“Jerry, I beg of you, don’t take the morning service away from her.”
He looks at me questioningly, some of the tension in his features dissolving. “You’re kind and forgiving to ask that, Mary, but I must—”
“Kind and forgiving has nothing to do with it! She’s been forced to her knees. It isn’t necessary to add a beating.”
“I consider it necessary, and I’m Elder here. Mary, why are you standing up for her?”
“I’m trying to avoid a worse schism than we already have. Do you think she’s just going to bow her head and meekly do your bidding from now on?”
“Yes! That’s exactly what she’s going to do.” He rises, frowning. “I don’t understand you. I’d think you’d be more…”
“Grateful?” I take a deep breath, remembering how young he is, how little experience he’s actually had with people. “Yes, Jerry, I’m grateful to you for defending me. But you did it for the wrong reason. You had to defend me, because Miriam made her attack on me an attack on you and your authority as Elder.”
“I did what I thought was right! What else could I do but defend my own mother?”
I’m too bewildered to respond to that, and he seems annoyed at himself. He comes to my end of the table, sits down in the chair nearest me. “I realize you wanted it kept secret, Mary, but I know all about it.”
I feel dizzied, as if I suddenly found myself on stage in the middle of a play and didn’t know my lines or have an inkling of the plot.
“Jerry, what are you talking about?”
“I know, that’s what I’m talking about. I know you’re my mother.”
I’m too stunned to do anything but ask, “How could you know that, Jerry? Did… Luke tell you I was your mother?”
“Not in so many words, but he told me you bore his child. It was conceived in love, he said. He took me into his household after the woman who called herself my mother died, and sometimes at night I’d find him by the fire in the kitchen, and he’d be… crying. And he’d talk about you. He never talked about you to anybody else, and I knew then that I was the child conceived in love.”
“But no one actually told you I was your mother, did they?”
“No. People at the Ark didn’t talk about you. But I knew.”
He looks at me with a trusting smile, looks at me with Luke’s eyes, and I’m tempted to let him go on believing what he wants to believe. And I wonder if it wasn’t in the depths of grief for his mother that he decided to be the child conceived in love whom his father loved.
So, what do I tell him now? I’ve never lied to him, to any of these people, unless it seemed absolutely necessary. When you speak to a child, you speak as a child. But I can’t bring myself to lie to Jerry about this, however childlike he seems now.
I take his strong, muscular hand in my weak, ugly one. “Oh, Jerry, I wish… I wish you were my son. I look at you and see Luke in you, and I wish I were a part of you. But I’m not. Jerry, you… you’re not my son. You were over a year old when I came to the Ark.”
He looks at me with the incredulous denial of a man told he is about to die. His head moves back and forth slowly, and finally, with a muffled cry, he pulls his hand away from mine, lurches to his feet, and in his eyes doubt turns to accusation. “But… why didn’t you tell me?”
And I recoil from his accusing gaze with the hurt welling from deep within me, and it takes the shape of anger. I didn’t want the childish assumptions and expectations he created for me.
“How could I tell you? I didn’t know you thought I was your mother. And what difference does it make? Are you different because I’m not your mother? Is your life different than it would’ve been? Aren’t I the same person you’ve known all these years?”
He retreats from me, shakes his head again in mute response to emotions he can’t verbalize, until at length, he forces out, “It does make a difference! I—I’ve been a fool. And you… I loved you, Mary.”
“You weren’t a fool to think I was your mother. That was just a misunderstanding. But you are a fool if you think love depends on sharing common genes.”
He’s too full of his disappointment and pain to hear me. But I have disappointment and pain of my own to deal with. I told him he had defended me for the wrong reason, but I didn’t know there was another reason beyond Miriam’s challenge to his authority. He thought he was defending his mother. And both reasons are so petty in light of the principle involved in that confrontation that I feel sick with disgust.
“Jerry, you need to do some thinking. Some soul-searching. You have a lot to learn about people, about life, and especially about love.”
He opens his mouth as if to speak, but he doesn’t. He picks up a candlestick, nearly quenching the flame in his haste, then stalks away toward his room. I hear his door slam. For a while I sit in the light of the last candle, listening to the silence, remembering the years of silence I spent here before Jerry and the others came. No, not utter silence. I always had the sea. I am here….
Shadow comes out of the darkness, nudges my arm, and asks to be petted. I oblige her, sighing for the simplicity of her affection. I have in my life often been as alone and vulnerable as I am now, but never so bone-weary.
But there will be no rest for these weary bones.
I am a slightly ridiculous, sad, old, distaff Quixote going out to do battle. For the future, because I am a human being, and my species discovered the future, and I can’t free myself of its hold on me.
Miriam hasn’t surrendered, and neither have I.
Jerry gave a moving sermon at the morning service, so Enid told me. His text was from the Beatitudes: Blessed are the peacemakers.
On the morning after the confrontation at the family meeting, the adult members of the family are assiduously behaving as if nothing has happened. We make conversation over breakfast about the weather—no rain, but the barometer is falling—about the livestock, the garden, the tasks that need to be done today. Miriam is the exception to the business-as-usual attitude. She remains silent, unless directly addressed, watching the rest of us with eyes that seem dead, as if the fires of anger had been so thoroughly banked, not even an ember glows.
She is playing a game with us today. Having been stripped of part of her power, she has abdicated the rest of it. She gives no orders, tells no one what should be done. This forces the other women to ask her for instructions, but, with a show of humility, she tells them to ask Jerry. At first, Jerry doesn’t recognize the game and tries to make decisions on matters he knows little about, which leaves him looking inept.
But on the surface, all is well, which is to say there are no overt disagreements, no reminders of what happened last night. The surface harmony is for the children. At least, if I asked the adults, that would be their answer. But the children aren’t deceived.
I remember there were times when Rachel and I had disagreements, when resentment accumulated until it became explosive. Our answer—one never verbalized—was to maintain surface appearances, going about our daily chores as if nothing was wrong, until our tempers cooled, until finally the time came around right, and we would talk out the sources of dissension and embrace in renewed love. Something similar is going on in the family now, but it won’t work.
Miriam won’t let it work.
She will pry at the cracks in the familial foundations until they collapse. But she won’t be blamed. I will. Already, I can see open animosity for me in Grace’s eyes, and in Enid’s eyes, a profound doubt. Esther is still bewildered, more than doubtful. And Jerry? His resentment for Miriam and for me seems equal, and it is underlain with confusion that prevents me from feeling the same resentment for him.