The plane leveled off, drinks and peanuts were handed out, and then there was such a delay before the meal was served that Dulcie and Benjamin both fell asleep. They woke when the food trolley bumped down the aisle, picked at the strange food, eating the cake and some noodles, but Benjamin found the milk strange after a lifetime of goat's milk and Dulcie spilled half of hers. They then wanted to play together with the packet of games and colors the flight attendant had given each of them.
Ana got tired of the elbows digging into her thighs and the constant chatter of excited voices directly under her chin, so she changed places with Benjamin and allowed the two small kids to have the middle of the row, bracketed by her and Jason at the ends. The children colored and played with the headphones, Jason watched the movie, and Ana tried to read the Jung book she had bought in Sedona and tried not to think of Glen.
The movie ended, reading lights were dimmed, toilets were visited, and the two children attempted to get comfortable. A thousand squirms later Ana got out of her seat and arranged pillows and blankets for Benjamin over both seats. Dulcie put her head into Jason's lap, and Ana took her book back a couple of rows, where there were a few empty seats. To her surprise, after a while Jason joined her with his own book, The Old Man and the Sea. He smiled shyly and read six or eight pages before closing it with an audible sigh.
"Are you reading that for school?" she asked. She took off her reading glasses and rubbed her tired eyes, leaning her head back on the headrest.
"Yeah. It's really boring. Nothing happens."
"I remember. The old man talks to himself a lot and the scavengers eat his giant fish." There was no response. After a minute she opened one eye to see whether he had gone back to his reading, but he was looking at her with an odd expression on his face.
"What? Isn't that what happens?"
"Don't you like Hemingway?"
"Oh yes, Hemingway was an immensely creative and influential writer, but that's the problem. So many writers have tried to copy his style that the original has begun to seem like a cheap imitation. Unfair, but I find it hard to get past the sense of caricature."
This may have been the first time the boy had heard that there might be differing opinions about the great literary works he had been required to appreciate for the last few years of his life.
"Anyway," she said, closing her eyes again, I'd have thought the family Dumas more to your taste, or Dashiell Hammett. Someone with more flair and sense of romance than Hemingway. Romance in the sense of adventure—"she added in an aside—"not as in love story."
He said nothing, and she allowed herself to be lulled by the noise and the vibration, drifting into a light daze.
She woke and slept and woke, each time checking on her surroundings, on Jason, and on the forward row where she could see the top of Benjamin's head. Jason had abandoned Hemingway and was looking at Jung, reading at her marker. She slipped away a third time, and woke greatly refreshed. She stretched and looked around for an attendant, but the plane was still dim and quiet. Jason was awake, still working away at the alchemy essay. She glanced at the page, and saw that he was staring at the drawing of a fifteenth-century alembic.
"Jason," she said. He jerked and quickly turned the page.
"Jason, look—"
"I can't talk about it."
"I know it's part of the Work that Steven gave you, but—"
"I can't talk about it," he repeated brusquely, and started to lift himself out of his seat.
She laid her hand on his arm to stop him. "Okay, Jason, I understand. But can I say something? As a friend?"
He gradually subsided, and she took that as a yes. She thought for a minute, trying to find words that might open a door rather than shut him off.
"Steven is a good man," she said, "and he cares for you. There aren't a lot of people like that in the world, and when we meet someone like him, someone who really reaches us, our automatic response is to accept him fully, every part of him. Add to this the fact that no one your age believes that they have a lot of choices in life, and it is natural to think that you either have to accept all parts of Steven's belief system and teaching style, or reject him completely. You don't want to talk about what went on between you and him during those two days, and I respect that. I just want to say that if you have any doubts or even questions, if anything someone wants you to do doesn't seem quite right or fair, you can come to me and I'll try my hardest to keep an open mind. Okay?"
Jason gave his trademark shrug-and-a-nod, and she had to be satisfied with that. She reached down and unlatched her seat belt.
"I'm going to get a cup of coffee," she told him. "Can I bring you anything?"
