Past Malice

by Dana Cameron

  “But it might not.”

  “I’m hungry all the time, but I can’t keep anything down. It’s awful. It’s not just morning sickness, either. Motion sickness, smells drive me crazy these days, even things I used to crave make me ill. And I look horrible.”

  “You don’t look horrible. You just feel that way because you’re not made up.”

  “Trust me, that’s the last thing on my mind right now. I just pity Kam, having to see me like this. At least I can avoid mirrors.”

  “It’s not that bad, I’m telling you. You just feel out of sorts.”

  “I’m not the only one. Kam gave up smoking.”

  “So I heard.” And now it all made sense. “Good for him.”

  “I’ll tell you, Em, that hasn’t been easy for him and if that weren’t bad enough, he’s really stretched at the moment.”

  “Work has been tough?”

  “That, always, but it’s hard for him to be the kind of person he’s used to being, lately. So many changes, so many things to think about.”

  “What with the baby and all.”

  “It’s more than that, Em.” She put her hand on my shoulder and leaned in to me, even though no one was around. I was instantly transported back to our days as undergraduates together, sharing confidences. “Please don’t tell anyone else. Even Brian, I mean.”

  So it was serious then. “Okay.”

  “He’s worried about bringing a baby into this world,” she whispered.

  I nodded. “I can imagine. But you can’t wait for the perfect time to have a baby, there never is one. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “I know, I know. It was time, as far as I was concerned. I mean, my folks, well, they were actually telling us to go for it, practically as soon as we were engaged. My sister threatened to have his baby if I didn’t—but you know my sister.”

  “I do.”

  “And his mother is so excited by the thought of it, she nearly pees when she walks past Baby Gap. That’s helped a lot, but—”

  “But it must still be pretty scary for him. For you too.”

  She nodded. “It doesn’t bother me so much; I just know everything will be all right. Kam would never worry about himself, it’s the thought of a family that he won’t always be able to protect that drives him nuts.”

  I thought about Brian’s reaction to my returning to the site. “He’ll be okay.”

  “I know.” Marty cocked her head to one side. “I mean, it shows, how very excited he is, though. He’s already talking about putting the little one’s name down for Winchester. I think he’s a couple years early for that, though.”

  “And assuming the baby will be a boy,” I agreed. “A little eager, is Kam? But there probably isn’t so long a waiting list at your old school. What was the name of that juvie hall you attended? P.S. Three-to-Five?”

  “He’d sure as hell learn self-defense, if I sent him there. Or her. And she’d swear like a champ, too.”

  “The best of both worlds: an American high school and an English public school. That’s real training for life.”

  Marty started to laugh, then clamped her hand over her mouth and reached for a plastic grocery bag.

  I stood aside, not knowing whether to try and help or give her some space. “Anything I can do?”

  “I’ll be okay in a—oh God.”

  More unhappy noises followed. I went into the house and got her a paper cup of water.

  “All right now?” I handed the cup to her.

  “Yeah, for the moment, anyway. Thanks, Emma. I need you to be my friend now.”

  “You got it.” If I hadn’t felt the tears starting then, I would have for certain with her next words.

  “And you’ll be a godmother, right? Promise me.”

  “I promise.” I hugged her again, carefully. Then I made a face. “Oh, man. I thought it would be years yet before I had to worry about someone calling me “Aunty Em, Aunty Em.” I’ve been dreading this day, but since it will be for you….”

  Marty drew herself up and looked as dignified and reproachful as she ever did, and it did me good to see it. “Emma, please. No child of mine would be that obvious.”

  Chapter 16

  WE GOT HOME AND GOT OUR GUESTS SETTLED IN the kitchen. I claimed the shower first, pleading company to be entertained, and ran up to the bathroom. After I shucked off my clothes, I thought I could hear laughter downstairs. I grabbed a quick shower to cool off; I’d also hoped to scrounge the time to tease out another stray thought or two about the paper that Bader had showed me, but that well was dry, for the moment. I went downstairs in an even better mood than I had been and was a little surprised when the conversation stopped as I entered the kitchen. Everyone—students, friends, family—was lolling around the kitchen, crowded on chairs, the floor, the counters, looking far too relaxed and chummy.

  “What? Why did you all clam up when I came in?”

  “No reason,” Bucky said in a tone that suggested that there was plenty of reason. Everyone exchanged grins and I began to get worried. “I was just telling them about the time we went to Montreal.”

  Oh damn. “Which time was that?” As if I didn’t know very well.

  “The time with Grandpa Oscar. The time you brought your trowel, you know, just in case, and set off the metal detector.” She turned to Dian. “Airport security guards don’t like trowels and don’t like wise-ass teenagers.”

  “I wasn’t a wise-ass; I was just explaining why I had the trowel with me. It wasn’t my fault he didn’t understand I wasn’t just going to dig up some monument and take stuff home.”

  “Our luggage got searched,” Bucky offered. “Oscar thought it was pretty funny, though we thought that Dad and Grandma Ida were going to blow a gasket.”

  “And what brought that up?” I asked.

