THE BROOCH OF CLYTEMNESTRA

By

Kathleen T. Moorhead

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Fine Arts

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, Florida

May 2006 THE BROOCH OF CLYTEMNESTRA

by Kathleen T. Moorhead

This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, A Papatya Bucak, Department of English, and has been approved by the members of her supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts.

SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:

Dr. Andrew Furman

Dr. Thomas Sheehan

Dr. Andrew Furman Chairperson, Department of English ~~~ofAru&Lette~

s

11 ABSTRACT

Author: Kathleen T. Moorhead

Title: The Brooch of Clytemnestra

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: A. Papatya Bucak

Degree: Master of Fine Arts

Year: 2006

The Brooch of Clytemnestra follows the adventures Margaret O'Brien, age thirteen, encounters when her family returns to The United States after living in

Venezuela for ten years. Set in 1963, in the fictional town of Desolasol, located on southeastern coast of Florida, the O'Brien family must cope with cultural, social and religious changes in order to adjust to life in the U.S. The story takes place over the course of one week in story present in Florida, and over the course of one year in story past in Venezuela.

The protagonist, Meg, runs afoul of the gods, when she unwittingly incurs the wrath of Zeus, who, along with the Pantheon of Greek gods, is summering on the coast in

Desolasol. Meg is a normal girl, without magical powers. However, to protect herself, and her family, she must become willing to stand up to Zeus.

111 Table of Contents

Prologue ...... 1

Friday ...... 17

Saturday ...... 59

Sunday ...... 126

Monday ...... 169

Tuesday ...... 233

Wednesday ...... 260

Thursday ...... 279

IV PROLOGUE

In the beginning was Chaos. Literally. The heavens, the earth, the oceans did not exist. Rather, the seeds of possibility for everything and nothing slumbered in an amorphous, seething darkness the ancients called Chaos. How order was imposed on

Chaos is a disputed matter; some tellers of tales say the God and the Goddess of All

Things conspired, while others whisper of a snake and an egg. Yet more tales blame the

North Wind, saying he consorted with Nature. The optimists among us propose Eros, the

God of Love, as the firstborn of Creation in a valiant, albeit tragically misguided, attempt to vanquish Chaos. That's what the Bard taught me, and I pass it on to you; Creation was born out of the desire for Beauty ...

''I'm feeling more the desire for a drink." Mr. Eckberg rolled his head, to get the kinks out of his neck. "This baby bard doesn't really grab me, y'know?"

Chiron shrugged. "We're on vacation. This young damsel, Kalliope, is

apparently a native. No one ever bragged about 'The Glory of Florida'. However, Zeus

always is interested in, shall we say, sampling the local talent?"

This was the Pantheon's first visit to Desolasol, known by the locals as D'Sol, a

small town on the southeast coast of Florida in the United States of America. Since the narrow island lay between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal, it was possible to stroll from one side of the island to the other to view the surrounding waters flooded with light from the rising to the setting sun. Hence the name, meaning "sunrise to sunset" in

Spanish, an apt description believed to have been bestowed by el Colonel Guillermo St. Teresa de Luis Hernandez, who stumbled upon the island and its native inhabitants when his ship was blown off course en route to the Caribbean.

As a vacation spot, it made sense, Mr. Eckberg reflected. Exchange rates were good in the late summer of 1963 and it wasn't every town that had facilities large enough to house the entire Pantheon with the sub rosa delicacy Hera and Zeus preferred while on vacation. Fortunately, D'Sol, though small, had been modernized in the early 20th century by scions of the burgeoning automobile industry who also preferred to have their winter haunts provide an acceptable level of comfort, yet still avoid the notice of the northern scandal sheets.

Mr. Eckberg moved his cigar to the other side of his mouth. "Nice shoulders, though. She come with the house?"

"This is a magnificent mansion," Chiron laughed. "I suppose you'd rather have a caddy?"

"That's one tough course," Mr. Eckberg mused. He and Chiron stood on an eastern balcony of the mansion, looking out on the ocean. The golf course twisted alongside the Intracoastal, across the street. If he peered around the comer of the balcony, Mr. Eckberg could see the tee box for the murderous ih hole, where the previous day he'd sliced four balls into the water. The recollection did not put him in the mood to listen to the local bard telling her tale on the stage erected at the far end of the

Grand Hall. A gleaming dark green, veined, marble floor, led up to and stretched off the sides of the stage. Two rows of channeled columns, carved from contrasting white marble with green and black veins, marched around the perimeter of the entrance hall.

By a trick of perspective they seemed to come closer and closer together as they receded

2 in the shadows. The columns' capitals were lost in the gloom of the vaulted ceiling where indiscernible whispers fluttered. On either side of the colonnade ~ marble staircase, with deep steps, curved from the second floor balconies down into the entrance hall. Its balusters were intricately carved figures of men, women, animals and creatures from legend. Three point sconces holding unlit candles chaperoned the lovelies cavorting murkily in tapestries on the walls in between doorways outlined in obsidian arches that seemed to open onto hallways running off the entrance hall, although in the half-light it was hard to tell.

Rustling sounds indicated the mansion was coming to life again as siestas, official or otherwise, gradually came to an end. The whispers filtering through the clubhouse most often concerned themselves with the banquet scheduled for later in the week to celebrate the end of summer and signal a return of the Pantheon to Mt. Olympus .

.. .It was the desire for Beauty inspired the God and the Goddess to dance on the swells of the darkness. Sparks from their dancing feet caused fire to erupt from the depths of the void, showers of sparks streaming into the skies, rising to create the

Heavens, lighting the way for the sun and the moon to follow. The light cast by those celestial orbs penetrated the troughs of the swells; the stalwart rays of the sun drawing forth rough hewn mountains, upthrust. ..

"Upthrust? pftt - that's it! " Mr. Eckberg flicked his tail. "A grown centaur can only take so much. Next trip we bring a real Bard with us."

A tearful gasp came from the proscenium as Mr. Eckberg realized, too late, his voice was clearly transmitted by the vaulted ceiling. Kalliope threw a drape over her head and began to wail. Accusing faces turned towards the balcony.

3 "Most ungallant, Bob." Chiron chuckled. "Now apologize prettily."

Mr. Eckberg gritted his teeth. "A thousand pardons. Please continue," he waved his arm, and muttered under his breath, "someplace else."

... UPTHRUST crags, expanding plains while the fey silver cast by the moon shadowed glades and slumbering forests, rivers newly coursing, searching, yearning for lands stamped by the sun.

And the God and the Goddess danced on, while the lights of the Heavens swayed and the Earth trembled and quaked. And as the firmaments rose, the darkness fell, fell, fell. When at last the God and the Goddess rested, the darkness cooled in swirls around their feet and the God and the Goddess laughed to feel the coolness against their heated skin. They wriggled their toes in delight, sending forth ripples swirling tiny white froths over the water reflecting blue from the Heavens, green from the Earth while the darkness fell, fell, fell, pooling through the Earth and through the Ocean to gather finally in secret caves, in hidden depths and beyond, there waiting until such time as it would be called forth again. And the God and the Goddess rested, well pleased with the Beauty surrounding them ...

"How are Hera and Zeus managing these days?" Chiron inquired. "I hear the peace is fragile."

"When is it otherwise?" Mr. Eckberg shrugged. "There was an episode ... one that could have, probably would have, passed us by if it hadn't been for Amphitrite."

Chiron squinted at the sky, and fingered his beard. "Amphitrite? Can't place her."

4 "No reason you would, she's new - one of the lovelier, and cleverer, of the

Nereids. She caught Poseidon's eye, then fled fetchingly enough, apparently, since he I married her." Mr. Eckberg cleared his throat, "Revels in her position of Zeus' sister-in-

law at every opportunity."

... While they slept they dreamed together a dream of twelve Giants who sprang

forth, eager to explore the new world lying before them. When the God and Goddess

awoke they found the Giants disporting themselves in the wanton manner of heedless

children; throwing boulders tom from cliffs into the Ocean, uprooting trees to hurl at

each other in the virgin forests. The God left off his slumbers with the Goddess and leapt

into the fray, ripping entire mountain tops from their summits and flooding valleys, so

anxious was he to show that he was Lord over the Giants. And the Goddess beseeched

the God to forbear for the sake of their Beauty but the blood of battle thundered in the

God's ears such that he could not hear the Goddess.

Then she turned from him in anger and beckoned to the youngest Giant they had

dreamed, the one known as Cronos. To him she gave a sickle fashioned from the rays of

the sun and directed him to sever the God from his dream of the Giants ...

"Well, that's not quite what got severed, but I s'pose this is a more suitable

version for the kids," Mr. Eckberg muttered, turning away so as not to prick Kalliope's

sensitive ears. Maybe Hera was right, maybe they did all need this vacation. Mr.

Eckberg surveyed his cigar stub, which had gone out. Lost in his thoughts, he started

when Chiron clapped him on the shoulder.

"C'mon, you old goat, let's join the others and have a drink before dinner starts!"

Chiron boomed.

5 "I was just think ... hell, you're right. We all know how this story ends, anyway."

Mr. Eckberg turned to follow Chiron's lead. Crowds parted more easily for

Chiron, instinctively sensing his presence. Clothes do make the centaur, Mr. Eckberg mused. You could trim your whiskers on the pleats of Chiron's robes. He ruefully surveyed the cigar ash drifting down the wrinkled front of his Hawaiian shirt with bright red and yellow ginger flowers on a black background. Granted, it clashed with his coat, a light brown flecked with gray, but still, it was mostly clean. And who could forget the lovely filly, what was her name, who given him the shirt as a token of remembrance. Pity he never had managed to get back to Hawaii. She was probably married now, galloping after a foal or two. He patted his pockets, looking for a match.

"There's no smoking in here, I don't know how many times I have to tell you," sniffed Amphitrite, coming up behind him. "It makes my hair smell."

Mr. Eckberg watched her glide up the grand staircase, inclining her head occasionally to those who bowed low enough. "Harpy," he muttered under his breath and stepped back out onto the balcony. From this vantage point he could look up at the clouds or back into the antechamber where deities of various ilk were starting to mill about, waiting for dinner to start. Or someone to mortify themselves in front of the

Pantheon, he thought. Then he shook his head and sighed. Damn, what I need is a vacation from this vacation, been playing courtier too long. He turned to look at the ocean.

The setting sun gilded clouds that, at home, hid Mt. Olympus from prying mortal eyes. Here they merely framed Apollo's journey or heralded some of the Winds' hijinks.

Tonight the sunset burnished clouds skimming the edge of the eastern horizon. The

6 burning underside of the nimbus seemed to herald a faint whiff of trouble, the way the shadow cast by a tarpon would cause a school of fish to suddenly scatter. Mr. Eckberg I sniffed cautiously, but the clouds were too far away. Probably nothing.

"Enter!" Amphitrite bowed gracefully as she walked into Zeus' room. After admiring a particularly well-appointed statue, recently sent as tribute from the denizens of the southern hemisphere, she arranged herself amongst the pillows of the window seat and watched Zeus moodily spear fruit in the bowl by his bed, using a small argent lightning bolt. With modest, downcast eyes, she averred, "Would that someone other than I could be the one to bring you this tale, my Lord. Although it might explain her vehemence in banning my sisters and me from your presence after misconstruing that unfortunate incident when you, in your infinite pity, were assisting Thetis as she was having difficulty with those new two-piece bathing suits. Modem fashion is so complicated!"

Zeus pierced a peach. "Knock it off, Amphitrite - maybe Poseidon likes

Shakespeare, but I don't. Why would Otus and Ephialtes want to abscond with Hera?

Everyone knows that Ephialtes loves Artemis- why would he jeopardize that?"

"Ah, but my lord, is not Hera, as your consort, a greater prize? Have not Otus and

Ephialtes made clear their mad ambition to destroy Mt. Olympus on many an occasion?

And has not Hera seemed, well, a trifle distant lately?" Amphitrite held her arm out to admire her fingernails, painted in the latest style of gilded enamel. She had shapely arms and liked to display them. Amymone, that little strumpet, could not be half so graceful while playing with Poseidon's trident. " ... hmm, now that I think about it, I haven't even

7 seen her wearing the Brooch of Clytemnestra you so graciously bestowed upon her as a token of peace after the Io, ah, matter, have you?"

"But ... Otus?"

"Well, Homer does say those two are the handsomest the life-giving earth ever nourished." Amphitrite suddenly sat up. "Oh, pshaw, Zeus -they're louts. Remember

Ares? You had to send in Hermes, for heaven's sake. They're out of control and

Poseidon does not seem to be willing to rein them in. Someone has to take matters in hand." She caressed the statue absently and smiled. "I think you're just the one to do it."

Mr. Eckberg sniffed again. Looking down from the balcony he could see the courtyard garden lying open to the ocean, protected on the sides by the wings of the building that also curved around to the back. Sooty torch holders with half-burned, unlit torches stood at regular intervals along the courtyard paths. The garden teemed with tropical flowers exploding in riots of color while the south side of the clubhouse was obscured by a stand of towering pines that covered the ground with a deep layer of needles. Nothing grew in their vicinity since the shade was so complete under the trees, only a deep covering of needles that looked invitingly like a feather bed. A cleansing aroma of pine wafted from amongst the trees, accompanied by low musical chimes that were so faint as to seem more imagined than heard.

"Ah!" Mr. Eckberg smiled. "Boreas. I thought I recognized the pine scent. You and your brothers have been missed."

8 Boreas snorted, "You know I hate humid places." A tall, broad-shouldered man with wavy salt and pepper hair, he wiped away the sweat that was already s~arting to form on his forehead. "We've been exploring."

Mr. Eckberg chuckled and bowed low. "When the North Wind says he's been exploring in the tropical regions, I sense a story worthy of yon infant Bard. And your, er, noble brothers? When will we have the pleasure of their company again?"

"Zephyrus, as always, wandered off to woo that female. Seize her!, I told him. It worked for me. Oh, look - I just got new pictures of the kids. Fine boys!" Boreas flipped open his wallet.

" ... urn, yes," Mr. Eckberg glanced at the photos disinterestedly. "Quite."

Boreas snuffled miserably. "This humidity is killing my sinuses! I wish we'd gone to Los Angeles again."

Mr. Eckberg nodded. "I gotta go with you on the humidity. Gives me prickly heat with this coat. Although, being from New Jersey myself, I still prefer the East

Coast. Maine is great this time of year. Wild blueberries, fresh lobster, ah! LA?, I don't know ... remember? Zeus ... those starlets... Besides, the golf's good here, better than that little course in Pasadena. This one's challenging - a lot of water hazards and that 7th hole has a real tough dog leg. I'm signed up for an 8 a.m. tee time tomorrow, why don't you join me?"

Fishing in his pockets for a handkerchief, Boreas considered the invitation. "That sounds good, I'd like to get in a round before we depart. I was waiting to hear from

Eurus, he'd said something ... but I'm not sure when he's due back, let me ask." Boreas circled his arm slowly and the scent of pine mingled with a piece of dream floating in

9 back of a memory. It hovered in a tiny burst of mist over Boreas' palm, then soared up when he blew on it, icicles momentarily flashing, quickly exploding in tiny drops that reflected the setting sun.

The mist skipped along the eddies whirling where the sky slowly darkened to night shade. Stars strolled in an unhurried fashion as the deepening indigo beckoned them to their places. Some constellations looked startled as the aroma of pine drifted past them, unheard of in this hemisphere save for the remote mountain tops of South America.

The mist watched them roll overhead and dallied along the languorous latitudes before drifting down in search of an eastern breeze, which it found in Maiquetia, the airport neighborhood outside of Caracas.

The mist fluttered gently around the match Eurus, the East Wind, had just lit for a cigarette. Eurus listened intently, then laughed. "How does an 8 o'clock tee time with

Boreas and Eckberg sound?" he asked his brother, the South Wind.

"Sounds great for you, bra!" Notus settled further back in his chair and winked at the young woman who held up a bottle of rum for him to approve. "Since you're getting an early start you'll need to head out pretty soon, won't you? Looks like Carlita and I will be working on this rum by ourselves."

Carlita vanished into the shadows at the back of the bar, in search of glasses. The band swung into "La Noche Suave," the latest salsa hit, and couples streamed onto the dance floor. Eurus and Notus sat on the north side of Eduardo's, where the straw matting was rolled up to the ceiling to open the wall to the sea. Local lore testified to the one­ time existence of Eduardo but The Winds had never encountered anyone who had met him. Carlita's aunt, called Tia Regina by one and all, ran Eduardo's. Where one wall

10 faced the open sea, two more opened onto back alleys that lost themselves in the winding streets of Maiquetia Vieja, while a fourth spilled onto a main thoroughfare leading to the I airfield. Eduardo's was a good place to enter unseen and an even better one from which to escape by land, sea or into thin air.

Tia Regina, still a beautiful woman when clad in the forgiving hues of the night, was rumored to have dispatched her lover with a machete when she found him in bed with the woman who cleaned the church of Los Tres Reyes. Afterwards, the two women had cafe con leche and a cigarette, agreeing that men were faithless scum. Together they carried his body back to his house, leaving him for his wife to bury. The chief of police, in love with Tia Regina since he was little more than a child, declared himself unable to prosecute as no one stepped forward to press charges. "~If no one objects, how can it be a murder?" he shrugged.

Eduardo's was a meeting place for people involved in fighting, or profiting from,

La Revoluci6n. Miami was close to the north; Cuba, from whence Batista fled and Fidel and Che ruled, even closer; the foreign oil companies closest of all. Betancourt was recently returned from exile and currently back in power as allegiances shifted throughout the land and the oil fields. The darkness created when world was formed was worth more than any king's ransom and all the kings and would-be kings wanted to share in its wealth.

While coming back from exploring Angel Falls, Notus had sighted Carlita looking for shells on the beach. At eighteen, Carlita had inspired more than one man to believe himself bewitched. A beauty with the patrician features of a European heritage blended with the warmth of the Arawak, she had a way of suddenly wrinkling up her nose and

II laughing uproariously that made Notus want to be the one who made her laugh. The only one who made her laugh. The room brightened when she entered and he waited desperately for her return when she left. He'd spent the past few days sighing softly to her and trying to learn how to dance salsa, much to Eurus' amusement.

"The South Wind! Able to uproot trees and calm fevered brows - yet unable to keep a beat even when the walls are pounding with it!"

"Little brother; a man who uses his lungs for a living- and smokes- is not really in a position to tell someone what to do." Distracted, Notus frowned at the man talking animatedly to Carlita. "I don't like him - Ricardo Dominguez. Something tells me he can't be trusted."

Eurus leaned across the table and lowered his voice. "Notus, none of these people are to be trusted. It's the revolution- we need to get back to the Pantheon, the banquet's coming up in a few days and Mother will kill us if we're not there. There is nothing but trouble here. If you want her, seize her, like Boreas said, but we should leave."

"I'm staying." Notus glared at Eurus.

''I'm leaving." Eurus pushed his chair back and stood up. Notus followed suit.

Brothers: mirror images of each other with the same build, same features but different coloring; Notus fair-skinned and hazel-eyed to Eurus' olive skin and dark eyes. They glared at each other until Notus spun on his heel and pushed his way through the crowd on the dance floor. Eurus watched as Notus disappeared behind the dancers, following

Carlita and Ricardo into the shadows at the back. Looking down, he realized he was still clutching the message from Boreas and shook it, blowing angrily to free its tendrils from his hand. The mist fragmented and floated off to wander through the warm summer

12 skies. Its cool shifts attracted eastern eddies drifting in from their wearying trek across

the ocean. The conflicting currents caught, swirled, building momentum by dashing first I up and down, then around and around. Latitude 19.3 north, longitude 59.4 west,

northeast of the northern Leeward Islands, the whirling currents dizzied themselves into a

frenzy and pressure started to drop.

Mr. Eckberg turned his head again and sniffed. "Something. Something. I know

it," he muttered. And from the south wing came the summons from Hera: Mr. Eckberg,

her favorite centaur, was required to be in attendance.

"I'm feeling the languor of the longer days, Mr. Eckberg," Hera sighed. "I've

decided to forgive my Lord Husband - perhaps that little tramp Thetis merely was having trouble with her strap." Mr. Eckberg eyed his queen gravely and forbore commenting on the matter, feeling that enough had already been said. "I think this week's banquet will

be a glorious occasion to commemorate a lovely vacation and help ease us back into our

work at home, don't you?" Hera snapped her fingers at Kithira, "Bring me the new

silks." Mr. Eckberg chomped his cigar stub as he watched Kithira rummage in a trunk.

Kithira was a recent addition to the Pantheon, a slave sent by Jason as thanks to Hera for her assistance. It all seemed straightforward enough but there were rumors, whispers the girl had worked for Medea as well. Nothing definite but then with Medea, well, one was

always tempted to look for the darkness.

Hera seized on an ivory silk, decorated in gold thread with Aztec patterns. "Is this not lovely? It came with a shipment of obscene statues from the south. I told them to get rid of the statues but these silks are exquisite. I'll wear this to the banquet. See

13 that it's ready, girl." Hera rounded on Mr. Eckberg, "And I want to wear the Brooch of

Clytemnestra with it."

"Very good, my queen." Mr. Eckberg bowed.

"You must fetch it for me." Hera instructed imperatively. "It went out the window and therefore needs to be retrieved."

"It went out the window?" Mr. Eckberg inquired neutrally.

"After Thetis' unseemly display. I was most put out. I swear, Thetis losing the top of her swimming costume after he tried to dupe me with a heifer - a heifer! What kind of fool do I look like, I ask you." Kithira suddenly seemed very busy folding silks.

Mr. Eckberg searched for something to say but was saved by Hera continuing airily, "so I threw the accursed brooch out the window. I believe it landed in the yard of some mortal. I command you to retrieve it, Mr. Eckberg. I will wear it to the banquet to indicate to my Lord that all is forgiven."

"You are most gracious, my queen," Mr. Eckberg bowed deeply.

"Yes, I think so too- we'll end the vacation on a pleasant note. It will get rough soon enough when the autumn storms start."

"A mortal, you say, has the brooch?"

Hera examined her image in the mirror. And smiled.

"My queen?" Mr. Eckberg prompted, "the mortal?"

"O'Brien, I believe. The name is O'Brien. Find it, Mr. Eckberg. Bring it back to me. "

14 The procession for dinner began, as always, with Hera and Zeus descending on either side of the staircases curving down from the second floor. As they met at the foot I of the stairs, the assembled Pantheon stopped murmuring and bowed low. Hera extended her hand to Zeus and curtsied, as he bowed.

"My Lord."

"My Lady."

As everyone rose Amphitrite moved to stand behind Zeus. Hera stumbled slightly and turned to Kithira. "Slave, this panel is coming loose- fix it."

Amphitrite murmured, "The panel slips because there is naught to .fasten it."

Kithira deftly pinned the offending panel in place. "Isn't that woman the sister of

Thetis, my lady?" she murmured. Hera narrowed her eyes.

"Hail, Wife - I see you do not wear the brooch I gave you as token of our undying love and unity."

"Ah, Lord Husband, I'm saving it to wear to the banquet, to do full justice to your glory."

"Faugh," Amphitrite muttered as she stooped to adjust her sandal. "She gave it to

Otus, I wager." Zeus stiffened.

"And she's his brother's wife, no less," Kithira continued as she brushed unnoticeable wrinkles out of Hera's gown. Hera's foot started tapping on the marble floor.

The watching crowd murmured restlessly as Hera and Zeus glared at each other.

Zeus offered Hera his arm to go in to dinner. "I'll look forward, my Queen, to seeing the brooch grace your fair presence at the banquet then."

15 "You most assuredly will, my Lord." Hera took his arm and shot Mr. Eckberg a piercing look.

Mr. Eckberg watched from the sidelines as the regal couple swept across the hall.

He shook his head and muttered under his breath, "Oi!"

16 FRIDAY

Later in the week, in the aftermath of her battle with Zeus, Margaret Mary

O'Brien would recall with precise clarity the quality of the light at this moment as she stared at the bank of sea grape trees. Gold was creeping slowly back into the sunlight bleached by Phoebus at his blazing height. The new leaves on the sea grapes were an encouraging light green while the older leaves in back were darker and chewed up by insects. Strands of cobwebs lifted briefly on the breeze, gossamer filaments ruined by stronger forces. When Meg glanced back over her shoulder the sun struck her square in the face, causing spots to appear when she blinked and looked away.

If she were back home in Venezuela, this would be the time of day when the monkeys started chattering in the mango trees and tadpoles mysteriously appeared in puddles left underneath the oil pipeline by the afternoon storms. However, ayer the

O'Brien family cleared Customs at the Miami airport and drove north to Desolasol. Meg and her sisters watched the world pass by from the car window. The roads didn't wind through the jungles or along the coast; they were peculiarly straight, paved, and packed with cars. They saw large signs in English, small houses and flat, flat land stretching to the horizon on either side of the highway. Florida. "No, it's pronounced Florida,"

Deirdre, their mother, said from the front seat. Florida. The girls slept. When they awoke, they were in Desolasol.

The next day Meg rode out on her bike, exploring this new world. She could sense the ocean, smell the salt and feel the wind freshening. Close, very close. After

17 several blocks the road led directly to the dunes running along the sidewalk. Not the towering white dunes of Coro where they went sledding on pieces of cardboard, but small dunes, tan and overgrown with tangled vegetation. Sea grapes growing wild on the dune formed an impenetrable barrier to the ocean until Meg found the twisted tangled cave with a shadowed opening. Towering over her the round, flat leaves cast flickering shadows on the walls and entrance to the tunnel. Meg peered in but the tunnel curved sharply to the right so she couldn't see to the end. To the north and south she could see sea oats sprinkled across the dune but the sea grapes were so dense she couldn't see through them.

Meg hesitated. The familiar smell of the ocean beckoned to her but the strangeness of this new world frightened her. Some of the houses across the street from the beach had shuttered windows. There were no children roller skating, windsailing, riding bikes or climbing trees; no Marias hanging laundry or sweeping patios; no men calling and waving to each other as they left for the refinery. The landscape was simultaneously open and shuttered. And deserted. It was as if the viento cadaverico

Abuelita Maria warned them about, the wind that swept all souls before it, had blown down these streets.

Meg shivered and made the Sign of the Cross. That was simply a story, one of many Abuelita Maria liked to tell. Meg knew the Winds; they were nice men who wouldn't blow souls away. She slipped out of her shoes and stepped into the tunnel.

Behind her the outside world slipped away. A hush descended, broken by unseen creatures rustling in the branches and the dry leaves on the ground. The sand was cool, rough with wrinkled berries and small twigs. The sunlight faded to shifting stripes of

18 light, playing across the leaves, filtering down through the canopy. Following the path, the tunnel curved, then straightened, and abruptly ended ..

Ahead of her stretched a glorious scene. The path wound through more sea oats scattered over the dune, then opened on a wide beach. The sun sparkled on the ocean and on the small waves breaking on the shore while the sky stretched deep blue in all directions, white clouds massing out on the horizon. Meg lifted her face to the sky and drew a deep breath. With rising excitement, she ran towards the ocean. The air smelled like home. The water, blue and green stripes running parallel to the shore, looked like home. When she stopped at the border where the sand turned wet and closed her eyes she could pretend she was home.

But she wasn't.

Meg opened her eyes and looked around. The sun was reversed; moving towards the horizon on land, instead of over water. Everything was different, just as the grownups had predicted. But here on the beach she could pretend. She sat down, leaned back and wiggled her toes under the hot surface to find the cool sand underneath. The sun warmed her back and relaxed her shoulders. The waves that rolled in steadily were fairly small, rearing up, gathering white foam over bottle green water, curling in to rush forward to the shore. Sometimes incoming waves collided with outgoing waves, other times they streamed up the beach to settle with a soft foamy sigh of bubbles. The sandpipers dashed back and forth at the water's edge, staying just ahead of the waves to keep their feet dry. They were fast, like the hummingbirds in Caripito. Farther out a solitary pelican skimmed the water. A few gulls circled overhead then moved away,

19 disappointed Meg had nothing for them. She was surprised there were no hibiscus pink and white flamingoes milling about.

The States. Meg still couldn't believe they were going to live here now. Florida.

Pan Am flights often stopped in the Miami airport to refuel on their flight to Idlewild but she and her sisters had never done more than play, riding up the down escalators in the airport. Her mother said they were going to be in Florida for some time but then she said that every time they moved.

The sound of a radio caught her ear. It was that Elvis Presley, a singer she'd heard on the radio. Very popular in The States, Daddy said. He brought home a 45 called "Return to Sender". "Good Heavens, Dan" Mom exclaimed the night he played it the first time.

"Catchy, don't you think?" he'd said, doing a little dance step in the kitchen. He grabbed Mom around the waist and twirled her. The girls shrieked and giggled.

"Dan, really!" Mom laughed but pulled away.

Meg bent her head forward to let her hair fall down so she could study the kids down the beach with the radio. They looked like they might also be starting seventh grade in the fall. The girls wore short shorts and had tan legs. And they looked like they were wearing bras. The girls laughed and jumped around, dancing in the sand. When their hair caught the breeze that suddenly kicked up, Meg turned her head to feel the wind and smiled.

"Ah, My friends, how I've missed you." Meg jumped up and bowed to the north, excited to be on familiar ground. "Sons of Eos!" she cried. "It is I, Maria Margarita, returned to you after a trip of great peril. Gruff Boreas, I honor you." Turning east she

20 opened both arms to welcome the gentle Eurus. South to salute Notus, shy as always.

West to say hello to Zephyrus and inquire after Flora. "Dear friends, I lost you after we flew out of Maiquetia and feared we would not be reunited."

The Winds swirled in eddies around her, sighing Meggie, Meggie, Meggie. She spun around laughing. When she stopped to catch her breath Eurus gave her a knuckle rub on the head, "Silly, how could you lose us?"

"What's this about 'great peril'?" frowned Boreas. "Did you have a bad flight?"

He glared at Eurus, who rolled his eyes and shrugged.

"Oh, no, thanks for asking. The flight was fine," Meg assured him. "We all wore our St. Christopher medals. And Maureen and I got a lot of neat stuff from the bathroom, if you'd like some little soaps. They smell good. The only thing that happened was the

Customs man found the mangoes Mom hid. But they always do. This time she stuffed them in Daddy's shoes and one of them got squished." She looked around. "Where's

Notus?"

