Before Gaia

by Francine Pascal

  “Get into the car, my friend,” Nikolai said. Oliver turned his head to see a large black Mercedes parked right there, its engine idling. Through the car’s dark, tinted windows, Oliver could see other armed Organization agents inside the car.

  “You have done a terrible thing, my friend,” Nikolai told him gravely. There was an unmistakable note of contempt in his voice. “You made some very powerful people very angry.”

  Nikolai and Boris were pushing Oliver toward the Mercedes’ open door. Oliver’s bare feet struck the wet asphalt as he was pushed into the gutter. “Wait,” he called out, twisting backward to look at Nikolai as Boris propelled him toward the open car door.

  He landed in the car and was rudely pushed against the backseat. There were two other agents in the car.

  Then Nikolai entered the car, pulling the door shut and locking it. Oliver was trapped.

  “Yuri,” Nikolai started. He reached behind his head, tapping on the tinted glass partition behind the driver. The Merecedes’ engine started. “Yuri is very important person.” Nikolai went on. “And you have badly disappointed him.”

  “But your plan would never have worked,” Oliver said in disgust. He could feel the Mercedes slowly moving, attempting to pull out into the traffic along Central Park South. “Don’t you see? She would have married my brother no matter what.” He grinned at the Russian. “And in the end, I don’t care about your stupid plan. I’ve had the best night of my life—I’ve finally got what I always wanted. So what if your ‘Yuri’ doesn’t get to ‘win her back’? I got her back.”

  “Do you not understand even now?” Nikolai said sadly. The dim light from passing cars shone on his red hair and ugly face.

  “Katia is Yuri’s daughter.”

  It took a moment for Oliver to fully understand what Nikolai had said—and what it meant. And then a wave of dread hit him.

  “What—what’s he going to do with me? Where are you taking me?”

  “It is best,” Nikolai grumbled, “that you not know. Suffice it to say, it will not be an enjoyable journey, Oliver Moore.”

  The dark armored car sped off into the cold New York night.

  It was worth whatever they do to me, Oliver thought. It was worth it—for you, Katia my love.

  CIA File # NIR-P4855J [Incident Report]

  Rating: CLASSIFIED

  Transcript Recorded—10/16/1990 21:06

  Administrating: Agent John M. Kent

  Reporting: Agent Thomas Moore

  KENT: And then your brother disappeared.

  MOORE: Yes. That’s right. He was gone.

  KENT: I seem to recall some further sighting—

  MOORE: That’s right. We managed to pick up Oliver’s trail once, inside the Soviet Union, about two years later. There wasn’t much to it—one of our operatives found out about an American who the Organization had stationed in Leningrad somewhere. It didn’t look like he was being very well treated—one agent got a glimpse of him in a gulag somewhere, but that was an unconfirmed sighting, and the agent was shot soon after, so we couldn’t follow up. I mean, we tried to find out more, but we couldn’t. Later, as Soviet politics ignited, I kept looking for signs of him, but there was nothing. He had vanished. The honeymoon suite at the Plaza Hotel was the last time I saw him.

  KENT: Do you need a moment?

  MOORE: No. I’m fine. There’s not much to say. Katia and I got through it. I mean, we had no choice.

  2002

  Now more than ever she needed a massive dose of that denial that ran through her family line.

  The Math

  GAIA WAS STUCK IN THE MOST tragic state of stillness. She read and reread the pages again, trying to fathom the sick, twisted deeds of that speck of crap stuck in the crevice of a sneaker that she called her uncle.

  Rape.

  There was no other word for it. No other term that would describe it any better or make it seem any less of the god-awful despicable crime that it was.

  The wedding night… You sick son of a bitch. Their goddamn wedding night. How could anyone even envision such a thing? Let alone be so completely void of any remaining goodness that he could actually go through with it.

