Fallen Elements

by Heather McVea

  “It’s no trouble. I can wait up front.” Ryan squeezed Leah’s hands, her eyes wandering over the woman’s face.

  Leah cocked her head to the side, a worried expression shadowing her eyes. “Is everything okay?”

  Ryan nodded, she knew too eagerly, before speaking. “I’m good.”

  Leah reached up and cupped Ryan’s cheek. “Give me fifteen minutes?”

  “Of course.” Ryan fought back the urge to cry. The warmth of Leah’s hands and the whirlwind of emotions her touch incited in Ryan was almost more than she could bear.

  Leah’s brow furrowed as she looked closely at Ryan. Lowering her voice, she leaned forward. “Something’s wrong. Let me cut this short and walk up with you.”

  Not waiting for Ryan’s response, Leah turned her attention back to the women. “Ladies, parting is such sweet sorrow, but I have to go.”

  Mrs. Dunkin shook her head. “You’re losing and you can’t take it.”

  Leah chuckled, tossing her cards onto the table. “No, Mrs. Dunkin, I’m late. And for the record, Mrs. Hoffman and I are up by thirty.”

  “Then we win!” Mrs. Hoffman announced.

  The women began to bicker over the rules when one team quits, allowing Leah to quietly slip out of the room. Ryan was leaning against the wall outside the door, and Leah wrapped her arms around her, hugging her tightly.

  “You ready to talk?” Leah’s breath was warm on Ryan’s neck as she spoke.

  “Sure.” Ryan’s voice caught as she buried her face in the warmth of Leah’s neck.

  Leah took Ryan’s hand and the two women made their way toward the front of St. Martin’s. “See you next week, Sister Mary Gabriel.” Leah smiled at the nun who had greeted Ryan.

  “I suspect I’ll still be here, but one never can tell.” The woman winked at Leah and gave Ryan a smile.

  The weather had finally begun to warm, and Ryan clung tightly to Leah’s hand as they walked toward her Nissan. “Hey, instead of rushing right over to dinner, why don’t we take a walk in the meditation garden?” Leah offered.

  Ryan was grateful for the offer. Her nerves already had her feeling out of breath, and the idea of getting in a car made her feel claustrophobic and sweaty. “Perfect. Lead the way.”

  “So you’re Catholic?” Ryan followed Leah around the building, and then up along a concrete walkway that ended near a small wooden gazebo. The path was lined with neatly trimmed grass, along with succulents, roses, and white lantana. Large pine trees formed a thick canopy overhead, and the shade they provided made the path slightly cooler than the surrounding area.

  “I’m not. My Aunt Helen was.” Leah hooked her arm through Ryan’s. “My parents weren’t religious, and I’ve never found much use for it as an adult. What about you?”

  “My family are white Anglo-Saxon Protestants all the way back to the Mayflower.” Ryan laid her head on Leah’s shoulder. “Which really means – at least for my immediate family – fundraisers, charity balls, and a general sense of superiority over the rest of the world.” The two women walked into the gazebo. “Then of course, there’s the proverbial stick up one’s ass.”

  Leah laughed. “Can I infer from that comment you haven’t found much use for religion either?”

  “Infer away.” Ryan and Leah sat down on a bench that was built into the gazebo. Across from them was a white marble statue of the Virgin Mary erected along one side of the covered area.

  “So, what’s happening? You’ve looked like you were near tears since you got here, and now I know you were upset last night.” Leah held Ryan’s hand in both of hers. Her light green eyes searched Ryan’s blue ones.

  “My aunt and cousin are in town.” Ryan exhaled as she felt the dreaded moment begin to unfold.

  Leah nodded. “Are they okay?”

  Ryan was surprised by the concern in Leah’s voice, given her and Lucy’s clear disdain for one another. “They’re fine.”

  “Then what?” Leah gently prodded.

  “You know how you know something, but you think there’s a chance you might not know something – or at least it might be different enough that what you know isn’t really what you imagined you knew?” Ryan stood up, her back to Leah. She knew she wouldn’t be able to have this conversation if she and Leah were touching. “You know?”