"Ah ... ," Eurus hedged.

"He's on his way," Boreas filled in. "He had to make a stop."

"And how are your boys doing?" Meg looked expectantly at Boreas.

He beamed. "They're doing fine- here, let me show you their new pictures."

Meg studied the photos carefully. "Very handsome," she pronounced.

Eurus snorted. Boreas smacked him on the back of his head with the wallet.

"Some uncle you are!", he fumed. "When was the last time you came to visit your nephews?"

21 "Ow!" Eurus backed away. "I sent them surfboards for their birthday- you said you were taking them to Corfu."

"All right now, that's enough of that." Meg clapped her hands. The Winds looked startled, then laughed.

"Uppity little mortal, isn't she?" Eurus grinned.

"She's going to need it," Boreas muttered.

"What does that mean?'' Both Meg and Eurus looked at Boreas, who suddenly started sneezing.

"Duthing. Damn humididy- makes my sinuses go act up."

"Here," Meg fished a handkerchief out of her back pocket. "It's clean. Honest."

"Dank you." Boreas blew his nose noisily and shook his head. "Ah! We're just staying up the beach, I'll give this back to you after it's washed."

"You're staying where?"

"Right up there," Boreas pointed.

Curious, Meg looked to the north. In the distance, a very large building appeared on the beach with sunlight glinting off its western windows and turrets and gables visible even when seen from afar. Foam blowing off the waves made the building appear to float on the beach, shimmering in a haze. It was unlike any other building she'd seen so far here in Desolasol. She was drawn to it and frightened at the same time.

She looked to Eurus for an explanation since Boreas had lapsed into silence. A pelican swooped in off the ocean, banking over the sea grapes to tum and make another fishing run. The sun slanted rays over the dunes. Meg suddenly registered that the sun was in the west and gasped, "The time! What time is it?" She had no watch, as she'd

22 lost hers, angering her mother, who refused to buy another one until Meg learned to take care of her belongings.

Boreas squinted at the sun. "I'd guess it's close to 5. Helios stays out late in the summer."

Meg's heart sank. She was going to be late. "I have to go, good bye, good bye, we'll visit more next time." Hurriedly she grabbed her shoes and ran towards the sea grape trees. The Winds raced beside her for a bit then leapt up in the air. "I'll come back tomorrow if I can."

It was hard to run in the soft sand, and Meg moved awkwardly. She had recently started growing rapidly - "an inch a day!", her mother exclaimed - and her knees and ankles no longer seemed to coordinate with one another. Her stride had become loopy, her kick in the water was splashy instead of smooth and undulating. Meg hated it. None of her clothes fit - it appeared nothing fit; her feelings were too big, as were her movements. When she reached for a glass she was as likely to knock it off the counter as she was to pick it up. And when she expected to laugh, she often disconcertingly burst into tears instead. There was nothing worse than seeing herself in mirrors, yet she couldn't stay away from them, morbidly cataloging the increasing damage minute by minute. The latest horror was her hair. Naturally red, the tropical sun bleached her top curls blonde while the peroxide in the pool deposited streaks of green throughout. Her father claimed he was going to send her down to Bolivia since she looked like she was wearing their flag on her head. In desperation, Meg had borrowed her mother's nail scissors and tried to cut out some of the streaks. The result was that now her ears stuck

23 out, her bangs still fell over her glasses, and a new batch of freckles sprouted on the unevenly exposed skin at the back of her neck. Deirdre, her mother, had promised to take I her for a proper haircut before school started. Meg couldn't wait.

Coasting up the driveway of their new home, Meg saw the garage door was up at the house next door. She was pleased to note bicycles and hula hoops inside their garage.

Empty, flattened boxes were stacked in a neat pile at the end of the O'Brien driveway, evidence of the weekend's activity. Given Dan's penchant for accepting transfers,

Deirdre O'Brien had become adept at packing and unpacking.

In his early 30s, fit and tan, Dan O'Brien mixed easily with most of the other

American men working in the Refinery. This was an opportunity for men to earn the kind of money honest men didn't make Stateside, with adventure and exotic locales added to the heady mix. The Refinery accountants were adventurers tempered by the sobering knowledge they had wives, and children to protect. Voyagers with valid passports, some of these men signed on to slip loose the restrictions they chafed under after returning from service in World War II, gratefully attending college on the GI Bill and starting families. Everything they promised themselves in Guam, Burma, France and

Tripoli that they would do when, if, they got home in one piece. And then, unaccountably, a yearning for surcease from the security they fought for, accompanied by the realization they could only afford limited surcease. Others, such as Dan O'Brien, enlisted to fight in World War II as soon as they could yet found themselves receiving uniforms and training in time to salute the victorious returning troops.

24 With handsome, regular features, hair bleached by the tropical sun and a dimple that flashed teasingly through a dusting of freckles, Dan O'Brien looked like someone the

Company brought in to photograph for their brochure extolling the virtues of working in

Venezuela. The other men liked him because he worked hard, was always ready for a hand of bridge and could be counted on to buy a round or two at The Club. His wife,

Deirdre, was a Cub Scout leader; their children well-mannered and respectful. Only the

Venezuelans, unused to the coloring of the Americans, seemed to notice the discordance of eyes the blue of a Northern winter sky. "Ojos de tormenta," muttered the superstitious and made the sign of the cross behind Dan's back.

The office space allocated to the Accounting Department at the Amuay Refinery complex on the Paraguam1 Peninsula reflected how far the accountants stood from the main purpose of the facility. The cavernous space had previously been used to store the tug boats that nosed oil freighters around the offshore shoals and in and out of their berths. Miscellaneous engine parts still stood along the walls while bare girders graced the unfinished ceilings. Occasionally a mechanic rummaged through a box of parts, whistling with bravado to show he was as much a Company man as the college educated accountants who avoided staining their white, short-sleeved shirts with grease. Some of the accountants used the spare parts as paper weights, protection against the disordering gusts of tropical air that blew in through screened windows, while most men used discarded lug nuts as ashtrays. Dan O'Brien improvised a wedge out of a spark plug to level his desk after a creature of unknown origin ("(,Quien sabe, Senor?," shrugged the maintenance man), chewed through a back leg.

25 "Knock, knock!" Ramon Cesta rapped his knuckles on Dan's desk. "I have the updated Fixed Asset numbers you were asking for." Ramon had a plaque on his desk that I read 'Accountants'. Until Dan arrived in the office no one had commented on the plaque, for fear of insulting his English by pointing out a misplaced plural. When Dan asked him what the sign meant, Ramon gleefully showed him page 12 in the Company's brochure that stated "Nine out of ten Creole employees are Venezuelan. They make good mechanics, drillers, operators, accountants, clerks and staff assistants." "C'est moil" he laughed and took Dan out for drinks at lunch to celebrate being able to share his joke at last.

Ramon, the next male heir of an esteemed Spanish family who'd settled in

Venezuela in the previous century, had graduated from Harvard and would eventually take his rightful place in the Foreign Ministry. First he had to obtain the business experience with a US company he would later parlay, according to the plan his grandfather laid out to his father at Ramon's baptism, as entree into the boardrooms of

American companies desiring a Latin American presence. "At your baptism?!" repeated

Dan incredulously. "And here I thought my dad was tough- when I started first grade he sat me down and told me I'd go to Notre Dame when I graduated from high school. The first in my family to go to college and he picks Notre Dame instead of City College."

"Now I just need to meet the girl they've picked out for me," Ramon said.

"Who is she?"

"I don't know, I don't if they've picked her yet," more for the pleasure of watching Dan's jaw drop in disbelief than from a need to extend a confidence. He signaled the waitress for another round. "She's new - German, I believe. What do you

26 think?" When she picked up his glass, Ramon laid his hand over hers. "We haven't welcomed you properly yet, Senorita. Maybe I can buy you a drink when you get off work tonight . . . maybe show you around the Refinery?" The waitress blushed and hurried away.

"' ... show you around the Refinery'? Don't tell me that line works."

Ramon shrugged. "You'd be surprised. Maybe she's a spy."

"A spy?! Here?'' Dan looked around the bar at the Club, startled. He'd only been to The Club for cocktails after work or the occasional dinner dance and wondered now what he'd been missing. The customers were all male, mostly single, from the

Refinery. No one sat at the bar at this hour, but rather ordered their lunch at a table.

Since lunch was the big meal of the day, followed by siesta, the married men usually went home for lunch.

"Not everyone around here is what they appear to be. Maybe she works for

Shell." Ramon nodded knowingly and raised his glass. "jTo the Accountants- Salud!"

"Slainte! That's what we, they, say in the auld country." Dan sipped his rum and felt a frisson of excitement. Ramon didn't look like the other men in the Accounting

Department. His shirt didn't seem to wrinkle as much and when he got a haircut he didn't have a thin line of untanned skin around his hairline. Sitting back in his chair

Ramon looked elegant and, unaccountably, like he belonged in this clime, where Dan knew he didn't. The cigar sat naturally and relaxed in Ramon's hand while Dan's cigarettes tapped nervously on the ashtray. Dan looked away at the waitress and then back at Ramon. He grinned and raised his glass again. '"What we have here is the start of a beautiful friendship."' The men clicked glasses and laughed.

27 "I'm home," Meg called as she burst through the kitchen door. Deirdre glanced up from stirring a bubbling pot on the stove. Tendrils of steam, agitated by the draft from the door, danced upwards around her head. Meg blinked. Her mother's face, shimmering through the steam, appeared as a ghostly reflection wavering in the mist.

Hair as black as night, skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood; Mirror Mirror on the wall, Black Irish wears a faerie's caul.

"Margaret Mary!" If Deirdre's hands had not been full, she would have snapped her fingers in front of Meg's blank stare.

Meg shivered.

"Someone walk over your grave?"

"You looked like ... ," Meg shook her head to clear the VISion, "a ghost, or something. A headless something!"

Deirdre regarded her daughter with characteristic skepticism tinged with exasperation. While both a deeply religious and superstitious woman, Deirdre understood that, as a practical matter, it was only in the rarest of circumstances that visitations from on high, or from the wee folk below, appeared to mortals. And, she strongly suspected, to more likely candidates than her first born, regardless of Meg's penchant for claiming to see spirits.

"Mom, I thought the faeries ... "

Deirdre snorted. "You're going to Wish the faeries were here to help you, young lady. You're Late. Since Maureen and Isabella helped get dinner and set the table you'll

28 wash the dishes. By yourself." Behind Deirdre's back Maureen wrinkled her nose triumphantly at Meg. "Your father called, he'll be home similar soon,", Deirdre continued, "all of you now; wash your face and put on a clean shirt."

Maureen darted towards her room, with Isabella following. At six, Isabella was desperate to keep up with her older sisters at all costs. Maureen was eleven months younger than Meg; "Irish twins," Mammo, Dan's mother, had tsked. Meg followed

Maureen down the hall, where the family photos leaned against the walls, waiting for

Dan to hammer in nails. The family photos marched down the hallway in every house the O'Briens occupied, always in the same order; a chronological depiction of the

O'Brien and Cahill families' short time in America. The exhibit commenced with a sepia toned photograph of Malachi O'Brien, Dan's father. Malachi posed for the picture when he was 17, grinning crookedly at the camera, fists clenched at his side. In 1917 Malachi

was a bantam fresh off the boat in New York City, sent to raise funds for the Irish

Republican Brotherhood after being shot in the knee, a casualty of the Easter Uprising.

Meg and her sisters had grown up hearing about The Revolution, marching around the

living room, singing We are the boys of Wexford, who fought with heart and hand, To

burst in twain the galling chain, and free our native land.

In contrast, the Cahills were a serious lot; hard working, hard drinking, hard repenting people. Deirdre's mother, Margaret, eschewed politics in favor of religion,

ever mindful of the tribulations she endured in the raising of five daughters. She wrote

Deirdre once a week, helpfully predicting the upcoming pitfalls awaiting Deirdre's

daughters. Nanna Margaret sat next to her husband in a photograph taken around the time of their marriage. Staring unsmilingly at the camera, they sat stiffly in garden

29 chairs, braced for the misfortunes they knew life would bestow upon them, in an empty, mowed field, a line of straight trunked trees like poplars in the distant background. I

Maureen was brushing her hair when Meg walked in. The curtains had not yet been installed and the naked windows, facing east over the front yard, commanded the room. Even in the late afternoon sunlight flooded the room, illuminating the matched twin beds, dressers and bookcases, painted white with light blue forget-me-nots stenciled inside golden curlicues. Although the furniture matched, its presentation didn't.

Maureen's bed was neatly made: Meg's disheveled. Maureen's bookcase contained books lined up by height, like a chorus line: Meg's books were piled horizontally and vertically, in order to fit more in, and carefully arranged in a sequence that made sense only to her. Like their furniture, there was also little physical resemblance between the two girls. Maureen's hair was pure blonde, her skin a smooth honey without the brown and white freckles Meg sported. Yet they were immediately identifiable as sisters. Their resemblance was not the result of matched noses or chins, rather, it came from the imperceptible gossamer threads drifting off the photographs in the hall, threads that twined together their stories; stories told and imagined, stories that settled in the back of the girls' eyes, tinting their expressions and intonations with the same tones the photographer produced when he developed his negatives.

Meg tripped on her trailing shoelaces and tumbled onto Maureen's bed.

"Hey! Mess up your own bed," Maureen instructed.

"Guess what! I think the next door house, the one on the side of the kitchen, has kids." Meg rolled off the bed and pulled the brush out of Maureen's hands. "Give it, you don't even need it. I saw hula hoops in their garage."

30 "Meg," called Deirdre. "Come get Dumpling, see if she needs to be changed."

"I said, Get Off!" Maureen snatched her brush back. That's great, tomorrow let's go ask."

Dumpling, with blue eyes and gold curls, was, at nine months, "round and ready to eat", as Dan described her. She sat in her high chair, in a comer of the kitchen, kicking her plump legs and beating time on the tray with a zwieback. The floor around her was strewn with blueberries she'd tossed with glee before Deirdre realized she was finished stuffing them in her mouth with both hands. Dumpling's nickname came from Deirdre's penchant for continually, and unsuccessfully, making dumplings while pregnant for her, as well as the fact that Isabella couldn't pronounce Majella when she was introduced to her new sister. Meg tried to extract the soggy and beaten zwieback so she could wipe

Dumpling's hands but Dumpling shrieked indignantly and furiously waved her hands.

"Meg!" Deirdre didn't even look up.

"I was going to give it back- I just wanted to clean her up a little." Surrendering,

Meg swung Dumpling up onto her hip. She settled for brushing crumbs out of

Dumpling's curls, while watching her mother pull a pan of biscuits out of the oven.

"Mom, I was at the beach this afternoon." Meg paused. "I saw some girls about my age."

"Mmm?"

"I'll probably be in their class. Probably. They were dancing to that record

Daddy brought home." She paused again.

"Meg. I haven't got all day. Your father's due any minute and I haven't washed yet."

31 Meg took a deep breath. "Mom, the girls were wearing bras. I, I want, I think, well. Well, they were all wearing bras. I think. I'm pretty sure." Deirdre looked up I sharply and stared at Meg. When Meg was young Deirdre told her that her eyes changed color when she told a lie. Meg had never been able to convince her mother she was telling stories, not lies. Meg knew the difference - you had to confess a lie and say a good Act of Contrition. She'd also never been able to hold her mother's stare. "I'm going to be thirteen next month!" she blurted defiantly into the silence. Deirdre raised an eyebrow at Meg's tone. Inexplicably feeling like crying, Meg pulled the baby in front of her. "I think she does need to be changed," she muttered and rushed out of the kitchen.

Trying to balance a squirming Dumpling on the side of the sink while scrubbing a washcloth over the baby's face, Meg heard her mother in the hall talking to her sisters.

"Isabella, I said a Clean shirt and Maureen, do not try to tell me a comb came anywhere near your head in the past hour." Maureen stomped into the bathroom and roughly shouldered Meg aside to grab a brush again.

"Hey!" Meg objected.

"Thanks a LOT," Maureen snapped. "She was fine until YOU came home."

"I didn't DO anything!"

"Did too."

"Did not!"

A car door slammed out front.

"Daddy's home!" Maureen rushed out of the bathroom.

32 "C'mon sweetie," Meg rested her forehead against the silky skin on the back of

Dumpling's neck and inhaled deeply. Whenever she held the baby something peaceful settled in her soul, smoothing the rough edges of the day. "Let's go see Daddy."

The front door slammed. "I'm home! Where are all my bonnie lasses? No welcoming committee for your poor old dad?" Tall and slim, Dan O'Brien was as fair as

Deirdre was dark, the source of Maureen's blond hair and sky blue eyes. Isabella had inherited Deirdre's black hair but she also had Dan's upturned nose and infectious

lopsided smile.

Center stage in the hallway, Dan O'Brien paused, arms outstretched, prepared for his reception. Upon his arrival, the front hall ceased being a drab, narrow space. The

green tinted wall paper, depicting stylized shepherdesses posed in front of pagodas,

seemed more like a scrim instead of an astonishing lapse in taste by the previous owners.

The slightly askew wall sconces, with peeling brass varnish, that illuminated the brown

curling edges on the wallpaper seams, receded into the background. The light from the

open door behind Dan narrowed the focus, like a followspot, as his daughters swarmed

into the small space, excitedly jostling for position.

"Daddy, Daddy!" They hugged his legs and waist, turning their faces up for a

kiss while the Dumpling shrieked and clapped. After lightly kissing each child on the

mouth, Dan bowed to Deirdre. With a flourish, he produced a rose from behind his back.

"For my rose among thorns!" He winked broadly at the girls.

"Oh, Dan," Deirdre shook her head and started to laugh. Leaning over the girls

she kissed him. "Oh, look, " she pressed her finger on his cheek, then turned her hand

towards him. "An eyelash- make a wish! And blow."

33 "I'm starving- how 'bout I wish for a three course meal, where I'm waited on by beautiful women?"

"Pick me up, pick me up!" Isabella hopped from one foot to the other as Dan put his briefcase down.

"Not now, Bella, but," handing her a sheaf of papers he pulled from his briefcase,

"these are for you, for coloring." He tugged her ear gently. "Stay away from your mother's walls, you hear?''

"Daddy, look, I'll put this in the closet for you." Maureen grabbed his briefcase, and whirled around, brought up short by the lack of a front hall closet. Dan and the girls looked around momentarily, as if they expected a closet to materialize, then burst out laughing. "There's no closet in this house!"

Dan shook his head. "Something new to learn in every house. Just put it in my bedroom for now. I'll find it." He reached for the Dumpling. "Here's my girl! At least

I know where my baby is. Thanks, Meg."

"Dan," Deirdre pointed towards the dining room. "Dinner's ready, I just have to serve."

"Great, I'll put on a record and my little Maggie here can pour me a beer.

Remember how to tilt the bottle and glass just so?" He rumpled her hair.

Deirdre paused on her way out to the kitchen. "Dan, we're about to sit down."

"Well, then, Meg, shake a leg, girl, shake a leg." He bounced the baby to make her laugh as he hopped to the stereo while shaking his leg out to the side. "What shall we hear tonight?"

"Spike Jones!" cried Maureen.

34 "That's not dinner music, you little hoyden," he laughed. "How 'bout a show?

What about Music Man or Pirates of Penzance?"

"Oklahoma!" shouted Isabella. She was learning how to spell and liked to sing

0-K-L-A-H-0-M-A.

"Ah, a girl after me own heart- a Rodgers and Hammerstein fan."

"Girls," called Deirdre. "Let's go." The well-practiced routine of serving dinner, with the girls knowing exactly what they were to do, took over. As each girl grew and learned new skills, her younger sister took over her previous duties. Deirdre considered their tasks to be both sharing their responsibility to the family, and training for the future.

"When you're married, and cooking for your own family, you can do as you choose," was her standard response to any objection. "Here, in my house, we'll do things properly." Quickly she carefully apportioned sizes as she served plates. "This is for

Isabella. Maureen, here's yours. And that plate is for your father. Meg, everyone needs milk so hurry up and finish pouring that beer."

"But Mom, if I rush the head is too big. Daddy says a man doesn't like that."

"We're sitting down. Now." Deirdre punctuated the command with a wooden spoon. "Do as I say- just give that to your father."

Amidst the clamor of glasses, plates and Dumpling banging on her tray, the

O'Brien family settled into their appointed places around the table. Deirdre quickly surveyed the table, mentally cataloguing the placement of the settings. "All right, everyone, settle down. Maureen will say Grace tonight. Maureen? In the name of the

Father ... "

35 "the Son and the Holy Ghost. Bless us, 0 Lord, and these Thy gifts," the corn is

as high as 'n elephant's eee-ye "which we are about to receive" 'n it looks lak it's I

climb in' "from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord." clear up to the sky

"Amen." everyone chorused. A trifle too loudly. Deirdre squared her shoulders

and a ripple ran around the table as the girls all followed suit.

Deirdre looked around and raised one eyebrow. "Next time, the record will wait

until after Grace. All right?" She lifted her fork to signal the meal could begin.

"Deirdre," Dan laid his hand over his heart. "Mea culpa. Your mother's right,

girls. Next time I'll tum it down." He surveyed the dining room. "It looks like you've

all been busy today." Speakers in large dark cabinets, Dan's pride and joy, were placed

in adjoining comers, to maximize the stereophonic effect more and more records boasted.

Resting on unpacked boxes of records, next to the speakers, were two Guatemalan

devil masks, souvenirs from one of Deirdre's trips. The wooden masks were hand

carved, fierce elongated caricatures of faces, with spiraling horns sprouting from the

foreheads. One was painted a harsh shade of red with black slashes for eyebrows, frown

lines and a leering mouth exposing rotting teeth; the other bright green, with a long,

lascivious purple tongue curving crookedly down its chin. The gaping eye holes on both contributed to the masks' bestial expressions, devoid of restraint or evidence of humanity.

The girls were terrified of the masks, while Deirdre maintained she was the only one who appreciated the humor and artistry of the masks. Every move sparked a debate in the family regarding where the masks would hang, with the children lobbying for as obscure a comer as possible.

36 The politics of peripatetic families differ from those of stationary families.

Conditions of intense heat, darkness and pressure can create diamonds or volcanoes. Or I

both. Families who remain stationary have outlets - neighbors, friends, relatives - for the

pressures that build up. They have escape routes and steam vents: nomads have none.

Nomads rely exclusively on each other, closed off from the outside world, in much the

same way as families consumed by addiction are immured by shame, ignorance and fear.

In solitude, and solidarity, their rules are different, their stakes are higher.

"Are you going to hang the masks in the dining room?" Dan inquired. "That

would be a first."

"I'm thinking about it," Deirdre replied absently, as she watched the girls eat.

"Isabella, elbows off the table."

"Won't they put people off their feed?"

"The Guatemalans didn't seem to think so."

"I wouldn't know, I've never been," Dan replied offhandedly.

"You haven't, have you. Where were you now, that time ... "

Keeping her head still, Meg quickly looked around the table. Maureen was

carefully buttering a biscuit, which was flaking onto the plate in small pieces. The

Dumpling was pinching her fingers on the tray, chanting "Nn, nn, nn." Meg heard a

slight thumping sound and realized Isabella was kicking the table leg. She tried to motion to Isabella to stop before someone noticed but Isabella was focused intently on her mother. Meg dropped her napkin on the floor so she could make chopping motions with her hand at Isabella as she leaned over to pick it up.

"I was in DC. For the hearings."

37 "Oh. What happened to the fishing trip with Rick and Tom?"

"That was another time. When you took them to Jamaica. The time Maureen got food poisoning." The thumping was suddenly audible to the entire table. Dan set his glass down sharply. "What in God's name is that noise?"

Deirdre looked up quickly. "Meg, what Are you doing?"

Meg, half out of her chair, tried to sit up and at the same time signal Isabella one last time. She over balanced and chopped one of the candlesticks instead, sending it clattering across the table, knocking over the salt and pepper shakers in its way.

"Margaret!"

Maureen grabbed the candlestick as it rolled towards her plate. "It's not broken," she announced cheerfully, holding it up. "See?"

"I see why I can't have candles lit during dinner like a civilized human being.

That's what I see," Deirdre snapped. "Salt, left shoulder. Margaret, you may finish your dinner in the kitchen."

"She can stay."

"Dan." Deirdre shook her head.

Dan lifted his beer glass in a toast. "This is our first sit down dinner in the new house. Let her stay. She won't knock anything else over, will you, Meg?"

"I'm sorry, Mom. Really. I'll be more careful." Meg bobbed earnestly.

"Sit still. You're going to knock something else over. Maureen, just put that down, please. Isabella, if you don't stop kicking this table ... "

Isabella leaned back in a pout. "Mommy, I wanted to spell sing. They were singing Oklahoma. I wanted to sing."

38 "There is no singing at the table."

The sound of the needle bumping into the paper circle on the record propelled I

Dan out of his chair. "Record!"

Maureen also stood up.

Deirdre glared. "Maureen! You have not been excused. Sit back down.

Honestly, Dan, look at all this -this is why records during dinner do not work."

"Mommy, I wanted to get my eppyfind to show Daddy."

"Epiphyte. All right." Deirdre waved her hand, dismissing Maureen.

"What does she have?" Meg asked, glad the attention had shifted from her.

"An epiphyte. An air plant. She found it in the front yard - they're all over the place here. Isabella, stop that!"

"I'm an air girl!" Isabella cried, waving her fork and spoon in the air.

"Look!" Maureen crowed, brandishing a stick. Attached to the stick was a clump of grey green tendrils swirled in the form of a ball, entwined patterns that had no beginning and no end. A few strands ending in feathery tufts stood straight out from the ball. The girls abandoned their dinners to crowd around Maureen and marvel.

"See? It's not planted in the ground, so it doesn't have any roots. Instead, it gets food and water from the air," Deirdre explained.

Dan continued eating. "Now how did you know that?"

1 Deirdre wrinkled her nose at him. "Biology, 9 h grade, Dr. Munson. You were probably too busy flirting with Betty Nolan."

"Probably," Dan laughed. "I forgot to tell you, Mom mentioned them in her last letter- they had another baby. Number seven that makes it, I think."

39 "Good Heavens!"

"Well," Dan shrugged. "She's my age, Hank's doing well in bonds. It's our duty.

To God, to ... " Dan stopped speaking, then drained his beer glass. "A boy, Morn said."

He watched his daughters examine the epiphyte, then smiled. "Remember our first dinner in Arnuay? Maureen brought horne a baby iguana. Looks like we have a naturalist on our hands."

Deirdre laughed. "That's right! I'd forgotten. Maureen, do you remember that?"

Meg looked up, "I do! You put it in a shoe box and cut air holes for it. But it escaped and hid in the kitchen and scared Maria. Remember, Mommy? The iguana jumped off the cereal box at her and she screamed forever!"

The family laughed amid choruses of "I remember!", with Isabella's counterpoint

"I don't, I don't remember!"

"I think that was Maria Teresa's cousin," Deirdre reminisced. "Wasn't she the one with a gold tooth in front? Or was she the one with the heart shaped mole on her arm? Boy, at the time I thought I'd never forget, but now I'm not sure."

"We didn't have The Dumpling then," Maureen remembered. Everyone looked startled.

"No, that's right," Dan agreed. "We didn't. Seems funny now to think that, doesn't it?"

"I don't remember," Isabella continued to whine.

"Sure you do," Dan encouraged. "We were in the Quonset hut, remember?"

"We weren't in the house yet?" Deirdre looked off in the distance, willing that move to resurface. They all blended sometimes in a welter of boxes, lost shoes, passports

40 and the disorienting feeling that came from waking to light coming in the bedroom from a different direction in the morning. While waiting in an empty house for the movers to I arrive, Deirdre always wrote their new address and phone number on slips of papers that the girls put in their shoes.

"No, Mom, we were at the Hartnett's that night." Meg said.

"The Hartnett's? Really?" All Deirdre could remember clearly from that move was the morning sickness that had not abated as she started her second trimester in

Majella's pregnancy. The ubiquitous faint scent of petroleum in the new camp had quickly settled in the back of her throat, causing her to constantly swallow queasily.

"Yup," Meg nodded definitively. She remembered it distinctly. Their new neighbors, the Hartnetts, had invited people over to meet her parents. Since the invitation was for drinks, no one else brought their children. Isabella had been laid to sleep in the guest bedroom. Normally the older girls would not have been allowed to be there either, but a move frequently proved to be a brief time of misrule; daft-days, Dan called them, when the normal schedule and rules seemed impossible to maintain. As soon as she'd unpacked, Deirdre set about reestablishing the family's routine. Tonight, after shaking hands solemnly with each grownup, Meg and Maureen hovered quietly in the hallway outside the living room to spy and eavesdrop.

The women were glamorous, dazzling in formal dresses and dangerous spike heels. Their skin was deeply tanned, their nails dark red. Deirdre's dress was made of black fabric shot with silver thread, a tight fitting bodice that flared out in a full skirt.

The air in the living room was filled with smoke, laughter and the sounds of music and

41 clinking ice. The men wore short sleeved shirts and short pants with long knee socks; the business suit of the tropics.

The girls giggled as they listened to the tall tales of the adults. A lady named

Mrs. Cahill claimed you could buy anything, stabbing the air with her cigarette for emphasis - anything - you - wanted - at a store in The States. In fact, there were many stores in every town, not just a single mercado. And people shopped whenever they wanted; they didn't wait anxiously every other Wednesday to hear the whistle from the supply boat coming up the river. "Her husband's the refinery manager," Bea Hartnett whispered to Deirdre, who widened her eyes appreciatively. "Oh, yes," Mrs. Hartnett continued, "and she appreciates it too, believe me!

Not be outdone, Mrs. Nestor said that bananas were supposed to be big, not the size of your thumb, and furthermore, that oranges were supposed to be small, not the size of melons. She also claimed milk came from cows, not goats, and poured out of bottles instead of sifting from cans. As she said this she was waving her glass for Mr. Hartnett to pour more bourbon into it. "Look over there." Bea pointed to a worried looking man with a sunburned nose. "Hank Nestor. Nice man, Assistant Manager in Shipping. He's got his hands full with her. Mr. Nestor was gesturing "no" to Mr. Hartnett behind his wife's back so the girls weren't sure if Mrs. Nestor could be trusted.

