Gibbon's Decline and Fall

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Hmmm,” Sister encouraged.

  “She used to tease me. I don’t respond to teasing well, I get flustered, but she could do it, so I didn’t mind. When we went to the San Francisco meeting in 1997, the two of us were together on the plane from Denver. I asked her what she’d been doing. She told me she’d been meditating in the desert, that she’d been exploring the caverns of despair to see what the enemy planned for us. She said one couldn’t ask for help until the need had been defined, but now that she knew what the enemy planned, she thought she could define it.”

  “What did she mean by that?”

  “I thought she was teasing. But she said …”

  What had she said?

  “She said the stories her grandma and aunts used to tell her were women stories, tales of wise women, warrior women, healing women, ruling women. She said when she came among us and heard our stories, all the women were weak or silly or unfortunate. Little Red Riding Hood. Snow White. Sleeping Beauty. Without the rescuing male, they were eaten up; without him they slept forever. In our stories women had no strength or passion of their own. In our stories woman’s fire does not burn, her joy is uncelebrated, all her knowledge is put to nothing. She said she was looking for the center of women’s being.…

  “And I interrupted her,” said Mother Agnes to Sister Honore. “I was always interrupting Sophy, very sure of myself, wanting to set her straight. I said the center of women’s being is God.” She made a face and then stared at her folded hands.

  “What did Sophy say?” asked Sister Honore.

  “She asked me whose God. I told her there was only one. And she said I was mistaken, that we like to think we all worship the same God, but we don’t. She said the God I’d been taught about wasn’t right for women.

  “I said she was confusing God with what men say about him, but she said I was the one who was confused. She quoted what she called the first law of the supernatural: No God can be bigger than the gate that lets people into the presence. If the only way to that God is through a narrow little gate with picky little gatekeepers, then that God is no bigger than that gate nor wiser than the keepers. If a woman wants to approach divinity, she should not go through a narrow gate built by men. Women should find their own way.”

  This conversation confirmed Sister Honore’s worst suspicions. No wonder Father Girard wanted Reverend Mother to forget about Sophy! “What did you say to that?”

  Reverend Mother Agnes shook her head slowly. “I told her I thought we Catholic women had opened ways for ourselves. And she said no, we had only bloodied our heads on gates that were long ago locked against us. She told me I was like a little mare in harness, believing I was being allowed to run, but soon I would feel the bit in my mouth and the weight of the wagon.”

  Sister Honore nodded, her lips compressed. “Well, of course she was right about that. The saving of souls is a heavy wagon to haul. We do it because we believe in it, because we love God.”

  Agnes was too intent to notice the contentious tone. “Sophy said she sought the center of women’s being, the place where the spirit of women is at home. She said she saw that place as the summit of a mountain; from that summit any movement in any direction would be a decline and a fall. She said when she found it, she would build a shrine there. When she found it, she said, perhaps I would even help her.…”

  “Ah,” breathed Sister Honore. “I see.” She did see. It was heretical. No doubt at all about that.

  “I didn’t see,” Reverend Mother Agnes whispered, tears on her face. “I didn’t see how far she was straying. I couldn’t think of an answer. I changed the subject. Then in San Francisco something happened, and it was too late to say anything. Even then, perhaps, I could have helped her, but I didn’t.…

  “And after that I never saw her again. And Father Girard says I must forget her, deny her, consider that she may not have been my friend, that she may have been sent by the devil.…”

  Sister Honore sat back, ready to do battle. “Don’t you think that’s probably true, Reverend Mother? She certainly has troubled you greatly. Wouldn’t you be better off doing as Father suggests?”

  Aggie shook her head sadly. “Well, Sophy’s first law of the supernatural certainly doesn’t fit our faith. If she was wrong about that, she may have been very wrong about a lot of things.”

  “If she was wrong?”

  Reverend Mother turned, suddenly aware that she was actually trying to undermine the faith of one of her community. Not only being disobedient herself but fulminating disobedience in others. All because of Sophy. Because of what she had been, or still was.

