by Deb Elkink
From that first Wednesday on, they followed the same routine. He’d find a seat in the basement of the rural church and toss his backpack onto the bench beside him, waiting for her until she pulled away from Naomi and the other adolescent girls all swooning over his dark eyes and swarthy skin, all envying her and considering her honored, blessed among women.
The first full-length sermon François heard on a Sunday morning was about Paul and the riot in Ephesus. She saw him circle the name of Artemis in his Bible during the service. Later around the dinner table, as Tina spooned out Sauerkraut and pork ribs simmered with prunes, so succulent and tangy that Aglaia’s mouth watered before she lifted fork to lips, Henry asked François if he’d enjoyed the morning’s message.
The Artemis he knew was the Greek goddess of the hunt, François told them, keen to relate. Artemis was one of many, many children of Zeus, and a half-sister to the Three Graces he’d shown them on the postcard. According to the tale, he said, Artemis was once bathing naked in a valley stream while her sentinels, the Graces, hung her clothes on the limb of an olive tree. When a passing hunter hid in the grove and spied on Artemis, she turned him into a stag for his indecency and he was killed by his own hounds. With just a short story, François managed to combine sexuality and violence and mythology into one horrendous affront to the Klassen family’s day of rest.
It was the first and only time he ventured to give his opinion on such matters openly, no doubt because of the wordless feedback he received from Henry and Tina and even from Joel—a message of censure in their posture and reproof in their eyes that even his foreign sensibilities could detect. But it was just the inauguration of his clandestine storytelling to Aglaia, which soon dried up her interest in other reading, sucking away all her attention and blotting out her former absorption in the Scriptures. By the time François left the farm, she’d heard dozens of tales from ancient Greece recounting the intricate dealings between the gods, the demi-gods, and humanity. By the time Aglaia left the farm, she was ready and willing to put away such childish things as Bible lessons, and the chimeras of mythology became a means to feed her creative imagination for real-life, productive work, far away from pews and preachers.
If only she could rid herself of the other, unwelcome, relentless memories that brought such arid loneliness—a loneliness Aglaia now had hopes of ending, if she could at long last unearth François Vivier.
Lou was still talking on her phone but she was almost ready to hang up, Aglaia could tell by the shortness in her voice. She had only a moment before Lou would turn back to her and so, following her hunch, she stole a quick peek at the book of Acts in François’s Bible. Yes, there it was—the name Artemis circled. Aglaia folded down the corner of the page and shut the book again as Lou finished off with the student who’d managed to get her cell number and dared to call this late in the evening.
“That’s correct, your first assignment is due on Monday. But I’m thinking of giving a week’s extension to the class, so don’t worry about it,” Lou said. She disconnected, tapped her gel nails on the hard shell of the phone in contemplation, and then blindsided Aglaia with the dreaded question.
“So, who is this François anyway?”
Aglaia swallowed. “Just an exchange student we had at the farm one summer.” Did she sound cavalier enough?
“Your first lover?”
Aglaia almost choked on a grape. “I was only seventeen!”
“Seventeen is old enough. I met my ‘true love’ about that age, then suffered through the short but intense hell of marriage and divorce for my bother,” she said. “Come now, Aglaia, give me a few details. Ever since we met I’ve assumed you’re subject to some unrequited love, since I haven’t observed any men in your life.”
“I’m not presently dating.”
“That’s a standard line for evading confidences. Why are you not presently dating? You’re certainly a beauty—sultry mouth, come-hither eyes.” Lou assessed her frankly, even drawing her finger along the line of Aglaia’s jawbone though she turned her face away at the touch. “Don’t tell me the men aren’t looking.”
“I’m not looking.”
“I won’t pry further, then. But at least tell me how you intend to find your elusive French boyfriend after all this time to fulfill your mother’s great commission.” She motioned towards Aglaia’s whitened knuckles gripping the Bible.
“Oh no, I won’t be taking this along on my trip!”
