“Thanks.”
“Where’s Jacob?”
“Um—” Alice looked to Archie for support, but then turned back to Louise, “Jacob’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“He, uh, he died.”
“Oh, no.”
“It was an accident. He was—” I guess Alice elected not to explain skiing to her. “It was an accident.”
“But—but—” Louise turned to Archie, “You said people don’t die. If you left, and took the children, they wouldn’t—”
“That’s what we thought,” Archie answered.
“But—”
“It’s a long story, Aunt Louise,” Alice said gently. “There are some problems.”
“But are you all right? I mean, are you—Oh, poor Jacob. He was—How old was he? When—”
“Not very old—”
“He was thirteen,” Archie interrupted.
“Thirteen. But that must have been right after you left. Oh, my goodness. Where ...”
“He died on Earth. In a place called Switzerland.”
This was all way too much for poor Aunt Louise to ingest. It took us a long time to get her settled down and brought up to date. Some of the story I don’t think she ever really understood: time dilation, for example, the reason Alice looked about twenty instead of fifty. But there were so many wonders in the story that the idea that “time slows down when you go really fast,” as Alice put it, seemed the lesser of many—when there was Alice, Alice who’d been to Earth, who’d grown up in a fairytale castle surrounded by riches and servants, who’d flown among the stars, Alice sitting there beside her. Alice who was thought to be lost forever, along with her brother, lost to the infinite void.
And when we finally did get her caught up, she looked around at all of us and then just broke down, hugging Alice to her bosom and rocking back and forth, crying, crying. Then she’d dab her eyes with a tissue, apologize, sniff, and start all over again. “It’s like you’ve come back from the dead,” she said, gazing into her eyes, then, hugging her close again, “We thought we’d never see you again. Never, ever, ever.” And she’d rock and rock.
But finally she said, “But why are you here? Why did you come back? Are you going to stay with us for awhile?”
“I can’t, Aunt Louise,” Alice answered. “Like I said, there are some problems that we have to figure out. But I wanted to come back to see everybody again.”
“Of course. Everyone will—Oh, no. Most of your relatives have passed on by now ... Your grandparents—”
“What about dad? I really came to see dad.”
“Oh, yes.” Louise suddenly looked concerned.
Alice’s face immediately hardened and she said, “He’s dead, isn’t he.”
This chagrined Louise: “No, no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—No, he’s fine. Well, not fine, maybe, but he hasn’t died. Not yet.”
I could see Alice’s hopes soar. “Is he—I mean, where is he? Is he here? In Nazareth? We haven’t been able to find any—any ...”
Louise took Alice’s hand and patted it. “He’s here. He should be coming back from the store any time, now.”
“He lives here?” Alice asked.
“Oh, yes. John—you’re father, I mean, has lived with us since that, that (witch),” she whispered the word, “if you’ll pardon my language—Oh, I’m sorry, Alice. Your mother had many fine qualities, I’m sure, but she ruined my brother’s life.” This last was to Archie.
“How?” Archie asked.
“Well ... Oh, we shouldn’t talk about sad things now,” responded Louise. “This should be a happy time. John is going to be so thrilled to see you. I mean—well, that is—Oh, dear. Maybe we should ...” She looked seriously at Alice, choosing her words. “You understand that John, I’m sorry, I mean your father. It’s just been such a long time.”
“Yes,” Alice said.
“You understand that he’s changed quite a bit since you last saw him. He’s an old man, now. Very old.”
“I know,” Alice nodded. “Do you think he’ll remember me? I’ve changed a lot, too.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll recognize you. You look just like your mother.”
Alice smiled a kind of strange, half-wistful, half-cynical smile. I don’t know what it meant. I was trying to imagine her mother. Mother. The word still felt empty to me, detached. Not at all like I felt it should feel. An arbitrary label, something somebody made up.
Louise continued, “It’s just that—well, it’s not only that John is old now. He’s had a—he had a pretty hard time of it for a while.”