He looked up at her, his face clearing with the relief of having gotten off so easy. "Can I have a Coke?"
"You can have anything you want except alcohol."
"I haven't had a Coke in three months."
"I haven't had a decent cup of coffee in five weeks. And four days, but who's counting?"
She found the attendants talking quietly in the galley. They exchanged a few words about the "cute kids" she was shepherding (Dulcie and Benjamin) and Ana went back to Jason with a can of Coke, a cup of ice, and two cups of stale instant coffee for herself.
"What else do you miss at Change?" she asked him when they were both settled in again with their drinks. "Your friends?"
"Nah. Most of the people I knew were jerks. I guess at first I missed all the normal stuff—you know, McDonald's and TV and music and everything. Ice cream—me and Dulcie both miss that. I kind of got used to the place, though."
"It's a different life. But, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if they have ice cream at the English house. I remember when I was in London in the dead of winter once, I was amazed at how many people I saw eating ice cream."
"I don't know, I hear it's a weird place. Not the whole country, just where we're going."
"What, the Change community? Weird how?"
"I don't know," he repeated. "There was a kid in my house who just came back from there. He said they never went anywhere and it was like living in a jungle."
Ana had to smile at the thought of a jungle set down in the civilized English countryside. "He's probably exaggerating."
"Maybe. Anyway, he's kind of weird himself."
Ana Wakefield and Jason Delgado sat elbow to elbow with seven miles of air between their feet and the ice-studded surface of the northern Atlantic Ocean, drinking their respective beverages. Jason poured the second half of his Coke into the plastic cup and glanced at the book she had stuck into the seat back ahead of her.
"Do you read of lot of stuff like that?" Jason asked with a gesture at the worn black cover. She was mildly surprised that he would raise an obviously forbidden topic, even obliquely, but she thought the best thing to do was just treat it as an innocent question. She had, after all, told him that it was up to him to talk about his experience in the alembic.
"When I'm living in the bus, I tend to read more demanding things such as that," she said. There just isn't room to collect masses of books. But when I settle down for a while, I usually go a little nuts at the local libraries and bookstores, catching up on all the novels I've missed."
"God, that must be so great, living in a bus. You can go wherever you want, eat when you want, pull over and sleep when you feel like it."
The wistful tone in his voice did him great credit: Most boys of fourteen, faced with the prospect of twelve years of responsibility for a minor sister, would feel more than mild regret.
"I have to tell you, Jason, how impressive your attitude toward your sister is. Dulcie is a sweetheart, but she's also a major burden. It can't be easy."
Praise on the basketball court was easy to ignore; from a person sitting at your side it was more difficult. Jason fiddled with the contents of the seat pocket in front of his knees for a moment, and then stood up to go check on Dulcie. He came back and continued on to the toilets in the far rear of the plane, where he spent a lo
ng time.
When he returned he paused by the seat, then walked forward again to look at the sleeping children. When he was finally in his seat he looked straight ahead at the rumpled white hair of the old man in the next row and he began to talk.
"Dulcie and me, we're not orphans, you know. Our parents are still alive. At least, I know my dad is—he's in jail, and last I heard Dulcie's father was around. He lives in Vegas, I think. Our mom is a crackhead—or, she used to be, until about a year ago she started shooting up, and things got a little crazy. She'd bring these really creepy guys home, real narfs, you know? and they"d… Well, anyway, I finally got pissed off and told her she couldn't do that, not with Dulcie there, and I… I kinda beat one of them up, so she started just not coming home. I had a job, just part-time at a building site, but I had to give it up because I couldn't leave Dulcie home by herself. I mean, I know people do, but she'd get scared, and when I got home she'd just be lying in her bed shaking, and she wouldn't eat her dinner. I used to wish Mom would get arrested so the city would step in and take care of things, but I couldn't go asking for food stamps or child care or anything because then I'd have to tell them why Mom wasn't the one doing the asking, and then she really would get arrested.