Why adults were interested in food that came from The States was a mystery - one time the supply boat brought American cereal that came in a box. When the children poured milk on it little black bugs swarmed up out of the cereal, trying to escape over the top of the bowl. Meg and Maureen tried to get Isabella to eat it but she screamed so vehemently Deirdre came in and slapped them both when Isabella tattled. After Deirdre

42 left, Meg and Maureen pinched Isabella hard in retaliation, then fed the cereal to the dogs that lived next door. They didn't seem to mind the bugs.

Mr. Foster, gallantly leaning over Mrs. Cahill's shoulder to light her cigarette and center the clasp of her necklace, maintained that in The States houses didn't have rattraps on the roofs, snapping through the night, needing to be emptied of carcasses every morning before going to work. Stateside, men didn't have to put up with their womenfolk shrieking when cucarachas, itan grande!, flew at their faces when they opened cupboards and closets. Men around the room raised their glasses to each other in a silent toast, honoring their heavy domestic burdens.

Not to be outdone, the women claimed the Marias didn't steal in The States, but then Meg didn't really believe they stole, even if Deirdre said they did. The truth was

Meg had eaten the chocolate her mother accused La Pequeii.ita Maria of stealing. But she hadn't touched the watch, given to her mother by Nana Margaret. Maybe the watch was in the jungle where a monkey had taken it, unable to resist a shiny bauble. Maybe it had been lost in a move or was still packed. It could be anywhere - in Caripito, Judibana,

Caracas. Or Maracaibo or the nameless camps, not on any map, where people lived for only a short time.

The Company built houses, a school, a mercado and a clinic. People were moved in and out: things can be lost in a move, things and pets, friends and lovers. Even buildings; after people decamped, the jungle reclaimed its own, as was its wont. There was no trace other than the dogs left behind to become rabid and band together in wild packs, occasionally raiding other camps for food. When that happened, fear rippled

43 through the camp. Chunks of poisoned meat were scattered around, while pets and children were warned to stay indoors.

The stories became more fantastical - Mr. Quinn stated there was a hospital in every town in The States so if someone got sick they didn't have to fly to Caracas, or, if they were really sick, damn it, to Miami. His son, Tommy, had to be flown to Miami when the piranhas chewed the flesh off his arm. Tommy had put his arm in the water while they were fishing and the river boiled up like a lobster pot. Mr. Quinn swore you could see through his arm, see right to the bone. Mrs. Quinn started to cry and said she wanted to go home.

Meg and Maureen backed out of the room. Grownups weren't supposed to cry.

Kids weren't supposed to cry either but they did sometimes. Deirdre insisted on a stiff upper lip at such times. Meg wasn't sure, but she thought she had seen her mother cry once. The day she came from the hospital with her arms full of baby blankets but no baby. Maureen said she hadn't seen their mother cry so she didn't believe Meg.

"Why does Mrs. Quinn want to go home?'' Maureen asked.

Meg shrugged. "Maybe she liked another camp better than this one. This one doesn't look like home, does it?" The girls stood looking out the screen door.

"There aren't very many trees," Maureen agreed. "And they're all bent. They're growing sideways."

"Let's explore," Meg suggested.

The late summer evening sun, riding low in the western sky, sent long rays down the flat, straight streets of Amuay as the girls slipped outside. They were amazed how

different the town looked. As the sun rose that morning they had driven through winding

44 streets with oil pipes as high as their head snaking along side, looking at hills rolling off into the distance covered by dense patches of jungle. As the sun now set the streets opened to the sky while the wind rushed down the street, bending all the trees in a permanent obeisance. The ground looked scrubbed raw by the wind instead of covered with lush growth crawling with bugs and snakes, interspersed with puddles teeming with tadpoles.

A few boys rode down the street on their bicycles and slowed to stare at the

Hartnett's house and the girls. The cars parked in the driveway and on either side of the street clearly signaled a party. A party this early in the evening meant a party of

Americans, and unknown children standing in front of the house having an American party meant a new family had arrived. The cyclists looked for boys. Not seeing any, they raised one hand in greeting and kept riding. Meg watched back, while Maureen smiled and waved. "Why don't you wave?" she whispered to Meg.

"We don't know them," Meg whispered.

"This is how you get to know them, you dope." Maureen started skipping down the street and waved again at the one boy who looked back over his shoulder.

Meg closed her eyes, turned her face to the west and spread both arms out wide.

The wind billowed out her shirt, forcing her backwards a step or two. The scent of the ocean rode on the wind, promising and inviting, blowing the stale smell of the day's strangeness out of Meg's head. She threw her head all the way back and surrendered to the sudden gust that kicked up, whipping her hair around and snapping her shorts sharply against her legs. The rushing sound in her ears seemed to hold her name behind it, the way she could hear the ocean in the conch shells her father brought home from his fishing

45 trips. When she opened her eyes, the setting sun struck her square in the face, blinding her with a red gold flare of light that blazed and swallowed her vision into a blackness I that intensified the sound and feel of the wind as it slid inside her body, bringing light and warmth to curl around her soul. Her head flooded with a whispering roar that tumbled her name around on a wave of light rushing towards the back of her eyes.

A hand pushed her hard and Meg stumbled backwards. "Hey!" Maureen said,

"What are you doing?? I've been calling and calling you."

Meg blinked and shook her head. Large spots danced in front of Maureen's face.

Meg stared down at the ground, slowly refocusing. "I heard ... " she shook her head again.

"You heard me calling you, c'mon, let's go."

"No, I heard something else," Meg closed her eyes. When she opened them and glanced sideways at the sun, she felt again the wind around her soul and heard her name whispered. "Maureen!" Meg grabbed her sister's arm. "I heard the wind- it called my name!"

"You did not!" Maureen shook her arm off. "I'm telling. Mommy said you have to stop telling stories. She said."

"This isn't a story, Maureen, listen- Listen!" But Maureen had already skipped away. Meg stood, listening again. She didn't hear anything. She tried to concentrate harder but it was gone. But it had been there, she knew it. This wasn't a story, this was real.

46 "So, we were at the Harnett's the first night in Amuay. That was so nice of Beato have a party for us. When did you find the baby iguana, then?"

"That was the next night, when we had dinner at the Adams," Maureen was thinking it through. ""Member, Meg? Mrs. Adams was from Boston and she had Johnny

Tremain."

"That's right! She had a really old copy." Meg remembered with reverence the moment Mrs. Adams held out the book. It was like her mother's Nancy Drew books from her childhood. Meg adored her parents' old books; they were the only connection she had with the past. The photos in the albums, the names in her mother's stories, the letters and packages that arrived in the mail - they were all from people vaguely recollected from meetings when the girls were very young. Blood is thicker than water,

Deirdre insisted, but it was all an abstract. The books, however, were tangible; visible evidence of a past that she could hold, touch, smell. The solid covers with gilt lettering and substantial pages held out the promise of permanence, the stories all had endings - good endings - and everything made sense. Like heaven, like the sense of belonging, like the happy ending, all the possibilities were there between the covers.

"I don't remember," Isabella continued.

"You were asleep!" Meg snapped. "Whiny twerp!" she half muttered under her breath.

"Mommy!"

"That's ok, sweetie, you'll remember the air plant, won't you?" Deirdre patted her back. "Maybe Maureen will let you borrow it to show Sarah."

47 Isabella perked up. "I have a new friend!"

Dan nodded, congratulating her. "Maureen's collecting plant specimens, I

Isabella's making friends already. Megs-a-Mug, what did you do today?"

"Oh, not much," Meg ducked back into her chair. "I went to the beach."

"Is it better than Adaro?"

"About the same. But backwards."

"Backwards?" Dan looked puzzled.

"The water looks east instead of west."

"Ah, right, right." Dan looked slyly at Deirdre, who shook her head imperceptibly. He ignored her and turned back to Meg. "And were the Winds there?"

"Dan!"

"Daddy!"

Dan grinned and spread his hands out. "I'm just asking."

Meg stood up in a huff. "You don't believe me!"

"Meg, watch your tone with your father," Deirdre warned. "Now sit back down and finish eating. All of you. Dan, Marcia Rago, who lives next door, brought over a wonderful cake to welcome us. Wasn't that nice? We'll have some for dessert. Her daughter, Sarah, who's Isabella's age, came with her. Isabella, why don't you tell Daddy about your new friend."

Isabella had been fidgeting, waiting for her opportunity. "Daddy. Guess what!

Sarah was telling me they have Halloween here - they wear costumes and her father takes them out trick or treating and they get lots of candy! Lots! We never had

48 Halloween before, will you take us trick or treating this year, Daddy, please please will you?"

"Well, maybe we didn't have Halloween, but you had Camaval. That was good."

Isabella scowled. "There was no candy at Camaval."

"Oh, c'mon, you loved Camaval. Remember the new dress your mother made you? And the dancing?"

"I want candy," Isabella wailed.

Dan threw up his hands. "You'll have to talk to your mother about it, Bella

Button. I'm off on a trip next week."

Meg was struck by a sudden thought. "Daddy, if they have Halloween here, will we still have Camaval ?"

"Probably not." Dan shook his head. "We're back in the States now- things are different. It's not an American holiday."

Meg and Maureen looked at each other, stunned. All their lives they had heard the grown ups talk about the wonderful things available in The States. A note of wonder and longing always shivered on the edges of any discussion about America and her products. Venezuela, and the other countries the oil people knew, clearly suffered from comparison. Hence, the thought that Venezuela would have something the States didn't had never occurred to the girls. They had envisioned moving to America as the answer to all the small lacks and inconveniences of their lives, yet the first thing to happen was the elimination of a cherished and colorful holiday.

"But," Maureen hesitated, looking for words, "but, what else don't they have here?"

49 Deirdre started laughing. "Rat traps on the roof, for one! Maureen, we have everything here. Camaval is just the start of Lent. We still have Lent."

"Swell," Meg muttered under her breath.

"Excuse me?"

"It won't be the same, is what I said."

Maureen wasn't willing to concede. "I only got to dance once in the Carnaval parade -last year, for the first time. Only once!"

Deirdre waved off her objection. "It's time for both you and Meg to start dancing lessons anyway. Ballroom dancing."

"What?" Meg squeaked.

"Wonderful!" sighed Maureen.

Dan leaned over. "The boys will be lining up to dance with you, Meg. You just slap them if they get fresh."

"Dan!" Deirdre sounded scandalized.

"I want a Halloween," Isabella's voice was rising up the scale. "I want to be a fairy princess. And have candy."

Dan pointed his fork at Isabella. "I've heard just about as much as I care to about what you want, young lady. I told you, I won't be here."

"Dan!" Deirdre looked up, startled. "We haven't even been here a week."

Dan held his glass up. "I need another beer." He looked around. Meg and

Maureen were whispering across the table, trying to determine when Halloween and dancing lessons, the two now irretrievably, forever, and horribly linked, were going to begin. "And it appears I will have to get it myself."

50 "Mommy, when is Halloween?" Maureen ventured.

51 "October 31 • Dan, are you going to be away from the middle of August until the I end of October? Is that what you're saying? We just got here."

"Mommy, I know," Meg weighed in, "can we trade Halloween for Carnaval?"

Dan waved his hand over his head as he walked into the kitchen. "It's off and on, most likely, still in the planning stages, as it were. We'll talk later, Dee."

"Isabella! Do not blow bubbles in your milk! Stop, now! Honestly, I do not understand why these children can't mind their manners at the dining room table."

"It's those masks, Deirdre. Brings out the divil in them." Dan sat back down and started pouring. "Hang the cursed things in the hall again."

"Isabella!" Deirdre slapped her hand.

"Dee, the girls are fine." Dan winked at Isabella. "If we don't manage to have

Halloween this year, we'll have a good old fashioned Thanksgiving dinner instead. A real American Thanksgiving family dinner. Here in the States, for the first time ever.

With a turkey and all the trimmings; cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sauerkraut - everything."

"Sauerkraut's stinky," Isabella contributed.

"It's not even American," Deirdre sniffed. "Just because your father insisted on it. That's what comes of..." She stopped, sat up straighter, then warned Maureen,

"Young lady, a bite half that size will suffice."

" ... being right off the boat?" Dan asked quietly. "Is that what you were going to say?"

"Of course not, Dan."

51 "Unlike your esteemed father?"

Dumpling started howling and banging her bowl on her tray. "No, no, sweetie, come here." Deirdre hoisted her out of her high chair and leaned back from the table to cradle her. "One dinner without interruption, is that too much to ask? Shh, shh."

Deirdre shook her head and looked around. "Well. Mrs. Rago asked me today if the previous owners had left the hurricane shutters. She says we're in the middle of storm season now, and might need them. Could you look to see if we have them, please Dan?

Are they like storm windows? I used to help Father put up the storm windows and they were very heavy. Maybe they should be put up before you go."

"Daddy, if you go on a trip, you're going to miss my birthday again." Meg said.

"And have I ever forgotten? Don't I always send a telegram? You told me you put them in your scrapbook."

"Daddy was here for illY birthday," Maureen taunted. Meg tried to kick her under the table but couldn't reach.

"That's enough, girls. Deirdre, hurricane shutters go up at the last minute, I think.

Tell you what, I'll introduce myself to Mr. Rago after Mass on Sunday and find out, how's that sound? I don't think there's anything to worry about."

"Well, there is! Mrs. Rago said the Hurricane of '47 was devastating, Dan! She said the winds were 155 miles an hour and the eye lasted 30 minutes." Dumpling squawked from being held too tightly. "Afterwards there were fish in the trees all the way to the Intracoastal. The streets and houses were covered with sand and water. It sounds ... ," Deidre noticed Isabella staring at her in horror and stopped.

52 "Mommy, are we going to have a tidal wave? I can't swim in a tidal wave."

Isabella perpetually fretted about natural disasters, tidal waves being her latest concern. I

"Fish in the trees, eh? What do you think, kids? Were they flying fish, wearing little Pan Am wing pins like the pilot gave you? Or maybe they were looking for a stewardess to get some orange juice. I know - they were building nests! They saw the halcyons do it and figured they'd give it a try because they were tired of wearing wet pajamas." Maureen started to giggle. "Deirdre - that was 15 years ago. We had storms in Amuay, we lived." Dan shook his head. "We'll all be fine. Maureen, brave girl that she is, will - ha! laugh in the face of danger. And you, Mags, what are you going to do?"

He reached over to chuck Meg under the chin. "Swim with the birds or fly with the fishes?"

It ain't so much a question of not knowing what to do ...

Meg started grinning. "I knowed what's right and wrong since I been ten," she answered, laughing with Dan.

"No! Dan, I don't want them singing at the table. Meg, stop."

But Meg was just getting warmed up. "I'm just a girl who cain't say no, I'm in a turrible fix. I always say c'mon, let's go, jes' when I outta say nix."

"That is enough. Margaret, you're excused. You may help Maureen clear, then start the dishes."

While Meg was washing the dishes she listened wistfully to her sisters wrestling with Dan in the living room. Finally finished in the kitchen, she ran into the living room and belly flopped onto the pile of giggling bodies. "Ooof, what a heffalump," Dan cried,

53 "I'll get you for that." Rolling her on her back he blew raspberries on her stomach while they all screamed with delight.

"Dan! I just got the baby to sleep. Enough roughhousing. C'mon now -

Maureen, Isabella, brush your teeth and get ready for bed." Deirdre stood in the hall, looking down at them. Amidst noisy and regretful sighs, everyone slowly untangled.

Maureen, still giggling, jumped up and chased Isabella down the hall. Meg, flushed with happiness, stretched out and smiled upside down at Deirdre. Seen from that angle, her mother's face was scrunched up in an odd expression. She looked angry, but also puzzled.

"Dan, may I speak with you." Deirdre stepped back into the shadowed hall. Her father mock groaned and put a hand on his back as he stood up and hobbled over to

Deirdre. Their voices were low but they kept glancing over at Meg as she sat up warily, pulling her shirt down. Dan suddenly stepped back and walked stiffly to his chair.

"Get up off the floor," he said curtly as he passed Meg.

"Margaret, you may go to your room now. I'll be in shortly to hear your prayers."

Deirdre stepped aside to allow Meg to pass. Dan snapped the newspaper open in front of his face.

The thought of trying to understand their parents had never occurred to the girls.

They concentrated instead on monitoring, gauging how close the danger was, and how to deflect it. Retreat was always the safest response, oftimes to a book, or to another room.

Meg softly closed the door of their bedroom. She couldn't tum on a light because

Maureen was already asleep. Meg listened to Maureen's steady breathing and, as always, envied her ability to fall asleep anytime, anywhere. Like a cat, her mother claimed. Meg

54 had trouble falling asleep; she usually lay in bed and watched the play of shadow and light on the walls and ceiling. She made up stories about the shadow creatures, stories that sometimes followed her into her dreams. Those were the nights her screams woke the entire family.

Meg got out her flashlight and looked for the Ian Fleming book she'd found in their last Quonset hut. In it, James Bond was running for his life through the dark and forbidding woods with a beautiful, blond woman. Since they'd fled just a few steps ahead of their evil pursuers, they only had one sleeping bag, which they had to share. His companion had brushed her teeth before bedtime and Bond could smell her peppermint toothpaste and the shampoo she used on her hair. Meg liked to read that scene, it made her feel ticklish. But she couldn't find the book. Meg sighed and looked around the room.

The moonlight shining in the uncurtained window melted in the warm air. Meg wandered over to stare out the window. The palm fronds rustled slightly, making a raspy sound. The stars paled in the moonlight. The stars were different here; they looked more distant. At home the stars were brilliant; glittering almost within speaking distance, it seemed.

Sometimes, when Dan was on a trip, Deirdre would lay out on the patio with the girls. They would watch the stars while Deirdre pointed out the constellations and told the girls their stories: Orion, who, as punishment for getting drunk, had his eyes poked out by a scorpion; The Pleiades, the seven sisters who were turned into stars so they could remain Virgins, like the Virgin Saints. For example, St. Agnes, who wanted to be a nun and refused to cooperate when a heathen judge ordered her to marry. When the man

55 tried to marry her anyway, he was struck blind and dead as punishment because St.

Agnes was pure. The girls' Saints book also said St. Agnes was finally decapitated after the Roman soldiers unsuccessfully tried to bum her at the stake. The black and white illustration showed a kneeling, praying St. Agnes in front of a flaming pyre. An ugly, mean looking soldier brandished a large sword over her. Meg and Maureen agreed privately that being a Pleiades sounded better.

The air seemed different, here too; there was no wind. Meg wondered where the

Winds were. Usually Zephyrus came by to say good night but tonight the air was still.

Paradoxically, even though the night was still, it didn't feel calm. As Meg watched the heavens, one star, seemed to get brighter than the others. It arced across the sky, coming closer and closer. A whistling noise filled the night; with a thud, something landed in the grass outside the window. Meg gasped and pressed her nose to the screen. There was a faint glow and a slight hissing noise. Meg looked over her shoulder to see if Maureen had woken but she hadn't moved. Meg turned back to the window. The glow had faded, leaving only a reflection on her eyelids when she closed her eyes and opened them again to see if it was real. Meg started to get up to go outside, then stopped. Maybe it wasn't real. Sometimes it was hard to know: the Winds were real, she had met them, but no one believed her; she hadn't met the Saints, but everyone believed they were real. She wanted to find out though, at least look. Ignorance and contempt, her father claimed, came from not investigating. She had to investigate, she decided.

Meg stepped out in the hallway and listened to quiet in the house. There was light coming from under the door to her parents' room but she could hear her mother's rosary beads softly clicking. She tiptoed down the hall and peered in the living room. Dan was

56 sprawled in his chair, head back, eyes closed. The ice in his highball melted as

Pathetique wept softly through the living room. A record she knew not to interrupt. I

She quietly let herself out the back door and hesitated. The stillness was absolute.

Shadows shifted, somewhere in the distance a dog barked. She crept around the house and, orienting herself to her bedroom window, searched the grass. A faint singed smell came from the spot where moonlight reflected dully on something half buried in the grass. Meg searched and found a small stick. She poked the spot with the stick, then quickly jumped back. Nothing happened. The air, thick, moist and still, coated her skin.

Sweat pricked at the base of her bangs. Meg poked the lump again, then picked it up gingerly. It was warm to the touch, flat and round, big as her hand, and heavy. She turned it over but couldn't see in the dark. A cloud slid over the moon and the stars glittered coldly.

Meg slipped back inside the house, closed the door carefully. Tchaikovsky was still playing when she closed her bedroom door. Her hands shook as she rummaged for the flashlight. Shielding the light with her body, so as not to wake Maureen, she shone the light on the star. It was a pin, a brooch, her grandmother would say. She'd never seen anything like it; fashioned from a silvery metal with intricate filigreed sworls that had no beginning or end. The patterns repeated, rising and falling, folding back, circling around the perimeter, cascading over the sides to the back where a large pin served as a fastener. Embedded on the front, in the center, was a large ruby that seemed to throb in concert with Meg's pulse.

57 The sound of the bathroom door closing caught Meg's attention. Her mother would be in shortly. She hurriedly slid the brooch under her pillow, and hopped into bed,

sliding under the covers to hide the fact that she was still dressed.

Deirdre opened the door quietly. "Sweetie? Are you still awake?" Meg

pretended to be asleep. Deirdre came in silently and lightly smoothed the hair back from

Meg's forehead. Holding out both hands, she warded Meg's bed, praying softly, '"Four

comers on my bed, Four angels round my head, Luke, Mark, Matthew and John, God

bless the bed that I lay on. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take,

And if I die while I'm asleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.' Good night, my darling."

Meg waited till her mother left. Climbing back out of bed, she retrieved the

brooch. It seemed to draw the moonlight to it, absorbing the light into its center, stealing

the light from the moon. Meg shivered. She found a sock on the floor and carefully

tucked the brooch into it, then hid it behind a stack of her books. Once back in bed, she

stared at the ceiling. This night, instead of chasing the light, the shadows swirled in

serpentine patterns, drawing her into a whirlpool that finally led to sleep.

58 SATURDAY

Early Saturday morning Meg woke slowly, gazing myopically out of the bottom half of the window. She watched the heart of a cloud bank glow increasingly bright, lessening the threat in the darkened eastern sky. The faint light revealed unpacked boxes inked 'BEDRM- GIRLS 1 ', stacked haphazardly against the wall.

Subtle sounds of morning, severing the ties to isolated sleep, suffused the air around her head, each sound conveying an image that bound her once again to her family.

With her eyes closed, Meg precisely emplaced her family members: Maureen lay close and breathed deeply under a nest of covers; a light snore, escaping past enlarged tonsils, put Isabella across the hall; Dumpling babbled quietly to herself in her crib in their parents' room; down the hall her mother showered behind opaque glass doors. Meg mentally wandered the unfamiliar house looking for her father. She got lost when the hall took an unexpected tum and she found herself several homes back, in the living room of their apartment in Caracas.

Abandoning the effort, Meg sat up and regarded the book case, wondering if she had dreamed finding a brooch in the yard. She tentatively slid her hand behind the books, not sure what she would find, or even if she wanted to find anything. The shock of touching the brooch ran sharply up her arm. Her shoulders jerked back and she gasped.

Maureen shifted under the covers, murmured something unintelligible. Meg waited until her breathing steadied before she extracted the brooch from the sock and held it up to the light.

59 Unfamiliar shadows receded from the ceiling as the clouds grew lighter, but not light enough to show detail. The brooch seemed to absorb the light in the room as the metal dulled darker instead of lighter. Like oozing blood drying to black, the red in the ruby slowly evanesced. Sometimes stories blended into reality, sometimes borders were blurry, always so many things didn't make sense. Meg, with Deirdre and Maureen, crept through the woods in the Guatemalan mountains behind their guide, to spy on a devil worship ceremony. He motioned to crouch quietly behind boulders, then allowed them to peer out to watch men wearing grotesquely painted wooden masks dancing in a ring around a fire. Smoke blurred her vision and tears smarted her eyes while flames danced darkling bright, bleeding slashes of colors from the masks onto the necks and arms of the dancers. Afterwards, Deirdre insisted on having the priest in the local church bless them with holy water. She had the masks she bought in the marketplace, similar to those they'd seen in the woods, blessed too.

When Dan heard the story, he laughed and swore it was a tourist trap. In the previous house, Deirdre had hung the masks in the hall. Sometimes, in the dark, when

Meg had to go to the bathroom at night, the dim light from the living room would animate the masks. Once, terrified, unable to proceed, she had collapsed sobbing until her father carne to investigate the noise. "Oh, for the love of God, Meg!" he'd exclaimed in an exasperated tone.

To break the spell now, she repeated it, silently; "Oh, for the love of God, Meg!", and reluctantly set the brooch aside. The silence settled once more until the Dumpling

stopped talking and started to fuss irritably, her precursor to crying. Meg fished her worn

60 copy of Bulfinch's Mythology from the bedside table. It had been a gift on her eighth birthday from her Uncle Malachi, Dan's younger brother. The inscription read:

Tiapn

He laughed when she tried to read it. "Ah, lass, you'll need a classical education for that

-something to study towards." This previous year he had given her Yeats' Irish Fairy

Tales. The two books, carefully wrapped, were the first items in her packing box each move. Meg had read the Tales to Dumpling and was now working her way through

Bulfinch's.

Meg tiptoed into her parents' room. "Scheming Eos," she yawned, "is preparing to make her appearance." Dumpling stood in her crib, bouncing and babbling through the side bars. Meg held up the book for her to see. Dumpling reached over the top of the crib, grabbing and demanding incoherently, then began to cry when Meg wouldn't give her the book. "No, you'll just rip it. Oh, dear- so much for Dawn, shh, shh. You'll wake everybody up. Ok, let's get breakfast instead." Meg carried the baby quietly down the dark hall, past half-closed doors.

The kitchen was always unpacked the first day. The small, painted ceramic statue of

St. Martha had assumed her place on the windowsill over the sink. The paint along the edges of her blue hem was chipped but her face remained serene as she gazed up at the ceiling fan, hand over heart. Her window faced north, looking out on a driveway that curved around into the garage. Fruit trees lined the driveway, orange and grapefruit trees with small glossy green leaves. A stand of palms next to the house shaded part of the window. Its fronds whispered, and shadows shifted from the frenzied leaps of lizards up, down, and over the branches. Neatly broken down empty boxes lay on the speckled

61 linoleum floor, and leaned against the lime green walls. Overhead, the fan turned slowly, moving the already humid air languidly around the room. To the right of the sink the I counter turned a comer towards the refrigerator, to the left a comer that ended at a rusting gas stove. The wall opposite the window opened onto the dining room, while, next to the stove, the back door in the west wall led to the garage.

Meg got out Zwieback crackers for Dumpling, one for each hand. Because the order was the same in every house, she didn't need to look for them. Meg and her sisters knew the system; dry goods in the cupboard next to the refrigerator, unless that was also the cupboard furthest from the stove, in which case spices were stored there. What they didn't know was that it was a system; they knew it simply as order, order as immutable as the Church's calendar, as natural as the constellations that sparkled in the equatorial sky.

Towns, schools, houses changed regularly; the Company skipped families across its balance sheets, able to locate them at a fixed point on a given date, the way Dan showed his daughters to skip stones across the surface of the water. The secret was maintaining buoyancy, never sinking into the troughs of the waves. Meg and her sisters stayed afloat with slips of paper in their shoes, deriving their security from the knowledge that the order never changed. Every Saturday morning freshly laundered sheets and towels were placed on top of the stacks in the linen closet, while the sheets and towels to be used were taken from the bottom of the stack. Every Sunday morning the priest raised his arms in benediction. Dominus vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo. Everywhere. Always.

In reality, Deirdre's system was intended to protect the spices from the heat of the stove (a tip from her Home Economics teacher in High School), and simulate as much conformity between kitchens as possible to ensure efficiency of movement in a new

62 home. The expatriate wives swapped tips like that to help manage their families and lives in constantly changing environments; how to pack for temporary housing, how to manage appliances through varying electrical grids, track inoculation requirements, quarantine animals, meet overseas Christmas mail schedules. The system had evolved naturally, over the moves, and therefore Deirdre considered it a system potentially subject to update. She would have been startled to learn her daughters regarded it as empirical evidence of the existence of God, on a par with the visions described by Maria La

Segunda of Christ's face in the clouds. These were the polestars of the O'Brien family: the dislocations of transient living, de die in diem; and the amaranthine eternity of the

Roman Catholic Church, in saecula saeculorum.

The Paraguan::i Peninsula stands sentinel over the Gulf of Venezuela. A death mask baring its teeth at the dying sun, warding off threats to the entrance to Lake

Maracaibo; a lake believed to be the second oldest in the world, an ancient lake formed

when the gods danced and the darkness swam beneath the surface to create the largest oil

field in Venezuela. Black gold, coveted by governments willing to grant concessions to the country's ruling powers in exchange for control of the oil. The snarling ferocity of the Peninsula, and the watchful care by natives in thatched houses on stilts, couldn't

prevent the Lake from being deflowered in the rough wooing that occurred when foreign

oil interests widened and deepened the narrow channel leading from the Gulf to the Lake, to allow seagoing oil tankers access to the Maracaibo's vast riches and salt water in to corrupt its clear waters.

63 Outside the channel, in the Gulf, lay the refineries and camps refined and exported the oil. The camps were model communities, safe enclaves for the expatriate I employees and their families. Lovingly documented in the Company's brochures, the glossy pictures offered two styles of houses, Type A or Type B; a school; a store; a clinic; a library. The camps shut in and shut out an ever-changing stream of faces; those whose skin accommodated the ferocious tropical sun and those who could not. Amuay, La

Salina, Quiriquire, Caripito; camps built for living, now living on only in memories of vanished worlds and lives.

A venida Zulia, in Camp Amuay, stretched long and flat, running from one end of the world to the other. To the north of was La Escuela Simon Bolivar, close enough for children to roller skate to, and further north, eventually the edge of the continent, slipping into the Caribbean Sea. To the east, La Iglesia Catolica de Judibana, with Cada,

Amuay's store, farther east. Beyond that, following the path of the rising sun, lay the airfield in Judibana; gateway to Maiquetia, Caracas and The States. In the west the uncertain waters of the Gulf of Venezuela murmured under the setting sun, while roads patrolled by soldiers, first from one side, then the other, ran south. Unsafe roads running through uncharted deserts bordered by rain forests. The deserts had mountain drifts of white sand the children could sled down, pretending it was the snow they'd never seen, while the waters in the rain forests boiled white with the piranha they had seen.

