Shelter (21 page)

    "Of Preston Walford's daughter in Pacific Heights? Oh, come on, Matt! Raji may be Kenyan, but in most ways he's more American than I am. He spends every free second surfing the Net and he listens to techno-bop and worries about whether his clothing's stylish enough and ... and he doesn't even want to be here! I do!"

    Matt had sighed. "Look, I want to give you a chance. I really do. I just want you to know what you're getting involved in, that's all. It's not a utopia. And frankly, your mom's a little worried about your friendship with Raji."

    "Yeah, I know. She wants me to take a vow of partner celibacy until I'm sixteen. Well, fine. I don't have a problem with that. Do you think I'm corning here to—"

    "No," Matt said. "I don't. But there are three sexually active couples in the dorm, and there's not a lot of privacy. We don't have separate quarters for you, Merry, and it would defeat the idea of community living if we did, but frankly, this is an experiment."

    "I passed sex ed with flying colors," Merry snapped. Like everyone else, she'd taken the mandatory fifth-grade exam about reproduction, birth control, and STDs, which included a practicum in which each student put a condom on a lovingly detailed dildo. She'd been masturbating since she was nine. Did these people think she'd been living on Mars? "I'm not going to freak out if I hear somebody having an orgasm, Matt, so relax."

    At least Matt had tried to be tactful, which was more than Merry could say for Gwyn. "School's not a problem," she told Gwyn now. "I'm not here to cut classes, if that's what you're worried about."

    Gwyn shook her head. "No, that's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried about the fact that you can't possibly fit in. I keep telling Matt he has to consult the rest of us before throwing new people in here, but he never listens. It's not fair to anybody, including you."

    "Oh, come on!" Raji said. "If Matt had to get community permission, I wouldn't be here, either, and neither would half of the rest of us. And it's not like we get to choose—"

    " 'With whom we live on the planet,' '' Gwyn said in a nasal singsong. "Yes, I know the Goddess-speak. We have to learn to live with all our neighbors, chosen or not, et cetera and so on. I'm sorry; the planet's a good deal bigger than this dorm. You know, the old Christian monks may have been exalted nut cases, but they had a few things right: they tested the people who wanted to come live with them."

    "So do we," Raji shot back. "Merry's been doing volunteer work for months now, and we've got a trial period just like the monks did. Give it a rest, Gwyn. You don't run this place; Matt does."

    "The master has spoken," Gwyn intoned, giving Raji a Buddhist bow. Then she straightened up, sighed, and said to Meredith, "We've got wheat bread and fruit and oatmeal and coffee for breakfast tomorrow. That's what we usually eat. If you want something else, add it to the shopping list and we'll try to grow it or make it or fit it into the budget. No caviar, I'm afraid."

    "No problem. That's not a standard part of my diet."

    "Good. I've added you to the chore roster; you'll help make lunch tomorrow and do the dinner dishes for the rest of the week. Any questions?"

    "No, ma'am," Meredith said, and Gwyn nodded and left. When she was gone, Merry blinked and realized that her hands were shaking. "Sweet Mother! Are they all like that?"

    "No. Some of them are worse. Listen, Gwyn's actually nice, believe it or not."

    "I'll take your word for it."

    "She's just busting your chops. She's harder on herself than on anybody else. And my first week, she made me scrub the toilets. Now listen up: here's what you need to know about everybody else before the meeting."

    The meeting was in the common room, which sported peeling paint and mold-colored carpet. The other novices sat in a rough circle, on folding chairs or on the floor. Merry looked up at the splotched ceiling, wrinkled her nose, and whispered to Raji, "How about if I offer to repaint this place?"

    "You won't have time," Gwyn said briskly behind her. "Why do you think none of us have done it? Hey, everybody, this is Meredith, if you hadn't already figured that out. We'll go around and do introductions, okay? Names and ministry areas, and anything else you feel like saying. I'm Gwyn. I'm a landscape architect. Anna?"

    Anna, a heavyset, thirty-something potter whose swirling, graceful designs fetched big bucks at the Temple gift shop, was something of a celebrity. "Hi," she said, and gestured to the next person in the circle. "Everybody knows what I do." Modest too. "Dave, your turn."

