The Third Grace (9 page)

This imagination of Aglaia's helped make their business productive, and Eb was indebted to her sheer ingenuity in costume design, which he'd been fostering all along. He saw the Creator in Aglaia's creativity. In the whole sphere of the universe, only man had the conscious impulse of art, Eb thought—no animal painted a portrait, no vegetable drafted a blueprint, no mineral narrated a story. The exercise of art, like worship, was a human response.

But Eb discerned in Aglaia an unnatural, occult curiosity. Maybe it was her reading, he thought as he reflected on her interest in his collection. “You are what you eat,” the saying went, but Eb believed one was what one
read
, and feeding the imagination with the wrong sustenance was worse than reaching for a bag of crisps instead of a carrot stick. What a person borrowed from the library bookshelves was as telling as what she loaded into her grocery trolley.

Eb didn't know with certainty Aglaia's tastes in reading, but he picked up cues from how she approached her design—for example, the calculated way she studied illustrations of Hermès's winged sandals and of the Sirens' feathers before designing her most recent archangel. On occasion she made off-hand references to Greek mythological deities and creatures when researching ideas, and often speckled her rough costume sketches with doodles of snakes and stars and symbols. Eb held scruples against vetoing her line of inquiry; she might see his concern as censure rather than guidance. But every season brought more of the degenerating influence of mythology to her work and she seemed to be devolving, using her craft as an incantation to call up the gods of fantasy, or perhaps exploiting the gods to feed her craft. Maybe the lass thought she was specializing in her field.

Eb downshifted behind a cube van, caught in its fumes for a block. Inner-city traffic was heavy these days with all the construction.

Of course, Eb thought, mythology as story was an art itself. Even savages saw something behind the constellations of the sky or the stones of the ground, behind a tree or a pod or an elephant tusk, their barbarous souls stirred to seek truth by means of beauty—though they always ended up carving a face into it and bowing the knee before it.

Humanity ever found it natural to worship, straining for a peek of the divine behind the physical realm and finding, in the case of the pagans, “a mere filth and litter of spawning gods,” as old Chesterton put it. The mythology of ancient cultures, and even the fables and folktales Eb himself found so illustrative—both Olympus's Zeus and Pinocchio's Geppetto—began as imaginative explanation but failed to satisfy longings only true deity could fulfill.

The words of Saint Augustine ricocheted down the millennia to Eb: “We love those things by which we are carried along for the sake of that towards which we are carried.” It was natural to love our creativity, he thought, patting the restored dashboard of his MGB with affection, but the whole goal of driving was to get oneself home. The whole goal of art was to convey the concept it carried—the object or idea being portrayed. The moment one idolized the method, one lost the message. Eb was inclined to think that Aglaia was catching a ride on the myths without knowing where they were taking her. There was a difference between using art to get to a destination, and clinging to art for the sake of the art. What was Aglaia's destination?

Eb himself, in bitterness over the death of his wee daughter, had wasted years running in circles to escape facing a loving God.
Father,
he muttered now, always only a breath away from prayer,
I hate to see Aglaia bound in some fatalistic cycle, going 'round and 'round as on a fairground carousel she can't dismount. Give her the eyes to focus on you waiting in the sidelines to take her homeward.

A drop hit Eb's nose and another his cheek. He was just blocks away from Iona's cooking and he was hungry. Dear Iona fed him so faithfully! Maybe they should splurge and go out to dinner one night soon. If his career hopes came to fruition, before long he'd be treating her to the freshest pineapple she'd ever tasted.

A
glaia hobbled out of her kitchen through the sliding doors to the third-story patio on Saturday morning with her favorite pottery mug in hand. The best thing about her apartment was the view of Mount Evans from her deck. She sat in the cool dawn with her left foot resting on the other patio chair. The snow-tipped Rockies glistened blue with ghostly transparency, floating on a bed of cloud. A distant thought sang into her mind like a hymn:
I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from?

Aglaia blinked away the words brought up by the sight of creation in its grandeur. Why couldn't she enjoy the beauty of nature without the ever-present voice within pointing her to something beyond?

The first time she'd seen the mountains was the year she was six. Her father had bolted a borrowed camper onto the back of the half-ton, and the four of them rattled over gravel roads and turned west onto the highway. How had Mom convinced Dad to leave the farm on such a sunny day, with hay to mow? The oscillation and the availability of Joel's shoulder conspired to send her back to sleep, and hours later her lids fluttered open just as they rounded the curve of a lake—opened upon the broken reflection of the mountains on the watery surface, their jagged peaks pointing down as though heaven had fallen into earth.

On the balcony, Aglaia covered her knees against the chilly breeze and wished for socks but was too lazy to move. She cupped her hands around the steaming coffee mug. On early mornings like this as a girl she used to catch her mother at the kitchen table with her elbows on the oilcloth reading, or resting her head on her forearms in prayer. Dad would come in from the chores and join Mom, the two of them murmuring in
Plautdietsch
while she peeped through the stairway banister and strained in vain to catch a secret before she'd burst in on them for a hug.