  Sister Honore frowned, longing to go on with this line of conversation, but Reverend Mother was already distressed, and it wouldn’t be thoughtful to pursue the matter. “Back to the weight of our wagon, Reverend Mother,” she said cheerfully. “You were saying it will be hard to give up the girls’ scholarship fund.”

  “It will be very hard,” said Reverend Mother, chill with realization. “Perhaps it is meant to be hard. Perhaps there are some things so precious that one can only be tested when one is asked to give them up.”

  Saturday evening, after Hal had gone off to bed, Carolyn stretched out in the little bedroom with the phone beside her, called Ophy, and talked with her for almost an hour about Lolly Ashaler. She followed that call with a similar one to Jessamine.

  “You’re serious?” Jessamine asked. “You’re really serious? You’re going to defend her by attacking the Hail Mary Assumption?”

  “Can you come up with some better way?” Carolyn asked irritably. “She’s completely unprepossessing, Jess. Totally unsympathetic. She has sensations but no ideas, she has speech but no vocabulary, she has wants but no aspirations. She’s a mess, but if you can think of something better, tell me!”

  “Well, no.”

  “Can you get the stuff I need?”

  “Yes. I think I can. Some of it. I don’t know where you’ll get the news tapes.…”

  “Simon was with Ophy when I called her. He’s getting them for me. He has all kinds of media contacts. Movies. TV. Maybe Patrick could locate—”

  “Patrick’s leaving, Carolyn. We’ve called it quits. He’s going back to California. The Alliance wants him to run for office.”

  “The Alliance!” Shock made her wordless. All she could come up with was, “Jessy. I’m sorry.” It sounded insincere. Damn it, it was insincere.

  “You’re not sorry he’s leaving, Carolyn. Neither am I. The fact that he’s associating himself with the Alliance means I couldn’t go on living with him. Patrick’s changed a lot in the last few years. He used to claim to be proud of me, but that was when he could stand on his political pinnacle and look down on my work. Since it’s been supporting us, he hasn’t liked it much. I think right now he’s seeing me as a horrible example of feminism gone wrong.”

  “You’re honestly not hurting?”

  “Honestly not. He’s such a … Do you know, he told me he tried to seduce the whole DFC just to see if he could blow us up, like putting a firecracker in a mailbox? If he hadn’t had d.t.’s and been seeing dragons.…”

  “Seeing dragons?”

  “In Sophy’s room. He was drunk, Carolyn.” She laughed. “I guess it’s funny, in a sort of sick way. Patrick always gets drunk when he’s bored, and when we were having our meeting, he was bored out of his skull. I had a dream about his being drunk the other night. A funny one. Patrick was drunk, and he got all the male apes drunk and then let them out. They locked me in a little cage, all of us females locked into these little tiny cages, and—”

  Carolyn interrupted firmly. “Jessy, I don’t think that’s funny in the least, and I’d just as soon not hear about it.”

  “All right. I won’t tell you.” Long silence. Then, “Let’s have the list of things you need.”

  Carolyn read it. “And you’ll come to the meeting prepared to testify?”

  “If you can get the case scheduled for then and get a judge to acc
ept my testimony, Carolyn.”

  “Ophy said the same. And it won’t be easy. I have no doubt the DA will have his crony on the bench.”

  Carolyn thanked her and hung up, looking up to see Hal leaning on his cane in the doorway, very pale, the daily paper dangling from one hand.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I thought I’d do the crossword before I fell asleep, so I took the paper back to the room with me. I hadn’t really looked at it this morning.” He was deeply distressed; his face showed it.

  “Hal! What?”

  “The kid. The one who broke in here last night. Don Bent. He’s dead.”

  She stared at him. “That’s in the paper?”

  “Hanged himself in his cell.”

  “He did not!”

  “That’s what it says.”

  “I don’t care what it says.” She felt herself shaking. “My lord, Hal. That’s what they said about Greta Wilson! Helen’s sister.”

  He sat on the side of her bed and picked up the phone. “I’m going to call Mike Winter.”

