Stony River (30 page)

Gargantua
.
The Aeneid
.
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
.
Cuchulain of Muirthemne
. She sets each book on the floor.
Beyond Good and Evil
.
Candide
.
The Nibelungenlied
.
Irish Witchcraft and Demonology
. James's penciled notes in the margins of some volumes catch at her heart.
Sex and Repression in Savage Society
.
Argonauts of the Western Pacific
.
Sons and Lovers
.
Critique of Pure Reason
.

Memories like fingers and hands grip her belly and chest.

Such joyous pain.

Heroic Romances of Ireland. The Death-Tales of the Ulster Heroes. The Golden Bough
.
Brave NewWorld. Tarzan of the Apes
.
Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande.
These would likely be on Sister Theodore's prohibited list. Miranda wants to read them all the more if they are, wants to savor words and ideas so powerful they must be banned.

Quickly now she unpacks the remaining volumes, setting them end to end, alphabetically by author, forming a serpent of books across the floor, her hands agile with purpose. Ah, here are those whose worlds she naively once believed existed outside their pages.
Don Quixote de la Mancha. Ivanhoe. Gulliver's Travels.
And others that befriended her all those lonely years.
Oliver Twist. Emma. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
For Cian, Carolyn and Mickey she sets aside
Winnie-the-Pooh, The Wind in the Willows, Through the Looking-Glass, The Jungle Book
and children's versions of the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey.

James said that if words could be held and tasted and smelled they might be enough to live on. He ferried most of these volumes from Ireland and purchased others later so that she could hear the literary voices of her birth country:
Gone with the Wind, Moby-Dick
,
The Last of the Mohicans, Of Mice and Men, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn—
she so wanted Francie to be her sister! She knows not how James paid for those books unless by card tricks in pubs. Her favorite was when he changed the colors of the aces.

Over here,
the Voice calls.
The cartons from our basement
.

Under rags she finds the altar cloth, chalice, James's cord of knots, the bells, drinking horn, wand and the candle, now soft and misshapen. The candle symbolized awareness, James said. She'd nearly forgotten. She pulls it out and sniffs the soapy smell of the wax.

She wrenches open another box. Hidden beneath a telephone that never rang and lamps that were never lit are the black drapes and the map James drew of their spiritual homeland. Here are the forests and plains, coastline and isles he traversed during meditations and trances, a landscape he said would open up to her in good time.

How careful and methodical he was, journeying in Miranda's eleventh year to the Isle of Labyrinths to seek advice from the magi there. They told him a sacred coupling would bear fruit only if it took place on the thirteenth day before Miranda's thirteenth birthday: Bealtaine, as it happened. For two years they made ready, Miranda prouder and happier than she'd ever been, with James devoted to her preparation. He cast a spell to make her fertile. She recalls holding smooth stones he brought in from the mystical river behind their house and, when she was twelve, drinking a potion to initiate her menses.

Frenetically now she undoes the remaining boxes but can't locate the harp, the blade and the necklace. How could some items have found their way here but not those? The chalice, at least, has not been lost. Winding around its stem is the likeness of a faerie James said protected women from men. Its cloudy pewter surface is cool and smooth in her hands. “Peasant's silver,” James called it. The chalice's worth, he explained, was in its emptiness, representing as it did the vagina from which all nature is born. It held the favored position on their altar once Dagda and Danú had called them. James positioned the drinking horn below it to remind them that the wisdom that is Dagda would be prostrate at the feet of the love and compassion that is Danú. Miranda trembles at the realization that her
great-grandmother, too, once lifted this very chalice to her lips and felt that first burning sip of wine.

She extracts the wand, a hard, pale brown stick cut from a rowan tree in her great-grandmother's native Donegal, with which James invoked Dagda and Danú. Miranda welcomed them with the tiny jingle bells. Holding the wand in one hand, jingle bells in the other, she closes her eyes and hears James's robe brush the floor like a broom. Breathes in and out until her body is no more than a hum. Behind her eyelids, shapes billow outward—a jingle bell swelling until its keyhole-like openings rise into giant doors. Her feather self floats through one into a vast echoing chamber where James, in black robe and bare feet, lobs a metal ball against the walls, ringing the bell so loudly that Miranda must cover her ears with her hands. Her heart wants to explode with rapture. The chalice magically appears in his hand. He lifts it as to Heaven and chants, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you drink the blood of your mother, you have no life in you.” When Miranda reaches for the chalice a woman rises from it, naked and sorrowful, her arms holding out a tangerine. As Miranda tries to grasp the fruit, the woman falls from the chalice in a torrent of salt and blood. It carries her and Miranda away, through the giant bell door and into nothingness. Miranda is back in the ocean on that day she thought she might drown until James calls out, “You've always known how to swim!”

She opens her eyes to Doris's stricken face. And finds herself on the cool cement floor.

FIFTEEN

JUNE 22, 1957
. Dearie stood up for Tereza and Herman for Buddy. Herman let them use the restaurant before it opened. They could've taken the big room, but Tereza chose the ladies' lounge because it was cozy, plus she and Buddy could face the mirror and be their own audience. The lounge gave off that good clean ammonia stink. The only other person was the Justice of the Peace, a porky man in a light gray suit; you could watch the jacket ride up over his ass in the mirror as he spoke. Tereza wouldn't have minded having Richie there, now that it was safe, but Buddy said Richie and his folks had vamoosed, like Ma, Jimmy and Allen. Tereza wanted Mary Lou, the Polaroid girl from the restaurant, to take pictures, but Dearie said the fewer folks the better so Herman brought his fancy camera from home.

