Bless the Child (52 page)

I call saintliness not a state, but

the moral procedure leading up

to it.

Jean Genet,

quoted by Sartre

T
he fire in the hearth had dwindled, and neither occupant of Maggie’s library had taken the time to fuss with it for the last half hour.

Maggie was seated behind her desk, weariness explicit in the sag of her shoulders, and the hair falling randomly from the clip that was supposed to be holding it back. She and Peter had been doing this work for endless hours. Or days . . . weeks . . .
years!
it seemed, she couldn’t even remember how long it had been. Peter pacing and firing questions. She spewing out answers. Sometimes tangling up the esoteric details she’d learned from Ellie, with Peter’s theology. Sometimes lost in the question of whether there was even a point to any of this monumental effort. And, Peter was acting so strange since he got back from Rhinebeck. Intense and remote.

With rising irritation, she watched him pacing back and forth in front of the fire, long legs striding to some rhythmic downbeat she could no longer hear through the thumping in her own head.

Peter fired a question at her and her mind was suddenly completely blank. Or rather it was so full of answers none could surface. Circuitry overload. Chronic fatigue. Too much pressure . . . too much information . . . too little sleep . . . too dire consequence of failure.

“I don’t
know!
” she snapped at him, pushing the papers she’d been fingering away from her, and rising from the desk in agitation.

“You
do
know!” She could hear the gritted teeth of his response. He, too, was under terrible pressure of a different kind . . .
the Church, choices, Maggie.
Peter repeated the question.

“I’m telling you, Peter, I
don’t
know.” Her voice had risen to a dangerous pitch. “I cannot remember a fucking thing! Don’t you understand, I can’t do this! It’s just too much—too incredibly hopeless. There’s so little time left, and I still don’t know how to save Cody—and all you can do is stand there screaming useless questions at me that I don’t have answers to!”

She saw the stricken response in his eyes, and suddenly, she wasn’t crazy anymore . . . just frustrated and afraid.

“Oh, Peter,” she breathed, horrified at how close to the edge she was, “I’m going to fail . . . and I
can’t
fail . . . She’s all alone with those monsters, and I don’t know how to save her, and soon it will be
too late.”
Maggie’s anger distilled into despair; she dropped her head to her chest, the momentary fury spent, and he could see her begin to sob, silently. It was the loneliest crying Peter had ever witnessed; as if there were so little help left in the world, even sound had become superfluous.

She looked up at him, beseeching him to understand her terrible hurt, and every cell of his wanted to do something to
help her . . .
Peter stood transfixed, sensing her terror emphatically, gripped in the enormity of her pain. She was drowning in an ocean of the unknown, and he was the only spar. If she could just keep her afloat a little while longer . . .

Almost without conscious consent, Peter crossed the floor to Maggie’s side, and took her into his arms. Wasn’t it only human to comfort one who was suffering so gravely? Wasn’t it only . . .

“No, Peter!” she said, shocked by his unexpected response, guilty at having provoked it.

But she could feel the hard strength of him against her; feel the broken boundaries in his urgency. She knew she must not respond, yet some part of her
wanted
to . . . some part that seemed not to be Maggie.

“Please, Peter. Don’t do this!” she gasped, struggling to pull away from his embrace. But how could she spurn this offering of self? she thought wildly: she loved him too much to reject him . . . And Peter was over the line now, where he had feared and longed to be. Out where nothing mattered but need. The barriers so carefully erected . . . the taboos of the Church . . . the programming of a lifetime . . . the war for his soul’s integrity. What did any of it mean in the face of such human need?

I wished to be part of God,
he thought madly—
sought Him in His very sanctuary, made myself one with His Godhead . . . yet I am not God! I am only a man.

He felt Maggie’s ambivalence, clearly, but he also felt her trust and the love that flowed between them, like a stream of ions—negative drawn to positive—with an eternal inevitability that demanded fulfillment.

How could this beauty be profane? How could such passionate communion be anything but sacrament?

Maggie felt herself drawn in against her will.
I’m not in love with you Peter,
she wanted to cry out, but if that was so, how did he know the things he knew of her? How to touch and how to kiss? How to understand the mutual craving that was older than everything but God? She felt disoriented, out of control.

He lifted her and she knew she shouldn’t go with him . . . shouldn’t let him awaken things in her that didn’t belong to him.
Or did they?
Had they always . . . Something was driving her, too, distorting her boundaries . . .

Peter held her in his arms, lost in the newness of her. Did she have bones as well as flesh? She was soft and strong, fragile and mysterious. Her skin was a silken wonder he had never felt before. How had he found her naked breasts so soon? Where had her clothes gone . . . and his own?

Oh Maggie,
my Maggie . . .
how could I have not known?
You were the phantom in the sleepless nights . . . the silver mane of the Unicorn glimpsed for a heartbeat through the forest . . . you were the dream.

Confusion wracked him, along with the certainties. I am a
man.
God forgive me. This is what I am!

“Peter,
please!
This isn’t right,” she breathed the words, afraid to the heart of hurting him. Not knowing any longer which would hurt him more—to surrender to his love, or to deny it. Because she wasn’t separate from him any longer; maybe she had never been. Maybe she had never been whole without him, her former wholeness only an illusion. There were no certainties for Maggie, now—the demands of the past were growing stronger within her, the urgent cry of body needing body. Or was it soul needing soul? Was this moment of ecstasy owed to them, by a destiny not of their choosing?
Karaden and Mim,
fulfilled at last, after eons of waiting? The gift of a Goddess to those she had made to suffer?

