Sunshine and Shadow

by Sharon

  She went into the kitchen, found a tea bag, dunked it in his cup, and, with "Never On Sunday" seeping through the floorboards, said, "I expected to hate you."

  "I don't blame you." Then, "I love her, you know."

  "If you're talking about the kind of love that hits you like something that comes out of a ray gun, I don't believe in it."

  "Neither did I."

  Their gazes held, and then he looked down and began rather thoughtfully to drown his tea bag. Here was a man used to brewed tea, she could see. She steadied herself to ask the difficult question, and was pleased with the even tenor of her voice when it came.

  "How is Susan?"

  "She's…" His face revealed that the question was difficult for him also. A smile interrupted his thoughts. "Last night we ate in a dim restaurant. She ordered filet of sole and a flashlight. Mostly she's the same. Changeable, funny. She takes piano lessons. She studies poetry." He lifted the cup, cradling it in his hands as if he welcomed the warmth, seeming to concentrate on the simple action. He slowly gave up the smile, and said, after an extended pause, "But the black moments for her are very black. Daniel told me not to take her, and he was right."

  The hurt was too great, too many-tiered to allow her to speak quickly. "Dammit, why did you come here, then?"

  "Susan is an observer, not a critic. I need to know more than she tells me."

  He'd spoken her name as if it were some sweet melody forever in his heart. Yes, she could understand someone loving Susan that way. She felt too full inside, like a cat with a hair ball in its stomach.

  "Maybe," she said, "you should have tried harder to learn about my family before you made my sister into Hester Prynne."

  He was too honest a man to defend the indefensible. Instead he looked at her steadily. "I've read your book, you know. It touched me very much." Then, gently, he said, "You didn't explain why you left."

  "I wasn't ready."

  "And now?"

  "I try. It isn't easy to capture."

  "If you would try for me, I would be very grateful. There's a possibility Susan will return. I have to know what there was about life with your family that made it intolerable for you."

  Her mind froze around the words "a possibility that Susan will return." Her palms were sweaty. She grasped her knees. "I've spent most of my life torn between two worlds. The thought of Susan's having to endure that makes me physically ill."

  He set down the tea he wasn't .drinking. "There's another thing we have in common."

  She spent a moment feeling unspeakably vulnerable, before she levered herself up, drying her palms on her jeans. She searched through a file on her desk and handed him two typed pages.

  If human beings experience emotion in different degrees, the way they do bodily pain, I would be said to have a low threshold. I know this about myself. When I am very angry or afraid, I become silent and appear withdrawn to those around me. I cannot permit myself to speak or I know I will become inarticulate and perhaps tearful.

  I worry about the world. It seems to me too cruel on a grand scale. In the intimate relationships in my life, I find I am no more elastic. Petty injustices and minor tyrannies disturb me. I don't like to be teased or startled or jostled. This is difficult to avoid in a large family.

  Susan likes all those things. The suddenness and commotion of life with many adults and children is not offensive to Susan. She doesn't carry resentments or need long periods of quiet. She forgives easily. It is nothing to her to forgive someone; it's just done, instant, complete.

  My mother-is like this too. It used to make me angry. It seemed to show a lack of personal dignity, too little concern for what was just and owed to one.

  I know differently now. They have a gift. The ones who accept life as it is—they're the free ones. The rest of us carry our emotions like weights.

  When I left, I wrote this to my father: I will never return to live by the ways of the church. I love children; that much is bred into me. But I cannot have child after child, like Mother. I can't clean and sew and feed animals and people in an endless cycle. I can't have my reading material censored, my appearance made to conform, or my behavior patterned after the standards of the seventeenth century.

  When he had finished reading, she said, "I love my family. Now I walk around with a permanent lump in my throat, but even if I have to grieve for the rest of my life, that's a price I'm willing to pay, I want to write and study and be responsible to no one but myself."

  She sat opposite him. She looked at the pages, at the dull haze of light coming in the window, at his face, his clear, bright eyes, so tolerant, so filled with comprehension. You could tell anything to a man like that. She said, "Did Susan tell you that a long time ago I was attacked, out of spite, by boys from town?"

  "She only told me a little. Why didn't it make you turn from the outside world?"

  "I read. I knew it wasn't all like that." She swung her feet up on the couch, tucked them under her. Her legs were stiff puppet parts. "Do you know, they didn't take me to a doctor until a week after it happened? It didn't occur to them that there could have been anything sexual in the assault. They couldn't imagine that in relation to a child, and I didn't have the language… City people think farm kids know everything, because we see the cycle of life in animals, but often we don't, especially girls. It isn't something we talk to one another about much, and even when you see animal behavior, you don't necessarily equate that with humans."

  She didn't touch her face. It would be hot, she knew. He said only, "Of course you don't." She found the words oddly comforting.

  "Anyway, what had happened had happened, and nothing could change that. They did everything they knew now to for me, but you see, it wasn't enough. This was an unheard-of thing. They were completely unprepared. I can't describe to you how I felt. When the bruises healed I could still see them on my skin. I wanted to get out of my body, to escape somewhere…" Her gaze had strayed to the window. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she saw him looking at her, and saw the intelligent, unshockable compassion there, and remembered what he'd endured as a child. Here was one to whom explanations were needless.

