In Paris, she’d begun writing letters to Maze, ones she never mailed. It felt easier that way, from that distance, knowing she could decide later whether to send them. She wrote about herself, but also about her mama, everything Clarisa Pool had told her. What her mama saw, the way her life had gone at the end. The way she, Mary Elizabeth, had simply stayed away and pretended none of it was happening.
She did send Maze a card with her new address once she’d settled in New York. After that she got back a letter filled with sadness and regret. Daniel dead, twin sons born in a country that kept sending its boys off to die. It seemed, too, like Maze was somehow telling her good-bye. It surprised Mary Elizabeth, the fear in her heart at the thought of losing Maze.
When she got that letter, on a damp April morning with the smell of spring below the mist rising off the park, Mary Elizabeth put all the letters she had written in Paris into an envelope and mailed them to Maze. “There were things I didn’t tell you, in Chicago, even back at Berea,” she said in a note clipped to the thick pile. “I regret that now.”
She forgot to ask about the names Maze had given her twins, names she’d chosen, Maze had said, because they reminded her of Mary Elizabeth and her, that first fall at Berea—of their younger, freer selves. Pilgrim and Stranger, they were called, and Mary Elizabeth wondered which of the two was named for her.
Acknowledgments
First, a few words about the real Pleasant Hill and the real Berea College: There were no surviving Shakers (and no war-resisting squatters) at the time of the actual restoration of the Shaker community at Pleasant Hill—which, from all accounts, and as reflected in that stunning site today, was done lovingly and with great respect for the members of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. Berea College has been refreshingly frank about its history, including its actions as an institution during the years of Kentucky’s Day Law. It is a college I admire deeply, one rooted, still, in the beliefs and principles of its abolitionist founder, John Fee. I am grateful to archivists and staff members at both of these beautiful places, particularly to Shannon Wilson, Special Collections and Archives Coordinator at Berea College, and to Larrie Curry, Curator at Pleasant Hill. All have been unfailingly helpful to me through the years.
Thanks are also due to Jan Russell-Urbani and Peter Christine for their weaving demonstrations and instruction; to Virginia Wiles and Charles Rix for advice on all things piano, as well as a wonderful afternoon spent talking and listening to Charles’s gorgeous playing; and to Ted Morgan for help with numbers and dates related to the war in Vietnam. Heartfelt thanks go to Gene Garber and Ursula Hegi for their continued support of this book through many years and many changes, and also to my agent Liv Blumer and my editor, Fred Ramey, Co-Publisher of Unbridled Books, for allowing me not to give up on Maze and Mary Elizabeth. Thanks also to the book’s wonderful copy editor, Connie Oehring.
I am grateful for time and space provided by the Quaker retreat center at Pendle Hill, by the Vermont Studio Center, and by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Thanks also to the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, and to Dean Gordon Weil, the English Department, and the Faculty Development and Research Committee at Moravian College for their support of my work.
Finally, I am thankful to my husband Jim and my daughter Anna, for their patience, devotion, and sustaining love.
THE TEXT OF THIS BOOK
IS SET IN ADOBE JENSEN.
Stranger Here Below Page 20