  And what made it so much more unbearable was that Gaia already knew how her uncle had been punished for his revolting deed…

  He hadn’t been. Because she’d seen him alive and well and free here in 2002, with plenty of money and power and whatever the hell else he wanted. Totally unscathed. Not locked up in jail for the rest of his natural-born life. Not begging for pennies on the street after the world shunned him for what he had done. No sign around his neck or in front of his house that read Despicable Rapist: Please Spit on Me. Nothing.

  Her mother’s strength had never amazed Gaia as much as it did at this moment. And her father’s. The ability to just put that horror behind them. Because they had to. Because they couldn’t let him ruin their lives permanently, as he’d so clearly intended to do. Because now more than ever, they’d deserved some real happiness. They’d deserved a chance to finally step out of his repellent black shadow and find themselves a little place in the sun for a while, like all people in love so desperately needed. Like Gaia had needed and been denied.

  And who had robbed her of that God-given right? The same man. She knew that now for sure. Oliver, Loki, his name didn’t matter. It was still the same man. The same man casting the same black shadow over anyone’s happiness, anyone’s untainted love story. History repeats itself. Again and again.

  The more Gaia thought about how much she hated Oliver, the less she had to think about something even more sinister. More hateful.

  She was doing every single thing in her power to block it out of her head, but there was really no point. Of course, she couldn’t be sure. There was no way to be sure. It wasn’t like her parents hadn’t been sleeping together that whole month before the wedding. But when she did the math… her uncle had slept with her mother on the wedding night… and Gaia was born about nine months after that.

  Enough. That’s enough. She’d already indulged the thought too long. Made it too real. Now more than ever she needed a massive dose of that denial that ran through her family line. Denial… Her uncle had been awfully good at denial, too. Or maybe he wasn’t her uncle. Maybe he was what he had always told her he was. Maybe he was…

  Stop, Gaia. Change the thought. Change it now. Stop, she commanded herself once again. Just stop it. Let it go, Gaia.

  She dumped the entire horrid line of thinking as best she could and refocused on the transcript in her hands.

  But there was no more transcript to focus on. The only other thing Nikolai had left in the binder was a small piece of white notepaper. It was no bigger than a slip from a telephone message pad. And the only thing written on the notepaper was a number. 790. But when Gaia saw the number, it was like seeing the first sign of light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

  This was nothing like the unexplained faint memories of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument. This was Gaia’s memory at its most complete—its most fine-tuned. The number 790 had sparked an endless string of vivid images: a large yellow hutch on dark and creaky wooden floors. A changing table placed the perfect distance from the bed for long-distance jumping. A beautiful gray field mouse named Jonathan, who could roam freely through her room.

  790 West End Avenue. The former Moore family residence.

  The train ride seemed to take an eternity. Gaia’s anticipation level was making the passing of time far too frustrating. Because honestly, when was the last time she could say she was “on her way home” and not feel like she was somehow lying? The apartment at 790 West End Avenue… that was one of the only two actual homes she’d ever had in her life. That, and the house in the Berkshires.

  As she entered the building, she breathed in that specific scent that had simply meant “home” to her as a child. She now realized it was just the combination of floor polish and fresh laundry coming through the air vents from the laundry room
in the basement. Still, it was home just the same.

  “Gaia Moore?” A voice came from behind her, echoing through the lobby. She turned around and realized the doorman was looking at her quizzically, holding a large manila envelope in his hand.

  Yes. Perfect.

  She snapped the envelope out of his hand, thanked him, and sprinted again, leaving the glorious experience of reentering 790 West End behind so she could continue over to her next favorite location as a child—Riverside Park. Once she was there, she could bask in memories without interruption.

  She found a private spot in the park—a small patch of grass surrounded by three different rather large rock formations—and dumped out the contents of the new envelope. And yes… exactly what she was looking for, another page from her mother’s journal.

