Decatur (12 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Changes

Marilyn closed the door to her apartment and leaned against it as Rowley buried his head into her thighs, his paws resting against her as he trembled. What had just happened, she wondered as she stroked his head softly, saying over and over, “It’s okay good boy, it’s okay.” She led him to the orange covered sofa and he climbed up and sat with his head in her lap as the storm began to slacken. Marilyn listened very closely waiting for the silence to come back into her. The silence was her way of keeping things under control. But suddenly she was finding it hard to hear nothing but the rain on the roof. Gar had made something want to jump in her veins, and it was scary and yet she felt more alive than she had in a long time. She looked at her apartment over Rowley’s head. The place looked like she hadn’t had anyone over in years. She hadn’t. Father W maybe four years ago on another rainy afternoon. And then that doctor who started dropping by the Surrey on a regular basis, only to find out he was married with two kids and a colonial on Lake Decatur. Not that the apartment was messy but it seemed painfully trapped in time. She didn’t have a stereo, she didn’t have one of those big black-and-white glossy calendars, she didn’t own any candles and her plants were all in plain pots, not one in the colorful ceramics or even the woven macramé holders she saw in the gift shops downtown. All she had was her quirky collection of toys, her poetry books, the antique patent medicine bottles filled with colored water that were her only grade-school hobby, and her poster of Andrew Wyeth’s
Christina’s World
along with the now propped-up painting of the elephant with its frame now in pieces, done by her great aunt.

Her mother had discouraged Marilyn from going out much or meeting new people and didn’t like her to play up her looks. She was afraid of any attention Marilyn might attract, not knowing what people would do if they really knew that Marilyn could sometimes predict what was going to happen or make objects move on their own when she was stirred up. She couldn’t remember the last time she wore anything other than her blue chenille bathrobe or her waitress uniform. Sure, she allowed herself to wrap her head into a silk scarf once in a while to keep her hair neat, or put a cashmere cardigan over the top that she found at a garage sale but even that felt so daring to her. “Rowley,” she said, “I’ve got to figure it out. Or I’ll never be free to really live a life.”

Rowley, hearing his name, came into the bedroom and looked at her curiously. Something was going on. He hopped on the peach bedspread. Marilyn was fascinating to him and he could watch her all night long.

She stripped down to her underwear in her bedroom and looked critically at herself in the mirror. The charge that she had felt when Gar touched her was still ringing in her nerves like a thousand tiny alarms, she thought, looking at her body and lighting a cigarette. She took a long drag, letting the smoke fill her lungs. When she exhaled, her image in the mirror wobbled and then shattered into pieces on the floor. “
You’re carrying a psychic burden.”
Max’s words floated up like they were written in the cigarette smoke as her mirror image with a tug pulled itself back together. Throwing on her robe she went to the phone and, consulting the slip of paper he had given her, she dialed, the big dial wheezing and clicking with every number. Max answered after three rings and seemed truly pleased and surprised that Marilyn wanted to get back to work that afternoon. He agreed to pick her up a little before five p.m.

Feeling brash, Marilyn pulled on a pair of brown linen flared trousers piped in pink and the matching big collared pink shirt with the fancy French cuffs. The woman in the Frank Lloyd Wright house had spent a fortune on this and let it go just after one season in a yard sale. Marilyn figured she might as well get used to not wearing the uniform right now if she was ever going to have the nerve to meet Gar tomorrow like a real date, for a walk and ice-cream. A sniggle of anxiety and desire at that thought crept up and made her cheeks flush as she looked in the bathroom mirror, applying pink frosted lipstick to her lips. She had some lines on her forehead, true, and a couple of fine ones by her eyes but maybe hiding out all this time had made time kind to her because she really didn’t look much over twenty-eight. Thank God.

She opened the door to Max’s Impala and let Rowley in first. Then she stood for just a half second so Max could see she wasn’t wearing the black rayon uniform that he had seen her in every time before and then got in the front seat beside him and the dog.

Max turned his head and looked at her full on then, before he put the car into drive: “You look amazing, Marilyn. Seems a shame to hide an outfit like that in the Map Room.”