“What are you doing up at this hour?” he asks, then lifts her up into his lap and rubs his nose into her neck, making her giggle. “Soon you'll be too big to sit on my lap,” he threatens. But Daddy's always ready to hug her when the work is done. He slides the Bible over—not the old German Bible anymore but the English one, so she and Joel can understand it—and reads the morning's passage aloud, her nose tickly with the hay dust on his sleeve.

“On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain.” His voice is rumbly. “And the whole mountain trembled violently.” The mountain of her father quakes beneath her and hugs her closer. “The Lord descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses went up. And God spoke all these words…”

Aglaia assumed her parents still followed the morning devotional ritual, even with the house empty of offspring now and so many chores waiting for him. But did her father miss the touch of his daughter?

She thought about yesterday and the enveloping security of Eb's office. She didn't know two men as different as her father was from her boss. Dad let her know he loved her long after he stopped cuddling her, when she grew breasts; it was an awkward time, her puberty. And he still gave in to Tina's insistence and called Aglaia occasionally, though he hated using the telephone for anything other than agricultural dealings—to order diesel fuel, perhaps, or ask how the neighbor was making out with his new-fangled baler. But he found words themselves extravagant. Dad was a meat-and-potatoes man in more than his diet.

Her dignified boss, on the other hand, was profoundly communicative, with every utterance full of connotation, often cryptic but always meaningful—always accompanied with a glint of his eye, a challenge to dig deeper, to come closer. But closer to what?

Recently Eb embroiled her in a discussion regarding names. He said that each costume, like any artist's painting, was incomplete until it was christened. “Take my name, for example,” he said. “It originated when the Israelites subdued the giant Philistines. Samuel set up a megalithic monument—a ‘standing stone'—and called it Ebenezer, meaning ‘Thus far has the Lord helped us.' ”

But she was reticent to talk about given names since she'd so thoroughly rejected her own, and so Eb turned back to the costume. “Agonize over the choice,” he coached her when she'd been ready to settle for the generic “Bunch of Grapes” for her purple padded fabrication. “An artist must name her piece deliberately, imputing meaning,
knowing
that creation. Call him out, Aglaia.” She'd opted for “Dionysus” and earned a cluck and a rueful smile from her boss.

Yes, Eb was full of bonhomie. Good will radiated from him, but it was accompanied by another quality—astuteness, maybe, or a sharp awareness short of cunning. A person wanted to sidle up next to him even though dressmaker headpins often bristled from his sleeve if he'd been helping one of the seamstresses with her work. A person wanted to hug him, but didn't.

Aglaia returned to the kitchen to refill her mug. Her cat stretched on the couch and yawned, his elfin tongue curling around a lazy “Meow” before he bounded over to rub against Aglaia's housecoat.

She picked him up and he climbed to her shoulder and arranged himself around her neck like a fur collar, his purring idling against her ear as she opened a fishy can of breakfast for him. The tabby was a barn cat, picked up at the ASPCA shelter last fall after her former cat lost his four-year battle against city traffic. She'd never buy one of those snooty Siamese or Himalayan breeds, and not just because of the price.

“Here you go, Zephyr,” she said as he sprang to the floor.

What Eb had said about names was true, she thought; they told a lot about a person and even about a pet. The farm crawled with cats when she was young but for some reason the Klassen family never labeled them “Fluffy” or “Snowball,” instead talking about them in general terms like “the mama cat” or “that mean tri-color” or “the stray.” Dad liked them around to keep down the rodent population, and Mom always made sure, in the coldest part of winter, to set table scraps outside by the step.

On occasion one cat or another made a mad dash into the kitchen, and Joel would always smuggle it into the basement for a quick snuggle.

Aglaia dubbed each of her cats “Zephyr” now—all three cats in turn that she'd owned since they formally named the first one on that perilous summer day in the hayloft.

Mary Grace hunts for the boys for an hour. She calls their names into the machine shop and the bunkhouse, and spies out the pasture but finds Joel's horse unsaddled, unridden, standing against the backdrop of the thunderheads with its mane blowing. As the storm breaks the hot sky open, she thinks of the loft and scales the splintery ladder with the ease of her tomboy days. She doesn't hear François picking on his guitar until she's halfway up the barn wall. She hoists herself through the wooden doorframe into the loft and catches sight of Joel grabbing at the fleeing tomcat.

“He goes like the wind!” Joel complains.

She hasn't climbed that ladder for over a year, and when she finds them there, it strikes her again what a haven the place is—the musty perfume of the bales, the daylight jabbing ghostly fingers through gaps in the shingles.

François is smoking something that smells sweeter than the hay.

“What are you doing?” She's aghast that Joel hasn't put a stop to it, if only because Dad's been adamant about their
never
lighting matches in this firetrap. But more, she's thrilled at the danger of what she's walked into. She looks from François to Joel, and gets the impression the two have had words about it and François has won.

But she doesn't leave the barn—she doesn't run to tattle. How can she
?
François's charcoal eyes smile away her indignation.

“You've come here to sing with me?” François asks as he strums a chord. “Or maybe to smoke with me?” He winks at her again. “Joel won't try, but you will,
non
?”