    Well, that fit Raji's description. "Anna hardly talks to anybody except the cats," he'd explained. "She keeps letting cats in, and Gwyn's allergic, so you can imagine how well they get along. Gwyn gets even by putting jalapenos in everything she cooks, because Anna hates spicy food. Anna gets even with that by complaining whenever Gwyn and her husband, Dave, have sex. She says they're too noisy. They are noisy, but it's really none of her business."

    So Dave was the lanky guy with the ponytail sitting next to Anna: check. "Welcome, Merry. I hope my wife hasn't been giving you too hard a time." Everyone laughed, and Meredith looked at Raji. Was she supposed to answer that? Evidently not, because Dave went on cheerfully, "I help her with the landscape architecture around here. I don't have her visual flair, but I'm a botanist by training, so I'm useful with the plants."

    ''I'm Fergus," said the next person in the circle. He had white hair, a beard, and a potbelly. "This is my partner, Johann." The two held up linked hands. "We've been here for a year now; my specialty's ritual and Johann's is music, and we certainly hope you find fulfillment in the service of the Goddess, Meredith." Johann, balding and mustached, grimaced.

    Check, check, check. "Fergus and Johann hold hands all the time," Raji had said, "but that's because they're in the middle of this huge fight about whether to stay at the Temple or not, and they think holding hands will help them maintain their emotional connection. Johann thinks Fergus is only here because of a midlife crisis. Fergus thinks Johann's in a state of spiritual emergency because he's so homesick for his china collection and his Persian carpets."

    The next two, the birdlike woman with mismatched socks and the hale, muscular man beside her, had to be Hortense and Harold. "Hortense has Alzheimer's or something," Raji said. "She may not be able to stay here much longer. She leaves bobby pins and rubber bands everyplace, and sometimes she wanders into other people's cubicles after a shower and tries to put their clothing on, even if it doesn't fit. Her husband takes good care of her, but he also puts the make on everybody. Gwyn's already warned him to stay away from you, though, so you don't have to worry. Her precise words were, 'If you try to get anywhere near that child, I'll have your testicles for breakfast, do you understand me?' "

    "Hortense?" Gwyn said now. "This is Meredith. She's new here. Would you like to say hello?"

    Hortense put a hand to her mouth. "You look like my little girl," she aid. "What's your name?"

    Gwyn had already introduced her. Well, never mind. "My name's Merry. What's your daughter's name?"

    "My tea is getting cold in the oven. How old are you?"

    Raji was right: Hortense was nuts. ''I'm fourteen. I'll be fifteen in a few weeks. How old is your daughter?"

    "My underwear's bunching up. I want a carrot now. Harold, where's the sailboat?"

    How can Matt let her stay here? Meredith thought. She's too sick. Harold put his arm around his wife and cleared his throat. "Hi, Meredith. I'm Hortense's husband, Harold. We work with hunger and food ministries. "

    "Nice to meet you," Meredith said, relieved to be speaking to someone who was rational. Hortense, making odd darting motions with her head, tapped at Harold's shoulder with a bony finger. Merry turned to the next person in the circle, so she wouldn't have to look at Hortense, and said, "And you must be Dana, the storyteller, right?"

    "Very good." Dana was tall and willowy, with huge gray eyes and extremely short hair. "Raji's been briefing you. I can just imagine the stories he's been telling about me."

    Uh-oh. Had she just gotten Raji into trouble? "He didn't say anything bad about anybody."

    Gwyn laughed. "Fat chance."

    "Well, not about you," Meredith told Dana, and everyone else laughed. "Right," Dana said. "So he told you I'm intersexed, right? And he probably complained that he can't tell which gender mood I'm in from one day to the next, but that's because gender's a continuum and we all travel along it, and I don't get mad when people goof and use the wrong pronouns."

    "Bullshit," Gwyn said. "You get bitchy as hell when people use the wrong pronouns."

    "Well, sometimes," Dana said with a sigh. "So, Merry, did Raji tell you that he keeps forgetting to put his earphones in when he listens to that noise he calls music? He's every bit as difficult to live with as any of the rest of us. And while we're on the topic, what are your annoying traits?"

    "Truth or dare," Harold said, stroking Hortense's hand. She had begun a soft, high keening, somewhere between song and grief, but everyone else seemed to be ignoring it, so Merry supposed she should too.

