficult for Aglaia to catch its erogenous inflection—“her skin, her lips”?

Without disturbing Aglaia or awakening the fat man lolling beside her, the professor returned to her seat. Her guess about François's intentions had been correct, then. He'd been sniffing around Aglaia and she hadn't recovered from it; hence the lack of boyfriends in her life. Aglaia was not frigid, just unfulfilled. Evidently François had left behind a souvenir for her in the form of a message written into the pages of the sacred script. How ironic; it was the ultimate gloss on the biblical text, a personalized love letter! What a mundane joke—the worldly wise cosmopolitan boy trifling with the starry-eyed farmer's daughter only to forsake her and leave her pining.

The plane change in New York City was a blur, with crowds at peak density and Aglaia limping as they careened from arrival to departure gate. Only when they were strapped into their seats on the international flight after takeoff, each with a glass of hideous airline wine to celebrate, could Lou lure Aglaia into focused discussion.

“How did you like the articles?” Lou asked, not hiding her cynicism.

“Um, your articles,” Aglaia stalled. “I didn't quite get to them.”

“Oh?” Lou waited. It would be best if Aglaia admitted of her own accord that she'd been reading other, apparently more riveting, material.

“The titles sounded clever,” Aglaia offered.

“Hmmm.” Seconds passed. “Did you watch the movie?”

“It was a rerun,” Aglaia said. She removed the papers from her purse and sifted past each cover page.

“Did you read the airline magazine then, perhaps order some duty-free items?” Lou enjoyed the prodding and Aglaia couldn't hold out any longer, turning on Lou eyes full of appeal and fully appealing.

“No, I was reading something else. I ended up bringing that Bible along after all.” Then, like an insincere afterthought, Aglaia added, “I couldn't very well let Mom down, could I?”

Lou fell silent for effect, relishing the control Aglaia gave her. She opened the cellophane packet and munched on a sesame cracker, arranging her face to appear engaged and evaluative as though waiting for more input. Aglaia licked her lips; she would crack any second now. Slight taciturnity on Lou's part, she found, always loosened the tightest tongue.

“It's not that I'm interested in the Bible itself,” Aglaia finally said.

The tension left Lou's jaw at this, and she realized she'd been on edge after all, worried that Aglaia might be giving in to some sporadic religious inquisitiveness. It was one thing for her to seek out the memory of François, another altogether for her to seek out the presence of God.

“Go on,” she said. It dribbled out then: Aglaia's decision to look for François preceding her mother's fortuitous request, the discovery that the boy had journaled in the book's margins, Aglaia's compulsion to puzzle through the meaning of his words and the recollections they evoked, and the suspense and delight of reliving, step by step, the summer's events she'd been blocking for years.

“I'm being hounded to death by the thoughts,” Aglaia said.

The notion of Cerberus came to Lou—the three-headed dog defending the gates of Hades so that no being could escape. Aglaia's conscience was her Cerberus, a merciless jailer keeping her spirit backed up and locked away. Lou saw now the futility in any attempt to dam up Aglaia's onslaught of feelings brought about by reading that Bible. The sooner Aglaia worked through her obsession, the sooner Lou would be able to salvage her own aspirations for this trip.

The younger woman did not have the capacity at present to read her articles, nor was there the slightest chance that Aglaia might listen to a verbal précis of the writing. Already she was tugging at her shoulder bag for the Bible, anxious to re-enter some fantasy world from which Lou was barred. No matter; this only challenged Lou to explain her view of life to Aglaia in more concrete terms, to articulate—perhaps through the instructional tour she planned of Paris's main attractions—her understanding of reality, relativity, and women's powerful place in the world, especially as it spoke into their own relationship.