Dearie had made Tereza a sleeveless white linen dress with a scooped neck and a short veil that fell from a little crown of phony pearls. She'd swept Tereza's hair back with fancy little combs. Tereza had bought herself satiny white shoes with four-inch heels so that Buddy wouldn't have to bend down too far to kiss her. Herman showed up with a huge bunch of red carnations for Tereza to hold and one for Buddy's lapel. They smelled like cloves. Buddy was in the same suit he'd worn at high-school graduation the week before. Dearie complained his black boots weren't proper wedding gear, but Buddy said they were like a trademark.

The ceremony was boss. Tereza nearly snorted when she found out Buddy's real name was Eldon. The part she liked best was when he put Dearie's “something old” silver wedding band on her finger. Tereza didn't get to say “with this ring” for him because he said guys who wore wedding bands were sissies. When the JP said “You can now kiss the bride”—their first kiss—Buddy brushed his lips over hers so fast she hardly knew it was happening. Later, Herman popped a bottle of ginger ale.

Tereza had been dumbstruck when Buddy asked her to marry him, especially since he'd been in a funk for a couple months and had stopped going to the movies with her. But then his boss told him A&P was looking for smart, hard-working guys to work their way up and that there was no reason he couldn't manage a store one day; there were over four thousand. Dearie said that would be the ticket to show Buddy was the respectable type, not one to be getting in trouble, and Buddy had bucked up a little. When he found out that A&P liked their managers to be married, Dearie said why wait, do it now, otherwise Tereza was going to have to move out. Dearie wasn't blind: she'd seen her mooning over Buddy and that spelled jailbait. Tereza thought she should become a star first, but Dearie pointed out that A&P had stores in California and Buddy could be transferred to Hollywood someday. In the end, Tereza decided it would be cool to have a husband.

She wasn't old enough to marry, but Dearie knew somebody who made up a phony birth certificate that said Tereza Ladonna Lange had turned sixteen in April. “One year's difference won't make no never mind,” Dearie claimed. Even so, she was nervous enough about it to not want a crowd at the wedding. The certificate got the month, day and state right, at least. Ma had told her she'd been born in Broken Arrow, North Dakota. Dearie found out there was no such place and figured Ma had been making a funny, so the certificate said Fargo.

They spent the night in the hotel Tereza had tried to get into on Halloween a couple years ago. Buddy had said, “Where'd you like
to go?” and Tereza knew right away. Herman booked it for them. A different guy was at the desk when Buddy signed them in as Mr. and Mrs. Eldon Jukes, both still in their wedding clothes so they'd look legit. The guy didn't ask for their marriage license or any other ID. Just said, “We value Mr. Schottler's business.” The room wasn't as big as she expected but nicer than she'd ever seen, with curvylegged white furniture and a high bed. Buddy called down and asked the color of the carpet, drapes and bedspread because she wanted to know and they said “champagne.” He filled the ice bucket with water and put her carnations in it. Red and champagne looked boss together.

They ordered room service: a steak for Buddy and for Tereza chicken à la king that didn't live up to its royal name. Tereza had brought along strawberry-shortcake-scented bath crystals but Buddy said bubble baths weren't manly. He agreed to watch
her
take one (she'd pinched the idea from
True Confessions
), but seeing her naked didn't get him excited. She put on the short black nightie Dearie had bought her and said, “Hold me over your head with one arm like Richie said you could do.” He did, stripping down to skivvies first, and she felt dizzy with desire.

They were laughing when he tossed her onto the swanky, satiny bedspread. He straddled her, bent his head and kissed her gently, his lips as soft as Wonder Bread. She pried them open with her tongue. He pulled his mouth away and rolled off her. “The human mouth is a petri dish,” he said, whatever the hell that was. He switched on the TV, said, “Look,
Gunsmoke
is on.” Propped up the pillows and gestured toward them. “M'lady?”

Tereza was still on her back, staring up at the dangly lamp with bulbs that looked like candles. She took the hand Buddy held out. They sat in bed, hands on each other's crotches, watching TV. Buddy's balls were beanbag squishy even though she was squeezing them half to death. She pulled his limp dick through the opening in his skivvies,
ducked down and put it in her mouth. He pushed her head away roughly. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to make you feel good.”

“Don't. It's degrading.” He pulled away, stood and tromped to the TV. Turned it off.

“What's degrading mean?”Tereza thought about all the guys she'd done at Tony's. Nobody'd ever complained before.

“Shameful. Unbecoming a wife.”

“Well, if you don't get stiff, you can't stick it in me.”

“What kind of talk is that?” He stood by the TV popping his knuckles.

“So, what do you want me to do?” Buddy was starting to piss her off.

Then it was like somebody had flicked a switch on him that said Act Cool. He hunched his shoulders and stuck his arms straight out in front, hands pointing down. He staggered stiff-legged toward her. “Frankenstein vill show you,” he said.

She laughed and screamed in mock fear. In
The Creature Walks Among Us
the horny man-fish monster breaks down a door to get to the blonde actress. Buddy was much better looking.