seven

Paul breathed.  The early morning light was dim around him as he stood on the shore of the bay, inhaling, hands pushed together against his chest. The cool air hummed with the activities of insects and awakening birds. Exhaling, he listened, centered himself, and began his aikido exercises with an invocation to the Holy Spirit.

Full stretch. Up. Over.  Pushing down, with both hands, he made a big grab of the space before him in the air, and as though it were a huge ball, pressed it down to the ground, “as though bringing your swollen ego down to the earth,” his aikido master used to say.  Reach up again, he seized the nothingness and pushed it down. And centered himself again.

Now stance work—his knees bent, his body forward, he lunged. Stance. Lunge. Stance again. His war injury was a barely perceptible ache. Good! Center. Center. Center.

He knelt on the ground in the seiza position and, spreading and touching his fingers and thumbs to form the ceremonial triangle, he pressed his palms and forehead to the ground, seeking humility and discipline.

Discipline. Time to work on his joints. He sat up and methodically began to pull his wrists backwards against the joints until they hurt.  The nikyo discipline increased his resistance to pain. He worked harder than usual on these, to ready his hands for the stress of juggling heavy clubs all day.

Then he leapt to his feet and stretched wide, making an expansive scooping motion with his arms while filling his lungs with air, then pushing the air out with a corresponding thrust of his arms.  Take it in, release it. After a few minutes of this, he exhaled completely from his gut and centered himself.  All his movements would begin from his center, his hara. He was prepared.

Now he was ready to move.  He began the agility exercises, stepping forward, twisting about, stepping back, the basic building blocks of all action. When he felt ready, he leapt forward and twisted about in a flip. Landing on his feet, he reached for the repaired juggling club and tossed it into the air. The twirl of the heavy, well-balanced instrument was a pleasure in and of itself, and he caught it, stilled it in an instant, and then tossed it again. His breathing regular, his mind alert, and his body prepared, he started into the routine he was practicing for the festival. Today was the first day.

He had hung out his juggling clothes—the black pants, loose white shirt, diamond-patched vest, and black mask—on a nearby branch. For shoes, he wore ninja shoes—lightweight, soft, black leather with flexible soles. Now he took off the black shirt and pants he had been wearing and changed into his costume. There was fruit and bread left over from yesterday’s meal, and he ate it for breakfast with a protein bar. By the time he was finished, the fire he had built earlier was burning brightly, and the water in his camping pot had boiled. Realizing he still had ample time, he made himself some tea and sat against a tree to drink it.

The Durham girls…he swirled the tealeaves in his cup and frowned. They were becoming almost as much a trouble to him as they were to Colonel Durham. He was beginning to think that the girls’ late night escapades were not so much the problem as they were the symptom of other deeper issues.

One big difficulty was that Colonel Durham didn’t seem particularly affectionate with his daughters. You have to show your daughters that you love them or they’ll start looking for someone who will, Paul’s dad had always said.

Paul wondered if part of the reason Colonel Durham was so reserved was that six of the girls were his stepdaughters. Maybe he just feels awkward trying to be close to them? And he withholds affection from his biological daughters as well, so as not to play favorites?

Paul tapped his fingers on his mug. There was something else that bothered him, but it was hard to express. He could find a lot of admirable aspects to the Durhams’ plain lifestyle. They were unpretentious people who had money but had chosen to live simply. Apparently the parents were happy, but he wasn’t sure this way of life was keeping the girls contented. The Durhams didn’t have a television, but he also noticed that they didn’t have many books, particularly storybooks. Except for Cheryl, who was mostly reading Christian romance novels, he had never seen the older girls reading anything.  It didn’t seem as if they had much of an imaginative or intellectual life. From what he could tell, they spent most of their time doing housework, serving other church members, sewing plain dresses, or being bored.

They need something good to love besides ‘being good,’ he thought to himself. Or else, they’ll find something to love that’s not good.

Rachel had to plan her dress excursions carefully, interspersing them with legitimate errands. Between going to the grocery store and the eye doctor’s, she had made a furtive dash into a clothing store and scoured the sales racks in vain. After going to the pharmacy, she had tried another store. No luck. And she had even stopped at the Salvation Army, to paw hopefully through the ripped prom dresses and dated bridesmaids frocks. In despair she had bought for twenty dollars a 1940’s navy blue dress with a short swishy skirt, but it was years away from the svelte, sleek black dress she was dreaming about. As it was, she had taken too much time and would have to rush.