  There was a lengthy wait before Mike came to the phone. Hal held it away from his ear so Carolyn could hear.

  “Hal! What’s the occasion?”

  Hal talked about Carolyn’s case, concluding with the prowler who had ended up dead.

  “Do you have proof that—”

  “Of course not, Mike! Would I be calling you if I could make a case here? The fact that the boy who broke in here last night was dead this morning raises our hackles and gives me the feeling this is bigger than local, that’s all.”

  Long silence at the other end, a receding murmur as though someone might be carrying a phone into a quieter corner. “How can I help, Hal?”

  “We don’t expect the cavalry to come riding over the hill. Carolyn wants to win this case, of course, but she’s reconciled herself to losing, which is almost a foregone conclusion with Judge Rombauer on the bench. Rombauer’s dirty, everyone knows it, but nobody does anything about it, and we don’t expect you to fix him. Carolyn figures if she can’t win, she can appeal.

  “If she appeals, however, she’s up against Jagger again, and we’ve come to suspect he has a tendency to solve problems by people committing suicide or falling accidentally dead.”

  Mike hummed and hemmed. “I think you can figure whatever Jagger is doing, Webster may be pulling the strings.”

  Hal thought about it for a long moment. “It would help to know for certain, Mike. If we’re going to protect ourselves, it’d be nice to know who we’re protecting ourselves from. Jagger? Albert? Webster himself? And if the latter, why?”

  Long pause, then Mike murmured, “I’ve got some information I’ll put together for you. In the meantime, if you get hold of anything on the judge that can be used to help Carolyn, I’d be pleased to bring pressure to bear, right up old Albert’s nose.”

  “Albert is still there, then.”

  “In high favor, my friend. Old Albert is right up there among the mucky-mucks.”

  “Damn him.”

  “Thou sayest.” And the disconnect.

  “Not much help,” remarked Hal to Carolyn as he hung up the phone. “I get the feeling Jagger doesn’t blow his nose without Webster’s knowing, but it’s hard for me to see how this case has anything to do with Webster.”

  “Maybe it’s like the ecologists say,” Carolyn murmured. “Everything’s connected to everything else.”

  “Possibly.” He nodded, thinking it over. “You look depressed, sweetness.”

  “I am. I’m … fearful. Everything I see and hear seems to be an omen. I’ve been having ominous dreams. So have some of my friends, if you can believe that! If I didn’t know better, I’d think the millenarians are right. Everything’s coming apart.”

  “Not that bad,” he said, hugging her. “It can’t be that bad.”

  Stacey Shepherd perched on the couch in Luce’s living room, sipping the cup of coffee Luce had delivered along with sweet words and a lingering stroke across her shoulder. So, fine. He always did that. Always insisted on cleaning up the mess in his own kitchen, letting her have her coffee while he did so. As he was doing now, whistling, because he was happy she was there, so he said. Claiming his territory, Stace used to say. Male bird in bright plumage, singing on his own cattail, letting all the other birds know where was where and what was what, cleaning up his own kitchen because he wanted her to know he was fully capable of sharing household duties after they were married.

  If they ever did get married!

  She got up restlessly, running her hands along Luce’s bookcases. He’d built them himself, clear pine, personally selecting each board, joining them beautifully; then he’d crammed them with tattered backs and torn covers, science texts and his old science-fiction collection, lots of them signed first editions, books shoved in any old where, Feinman jostling Heinlein, Asimov cheek by jowl with Hawking. Sometimes he read stories to her. Sometimes they made sense. Stace was no great shakes on science, never had been. It had always seemed cold to her. Not that Luce was … had been cold. Until recently.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” he called. “Did I leave my coffee cup in there?”

  “I’ll bring it,” she told him, rising to do so. “You sure you don’t want any more?”

  “Oh, maybe half a cup.” Humming now. Full of music, this man was. Full of crap. Besides, Luce liked measurable things. He wanted things quantified. “Luce, you never …,” she would say. “How many times don’t I?” That was his kind of question. “How many times don’t I …”

  She passed him the cup across the counter, then perched on one of the kitchen stools. “Luce?”