Maggie’s eyes were filled with tears, for there was no turning back now; she was caught in a cosmic tide, too far beyond the shore. She ceased to struggle, for he was no longer Peter and she was no longer Maggie, and all the need of an eternity of loving was suddenly within her. So, she reached for him . . .

Peter, too, felt his mind slipping away, fading into brilliance, like a star in nova . . . There were unaccustomed arms and legs wrapped around his own . . . there was hardened flesh that knew its cosmic destination, and unutterable warmth that longed to yield to its intrusion. In a moment she would be completely his, lost in forbidden love . . . forbidden . . .
forbidden . . .
Why, O sweet gentle Christ, why must this beauty be forbidden me?

Because it must.

Because this intensity would take precedence over everything. Because once tasted, the fruit of the apple brings not replenishment, but damnation.

With a groan of anguish as true as if his heart had been torn living from his body, Peter wrenched himself away from Maggie. Forcing his flesh away from hers, and his eyes, and his heart . . . panting, half mad with desire and unfulfilled dreams, he tore his body from her entangling one, and crouched like a great wounded lion, on the floor beside her.

Shocked beyond movement, Maggie lay absolutely still, almost fearing to breathe. She was mortally afraid. She watched Peter struggle to regain control of himself . . . of the moment . . . of a life coming undone.
Who am I? What have I done?

There was no sound around them but the small hiss and crackle of the last log.

“I love you, Maggie,” Peter whispered . . . his tortured voice, unfamiliar. “Please,
please
know that I love you . . .” She heard the defeat of it in his words. A lifetime vanquished in a moment.

“Forgive me for leading you to this, Maggie,” he whispered. “It’s my need, not yours, that’s led us here.”

She started to protest, but the look on his face stopped her.

“If we do this,” he rushed on, urgently, needing to explain. “If I forswear my vow . . . it’s the one sin that will put me in their reach, and I will not be able to protect you.” He turned to look at her, naked and vulnerable in the last flickers of firelight. . . there was such sorrow in his gaze that she longed to touch him, to comfort him, but dared not.

“At this moment, my dearest Maggie,” Peter said, in a voice that left no room for doubt, “for this one act . . . I think I would trade my own salvation.” He stopped, for the barest heartbeat. “But I cannot trade yours.”

She closed her eyes in terrible understanding. Tears broke free, and ran unnoticed down her face to the rug beneath her.
What have I done?
Her heart kept beating out the rhythm of the words.
What have I done?

Maggie heard him gather his things, and let himself out the front door. “I love you, too, Peter,” she whispered quietly, into the deafening silence. But she knew as she said it, that theirs was an old, old love . . . and not for now.

Peter stood on the top step outside Maggie’s door and fought the violent desperation of his own heart.

What madness it had been on his part to have thought he knew life. Now until this hour had he ever been alive. What arrogance, to think he had known God, and could counsel others in that knowledge. How could anyone know God, without having known the love of another human being?

You are as subtle and wily as Satan is, God!
he thought blasphemously. Leading your priests on . . . letting them believe in their superiority to meager humanity, when the reverse is true. No wonder you keep us from eating of this fruit of the Tree of Knowledge . . . who among us would have the strength to bear it and go on? What presumptuous pride to think that in our ignorance, we are the chosen ones.

He pulled the cold air forcefully into rebellious lungs and started down the limestone steps. Is this how Lucifer fell? he wondered heartbrokenly. Trying to be God-like and failing utterly. Did he, too, learn humility?

“I will never regret you, Maggie,”
he said defiantly, and aloud, as he reached the corner of the deserted street. But before the words had faded, he already knew the sister truth.
I will regret—every moment of my life—what might have been.

Maggie lay in a fetal position on her own bed, scarcely capable of breathing; how she managed to get there she wasn’t certain. She felt disoriented, confused and utterly alone.

Love never dies,
a terrible internal voice cried out within her. Love never, never dies, and you, the mourner, are left with its forever agony. Prometheus on the rock . . . picked apart by carrion birds, and then restored to suffer the next day.
Alone. Alone.
Alone . . . Not even five thousand years are enough to expiate this pain.

Maggie drifted into the oblivion of sleep . . . and “awakened” in a dream:

The man was tall and fair; he moved easily in his lanky frame, like one who feels at peace with the world. The woman at his side was dark-haired and slender; she laughed as they walked, looking up into the man’s face, love in her gaze.

Their hands were clasped, in the easy grace of those who know their love need not be hidden. Gold wedding bands were on the hands of each, and their joyous camaraderie was impossible to mistake.

They lay down on the soft, summer carpet of grass and wild flowers, smiling in the comforting radiance of the sun; the air was fragrant, and the sweet song of passing birds blessed the tranquility of the undisturbed meadow.

Their laughter quieted, and the man turned to trace a pattern with his fingers on the woman’s lips. She smiled at the tingle the touch provoked, and moved nearer, closing her eyes to better sense the loving touch. His hand caressed her throat and shoulders, then slipped beneath the soft, sheer fabric of her dress. She moaned a little and drew the impending fabric up over her head, tossing it carelessly behind her, reveling in the warmth of the sun on nakedness.

The man undressed with the controlled urgency of one who knows his lover’s rhythm, better than his own; the woman lay lost in the dizzying beauty of sensual expectation. Maggie, the dreamer, felt one with the dream-woman, every cell alive, every nerve ending shared with her, in some cosmic symbiosis.