The houses on A venida Zulia were white. The sand, dirt and sidewalks were white. The memories of people who lived there and moved away were white, memories of unflinching tropical light flooding every surface, emanating from a white sky.

Memories reviewed in a different light, one where there are no shadows. The black and

64 white photographs show people squinting, holding white arms up to shield white eyes made for different light.

The long, flat stretch of A venida Zulia was another man-made channel, this one of houses past which the ever present winds blew. The only plumb surfaces to be found, horizontal or vertical, were man-made, fighting the dominion of the winds. And most often losing, as poles or sheds slowly sighed their surrender to the winds and settled softly into a comfortable list, following the example of nature. A wonderful place to skate sail, a game the children of the camps often played. Skate sailing called for two people on roller skates, each struggling to keep hold of the side of a billowing beach towel in the face of obdurate winds as they sailed down the street. One misstep, one rock under the skate, one angled sail due to mismatched strength or inattention to the force of the winds and the ship foundered at high speeds, leaving skidded strips of skin embedded in the concrete.

The time before supper, after school let out, was a play time when all the kids in the camps were out. The long days, close to the equator, meant there was always full sunlight for playing. In front of the O'Brien house at 32 Avenida Zulia, Bunny and Meg were skate sailing. The girls paused to allow Meg to tighten her roller skates on her shoes.

"Boy, the wind is strong today," Bunny said. "This is as fast as my brother and me went on the go-carts last weekend."

Meg tightened the key too much and it pinched her toe. Dan did not allow her to ride the go-carts out at the track and this was a sore point. "All the other kids my age get to drive them!" she had frequently, and futilely cried. The scrub track on weekends

65 resounded with the roar of the motors and the air filled with the reek of the fuel and clouds of dirt. "We went even faster than go-carts when we went sledding on the dunes I in Caripito," she answered. "We'd FLY- just FLY- whoosh!! -down the dunes. And it was beautiful white sand, not all dirty like the track."

"They don't have dunes in Caripito - the dunes are in Coro," Bunny said. But she hesitated. Her family hadn't lived in Caripito yet but still, it wasn't part of this section of camps, it was part of the eastern camps. And the dunes were here, in the west.

"Nuh-uh, we went sledding in Caripito. I know it." Meg was sure, she remembered that Isabel hadn't been allowed to go because she had ringworm. Meg and

Maureen went instead, triumphant. She could see the dunes now, hear the sand shrieking as they sped over the surface, waving at Dan as he took photographs from the bottom of the dunes.

Meg stood up as Jorge Rodriguez and Rick Harden skated by and slowed to join them. In the face of extended pleading on the part of the boys, the girls refused to allow them to use the towel by themselves because they suspected the boys would skate off with the towel, refusing to return it.

"We won't! Promise! Promise - cross my heart and spit on a pirate's grave!"

Jorge and Rick both sincerely crossed their hearts, and their fingers behind their backs.

"No! You're a big fibber", Bunny pouted. "You did that last time. But," Bunny tucked her chin and looked up at him the way she'd seen her older sister look at boys,

"you can sail with me, Jorge." She held up her side of the towel and offered the other to

Jorge. "We can sail off into the sunset."

"P-U!" snorted Jorge.

66 Rick punched him on the arm and singsonged, "oo, Jorge, g'won! Sail off into the sunset with your- girrrlfriend!"

"jCayese!" Jorge glared at Rick. "Here, give me that, I'll show you." He grabbed the side Bunny held out to him and flipped the towel up to catch the wind. It instantly filled and the strength of the gust knocked Bunny off her feet, pitching her forward onto the street.

"You did that on purpose!" Bunny tearfully examined her bleeding knees. "I'm telling, Jorge, I'm telling!"

"Yeah, you did, Jorge. I saw you." Meg poked at him.

"Did not! She's just a girl and can't hold on." Jorge skated backwards in a circle to further demonstrate his superiority. "C'mon Rick, who wants to play with girls, anyway? 'N sissy baby girls, too." The boys stayed long enough to watch Bunny get up, knowing that meant they wouldn't get in real trouble, then skated away. In a camp with less than one hundred children, no child was exempt from the wrath of someone else's mother. And every mother knew exactly what had happened and who had done it. It was generally understood among the children that the wind had something to do with it. The wind and possibly the Marias, both found everywhere in the camp.

Some Americans couldn't roll their Spanish rs, while others couldn't sleep for listening to the wind blow constantly through the night. Some struggled to understand unrelenting differences that sailed beyond language. The hours kept, the deadlines and appointments not kept, or kept hours late with no apparent remorse, the constant reminders everywhere one turned that this was not familiar, all the unfamiliarity glaring in the white tropical light. Some thrilled to this, others retreated further and further into a

67 desire to relax with the known, the safe. The local custom of naming a female baby

Maria, followed by her saint's day name, caused untold confusion among some new I arrivals to the country. Women, intensely nervous in a newly foreign life, accustomed to the penury of the newly married in the United States of the 1950s, found themselves expected to direct a Maria to help cook, a Maria to clean, to operate appliances she'd never seen before, to watch the children, to serve at a dinner party. The wind blew; experienced women smiled at Maria and gave patient, detailed instructions. The wind blew; women who didn't sleep well frowned at Maria and counted their silverware.

Maria Rosa was scaling a fish for dinner when Meg helped Bunny limp into the

O'Brien's kitchen. Meg looked away from the fish and hoped Maria would behead it before Deirdre cooked it. Meg's place at the dining room table, as the oldest child, was seated at her father's left. When a whole fish was served, Deirdre always placed the platter before Dan with a triumphant flourish. The head pointed towards Meg, with the eye staring while Dan served it. Each stab of the carving fork caused the eye to jump slightly but never blink. When she closed her eyes at night Meg could still see the fish staring at her as it was carved. Its eye had the same expression as the eyes of the child martyrs in The Five O'Clock Saints illustrations. Black, staring eyes that didn't blink when the pagan Roman centurions speared them for drawing the symbol of the fish on the wall and bravely refusing to renounce their faith.

Maria Rosa shook her head sympathetically when she saw Bunny's bleeding knees. "Ay, chiquitica," she commiserated. Wringing out a dish towel, she dabbed at

Bunny's knees. Bunny's fresh wails brought Deirdre hurrying into the kitchen.

68 "No, no, Maria! Not with the dish towel!" Deirdre evaluated, and dismissed,

Bunny's injuries in a flash. "And, girls, not in the house with roller skates! Out, out."

"But, but Mrs. O'Brien, my knee is bleeding!"

Meg, familiar with Deirdre's idea of what constituted bleeding, tugged the back of

Bunny's shirt. "C'mon, let's go." The girls retreated out the back door, which opened into the garage. The deep freezer stood in the shadows of one comer and Meg hoisted the heavy lid to pull out handfuls of ice chips. "Here, this is what I do," and she showed

Bunny how to use the heat of her palms to melt the ice, letting the water run over her knee. "See? It 'debrides the wound' - I read that in my Dad's Boy Scout manual. It really says 'clean, clear water from a running stream' but we don't have any running streams. And this is clean ice, I think, besides, this makes it stop hurting 'cuz it gets all numb and; oh, Bunny, stop yelling, it doesn't hurt that much!"

The back door opened and Deirdre looked in. "Honestly, what are you girls doing in here?''

"It hurts more now! I need a band aid," Bunny wailed. "And a piece of candy!"

"Oh, don't be a baby. And no candy - that certainly won't help your knees.

Why, what you need is to let air get at them to heal."

Bunny regarded her knee doubtfully.

"All right, don't worry about it now- it's close to supper time and everyone has to get washed up anyway, so why don't you head home and let your Mom take a look at it."

Deidre ushered Bunny out.

69 "See, you tomorrow, Bunny." Meg waved as Bunny skated slowly down the driveway, sniffling. "Mom, 'member last time Bunny went home bleeding? Mrs.

Hofstadter took her to the clinic!"

Deirdre snorted. "Mrs. Hofstadter takes those kids to the clinic every time they sneeze." Deirdre's system of categorizing physical injury was a two tier system: those injuries requiring emergency medical treatment and everything else. The former was a rather elite group consisting of compound fractures, uncontrolled bleeding and temperatures in excess of 101 °. Everything else could wait until after school or for a doctor's appointment. An exception, occasioned when Maureen recently stepped on a nail and required a tetanus shot, was under consideration. Deirdre felt strongly that, had

Maureen been wearing shoes as directed, an exception would not have been necessary.

Dan argued for the nature of children to dash after the enticing promise of a pot of gold at the end of the immense rainbow, which had appeared after the thunderstorm and truly did look like it ended on the other side of the Adams' house next door. The Venezuelan humidity, coupled with the advice of parents more experienced with the danger of infection, won the day. The rapaciousness of tropical diseases were all the more frightening for being so unknown. Mumps, chicken pox, measles - the mothers had all had these diseases themselves, knew how to recognize and treat them in their children.

Malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever - no amount of mosquito netting or hand-washing enabled frightened mothers to protect their children from these diseases. In white houses, on white wind-washed street, the adventurous thumped their chests at God and dared Him to "give it all ya got!" while the fearful sought refuge in building better bulwarks against the vagaries of nature and climate.

70 Maureen, swearing, on the St. Joseph's Missal she received for her First

Communion, that she would never go outside again without shoes, was nonetheless I marched down to the clinic for a tetanus shot. Along with her sisters, who were also given tetanus shots as a precaution. The shot made Maureen's left arm ache for two days.

The pummeling she took from Meg as retribution for Meg's unwanted shot, made her right arm ache for as long. With both arms and one foot out of commission, Maureen limped and whimpered around the house for the next few days, glaring at her tormentors and loudly listing her complaints to anyone who would listen, which turned out to be only the cat, Lord High Everything Else, Pooh-bah for short.

Maureen, swearing, on the St. Joseph's Missal she received for her First

Communion, that she would never go outside again without shoes, was nonetheless marched down to the clinic for a tetanus shot. Along with her sisters, who were also given tetanus shots as a precaution. The shot made Maureen's left arm ache for two days.

The pummeling she took from Meg as retribution for Meg's unwanted shot, made her right arm ache for as long. With both arms and one foot out of commission, Maureen limped and whimpered around the house for the next few days, glaring at her tormentors and loudly listing her complaints to anyone who would listen, which turned out to be only the cat, Lord High Everything Else, Pooh-bah for short.

"All right, let's go. It's time to help with supper: you need to get washed and tell

Maureen to come out." Deirdre dismissed Mrs. Hofstadter's over protectiveness with a flap of her apron. She checked inside one of the garbage cans used for storage. "hmm ... remind me to tell your father we'll need more flour soon."

71 Meg followed her mother back in the house, seriously repeating to herself, "Dad, need flour. Dad, flour." She found Maureen in their room, reading The Mystery of the

Tolling Bell. "oo, oo", Meg flopped on the bed next to her, "that's one of my favorites!

How far are you?" "Don't tell me anything!" Maureen cried, waving her arm

frantically. "I just started- Nancy, Bess and George got to the Inn but Mr. Drew's not

there yet."

"That's such a good one, you'll really like it. But I still think The Secret in the

Old Attic is the best."

"Is not! The Clue of the Leaning Chimney is the best."

"It is not!" Meg was insulted. "Oh! The clues were sooo easy in that one- the

Old Attic was hard and the mansion was scary."

"That's 'cuz she didn't have Bess and George helping her enough- if Bess and

George had gotten there sooner she would have figured it out."

"Would not! Bess is a big baby, she never figures anything out- Nancy always

has to do the thinking."

"Does not!"

"Does too!!" Meg leaped on Maureen and started tickling her. Maureen shrieked

as they rolled off the bed and thudded onto the floor.

"Girls! Time to wash up!" Deirdre's voice cut cleanly through the giggles.

"Stop ... stop!" Meg pushed Maureen away. "You have to go help Mom fix

supper."

"You started it- and you have to help too." Maureen put a bookmark at her page

and headed towards the bathroom.

72 Meg followed her to wash up. "Bunny scraped up her knees while we were sailing. Jorge yanked the towel and she fell down."

"Ouch. Did she cry?"

Meg flicked water in Maureen's face. "Yeah, just like Bess woulda."

"Would not!"

"Would too!"

"Don't make me come back there." The warning floated down the hall, drawing both girls immediately out to the kitchen. Deirdre scanned their appearance and nodded.

"Maureen, you set the table, we'll need forks, knives, and dessert forks tonight." Maureen held up a small knife, inquiring. "No, no butter knives tonight. Meg, get out dinner and dessert plates, glasses for milk ... ", Deirdre mentally ran through the meal, "and the salt and pepper shakers, please."

"Mom, which is better, The Secret in the Old Attic or The Clue of the Leaning

Chimney?" Meg asked as she counted plates out.

Deirdre considered the question as she stirred a pot on the stove. "I think my favorite is still The Whispering Statue because that's the first one I read. Grandma

Margaret gave it to me for my tenth birthday."

"Did Grandma Margaret like The Secret in the Old Attic or The Clue of the

Leaning Chimney better?"

"Oh, sweetie, I don't think they had Nancy Drew when Grandma Margaret was a little girl." Both girls stopped short and stared at Deirdre. Such an idea was unimaginable. Deirdre laughed at their expressions. "Things were very different when

Grandma Margaret was a girl. They didn't have Nancy Drew - or electricity. Why,

73 women didn't even have the vote until after Grandma Margaret was married. And women didn't go to college the way you will when you finish high school ... "

"In The States, right, Mom?" Meg exclaimed excitedly.

"Don't interrupt. Yes, in The States. All right, please sit down, supper's ready.

Your father's eating at the club so we're having a hen party tonight. Meg, please make sure Isabel's hands are clean first."

Deirdre continued to reminisce about her mother, Margaret, as supper progressed.

It was a rare occasion as she was able to relax without other adults present to pass judgment. Her daughters loved these moments and reveled in the retelling of family stories. The stories made more sense to Deirdre each time she told them. It all seemed so far away and simple. A soothing coolness seemed to envelope the stories, smoothing the edges of the tropical heat that had been building all day, waiting to retreat slightly when darkness finally fell. Even the raucous noises of New York City didn't seem foreign now; in her memory the roar of the elevated trains that used to keep her awake at night now signaled progress, security. It all made sense; mothers didn't check their children for ringworm, listen to rats scurry across the roof or rush home in the late afternoon so as not to anger the soldiers by being out after curfew.

All their relatives lived in The States, and so were strangers to the girls; the living and the dead. As there was no possibility of the living visiting them in Venezuela, the dead, according to Deirdre, were more likely to be present. "Granddad is looking down from Heaven now, watching everything we do."

"And my guardian angel?" Isabel asked anxiously.

74 "And your guardian angel. And all the saints. If you need help you can always ask your angel or Granddad or pray to the saints. You're never alone, precious, you always have someone to help you."

"Mommy, Maria Rosa said there's una fantasma mala in the trees behind her house." Isabel looked worried. "Can Granddad make it go away?"

"Oh, don't be silly, sweetie, there's no such thing as ghosts. I'll talk to Maria

Rosa manana."

"Father Corrigan could bless her house, Mom, like he did ours when we moved here", Maureen offered. "That would get rid of thefantasma, wouldn't it?"

"Mom, Daddy said there are ghosts in Ireland", Meg added. "He said Auld

Malachi saw a ghost on the moors one night, keening and drifting in the mist." She leaned over to whisper to Isabel, "a REAL ghost!"

Isabel screamed and Deirdre frowned. "Now stop it, all of you. Isabel, there is no such thing as a ghost, that's pagan talk and I'll have none of it. I'm sure it was during the famine and what he saw was one of the poor wretches who wandered the countryside, starving, bless their souls." She made the sign of the cross and the girls quickly followed suit. "Auld Malachi lost his wife and children in the famine, remember. It was a terrible time for us all."

"He was Daddy's grandfather, right, Mom?"

"mm," Deirdre squinted into her in-laws' past. "No ... he was your father's great­ grandfather. Daddy's grandfather was Stephen and-"

"-and Stephen's sister was Margaret, who I'm named for!" Meg finished triumphantly.

75 "Meg, how many times do I have to tell you not to interrupt? And actually, you're named for my mother, Margaret."

"Dad said I'm named for Great Aunt Margaret," Meg said stubbornly.

"She can be named for both, can't she, Mom?" Maureen could always be counted on to intercede for peace. Besides, dessert forks presaged dessert and Maureen didn't like the way Deirdre was eyeing Meg. "Look, Mom, I finished my plate. May I please have some dessert now?"

"Yes, you may. Let's clear the table -how about dessert and after we clean up the kitchen we can play cards?" A general cheer followed this announcement. "Great!

What would you like to play? Go Fish, Old Maid?"

"Go Fish", cried Isabel. "Go Fish!" And so they did, until it was time for her to go to bed.

Meg strapped Dumpling into her high chair, talking quietly with her baby sister, as had become their custom. The baby listened, watching Meg's face intently, then reached up and touched first Meg's eyes, then her nose and mouth. This was her newest breakfast routine; cataloguing Meg's face, as if to make sure nothing had changed over night. She pointed overhand, awkwardly, her chubby fingers not yet dexterous enough to make a fist. Meg gently caught Dumpling's finger between her teeth for a little bite, then a little kiss. Dumpling giggled and looked shyly down at her crackers. Meg brushed her sister's curls back, reveling in their silkiness, helpless once again in the face of a wave of emotion that made her want to weep. It was so easy to love the baby, so straight forward, uncomplicated and rewarding.

76 "I can tell you anything, can't 1," Meg asked Dumpling. "I can tell you-"

"Tell her what?" Maureen shuffled into the kitchen, yawning. "What are you telling

Dumpling?"

"Nothing," Meg turned away.

"hmph. I bet." Maureen looked around. "Daddy's in the living room."

"Is he still sleeping?"

"I think so. What's for breakfast?" She opened a cupboard door and peered in.

When she let it go it banged shut noisily. Maureen and Meg froze when they heard Dan mutter unintelligibly in the living room. "Did you start the coffee?" Maureen whispered.

The electric coffee pot resembled a gleaming chrome spaceship. After measuring water into the pot Meg struggled to insert the post for the basket into the base, a difficult task, as she still wasn't quite tall enough to see over the top of it on the counter. Meg carefully counted scoops of coffee into the metal basket and plugged the pot in.

In the living room, Dan woke fitfully. The coffee began a syncopated bubbling into the glass dome on its lid and Dumpling crowed, banging the crackers on her high chair tray. Dan shifted, shaking his head irritably. His foot knocked the empty Jameson bottle, which wobbled unevenly to rest against a leg of the coffee table. Meg tiptoed in to pick it up. Uncurtained windows framed the sun rising above the horizon, light falling on rolled up rugs and bare lamps, their unpaired shades sitting in the comer. The stereo equipment was the organized heart of the room. While Deirdre unpacked the kitchen, Dan connected the stereo equipment and experimented with placing the speakers to ensure maximum sound quality. The first dinner in a new house, even if it was only warmed canned soup or a donated casserole, was always accompanied by music.

77 "Dad ... Daddy," Meg hovered in the doorway. "El cafe esta listo, would you like some?" Dan sat up, stretched and scrubbed his hands on his face. The scratchy sound of I the stubble on his cheeks matched the pattern of the dust motes dancing in the air.

Dumpling squawked, banging on her high chair. Meg went back into the kitchen and tunneled the whiskey bottle into the garbage. "Bot-tle," she enunciated, as she handed

Dumpling her milk. "Bah, bah, bot-tle. Y esto cafe es para Daddy. Can you say Da,

Daddy?"

"Da, da, da," Dumpling triumphantly beat her bottle on the metal tray.

"Oh, for the love of God, child, can't you keep her from making that racket?" Dan leaned over the sink, splashing cold water on his face. He shook his head like a dog coming out of the ocean and squinted around the kitchen. "Sweet Jesus, I must be in

Purgatory; look at these walls. Maybe the hair of the dog ... ", Meg hurried to hand him a cup of coffee. "Ah, salvation! You're my best girl, Meg." He lit a cigarette, pushing St.

Martha aside to make room for an ashtray. Meg started making oatmeal for Dumpling; baby food in the bottom cupboard next to the refrigerator. Alongside the cat food, although Boots was in quarantine and couldn't join them for six weeks.

"Daddy?"

"Hmm?"

"How long will we stay here in Florida?"

"Oh ... depends."

"On what?"

"It just depends. On the Company, the price of a barrel ... " He shrugged, "it just depends." Dan stared sightlessly out the window, smoke spiraling slowly out of his

78 mouth, bouncing in and out of the screen as a slight breeze moved the palm fronds

outside the window. Maureen looked from her father to Meg, then shook her head

imperceptibly at Meg.

Meg struggled to stay silent. She distrusted silence; in silence there were no signals, no indication of what direction danger might come from. With the honed instincts of a

point man, she knew it was an abyss in which someone could transubstantiate unseen into

something dangerous that would explode out of an unexpected quarter. Maureen sat up

straight and carefully watched Meg. Dumpling poked a damp cracker piece around her

tray. Meg nervously sliced a banana into the oatmeal.

"Daddy?"

"What."

"Would you like some oatmeal?"

"No, thanks.

"~Quiere mas cafe?"

"Mm ... this is enough now."

"Daddy?"

"What! Don't pester me, Meg."

"Da, da, da!"

Dan laughed sharply and pushed away from the sink, chucking Dumpling under the

chin. "Lord, Majella, if females could only stay this cute- and this quiet." He cuffed the

back of Meg's head, "Let me at least wake up, ok? Then you can ask too many

questions." He walked out of the kitchen, one hand massaging his lower back.

"Told you," Maureen said calmly, as she spooned cereal into her mouth.

79 Meg glared at her. "You're dribbling worse than the baby."

"You should listen to me," Maureen continued. "You always talk too mu~h. They don't like it."

"Oh, go to Hell," Meg snapped.

Maureen narrowed her eyes. "Better watch it- I'll tell."

"Tell what?" Deirdre stood in the doorway, fluffing the hair on the back of her head to help it dry. "Don't tell me you two are bickering before breakfast is even over."

Meg turned away. "No. No, we were just talking about. .. " She looked sideways at

Maureen.

" ... how I'm going to tell Nana Margaret that I'm going to wear the dress she gave me for my birthday on my first day of school in The United States," Maureen finished.

"We're going to write her today," Meg added.

Deirdre looked suspiciously at Meg. Maureen loudly slurped the last of the milk in her cereal bowl. "Oh, for Heaven's sake, Maureen- stop that!"

Maureen smiled and held up her bowl. "I'm finished, Mommy."

Deirdre waved her hand dismissively. "You're excused. Both of you."

Meg and Maureen jostled each other down the hall. "I didn't even get any breakfast,"

Meg hissed. "Thanks a lot."

"Shut up," Maureen muttered back. "You can eat the cookies you hid in your suitcase."

"What?" Meg gasped. "Did you eat them?"

Maureen laughed, "No, I don't like ginger snaps."

"Well, don't go poking through my things," Meg muttered.

80 Maureen looked interested. "Why? What else you got?"

"Nothing." Meg shrugged. "You'll mess up my stuff."

Maureen burst out laughing. Meg's propensity for disarray was legendary in the family. Deirdre required two things of her daughters before they were allowed to leave for school in the morning; breakfast and a room inspection to verify the beds were made and clothes put away. The only way their room passed inspection was for Deirdre to inspect it as two halves. Maureen generally skipped off to school while Meg valiantly tried to stuff more items under her bed.

Maureen smoothed her bedspread a bit. "Let's go explore a little bit before we have to start cleaning," she suggested.

"Have you seen my Keds?" Meg looked around distractedly. "Wait, here's one- I just need the other one."

"Nope," Maureen waved. "I'll meet you outside."

Meg pretended to keep looking for the sneaker she'd kicked under the bed until

Maureen left. She checked the hall before quietly locking the door. She retrieved the sock from the bookcase and looked around the room for another place to hide the brooch.

When Daddo Malachi, her paternal grandfather, told stories about hiding guns from the

British before the Easter Rising, he always said the same thing, "If ye want to hide something so no one will be finding it, hide it right under their noses!" Meg pulled some clothes out of the closet to make a little pile of laundry on the floor then tucked the sock halfway in it. She inspected the mound from several sides and nodded, satisfied.

81 Dan's pallor and irritability faded as he worked through the morning, sweating out the night. The family fell into their weekend routine, slightly altered to allow for I unpacking. Dan sorted through boxes until he found his tools, then started installing shelves in the garage. Carrying a load of laundry out to the washing machine in the garage, Meg dodged Dan as he circled around with a level. Isabella and Maureen carried empty boxes out to the curb, Isabella, making loud oaf sounds, complaining bitterly that they were too heavy. After a while, Deirdre set a play pen on the grass for the baby, and brought out a pitcher of ice tea for everyone.

People drifted by and waved, a few stopped to introduce themselves and welcome the family to the neighborhood. An elderly lady carrying a black parasol and walking a fat, short-legged chihuahua, stopped to introduce herself. "Nice folks on this street,"

Mrs. Briggs said. "This here's Pedro. We're across the street- that house there, with the green shutters. You need anything, just holler." She waved and walked on, her ample rump jauntily rolling in concert with Pedro's.

Meg and Maureen kept an eye out for kids their own age as they went back and forth. The little girl from next door bounced out the side screen door and ran to the edge of the driveway. She stood and stared at them uncertainly, her eyes partially hidden by dark brown curls.

"Sarah!" Isabella ran up. "Do you have any candy?"

Sarah hung her head. "No."

"Isabella!" Deirdre stopped pouring Ice tea. "You don't greet someone by demanding candy."

"Ok." Isabella tried again, "Do you have any candy, please?"

82 Sarah looked like she was going to cry.

"Isabella!!"

Marcia Rago walked out behind her daughter, laughing. "That's ok, sweetie.

Sarah, honey, c'mon, let's go say hi." A petite, full-figured brunette, she had an easy smile that made her look as if she'd just remembered the punch line of an amusing joke.

Her southern accent and slow, graceful way of moving made her soothing demeanor immediately likeable.

Deirdre shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Honestly, all that talk about

Halloween has activated Isabella's sweet tooth. Which is why they're not allowed to eat candy!"

"Oh, a little sugar never hurt anyone. In fact," Marcia waved her hand airily behind her, "it improves Chris' disposition tremendously, ain't that right, honey?"

The screen door banged loudly. "Isn't what right?" Standing on the steps, Chris

Rago looked like a boxing coach; his crew cut exposed a few scars on his scalp while his slightly off-center nose promised a few stories over a beer. Short, stocky legs made his large chest and broad shoulders seem disproportionately big. A dimple that appeared every time he looked at his wife, and eyelashes long enough to make any woman jealous, belied his otherwise bellicose appearance.

Chris had, in fact, been the Light Heavyweight champion at St. Joseph's, the

Italian parish in Brooklyn that bordered St. Jude's, where Dan grew up. Although they'd never met, Dan and Chris shared a mutual friend, Tom Tierney. When Tom heard Dan was transferring to Port Everglades, he had written Chris, who arranged for the O'Briens to rent their house.

83 "Honey, this is Deirdre O'Brien, 'member I told you? And this little cutie is

Isabella, she's just Sarah's age, now ain't that nice."

Dan carne up behind Deirdre. "Chris! Glad to meet you at last. Torn Tierney says hello."

Chris lit up. "Torn- that old dog! I got some stories for you!"

"Well, how about dinner tonight? We're not finished unpacking, but the beer glasses are washed. Bring all the kids!"

"Dan," Deirdre turned to him and spoke quietly. "Chairs, remember? We don't have enough dining room ch-"

"The kids don't have to eat with us," Dan waved off the problem. "It's better that way, right, Chris?"

"Thanks, that sounds great."

The men were still shaking hands heartily when Marcia, looking from Deirdre to

Dan, put her hand on her husband's arm. "Chris, honey," Marcia demurred, "give these folks a chance to get settled in first. Better yet, why don't y' all come over here for dinner?"

"No, no, join us, c'rnon! It'll be fun," Dan insisted. "We need to break in this house, right Dee?"

"Of course," Deirdre assured Marcia quickly. "Can't promise you anything fancy, but please do come."

"Mommy, entonces, necesitarnos ir al rnercado," Meg interjected.

"English, Meg, speak English," Deirdre corrected.

"Your girls speak Spanish?" Marcia sounded impressed. "That's nice."

84 Deirdre shook her head. "They sound like little half-breeds most of the time.

Dan, were you going to ask Chris about the storm shutters?"

Dan rolled his eyes. "Just survived ten years in the wild, untamed tropics, and she's worried about a thunderstorm!"

"Well," Chris shook his head. "Hurricane's are nothing to sneeze at, let me tell you. C'mere, I'll show you what we've got." The men wandered off into the Rago's garage, Chris busily talking and gesticulating.

Deirdre nodded, satisfied. "Now," she said brightly to Marcia, "if you can tell me where the store is, we'll be all set for dinner."

"You sure?" Marcia looked sympathetically at Deirdre. "Honey, with all these kids you got?"

Surprised, Deirdre looked around, tabulating her offspring. Meg stood behind her, folding laundry; Maureen followed Dumpling as she crawled around the yard;

Isabella and Sarah sat on the Rago's steps, chatting busily. "Four? That's not very many."

"Oh, well, all right. Casey's, the grocery store, is on Main Street - once you cross the bridge, just keep going. It's on the left, you can't miss it."

"Just think, Meg, a real grocery store," Deirdre said happily.

Marcia paused on her way back to her house. "You may see some coloreds," she added. "They have their own store, of course, but some ladies here send their girls to shop for them."

"Colored what?" Meg asked.

85 "Colored what!" Marcia Rago laughed delightedly. "Oh, honey, you're so cute!

Deirdre, you want, you leave Isabella with us while you go shopping." She waved and I walked inside.

"Colored que, Mom?" Meg asked Deirdre. "What's she talking about?"

"People, Meg, colored people," Deirdre said impatiently. ''I'm not going to tell you again to speak English. Honestly, the questions you ask sometimes. Like the

Marias, except darker." She expertly snapped a few towels into symmetrical squares and laid them on top of Meg's rickety pile of clean sheets and towels. "Let's go while we can. Maureen can watch Dumpling."

The car rattled over the wooden slats in the bridge as they headed over the canal, west into town. Usually seated in the back, Meg was delighted to sit up front. She stared at the little, boxy, concrete bridge tender's house. "Mom, look! Doesn't it look like something out of a fairy tale?"