  "There was an anger in me so powerful… just a rage over what had been done to me, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it. Terrible things had happened to me, and I had no way to fight back. My parents wouldn't have allowed me to take an oath and give testimony against my attackers in court. It would have violated their beliefs."

  "I stopped eating, stopped talking, and my parents became more and more frightened. They sent for the Bishop to speak with me, and he said that I must not hate, I must forgive those who had trespassed against me. He read from the Bible about forgiveness, and he took me down on the floor at his side and told me to pray with him for their salvation. Well, I prayed, all right. I've never prayed so hard in my life. I prayed that God would strike down the English boys. I got some relief then. To my parents, I seemed to improve. They didn't know I was waiting. Time passed, the town went on without pause or pestilence, and I was beginning to wonder about God. He began to seem ineffectual. But I thought, well, all right, maybe He's just biding His time."

  "I had begun to spend time with a retired schoolteacher, an English lady who bought her eggs from us. She save me books secretly, talked to me about places she'd been. One day we were talking about religion, comparing what we'd been taught, and I learned that in the town's church there was no public confession of sins. In other words, the boys who attacked me would never have to face public shame in order to be absolved. One private moment between them and God, and it would all be in the past. That easy. Even in everlasting life, I'd never be avenged."

  "That's when I knew that life was irrational, and if there was any justice, it came about by accident. I was elated when I found books by English philosophers that had the same idea. It was so obvious, so clear to me that the world was Godless. It explained everything. It was the only believable story."

  Rachel was
quiet by nature. It had been, for her, a lengthy explanation. Silence was a relief.

  Downstairs the harp had launched into "Rock Of Ages." It was positively macabre, she thought. He'd noticed it, too, because he grinned at her, but when he spoke, she thought that rarely had she heard a kinder, more soothing voice. "Did you keep your new insight to yourself?"

  "No. I went to tell my father. He locked me in my room for a week. You can imagine what that did to Susan. I'm not sure why I fought my dad so hard. It might have been because I was so attached to him, I had to fight that hard to get free. But I've learned one thing since I was banned. I've learned what it's like to go without forgiveness. I don't despise forgiveness any more, even when it's not linked to justice. In fact, I can see there's all too little of it in the world."

  Chapter 26

  Susan didn't mind waiting for him in her hotel suite.

  They'd come in late last night, and she'd been fast asleep by the time Daniel had called, responding to Alan's cable. Alan hadn't said much about the call, just that Daniel was coming into the city to see them this afternoon. She was so glad about it, she could have played like a kitten. She wanted to sit in the lobby with a newspaper and see if he knew her in English clothes, her hair cut to her shoulders.

  She hadn't gotten over being amused by the way Alan did things when he wanted to: zip, zip. She'd needed this trip—funny, she hadn't thought even how much.

  She was halfway amused also by the way Alan had volunteered to see Rachel first on his own. "When she tells me I'm a degenerate and that she hates me for what I've done to you, you won't have to listen," he'd said. She told him to go without her, not because she was afraid of Rachel's tongue—she'd never been that—but because she wanted them to become friends on their own, not just out of duty. It could make all the difference with Rachel, how you approached her. Alan would know the way.

  While she waited, she dressed herself in a bedgown of burgundy-colored silk and lace, one new to him. She just wanted to see what he'd do. Then she studied the jagged city skyline and the sparkling surface of Lake Michigan, picking out what the city guide said she ought to be impressed by. She contemplated the world's tallest building and tried to assemble an appropriate response, finally setting on, "Well, that's one big bunding." The world was getting bigger and bigger to her.

  When Alan let himself into the room she said, "How'd it go?"

  She couldn't tell if he'd heard the question or not, the way he was looking at her. He only said, "Wow!" and started toward her.

  She fended him off with the guidebook. "Was she cruel to you?"

  "There were no streamers of confetti, but I think she tried to be gentle. We're picking her up tonight for dinner. She sent this for you."

  She recognized Rachel's hand on the note, the letters carefully formed—you could always tell she enjoyed the act of writing for its own sake.

  Dear Susan,

  I was weighted down by guilt, thinking it was my fault you were seduced by a movie director, that you went through the whole thing to earn that money for me. Now that I've met Alan, I can see maybe I did you a good turn.

  I can hardly call it rivalry, what was between us while we were growing up. You were better at all things. I know you did your best to equal things up and count me in. I guess it didn't work because I didn't want in badly enough. We were stuck in that cycle of generosity, rejection, and regret.

  You were the one I wanted most to understand how stifled I felt, but it couldn't be. You lived fully; you were too complete and satisfied to know the kind of hunger I felt. I know you always had the feeling you were disappointing me, and in a sense you were. I wished you were angry too. You know me. I always felt as if I talk to people through one of those screens in prison. I'm not warm like you; I don't have the knack. I wish I were your friend.

  Love,

  Rachel.

  Susan felt a quiver inside, a part of her beginning to relax that had been tensed for a long, long time. She swallowed.

  Alan said, "Come here."