“What happened ... after we left?” Alice asked.
Louise shook her head sadly, “Oh, it was just so hard on him back then, losing all of you so close together. First Estelle ran out on him and then you folks came,” she looked at Archie, “and took the children.”
Alarm bells were going off in my head. Where had I heard the name ‘Estelle’ before? But Archie was speaking:
“We thought—we thought it would be best ...” Archie didn’t seem to believe what she was saying even as she said it.
“I know, I know.” Louise looked at the floor. “Things were so ugly back then.” She turned back to Alice, “I don’t know if you were old enough to understand ...”
“I remember everybody yelling and stuff. And a fire. Windows breaking. Things like that. Dad never told us why. He just said people were angry.”
“Yes. Yes, people were angry. And frightened. Maybe more frightened than angry, but sometimes those two things go hand in hand.”
“Why were they frightened?” Alice asked.
Louise looked back on painful memories. There was still anger there, too, but mostly pain. There was more anger in Archie—a detached, observational anger. Her face was stone as Louise spoke.
“Well, we tried to keep this from you children, but—but your mother,” this with great reluctance, “Your mother was a heretic. She ran off before we could try her, but she was. We all knew it. She tried to poison your father’s mind, too, and she almost succeeded.” Something occurred to her and she turned on Archie. “It was you people, wasn’t it? You came from somewhere,” she waved her hand at the ceiling, “out there. Earth or somewhere. You got to her, got her thinking about ... sinful things. Evil things. I never believed you before. I thought you were heretics, too.” Archie didn’t respond. Louise regarded her for a moment but, receiving no answer, turned back to Alice. “But John knew,” she dropped her eyes to her lap, “I knew, too, that we had to get you children away. The only way we could do that was to let Mr. and Mrs. Drake have you. John thought they’d take you someplace safe, someplace ...” Archie shifted in her chair, her anger rising, but still distant, somehow.
“Mom wanted to take us off Eden, to make contact with the outside,” Alice said. It was a statement, not a question.
Louise thought a long time before she spoke: “A person can love someone too much. A mother can love her children too much. She can want to possess them so much that she’s willing to take them away from God.”
“She didn’t want us to die.”
Louise looked earnestly into Alice’s eyes. “No one wants anyone to die. Only murderers want someone to die. I certainly never wanted you children to die. Death is something we accept as part of the great gift of life. It is God’s way of calling us home, to His home, His heavenly home. All of us here, of any faith, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, every one of us accepts death as a natural part of the cycle of life. An inevitable part. A necessary part. Whether you call it the wheel of Karma or the Will of Allah or God moving in mysterious ways. We believe that God is a good and just God—that His plan for us is wise and wonderful in ways we can’t conceive of.” It sounded like Louise had said all this before.
Alice took it in, then answered, “But, but didn’t God give us the ability to learn how to cure disease, how to stop people from dying?” Alice asked.
“Oh, yes. God has given us many abilities. To cure death, to
cause death. To rain fire on people by the millions. We don’t have to use every ability God gave us. He also gave us the ability to choose between good and evil.”
Alice was thoughtful.
Archie said, “He only seems to have forgotten to give us the ability to agree on which is which.”
There was what I think could only be described as an awkward pause, then Louise said, “Well, this conversation certainly has become serious, on a day that should be spent in rejoicing. I’m sure we can put aside our differences long enough for—”
We heard the front door open.
“Oh!” Louise hopped up. “That will be John. Please, let me try to prepare him for this. It’s going to be quite a shock.” We nodded in agreement. “John?” she called out.
“Yeah?” a gruff, ruined voice answered.
“John, there are some people here to see you—”
“Who the hell would want to see me?”
Louise went out into the foyer. We could hear their voices through the archway. “Now, John, please watch your language. These—”
“I don’t have to watch my fucking language. Who gives a rat’s ass what I say? Who the hell are these people?”