“Tina won’t ask you about it? You gave your word, you know. Or at least you insinuated it.”
“I’ll explain it all to her when I return.”
But what would Aglaia explain, exactly, since her mother believed it was possible to find François? That she didn’t have enough room in her luggage? That the book was too heavy to tow around Paris? Her mother would see right through her excuses and bring up the whole argument again about how Aglaia had forsaken the faith of her fathers, had surely lost her salvation in the process of finding herself. If she brought the Bible back undelivered, Mom would insist on scrutinizing it for some clue—an address, perhaps—and the threat that François had written something more incriminating than Aglaia had read thus far was too great a gamble.
Lou eventually got up to leave. She tugged her navy trench coat off a hanger in the hall closet and donned it, buttoning up against the rain splattering the window. She took the few steps back into the sitting area and bent down. “You won’t mind if I borrow this postcard of the Three Graces for tomorrow’s lecture? It’s particularly applicable and the photo is so clear.” She pocketed it before Aglaia could object.
Ebenezer MacAdam, general manager of Incognito Costume Shop and Aglaia’s boss, lay snug in his bed on the rainy Thursday night, with the wife of his youth tucked in beside him. He removed his reading glasses, clicked off the lamp, and felt Iona’s feet shift closer, their coolness transferring to him beneath the feathertick.
“Be my guest,” Eb said, meaning it, and she plastered them up against his legs, making him shiver. It had been part of their bedtime ritual for nearly forty-five years, and was cherished by him because of it.
“Ian rang today,” Iona said, yawning.
Their son was a computer programmer and data administrator for a shipping firm out of Honolulu. He didn’t telephone often and Eb missed him, too.
“Everything okay?”
Iona sighed. “The twins have the sniffles.”
They hadn’t seen their eight-year-old grandchildren in more than two years. Now, with Britney at her age expecting another bairn in a few months, Ian was justifying holding off coming home for another Christmas.
“He sounded grouchy,” Iona said, “I worry about him.”
“Poor lad has a restless heart,” Eb said.
Iona murmured assent, but Eb knew her maternal sorrow encompassed more than a wandering son. Their own second child had been a precious baby girl, stillborn. Eb took some of the blame for his wife’s sadness, having poured his own grief into his work so that he neglected both Iona and Ian until it was almost too late.
Father reconciled with son before Ian went off to university, but years of emotional absence left its scars. And Eb’s marriage suffered as well, but dear Iona loyally loved her husband through it all. Now in their late sixties and with a significant wedding anniversary coming up, it was time for a second honeymoon, Eb thought. What better place than Hawaii’s beaches? If only he could get away from his job—his besetting sin. And he was working to that end.
Ebenezer came to North America as a young man eager to earn his living with the needle, and started in Montreal before Incognito sent him down to the fledgling U.S. office.
He preferred the entrepreneurial attitude here, and was soon manager of a thriving storefront, eventually expanding the Colorado branch of the individual sales-and-rentals business to include stage productions, films, and festivals. Headquarters was impressed but, with fears of a slowing economy, now threatened to close the Denver site and move essential
staff up to Canada.
Under duress, Eb had already offered severance packages to two older members of the team. It was Aglaia he was most concerned for.
“I wonder how her Shakespearian designs were received by the audience tonight,” Eb mused aloud. But Iona was already sleeping, he judged by the even breathing from her side of the bed. He kept his next thoughts to himself as he repositioned his legs to warm Iona’s feet more completely.
Aglaia was almost like a daughter to him. He saw a divine spark of creativity in her love of costume making—there was something spiritual about her—but she was restless, too, just like Ian. Perhaps Eb could have prevented the rift in his own family; perhaps even now there was something he could do to at least bring solace to the lass.
Eb was a man who believed in prayer, especially when he had heavy thoughts. Bless these children of yours, he appealed simply and silently into the dome of the firmament beyond his window. There’s naught that I can do to change them—and if I tried, I’d only bungle it anyway. And while you’re about it, Father, change me, too. Then like a child himself, Eb slipped from meditation into sleep.