"I got… I don't know. I guess I get kind of fed up after a while, trying to do the school thing with Dulcie and no money. I thought I deserved a break. Some time for myself, you know? I mean, all the other guys I knew used to spend hours just hanging out, not dragging their little sisters to all the games and wondering where their damn mothers were half the time. I know most of them don't have fathers and a lot of them have moms who work or spend time in jail, but there's always grandmothers or the welfare or something. Dulcie and I just had us."
He turned and gave her a hard look. "I'm not complaining, you know? I'm just telling you. Okay?"
"I understand."
He looked as if he doubted that, but he continued.
"Anyway, I started to go out sometimes at night after Dulcie was asleep. I never went anywhere, not far, because I kept thinking, "What if she woke up and went looking for me?" or "What if there was a fire?" I'd just sort of hang out with the guys who lived around us, listening to music and stuff.
"And then one night… God, I still can't believe I could be so stupid. We hadn't seen Mom for about a week, and there was almost no food in the house, and school wasn't going too good, and—I don't know, a lot of stuff. So after Dulcie went to bed I went out with some of the guys. And one of them stole a car. And I went for a ride with him, and the stupid bas—he crashed the car.
"We were miles and miles from home, and it was about two in the morning, and all I could think of was Dulcie waking up, and I just kind of lost it and started beating on him. And"—he shook his head—"somebody called the cops. Probably a good thing, or I would've killed him, but instead of letting us go they arrested me, 'cause I was the one with blood all over my hands, and they took the kid who'd stolen the car off to the hospital.
"As soon as they closed me in the back of that cop car I knew I'd really done it. I had to tell about Mom, or else Dulcie would wake up in the morning and find an empty house and go nuts. She did go kind of nuts, I guess, with this strange woman showing up at the door with another cop and no brother in sight, because after a while they brought her to me to settle her down. Some psychologist came along and told them it'd be a bad idea to put her in a foster home by herself, so we got to stay together. We were in and out of half a dozen places, but for some reason nobody wanted a little girl who didn't talk and her brother who liked to beat people up, so we ended up at Change."
"Did you like to beat people up?"
"No! It's just, sometimes you don't have a choice, you know? I used to think that, anyway, but Steven's been helping me see that I really do have a choice, that I hit people because it's easier than not hitting them. Steven told me that sometimes what looks like being strong is really being weak, and what looks like weakness takes greater strength. There's some stuff in the Bible about it."
" 'If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.' "
"That's it. And if he wants to sue you for the coat off your back, give him your shirt as well."
A loose translation, she thought, but a happy one.
"He also talked a lot about what you said, about thinking before I get mad."
Ana took a deep breath. "Have you had a blood test, Jason?"
"A blood test? Oh, you mean because I was in that fight?"
"And the other one, with your mother's… friend."
"Sure. I had two, six months apart. I'm clean."
"That's a relief. I should tell you that I am, too. Your hand," she said when he looked at her, puzzled. "You cut your knuckle on my face. If I had HIV, you'd have been exposed. Something else to keep in mind next time you're tempted to pound some drug addict into a pulp."
"Yeah," he said. His face suddenly relaxed into a crooked smile that would have melted stronger women than Ana. "Next time I'll wear gloves."
She laughed. "So, do you like it at Change?"
"It's okay. There's a lot of rules, but I'm learning a lot. And Dulcie's happy."
Dulcie is happy, and Dulcie's brother shoots baskets and runs in the morning, and fantasizes about living the unencumbered life of a Gypsy, sleeping when he likes and surviving on Cokes and hamburgers.
"You know," she said after a few minutes, "I went to Japan one time. It's a very crowded little country, the cities anyway. When you get on the subway during rush hour, they literally push the passengers in the door to pack them solid. Traditionally the Japanese lived in houses with walls made out of paper, and right on top of each other.
"People can't survive like that, though, so they developed methods of achieving privacy for themselves when surrounded by people. Small areas, like a language that is filled with double meanings—they can say thank-you in a way that means "piss off" with nobody to know or be insulted. There are elaborate forms of politeness and dressing—all ways of hiding in a crowd. Even their art reflects this. In the West we've developed big, sweeping art forms, things that catch at you and won't let you walk by. Japanese art tends to be subtle and intense, so a person has to be looking for it to see the beauty of a teapot or a stroke of calligraphy.