“Please, John, these are people from long ago. Long, long ago—”
John Cheatham strode angrily into the sitting room. “What the hell do you people want? Huh? Haven’t had enough? You want to rip out my guts, too? Fucking pious assholes—”
“John! John, please!” Louise implored. “Don’t you recognize them? This is Mrs. Drake, remember? Remember Mrs. Drake?”
John Cheatham, or what was left of him, stood staring at the two femmes. A once handsome face was creased and weathered, the skin thin as paper. A white frost of stubble covered a strong jaw, but the teeth were worn and yellow. Blue eyes had faded almost to grey, rheumy and vague. A shock of unkempt white hair hung over his forehead. He was tall for an Edenite, even old and collapsed as he was. He had been a large man, once, but his frame now was gristly and vacant. His clothes shone with ancient grime. He uttered just one word:
“Estelle ...”
“No, dear,” said Louise. “I made the same mistake.”
“Estelle ...”
“No, this is Alice, John. Alice. Do you remember? This is your daughter, Alice.” Louise led him over to her.
“Alice?”
Alice stood. “Hi ... Dad. Daddy. Hi. It’s me.” She started to hold her arms out to embrace him, stopped, started again. He looked down at her arms uncomprehending, then back at her face.
“You look like ...” he croaked.
“I came to ... see you,” Alice offered. “I came back. To see my ... to see my father.”
He looked confused, uncertain. He looked her over again, then said, “You grew up.”
Alice laughed, “Yeah, I guess I did.” He reached out and touched her hair. She let him. She asked, “Do you remember me?”
“You look so much like—where is she? Your mother, is she—do you know where she is? Is she with you?”
Archie said, “We don’t know where she is, John. Didn’t she run off to New Jerusalem?”
John’s expression hardened when he looked at Archie. “You look the same,” he said, his voice cold, guarded. “What happened to your—” He was looking where Archie’s arm used to be.
Archie smiled ironically. “I actually lost it getting back down here,” she said.
“Oh.” He measured her. “Why did you come back?”
Alice looked like she’d been slapped, but she hid it immediately. “I just ... wanted to ... see you, and—that’s all. I just wanted to see you again. I ...” I think she might have wanted to tell him that she loved him, but I’m not sure.
He seemed to soften a little. Louise said, “Let’s sit down, John. Hmm? Let’s all sit.” She led him to the settee, then stood behind it. John kept staring at Alice.
“I can’t believe how much you look like your mother,” he said, shaking his head. “I think you’re even more beautiful than she was.” His voice tore and flapped, a painful scraping.
Alice blushed and looked at her feet, “Oh, I don’t know.”
“She’s not with you? I thought she might have—”
“We don’t know where she is, John,” Archie repeated. Alice shook her head, too.
“How old are you now?” he asked.
Alice said, “I’ll be twenty-one pretty soon. Well, that is, it depends on how you look at it ...” And she told him of her travels.
“Isn’t that something,” he said when she had finished. “Have you heard from Jacob? How is he? Do you still keep in touch?”
Louise’s eyes opened wide in alarm behind him and she shook her head urgently. Alice picked up the cue and said, “Oh, he’s, he’s fine. He’s doing really well.”
“Did he travel around with you?”
“No, no, he, uh, he has his own things to do, you know.”
“Uh-huh. So he’s a lot older than you now, is that right?” He shook his head in wonder. “That’s something, that’s really something.” He leaned toward Alice, his hands trembling. “And he’s just going to keep on living forever, isn’t he? Both of you, I mean, you’ll get to keep living?” His old eyes searched her young ones, fervid, imploring.
Alice said, “That’s right.” But she didn’t want to, I could tell.
“That’s good.” He sat back. “That would have made your mother happy. Everything would have been so pointless, otherwise.” Sudden water spilled from his eyes, wetting sallow cheeks. “I missed you all so terribly for so long. I—sometimes I—it was ... I didn’t know if I—”
“Oh, Daddy!” Alice’s eyes were swimming, too. “I missed you! I cried and cried, every night when I went to sleep. Forever, it seemed like.” And they moved closer together on the settee.