  1/31/84

  A baby! I have had a real live baby with ten fingers and ten toes and the most adorable little mouth and the tiniest little specks of blond hair and the world’s biggest, most beautiful head. And I can say right now, with absolutely no reservations, that she is perfect. Tom and I agree. I have given birth to the perfect baby. In fact, she is so undeniably perfect that Tom and I have decided to name her after a goddess. The Greek earth goddess “Gaia.”

  Tom and I think there is already something unique about our daughter. Because when she entered the world… she didn’t cry. Not one tear. Just a look of curiosity on her face. She seemed to be sizing up the doctor and the nurses, examining them like a thoughtful young graduate student in anthropology.

  I suppose it was rather remarkable. It was as if she were already completely prepared to enter this totally alien land. As if she had been born without a fear or worry in the world.

  Of course… somewhere in the midst of all this unadulterated joy and overwhelming elation, I suppose there was that horrid nagging question somewhere very, very far in the back of my head. And I’m sure Tom’s, too. The doctors were pretty clear about when my beautiful Gaia was conceived. Tom and I both knew that meant there was a very real possibility that the father was in fact…

  No, we don’t think about that. Tom and I don’t think about it. We’re just glad that he’s gone. Hopefully for good. I believe that. I believe he’s gone for good.

  She is simply too perfect to have come from him. I know it. I know it in my heart. Gaia has only good in her. I can see it in her remarkably calm eyes. So she couldn’t be his. She couldn’t be.

  CIA File # NIR-P4855J [Incident Report]

  Rating: CLASSIFIED

  Transcript Recorded—10/16/1990 23:12

  Administrating: Agent John M. Kent

  Reporting: Agent Thomas Moore

  MOORE: Yes… [Pause] Yes, I knew that was a possibility. We were certainly clear on the two-week period in which she’d been conceived. And yes, the wedding night fell in that period. But Katia and I had been intimate together that whole time, too. We couldn’t really know. There was no way to know. It’s not like blood tests would have told us anything. We’re a complete genetic match. And you want to know the truth? [Pause] I didn’t care. And I told her that. He was finally out of our lives, and that was all that mattered to me either way. I loved my child so much. From the moment I laid eyes on that calm, curious face. No, before that. Before she was even born, I loved her more than anything else in the world. And that had nothing to do with biology. That had to do with love. And family. Gaia was my daughter, and she always would be. And Katia and I had never been so happy. Not even that night by the water in Battery Park. We had been given a gift. I think we’d been given a bigger gift than either one of us could really understand.

  The world’s calmest baby. It was true. But that was just the beginning. It started to seem like every day she was doing some new strange and remarkable thing. Katia and I had no idea what to make of it. At first, we would just revel in it. Revel in the fact that there was something so clearly special about our Gaia. It was a source of nonstop entertainment and awe. I mean, not only did the girl almost never cry, but she also never seemed to mind anything. She never minded being left alone in her crib at night like every other baby I’d ever seen. She never minded loud noises or huge dogs. She never even seemed to mind when she had to be punished. I had to teach her, you know. “Don’t climb the stove, Gaia.” “Get away from the electrical outlet, Gaia.” “Never go near a fire, Gaia!” But every time I’d scold her… she’d just stare at me innocently and say, “Okay.” That was it. “Okay, Daddy.” Never crying, never running away. Never grabbing onto her mother’s leg or hiding when she’d been bad. Just, “Okay, Daddy.” And by the way… those “okay, Daddys”… she was eight months old. She was talking at six months, walking at seven, and climbing at eight. But that wasn’t all.

  By the time Gaia was two and three, her “special qualities” had started to leave the realm of special. To be totally honest, her behavior started to scare us. A lot. We started to feel anxious all the time. Because we never knew what she would do next. With the kinds of behaviors she kept exhibiting again and again, we never quite knew how to keep her safe from herself. After a while I remember Katia started to keep a baby book. She wanted to have some way of recording all the incidents. We both felt the need to keep track, maybe to learn—to try and understand better what was happening to our daughter. I thought the baby book was a great idea.