Marilyn laughed at this, licking her lips lightly and waving her hand to hide her embarrassment as she pushed down her mother’s warning voice in her head. “Let’s go,” was all she said.

The campus was emptying out for the weekend because if you had a car and any dough you would make the run over to Champaign Urbana, the real hopping college town forty-five minutes away. Max came around to the passenger side and helped Marilyn out of the car, even taking Rowley by the leash and giving him a pat on the top of his head as if to say, you’re part of the package, big fella.

The grey light post-storm made the map room seem moody and almost romantic. Marilyn sighed deeply, enjoying the contours of the room, the way the cracked leather chairs smelled, the out of date maps rolled down along the deep sienna-colored walls. Max opened the windows to let a little fresh air in and wondered what had happened to make Marilyn so restless, so beautiful, so intent on working through her past.

“I want you to relax.” He began the hypnotic visualization process as Rowley settled into his chair next to Marilyn’s. “Feel your body filling up with beautiful clear liquid, let it start in your toes and then feel it in your ankles, it feels so good as it goes up your calves and thighs into your pelvic area, stomach, chest, throat, it’s filling every part of you and relaxing you.” They went through the entire visualization and how it was a safe place, a good place, and that the only thing Max wanted was for her to better understand herself and connect to the divine. Marilyn soon was falling into a state where while she knew she was in the map room with Max and Rowley it was like she was looking down at her present self as another self was forming in her mind.

Even though her eyes were closed she felt she was looking through a window
. A window in an old building. It was winter and the panes of glass on the window were cold.
“There,” she murmured.

“What are you seeing, Marilyn?” Max asked, opening his notebook.

“A snowy yard. There’s a round stone barn. I’m watching for someone,” Marilyn said,
now looking out onto the yard, watching the barn doors closely. Her heart was pounding.

“Where are you?” Max asked.

“Hancock Village,” Marilyn whispered, “Here.” Marilyn rose and went to the map of the Americas and traced her fingers up through New England to the Berkshire Mountains. “He found me again in another lifetime after missing me in two others. Here I was not nearly so lucky.” She again pointed to a little town called West Pittsfield.

“Is that a community of some kind?”

“Yes, we are Shakers. I’m Sister Ellen, soon I’ll be an elder.” Marilyn shook her head sadly
. The man in the map room seemed far away.
She sat back down so she could concentrate
. It was what was happening in the yard that was important. A bird flew over the snow making a shadow. Was he coming? Was the shadow a sign from the spirits
? Marilyn bit her lip and twisted her hands in her lap.

“Who are you watching for, Sister Ellen? You seem anxious,” Max said gently. Marilyn was in another past life regression and as a member of a Utopian society, the Shakers, who believed in a connection to the divine, who had trances, healed the sick through spirits, and made beautiful music, buildings, and furniture. They were also celibates, which was why they died out as a society. Much like priesthood, celibacy didn’t work in the long run, thought Max, straining to remember everything he had ever read about the religion.

“He came to us Believers a month ago. It’s been a bitter winter. We take in those that need our help and we kindly welcome them into our community only asking they observe our ways and praise the Lord in worship. Young and strong, he’s worked hard like a true Believer doing many things our Shaker men have grown too old for. We have too few men in our community these days and our industry suffers from it. So when death first came calling but two nights after his arrival there was no suspicion. We needed him that winter. They found our old Brother Paul on the floor of the carpentry shop with his eyes wide open and his mouth gaping, but it could have been anything that caused his passing,” Marilyn broke off, putting a hand up as if to block out something.

“Were there other deaths?” Max asked, thinking hard, trying to piece together what was happening. Any doubts about the authenticity of her channeling past lives under hypnosis evaporated; too many details and the kind of symmetry found in nature between the past lives bore out a spiritual journey taken over lifetimes.

“Another drifter we had taken in was found dead in the far field, he had been running from something they said, but no-one knew what. They had shared quarters together - him and what I thought was the good stranger - it was innocent enough. Then Elder John took me aside. He bade me read the story of Lot and asked me if I would disobey like Lot’s wife and be turned into a pillar of salt. Where was Sodom, I asked? He pointed to the new convert. He felt I had developed an improper affection for this man who had come to our community. Faith, I only spoke to him twice. My hair is gray, where was the harm?” Marilyn as Sister Ellen spoke quietly but there was deep emotion in her tone.