  "First you have to tell me more."

  "If you're going to look like that, you probably won't get much sense out of me."

  The sensual heat in his eyes began its work on her pulse. She got that funny smile only he knew how to produce in her. "What's going on in these private talks with Daniel and Rachel that you haven't told me about?"

  "Nothing might come of it. I don't want you to worry."

  "That won't work. I sense things. What are you going to do?" She grinned. "Let's communicate."

  "Tomorrow Daniel and I are going to talk to your parents."

  What a way to lose a smile. "Oh, no. Please. I've told you nothing can come of it. It's no good talking—it only causes hurt. They won't accept me while I live in the world. What good to go there and have them—"

  "But they could accept you if you came back to live."

  The air around her tingled like winter. "What are you saying?"

  "I want to tell them I'm willing to live with you in a new community where you can practice your faith if your parents will agree to accept you back as their daughter."

  She heard the guidebook hit the floor before she knew her fingers had released it. His image softened to a glassy blur. "What—" The word didn't come out well. She had to try again. "What can you be thinking of?"

  "That you look magnificent? The rest is censored."

  She tried to decide whether she was holding in laughter or tears. "Alan, you can't adopt a view of God because you care for a woman."

  "I know that. It might strain credibility to pretend to a conversion. Daniel thinks we might be able to find another Plain community that would accept your marriage to an outsider."

  Her legs were poor support. "There's nothing like that near Greyling. Maybe not even in Wisconsin."

  "Maybe not. It could mean your family would have to move if they wanted to live near us."

  "Daniel had this idea?"

  "He's wanted to leave for some time, Susan. In fact, he flew out with Fanny's husband to look at land near liberalized groups in Indiana and Pennsylvania, He's ready to go with me to your parents."

  "It couldn't be… it's just too… Mother and Dad would have to leave everything they know—land Dad's worked since he was a boy. For Daniel it's not so much. He's always wished he could have the farm more modern, but for my parents… The differences between Plain groups may seem small to you, but to us they're vast. There are no small acts of faith. Each one has meaning." A wet track tickled its way across and down her cheek. "Oh, my dear, even if they were persuaded, how could you think you'd be happy in the country, after the way you've lived?"

  His smile burned her to the soul. "It doesn't matter to me where I live any longer. It only matters that it be with you."

  Love filled her like the swell of wind in a tree crown. She stood so until her smile grew like his, and then she said, "Come here."

  She understood why he had to try. But she had also understood from the beginning that leaving home would be forever. Hope was too dangerous. She permitted herself no more than the most frail flicker—and that way it was merely searing when he came home late the following day and held her in silence and she knew he had failed.

  Two days after the visit by her banned daughter's English husband, Rebecca Hostetler had a troubling recollection.

  It had nagged at her all day and stayed with her that night as she lay in the darkened bedroom beside her husband.

  The sun had come up on the finest morning in her memory, and after breakfast Levi had gone off behind the tool shed to burn leaves, and she'd taken Katie out to the yellowing grass to play catch. When the ball rolled under the blue spruce by the porch, she didn't want Katie scratched by the needles, so she herself had crawled under the evergreen's heavy skirt. As she'd knelt breathing pine resins mixed with the sharp scent of burning leaves and the sunless dust under the porch, the strangest feeling came over her that this had happened to her once before. Once before she'd been like th
is, the branches sweeping down around her, her knees up by her nose, smelling pine and leaf smoke. It wasn't a recent memory, she knew. It came from way back, perhaps even from her early childhood, a memory that had vanished totally over all the years of her adult life. Why would she have been crouched so, as if she were hiding? Why had that moment been so important that it would come back to her after so much time?

  She couldn't place the memory, and it bothered her, and then it came back to her while she'd been dusting the German Bible—it came clear, complete, as if it had happened yesterday.

  She couldn't place her age at the time, but she'd been little, real little. ltd been Church Sunday, and the preaching had been on the faith of Abraham.

  She heard for the first time about the terrible day God had asked Abraham to kill his own child. She remembered the horror of each detail, the distraught father lying to the curious child, telling him that they were walking up the mountain to sacrifice a goat, how he had covered the child's eyes so that he might not see the knife, how he had bound him and laid him on the cold stone altar.

  Sickened, not a bit consoled that God had sent an angel at the last to stay Abraham's hand, she'd been good and scared after service. She hardly knew where to turn for comfort. Not in her worst nightmares had she guessed that the cruel streak God showed the heathen could come out against His own people. Her father was a godly man. Suppose God got the idea to test her dad's faith, maybe to ask him to take her out to the field and take her life, just to see if he'd do it. And her dad would do anything for the Lord.

  She'd hidden herself under the porch lattice by the yews and stayed there until evening, when her folks found her and brought her inside for supper. They'd fussed over her, asked her why she'd done such an odd thing, and, when she wasn't able to tell them, they'd loved her up and put it down to childish nonsense. Set to her chores, the familiar tasks of her family life had begun to seem normal once more, and in a few days she forgot her terrifying thoughts, the way children will. Something had erased them as surely as if they'd never been there, and then returned them to her now, just as if they'd never been gone. Why?