Now she stood in the library, jingling her car keys, having come to pick up Cheryl and the younger girls. They were still in the stacks, choosing their Christian paperback novels with care. Rachel stalked from side to side, antsy, and was shushed by a cross librarian, who pointed at her keys. Guiltily irritated, Rachel thrust them into the pocket of her blue denim dress and looked at the summertime reading display.

One book leaning against a model sailboat caught her eye—The Wind in the Willows. That was the book Paul had mentioned, wasn’t it? She vaguely recalled seeing a silly Disney movie about weasels and racecars by that name.

She picked it up and paged through it. Yes, it was a book about talking animals, the sort of thing that held no interest for her. She fanned the pages and came across an illustration of a huge man with goat’s feet and horns on his head, holding a set of pipes. He was looking down upon several cute, fuzzy animals, with an expression of love. The title bar above said The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

The figure was vaguely familiar—yes, it was Pan, one of the Greek gods. This must be the pagan part, she thought to herself. The part that had made one of the Bayside Christian Academy teachers warn her students against the book. Intrigued, Rachel creased the page and started scanning and reading.

All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.

‘Rat!’ he found breath to whisper, shaking. ‘Are you afraid?’

‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. ‘Afraid? Of Him? O, never, never! And yet—and yet—O, Mole, I am afraid!’

Chilled by the unexpected, she closed the book. Here I am, reading children’s literature for a naughty thrill, she thought to herself. Feeling foolish and tawdry, she set it back on the shelf and studied it warily.

Maybe she should read it. It was obviously a children’s book, with the fuzzballs and all. And she was an adult, almost, too big for things like this. But Paul had read it.

The thought sat in her mind, and she set the book back on the shelf, then abruptly picked it up again and slid it under her arm. What the heck, she thought.  If it turned out to be boring and stupid, she could always bring it out when the girls were alone and read aloud parts for laughs. As she set it down on the counter, she looked again at the cover, which showed two animals rowing a boat down the river. There was a bright blue and black butterfly in the corner.

Then inspiration struck. That was what she wanted, she decided. A dress like that, blue and black.  A bit of sparkle winking here and there. Yes, that would be a dress for the moonlight. But there was no question of her ever finding a dress like that. She would have to make one.

And the fabric store was an easier place to go without arousing parental suspicion than most dress stores. Yes, that would be her strategy. 

Almost pleased, she leaned against the book counter, still waiting, but now planning. At last Cheryl came out of the stacks, staggering beneath a pile of romance novels.  Rachel added her one book to the pile and hurried out to the car to wait for the girls to finish checking out.

When she reached it, she noticed that the family cell phone was blinking. She must have spent too long a time at the stores, including the extra errands she had made. Quickly she dialed voicemail and listened to the message.

It was her father. “Where are you?” his voice demanded. “This is the third time I’ve called and no one has answered the phone. I need you to get over here, pronto, to pick up these files and mail them out for me! Don’t you remember?”

Rachel cursed. She had completely forgotten that errand, which her father had told her about at the breakfast table. His message went on. “Please try and be less scatterbrained! I hope I’ll be seeing you soon.”

Rachel turned off the cell phone abruptly. It was after five now. The post office would be closed. It was no use. Tears sprung to her eyes. Serves Dad right for treating me as his errand boy, part of her said rebelliously, but another part of her insisted, I should have remembered. I shouldn’t have forgotten. At least, I should have brought the cell phone into the stores with me.   

It used to be so much easier to please her dad, she thought. Back when Mom was alive, back when she was the oldest of a smaller family. She remembered her dad boasting to his friends about how capable she was, just because she had learned to set the table when she was five. She used to run to him when he came home, eager to tell him what she had accomplished, and he had always seemed interested and happy. And even after Mom had died when she was a young teenager, he used to be so grateful to come home and find the table set and dinner made.  But now, he was always preoccupied and distant, and coldly judgmental when she failed—

Why bother pleasing someone like that? she told herself angrily.  I’m not even going to try.