  Brian smiled. “Well, it was just the four-clunk-Emma-tracking system. Boot one, clunk, boot two, clunk, pants, big clunk, shirt, small clunk, shower goes on. We can track your progress pretty good from down here.”

  “Lovely.”

  Quasi liked Kam very well, which was not surprising, since it had been ascertained in an early, ugly incident that Kam was hysterically allergic to cats in general and to Quasi in particular. When Quasi made as if to jump into Kam’s lap, Kam merely said, “Do your worst, you, my little bête noir. I took my antihistamines before I came.”

  Quasi yawned hugely and settled for rubbing against Kam’s knees, leaving a trail of long white and black cat hairs clinging to his meticulously pressed jeans.

  “Good God, that cat’s like a porcupine,” Marty said. She was doing a lot better now, with a glass of ginger ale in one hand and a pile of oyster crackers in another. “I’m sure he can just shoot those damn things like missiles at a distance.”

  “Porcupines don’t shoot quills,” Bucky said. “But I wouldn’t give Quasi any ideas, if I were you.”

  “What do you guys want to do about dinner?” I asked.

  “Well, the only reason we’re here is because Marty thought she had a better-than-average chance of getting a hot dog for dinner,” Kam said.

  “Miss the hot dogs in the city, huh?” I said.

  “I’m not going home to visit for another month, but I can’t wait that long. And since I don’t know any of the vendors in Boston, I thought this would be close enough to hold me.”

  “Well, I’m flattered you consider us a tolerable second to the guy down the street from the Met,” I said. “I think we can help you out there. But just give me fair warning if you decide a dog with everything is one of those old favorites that is suddenly going to make you hurl, okay?”

  “Deal.”

  “Joe, give me a hand with these?” I handed him a plate of salad and a plate of buns, took up a big platter of meat, and then bumped the screen door open with my elbow, holding it for the student.

  “I don’t want to keep you from your shower,” I said. “But I wondered if you’d made plans for next summer yet?”

 
“Emma, I’m still trying to get through this summer.” His voice was heavy with fatigue.

  Oh man, he thought I was trying to rub it in or something. “I know, it’s a long way off, but I’m already starting to block out field time, and I wanted to know if you’d be available.”

  “As far as I know.” His face brightened. “Sure. You’ve officially got first dibs. Thanks.”

  “Good. I’ll keep you in mind when I plan the schedule.”

  We heard Rob shout from the house. “Shower’s free, Joe.”

  “Thanks!” he called back. He rolled his eyes. “God, I was afraid I’d be next. Rob has so much goddamned hair that he always leaves about a pound of it behind in the tub.”

  “And that is officially more information than I needed,” I said. “Go on, it’s better than no shower at all.”

  I watched as Joe headed back into the house, a little bounce in his step that hadn’t been there earlier.

  After dinner, the wind changed and the muggy air started to lift. Maybe it was the wind, maybe it was the smoke from the fire, maybe it was the amount of garlic that Meg and Brian loaded into the barbecue, but the bugs were mysteriously absent as the sun went down, leaving the sky tangerine and pink in the west, blue overhead, and dark violet in the east. As the shadows lengthened and merged, sunlight was replaced by the flickering orange glow of the fire.

  It all started out ordinarily enough, but sitting around a campfire at night changes things. Bright sun that lights everything evenly allows for distinctions that aren’t as easily made by firelight. The wavering semidarkness alters status, blurs age, evokes stories that are common to us all, or at least makes a space where it is easier to relate to those stories. It could be because telling stories around a fire at night is one of the oldest shared communal experiences, and we yearn for some lingering memory of that, or it might simply be because, by firelight, we are reminded of just how little our human distinctions matter, how much closer we are to our roots than complicated cultures suggest. A fire under a starry sky changes the way people look, the way they seem, and the way they behave. The darkness grants license; the magic of fire, largely lost in the modern world, provokes daring. There is something dangerous in seeing people, friends or strangers, by firelight. It can deceive. It can reveal. It is illuminating.

  The tenor had been set in the house and it was officially “pick on Emma night.” Many cultures have something like a Twelfth Night tradition, where those who are usually in charge are temporarily made fools, deposed by those they govern. It was fun, it was good for morale, and I was fully prepared to go along with the teasing, not minding that the memories that people were sharing were all of me at something less than my best.

  Besides, I was completely outnumbered.

  “I can’t believe she was that boring,” Dian was saying. The pop of a burning branch punctuated her observation.

  “I was, completely,” I confirmed. “Within whiskers of being a prig.”

  “You never had detention?” Rob was incredulous. “Never skipped school?”

  “Never dared to,” I said, taking a sip of beer. But I also never got caught when I did dare to do something. But those times didn’t really count, because they were usually when I was out in the field with Oscar, and that was different. “Bucky was the one who made up for both of us.”

  “It’s true,” my sister said. “But it didn’t make much difference to me whether I stayed after school and read, or went home to read. It was later on, when I really started to get bored, that was the problem. Emma saved my ass a couple of times, kept me from getting caught.”

  “I didn’t want to,” I protested. “I didn’t think you should be leaving the house at night, after you were supposed to be in bed.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t squeal either. And you had the credibility that counted when it mattered.”

  Meg nodded: Loyalty was important.