Four
Late afternoon light streamed in through the workroom window of Incognito. Aglaia had tossed and turned all last night after Lou left, her alarm finally startling her out of fitfulness and into a day of intense activity, now abating as she sat alone. She was still manually occupied but free to ruminate.
Aglaia suspected she cried when she slept because her lashes were crystallized when she awakened some mornings and because her pillow had stains. And she knew she dreamed because she came up through them sometimes, resurfacing into consciousness, her eyes scraping open as she reached into the bedside drawer for her bottle of drops.
She used to love to recount her dreams at the breakfast table before the country school bus flashed its lights at the end of their driveway, Joel offering far-flung interpretations and her father shaking his head and muttering, “Vain imaginings.” They were hilarious, cheerful dreams of cherubs flying backwards through a rain forest or choirs singing hymns to conjoined twins—uncomplicated dreams that made her laugh at the silliness.
But when François came with his stories of far-away and long-ago Greece, her slumber absorbed the distorted character of Morpheus (god of dreams), who was son of Hypnos (god of sleep), who was son of Nyx (goddess of night). Her dreams became jumbled nightmares of Scripture and myth, of creation by Uranus and resurrection by Adonis and salvation by endless appeasement of the gods. It was then Aglaia stopped sharing dream details with her family, though throughout the day she treasured the inky residue of feelings they left behind.
These days, though Aglaia was still subject to the tyranny of Morpheus whenever she forgot her herbal sleep aid, there was no occasion for morning analysis. In the first place, although her job was creative, it wasn’t always conducive to woolgathering, especially the past weeks with her international project demanding such close attention. Besides, she refused to ponder remnants of nightmares any longer, and she could call up full-blown daydreams whenever she wanted a little romance—reminiscences she picked and chose. During waking hours she managed her imagination intentionally, or tried to, categorizing her memories as neatly as she arranged the color-coded thread rack at work, with pleasurable thoughts as close at hand as her buttonhole twist.
This morning at work, her head aching from too much wine in her apartment with Lou, Aglaia had finished the paperwork necessary for smooth importation procedures at the French border. So she was free to complete the remaining stitches in solitude, as everyone but her boss had left for the weekend. She heard him in the next room, his bass voice chanting out a low-key refrain, and she caught a few words: “My soul doth thirst… deep unto deep doth call.” Likely they were from the Scottish Psalter, the out-of-print hymnal he was fond of paging through, with its worn fabric cover, its lyrics written in crabbed lettering.
Ebenezer MacAdam was a gnome of a man with a brogue as thick as the butter on his lunch scones, a generous man with nothing of the Scrooge about him despite his unwieldy name. Aglaia calculated that Eb must be past retirement age, but his energy was steadfast. He closed the shop by himself every evening, and, by the time she arrived the next morning, he was paging through bills or oiling the machines, teacup at his elbow, a measuring tape around his collar like a loosened necktie. Eb drove to work in a classic tartan-red MGB that he’d restored and continued to maintain himself, usually with the top down and at the mercy of the elements until the frost was too sharp. He pushed his luck well into the winter and came in some mornings with ice coating his whiskers.
On Aglaia’s worktable, a stray beam of sunlight played on metallic threads in the garment rumpled in a heap before her. She plugged the buds of her iPod into her ears to listen to the muted crooning of a male vocalist with a guitar rather than Eb’s sentiments, and lifted the heavy gown onto her lap to pick at the bodice.
The rest of the costume was completed—petticoat and stays and beaver-trimmed cape. Representative of relations between Europe and North America, it was a replica of an outfit worn by a minor historical figure—a Parisian lady in the entourage of a governor visiting New France in the eighteenth century. Researchers at Incognito’s headquarters authenticated the particulars of its style and sent Eb’s office both a small oil portrait of the lady and documentation in the form of a letter home to her daughter—endorsements the Paris museum required, of course. This was the most advanced dressmaking commission Aglaia had yet undertaken and she was given some latitude in executing it.