That night Taren wore her brown suede dress, to the envy of all the girls. However, as Prisca admitted, not all of them could have fit into a dress like that. And now that Taren and Rachel had their own dresses, there were two more dresses to go around. 

Rachel, in her navy blue skimmer, took it upon herself that night to find something to suit Melanie. She had noticed that Melanie, alone, always wore the print cotton bridesmaid’s dress from Sallie and Dad’s wedding. “Let’s try something more grown-up,” she suggested, and gave Melanie the white sheath dress to put on, and her younger sister obeyed.

“I really like wearing dresses with sleeves,” Melanie objected. “I’m always cold.”

“Oh, come on. Try this one once. Just for me,” Rachel coaxed. When Melanie stood awkwardly in front of her in the slim white dress, Rachel adjusted her shoulders and said, “We’ve got to do something with your hair.”

“Do we?” Melanie asked, fingering her tousled long honey-blond hair. “I like it down.”

“Yes, but you look so young!” Rachel explained.

“Well, I am young.”

“Let’s just try it this way, for once,” Rachel begged. She longed to see her younger stepsister sparkling and vibrant and attractive, and Melanie reluctantly agreed to the makeover.

Rachel piled Melanie’s hair on top of her head and skewered it with bobby pins. Then she wound a scarf around it. “That’s just for the boat,” she informed Melanie, “so that it won’t blow all over the place. There! I wish you could see yourself. How do you feel?”

“Cold,” Melanie confessed, hugging her bare arms and trying to smile.

“Oh, get her a sweater and stop fussing with her,” Tammy said, irritably. “She’s always complaining about being cold.”

“I’ll choose a sweater,” Rachel said, and found a white one with lacy knit sleeves. “Maybe not the best match in the sunlight, but in the moonlight—perfect!”

Melanie put on the sweater, but she still shivered. Rachel shepherded her down to the beach. “The boys will be here soon.”

The boats arrived, and Rachel was impatient to get going immediately. But not all the girls were ready, and the guys liked to stand on the beach and chat, so she indulged them while the boats bobbed up and down in the water beneath the willows.

As soon as she could politely do so, she suggested they leave. All the girls were agreed that tonight they would all go to the island.

“Just so long as no one’s home,” Taylor said dubiously.

“We can check,” Rachel said lightly. “No one seemed to mind us being there last night.”

“But that was only one boat. If someone was there, they might not care about that. But what are they going to think when they see three boats?” Taylor objected.

Rachel was glad she had left him to Cheryl—he was being a stick-in-the-mud. “Taylor,” Rachel said playfully, “can’t you live it up a little every once in a while?”

He grumbled, but when the other guys started teasing him, he relented, and the party got into the boats.

In the sloshing of the boarding, Alan’s boat bumped against Keith’s, splashing Prisca, who exclaimed. “There goes my mascara!”

“I just stepped on someone’s foot,” Debbie informed them in the darkness of the boat beneath the trees.

“Do you hear anyone complaining?” Rachel said, a little sharply.

“No. That’s why I said something. And I can’t find any place to sit. There’s no room back here.”

“Just move a bit of that canvas and sit squished next to me,” Rachel said, situating herself.

Alan turned on the engine and the boat slowly motored out into the bay.

The moon was at a half. Rachel breathed a deep sigh. Perhaps by the next full moon, she would have made the midnight butterfly dress, as she thought of it fondly. She looked over at her sister Melanie. The transformation she had hoped for had not occurred. Melanie wasn’t sparkling—in fact, she looked deadened in the pale light, gray and colorless, shivering in the thin short dress, somehow less than her buoyant self.  She actually would have looked better in the print bridesmaid’s dress she usually wore.

Rachel felt a twinge of disappointment. Perhaps Melanie was too much a child of the sunshine, she decided. She wasn’t at home in the night.

Like I am, she thought to herself. The night is almost my real self.

Prisca also seemed to be more herself at nighttime. The strong colors of night makeup highlighted Prisca’s already dark coloring, and made her eyes darker, her lips redder. Right now, she was wearing a red knit tank dress, which looked good on her, accentuated her full figure. But there was something about Prisca that bothered Rachel. She was almost too jumpy and eager, too unsubtle. Rich seemed to be able to tell. Like most of the church guys, Rachel noted, he seemed to hang around Prisca but seemed uncomfortable being close to her. There was an air of volatility about her that seemed to make him nervous.