  “Ah, I was never very good at word problems. Could you be a little more specific?”

  Ryan couldn’t bring herself to turn around. “I need to talk to you about my mother.”

  Leah leaned back on the bench, crossing her ankles in front of her. “What about Karen?”

  “I need to know what happened between you two. Specifically.” Ryan’s back was to Leah, and for whatever reason she couldn’t take her eyes away from the smooth lines and grayish white skin of the statue. Its perfection seemed more like an aberration than a rendering of a once living person.

  “I told you, we had a falling out. Teenage girls and all the drama that can come along with it.” On the surface, Leah’s tone was calm, but Ryan could detect a slight edge to her words. As a result, the certainty Ryan had wanted eluded her.

  Finding her courage, Ryan turned to face Leah, her eyes brimming with tears. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Leah’s brow arched. “I’m not lying to you, and I’m a bit offended that you’re implying that I am.”

  “Did you make a pass at Lucy when you were younger?” The question shot out of Ryan’s mouth before she could stop it. Leah’s evasiveness was irritating her, and it was prompting a more forward line of questioning than Ryan might otherwise be comfortable with.

  Leah’s eyes widened as her breath caught in the back of her throat. “What?!”

  “I asked you if –”

  “Stop.” Leah stood up, and held her hand out in front of her. “Just – just stop.”

  Ryan felt sick to her stomach. Hearing the hurt and anger in Leah’s voice was almost too much for her to bear. “I need you to answer the question.”

  Leah shoved her hands into the front pockets of her jeans. “Jesus Christ. First Jenny and now you. Who do you think I am?”

  Ryan wanted the conversation to end. She wanted Leah to say the whole idea of her and Lucy was ridiculous and comical. Instead, Leah stood in front of her defensive and angry. When Ryan spoke, her voice sounded hollow. “Please. Leah, please answer the question.” Tears burned Ryan’s eyes as she fought the urge to turn her back on Leah again.

  “I have never, and would never give Lucy a second look. She’s a horrible person.” Leah’s eyes brimmed with tears. “She’s hateful and manipulative. The very idea that I would ever – it – it’s disgusting.” The tears flowed freely down Leah’s face.

  Pushing past the overwhelming need to comfort Leah, Ryan softened her tone as she pressed on. “And my mother?”

  Leah quickly wiped at her face as she tilted her head up. “Ryan, please don’t do this.”

  Ryan stepped forward, and took Leah’s hand. “I need to know.”

  Leah looked at Ryan. The green of her eyes was intensified by the redness her crying had caused. “Karen was in love with me.”

  The quiet of the garden folded in around Ryan. She felt as if time were slowing down, and the space surrounding her was shrinking. “That’s not possible.”

  “It’s the truth, Ryan.” Leah chewed nervously on her lower lip. “I didn’t love her - not like that anyway, but she insisted. Then she told Lucy.”

  The revelation that her mother was gay, or at the very least in love with a woman, blanketed the surface of Ryan’s mind. “But – she was so angry when I came out to her.” Remembering the exchange six years earlier with Karen brought a fresh set of tears to Ryan’s eyes.

  Leah squeezed Ryan’s hand. “I can’t imagine what that was like for you. Or how confusing and awful that must have been for Karen.” Leah released Ryan’s hand, and took a step back. “After Karen confided in Lucy, she betrayed your mother’s trust and told your grandfather.”

>   Leah sat back down on the bench, her eyes fixed on some distant point beyond the gazebo. “It got worse when Lucy implied that I had tricked or converted Karen into being gay so I could get at her money.”

  Ryan pushed her own questions and hurt feelings aside, seeing that Leah – in spite of many false starts – needed to tell this story after all. She sat down next to Leah on the bench.

  “Karen and I had been best friends for several years. She was one of the first people I told when I thought I might be gay.” Leah wiped at her face with the back of her hand.

  “I was never attracted to her like that. I always thought of her more like a sister, but at some point she developed feelings for me.” Leah wiped the last of her tears away. “She worked up the courage to tell Lucy, and the rest was a disaster.”