Aglaia stroked the bisque brocade embossed with fleurs de lys, which she’d specially ordered from France a year ago for the ensemble. She alone designed and cut and stitched the creation from the beginning, ignoring offers of help from the teen volunteering at Incognito as part of his student work program. Aglaia owned the project from the beginning, and even now the texture and the weight of the cloth in her hand brought a deep tranquility.
From the time she was a child playing with colorful scraps that fell to the floor, listening to the drone and punch of Mom’s antiquated Singer machine, she’d hankered to sew. She learned the smell of the flax beneath linen, savored the variance between silk and wool. She had a habit still of chewing a strand each time she laid out a length of yard goods, ready for the shears. She made a sacrament of touching and sniffing and tasting—a sensual adulation.
Aglaia recalled the first dress she made for herself from start to finish, using a size eight Vogue pattern and indigo challis speckled with wildflowers.
The spell of the cloth binds her, winds itself through her imagination as she determines the straight of grain and matches up the print and struts in her mind in front of the panel of 4-H adjudicators. But today she has a different critic in view. She is engrossed when Joel enters the basement laundry room.
“You’d rather sit at the sewing machine than eat?” he asks. “Mom called you twice.” But the sundress is completed so she tries it on for the family—for François—after supper.
“When in heaven’s name will you ever wear that?” her father asks. His idea of high fashion is a sturdy twill shirt for the cattle sale at the auction ring. But his eyes sparkle at her.
“Henry, don’t discourage her,” Mom says. “It’s lovely, Mary Grace. Maybe you’ll wear it to the church picnic next week.”
Her mind fast-forwarded to the picnic where, in the shade of an apple tree, she unfastened the top button when everyone but François crowded around the potluck table.
“You are beautiful, mon enchanteresse,” he says, and then spins for her the tale of a great weaving competition called by Athena, the goddess of household arts and crafts, against Arachne, the mortal daughter of a famous dyer of purple wool.
“I image you there at that contest, my little Mary Grace.” His mouth is close to her ear and she hears him over the noisy picnickers loading their plates and calling out to them to get something to eat before it’s all gone. And she imagin
es, with his coaxing, being at that contest, imagines being one of the assisting Graces fixing the warp threads onto the loom before the great virgin goddess, passing the weft shuttle back and forth in a frenzy through the tapestry, tying off the ends in a race against time. When Arachne won, François says, the vengeful Athena turned her into a spider to spin a cobweb for eternity.
François touches her hand but she pulls away, fearful someone might see—and maybe Joel has, for he’s the closest to them and he’s glowering over his potato salad now. François winks at her. Has he been teasing, just playing with her all along? No one winks nowadays, she thinks, at least not the local boys who know nothing about flirting.
But her spoonful of jelly salad tastes like ambrosia.
Aglaia chose her needle from the stash of gold-plated “betweens” Eb supplied; she knotted the thread, then caught a loose edge within a fine seam allowance threatening to fray. Only a mannequin would ever wear this costume. Even so, the idea of unfinished seams vexed Aglaia. The piece must be perfect when she handed it over to the curator of the world-renowned collection at the Musée de l’Histoire du Costume. As Lou said, this was her chance to promote herself on an international scale. Le Parisien had already printed an advertisement of the upcoming exhibition.
Aglaia didn’t turn her nose up at public acknowledgement here at home, either. She glanced at the line of frames that hung on her wall—occupational qualifications and certifications, competition placements, a merit award. Granted, no postsecondary diploma hung in the lineup. But Lou’s unveiling last night of her recommendation of Aglaia for a position in theater costuming at the university took some of the sting out of her lack of academic credentials. The job would give her standing within the arts community—proof to herself that she’d broken free from the straitjacket of her agricultural past. If she could up her profile as a seasoned urban artist, maybe she’d finally feel like one. She was tired of living on the run—running from emotions and definitions she never asked for. Running from the farm.