Debbie was wearing a purple striped dress that Rachel had scouted out for her at Goodwill. She still seemed like a child let out to be with the grownups. Even now, she was swinging her thin brown legs carelessly.

“I wonder whose foot I stepped on,” she said. “No one said ‘ouch.’”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “Are you still going on about that?” she said.

Debbie ignored her. “Was it yours, Rich?”

Rich started and said, “No, I don’t think so.”

“I was waiting to apologize,” Debbie said. “But no one said anything. I thought I really hurt someone because it was when I jumped onto the boat.”

“Maybe it was my foot, but since you’re such a weenie I didn’t feel it,” Prisca said with some irritation.

“No,” said Debbie decidedly, “It wasn’t you. It was a big foot.”

“Then it must have been mine,” Rachel said.

“You do not have big feet,” Prisca interjected.

Rachel held up one of her size nine feet and pointed the toes. “Does that look big enough for you, Debbie?”

“No, it wasn’t yours. I stepped on the toes. I thought it was a guy’s foot,” Debbie said. “It was very strange.”

“Shut up,” Prisca said abruptly. “Alan, why are you stopping?”

Alan had cut the engine. He looked at the island. “Is there someone there?” he asked uncertainly.

“Ohh—” Rachel got up, along with the others. The boat rocked, and Rich and Prisca sat back down. “No, I don’t think so,” she said, after scrutinizing the heliport in the shadows. 

“Were all those boats there last night?” he asked, pointing to the docks.

Worried, they all looked at the docks.

“Yes,” Prisca said suddenly. “There’s five boats there, just like last night. I counted.”

“Okay, just checking,” Alan said, and the engine roared to life. They soared towards the quay and soon they were docked beside it. Once again, Rachel got out first and tied up the boat. Rich jumped onto the quay and helped the other girls out.

“This is going to be perfect,” Prisca said, taking Rich’s hand and swinging onto the quay, leaning against him. “Oh my gosh! I almost fell! Sorry!”

Prisca had a small CD player with her, along with a few of her “contraband,” as she called them—CDs of pop music—that she listened to turned down low, underneath her pillow at home.

Now she cranked the CD player as loud as it would go. “What shall I put on first?” She pulled out a CD of dance songs and slid it into the dinky machine and pushed ‘play.’

“That’s like, a state of the art sound system you’ve got there,” Alan cracked, getting out of the boat.

“Do you have something better?” Prisca asked anxiously.

“Not here.”

“Are you having a dance here or something?” Rich asked, getting the prize for the most clueless remark of the evening, so far.

“Duh! Of course!” And Prisca grabbed his arms. “Come on, dance with me.”  She and Debbie started to bop around, and Rich, at first embarrassed, fell in step.

“You want to?” Alan cast a glance at Rachel, who grinned.

“Of course!”

And he took her hand, and they started dancing. Despite the tinny sound and low volume, it was just enough music to dance by.

The roar of the other boats coming to join them temporarily superseded the music. Tammy and Liddy leapt from their boat, convulsed with laughter, and jumped right into the dance. Cheryl came a bit more gingerly, but consented to dance when Taylor took her hand. Brittany struck her usual poker face and started doing the monster mash, which the young girls quickly picked up. Soon everyone was dancing.

It was glorious. The guys broke out some bottles of beer and bags of potato chips. Taren had managed to snag two six packs of soda from the family pantry, so the girls passed out sodas.  They were careful to put all the bottles back on board the boat, Rachel reminding the guys that even a single smashed beer bottle would give them away. They played through all the songs on one CD and then restarted it to dance some more.

Rachel drank in the music as much as the beverages, throwing herself into the dance. As she swayed to the beat, she felt her own beauty like a barely-visible shadow, growing, blooming.

She and Prisca were dancing together when Prisca suddenly stopped, staring. “Who’s that guy?” she said.

As if by some scent in the air, everyone on the portico froze in place, while the music from the CD played on and on. All of them were staring at the figure of a young man coming slowly down the steps from the big house.