The man talking to her in the room was distracting. She had to keep her eyes sharp. Then the red doors on the barn opened. A man simply dressed in an outer coat and hat came leading an oxen and cart. Her breath caught in her throat. It was him. She shouldn’t take her eyes off him. He had an axe in the cart
. “Elder John has been missing now for two days. The community’s harmony is broken. Chores undone, hymns unsung. I promised even though I knew it was wrong to go with the new believer. I am to meet him as sun sets. He says he found Elder John’s body. That Elder John fell beneath the ice in the mill pond but he won’t chop him out alone. Bitter cold has come down from the mountains and everything is frozen hard. I can’t leave the elder beneath the ice.”

Max felt the hairs rising on the back of his neck. “Sister Ellen, I thought you said you only spoke to this new believer twice, how did you learn about Elder John?”

“I couldn’t help myself once I started sinning with this man. We never had relations but I broke the separation of the sexes and we communicated any way we could, through notes, songs, and I sinned with him in my mind. We touched our hands just once palm to palm. It was like lightning striking. The stranger told me I have something he needs and that Elder John was wrong to try to keep it from him. It is not our way and I’m ashamed. Now the sorrow begins. Mother Ann was right and I’m afraid. I have to get away from here. ” Marilyn’s voice was a hushed whisper.

“What are you afraid of?” Max asked, gripping his pen so tightly he thought for an instant he might break it.

“I had a vision on the Holy Mount. A spirit warned me about the one who came to us a laborer this winter.” said Marilyn.

“What was the warning?” asked Max

“That I knew this evil. That my spirit had met it in another world and that it is hunting my soul, it wants my immortal life. That’s why I’m watching. I need to teach myself. He can’t see me but waits outside of the dwelling building by the barn for me. But I’m hidden from his view. I will have to confess to my sisters, chop my hair off and take on the clothing of man. I will wear Elder John’s cloak and hat and leave this place in shame. My sisters I will ask to spirit sing to protect me, and in their good love they will sing out one after the other and help me escape. I will humbly ask the spirit to guide me through the snowy fields and see even now how the flakes fall and will cover my tracks. The voice has risen up in my heart and told me to go to West Pittsfield and live like a man with a good family we know that believes in us Shakers, in the world of the spirit, and hope that will shield me.” Marilyn even though her eyes were closed her face as Sister Ellen was strained as she peered from somewhere deep inside herself into the other world.

“What do you want to teach yourself?” asked Max.

“To recognize the signs,” Marilyn said in the low tones of the trance.

“The signs?” Max prompted.

“Of he who would rob me of my soul for all time,” Marilyn as Sister Ellen said.

“Like the demon in Attyahuya?” asked Max, careful to keep his tone modulated.

“What?”
The questions were like flies landing on her. She wanted the man in the yard to look up and see her watching him from the window. She felt if he would just look up she would know if the spirit’s warning was true. In other lifetimes. Then he took the hat off that hid his face and, like he had heard her, the man turned around not knowing she was standing in the window, watching.
“No!” the words slipped out of her mouth and suddenly Marilyn was on her feet.

“What? Sister? Marilyn? Are you all right?” Max’s anxiety was flaring. He had to end this session.

“Stop now. Stop.”
She didn’t want to see, she forced her eyes open, she didn’t want to look out the window and see the face
. There was a wobbling in the world between two places, like being shaken from a dream.

“Wake up, Marilyn. Wake up. You’re fine. You feel fine,” Max commanded as Rowley whined and jumped down from his seat. Marilyn’s beautiful dark eyes were huge, like smudge spots in her white face, and she looked rattled to her core. Rowley felt shivery and he skulked next to her legs as she breathed hard and tried to keep her composure. Marilyn didn’t smell right, there was something off in her normally sweet odor, something like a human ozone smell, sickly, yet heavy and dangerous.