  I knew the time Bucky was thinking of. She’d fallen out of the tree that was outside her window. I’d suspected for some time that she was using it as a means of illegal egress and entrance, but this time, she’d busted her arm. I was home for one of the last times, it was Thanksgiving break of my senior year, and I heard the crash. I was up late on the phone and ran outside, beating my parents by an instant.

  Spying my sister sprawled on the ground, I’d said, “Bucky, I said I’d take care of it!”

  “Take care of what?” Dad had asked.

  “There were some kids from school,” Bucky had said. “I didn’t even see who they were.”

  “I was just going to the door, to turn on the light,” I’d said. “And Bucky fell out of the window.”

  “They were going to TP the house. I guess I leaned out too far when I yelled at them.”

  Mother and Dad looked at me and I nodded, astounded by the speed with which she’d invented the lie. They weren’t thrilled with the notion that our lawn and trees might be the target of the toilet paper treatment, but they would have been even less pleased to know that Bucky hadn’t been home snug in bed as they thought she was. Something changed between us that night, something that made us more friends than sisters. A mundane event with longterm repercussions.

  I was thinking about that when I realized that the subject had changed. Joe was talking, Joe who seldom offered much in the way of conversation. Joe had been talking the whole time I’d been remembering.

  “…he bought me my first bike and taught me to ride. We went out almost every weekend.”

  I knew a little about this, that Joe’s father had died when he was just twelve. I realized what was happening when I started to get tired, sitting on the ground and leaning against Brian’s legs as he sat in a lawn chair and was reluctant to move, even to shift my weight. Joe was telling us about a bicycle ride he’d taken recently, over three hundred miles, camping along the way, over the course of a week. He said he’d been taking it fairly easy, which I found difficult to believe, though I couldn’t have gainsaid him.

  “That’s when I learned that you see the land in a whole different way than you would in a car,” he continued. “You get very familiar with the landscape when you’re pedaling up all those hills and feeling every change in every microclimate—hot and steamy in one place, and chilly with a breeze one minute later. You start thinking about how farmers and ranchers think about the land, in terms of wind and vegetation and grade, and a lot of little things start to make sense. I go out and it’s like being with him again.”

  It was more than I’d heard from Joe the whole summer, and suddenly I saw where he had focus, how he saw things, in the hard, the physical, the concrete. Direct experience was what fueled him. I filed it away to make the most of it when directing him later in the semester, or with his master’s thesis.

  Around and around it went, everyone picking a story to tell, the care with which they chose them showing that they all felt it too, that there was communion around that fire. It was like building a rope bridge over a chasm, each step important and a link between the last and the next, one after the other, until it was completed. Or maybe it was like building a fire, feeding the thing between us, already so fragile, so elusive that we didn’t want it to die away or be extinguished by an ill-considered contribution. It wasn’t the stories themselves that were important, or the questions either, it was the trust. I leaned back against Brian’s knees and gazed at the stars through the smoke.

  At last, we fell quiet. It was late and it had to end sometime, and it was better that it should be intentionally than have some wrong note jar and ruin the harmony. I got up and threw another stick onto the fire. “Well, it’s late and I’ve got to get my beauty sleep. I’m heading in.”

  “And we’ve got to head for home,” Kam announced. He helped Marty out of her chair, even though she was months away from showing yet. “Enough hot dogs, beloved?”

  She nodded and patted her belly. “And the little one liked them, too.”

  “For which I am, on behalf of the car’s interio
r, eternally grateful.”

  We all exchanged good nights, and Brian and I walked Kam and Marty out to the driveway. We said quiet goodbyes, and Kam and Brian shook hands; a truce had been called or an understanding reached; perhaps now that Brian knew about the baby, some of Kam’s worry was lifted. We lingered on the porch as the Jag pulled away and left us in the quiet of the night—crickets, ambient light from the center of town nearby luminous over the field across the street. We heard everyone come in the back, so we locked up and set the alarm. Brian and I went up to bed, neither feeling the need to talk.

  We were the last ones up; the students had decided to come in. After I confirmed that they’d doused the fire, I ran into Bucky as she was coming out of the bathroom.

  “Okay. I get it now,” she said, as if she was here to observe me. Maybe that was why she’d come to visit in the first place.

  I paused outside the doorway. “What do you get?”

  “I get the attraction. Of what you do. Why archaeology means so much to you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Psychology aside?”

  “Please.”

  “Well, maybe just a little psychology. At first it was just because I thought you were misanthropic, but you’re not really a hermit. Studying the past, that allows you to think about why people do things without getting too messy. Too personal. Possibly a reaction to Ma and Dad’s divorce.”

  “Interesting.” I cocked my head. “And here I thought I was in it for the money. But I was into archaeology well before they split.”

  “But then there’s the influence that Grandpa Oscar had on you, when we were growing up. And it’s because it gives you the chance to build these communities. That’s important to you.”

  “Yeah. It is.”

  “And you know something? It’s just as important to them too.”

  I mulled that over, hoping she was right. “You want to know the real secret? The real reason I became an archaeologist?”

  “Why?”

  “It was the only job I could think of where I could read someone’s diary and get paid for it.”