The Third Grace (4 page)

Aglaia was tipsy. Her wine glass was now empty and she had a drowsy, after-bath feeling as she slumped on the sofa. She checked her watch. She didn't actually want Lou to leave, or at least didn't want Lou to know she wanted her to leave. But the other woman rose to her feet, smoothed out her skirt, and stepped towards the hallway. She approached the table and rested one hand on the outer pouch of the suitcase, then worked at the zipper.

“Are you looking for something?” Aglaia stammered, instantly sober.

“No, just curious about this Bible. You know my penchant for cultural investigation, and biblical literature is, after all, the foundation of Western values.” Lou removed the book and Aglaia was astonished at her audacity. Lou continued, “More than that, the devotional interaction we see between the reader and the text is based on an almost magical view of reality. It's fascinating.”

Aglaia found her feet and almost shouted, “That's private!”

Lou's brows shot upward. She ignored Aglaia's outstretched hand. “Private? I should think it's the most public writing of all time. The world's bestseller, isn't that what they say?” She weighed the book in her hand, her thumb slipping into place ready to open it. “In fact, your theologians have very publicly discussed angels and heads of pins for centuries now, although recent literary scholarship has brought to light issues worthy of more serious debate.”

“Then you must have several versions of it in your own bookshelves.” Aglaia sounded petulant to her own ears. She didn't want Lou misunderstanding; she had no desire to support any theologians. She just wanted that Bible shut and safely stowed away before Lou discovered the subject of the writing in the margins.

“I have one or two copies, although my area is more generally anthropological than theological. What version is this?” To Aglaia's relief, Lou kept the cover closed and read the spine, then moved back to the couch and sat again. Maybe she wouldn't open it after all. Lou said, “You should use the King James Version instead for its literary worth. It was first printed in 1611 and heavily influenced subsequent English vocabulary and literature. Of course, the value of biblical myth to society goes far beyond linguistics. The stories in these pages, if properly informed by content from every religion and reinterpreted within the contemporary milieu, speak of the metaphysical yearning of all humanity for the divine.”

A faint ringing emanated from the suede bag at Lou's feet. Aglaia was thankful for the interruption, only in part because it forestalled the danger of Lou opening the Bible. Something in her rebelled at the professor's instructive tone and vocabulary, but she couldn't let that show now—not after the job offer Lou had just dangled before her. When Lou set the Bible down to answer her phone, Aglaia took her seat, slid the book off the coffee table, and clamped it to her lap with both hands.

Her own wariness of the Bible went beyond Lou's dry, academic dismissal. After all, hadn't she read it in the fervor of her youth for sheer joy—read it in her room every morning under crumpled bed sheets, submerged in the poetry and the prophecy, memorizing lines that sang in her heart?

It wasn't just the stories, either, of Daniel in the lions' den or the good Samaritan. Gullible as she was, she'd known back then with such certainty that this was God's true Word to her, God speaking directly from His own heart to hers.

And the gullibility didn't stop with just her reading. In spite of her shyness, she was always ready back then to impart her convictions to anyone who'd listen. It was natural to talk to François about it, too—in the beginning at least. She thought of the first time she and her older brother took him to their youth group.

“You can follow along in the English,” she says, and opens François's brand-new Bible to the Psalms for him.

He tilts his head at her, his smile mischievous. “You will sit close to me and help,
non
?” And he moves his leg so that his knee brushes hers.

Joel snorts. “Nice going, Sis. Your sucking up in French class pays off at last. Lucky you didn't take German after all.”

François ignores the brotherly bantering but she's embarrassed, and even more so as he looks over at her own Bible every now and then throughout the reading. There's no hiding the verses she underlined at a different time in a different frame of mind, and François smirks as Pastor Reimer reads aloud other verses on the facing page, and he presses his leg closer to hers:
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you… All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears… You turned my wailing into dancing and clothed me with joy.
This is new magic to her, the magic of words that shield implication beneath connotation. François's silent reading of the words, his flickering glance and half-smile, give her goose bumps.

From that first Wednesday on, they followed the same routine. He'd find a seat in the basement of the rural church and toss his backpack onto the bench beside him, waiting for her until she pulled away from Naomi and the other adolescent girls all swooning over his dark eyes and swarthy skin, all envying her and considering her honored, blessed among women.

The first full-length sermon François heard on a Sunday morning was about Paul and the riot in Ephesus. She saw him circle the name of Artemis in his Bible during the service. Later around the dinner table, as Tina spooned out
Sauerkraut
and pork ribs simmered with prunes, so succulent and tangy that Aglaia's mouth watered before she lifted fork to lips, Henry asked François if he'd enjoyed the morning's message.

The Artemis he knew was the Greek goddess of the hunt, François told them, keen to relate. Artemis was one of many, many children of Zeus, and a half-sister to the Three Graces he'd shown them on the postcard. According to the tale, he said, Artemis was once bathing naked in a valley stream while her sentinels, the Graces, hung her clothes on the limb of an olive tree. When a passing hunter hid in the grove and spied on Artemis, she turned him into a stag for his indecency and he was killed by his own hounds. With just a short story, François managed to combine sexuality and violence and mythology into one horrendous affront to the Klassen family's day of rest.