"We-ell, it's rather plain, isn't it?"

Meg puffed her chest out and boomed. '"Who's that tripping over my bridge, roared the troll?' I think it's the troll's house!"

Deirdre laughed. "You could be right. Oh! Look at all these palm trees! What a pretty town this is."

Meg hesitated. "It's kind of half Caripito, half Amuay," she hedged.

"That's an American flag in front of that bank," Deirdre pointed out proudly.

"It's all American!"

Main Street was a wide avenue lined with young coconut palms on one side and date palms on the other, all replanted after the 1947 hurricane. The square masonry

86 buildings, some two stories, but mostly one, were stuccoed in light, tawny earth tones, and set back from the street. Wide, spacious sidewalks allowed people to stroll the avenue in leisure, window shop, and stop to talk. Small clusters of women in light colored dresses, tightly belted with full skirts, were interspersed by men wearing panama hats.

"There's the store!" Deirdre's excitement was contagious and Meg leaned forward onto the dashboard to look out the windshield. Although she'd grown up hearing the women talk longingly about American grocery stores, she'd never been in one before.

As Deirdre parked, Meg noticed a group of girls up the street. She couldn't tell if it was the same group from the beach, but they looked like they were about her age. She glanced down at her shirt and noticed it was buttoned incorrectly. Sliding down on the

seat she hurriedly started rebuttoning, starting at the bottom this time, as Deirdre always

advised.

"All right! Let's g- What are you doing?" Deirdre looked down at Meg, half on the floor of the car.

"Nothing, nothing, let's go." Meg hopped out of the car, smoothing her shirt front. The girls were still a ways off but headed in their direction. Meg bolted for the front door of the store.

"Excuse me, young lady," Deirdre warned.

"Sorry." Meg stepped back and held the door for her mother. She glanced

around her mother at the store and stopped suddenly. It was small. And cold. And

almost deserted. The mercado at home was an enormous bustling place that sold

everything one could possibly imagine. This store was small and she could only see

87 food. No magazines and books, no tires hung from the ceiling, no cries from fish vendors on the side. A few ladies moved slowly down the aisles, talking or calling to each other. I

"It's freezing in here," Meg grumbled, shivering.

"Air conditioning!" Deirdre sighed happily. She drifted down the first aisle, dreamily reaching out to touch items on the shelves.

Meg trailed unhappily, then wandered off when she saw a pyramid of coconuts at the end of an aisle. Smiling, she remembered how she and Bunny Wentz and Tommy

Diaz used to practice climbing the coconut trees. It was hard to do but Tommy's older brother could scamper up a tree in a flash and knock coconuts down; Coconuts and mam6nes were Meg's favorite fruits. Juggling a coconut, she looked around the produce section for mam6nes. A woman, who looked a little like Maria La Segunda, was selecting a fruit Meg knew was called an apple. She had seen pictures of it in Protestant

Bible stories, but never a real one.

"Permiso, Senora," she said politely to the Maria. "(,Donde estan las mam6nes?"

The woman stared at her blankly. "(,Las mam6nes?" Meg repeated.

The woman looked over her shoulder, then back at Meg. "Child, you talking to me?" she asked. "What you saying?"

"Meg!" Deirdre spoke sharply.

Meg jumped, startled. She hadn't heard her mother coming up behind her. The coconuts she'd been holding fell and bounced across the floor, knocking over a small pyramid of tomato sauce cans.

"Lord, child!" "What are you doing?" Deirdre and the woman spoke simultaneously as coconuts and cans clattered and rolled around the produce section.

88 "She simple?" The woman asked Deirdre, pointing at Meg, who was busy trying to retrieve cans. As she bent to pick up cans, her foot caught one of the coconuts, I sending it rolling further in front of her.

At the sound of giggling Meg looked up to see the group of girls staring down at her. A last tomato can rolled to a stop at her feet. One girl, a small blonde with freckles, picked it up and handed it to Meg, smiling sympathetically. But as the others turned away she ran to catch up with them. As they left, Meg heard the tall girl in front say,

"Maybe she is simple - 'member we saw her on the beach, talking to herself?"

Meg stared at the floor, digging her nails into her palms. She'd found that if she pushed hard enough, sometimes the pain could keep her from crying.

"Well, I hope you're happy," Deirdre whispered fiercely to her. "Now clean this up, oh, thank you," to a young man who had materialized suddenly to restock the cans.

Straightening her back, she pushed Meg in front of her. "Don't touch anything else!

Let's just finish shopping and make it home without breaking anything."

During siesta, Meg couldn't sleep. She tried to read and finally gave up.

Kneeling on the bed, she stared out the window and ached to go someplace, anyplace else.

"Mom!" Meg called from the back door, where she stood with Dumpling on her hip. When there was no response she walked into the dining room where Deirdre was counting out place settings of silver.

89 "Honestly, Meg," Deirdre did not look up, "if you have something to say, you find me and say it. You do act as if you were raised in The Bronx."

"Sorry. I'm going to the beach now, remember? And taking Dumpling with me."

"The Ragos are coming for dinner tonight so I will need your help getting dinner on the table." Deirdre consulted the notebook at her elbow. "Dinner at 6:30- that means the roast goes in at 5:30; Maureen will set the table, Isabella can pick up the living room, you'll fix the vegetables and potatoes, they'll be here at 6, your father will serve drinks­

I also need you to make sure Dumpling is washed and dressed, as well as your sisters."

Deirdre took a long breath. "Lord! I don't know how we'll manage here without help.

Well, I guess we'll just become ... casual, as they say. However, not just yet, thank you very much." She gave Meg a long unblinking look. "So I need you home in plenty of time to help, is that clear? I don't want to hear any of your Mulberry Street stories."

"They're not stories, Mom." Meg muttered.

"What was that?"

"Nothing! Nothing- I'll be home on time. I promise. I'll be back in plenty of time."

When they arrived at the beach Meg retied Dumpling's sun hat before taking her out of the stroller. On the way over, she'd explained the Winds to Dumpling, "You haven't met them yet, but they're very nice. Boreas is the North Wind. He blusters, but it's all for show, kind of like Daddo. Notus, the South Wind, is shy and doesn't say much. And you'll like Eurus, I'm sure, he's very gentle. He's the East Wind. Then there's the West Wind, Zephyrus. I get along with him the best. Probably because he

90 was around the most when we lived in Amuay." In addition to the visceral pleasure Meg

experienced touching and smelling her baby sister, the pleasure of having someone to talk I to in an unfettered manner was dizzying.

Cultures, families, and individuals acquire manners and customs that allow them

to live in close proximity without bloodshed. However, with a sharp enough instrument,

a surgeon can make a penetrating incision, a possibly fatal incision, yet not draw blood.

The delicate balance between moderation and obsession is constantly tested and adjusted,

based on living conditions. People who live in close quarters exercise greater discretion,

and silence, than those in more expansive environments. When Deirdre brought Majella

home from the hospital, from the moment her parents placed the baby in her arms, for the

first time in her life, Meg was struck by a sense of awe and love so intense it rearranged

the cells in her brain and heart and soul. She could barely stand to let the baby out of her

sight and, while Deirdre recuperated, Meg quickly learned from the Marias how to care

for a newborn.

Indulging in the heady pleasure of talking to someone to whom she could tell

anything, Meg trundled along the dune with Dumpling, searching in the sea grapes for the

entrance to the beach. Once she found it, however, she hesitated; it looked as mysterious

as it had the first time. Whispering reassurances to the baby, she plunged in. The light

darkened as she hurried through the tunnel then exploded in a bright burst of sunlight as

they came to the end. The beach was deserted and ran as far as one could see, north and

south, fading into a mix of sea foam and haze. On the horizon, where the sea merged

with the sky, the water appeared to ripple in jagged edges just the way the sun tricked you

91 into thinking that water was shimmering on the asphalt turning soft in the tropical sun at

siesta, right before the rains came.

She walked towards the water, her feet sinking into the sand because of the added

weight of the baby. The noise from the world on the other side of the dunes receded and the splashing from the waves grew louder as they approached the water. Meg spread a towel on the sand, put the baby in the middle of it and handed Dumpling a piece of

driftwood to beat on the towel. "You stay here, now don't go crawling off. Let's see

who's here today." Standing, she put her head back with eyes closed and opened her

arms. "Sons ofEos! It is I, Maria Margarita."

"That's a neat trick, does it work? They never come when I summon them," an

amused voice observed. Meg spun around, stumbling in the sand. A centaur stood

looking down at her from the other side of the towel. She had to look up to see his face,

which was craggy and lined, as he stood many hands high. He was wearing a Hawaiian

shirt with bright red and yellow ginger flowers on a black background. "Mr. Eckberg, at

your service, Senorita Maria Margarita." He took off a battered Yankees cap and swept

Meg a formal bow.

Meg gaped. "Where did you come from?" she finally managed.

"Well, I'm originally from New Jersey, but that was eons ago," Mr. Eckberg

replied. "I probably wouldn't even recognize the place now. This is your sister, I take

it?" He gestured towards his hooves with an unlit cigar stub. Dumpling had crawled

over to him and was hauling herself upright, both arms wrapped around one of his forelegs. She giggled and swayed.

92 "Oh dear, I'm sorry." Meg untangled the baby from his leg and stepped back to see him better. "This is Majella, but we call her Dumpling. I take care of her." The baby held her arms out to Mr. Eckberg, who laughed.

"May I hold her? I don't remember the last time I held a baby." He sat down and took the baby from Meg. "You're a cutie pie, aren't you?" Dumpling squealed delightedly and stiffened her chubby legs to bounce up and down. "See? She likes me.

Babies always do. It's their mothers I have trouble with."

"She's never met a centaur before." Meg looked away, then back, half expecting him to disappear. "Neither have I, to tell you the truth."

"Well, that's understandable, we don't mingle much anymore. Had some bad press for a while there. And then ... well, you know, people are funny. Getting more fussy all the time about only socializing with their own kind. Damn shame, really." Mr.

Eckberg pushed his cap back and scratched a peeling patch of skin on his forehead.

"Phew, sun's awful hot in these parts. You'd think I'd be used to it, living in Greece, huh? But I'm not- I've been sunburned all summer."

"I get sunburned too," Meg replied. "I just bum and freckle. I keep hoping all the freckles will run together and I'll be tan but it never happens."

"Me too," said Mr. Eckberg. "Must be the Celtic blood. On my mother's side.

Fine looking woman but a little high-strung and superstitious. You know how the Irish are."

Meg considered that in silence, not knowing what to say. The waves lapped quietly on the shore and unseen insects buzzed in the hot air. Finally she ventured, "We just moved here. From Venezuela."

93 "That's interesting." Mr. Eckberg sounded sincere. "I've never been to South

America, always wanted to get down there and see the Amazon. Where did you live in I

Venezuela?"

"Well, we lived all over but the last place was on the west coast of the Paraguam1 peninsula. That's where I met the Winds."

"Is that where they've been hanging out?" Mr. Eckberg laughed. "Always wondered where they went off to. Now I know. I'll have to rib Boreas, he hates being teased. Huh- Venezuela to the States, that's a stretch. How do you like it so far?"

Meg concentrated on digging a hole in the sand with a little shell. The dry sand ran back down the sides as quickly as she could bring it up from the bottom of the hole.

"I want to go horne!" she finally exclaimed. She sighed and squinted her eyes at the horizon, watching the sea shimmer through a screen of eyelashes. "Nothing's right here.

I don't understand."

Mr. Eckberg chewed on his cigar. "Don't understand what?"

"I don't understand anything. At horne I could always ask the Marias about anything I needed to know. There don't even seem to be any Marias here. I haven't found them, at any rate. And this morning, it was ... it was all wrong. People are mean."

She threw the shell she'd been digging with towards the water. "It's different here. And

Daddy's angry with me. And I don't know why."

"That's a tough one," Mr. Eckberg sympathized. "I've had lots of experience with capricious gods. Hard to know sometimes what sets them off."

Meg trailed a piece of seaweed through the sand. Minute transparent crabs, startled by the motion, scuttled into their holes. They were so quick they almost couldn't

94 be seen, it was their movement that caught the eye in a sideward glance. She let her eyes drift out of focus to watch the crabs. Against the .sandy screen images started to surface and get bigger and bigger. In Chicicastenango, after they watched the devil dancers, the guide took them to a small lake, deep in the forest, where human sacrifices had been made long ago, long before the Spaniards arrived with the true God to put a stop to all that. The water was black, the bank ringed with stones trod by people who had gone unwillingly to their deaths. The guide said the lake could call to you, and when Meg slitted her eyes, she heard the whispering, heard her name soughing in the windless trees, the lake enticing, entreating, exacting her to come closer, closer, closer. It had no reflection and admitted no light as the trees crowded close, pushing in, their canopy blocking the sunlight. There were no birds, no animals, no sounds. Only eternal stillness.

"I wish we hadn't come here. I don't belong here. I don't belong anywhere. And

I don't have any place to go back to." It burst out, she hadn't even thought it before she said it. The cold stillness from the sacrificial lake seeped into her mind, blocking the heat from the sun. She started to shiver.

"Hey, now." Mr. Eckberg touched her arm, breaking the spell. "Look here, you all right?"

Meg watched her shadow thrown ahead of her, distorted several times larger than she was. She shifted so that it protected Dumpling, who had fallen asleep on the towel.

"You said you were from Greece. Do you live here now?"

Mr. Eckberg accepted the change in subject without comment. "No, we're just here for the summer. Staying up the beach a ways. Nice place, it's hard to find

95 somewhere big enough for the whole Pantheon. Zeus and Hera, well, I guess they figured it would be good to get away for a while." He chewed on his cigar for a bit. I

"Looked like it was working out too, but then the Nereids took it in their heads to try those new fangled two-piece bathing suits." He shook his head in disgust. "They have those in Venezuela?"

"Two piece bathing suits? I don't know, I've never seen one." A fragment of memory from a previous summer slowly surfaced. The beach club, everyone chased out of the water by the Portuguese man-of-wars, the radio, people dancing and laughing.

"But I've heard a song about them." She started singing, "it was an itsy, bitsy, teeny, weeny, yellow polka dot bikini ... "

"That's it," Mr. Eckberg interrupted. "Scandalous, bad enough that they usually run around in those gauzy drapey things but these are beyond the pale." He tsk tsked,

"Young people these days."

"What's wrong with them?" Meg asked. She wasn't even sure if she was asking about the Nereids or bathing suits but Mr. Eckberg didn't seem to mind questions the way her parents did.

"Well, Zeus took a fancy to one of the Nereids. Lord, lord, I hoped we'd get through this summer. It was a rough spring on Mount Olympus, let me tell you. But

Zeus and Hera finally made their peace. As a token he gave her the Brooch you have."

"The brooch I found? It's from Zeus?" Meg was astonished.

"It's known as the Brooch of Clytemnestra. Beautiful, isn't it? Part of the spoils of Troy. No one's sure how old it is and that ruby is worth a king's ransom. Also reputed to have powers, but I've never heard exactly what they are - you know how

96 cryptic the Oracle is. She's just gotta hold all the cards. Annoying woman, I always say." He stopped and cleared his throat. "Not to too many people though."

"Anyhoo, Agamemnon brought the Brooch back with him. Gave it to

Clytemnestra when he returned. The night of the fateful banquet, as the poets like to say.

Clytemnestra tried to propitiate the gods afterwards by offering up the Brooch but that didn't satisfy Zeus. Can't have mortals running around murdering their spouses, sets a bad precedent. Although he did keep it, gave it to Hera when we arrived here. She was on the tail end of being angry with him so that seemed to satisfy her." Mr. Eckberg stopped talking. He stared out at the sea, absentmindedly patting Dumpling on the back.

"Then what happened, how did the brooch fall in my yard?" Meg prompted.

"It was the Nymphs in those damn bathing suits. Poseidon really should keep a tighter rein on his retinue. Uh ... Zeus got a little carried away, it's hard to explain to someone your age." Mr. Eckberg took off his cap and scratched the back of his head. He was mostly bald, with a monk's tonsure and a scalp pink with sunburn. "Zeus didn't behave well, as is his wont, but neither did Hera. I don't really think anything happened but there was gossip... She gets so insanely jealous. So Hera threw the Brooch out the window that night in a fit of pique. That's how it landed in your yard. And now they've tentatively made up and she wants it back. It's a rather fragile peace and she doesn't want Zeus to know she threw the Brooch away. She promised him she'd wear it to the banquet tonight. So she sent me to retrieve it." He shifted the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. "I don't suppose there's any chance you have it with you, is there?"

"No. No, it's at home. I hid it."

97 Mr. Eckberg sighed noisily. "I was afraid of that. Told her there wasn't enough time for this. Fool's errand. Well. Think you could run home and get it? I can watch I the baby for you."

"What time is it? I don't have a watch."

Mr. Eckberg squinted at the western sky. "From Phoebus' progress, I'd say it's close to 5 o'clock."

Meg gasped. "5 o'clock! Oh no, I'm going to be late. Again. My mother will be furious. I promised her we'd be home by now." She rolled Dumpling over gently.

"C'mon sweetie, you have to wake up, we have to go."

"Hold on now." Mr. Eckberg stood up. "Here, I'll carry the baby for you. What about the Brooch? Can you come back to the beach with it tonight? I could meet you here."

Meg was getting ready to head for the dunes. "I can't, I just can't. We're having company for dinner. But I can meet you back here tomorrow and give it to you then."

Mr. Eckberg sighed. "I'll try and stall Hera tonight for you. But no guarantee - I need it back soon. Believe me, kiddo, you don't want to make an enemy of Hera."

"Tomorrow," Meg promised, looking at the setting sun. "I'll be here tomorrow afternoon. Please tell Hera I'm very, very sorry, tell her- tell her anything you think will help."

"Having the Brooch will help. I'll be here tomorrow. Right here." They'd reached the break in the sea grape wall. Mr. Eckberg handed Dumpling to Meg.

She hesitated for a moment then shook hands with him before running through the tunnel. While pushing the stroller roughly towards the sidewalk, one wheel snagged and

98 twisted in the soft sand, almost tipping the stroller over. Meg yanked the stroller backwards and stooped to straighten out the wheel. She looked up to see the sun dipping I below the palm trees. She glanced back but the tunnel entrance was dark and nothing moved. She swallowed, tasting fear. More carefully this time, she slowly steered the stroller up onto the sidewalk.

After Meg parked the stroller in the garage, she peeked into the kitchen to assess the situation. A strong scent of curry, picante and sweet, floated through the screen door, accompanied by a cacophony of clanking and bubbling pans. It sounded like everyone was in the kitchen, which might or might not indicate a problem. Meg took a quick breath and walked into the kitchen, holding Dumpling close to keep her from harm's way of the cooking. Isabella frowned in concentration as she folded napkins, the tip of her tongue caught between her lips. Maureen looked over from counting out place settings of cutlery and rolled her eyes. Meg clenched her back teeth.

Deirdre turned from the stove and steadily regarded her eldest daughter. "I'll deal with you later, young lady. First, you get yourself and that baby washed and dressed.

Then come right back here. On the double!"

Meg hurried down the hall to her parents' bedroom. "Oof - you are getting so heavy," she muttered as she slung Dumpling over the side of her crib. Dumpling squawked in protest. "Oh, shush -just stay there for a minute and be quiet, ok? Please?"

Meg glanced up and down the hallway to make sure the hall was empty, then hurried back to her bedroom and closed the door. She scrambled through the laundry pile for the brooch, breathing a sigh of relief when she felt the metal inside the sock. Sinking

99 into a cross-legged position, she slowly pulled the brooch out. The Winds seldom spoke about the Pantheon, but sometimes, after they'd been away for a while, upon their return they'd regale her with tales of where they'd been and adventures they'd had with Zeus or one of the other gods. And now they were all here. Meg shook her head in disbelief.

After a moment the ruby began to glow and pulse, seemingly in time with her breathing. The swirls of silver appeared to flow even though Meg knew metal couldn't yield; that was impossible. But the brooch belonged to Hera; that seemed impossible too.

She traced the silver with her index finger, following the path as it flowed towards the ruby, eddying around the stone, pouring sacrificial light into the crimson heart of the stone.

With everyone at the other end of the house helping with dinner, the room was still. Meg slid her legs out in front of her and rested her back against the bed. She absently noticed for the first time that her socks didn't match; one was white, the other yellow stripes. Sand from her shoes drifted slowly onto the floor next to the laundry pile.

The open window showed shadows starting to smooth the edges of the light from the setting sun, while down the block a woman's voice indistinctly summoned someone.

The bedroom door crashed open as Maureen burst in. "Get out!" Meg shrieked, scrambling to shove the brooch underneath the dirty clothes. "Don't you ever knock?"

She threw a dirty shirt at Maureen.

"You're crazy!" Maureen snapped as she crossed her hands in front of her face.

"This is my room too! You better get out there right away - what are you doing, anyway? The Ragos are going to be here any minute."

100 "Oh, nuts. Can you help me? Please? I have to get washed - can you get

Dumpling dressed? Double please?? I'll make your bed tomorrow morning, promise." I

Maureen considered. "For a week- and it has to be neat."

"What?" Meg's voice was muffled by the shirt she was pulling over her head.

"No!" her head popped back out, "three mornings."

"Four."

"All right, all right," hopping on one foot, looking for her other shoe, "four."

"You better hurry up," Maureen shot over her shoulder on her way out the door.

"Mom's ready to kill someone."

Dinner preparations were in full swing as the girls came back into the kitchen.

Deirdre moved swiftly and efficiently around the kitchen, stirring, chopping, watching two timers and issuing a steady stream of instructions.

"Hey now, girls, isn't your mother a remarkable woman- a veritable general in the field of battle!" The door to the dining room swung open as Dan danced into the kitchen with the DeCastro Sisters singing backup. No tenemos bananas, no tenemos bananas aquf... He caught Deirdre around the waist and sang as he cha-chaed. Hay frijoles y ...

"Dan- stop!" As Deirdre put her hand out, she knocked a knife off the counter.

"All right, there you go; 'knife falls ... ' - and, look, there's the door bell. Our guests are here: Isabella, go with your father to answer the door; Maureen, take the baby, make sure her playpen is far away from the hors d'oeuvres." She took off her apron, and smoothed her hair, "Meg, we need salt and pepper, and wine glasses, on the table. When the first timer goes off, the chicken comes out of the oven. Let me know when the second timer

101 goes and I'll serve." The door swung shut behind her, leaving a sudden silence in the kitchen.

Meg bent to pick the knife up off the floor. Knife falls, gentleman calls. What if this foretold Mr. Eckberg, instead of Mr. Rago? But he'd already called. Could it mean

Zeus? Boreas, gruff and blunt, had been known to fall afoul of Zeus when he didn't guard his anger. Boreas himself never mentioned it, but one time Zephyrus explained the reason she hadn't seen Boreas for awhile was because he'd been banished for a spell.

Boreas was bigger than Uncle Malachi, fiercer than Daddo - if Zeus could banish Boreas for something he said, what would his wife do to keep from making him angry at her?

The knife caught the light and flashed momentarily in her eyes. Memory swirled like the current of silver flowing towards the ruby; the flashing blade moving towards her was held by a man who wore a tattered uniform. She had taken a forbidden shortcut through an abandoned construction site while walking home from school, late for lunch because Senora Wilson had delayed her for a lecture on daydreaming in class. Vines grew over and through the concrete slabs, obscuring their original shapes, while trees crowded close to shadow the broken foundation and create homes for the birds and monkeys. The man holding the knife appeared suddenly from behind a partially collapsed wall. He was speaking but the fear roaring in her ears drowned his words.

Meg could only watch his lips moving. The indentation on his top lip was well defined.

A Cupid's Bow. Meg incongruously remembered her mother telling her that was called a

Cupid's Bow as Deirdre taught her how to blow a kiss by placing her index finger there and kissing it. His tongue was unnaturally pink and wet drops of spit lodged in his untrimmed moustache. Frozen in the heat of the noonday tropical sun, with sweat

102 trickling down her back, Meg could only watch helplessly as the flashing blade came closer. A sudden gust of wind knocked a branch from a mango tree against the wall. The I movement bounced mangoes onto the concrete and set a small flock of green parrots screeching into the air. The soldier dropped to a crouch and wheeled to look behind him.

Released by the sound, Meg fled, scrambling and falling over the uneven ground, cutting her knees and palms badly.

Although the fathers searched, they never found the man. The grownups speculated he was a deserter from one side or another of La Revoluci6n. Children were chaperoned for a few days to and from school by watchful parents, then slowly the incident faded. Meg never forgot. He knew she could identify him. She'd seen his face, watched his lips move. Even if he shaved, she would recognize his Cupid's Bow and tongue. Meg knew two things: he was looking for her and the Winds had saved her. At the time, she hadn't met them yet, but once she did, she understood. But even with their protection, el soldado was still looking for her. She shivered. Someone walking over your grave; that's what her mother said when you shivered even though you weren't cold.

Fear made her cold.

The kitchen door swung open and Dan and Chris Rago came in with the ice bucket. "Don't just stand there staring into space, Meggle, join the party!" Dan ran water over the bottom of the ice cube tray, which rattled and clanked. "Jiminy, don't you hate the way the metal on these things takes your skin off? C'mon, Chris- I've got the ice, you escort Meg and we'll rejoin the ladies." Chris gallantly offered Meg his arm and they headed out for the living room.

103 "Chris!" Dan beckoned. "C'mere, let me show you my equipment." At one end of the living room, Dan had installed his stereo in the built-in shelves next to the I fireplace. "Look -look at that receiver!" Dan pointed with pride. "Stereo! And I've got some stereo records, we can play them after dinner so you can hear it."

"Hey, I helped Buddy put in those shelves." Chris ran a hand appreciatively over a shelf. "Look at that - plumb as you please. 'Ole Buddy was a carpenter. Everything he made in this house was built to last."

Deirdre looked around the living room doubtfully. "The place was a mess when we got here. I don't want to know what was in that refrigerator- or for how long!"

"Aw, it's such a sad story," Marcia shook her head. "Buddy and Pernella,

Buddy's wife, they worked and worked on this house. You know, they were going to retire and have their grandkids come visit, she used to talk about it all the time. Then, I don't know how to explain it, Pernella, she, just seemed ... to get lost. Didn't know where she was, what she was doing. It took everything he had to look after her, and, of course, what does a man know about keeping a house? We all helped as much as we

could, but," Marcia shook her head again and waved her hand around the living room,

"look at this."

The O'Briens obediently paused and looked around the living room. The walls had faded to a dull grayish tone, making it difficult to discern the original light blue color, which still showed in the comers. Mildew streaks ran down the wall underneath the window frames, clearly indicating where the windows had leaked. The thick rug, formerly a creamy ivory, was stained brown in patches. While boxes lined the walls,

Deirdre had unpacked enough to give the room a flavor of her style. The traditional lines

104 of the furniture she and Dan bought after they were married were belied by the bright tropical fabric used to reupholster the cushions. Deirdre had an uncanny talent for mixing eclectic styles of fabric and objects d'art she'd collected in their travels. The result was a striking and vibrant look that underscored the shabbiness of the room. Lamp light reflected harshly off the uncurtained windows, adding to the humid heat of the late

summer evening.

"Well," Deirdre considered, "I guess I won't say anything else about the house.

That is a sad story. What happened to them?"

"They moved to Phoenix, I think. Is that right, Chris, honey? Did Buddy take

Pernella out to Phoenix?"

Chris nodded. "One of their daughters lives out there."

"Hey, Chris!" Dan waved a cover excitedly. "Look at this one; Charlie Parker with Jay McShann and his Orchestra! It's out of print - I bought it from a guy in Caracas who was moving to the Middle East and over his weight limit. He had a great collection

- I bought a number of his records."

Chris looked admiringly at Dan. "The Middle East! That's a long way from

Brooklyn. I thought we were being adventurous 'cuz my Dad moved us down here, but you sure got us beat!"

"Well," Dan tried to look modest. "It has been an adventure at times, you can certainly say that."

Meg slowly circled the dining room table, checking the grownups' place settings.

Maureen was setting places at the card table Dan had set up for the girls at the far end of

105 the dining room. Isabella sidled up to Meg and whispered, "How can a grown up get lost? Did she lose her shoes?"

Meg whispered back, "It means she went crazy, estuvo tan loca."

"jAy!" Isabella gasped. "~Aquf? ~En este casa?"

Meg crossed her eyes at Isabella and hissed, "Sf - ese old lady, una bruja, lived here before us and went crazy! In this house! jCompletamente loca!"

Isabella's scream was drowned out by the sudden saxophone riff that wailed through the living room. Everyone jumped and Dumpling howled.

"Sorry, sorry!" Dan leapt to adjust the volume, looking sheepish, while Chris snickered.

"Men and their toys," Marcia laughed. "With Chris it's any kind of tool he can finagle out of the budget."

"Some things never change," Deirdre shrugged casually. "My brother's the same way. Whatever he wants ... " She looked sharply at the girls. "What's going on over there?" Maureen was yanking the back of Isabella's shirt while Meg giggled. "Maureen, leave your sister alone. Meg, are you listening for the timers?"

"Yes, Mom," Meg turned to go back in the kitchen, scrunching her face up and leering horribly at Isabella as she left.

Isabella wailed. Deirdre narrowed her eyes. Maureen quickly dragged Isabella over to where Sarah sat next to Dumpling's playpen, whispering something in her ear while pushing down on her shoulders. Isabella glared mutinously, but then gave up and turned to Sarah.

" .. .in space, so I think things just might be changing."

106 Deirdre looked at Marcia. "I'm sorry, what did you say? I was ... " She waved over at the girls.

"I understand," Marcia laughed. "That's why I don't want any more. Maybe one." She waved her hand lazily. "Too much work."

"Too much work?" Deirdre regarded the ice in her drink. "But when you get married you have children."

"Oh, honey, I converted when I married Chris because otherwise his mother would've dropped down dead on the altar, but I am not ruining my figure and my day with twenty children. Uh-uh." She blew a smoke ring that lingered in the still air.

Deirdre stared at it in silence. Marcia poked her finger through the ring. "See? That's part of it- it's not just a man in space. This Jewish lady in New York, a Mrs. Friedan, wrote a book Chris' cousin told me about. All the girls are reading it, especially since the priest told them not to. It's all about women being stuck at home instead of being able to do what they want."