    "Um, well, my mother says I'm stubborn. And I pick at my split ends sometimes, and, uh—"

    "Never mind," said Dana. "I'm sure we'll know worse things than that before you've been here very long."

    Gwyn smiled. "She's too young to know what her faults are."

    Meredith felt herself flushing and bit back a retort. She'd already been snippy to Gwyn, and even if Gwyn had started it, she wasn't going to make any friends by picking a fight. "Well, it's nice to meet you all, and I'm very glad to be here. Matt assigned me to animal ministries. I've already been volunteering with the dogs and cats here, and tomorrow I'll start going to the SPCA."

    "Tomorrow after school," Gwyn said pleasantly. "Merry, do you have any questions?"

    "No," Merry said. She did, but she'd ask Raji later; she wasn't going to give Gwyn any openings.

    "Fine, then. Shall we close with a blessing, everybody?"

    They all stood and linked hands. Hortense had turned and huddled into Harold's chest, but Johann reached out and gently put his hand on her shoulder, so the circle would be complete. When they were all connected, Gwyn said softly, "Mother Earth and Father Cosmos, help our young grow into wisdom and our old grow into your light. Bestow your gifts on those who are new here, and teach all of us to feel at home in our bodies and in your embrace. May we learn to praise your blessings, and to transform into blessing whatever wounds us. By air and water and earth and fire, hosannah."

    "Hosannah," everyone else murmured. The circle disbanded, people wandering off with yawns and waves. Merry had expected at least some of them to come up and talk to her, but no one did.

    "Lots of time to get to know you," Raji said, as if reading her mind. "Folks get to sleep early around here, for the most part. You still want help unpacking those books?"

    "Yes, please." On their way back to her cubicle, Merry said, "Why's Hortense still here? She seems way too sick."

    "She was worse than usual tonight—new people do that to her. Harold takes good care of her, like I said, and Matt says she's good for the rest of us. Reminds us how fragile we all are. Reminds us to be compassionate. By the way, she and Harold never had any kids, so I don't know where that bit about a daughter came from. Wishful thinking, I guess."

    "They wanted kids?"

    "Well, yeah, but lots of people can't have kids. I don't know why they didn't adopt."

    "It wouldn't really be the same."

    Raji gave her a sharp look. "Sure it would. Why wouldn't it?"

    "Well, I mean ... " Merry floundered, knowing she'd just run headlong into the Temple doctrine of interconnectedness. Raji wasn't usually such a Templehead, but Netgeeks were into the idea too. It was just another verion of Preston's "we are all one," after all, and Raji had been spending a lot of time talking to her father. "I know it's supposed to be the same, even if the kid isn't genetically related—"

    "We're all genetically related."

    "Yeah, yeah, okay, I know. But I mean, bearing a kid in your body—it must be hard not to be able to do that. That's all." She thought of her mother and Jack, and wondered if Constance had been this dewy-eyed when she was pregnant with Meredith. Somehow, Merry didn't think so.

    "Oh. So men aren't good parents because they don't get pregnant?"

    Oh, Gaia's gas. So much for not picking a fight. "That's not what I meant," Merry said miserably.

    "Well, what did you mean?"

    "That I can understand why Hortense is sad about not being able to have kids, that's all! People have always felt that way. You know what Matt says: good doctrine doesn't forbid things to be what they are." There: that should win her some points.

    Raji shrugged. "Yeah, but that one cuts both ways, you know. You can also argue that Harold and Hortense forbade interconnection by refusing to adopt."

    "You're losing me," Merry said, shaking her head. "Can we just unpack books now, please?"

    * * *

    Her first week in the dorm shattered any remaining illusions she might have had about the higher consciousness of Gaia initiates. Raji drove her crazy by talking about AI and MacroCorp whenever he had a free moment; maddeningly, he even passed along inquiries from her father. "Preston's wondering how you are. He says he thinks dorm life is probably too big a change after what you've been used to at home. He said to tell you that if you go back to live with your mom, he promises not to intrude on you."

    "Fat chance," Meredith said. "He's intruding on me by giving you all those messages, isn't he? Tell him I'm doing just fine." She had, indeed, been entertaining fantasies of going back to live with Constance and Jack, but she wasn't about to do anything Preston suggested. "And would you mind not discussing me with him?"