  Spicy Lilacs

  GAIA DROPPED HER FATHER’S TRANSCRIPT on the ground and reached for the manila envelope, her heart pounding with anticipation. Come on, Nikolai, she thought, shoving her hand deep into the envelope. You said you had everything. Prove it. Tell me you really had everything…

  And sure enough, her fingers latched onto a booklike object with hard covers and a spiral binding. Gaia tugged it out into the sunlight and took a long, hard look. And the moment she saw it—the moment she saw the picture of herself at four years old framed in pressed flowers, that familiar smell of spicy lilacs wafting into her nostrils—she knew she had just discovered her new prized possession.

  Gaia’s baby book. A beautiful spiral book, thick with photos and postcards and dried-up Scotch tape. Every page covered in her mother’s handwriting, English this time, written in various colors of pen from all the years of different entries.

  The book had clearly been a traditional baby book—the kind of thing you could buy at a stationery store or a bookstore and give as a gift at a shower or something. There were certain preprinted milestones at the beginning. First steps, first word, etc. But Gaia’s mother had crossed out those milestones with a red pen and written in very different milestones. Instead of Gaia’s first word, her mother had written, Gaia’s first sentence. Apparently Gaia had opted to skip past just one word once she had decided to speak.

  Gaia actually remembered that moment. Again her memory seemed to be functioning perfectly in all categories but the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument. She remembered that her first sentence was, in fact, at six months—only because she had waited a month before she was sure that speaking would be the best way to go.

  She remembered sitting in her high chair, watching her parents having breakfast. Her father had asked for the jam for his toast, but when her mother reached in the fridge, she pulled out a red jar that Gaia had been under the distinct impression was called “jelly.” So she asked her mother, “What’s the difference between jelly and jam?” And then she watched her parents stare back at her slack jawed like she was some kind of alien from outer space for asking a perfectly legitimate question. A question that, to this day, she had not really received a sufficient answer to.

  The book began with a whole list of Gaia’s very unusual firsts. First sentence at six months, first steps at seven months, running at eight. First time getting dressed by herself—one year. First math problem (9 + 5)—also at one. And then they really got interesting. First time using sign language—two (Gaia had learned it watching that woman in the corner of the TV screen translating for the deaf on Sesame Street). First word in eight other languages—two years,
three months (the word was injustice, as Gaia felt that was one thing that was clearly the same no matter where one was).

  Once the firsts had been filled out, Gaia’s mother had begun to chronicle pages and pages of incidents that had obviously fascinated and concerned her and Tom a great deal.

  Katia had written a small introduction to this part of the book. She explained how there were, of course, remarkable incidents that took place every day of Gaia’s young life, but that she’d meant for this book to be a compilation of only the grandest examples of Gaia’s awesome and sometimes terrifying behavior. This book, she hoped, could serve not only as a record for her and Tom, but also as a record for doctors and historians who probably, at some point, would want to know more about Gaia’s “condition,” whatever that meant exactly.

  Gaia flipped through the book, reading up on more and more incidents of her undiagnosed fearlessness. She read about the Subway Incident, when at age two she jumped in front of an oncoming train to retrieve a crying girl’s fallen doll. And about the Pit Bull Incident at age five, when she managed to subdue the wild pet by pinning him down until his owners put him back on his leash. Gaia had forgotten that her career as an ass kicker had started at such a tender age.

  But by the middle of the book, she was only flipping blank white pages. She stopped and turned back, looking for the last page that had anything written on it.

  The last page had only one little piece of writing. On the top-left corner, it said, Age—6 years. But that was all it said. As if her mother had been planning to write something about Gaia at age six but had never gotten to it. Everything was blank after age six. What was that supposed to mean?

  She placed the baby book gently down on the envelope and swiped up her father’s transcript again, searching for the exact place she had left off. And as if on cue…