It was the first and only time he ventured to give his opinion on such matters openly, no doubt because of the wordless feedback he received from Henry and Tina and even from Joel—a message of censure in their posture and reproof in their eyes that even his foreign sensibilities could detect. But it was just the inauguration of his clandestine storytelling to Aglaia, which soon dried up her interest in other reading, sucking away all her attention and blotting out her former absorption in the Scriptures. By the time François left the farm, she'd heard dozens of tales from ancient Greece recounting the intricate dealings between the gods, the demi-gods, and humanity. By the time Aglaia left the farm, she was ready and willing to put away such childish things as Bible lessons, and the chimeras of mythology became a means to feed her creative imagination for real-life, productive work, far away from pews and preachers.

If only she could rid herself of the other, unwelcome, relentless memories that brought such arid loneliness—a loneliness Aglaia now had hopes of ending, if she could at long last unearth François Vivier.

Lou was still talking on her phone but she was almost ready to hang up, Aglaia could tell by the shortness in her voice. She had only a moment before Lou would turn back to her and so, following her hunch, she stole a quick peek at the book of Acts in François's Bible. Yes, there it was—the name
Artemis
circled. Aglaia folded down the corner of the page and shut the book again as Lou finished off with the student who'd managed to get her cell number and dared to call this late in the evening.

“That's correct, your first assignment is due on Monday. But I'm thinking of giving a week's extension to the class, so don't worry about it,” Lou said. She disconnected, tapped her gel nails on the hard shell of the phone in contemplation, and then blindsided Aglaia with the dreaded question.

“So, who is this François anyway?”

Aglaia swallowed. “Just an exchange student we had at the farm one summer.” Did she sound cavalier enough?

“Your first lover?”

Aglaia almost choked on a grape. “I was only seventeen!”

“Seventeen is old enough. I met my ‘true love' about that age, then suffered through the short but intense hell of marriage and divorce for my bother,” she said. “Come now, Aglaia, give me a few details. Ever since we met I've assumed you're subject to some unrequited love, since I haven't observed any men in your life.”

“I'm not presently dating.”

“That's a standard line for evading confidences. Why are you not presently dating? You're certainly a beauty—sultry mouth, come-hither eyes.” Lou assessed her frankly, even drawing her finger along the line of Aglaia's jawbone though she turned her face away at the touch. “Don't tell me the men aren't looking.”

“
I'm
not looking.”

“I won't pry further, then. But at least tell me how you intend to find your elusive French boyfriend after all this time to fulfill your mother's great commission.” She motioned towards Aglaia's whitened knuckles gripping the Bible.

“Oh no, I won't be taking this along on my trip!”

“Tina won't ask you about it? You gave your word, you know. Or at least you insinuated it.”

“I'll explain it all to her when I return.”

But what would Aglaia explain, exactly, since her mother believed it was possible to find François? That she didn't have enough room in her luggage? That the book was too heavy to tow around Paris? Her mother would see right through her excuses and bring up the whole argument again about how Aglaia had forsaken the faith of her fathers, had surely lost her salvation in the process of finding herself. If she brought the Bible back undelivered, Mom would insist on scrutinizing it for some clue—an address, perhaps—and the threat that François had written something more incriminating than Aglaia had read thus far was too great a gamble.

Lou eventually got up to leave. She tugged her navy trench coat off a hanger in the hall closet and donned it, buttoning up against the rain splattering the window. She took the few steps back into the sitting area and bent down. “You won't mind if I borrow this postcard of the Three Graces for tomorrow's lecture? It's particularly applicable and the photo is so clear.” She pocketed it before Aglaia could object.

Ebenezer MacAdam, general manager of Incognito Costume Shop and Aglaia's boss, lay snug in his bed on the rainy Thursday night, with the wife of his youth tucked in beside him. He removed his reading glasses, clicked off the lamp, and felt Iona's feet shift closer, their coolness transferring to him beneath the feathertick.

“Be my guest,” Eb said, meaning it, and she plastered them up against his legs, making him shiver. It had been part of their bedtime ritual for nearly forty-five years, and was cherished by him because of it.

“Ian rang today,” Iona said, yawning.

Their son was a computer programmer and data administrator for a shipping firm out of Honolulu. He didn't telephone often and Eb missed him, too.

“Everything okay?”

Iona sighed. “The twins have the sniffles.”

They hadn't seen their eight-year-old grandchildren in more than two years. Now, with Britney at her age expecting another bairn in a few months, Ian was justifying holding off coming home for another Christmas.

“He sounded grouchy,” Iona said, “I worry about him.”

“Poor lad has a restless heart,” Eb said.

Iona murmured assent, but Eb knew her maternal sorrow encompassed more than a wandering son. Their own second child had been a precious baby girl, stillborn. Eb took some of the blame for his wife's sadness, having poured his own grief into his work so that he neglected both Iona and Ian until it was almost too late.

Father reconciled with son before Ian went off to university, but years of emotional absence left its scars. And Eb's marriage suffered as well, but dear Iona loyally loved her husband through it all. Now in their late sixties and with a significant wedding anniversary coming up, it was time for a second honeymoon, Eb thought. What better place than Hawaii's beaches? If only he could get away from his job—his besetting sin. And he was working to that end.

Ebenezer came to North America as a young man eager to earn his living with the needle, and started in Montreal before Incognito sent him down to the fledgling U.S. office.

He preferred the entrepreneurial attitude here, and was soon manager of a thriving storefront, eventually expanding the Colorado branch of the individual sales-and-rentals business to include stage productions, films, and festivals. Headquarters was impressed but, with fears of a slowing economy, now threatened to close the Denver site and move essential staff up to Canada.