Deirdre demurred, "But this is what I want."

Marcia tilted her head. "Did you go to college? I didn't. I want to go to college."

"I did want to go," Deirdre smiled fondly at the memory. "I wanted to study botany."

"Botany?"

Deirdre sat up, excited. "Oh, it's fascinating - how plants work, how they've evolved, adapted- we saw plants in Venezuela that haven't even been named yet! They haven't been discovered and I saw them! I took notes and photographs, I sketched them and, well. .. " her voice trailed off. "I thought the girls might be interested someday."

107 "Well, why didn't you study that?"

"Oh, you know," Deirdre sat back, waved at the living and dining rooms. "My I father thought college was wasted on a woman, he'd only pay for us to study nursing or teaching - something that would be practical for being a mother. Then Dan and I became engaged. He'd just gotten home from the War, we had to wait until he graduated from college to get married. You know. And I had to take care of my grandmother, she was quite sick. She died shortly before we got married. All those things." She drained her glass.

"Mom! Timer," Meg shouted. "Mom!!"

"Honestly, Meg! I heard you the first time. In fact, I think they heard you in

Brooklyn." Deirdre swatted at Meg as she walked into the kitchen but Meg ducked.

Maureen scrambled up, "Want some help, Mommy?"

Deirdre smiled at Maureen. "No, thanks, sweetie, I'm just taking the chicken out.

It needs to sit for a little while so the juices can redistribute, then we'll eat."

Maureen bowed, "Sientese, Senor Pollo." Meg kicked at her ankle but Maureen nimbly side stepped.

Deirdre checked the chicken, her children, and glanced over at the men, still rifling through Dan's records, before she sat back down. "Dan, I think we're ready for fresh drinks here, then dinner." She smiled at Marcia. "It's always so nice to meet new neighbors. And it's wonderful that Sarah and Isabella are the same age."

"Speaking of which, where is she?" Marcia looked around to see the girls eating handfuls of peanuts. "Oh ... Sarah, honey, not too many of those - you'll spoil your dinner."

108 "I'm sorry it's just peanuts," Deirdre said. "They almost don't count as hors d'oeuvres, do they? We'll do better next time."

Marcia sat back, shaking her head. "Anything's fine for me. I coulda killed Chris for agreeing to come over tonight when you folks just moved in. And you look so nice, too - that skirt is spectacular, I've never seen anything like it. Where on earth did you find it?" The skirt was made of heavy black cotton fabric, shot through with silver thread embroidered in stick figures and symbols. It belted tightly at the waist and fell in stiff folds, the figures seeming to dance as they shimmered in the light.

"This? Oh, this is from Guatemala. We saw the most amazing fabrics there- this is real silver, can you imagine? The women sold the material in the market place. I bought extra for the girls' hope chests to make them skirts when they're older." Both women looked over to where the girls were sitting in a circle around the Dumpling on the side of the room.

Marcia shook her head. "Lord - four of them! How do you manage? Oh, thank you Dan," taking the proffered Manhattan.

"We're hoping for a dozen, actually." Dan winked at Deirdre. "Got all the names picked out - boys' and girls'."

"NO! Meg!" Deirdre started to rise, reaching her hand out. "Don't let Dumpling put that in her mouth, she'll choke. Maureen, move those peanuts back where they belong. Over by Mr. Rago, yes, that'll be fine. Honestly, you expect them to behave when we have company ... Well, we're not going to manage too well without help, I can tell you that."

109 "A dozen! Oh, honey, you're going to need lots of help. Me, I'm fine with one.

Maybe two, we'll see."

"Ah, 'worthy fruit of the marriage ... ' "Dan quoted. "Last I heard, the new Pope hasn't changed anything. Can't imagine he will, either. It's worked just fine for almost two thousand years."

"Hmph, I say if the Pope wants us all to make that many babies, he can have a few himself," Marcia snorted.

"Honey!" Chris looked uncomfortable.

"Marcia!" Deirdre tried to look scandalized but started to laugh.

"Well, he has changed things. Have you heard? It's called Vatican II, were they talking about it down there?" Marcia looked from Dan to Deirdre.

Smoothing the folds in her skirt, Deirdre looked away. Dan snorted, "Rumors.

There are always rumors. Nothing can change the Church."

"Chris," Deirdre said brightly. "Marcia tells me you men folk were talking about hurricane shutters this afternoon. Dan is going away on a trip soon, are we safe here?"

"Oh, no problem, no problem at all." He looked around. "Is this an ashtray?" He dubiously eyed a flattened skull sitting on the table.

"Oh," Deirdre frowned. "That's Dan's idea of a joke. It's a chinchilla skull.

Really, Dan, that doesn't belong in the living room."

"Hey," Dan protested. '"ole George here was a good friend to the Wilsons.

Neighbors of ours in Caripito. Alas, poor George, they knew him well. No one's fault he escaped and got run over."

110 Meg watched Mr. Rago tum the skull over in his hand. She remembered George running around the Wilson's living room, his fur the softest thing she'd ever touched. I

Mr. Wilson let her father's Eagle Scout troop dissect George after the accident and they presented the skull to Dan as a present. Her father could make the skull seem to talk and send Isabella shrieking from the room. Meg didn't want to look but couldn't help herself.

Like the photographs of the first, second and third degree bums in the first aid section of the Scout manual; they were horrible and fascinating at the same time. Once she started looking she couldn't stop. It didn't make any sense, she reflected, but then neither did so many things all of a sudden. But George shouldn't be an ashtray. She hurried over with a brass ashtray for Mr. Rago.

"Oh, thank you, sweetie," Deirdre smiled at Meg. "Chris, we bought those in

Mexico- isn't the workmanship striking?"

"Very handsome. What a life- traveling around as much as you have. I've never even been out of the United States- and Marcia's lived in this backwater state her whole life."

"Why, honey, I wouldn't call it a backwater. And things are starting to pick up now, that's what I was just telling Deirdre. Remember what President Kennedy said last

year about putting a man on the moon in a decade -look at what they're doing on Merritt

Island. That's going to happen from Florida!"

Meg quickly glanced at her mother, who looked up, startled. They all knew better than to mention President Kennedy to their father. It was like saying Kitty O'Shea's name while Daddo was in the room.

Ill Dan banged his glass on the table. "Kennedy?! Hal He was the one who turned his back on the Americans in Venezuela when the fighting started. He doesn't want problems with Castro? He's got problems whether he likes it or not - you think Fidel's going to forget the Bay of Pigs? You think-"

"Dan." Deirdre stood up. "I need the girls to help me in the kitchen, and ... " she looked around, "and I think Chris needs his drink freshened."

In the silence the needle could be heard skritching against the paper. "Lord!

Meg, get that record. Sorry, folks." Dan tossed off his drink. "I'm ready for another­

Chris, you do need a refill. Marcia, how 'bout you?"

"I'm fine, thanks. Deirdre, I'll keep an eye on the kids," Marcia said, "unless I can help in the kitchen?"

"No, no, but thanks, we'll do fine - girls?" Maureen quickly followed their mother into the kitchen while Meg held the record's sides with her palms, and carefully turned it over. You had to be twelve before you could play records on Dan's stereo and it was still a nervous honor for her. When she finished, she headed into the kitchen, hearing the drums start up behind her on the stereo.

It always seemed to Meg like there were more than two other people in the kitchen when Deirdre was cooking. She moved quickly, tying on an apron and cataloguing remaining tasks while Maureen deftly dodged out of her way. "Meg, we need milk for all the children, then serving pieces on the table. Maureen, check that the adult's table has salt and pepper, and now you can put the butter out. All right," sampling a sauce, "everything's ready to go, let's serve."

112 Marcia came in, "I left the kids with the men, they may as well do something.

Mmm, what smells so good?"

Deirdre gave Meg a little push towards the door. "Put Dumpling in her high chair, make sure she's not close enough to get anything off the table, then get your father's lighter to light the candles. Marcia, we put the children at a separate table.

Usually we have them eat earlier than the adults, but we're not really on a decent schedule yet."

"Oh, my, that's fine." Marcia admired Deirdre's efficiency, "This is all fine."

In the living room Isabella and Sarah were herding Dumpling, trying to keep her away from the ashtrays and drinks. As the men watched, Dan laughed and told Chris about the time Meg finished everyone's drinks as her parents bade their guests good night. "Drunk as a lord- two years old!"

"Oh, Daddy," Meg giggled and leaned against his chair. He tried to haul her on to his lap but her torso sloped backwards awkwardly as she partially lay over his legs.

"A heffalump! Just wait, Chris- it's trouble when they get too big to fit on your lap. That's trouble, my friend." He tickled Meg, "Trouble with a capital T .. . "

"and that rhymes with P and that stands"

"Dan." Deirdre stood in the dining room, holding steaming bowls. "Margaret

Mary. The candles are not lit."

Dan brusquely pushed Meg up. "Do as your mother says."

"But I need your lighter." Meg hesitated, quickly looking from her mother to her father. "Please, Daddy."

113 "Here you go, Meg." Mr. Rago held his lighter up with a flourish. "Let's see if we can all help get dinner on the table. Dan, you've got a tribe here- you're a lucky man I indeed."

"Indeed," Dan replied absently.

Meg covertly watched her parents settle at their table. Between the two tables, the gathering was noisy and busy. It was important to follow closely because adults changed quickly, without warning and sometimes with disastrous results. She'd noted that sudden shifts were more likely to occur when they had company. Now Meg observed Deirdre watching her children closely, monitoring their manners. Usually the Maria serving dinner kept Deirdre somewhat distracted but tonight there was no Maria. The lack of that comforting presence circling the table gave Meg the eerie feeling that her back was exposed and some one was sneaking up on her. She had to keep fighting the urge to tum around and look. In order to stay focused, she tried to concentrate on what Isabella was saymg.

"iEl mejor!" Isabella finished triumphantly. Sarah regarded her quizzically.

"The best what?" Meg asked.

"Stories! You tell el mejor stories! Could you tell us one now, please?" Isabella was bouncing with excitement. Deirdre had long ago started a tradition of telling the girls stories at dinner when Dan was away and Meg had continued the tradition at the children's dinners.

"I'll help!" Maureen chimed in.

"Ok," Meg laughed. "umm ... let me think. Ok. This story is about four," she smiled at Sarah, "no, five, girls. Five girls, who lived on a sail boat called ... "

114 "The Good Ship Lollipop!" Isabella shouted happily.

"No. No, this time they were on the Sloop John B." Meg paused to sip her milk.

"And the Sloop John B sailed each place the wind can blow." Maureen started humming

"The Four Winds and the Seven Seas", the song Meg quoted. "This was a magic sail boat because it never touched land, never saw the hills of home. So the girls sailed and sailed, over the waves and through the days and across the years. During the day they played with mermaids and at night they read books by starlight."

"What did they eat?" asked Sarah.

"Oh, they ate chocolate. Imaginate; for breakfast, lunch and dinner, they ate chocolate. And they drank grape juice. All day."

Isabella sighed contentedly.

"But-" Meg paused dramatically. "One day a storm came up. It was a big storm, a very big storm- the thunder crashed, boom! and the lightning flashed, boom, boom!

And then a HUGE wave came up- and the boat rose upandupandup and then one little girl fell off and then the other little girl fell off-"

"jUna oleada!" Isabella shrieked in terror.

"Girls?" called Deirdre. "What's going on?"

"Nothing, Mom!" Meg and Maureen chorused.

"Remember," Meg reassured the table, "this was a magic sailboat. It had a guardian angel, a baby boy guardian angel. He snatched the baby off the boat and made sure the little girl, no, the two little girls, who fell off, swam safely away."

"We swam away with the angel," Isabella sat back in relief.

115 "But! The wave got bigger and bigger. Poseidon raced along side the boat with dolphins leaping in the waves behind him. He threw a trident at the captain and captured I her, dragging her along with him as the wave rolled off to the horizon. The other girl steered the boat to safety by following the angel. She picked up the little girls from the water and took the baby back from the angel. And then they all had chocolate and grape juice for dinner."

Maureen stopped humming and looked at Meg. "What happened to the captain?"

Meg looked down at her plate. Mr. Eckberg had mentioned Poseidon. And the

Nymphs. Something about causing trouble. "I don't know." She shivered again.

"Someone walking over your grave, sweetie?" Meg started, she hadn't heard her mother come up to their table. "Just an old superstition." Deirdre laughed at Chris' puzzled look. "You know the Irish - we have a superstition for everything."

"And a saint," Dan admonished. "You make us sound like ignoramuses out of the bog."

"Well," Deirdre replied, "I'll have to see if I can come up with any regarding storms." She turned to Chris. "We didn't finish our discussion before dinner. I am worried about a hurricane- especially since Dan will be leaving for a trip soon. How do we know if there's going to be one?"

"Oh, they give news reports on TV," Chris replied around a mouthful of food.

"TV!!" Meg and Maureen looked at each other in glee, then turned hopefully to their mother. Television had been a rare and wondrous occurrence at home. Only two families owned a television set, in part due to lack of programming. The only program

116 on during the day was Popeye, which played in Spanish on a schedule no one could fathom, but still, it was an exciting thought.

"I don't think we need a TV." Deirdre shook her head at the girls before turning back to Chris. "I ask because Marcia was telling me about the storm in '47."

"Holy moly - that was one hell of a, er, excuse me, one terrific storm!" Chris shook his head. "We'd just moved here and I'll never forget it, will you, Marsh? Just about everyone in town has a story from that storm. Our front porch was ripped right off the house; my mother was on her knees praying to St. Jude that the roof would hold. And when the eye came through, the Casons, across the street- from Michigan, didn't know any better - thought the storm was over and went outside. People were shouting at them to get back inside but they wouldn't listen. And then- ooee! When the other side of the storm hit, a flying rocking chair - not from our porch though, Mother only had straight backed chairs, probably came from the Etta sisters up the block - smacked Randy Cason as he was trying to get back inside, broke his leg in three places. 'Course we couldn't get him to a doctor for days afterwards so old Mama Harnett, who delivered babies for the pickers, set his leg. Hope she did better with babies, 'cause Randy walks with a limp to this very day."

Deirdre flicked her finger under her chin and Meg realized she was staring at Mr.

Rago with her mouth hanging open. She glanced around the table. Isabella's mouth was open too, working her way up to a full scream. Nervous, Meg turned to her father who had leaned back in his chair to be able to see the children's table.

"Does Randy have a sister named Dorothy?" he asked.

117 "Dorothy?" Chris looked puzzled. He glanced over at Marcia. "No, the Casons didn't have any girls, did they, Marcia?"

Dan laughed. "I meant, it sounds like something from Oz, doesn't it, girls?"

"Oh no. No sir, this wasn't something out of a book or movie, this was real.

Right here in Desolasol."

"Dan, I don't think that's funny." Deirdre was tugging up on Isabella's elbow, preventing her from sliding further off her chair. "This isn't something to make light of.

I'm worried about being here alone with the children."

"Judas Priest!" Dan threw his napkin on the table. "Dee, have I ever left you and the children unprotected?"

Deirdre stiffly sat back down and arched her neck to look around the table.

"Marcia, Chris- anyone for seconds?"

"Oh, no, thank you - that was wonderful!" Marcia glanced over at Chris.

"Maybe you can teach me how to make curry. Tell you what - teach me how to make curry and I'll teach you how to make real Southern biscuits!"

Chris closed his eyes blissfully. "Deirdre, take her up on that offer - Marcia makes heavenly biscuits!"

"Why, thank you, honey," Marcia beamed.

Meg was trying to convince Isabella to finish her peas. The rule was clear; everyone ate what was served to them. "Isabella, you have to finish, don't make Mom mad while we have company."

Isabella wrinkled her nose. "They have those squishy, stinky things." She poked an offending pearl onion with her fork.

118 "Isabella," Maureen leaned over to whisper. "Te recuerdas la bruja - I told you before dinner- she'll git you if you're bad. iY ella esta aquf- aquf mismo- right now, in this house, watching you!"

Isabella was over her limit for excitement and upset. She pushed back sharply from the table, yelling wildly.

Deirdre was up in a flash. "Girls! Now. Marcia and Chris, I'm so sorry- let's have our coffee in the living room like civilized people. Margaret - you and Maureen will clear and start the dishes, please."

In the kitchen Meg whirled around and hissed at Maureen "Trouble maker! Now we're all going to get it."

"Oh," Maureen was unconcerned, "we are not." Trouble rolled off her. Her guileless look, combined with a straight forward manner, fooled most adults into thinking they were dealing with a pliable child. However, other children quickly pegged her as a mischief maker who was fearless, most likely because she was rarely caught. "Not unless you tell. And you're a big baby," she spat at Isabella.

The door swung open to admit Deirdre. "I am not interested in hearing any bickering out here, you hear me? I want that table cleared and set for dessert while I start the coffee. Isabella, you may go to your room."

"Pero, Mommy, hay una bruja en este casa. Like the picture in my book."

"English, Isabella, English. A witch. And the picture in your book is just a picture. It's not real, not at all. There's no witch in this house."

"But, Mommy ... !"

119 "Enough! Sarah is still here - take Sarah to your room and you two can play.

Quietly, you hear? I don't want to hear any shouting or fighting." She turned away to I focus on counting scoops of coffee into the pot, "Don't interrupt me. One, two ... "

As Meg collected dishes from the table, the adults settled in the living room.

"Daddy, can we listen to the Smothers Brothers, please?"

"May we ... " Deirdre's voice carne from the kitchen.

"Oh, Meggie - you're the girl for me," Dan laughed. He turned to the Ragas.

"Last year I was in San Francisco for an audit review, and one night the guys all went out to a club where we heard an act called The Smothers Brothers. I bought their records for the girls and they love them. And now - ba-bump!" Dan drum rolled the coffee table.

"Chris, how 'bout some Bailey's to go with your coffee? Marcia? Oh, Dee, let me help you with that." He jumped up to take the tray laden with a coffee pot and cups and

saucers from Deirdre.

Meg stared at the tray as her mother handed out cups and passed around cream

and sugar. The silver coffee set had belonged to her maternal great-grandmother. A heavy ornate wreath of grapes and leaves woven together ringed the tray. She had never

liked it because it was such a chore to polish all the little curves and swirls. But tonight,

as she stared at it, she relaxed and her eyes started to go out of focus. The grapes leaves

seemed to twine like ivy tendrils, melting and flowing around the edge of the tray, creating a sheen that shimmered and danced as it circled. Like the brooch, she thought.

"Meg! Are you listening to me?" Meg looked up, startled. "Honestly, I just don't know what's gotten into you kids tonight." Deirdre turned to Marcia. "You must

120 think we never have company. Meg, I asked you to please take Dumpling and put her in bed."

"Ok, Mom." Meg bent and scooped up Dumpling. "V amonos, my baby love."

"Buh, huh!" Dumpling waved to an appreciative audience. The grownups laughed and waved back, Deirdre blowing her a kiss. After changing and tucking her in,

Meg quietly tiptoed out. She stopped to look in on Sarah and Isabella happily playing with dolls. She thought their vacant staring eyes, and graceless naked plastic bodies were

grotesque. When Nana Margaret gave Meg a Chatty Cathy doll one year for Christmas,

she and Maureen beheaded it with a machete. After that, Nana didn't send her any more dolls. Isabella, however, loved dolls and filled her entire moving box with them.

Meg crossed the hall and looked in her room, half expecting to see the brooch

glowing. The room was dark. But the silence felt alive, expectant, like the silence in the confessional booth, after the door closed, before the priest slid open his partition. Meg made the Sign of The Cross and quickly pulled the door shut. Standing in the dark hallway, she listened to the girls laughing across the hall, to the music and voices coming

from the light in the living room. The door behind her back pulsed in concert with her breathing. The laughter, music, voices and lights seemed to recede, leaving her portion

of the hall to become darker and darker.

The hall light blazed on, blinding her. Meg cried out and covered her eyes. "Oh,

I'm so sorry - I didn't mean to startle you!" Mrs. Rago looked concerned. "I was looking for Sarah, it's time for us to go home. Are you all right?"

Meg blinked. ''I'm fine," she nodded. "I was ... I'm fine- Sarah's right here.

Isabella, vamos."

121 While good-byes were said at the front door, Meg wandered into the kitchen where Maureen was washing the dishes. "It's about time," she said, looking over her I

shoulder.

Meg's job was to dry and put away. She picked up a dish towel and flicked it at

Maureen's bottom. "Wash, wench!"

Maureen giggled and scooped up a handful of soap suds to blow at Meg. "That's

enough!" Deirdre commanded from the doorway. "I've just about had my fill of you two tonight. Maureen, you're excused to get ready for bed. I want to speak with your sister."

Maureen widened her eyes and ohed her mouth into a little circle at Meg. "Yes,

Mom," she said meekly and pulled off her rubber gloves. "Here you go." She handed the gloves to Meg and skipped out of the kitchen.

Deirdre started putting food in the refrigerator.

"Mom ... " Meg began.

"Wait until I finish," Deirdre's voice was muffled, coming out of the refrigerator.

Meg turned back to the dishes. The record had ended in the living room and there

was silence until a new one started. Maracas pulsed; ONE, two, three; Meg's foot

tapped, both from nerves and the music. Her father would want to dance soon, her

mother didn't like dancing, and Meg didn't want to be in the kitchen. ONE, two, three.

"Exactly what did I say to you this afternoon?"

Meg jumped. She'd stopped watching her mother, hadn't realized Deirdre had

closed the refrigerator and was looking at her. It would be worse to pretend she didn't know what Deirdre was talking about. "You said you needed me to help get dinner ready."

122 "I believe my exact words were 'I need you home in plenty of time to help', weren't they?" Meg opened her mouth. Deirdre held up a warning finger. "And no

Mulberry Street stories, either."

Meg stared at the dishwater. She knew her mother wouldn't believe she'd been

delayed by a centaur. Who needed Hera's brooch returned. ONE, two, three, ONE, two, three; her foot tapped faster.

Deirdre shook her head in frustration. "Margaret, you're going to be thirteen next month. I expect you to act your age. I expect you to be a responsible member of this

family - and that means you do what you're told. It also means you are honest and helpful and reliable."

Meg felt her face getting hot. She did, she thought mutinously, she did. But

somehow, it always seemed to come out wrong. It wasn't fair, it wasn't her fault. She

scrubbed a pan harder, trying not to cry.

"Honestly," Deirdre continued, "sometimes, I think Isabella acts more grown up than you do."

"Isabella plays with dolls!" The words burst out with more force than Meg

intended and sounded like a curse.

"Most girls do!" Deirdre shot back. "Most girls also don't constantly lie and misbehave."

Meg felt her nose start to swell. She hated the way her face looked when she cried; her nose got red and swollen and her eyes scrunched up. Maureen cried prettily; fat, repentant tears slowly rolling down her cheeks. People relented when Maureen cried

123 and watched in dismay as snot dribbled out of Meg's nose when she cried. ONE, two, three, Meg desperately sniffed.

Humming loudly, Dan sauntered into the kitchen. And stopped, surveying the scene. "Dee," he sighed, "It's Saturday night."

Deirdre straightened her back. "Which means tomorrow is Sunday." She pointed at Meg. "You say a good, and I mean good, young lady, Act of Contrition before you receive Communion."

Dan held both hands open to Deirdre. "Come dance with me, m'darlin' !"

"Oh, Dan, please! I have to hear the girls' prayers." Deirdre turned to leave and

Dan followed her out.

Meg started drying the dishes, listening to her parent's muffled voices. She thanked her father under her breath; that could have been worse.

The door swung back open and Deirdre came back in. "Tomorrow, after Mass, your father is taking your sisters for a drive down to Ft. Lauderdale to see Port

Everglades. You, young lady, will stay here and help me finish unpacking. You will pay attention and you will not go wandering off. Is that clear?" Without waiting for an answer, she left. The door swung behind her, slowly losing momentum until it came to a stop.

Meg stared at the closed door in horror. The green walls tinged with red at the edge of her vision. Tomorrow she had to get back to the beach, to return the brooch to

Mr. Eckberg. She couldn't stay inside all day. She started towards the door, her mind racing, then stopped. It was better to let her mother alone now, better not to say anything now. She'd work really hard tomorrow, she decided, and pay attention really well, and

124 then, then her mother would let her go to the beach. 0 my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, please, God, Meg prayed desperately, please God, let Mom know I'm really sorry and I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy

grace, to pay attention and not be late and I'll be good and please, please let her let me go

to the beach tomorrow. Please. Amen.

125 SUNDAY

Hera was crying. Stab at mater dolorosa. She's crying for her brooch, Meg thought, juxta Crucem lacrimosam. I have to give it back to her. Meg kicked the sheet off and sat up. "I have to give it back," she announced.

"Shut up!" Maureen wailed and pulled a pillow over her head. "You and that stupid baby," she mumbled.

The crying continued. It was still dark, but the night had ended. Meg fumbled for her glasses on the bedside table. Dumpling, it was the baby crying. Meg quietly closed the bedroom door and oriented herself in the dark hallway. The noise came from the kitchen where a light shined under the door. Meg leaned her head back against the wall.

A flash of pain throbbed in her left temple from getting out of bed so fast. It hadn't been

Hera crying. But she did want the brooch back. You don't want to make an enemy of

Hera, that's what Mr. Eckberg had said. Maybe it was a premonition. The crying continued.

Meg pushed open the kitchen door and quickly shielded her eyes from the electric light reflecting harshly off the green walls. Her mother was balancing a sobbing

Dumpling with one arm while trying to open a bottle of Four Roses with the other. When

Dumpling saw Meg, she started kicking and grabbing for Meg. "I'll take her," Meg shuffled over to her mother. Deirdre stared at her, startled, then handed her the baby.

Dumpling sniffed and schnuffled, burrowing her head under Meg's chin. She cradled the

126 back of Dumpling's head and nuzzled her forehead. Dumpling suddenly twisted back and started crying again.

"Molars." Deirdre nodded, satisfied. "Hold her steady now." She ran a finger dipped in whiskey over the baby's gums. Dumpling gulped and hiccupped. Deirdre repeated the process. "That should do it," Deirdre put the top back on the bottle and looked at the label. "This is Dad's favorite."

Meg patted the baby on the back. "Daddy drinks Jameson's, not Four Roses."

"My father, not yours." Deirdre pushed the bottle away. "What are you doing up this early?"

"I heard crying, it woke me up."

"Well, here - give her to me." Deidre took the baby back. "We're going to 9 o'clock Mass and it's not even 6 yet. Go back to bed."

"That's ok, Mom, I can take her. She can be in my bed with me."

"No. I want her to sleep, so she needs to be in her crib. Go back to bed now."

Deirdre snapped the light switch off as she walked out of the kitchen.

Darkness swept down. Meg blinked. It must have rained in the night because she could hear water dripping from the palm fronds onto the ground. An occasional insect issued a tiny chitter. She stood on tiptoe to peer out the window. The details of the trees were shrouded but the outlines were starting to become clear in the grey light. The only times she had been outside at this hour was when they had an early flight. At those times all the lights were on, people bustled about eating breakfast standing up, suitcases and passports were counted, and with a murmured prayer, Deirdre draped a St. Christopher medal around each girl's neck.

127 Now Meg was alone. The quiet was startling; she wondered if she had ever heard quiet before. She realized there was always noise in the background: the baby crying or babbling; her sisters talking, arguing, shrieking, giggling; her mother admonishing, explaining, vacuuming, praying; her father whistling, singing, playing records; the Marias laughing, whispering, teasing. Even the silence was loud when people were in the room.

In fact, it was often noisiest when everyone was silent because people's thoughts were so loud. This moment was quiet; it felt velvet soft and full of promise.

Maybe, she mused, Mr. Eckberg would be at the beach this early. Maybe she could return the brooch to him now. She was tom between her fear of being outside alone before dawn and her fear of Hera. Both unknown quantities, both fearsome.

Would it be disobedient to go outside now? Last night her mother said she wasn't to go wandering off, she had to help unpack. But that was after Mass, when the others went to see the tankers. This was before.

She paused. Was this a venial sin? Her catechism teacher droned: A sin can be venial in two ways: first, when the evil done is not seriously wrong; second, when the evil done is seriously wrong, but the sinner sincerely believes it is only slightly wrong, or does not give full consent to it. This, she decided, is not evil. But it must be at least

slightly wrong if she was wondering about it. And besides, even venial, a sin was wrong

- and would add to her time in Purgatory. Maybe if she got home before anyone woke up it wouldn't even be slightly wrong. Then it would be doing something good for

someone; God would understand that, besides, He must know about Hera. Was it only wrong if her mother found out? A sharp pain spurted on her thumb. Meg looked down to realize she'd peeled a piece of cuticle below the quick. The light had increased enough

128 to show that it was bleeding. If she was going to go, she had to go now, before it got much lighter. Sucking her bleeding thumb, she tiptoed down the hallway to re~rieve the brooch. She wondered how much this would add to her time in Purgatory.

Meg paused at the front door. She didn't know this house yet, didn't know if the

front door made any noise. She decided it was safer to go out the back door. That way

she could close the kitchen door and no one would hear her. It sounded like something

Nancy Drew would think of and she was quite pleased with herself.

Outside, the overcast sky subdued the dawn light. Water dripped from the plants,

the air smelled damp and humid. But it was fresher than the air in the house, which was

stale and smoky from last night's party. Meg tiptoed down the driveway and looked up

and down the street. She saw no one, no movement. She stepped onto the sidewalk.

Leaving her parents' property released all restraint and she started running. Several

blocks later, she stopped in front of the sea grape wall, gasping for breath. A stitch

throbbed in her side.

After catching her breath, she walked through the tunnel to the beach. Everything

looked silver; the sand, the water, the sky. The only color was a shining border of pink

gold light threading through a bank of clouds. The water was absolutely still, with the

tiniest of waves lapping on the shore. The quiet was overwhelming, not even a sea bird

stirred. Meg slipped off her shoes and walked onto the sand. It was a shock to feel it

cold and damp beneath her feet.

She held a hand up to feel the direction of the wind. Nothing. "Notus?" She

whispered. "Eurus?" She turned around, looking in all directions. There was no

answering whisper against her cheek. "Mr. Eckberg?" She tried again, keeping her voice

129 low. The quiet swallowed even that small utterance. Meg closed her hand over the brooch weighing down her pocket. The chill from the metal spread up her arm. She curled her toes as the cold from the sand spread up her legs. It felt like the cold was going to meet in the middle, where her stomach was clenching. She looked up the beach, towards the building where the Pantheon was staying. In the grey light, with the silver water merging with the silver sky, she couldn't tell if she was seeing the building or imagining its outline. But there was no movement from any quarter on the beach.