They talked and talked for a long time. John wanted to know everything, and there was so much to tell. At one point he said, “I’ll never look at the night sky the same way again.” Then he asked, “Can you stay for dinner? Louise? We can whip up some dinner for everybody, can’t we?” He didn’t wait for her reply. “Sure we can. Then we can go up out of the canyon tonight and you can show me where you’ve been. Could you do that? Could you show me Earth and— What were all those places?”
“Sure, Daddy,” Alice answered, “I mean, some of them might not be above the horizon, but—”
“That would be something! Wouldn’t it, Louise?” Louise didn’t look like she entirely agreed, but, once again, John didn’t wait for her reply. He was gazing at Alice. “Alice has been all over the sky! My little girl has been all over the sky!”
The day was a difficult one; sometimes things went well, sometimes not. John would focus on the present for a while and then drift off into the past. Alice just tried to put it all together into some kind of coherent memory, the story of her family, of her life, of her father’s life.
At one point John asked Archie, “You don’t really think Estelle is still on Eden, do you?”
“What do you mean?” she answered.
“I mean, that’s just another story, right? Like all the other bullshit you gave me.”
Louise blanched at his language. Archie stammered.
John cut her off: “I never let myself believe,” he said. “All the clues were there; I just never let myself believe.”
“Believe what?” Archie asked.
He eyed her like a prosecutor. Then he turned away and said, “I’m not sure I want to believe it now. I always let it be enough: enough that she loved me, enough that she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, that she wanted to have my children, be my wife.”
“I’m sure she did,” said Archie. “I’m sure she really loved you. It was—”
“All that crap about visions and talking to people from outer space.” He turned back to Archie. “She was one of you, wasn’t she?”
“What, what makes you think so?” Archie asked.
“Or if she wasn’t, you put her up
to it.”
“I swear to you I didn’t.”
He pounded his fist on the arm of the settee suddenly, violently, and just as suddenly was calm again. He laughed a little. “You know, everything was fine for a long time.” He gazed at Alice, “You have to know, sweetheart, that your mother and I were very happy. She made me very happy. I hope I made her happy. But she started worrying about you kids, you and your brother. I mean, everyone dies. Around here, I mean. Everyone. No one thinks about it much; it just happens every so often. But your mom couldn’t take thinking about it happening to you after a while.” He turned back to Archie. “That was what I didn’t get,” he said. “I didn’t understand why it would start bothering her so much.” He bored into Archie’s eyes, trying to pull the truth out through them.
Archie said, “I don’t know.”
He pointed a bony finger at her. “You look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t convince Estelle that you could save the kids. By taking them away.”
Archie shook her head, “I suppose—we knew we could—But I didn’t, Drake and I, I mean my husband—”
“You don’t have to keep up that crap for me. I don’t care if you were married. I don’t imagine anybody gets married out there, do they?” He gestured at the ceiling.
Archie sat still for a moment, then shook her head. “No, no one gets married. It’s a ... It doesn’t really make sense for anyone to. Anymore.”
“Why the hell did you people come here in the first place?”
Archie looked at her feet. When she raised her eyes to meet John’s again I could tell that she wanted to be straight with him, to make amends for whatever had happened, to take responsibility, to atone. “We just wanted knowledge. I—It was my project. I brought Drake in on it but it was my project. I wanted to know ... what it was like. In the old days, when people died. When people married, had families, raised children. I wanted to learn from you.”
“You wanted to study us.”
“I—Yes, all right, yes. That’s fair. We wanted to study how you did things, how you lived. But not in any condescending way. Not like studying ants in an anthill or anything like that.” It was touching to see Archie so passionate, so desperate to convince this old man that he was something more to her than just an experiment. “I wanted to learn what we’d given up to get to where we were.”
Dancing with Eternity Page 33