  “Yes, ma’am. You want another cup?”

  “I want to talk.”

  “So talk. You’re the psychologist, so tell me about these old ladies, why they’re burning the shoe stores and stuff.”

  “That’s not what I want to talk about. I want to … to ask why. You know, we haven’t made love lately.”

  He looked up, suddenly alert, hands quiet, eyes searching her face. “Not for a while, no.”

  “Why is that?” She took a sip of coffee to soothe a suddenly dry throat.

  He looked puzzled. “You haven’t given me the signal,” he said at last. “Not lately. I figured you were preoccupied.”

  “The signal?”

  “You know, the go-ahead. The flag. The starting gun. The bell for round one.”

  “I didn’t know I ever … gave a signal.”

  “Sure you do,” he said, shaking his head. “I think. It’s the way you … look, I guess. Or smell. Hell, I don’t know. Something that sets me off.”

  “And lately I haven’t done it?”

  “Not lately. I figured it was the new job. They can be pretty demanding—new bosses, new projects. I know. I’ve had enough of them.”

  She was staring into the coffee, as though into a crystal ball. “Luce, I thought you were the one who gave the signal.”

  “Me? I always tried not to. You know, being considerate. Dad told me that when I was fourteen: He said it was better than the Scout motto. Not ‘Be prepared,’ but ‘Be considerate.’ ” He dried his hands on a paper towel, threw it into the trash, and took her hand to lead her back into the living room. “Hey, it’s nothing about us. I mean, Stace, I’m in love with you. Like forever. Whatever’s bothering you—me, us—it doesn’t even touch how I feel about you.”

  He drew her down on the couch and cuddled her, his arms tight around her, and she waited for the signal, from him, from herself, searching memory, searching sensation. Something. Sound. Smell. Feeling. Something. They were warm and cozy and pleasant and loving, but the other thing, whatever it was, didn’t happen, even though they were both thinking about it.

  About it. But finding it hard even to remember. Stace could remember what they’d done, what they’d said, but the actual feeling …

  He was fondling her breasts, stroking them. “Your bra’s all stretched,” he said. “It’s loose.�
��

  “It’s a new one,” she said, sitting up, adjusting the straps.

  “Take off your shirt,” he said.

  She peeled it off, let him kiss her shoulder, run his hands down her back. She loved his hands. They stroked easily under the straps of the bra. Easily.

  “It’s the same size I always buy,” she whispered.

  “You’re … smaller,” he said.

  She went into his bedroom, took off the bra, looked at herself in his mirror. She didn’t usually look at herself undressed—no real reason to—but she was smaller. She was almost flat-chested. Just breasty enough so people would know she was a girl. Like a twelve-year-old, maybe. Or a ballerina.

  He came in behind her, took her in his arms.

  “I’m shrinking,” she whispered. “The incredible shrinking boob! What shall I do?”

  “Darling, I don’t know,” he said.

  Faye had finished the figure of Fecundity, had paid Petra off and bade her farewell, only to have her call a few weeks later asking if she could bring Narcisso, her boyfriend, by to see the statue.

  “The maquette,” Faye corrected. “If you want to, Pet. Not for long, though. I’ve got a lot of work laid on this week.”

  She was deeply immersed in the transformation of Mercury and the three Graces, but when Petra and Cisso arrived, Faye propped the door open and went out onto the balcony so Petra could show off alone.

  “That’s you, huh?” The boy’s voice was soft, much softer than Faye had expected. “Nice. Lookit all the little kids. We used to go swimmin’ like that, me’n my brothers, skinny-dippin’.”

  Faye turned slightly, so she could observe them without seeming to watch. Was this the same young man she had seen before? It was the same car, no question of that. There couldn’t be more than one. But the young man himself seemed different. Her sculptor’s eye saw a change in his stance and the way he held his head. Softness. His shoulders were softer, sloped and relaxed instead of raised and stiff, the difference between ballet and flamenco. There was something almost demure in the stance.

  “Y’think I look, you know, sexy?” Petra asked him.