  Ryan put her hand on Leah’s knee. “What happened?”

  Leah looked down at Ryan’s hand. “Her parents threatened to disown her. Your grandfather sent her to a resort in Massachusetts.”

  Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “Resort?”

  Leah sniffled. “That’s what they called it, but really it was a psychiatric hospital that specialized in fixing gay people.”

  “Jesus.” Ryan couldn’t imagine what that had been like for her mother. She had read about ex-gay movements, and knew some of them went as far back as the late sixties and early seventies. “What happened?” Ryan forced the question. She wasn’t sure she had the stomach for the answer.

  Leah hesitated. Her voice cracked when she finally managed to speak. “When she came home, she was so angry and hateful. She blamed me for what she had been through.” As she spoke, Leah’s eyes filled with tears again. “She was angry she had stood up to her family for what in the end turned out to be nothing.”

  “But it wasn’t nothing if she was gay.” Ryan insisted, her mother’s reaction to her own coming out ringing truer in light of what Leah was telling her.

  “She didn’t see it like that, and we had a terrible falling out.” Leah frowned. “I think she married your father to prove something to her family – or to herself.” Leah’s gaze was distant.

  “Leah.” Ryan put her hand on the woman’s back. “It’s not your fault. You were honest with her.”

  Leah’s eyes shot up to Ryan’s. Her face distorted with grief, and something else Ryan thought akin to shame. Leah quickly got up.

  “What is it?” Ryan felt some of the certainty of the past few minutes begin to falter. She didn’t want to go backward with Leah.

  “Nothing. I haven’t talked about any of this for a long time.” Leah couldn’t make eye contact with Ryan, and she had thrust her hands back into her pockets.

  Ryan closed her eyes, an errant tear running down her left cheek. In that moment she knew Leah was still holding something back. The fact Leah would lie to her so emphatically after what she had shared, threw Ryan back into the deep recesses of doubt.

  “Ryan?” Leah was standing in front of her. “Tell me.”

  Ryan sniffled. She was tired. Her body suddenly ached with fatigue, and she wanted nothing more than to curl up in her bed. “I’m not going to be able to have dinner with you tonight. I just remembered I promised Carol we would get drinks.”

  Leah’s shoulders slumped, a frown forming on her perfect mouth. “Ryan, we should talk about this.”

  Ryan stepped around Leah, and began walking back through the garden. “What’s to talk about? You’ve said all you’re going to say, right?”

  Leah quickened her pace to catch up with Ryan before grabbing the woman’s forearm. “Wait. What’s going on?”

  Ryan spun around. “Did you tell me everything?”

  The last trace of hope Ryan had was hanging on Leah’s next words. When Leah said nothing, Ryan’s fall into doubt was even greater than she could have imagined. She had already gone so far with Leah that the journey away from her seemed perilous and exhausting.

  “I have to go.” Ryan pulled her arm away from a dumbfounded Leah, and quickly retreated to her car. Leaving the convent, Ryan veered off onto a residential street, pulled alongside the curb, and put her car in park.

  She looked up at the sky, catching glimpses of white clouds between the branches of nearby trees. Like Leah, they had nothing to say. Ryan felt a pressure on her chest, and she thought it must be the weight of suspicion pressing into her, reshaping her skin along with her feelings for Leah. She suddenly felt heavy and clumsy as if she were fraying in places.

  Resting her forehead against the steering wheel, Ryan wondered if she weren’t better off not knowing. Everything Leah had said left Ryan wondering if no answers were the best, lest she have to try to unlearn the ones she didn’t like.

  ***

  1 May 1628

  Isaac woke me before dawn this morning. I was slow to rise as I can feel the time of our child’s birth is near, though the sickness and cramping have left me.

  Isaac and I have struggled over the past few days to find our way back to each other after the terrible words we had. My husband has reminded me though, that where we have love we have forgiveness.

  I fear there will be no forgiveness for Margery and her family. As much as it pains me to write, I know now that what they are accused of is true. Coleen called upon me just yesterday, she said at the request of Isaac. She was, as always, gracious and kind in her reassurances that all would be well with the birth, and that she had no doubt our child would flourish.