He takes the joint from his lips and raises it to hers, daring her while Joel watches with distress in his eyes. She remembers the pact she made with her brother, but she takes the slightest puff anyway and starts coughing. She's never even smoked a cigarette, never mind a joint. Joel grits his teeth but François smiles, and so she takes a second draw—this time deeper. She knows she should leave now, but hail as hard as Pharaoh's heart begins a staccato on the barn roof.

The tomcat reappears to skulk near François, curls up against him without invitation, then snags at Joel when he reaches to pet him. “Let's name him Zephyr,” François says, “for the west wind.”

François makes her feel like a Zephyr, nervous and needy and naughty all at once.

Aglaia never touched drugs again—even an accidental buzz from her premeditated use of wine unsettled her. She pulled a pair of socks from the dryer, crushed ice for her ankle, and returned to the balcony to go through her must-do list, mentally ticking off items: flight confirmed, walking shoes and passport packed, lasagna ready for the oven.

Blast Naomi's timing, insisting on a visit the evening before her European departure. The medical appointment had been made months before Aglaia's airline ticket was booked and Naomi couldn't afford a hotel room, but it annoyed Aglaia all the same. It wasn't completely untimely, Aglaia admitted to herself; Naomi had agreed to take Zephyr back with her for the week and drop him off at Mom and Dad's, a couple of miles up the road from her place. She seemed eager to please since getting back in touch with Aglaia after years of estrangement.

They'd been so close as girls. Naomi was less than a year older than she but a grade ahead in school. Her mother died of cancer when Naomi was in junior high; after that she often dismounted the bus with Aglaia to hang around till it was time to beg a ride home to help her father fix supper for her younger siblings. Naomi blended into the Klassen household as though born to it. She always came up with fun things for them to do—bike to the scene of a prairie fire, build a fort with Joel. There wasn't a sniff of competition between the girls in those days, not even over report cards. Naomi didn't mind that Aglaia always aced her classes. She'd just say, “You deserve it for all the studying you do.”

They were also of one mind in things spiritual. As freckled, braid-sporting youngsters, as prim preteens, through the pimple stage and out the other end to unsullied womanhood, they worshipped together on the hard wooden benches every Sunday, raising their voices in harmony to praise the Lord.

They sang their girlish duets at weddings and funerals, exhorting the congregation to rejoice at marital bonding and rejoice at earthly parting—as though they had experience in these areas themselves!

They witnessed through the testimony of music for the multicultural festival at the fairgrounds, and all the housewives with bags of
Portselkje
to sell—committed to furthering the Mennonite way of life first through the stomach—would nod in appreciation as they passed the girls on their way to the fritter booth. Naomi and Aglaia even cut a recording of sorts entitled “Sisterly Songs of Sweetness,” on sale in the church basement for $5.95.

It was unconscionable, Aglaia thought now, letting kids make such certain declaration. But immediately and almost audibly she was chastised by the Psalmist, who sang to God:
From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise.
She banished the verse from her conscience, telling herself that people had always worshipped something—blindly, fatalistically. What gave the God of the Jews alone the right to demand all praise? He was as inconstant in giving her happiness as some trident-wielding sea-god dredged up from the wishful thinking of ancient Greeks. What was wrong with her parents—with that whole community—for encouraging empty hope, as though God were that simple and just waiting for a word of adoration to bring Him glory?

Furthermore, what was wrong with Naomi for still buying into it? But then she'd always followed authority, sheep-like. Such a good and contented girl, never on the cusp of sin, never tempted—except, perhaps, to overindulge at the table.

Unless she counted Naomi's uncharacteristic impulsiveness right at the end of their teenage friendship. Perhaps Naomi's desertion when she just up and moved away might be classified as a sin. It was Aglaia's first significant loss in that summer of loss, when she was left to navigate her last year of school alone. Within that year, that very autumn, Naomi married her high-school beau but, by the time Mr. and Mrs. Byron Enns moved back out to the country with their blossoming family, Aglaia was long gone. Over the years she saw Naomi now and then, when she couldn't avoid going home for Christmas or some such occasion, but she'd been able to shun most contact.

Naomi began to pester her in spring about getting together for a coffee, after the birth of her sixth child, probably in an attempt at temporary emancipation from the bawling hordes at home. Her insistence on re-establishing a friendship best left dead might have another cause: Perhaps Naomi had been sent by Tina and Henry. They were seeing more of each other lately, Aglaia heard, Naomi running a cake over for Dad's birthday or helping Mom with mending now that her eyesight was going. It was a conspiracy, an attempt to bring Aglaia back into the fold, she suspected.

So she surprised herself by agreeing to that first meeting a few months ago. She gave Naomi directions to the Starbucks on Larimer, half wishing she'd get lost. In fact, in the end the get-together had
not
bored Aglaia. Naomi nursed her baby under the cover of a blanket, then made a cozy intimacy for the three of them as she rearranged the napkins on the table in front of the coffee shop fireplace while Aglaia collected the lattes and biscotti from the barista at the espresso machine. Naomi even smelled soothing when Aglaia bent over her to put the cups down—like sheets hung in the sunlight.