A cramp started to form in her calf. Meg gasped and leaned over to massage the muscle. She didn't know what to do. She couldn't afford to stay any longer. "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," her father liked to say. Meg closed her eyes and swallowed against the fear. She opened her eyes. The sun was starting to break through the clouds. Meg knew she had to get home before anyone woke up, before this morning got any worse. She turned and ran.

Back at house, she carefully entered the empty kitchen and slipped down the hall to her room. Closing the door quietly behind her, she tiptoed to her bed.

"I'm awake," Maureen murmured. "You can tum on a light if you want."

"No, thanks," Meg said and pulled a sheet over her head. She'd failed. Bleakly, she realized she'd been willing to jeopardize her soul and yet she still failed. The brooch was an oppressive burden in her pocket. Meg slid it between the mattress and the box springs. Her feet were sandy and uncomfortable, her scalp was sweaty and she was hungry. She curled up, feeling miserable, and despaired.

"All right, girls, time for everyone to finish getting ready!"

130 Maureen smoothed her hair in the mirror and muttered, "I could already eat a horse! I can't stand it." She slipped out to the bathroom to eat some toothpaste.

Isabella pushed open the door and peeked in. "Meg?"

Meg turned her head but didn't get up. "What?" she asked indifferently.

Isabella ignored her tone and walked over to the bed. She held out two different shoes, one black Mary Jane and one saddle shoe. "Which zapatos should I wear? What do they wear in an American Iglesia?"

Meg sat up. She hadn't thought about it - would they wear different clothes to

Church in the United States? Being here was not the thrill she and Maureen had discussed for hours after the lights were turned out. But things didn't bother Maureen as much. "Let's ask Maureen, she's better at these things."

"What things?" Maureen asked as she walked in. Isabella held up her shoes.

"Oh, definitely the Mary Janes," she said confidently. Isabella skipped out, delighted.

"How do you know?" Meg marveled.

Maureen shrugged. "You make too big a deal out of it."

Isabella popped in again. "What socks?" She held out plain white anklets and white lace trim anklets.

Maureen pretended to consider, then pointed at the lace socks. Isabella nodded firmly and ran out.

"All right," Meg said crossly, "what should I wear?"

"How about the lavender dress Nana Margaret gave you? That's pretty."

"With the frilly slip underneath?" Meg was horrified. The crinoline scratched her legs unforgivably. "I hate that dress."

131 "Well, why' d you ask me then?" Maureen retorted crossly. "Wear whatever you want, I don't care. Mom won't like that outfit, you look like an unmade bed."

"Hmph!" Meg snorted and stuck her tongue at Maureen's back. After Maureen was out in the hall, Meg tried to smooth down the sleeves on her blouse. It didn't look all that wrinkled, she decided.

"jVamonos! It's time for Mass," Deirdre called. She held open the front door, keeping an eye on Dumpling while smoothing Isabella's hair into a ponytail. She shook her head as Meg came up. "That skirt is too short to wear again. Goodness, you're just growing out of everything." Meg tugged on her skirt and buffed the toe of her shoe on the back of her socks.

"C'mon, c'mon, I don't want to be late." Dan strode into the hall. "Bus leaving for St. James - everyone ready?"

Meg brightened. "St. James the Greater or St. James the Lesser? How ignominious, going through eternity as St. James the Lesser, right, Daddy?" This was an old joke between them.

"Dan ... on Sunday morning?"

Dan straightened his tie in the mirror. "I don't think much of disrespecting the

Saints on your way to Mass, young lady."

"I'm hungry," Maureen grumbled.

Meg pinched her. "Offer it up."

"ow! Mom!!"

"She has to offer it up, doesn't she?"

132 "Oh, stop - both of you. You kids have no idea how lucky you are - you only have to fast for three hours," Deirdre said. "In the car, now. When we were younger we I had to start fasting at midnight on Saturday. Dan, remember that? Dates on Saturday night were no fun since you had to stop eating and drinking at midnight. Everyone just went home."

"Oh, I had fun," Dan laughed.

"Not on Saturdays, we didn't." As they drove down the street Deirdre turned to the girls in the back seat. "Now, this will be your first time in this church so remember your three wishes. Three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys and three Glory Bes. Then you can make your three wishes."

"I'm going to wish for a big breakfast," Maureen muttered.

Dan caught Meg's eye in the rear view mirror. "What was that?" he demanded.

"Not me! It was Maureen." Meg elbowed Maureen who quickly retaliated, missing Meg and striking the baby on Meg's lap. Dumpling immediately started wailing.

Dan slammed his hand on the steering wheel. "If I have to stop this car and we're late for Mass, so help me God, there'll be hell to pay!"

The back seat lapsed into a sullen truce while Deirdre busied herself with her mantilla. Meg nuzzled the back of Dumpling's neck and watched as Isabella leaned forward to stroke the black lace. She remembered doing the same thing when she was young. She'd been fascinated with the folds of lace as they lay across her mother's

shoulders; silky, shimmering undulations of mysterious patterns falling forward to hide her face as she bowed her head in prayer. The lace was delicately woven in an intricate design surrounded by a heavy border, giving off a faint scent of perfume mingled with

133 hairspray. Only married women were allowed to wear black lace. Some women wore mantillas that came down to their waists, hand tatted family heirlooms, lovingly passed from mother to daughter on her wedding day. A girl became a woman the day she wore a black lace mantilla. Until then she was a novitiate in white, an outsider to the mysteries women whispered about in the living room or the front seat of the car when they thought the children were asleep in the back.

Deirdre glanced back. "Meg, help your sisters with their mantillas, please." They all wore identical white lace doilies that only required a single bobby pin in the middle.

Meg jammed the bobby pin into Maureen's scalp and received a swift kick on the ankle.

"Ok, here we are." Dan swung the car into the church's parking lot and they stared at the building.

"That's the church?" Maureen blurted. The building was octagonal, with a white roof that peaked in irregular sections, and a large, bland white statue of St. James out front. They'd never seen anything like it before. The O'Brien children were used to rectangular churches, long and dark, where the statues were brightly painted, adorned with floral offerings and notes imploring the saints for aid or giving thanks for prayers granted. The church was the center and soul of a town, life swirling around it, a magical and mysterious place. This building was concrete and cement, standing starkly alone in the middle of a parking lot on the mainland side of the Intracoastal.

Inside St. James the contemporary patterns in the stained glass windows sent brightly colored rays of light reflecting off the blond wood of the walls and pews. After seating his family Dan Dumpling and walked to the back to introduce himself to the ushers. Meg turned to watch him show off the baby and joke with the men. This was her father was at

134 his best; she'd watched with pride countless times as he charmed everyone in sight. Men and women alike loved to see him walk towards them, shake their hand, tell them a joke, I include them in his warmth. "Meg, your prayers," Deirdre tugged Meg's elbow and she turned forward to kneel.

" ... As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen."

Meg sat back to contemplate her three wishes. I wish, I wish- I wish we'd stay here long enough for me to have a friend. She looked around the church to see if any of the girls she'd seen on the beach were present. I wish for a radio! My very own radio that I can play in my room and listen to whatever station I want. She started tapping her foot and dancing in place in time to the tune she'd heard playing on the radio at the beach.

Deirdre's scandalized glance pulled her back into church. She suddenly realized all her wishes were for things she wanted - selfish, selfish, selfish. She hurriedly knelt again, one wish left; please God, I wish for the souls of the poor unbaptized babies in Limbo to be released to find everlasting joy in Your presence, per Christum Dominum nostrum,

Amen. After a moment, she added, tambien, God, if going to the beach this morning was a venial sin, it didn't make me less fervent so it was probably a little venial sin but, of course, I'm still very sorry for it.

Dan came back to join his family in the pew and passed the baby to Deirdre. Meg could see the priest and altar boys assembling. It still infuriated her that she couldn't be an altar boy. She knew the Latin responses as well as any boy but, as a girl, she was barred from the altar. The congregation rose to their feet as the opening notes to the entrance hymn sounded. Joyful, joyful, we adore you, the melody rose until the sopranos in the choir took flight in descant. Giver of immortal gladness, Fill us with the light of

135 day, Dan's throbbing baritone and the deeper notes from the organ circled underneath the sopranos while the music crescendoed soaring into. the heavens.

As the unbearable beauty of the music faded with the last notes the priest bowed at the foot of the altar then strode around it to stand facing the congregation. Deirdre looked over at Dan, puzzled. "He's standing on the wrong side," Maureen whispered to

Meg, shocked. Meg looked up at her father but he was staring straight ahead.

"Let us turn to page 84 in the missallette for the Entrance Antiphon," announced the lector. Meg opened the missallette and gasped.

"It's in English!" she said out loud, looking back and forth at her parents. Several people in the vicinity chuckled. Deirdre shushed while Dan glared. Meg looked at

Maureen who shrugged.

"Maybe that's how they say Mass in Florida", she whispered to Meg.

"They're doing it wrong!" Meg hissed. Deirdre glanced over with narrowed eyes and the girls subsided. The priest raised his arms, the chasuble falling back in folds. Meg shook her head; the front of the chasuble didn't have the spectacular embroidery that the back did. Nobody wanted to look at the front. Or at a priest who'd turned his back on

God.

"The Lord be with you."

"Et cum spfritu tuo." The O'Brien family answered automatically.

"And also with you," answered the congregation.

The priest continued, " ... let us call to mind our sins."

The congregation responded in unison, "I confess to Almighty God, to Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, to Blessed Michael the Archangel, to Blessed John the Baptist," Meg looked

136 around, amazed. They were reciting the Confiteor in English. She'd never heard it in

English, didn't even know the words. " ... and to all the Saints, and to you, Father, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed,"

"mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa," she chimed in helplessly, striking her breast.

The lector stepped up to the microphone. "The first reading is from the Book of the

Prophet Isaiah:

'Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old.

Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I

will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise.

But thou hast not called upon me, 0 Jacob; but thou hast been weary of me, 0

Israel.

Thou hast made me to serve with thy sms, thou hast wearied me with thine

iniquities.

I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgression for mine own sake, and will not

remember thy sins.'

The Word of the Lord."

"Thanks be to God." Everyone sat down.

"Daddy, why did he say that, instead of the priest? They're doing everything wrong" Meg whispered. Deirdre leaned over Maureen and rapped Meg's knee with the missallette.

"Not another word out of you."

137 Meg sat back and looked around the church. Through all the moves - a new school every September, a new camp, more strangers, different Marias, change,d flights, unknown vistas -the Church, in her infinite majesty, remained constant. I am Alpha and

Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, per omnia srecula sreculorum.

The scene in St. James was strangely off-kilter; the people light and subdued, blond hair, fair skin, standing, sitting, kneeling quietly on cue. At home there would be a constant swirling of movement through out Mass with children scampering about, adults moving up and down the aisles, stopping to pray to their saints, going in and out of the confessionals, prostrating themselves before the altar. Latin texts, sermons in Spanish, whispered exhortations in English to behave. The scent of burning candles and incense, the clanking of the censer's chains, dark skin black lace soot stained walls, the consecration of the Sacred Host, the bell rings three times, the adoration of the Precious

Blood, the bell rings three times, life in death Lord I am not worthy, death in life Christ I am not worthy, it's a mystery of Faith my child, do this in memory of Me. Through Him.

With Him. In Him. Is to You, God the Father Almighty, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory. Per omnia srecula sreculorum. Amen.

After Communion Deirdre sat back and gazed happily around the church. "It's so good to be home," she whispered to Meg. "We could almost be back at St. Stephen's. I half expect to see your Uncle Sean and Grandmother in another pew." Meg kicked the bottom of the kneeler. "Oh, c'mon, sourpuss, cheer up- God's in His heaven and all's right with the world."

Meg rubbed her cheek against Dumpling's hair. God wasn't in His heaven, if He were the Mass wouldn't be wrong. She didn't know where He was. She stared at the

138 stained glass windows. They were supposed to be pictures; Blessed Michael the

Archangel, Blessed John the Baptist, the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, all the Saints, but instead they were formless abstract shapes. The light coming through the windows was fractured and foreign, creating random patterns of color that tinted people's faces green, red and blue. The flames on the altar candles paled to insignificance in the bright light.

The priest sat down and looked at his papers. A rustle ran around the church as everyone settled back. "A few announcements. The Ladies' Guild is having a meeting this Tuesday at 7 p.m., please see Mrs. Hagen for details. Remember, this is the last week for ordering school uniforms and, oh, I almost forgot - someone handed this to me before Mass," he rummaged in his pocket, "yes, here we are; there's a tan Buick in the parking lot with the engine running. Now, let us rise for the final blessing."

After Mass, Monsignor Parsloe stood at the door to the church, shaking hands with parishioners as they filed out. Dan introduced himself and Deirdre.

"And these fine children are all yours, then?" Monsignor rested one hand on his portly belly and patted Isabella on the head. "Have you ordered their uniforms for school?"

"Why do we need uniforms for school?" Maureen asked.

"Why? What a question, child, don't tell me your school didn't have uniforms."

"They've never attended a Catholic school, Monsignor," Deirdre answered.

"There were none where we lived."

"Never been to a Catholic school! Well, I certainly hope they know their catechism." He pointed at Maureen, "Who made you?"

"God made me."

139 "Oh, that was easy," huffed Meg.

Monsignor looked down his nose at Meg. "And what is meant by the infallibility I of the Catholic Church, child?"

"Oh. Well, it means that the Catholic Church, by the special assistance of the

Holy Ghost, cannot err when it teaches, no, when it believes, urn, defines a doctrine ... "

Meg looked desperately at Dan.

"You need to work on your catechism, young lady," Monsignor said sternly.

"Well, you erred in Mass today," Meg cried, "you did everything wrong!"

"Margaret Mary!" Deirdre was horrified. "Apologize immediately, then wait for us by the statue. Monsignor, I am so sorry, we've been traveling all summer, just unpacked, oh, I am terribly sorry."

Meg stomped over to sit at the feet of St. James. Groups of people mingled in front of the church, laughing and chatting. Isabella came running up with Sara. "I'm going trick or treating with Sara," she announced triumphantly. Meg glared at them.

"Oh, honey, don't let Monsignor get to you." Mrs. Rago came up and smiled.

"He tries to put the fear of God in everybody."

"But they did the Mass all wrong," Meg insisted.

"Well, honey, that's Vatican II. I told you about it last night. Didn't they start making the changes at your old church?" Mrs. Rago asked.

"I must say," Deirdre, coming up with the others, shook her head. "We'd heard about it, of course, but I didn't know it had started yet. I don't know if I even really believed it."

140 "Oh, sure, it's causing quite a commotion too, believe me. We've only just started these past few months. It does feel strange. I guess it takes getting used to - Chris used to complain every Sunday."

"Still don't like it. Don't see why they had to change a thing." Chris Rago shrugged. "Oh, well. Hey, Dan, I hope you play golf. We've got a terrific club in town and I'd be happy to sponsor you. The club's just up AlA."

Meg looked up remembering the building Notus wanted her to see. "Is that a big building on the beach? I saw one yesterday."

"One and the same. The clubhouse itself is on the beach and the golf course is across the street. It's closed in the summer but reopens in the fall. It's a grand old place, built back in the days of Mizner. Maybe your dad can bring you all some time. The beach has blowing rocks, too. Have you ever heard of those?" The O'Briens all shook their heads. "Ah, the kids love them. They are great; limestone foundations on the sand that reach out over the water. At high tide the waves shoot up through the holes in the rocks. Kind of unusual for this far south- a terrific sight. We'll all definitely have to go when the club reopens."

"Chris, that sounds great, thanks very much." The men shook hands. "I'll stop by later to ask you about the shutters. In the meantime, let me get these hooligans home for breakfast."

Isabella skipped along, swinging her father's hand and chattering happily about

Halloween as the O'Briens headed for the car. Meg trailed behind them, thinking about the building on the beach and the brooch.

141 As they pulled out of the parking lot Isabella concluded, "and I'm going to get lots of chocolate and lollipops and gumdrops."

"Oh, shut up about food," snapped Maureen. "I'm starving." She slapped

Isabella just as Dan slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a car that had suddenly turned in front of them.

"Judas Priest!" he swore. "Stupid idiot, the drivers around here are jackasses."

"Maureen hit me," Isabella whimpered.

"All right, now, everyone's hungry. Dan, little bees ... everyone settle down and we'll soon have breakfast," soothed Deirdre. She looked over at the back seat. "Keep your hands," glancing warningly at Maureen, "and feet to yourself."

Meg stared out the car window and saw again the way the building on the beach seemed to float on the foam from the waves.

Unpacking boxes after a move can be construed as a beginning. But where do beginnings begin? For Deidre O'Brien, the answer to that question was obvious; begin at the beginning: the first uncrossed-off entry on the "To Do" page in her Homemaker's

Domestic Notebook, or, direct the person, be they child, maid or spouse, standing in front of her. For Meg, the answer to that question was endlessly baffling. The harder she tried to emulate Deirdre's clarity, the more tasks she started, resulting in a pile of unfinished tasks that accumulated at every tum, weighing her down and creating clutter every place she went.

In Deirdre's eyes this was evidence of lack of character, sloppiness and laziness, bordering on indolence; the "Irish curse". She grew up hearing her mother, Margaret,

142 constantly attribute it to her father-in-law. "That no-good, drunken, scoundrel - always after takin' The Pledge at Sunday Mass, then comin' home drunk on Monday night, I breakin' his poor wife's heart." Dan laughed it off, "Your Old Da's just like my Daddo.

He's harmless." But Deirdre knew better. She watched her grandmother hide the money she made cleaning other people's houses, trying to keep it from her husband. Who always found it, especially after he threatened to beat someone. Deirdre knew life was hard. And hard work. It was her job to make sure her daughters understood the thankless lot that lay before them. Especially as girls, even in these modem times they couldn't escape that fate. Her father had proudly sent her brother, Michael, to college, the first in the family to attend college. Deirdre begged to be allowed to go too after Michael came home at Christmas and thrilled her with tales of talking long into the night with his roommates about philosophy, economics and politics. They were remaking the world after WWII with grand, sweeping plans and ambitions. Deirdre's father was amused when she asked to attend college. "Why educate a girl?" he chuckled. "It's a waste of good money, it is. Get married, have children - that's your job. You don't need college for that, m' girl." Deirdre was determined her daughters would attend college.

Deirdre breezed in with sheets fresh out of the dryer and stopped, dismayed, to see Meg lying on the mattress. "Margaret Mary! What on earth are you doing now?"

Meg looked up, beaming. "Look! This is the book of Greek myths Uncle

Malachi gave me for my birthday, remember? Here's the story on The Winds. It's not as windy here, is it? I wonder if all of them will be here."

"Take your shoes off the bed! All of who? You're still not finished with one box? It's almost lunchtime! What have you been doing all this time?'' Deirdre looked

143 around the room. How could a child, a girl no less, get into college when she couldn't finish a simple task such as unpacking one box? The room was messier than the last time she'd checked. The dresser drawers were pulled out, half filled with clothes, more clothes stacked in tottering piles, threatening to fall, were on top. The suitcases sat open on the floor, shoes jumbled inside, belts spilling out onto the floor. "Why are these clothes out? They were all put away the last time I was here."

Meg gestured towards the dresser. "Yes! Look, I'm organizing my clothes differently this house. My underwear always get wrinkled in the little drawer on top. I want them in the big drawer this time so I'm moving everything around." She was quite pleased with the idea since Deirdre frequently stressed the need to be organized.

Deirdre stared at her daughter. Her father-in-law's face stared back at her; the same curls, originally red gold, now white, his from age, hers bleached in the tropics, stubborn chin, light green eyes always looking at something beyond this world; Malachi

The Dreamer. Talking, talking, always talking, always letting others do the doing.

"Ireland unfree shall never be at peace!" The men cried "Huzzah!" and thumped the table while the women wiped up drink rings left by their glasses. Deirdre's bedtime pushed back further and further as she recalculated her To Do list, allowing for Meg's uncompleted work. Meg would have to take care of Dumpling that afternoon so Deirdre could finish unpacking the kitchen. Dan had invited the Ragos for dinner the following night so by tomorrow the kitchen had to be ready to fix dinner and she needed to go grocery shopping. There was no Maria here to help, no helpful Company wives to tell her where everything was. Deirdre heard the thump of Dumpling's teething ring being

144 thrown out of her playpen in the living room and then the baby started crying. Deirdre squared her shoulders and narrowed her eyes.

Meg recognized the look. She didn't know what she had done wrong in organizing her dresser but she clearly wasn't doing it correctly. She jumped up and started jamming clothes in the drawers. "It's ok, Mom, look I can finish quick ... "

"Stop!" Deirdre shook her head. "Look at the clothes, you're getting everything all wrinkled. Just stop. Why can't you pay attention to what you're doing?"

Meg froze.

"What is the matter with you?" Deidre burst out. The harder they tried, the less they understood each other. Meg stared at the floor and eased her shoe over the grout line in the tile.

Maureen strolled in, whistling, and stopped short. Looking from Deirdre to Meg, she waited for someone to speak. A mockingbird chattered raucously outside the uncurtained window. Maureen carefully catalogued postures and expressions to evaluate the situation.

Deirdre sighed noisily. "Here." She tossed sheets on the beds, "At least get the beds made and then I'll fix lunch. Margaret, I'll help you so it actually gets done."

Maureen and Meg both leapt forward to help her with the sheets. "No! Maureen! What are you thinking - three people making a bed?! That's terrible luck. And in a new house! Quick- a prayer to St. Martha. Good, good. Maureen, you work on your bed.

Now, Meg, let me see your hospital corners. All right, that will do - smooth down the top sheet, like so. Good. Maureen? Very nice. Now put all these clothes away- neatly

145 - I don't want to have to iron anything else, then come have lunch after you wash your hands."

After she left Meg flopped on the bed. "What happened?" Maureen asked.

"I don't know. Don't look at me like that. Really! I was getting my dresser organized and she got mad at me." Meg slammed a drawer shut. "I don't know why. I wish Daddy was here. She's nicer when he's here."

"She can be nice when he's not here."

"No, she's not. When was she nice when Daddy wasn't here?"

Maureen smoothed her bedspread and thought about it. "Remember in Amuay, when Bunny fell while you were skate sailing?"

"Oh, yeah. Jorge Rodriguez jerked the towel on her. That was mean. You know, they left Amuay too. They went to La Salina when we came here."

"Who? Bunny or Jorge?"

"Jorge! Pay attention! Bunny's still in Amuay."

"Oh, well, anyway -that night.

"That night, what?"

"That night Mommy was nice. 'Member? Daddy wasn't there and we had a hen party. She told us about Nanna Margaret when she was little, how she skated on ice instead of wind skating. jlmagfnate! And we played Go Fish after dinner."

Meg grinned. "I'd forgotten about that. That was fun. We played Old Maid too, after Isabel went to bed. And you shot the moon - twice! Gee, we didn't even have

Dumpling then."

146 "That's right! And we had dessert! Mommy said Mrs. Hofstadter probably gave

Bunny dessert because she skinned her knees and so we had dessert too. Chocolate cake

-real dessert! No mangoes."

Meg started laughing. "Where ever the Hofstadters go next, I hope they have a better clinic!"

"Now." Deirdre ticked tasks off on her fingers as she surveyed the master bedroom. "We need to unpack any boxes that are left. Company boxes are broken down and stored flat - neatly, mind you - in the garage. Other boxes, just throw them out."

She looked over at Meg, who stood by the play pen with her back to Deirdre. "All right?" Meg shrugged. Deirdre's mouth tightened. "Fine. I'll start in here; you start in

Isabella's room."

"Isabella's room?" Meg dropped her hands from playing peek-a-boo with

Dumpling. The baby crowed and clapped triumphantly. "Not now," Meg glared at

Dumpling. "That's not fair! Why can't Isabella unpack her own room? Maureen and I had to unpack our room."

"Honestly, Meg, Isabella is only six!" Dumpling started crying and Deirdre threw up her hands in exasperation. "Now look what you've done."

"So what?" Meg kicked the baseboard. "I was six when we moved to Maracaibo and you made me unpack my room," she muttered.

"Do not mumble," Deirdre instructed. She struggled to push a wardrobe box towards the closet. "And stand up straight, for heaven's sake!"

Meg was bent over the play pen. "Dumpling's crying- I was trying to help!"

147 "It's your fault she's crying- that's not helping. Leave her alone and she'll be fine. They just cry to try and get attention sometimes." Deirdre shook her head in I frustration. "You were the worst when it came to that." She stepped back from the wardrobe. "I can't make this thing budge."

The wardrobe box was tall, bulky, and heavy with the weight of woolens stored in mothballs, unworn for over a decade, moved from house to house. Every spring Deirdre aired out the coats and suits, wiggled the buttons and inspected the material for signs of infestation. The old mothballs were replaced with new, smellier moth balls. Meg and

Maureen assisted her, amazed that people would want to wear such uncomfortable, scratchy and smelly clothing. "For winter," Deirdre explained, to their incredulous giggles. Winter; an inexplicably abstract, foreign concept to children who had never lived in temperatures below seventy degrees Fahrenheit.

The ghosts of the stored woolen clothing could be seen in the photographs in the family album. After dinner, on nights when Deirdre was feeling expansive, the girls got out the photograph album or set up the slide carousel to shine on the dining room wall.

Deirdre would make popcorn and tell the girls stories about their great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins. Most of their relatives lived in the United

States. Some lived in Ireland, some were alive, some were dead. Saints y fantasmas, angels and mdrtires, cousins in Brooklyn, bisabuelos en /rlanda, young versions of

Deirdre and Dan wearing the mothballed winter coats; all these figures lived in a phantasmagorical ether ordered and recounted by adults.

The girls solemnly accorded this world the same degree of belief their Church demanded. Faith, once taught, could be applied to a multitude of subjects, it was in fact,

148 a prized virtue; the virtue by which they could firmly believe all the truths God had revealed, on the word of God revealing them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived.

The degree of solemnity Deirdre's children applied to their faith was rooted in another moral virtue; obedience. The rewards of obedience, and the commensurate perils of disobedience, could be found in all the tales of the martyred Saints, tortured and mutilated for their unwavering obedience to their faith. For the glory of God the Father and the Blessed Mary, ever Virgin; devotion was absolute and absolutely required. The penalty was damnation; deprived of the vision of God, and suffering dreadful torments, especially that of fire, for all eternity.

Boundaries between worlds were fluid, enabling saints, faeries, spirits of relatives, acquaintances from past camps, ghosts in the fire and apparitions in the air to flow through the dimensions of the day and redouble the darkness at night. Deirdre and Dan sent their children out into the world securely wrapped in the protection of spirits. There were saints to respond to all every day needs and cares; if something was lost, St.

Anthony would find it, St. Blaise blessed throats, St. Teresa brought roses and encouraged small kindnesses, in a last resort St. Jude stepped in to resolve desperate case.

Even the cats and dogs and hamsters were looked after by St. Francis. Guardian angels afforded an additional shield during the day, while at night four angels, one stationed at each comer of the bed, protected a sleeping child.

Other boundaries were also fluid; gods were adults and adults were gods; obedience was demanded and punishment for disobedience was certain. This made life for a child straightforward, but for an adult it was more complicated. Where do the gods stand when one steps into that role and realizes the frailty of the veneer? How much

149 harder does one need to cling to the beliefs of youth in order to avoid looking over the edge of the chasm that yawns underfoot? The gods still held sway, but in different I guises. Like faith, once installed, the need for the gods endures forever, in saecula saeculorum.

Deirdre stepped back and considered the wardrobe box. Absent being moved by straight forward lifting, it needed to be angled back and forth in a zigzag pattern. "Ok,

Meg, this will require teamwork. Here - you stand there and push that side. Then I'll push this side. We're going to 'walk' the box over to the closet. Understand?"

Meg quietly backed up, hoping to leave the room before her mother noticed.

Teamwork with a parent guaranteed misunderstood instructions, dropped comers, fumbled handoffs, broken objects and reinforced the generally accepted belief that she could not do anything right.

"Meg!" Deirdre looked over her shoulder. "Over there." Meg sighed. Deirdre pointed, "On that side, didn't you hear me?" Meg dropped her shoulders and noisily sighed again. "Oh, for heaven's sake," snorted Deirdre. "A little less Sarah Bernhardt and a little more action, please. Over there. Now, push!"

Meg pushed. Deirdre pushed. The box creaked, straining against the carpet. It moved a little, then a little more, revolving a few degrees. Mother and daughter pushed together against the past, straining to unpack a future. Deirdre stopped to check their progress. "No, Meg. Look- it's going in a circle. Pay attention. You have to push the other way."

150 "Push what way?" Meg tried to concentrate. This clearly wasn't going well and that made her nervous. A magnet hung in a hardware shop ... When she got nervous, she was distracted by random songs loudly parading through her head.

"That way," Deirdre pointed towards the wall.

"To the left?" But for iron the magnet felt no whim ...

"Right."

"To the right?" His most cesthetic, Very magnetic, Fancy took this turn ...

"Pay attention, Meg- I said the left!"

Meg hopped from one foot to the other. By no endeavour Can magnet ever

Attract a Silver Churn!

Deirdre looked around the wardrobe. "Do you have to go to the bathroom?" Meg shook her head. "Well, then, push!"

Meg hesitated. "Mom, can we wait until Daddy can help us? It's too heavy."

"Meg, you can not keep expecting someone else to do your work. You need to be responsible- that's why you're here now, remember?"

"I am, Mom."

"You are what? Responsible? No. No, you're not." Deirdre poked the wardrobe box on each no. "Responsible means coming home on time. Responsible means doing what you don't want to do simply because it needs to be done. Whether you want to or not. Because someone else is counting on you. And it means you do it before you do what you want to do. Whether you want to or not."

151 "I never get to do what I want!" Meg burst out, stinging under the lash. "I have to unpack Isabella's room- and she gets her own room! It's not fair! How come I don't I get my own room? I always have to share with Maureen."

"Don't you back talk me," Deirdre warned. "Isabella will share with Dumpling when she's a little bit older," she continued. "Count your blessings - I always had to share a room with Aunt Marie and Aunt Teresa."