  “Your family is a strong one, Remembrance.” She had not touched the warm ale I had given her, but absently ran her finger along the mug’s rim. “You must know the Allerton line is one of strength and conviction.” Her eyes had narrowed and an inquisitive look crossed her face. “Did Isaac tell you my husband knew his father?”

  I was surprised by such a revelation as Isaac had not so much as mentioned a connection between the families. “No, he must have forgotten.”

  Coleen had nodded. “He is a very busy man, but then again do not all men think themselves busy?”

  Her words had been said casually, but I was still surprised that she would speak so plainly. “They are the stronger sex by design.” I shifted nervously in my chair, unsure where our conversation would take us.

  “Because it is so, or because they have said it is so?” Coleen took a short drink of the ale, frowning before quickly placing the mug on the table next to her.

  “Is the ale not to your liking?” As I have said before, I have always enjoyed Isaac’s family’s recipe and was surprised Coleen seemed turned off by it.

  “I have never cared for warm ale.” In spite of her words, a warm smile had spread across her mouth, and I found I could hardly be cross with her.

  “Your husband knew my father-in-law?” I was keen to direct the conversation back to this interesting, and previously unknown fact about my husband’s family.

  “He did. They had business dealings in Europe.” Though she had broached the subject, she now seemed to be intentionally being vague in her responses, and I wondered if she was testing my resolve to know the truth.

  “Is that what prompted you to come to Plymouth?” I had many questions going through my mind, and could not decide which was more pressing.

  Coleen leaned forward in her chair, and I was again amazed at her beauty. “We came to Plymouth – we crossed an ocean – for the same reasons you did.”

  The intensity of her voice, and the steadiness of her gaze brought a sudden heat to my neck and I found difficulty in speaking past the lump that had formed in my throat. “I – we came for freedom of thought and faith.”

  Coleen leaned back, and something akin to a short laugh escaped her. “Yes, yes. We came for the same reasons.”

  Now, I could not say why exactly, but there was a telling in her posture, or perhaps a slight hitch in her tone, but I did not altogether believe her. Though it seems unimportant in consideration of what else I have been told and seen today.

  After waking me this morning, Isaac insisted I get dressed and be p
repared to travel into the town center. I did not feel I could as I estimate I am less than a fortnight from birth. Isaac, though apologetic, was insistent nonetheless, and I felt obliged to honor his wishes.

  An hour later, I stood in the town center with no less than fifty other citizens. To my horror, Margery, Abigail and Goody Sebille were pulled before the crowd in stocks. The chains were so heavy, a constable had to give aid to Goody Sebille as she was unable to manage the restraints on her own.

  Isaac had left me with Goody Payne, and shortly after, Coleen and her sister Hester arrived in moods I can only liken to jubilation.

  “What a glorious day!” Goody Tynan had smiled, lifting her head toward the overcast sky. “Do you not agree, Goody Allerton?”

  I did not agree. Though I understood the necessity of any good Christian to do their duty in vanquishing the servants of the devil, I could never abide the public spectacle.

  Coleen took my hand in her cool one, and clearly seeing my dismay, squeezed my hand reassuringly. “This is not their end. This is the trial.” She nodded toward the procession of judges that exited the court house. “You see, there is Isaac near the front.”

  I scanned the crowd, and found Isaac’s face. His brow was narrowed, and his lips set in a frown. I could not imagine what a struggle this had been for him or his counterparts as I can scarcely think of the burdens of men.

  I listened, my hand still in Coleen’s, as the head magistrate read the charges against the Sebille women to the town’s people. The list was more shocking than one could care to imagine. Conjuring of the devil, killing farm stock throughout the colony in ritualistic manners, and perhaps worst of all, Abigail was accused of fornicating with no less than three savages in what the magistrate described as desperate acts of debauchery.

  I was not alone in my disgust, and held tight to Coleen for fear I might collapse under the weight of these revelations. “I knew she had denied two suitors, but I had not imagined –”