"It's a little like that bird you did on the side of the mug I bought," she said as if the thought had suddenly occurred to her. "Controlled lines that say just what you wanted them to and no more, no less. The essence of 'quail'; with no superfluous decoration. I like that cup very much."
He nodded, a motion closer to a squirm. After a minute of staring off into space, he said casually, "Steven said I could draw again if I wanted to."
"Did he? That's good to hear. Do you generally do a lot of drawing?"
"Not a lot. Sometimes, when I see something I like. Once I… um. I made this book for Dulcie once, for a Christmas present. She wanted this doll, but there wasn't enough money, so I drew her a story about the doll, making it have all these adventures and stuff. She still has it somewhere."
"I'll bet she does." She probably slept with it. "The reason I ask is that Japanese idea of privacy. If you were gifted at poetry, I might suggest that you… oh, write a poem about how Bryan made you feel at the museum that day, for instance. Since your form of expression seems to lie in your hands rather than with words, you might think about using them to create a place that is all yours, a place that is Jason Delgado's alone. Small, intense drawings that capture how you really feel about things. You see, I've lived in communities like Change for a lot of my life, and although I do understand the importance of participating in communal life, I know also that if you don't keep a little piece of yourself apart, you go a bit nuts."
"Like you with your walks," he said. "Dulcie said you like to walk in the mornings, by yourself."
Ridiculous, the pleasure in knowing that the two children talked about her between themselves. "I do. I also keep a journal, with thoughts and descriptions and a
few really clumsy drawings." Not, admittedly, that the journal she had going at the moment was much more than a sham.
"Can I see it?"
"What, the journal?"
"Not to read. I just wanted to see your pictures. Oh, never mind, it's not important."
"No, I'd be happy for you to look at my drawings, if you promise not to laugh at them." She reached into the nylon backpack at her feet and dug out the journal. He lowered the seat-back tray and put the journal on it, opening it methodically at the beginning, where Anne, still in her home in the mountains, had written:
Sedentary life does not seem conducive to keeping a journal. I finished the last one nearly 4 months ago, & have not felt the urge to open this one until today, when I noticed that a colony of bats has moved in under the eaves of the house.
The journal continued for half a dozen pages of purely imaginary non-events and the rough sketch of a nest with three eggs in it that according to the journal she could see from her bedroom window but which in truth was a long-abandoned nest brought to her by Eliot after a windstorm the previous fall, which she kept on her mantelpiece (empty of eggs).
Jason studied the delicate lines of the nest under the blue light of the overhead spot, while she sat back in the shadows and studied him.
When she first met him over the repairs of Rocinante's heater, he had worn his black hair long and slicked back into a short ponytail. A few weeks ago, the urban-shark look had been replaced by a short buzz-cut that looked less extreme and threatening but by its very lack of distraction served to emphasize the sharp edges of his nose and cheekbones. Even if he'd had an ordinary haircut flopping down in his eyes, though, she doubted that he would have looked like anything but what he was: a young man with the the eyes of a boy who had given up on hope and the expressionless face of a killer.
This Jason now sitting next to her was no longer that same young man whose devastating good looks and icy aloofness had sent such unexpected and disconcerting ripples down Ana's spine. He had matured dramatically in the few weeks she had known him, and paradoxically shed much of the hard defensive shell that made him appear so much older than he was. There was a boy in his eyes now—a wary boy, to be sure, ready instantly to snap back into his shell, but still a person who had experienced the first faint glimmerings of hope and who might, given time, come to believe in it. That this change had taken place despite the trauma of the alembic was eloquent testimony to his strength of spirit and the incomprehensible workings of the human mind. It was even possible, she had to acknowledge, that the change had been worked in part precisely because of the trauma.
The Birth of a new moon Page 27