"But, Mom ... " Meg started.

"No!" Deirdre interrupted. "No, Meg, you listen to me. You keep saying you want to be treated more responsibly, that you're going to be a teenager and all grown up.

Well, that has a price. If we were still in the camps, you'd be going to boarding school pretty soon. You'd be all alone and expected to know how to behave." Deirdre stopped and regarded her first born, who was picking at a scab on her elbow. "Oh, stop that - you'll make it bleed." She took a breath and tried a different tack. "Meg, if you want people to treat you responsibly, you have to behave responsibly. No one said it was going to be easy or that you'd get what you want. Instead, you have to work for it and even then you may not get what you want."

Meg pushed hard on the wardrobe box. It didn't move.

"Are you listening to me?" Deirdre demanded.

"Yes," Meg muttered.

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, Mom, I'm listening to you."

Deirdre gave a final shove to the wardrobe box. It didn't move. She smacked the box irritatedly.

152 Meg looked around the room, wondering if the lecture was over, if she could

leave the room without getting in further trouble. She casually glanced sideways, trying I

to determine her mother's mood, without appearing to look at her. Behind Deirdre, a

small, odd looking shadow was cast up on the wall, where the wall met the floor. She

gasped, momentarily thinking it was a Brownie.

"What?" Deirdre looked around, startled.

Meg pointed, "Over there, behind you. I thought I saw a Brownie."

"A Brownie!" Deirdre looked carefully behind her and noticed the shadow.

"What on earth is that?" She dropped down. "Oh, look! They're mushrooms! Growing

inside, of all things. Oh, dear, they really couldn't take care of the house, could they?

What a shame - be sure to remember them in your prayers tonight. But, still - look,

Meg," she gestured excitedly. "Come see, they're beautiful. I think the sun caught them just right to throw that shadow on the wall."

Meg peered over Deirdre's shoulder. A cluster of long stems, topped by caps

with black gills, protruded up from the carpet. They were a cadaverous shade of grayish

white, with dark lines etched on the wall behind a few of them. "Eew - it looks like a

fungus."

"Well, a mushroom is a type of fungus." Deirdre looked up at Meg. "The spores

are releasing - that's what caused the lines on the walls. We can make spore prints!

Wouldn't that be fun?"

Meg wrinkled her nose and squinted at the mushrooms. They seemed to emanate

a slightly evil quality. "I bet it's bad luck to have mushrooms inside," she ventured.

"They're part of fairy rings- the mushrooms are where sprites sit to watch the dancing."

!53 "Oh, you sound just like a silly girl," Deirdre exclaimed. "Judy Parks used to say things like that in Biology class. Although," she mused, "it's true, their ecology is skewed."

"What's that mean?" Meg asked.

"The ecology? It's the relationship of an orgamsm to its environment.

Mushrooms, for example, are normally outside. The fact that they're not is the sort of thing that would probably create superstitions among lace curtain Irish because they don't know any better. But still, these are fungi, that's all."

"No, really, Mom," Meg protested. "That's not just all." The thought of the magic being inside the house, growing up out of the carpet, was unsettling. It meant the family wasn't safe inside. It meant something or someone could find them, get at them.

"We should tear them up. And then, and then ... sprinkle holy water. Or something."

Deirdre tsked impatiently. "This calls for science, not superstition." She gently stroked the underside of a cap and inspected her finger. "People used to think they were plants but now they're considered a separate kingdom. We'll have to get a new book to identify the local fungi and plants." She sat back happily. "We can press the cap onto a piece of paper- that will make a spore print we can compare to a picture in the book. We should also get a book for the trees and -"

"And one for bad luck plants," Meg finished.

Deirdre looked at her sharply. "You sound just like your father."

The ecologies found in nature can be satisfyingly recreated in a laboratory, enabling students of life to draw proven conclusions about the needs of living things.

Air, water, food, and shelter: these are the quantifiable elements basic organisms need to

154 survive. Humans, however, require additional elements for survival, elements that are not only unquantifiable, but obscure. These elements, emanating from caliginous depths, I and remaining murky even as they come to light, drive people towards and away from each other as indisputably as the need for food and shelter.

These are the elements of the heart's periodic table, the elements story tellers clothe in metaphor and myth, science and superstition. The heart's elements can't be seen naked; they can only be seen like a solar eclipse, by viewing the image of the sun projected onto some surface, and so not looking directly at the sun. Indirection and degrees of darkness are the hallmarks of an eclipse, both necessary for protection against the searing intensity of the sun. The elements of the heart are also too intense to be viewed without protection, and so indirection and darkness thus becomes the basis of its incomprehension and frailty.

When Deirdre and Meg looked at the mushrooms, Deirdre offered her daughter her own understanding of the wonder of life, through her knowledge of plants, as a gift.

Meg tried to do the same; offer her own sense of wonder, through the prism of magic, to her mother. Neither saw what the other had offered, merely that, like the father with his elder son, when the lost younger son was found, their offerings were not accepted or understood.

"Enough." Deirdre dusted the spores from her fingers and slowly stood up. She shook her head. "We' 11 have to leave this box here, it's too heavy for us to move. You get started on Isabella's room."

"But, Mom ... "

!55 "I'm not telling you again, Margaret. Start unpacking Isabella's room. Go!"

Deirdre pointed out the door.

Meg, caught off-guard, stared at her mother. Then she stomped out, muttering,

"Stupid Isabella."

"I heard that," Deirdre's voice trailed behind her.

"I don't care." Meg kicked the first box she saw in Isabella's room and tipped it on its side. "Momma, Momma," a tinny voice squeaked. "Plays with stupid dolls." Meg couldn't imagine anything more insipid. Yet, she was acutely aware that the girls she had known thought she was the peculiar one for not wanting to play with dolls, which only made her dislike them more. How would Isabella like it if Hera took all her dolls and threw them in the ocean.

Meg picked up Isabella's Raggedy Ann doll. She sat down on the bed and smoothed the red yam curls. It had previously belonged to Maureen, who slept with it every night. One night Meg woke to find Raggedy Ann standing next to her bed, the button eyes twice their size with pinpricks of fire in the center, and her curls standing on end. Meg screamed until her throat was raw. Disgusted, Deirdre had put the doll away, despite Maureen's pleading, and eventually Isabella inherited it. Meg smiled now at the doll, amused to think she had been afraid of this silly thing when she was young. She shook its floppy body and tossed it back on the bed.

Looking around the room, she wondered, what was Hera going to do? As the queen of Olympia, Zeus' wife and sister, she could probably do anything she wanted.

Meg was sure the mushrooms were a bad sign. Maria Teresita would have understood; she always made sure there was a saint's statue on the windowsills in the kitchen and the

!56 bedrooms, while in the other rooms she twined pieces of braided red yam at the windows, to ward off the evil spirits. She also carefully monitored the sanctity of the ,house; if something was amiss, for example, an egg found with a double yolk, which meant the devil was in the house looking for a soul, someone was quickly sent outside to bury the egg with its shell.

Meg sighed, she was being responsible, no one knew how hard she was trying.

She'd endangered her immortal soul to try and avert Hera's wrath this morning, for nothing! And now she was in trouble for trying to help. It was just all so unfair. She looked in the box. More dolls! She slowly pulled out a Barbie, its hair matted and one leg stuck back on backwards. She remembered when Isabella had been given the Barbie.

Meg had wanted a Magic 8 Ball but instead, when their father returned from his trip, he brought Isabella a Barbie.

Deirdre looked in. "How are you coming along in here?" she asked.

"This is so unfair!" Meg burst out. "You like Isabella better than me - she got a stupid Barbie and I didn't get a Magic 8 Ball!"

"Than 1." Deirdre shrugged, "Life's not very fair, is it." She turned to leave.

"Wait!" Meg scrambled after her. "Mom, wait. Do you think, my birthday's coming up, maybe I could have a Magic 8 Ball for my birthday this time. Please?"

Deirdre turned to look at her in amazement. "You really are a piece of work, aren't you? When I come back in here," she checked her watch, "in a little while, I want that box unpacked and everything in it put away." She went back into her room.

Meg listened to her open and close drawers, then turned and threw the Barbie at the wall. The backwards leg satisfying popped off. Adults were impossible. Meg

!57 flopped down on the bed, arms and legs splayed. A Magic 8 Ball might be able to help her now. Her mother had said no the last time, too.

"But I WANT it!" Meg stood in the doorway to the kitchen, putting her whole body behind the request; her elbows clenched to the ribs, palms raised in supplication, pleading, struggling to find the way to make Deirdre understand that this request was important and valid, not a childish whim like Isabella asking for a stupid Barbie. "Mom,

I'm eleven now. Next year I'll be twelve, and then, then I'll be thirteen and I'll go to

High School in The States with the older girls."

Deirdre looked up from the button she was sewing on one of Dan's shirts. "It

sounds like your math is improving."

"Well, I'm growing up. I'm big enough for this. Isabella's being a silly little girl,

she's just excited because the Tooth Fairy left a bolivar under her pillow, that's all. You can't buy a Barbie for a bolivar."

"She's only five, Meg. She doesn't know that. And you don't need to tell her­ your father's bringing it back with him."

"That is so unfair!" Meg exclaimed indignantly.

Deirdre put down the shirt and regarded Meg steadily. "Do I need to remind you, young lady, that the reason she lost a tooth is because you hit her with a croquet mallet and knocked her front tooth out?"

"It was an accident! I didn't hit her- she got in the way."

Deirdre rolled her eyes.

158 "Honest, Mom! She got in my way. And she gets a Barbie for that. That's not fair!"

Deirdre waved Meg off. "Out you go- I don't want to hear any more."

Meg had seen the future at Bunny Hofstadter's house. Literally. On his latest trip, Mr. Hofstadter brought home a Magic 8 Ball from The States for Bunny. It was made of obsidian and filled with black dragon's blood. That's what Hal, Bunny's older

brother, said. Hal swore them to secrecy about how truly powerful the Magic 8 Ball was because he said Father Soledad would take it away from them, claiming to see the hand of Lucifer in its uncanny scrying ability.

All that afternoon Bunny and Meg tested the Magic 8 Ball, simultaneously wanting to believe, and terrified of believing. "Ask it again," Bunny urged Meg. "You ask it this time- ask if Jorge Rodriguez likes me."

"That's a stupid question!" Meg was incensed that Bunny was willing to

squander the power of the Magic Ball on Jorge, who hissed his esses in choir, much to the annoyance of Miss Coffee, the choir directory. "Besides, YOU have to ask it that. I can't ask for you- here."

Bunny took the ball gingerly, rolling it around in her hands. "Ooh, ooh, Magic

Ball, Magic Ball ... does Jorge Rodriguez like me better than Carolyn Herrera?" She turned it upside down and both girls crowded close to watch the answer swim up through the murky shadows of the dragon's blood. They held their breath as the white letters came into focus. IT IS ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN, the ball proclaimed. Bunny shrieked and threw herself back on the bed. "I knew it!! I knew it!"

159 Meg retrieved the ball. Who cares, she thought crossly. "We should only ask it important questions," she instructed Bunny. "From now on we only ask it i,mportant questions."

Bunny sat up, affronted. "It's MY ball - you don't get to make rules about it.

And that WAS an important question. Very important. You just want to know if you're going to move when school's over and that's a stupid question- of course you're going to. My dad told my mom that your family's moving to a Quonset house. Everyone knows that means the Company's going to move you. So YOU'RE the one wasting the

Magic Ball- give it back to me. It's mine!" Bunny grabbed the ball from Meg, shook it, and quickly asked "Does Andy Trainor like me too?" SIGNS POINT TO YES. "Oo, oo!" Bunny squealed and bounced up and down on the bed.

That was too much for Meg and she stomped out in a huff, remembering only just in time to stop and thank Mrs. Hofstadter for their snack. On the way home she pondered the revelations she had gleaned so far from the Magic Ball. She'd asked if Miss Ramirez was going to give them a surprise spelling test and the Ball predicted MOST LIKELY.

Meg decided to study that night. The most puzzling answer had come to the question she whispered hurriedly while Bunny was in the bathroom. Meg asked the Ball if Daniel

Malachi was really in Limbo or had he gone to Heaven. BETTER NOT TELL YOU

NOW, the Ball replied cryptically. Meg didn't understand that answer. She knew she needed her own Ball, needed to have time to ask better questions about things that mattered, like Daniel Malachi. And if they were moving to a Quonset house.

Bunny's a bubble head, she thought. Meg had overheard Dan tell Deirdre one night after Bunny ate dinner with them that "she'll be wearing a cottontail before too

160 many years have passed". Deirdre shushed him. She said Bunny was a nice girl and Dan shouldn't say such things. What things, Meg wondered .. She could ask the Ball that too.

And all the other questions the grownups wouldn't answer.

She'd ask about Daniel Malachi. The baby brother she never met. He didn't have a nickname, like everyone else. He was always called by his full name, although actually you weren't supposed to say his name at all. She didn't know why. Or what happened to him or where he was. No one ever said. Maria Chocolate, the Maria who took care of the girls while Deirdre was in The States afterwards, said that Daniel Malachi hadn't been born, he'd been died. Strangled by a cord around his neck (Maria twisted both hands around her neck, bulged her eyes and stuck out her tongue) because he came all wrong and too fast. "Mala, muy mala." She shook her head and made the sign of the cross, kissing her thumb at the end, the way the Venezuelans, and not the Americans, did.

When Father Soledad came to the house to speak to her father, Meg and Maureen hid in the hall to listen. Father solemnly told Deirdre and Dan that unbaptized babies went to Limbo, where they were excluded from the beatific vision on account of the original sin on their soul. Upon hearing that, Daniel said terrible words, words Deirdre would wash Meg's mouth out with soap if she ever heard Meg say them, plus Gaelic words she'd never heard before. After Father finished talking, Dan threw his glass of whiskey at the wall, shattering Deirdre's framed photograph of Pope John XXIII.

"To hell with the Popes and the Priests," he shouted. "To the flames with all of them! My grandfather, Auld Stevie, rest his soul, was right - the Church doesn't give life, it takes it!"

161 "Dan! Stop!" Father Soledad held his hand up. "Sus hijas, the girls will hear you."

"Let them learn the truth about the Church, then," Dan rounded upon the priest.

"Let them learn how the precious Church sucks the joy out of existence, sucks a man dry and then spits out the husks of men upon the world. Spits you out and then promises you'll find your joy when you're dead. Oh, Jesu! When you're dead!"

"No." Father Soledad up. "No, I won't listen. We'll speak when you're calmer.

I'll pray for you, Dan, but I won't listen to you." He walked quickly from the room. The girls drew back against the wall but the priest didn't even see them as he went by.

"Don't listen, then!" Dan shouted after him. "But remember- you're living with your soul sold to the Church. And then the will Church sell you out! The Church sold

Ireland out when it killed Parnell and now they wantto deny Heaven to a baby who never had time to draw more than five breaths, much less sin- deny Heaven to my son! My first born son! My baby, my baby Danny boy, my ... " He collapsed in a chair, sobbing.

Meg and Maureen stood frozen in horror in the hallway. They had never even seen their mother cry, much less their father. The sound of the front door slamming reverberated in the hallway, underlying Dan's choked and tortured breathing.

Maria Chocolate found them there, in the hallway, sometime later. She ushered the girls out the kitchen door and took them next door to the Adams'. Mrs. Adams'

Maria shook her head, "jAy, que l

"Why are we pobrecitas tonight?" Maureen asked Meg.

"Because Daddy broke the Pope's picture."

"Are we going to Hell?"

162 "I don't think so."

"Is Daddy going to Hell?"

"I don't think so. I don't know." Meg nervously bit her thumbnail and wondered.

Her mother knew the answer to all those questions. Her mother and Father Soledad. But her mother was visiting Nana because Daniel Malachi was died and it was Father

Soledad's visit tonight that made her father break the Pope's picture. She tried to remember the right question to tell Maureen. The answers were supposed to all be there; was it 127?, where did it say that priests were infallible?, did the Catechism say that?

"Mrs. Adams?"

"Yes, sweet pea?" Mrs. Adams was rocking Isabella, who had already fallen asleep. Mrs. Adams' two girls were grown up, off to college in The States, and she hadn't rocked a little girl in a long time. Mrs. Adams smiled.

"What is question 127? I'm getting them mixed up."

"Bless your heart, child, what are you talking about?"

"The Catechism, The Baltimore Catechism. It has all the answers about God and the Church. I can't remember if question 127 tells you about the priests. It says something about the Pope, and he's infallible, you know, and he teaches the bishops and priests and all the people until the end of the world."

Mrs. Adams patted Meg's arm. "Why, honey, Daddy and I're Baptists. From

Texas. I don't know anything about your Questions. But that Father Soledad of yours is gone now. Mr. Adams is talking to your daddy right now so you girls just have some more of these ginger snaps I made. I made them for the Ladies Bridge Club luncheon

163 tomorrow but y'all are such bitty things you cain't eat that many. So you just eat up now and then y' all can go back home."

But after Mr. Adams returned, Mrs. Adams took them instead to her daughters' room and tucked them into bed. She put Maureen and Isabella together in one bed and

Meg in the other. She sat for awhile and hummed a little song while rubbing first Isabella and then Maureen's back. Meg lay stiffly and stared at the ceiling. She said her prayers and then said them all again, twice; once for Isabella and once for Maureen because they hadn't said theirs. And nobody had brushed their teeth. Mrs. Adams offered to rub

Meg's back too but Meg said no. By the time she remembered to add thank you, Mrs.

Adams had already closed the door.

Meg stayed up for a long time, kneeling on the bed and looking out the window.

She could see in the windows of her house. Deirdre always went around after supper, when it started to get dark, and pulled the curtains closed. Dan had forgotten to close the curtains and Meg could see in the side windows of the living room. And the windows of her bedroom, which was dark. It gave her a peculiar feeling to look into her own house at night, in the dark, from the outside. It was like the feeling she got when she looked at pictures in her science book of the solar system.

Earth was so small, so fragile looking. Meg couldn't make the picture of Earth in the book fit with what she saw when she looked around at the playground or her back yard. The pictures clashed and crashed in her head. The more she looked at the picture of Earth, the farther away it seemed to get and Meg was terrified it would move away completely without her. Knowing she was moving with it didn't help because she was looking at the picture of it moving away while she was on it moving away and she

164 couldn't ask anyone because she couldn't even explain why she was so frightened.

Sometimes, when she lay in bed at night she would spread her arms and legs wide, trying I to slow down the rotation of the Earth so it wouldn't spin off course without her on it, leaving her all alone in the black galaxy, watching the Earth recede in the distance.

As Meg watched Dan through the windows across the strip of brown grass that separated the two houses, she was seized by the fear that he'd move away forever, spinning off to the edges of the galaxy, if she stopped watching. Dan moved very slowly.

He righted a chair and then moved to the stereo. It felt like she watching him mime putting on a record, carefully cleaning the record with a piece of velvet, then using the little brush to flick microscopic dust, "muddles the true tone," he always told Meg, off the needle. When he straightened up, he swayed and grabbed the wall to steady himself.

Meg watched harder and gripped the windowsill tightly. She should be with him; he looked like he had one of his headaches. When Dan had a headache he needed Meg to get him aspirin. Only Meg could blow on the aspirin three times and whisper "Come to my aid, Mac Brice". No one else knew how to do it right; this was the magic incantation he'd solemnly taught her that turned the aspirin into "bullaun stones", the only thing, other than a bit of whiskey, that could make his headaches go away.

The record finished and the arm automatically lifted up, swung back to its starting point and settled into the cradle. Meg watched as hard as she could but Dan didn't get up from where he lay on the couch to tum off the stereo or the living room lights. As Meg fell asleep the lit windows of the O'Brien living room got smaller and smaller, spinning away as the Earth rotated on its axis, spinning further and further out into black space.

165 "No! No, you may not have a Magic Ball." Deirdre slapped the fly swatter against the screen window and hissed a bit as a fly flew off, unscathed.

"Why, Mom, why?? I have the money Nana gave me for me for Christmas - I can buy it with my own money!"

"Because I said so, that's why. Maureen, is that table set for dinner yet?"

Maureen was taking extra time to set the table, sidling along the wall so as to stay out of the way of the argument.

"You always want something," Deirdre continued, "don't you? - you've wanted your entire life! Since you were born! Honestly, when you were six months old I could feed you until you'd start throwing up! When are you going to learn when to stop? Until you do, young lady, you stop when I tell you to stop. And right now I'm telling you you are not getting a Magic 8 Ball."

"But Bunny has one! Everyone has one- even Tom Hardwick has one. Mom, it tells the future - the Magic Ball KNOWS! I asked it last week if Miss Ramirez was going to give us a surprise spelling test and the Magic Ball KNEW - it said MOST

LIKELY so I studied, I studied hard, and she did and I got them all right, even 'foreign', and that was hard and I got it right and it was all because of the Magic Ball. PLEASE!"

"I said No."

"Mom! I NEED it - then I'll know when we're going to move again or when you're going to have another baby."

Maureen froze. Deirdre froze. As the silence settled in the kitchen and she could hear the fly buzzing, Meg realized too late she'd said too much. Deirdre drew herself up and moved her shoulders back. Meg and Maureen instinctively straightened up too, as

166 this was usually Deirdre's reminder for them to stop slouching. With posture to put a modeling school to shame, the three resumed their dinner preparations, the girls carefully watching Deirdre's movements for their cue. Deirdre scanned Maureen, frowned and titled her head slightly towards the hallway. Maureen scurried off to change her shirt before dinner, delighted to have an excuse to escape the frozen silence even if it meant having to wash her face. Deirdre looked at Meg sharply, drew a breath to say something, stopped, then turned back to the stove to remove a sizzling frying pan. Holding it over a glass jar, she deftly poured off the grease.

The silence shattered with the cracking of the glass jar and Deirdre's scream as hot grease splattered on her arms. She dropped the pan and it bounced off the counter onto the floor, sending slivers of glass, pieces of chicken and rivulets of grease down the cupboard doors and on the floor. Frozen in horror, Meg watched the pan turn ever more slowly on a lopsided axis until it settled right side up on the floor. Deirdre was moaning, rocking back and forth. "Butter," she managed to say, whispering almost as if to herself.

Her voice released Meg from the paralysis her scream had created and she ran to the refrigerator and got out the butter. Her hands shook and the lid of the butter dish rattled noisily as she took it off and moved forward, holding out the entire stick to rub on her mother's arms.

"Give me that." Deirdre snatched the stick of butter out of Meg's hands. "Now get away. Call Maria, tell her to come in and help me clean this mess up."

"I'll do it, Mom, I'll clean it up." Meg rushed for the sink but slipped in the chicken grease on the floor and dropped the butter dish, which broke into several pieces on the floor.

167 "Get. Out."

"Mom, please, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I can help, I can ... " Meg backed up, holding I her hands in front of her.

"Haven't you done enough?! Look what you've done! Look what you've made me do! OUT!! Now!! Get Maria and then go to your room! I don't want to see or hear from you again tonight! And I don't want to hear anything else about what you 'want'!"

Meg turned away, shaking. She brushed by Maureen in the hall, who merely stood back and let Meg pass without venturing a taunt.

168 MONDAY

Clutter takes time to develop: recipes tom with honest intent from newspapers, a flashlight with weak batteries, S&H green stamps waiting to be soggily pasted on stiffening pages, an eyeglass case left behind by the Fuller Brush man, last month's parish bulletin with the recommended plumber's phone number jotted in the margin. The excrescence of lives lived builds slowly but steadily, migrating into dusty piles on countertops, causing drawers to jam and jump suddenly when opened, unruly, untidy loose ends of life that never quite find their place until a ruthless decision can be made.

For most, death or relocation is generally the occasion for such decisions.

In Deirdre O'Brien's world, loose ends were symptoms of weak resolve, lack of will power and general moral failure. Annual moves insured an appropriate lack of loose ends, resulting in countertops that could be cleaned thoroughly after every meal. By

Monday morning, the start of Deirdre's fourth day back in The States, even the moving clutter had been cleared out of her kitchen. Deirdre paused momentarily in the doorway as she turned on the kitchen lights. Years in the tropics had taught her to visually scan a room immediately after the lights went on, before entering, to check for all manner of creatures that would momentarily freeze, startled by the light. She caught herself checking for cucarachas and then laughed at herself. Not here, not in The States!

Deirdre allowed herself a rare moment to savor her new kitchen. It was immaculate, just right: counters cleared off and clean, the sink gleaming, garbage can empty, fingerprints wiped off of walls, appliance surfaces sparkling. True, the appliances

169 were older than those she had had in Venezuela, but their appearance reminded her of her mother's kitchen. Nostalgia rose gently and mixed with the softly golden light coming I through the uncurtained window. Home. Deirdre listened to the kitchen speak English, rather than Spanish, to her. The food in the refrigerator was from a grocery store, not a mercado, the flower sitting quietly in a pot on the windowsill was an African Violet, not a riotous hibiscus bloom shoving against the screen, no flies buzzed incessantly insistent.

The silence was waiting to be broken by ... by what, Deirdre wondered, momentarily disconcerted. There was no Welcome! basket on the counter with a freshly baked loaf of banana bread and a list of the women's names and phone numbers, no booklet introducing The Camp from The Company, no Marias bustling in to fill the room with noise and answers in varying degrees of reliability.

Dan slid his hands around Deirdre's waist and dropped a kiss on the back of her head. "A penny for your thoughts on our first Monday back in The States, darlin'.

Didn't I promise I'd bring you back home?''

Startled out of her reverie, Deirdre moved away, shaking her head. "Actually, I was just thinking there's no one here to help me."

Dan stiffened. "No one to help you? That's what you were thinking?" He opened, then slammed shut a cupboard door. "Where the hell did you put the ashtrays?"

"Dan! The girls will be up any minute now." Dan slammed another cupboard door. "Stop! Here- here's an ashtray. Now just stop, you'll wake the baby."

Dan slowly leaned against the sink, crossed his feet in front of him, and lit a cigarette. Carefully, deliberately, he blew a stream of smoke towards the ceiling then

170 titled his head to look steadily at Deirdre. In a low tone he said, "By all means, darlin'.

Make sure you take care of. The baby."

Families can be tied together in many different ways. One of the ways the

O'Brien family was tied together was words. Not the definition, connotation or denotation of a word, but the hidden meaning behind the word; the story or stories the word had come to mean. A single word could become a world, a short hand code only the family understood. The outside world heard a single note when the word was spoken whereas those who were admitted to the code heard a chord that intimated times, places, reactions, what was said and done, by whom, what was not said and not done, who won, who lost. The price paid.

Each time the note was struck the chord reverberated with meanings and nuances trembling in the air, quivering on the nerve endings of those who could hear the reverberations. Memories didn't need to be resurrected, nothing further needed to be said: there, resonating in the ether was a common denominator filling the room with an unspoken truth.

The next chord struck builds on that resonance, needs it in fact to build on and make sense. Just so a husband may sound a note that strikes a chord with his wife. A chord only she hears. Or thinks she hears. With unspoken chords, it can be hard to tell.

One must pay close attention. But she responds. And her children sense a chord has been struck. They can't hear it, but they can see their parents reverberating and, like bells, begin to reverberate themselves. Thus the chord crescendos to become a family chord. Husband, wife, children: henceforth a new triad in the repertoire of the family.

171 The word baby was a chord in the O'Brien family. A discordant, frightening, taboo antithesis. It meant life. Death. It meant power. Submission, bondage, thwarted I desires. When invoked, abandoned dreams and vivid nightmares floated through the air and settled on sparkling counter tops in the kitchen, on neatly stacked sheets and towels in the linen closet, on the Madonna statue on Deirdre's dresser. A gift from Dan upon the birth of their first child, Margaret Mary.

Margaret Mary; Friday's child is loving and giving. A first born baby is a dream come true, a wish granted by the smiling heavens.

Maureen Ericka; Saturday's child works hard for a living. A second baby, born eleven months later is a taunt from the fickle heavens.

Isabella Jane; Tuesday's child is full of grace. A third baby, born after the memory of the travails have dimmed. Dimmed, but inexorably reawakened as the breasts bloomed and the skin stretched.

Daniel Malachi; Wednesday's child is full of woe. First born male. Still born male. The umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, blue purple mottled. Fiat voluntas tua, omnia saecula saeculorum.

Majella Elizabeth; Thursday's child has far to go. The gods will not be denied their gibes; another baby, another girl, pink white breathing.

Deirdre was surprised that her babies breathed so noisily. Mrs. Dahlberg, her high school home economics teacher, never told the girls in her class that babies emitted a stream of unearthly noises during the night; gurgles, snorts, snuffles, sighs, coughs, chokes, gasps, each noise possibly presaging a fatal cessation of breath. No amount of cooing, coddling, back rubbing, lullabies sung, prayers whispered, tearful pleas or stem

172 lectures administered to uncomprehending ears made a difference. There were many things Mrs. Dahlberg never told the girls in her class.

The obstetrician's office in Caracas looked like an obstetrician's office in New

York City. Old Life magazines lay on the tables in the waiting room, last year's instead of last month's, but the pictures were still good, Deirdre reflected. Beige carpeting, discretely stained, covered the floor, beige paint, touched up with a close enough match in color, covered the walls. The only difference was the sign on the bathroom door;

Mujeres. Deirdre watched both Hombres and Mujeres use the bathroom and pursed her lips. Dr. Hernandez had been highly recommended by the women in Amuay. Deirdre couldn't bring herself to tell them about Daniel Malachi, although she was sure news from Las Salina had made its way here. But no one would mention it to her if she said nothing to them. She said nothing. Mitzi Hofstadter had not mentioned it the afternoon she recommended Dr. Hernandez.

"Honey, Dr. Hernandez is as good as the doctors Stateside." Mitzi Hofstadter sipped her bourbon. Never more than one finger during the day was her rule. A matter of etiquette, akin to wearing colored jewels before dark, simply not done. Unless they were playing bridge. Which she and Deirdre were not. Mitzi was the 1961 Amuay

Welcome! Lady. She had three children, all born in Texas, where she had flown to give birth each time. "All the Venezuelan women say so. And I heard that from an American woman, too. Martha Briggs- they're in Maracaibo now. She had a girl, Suzy. Everyone was fine, just fine." She patted Deirdre's hand. "Bourbon? Just one little 'ole finger, to keep that baby calm? No? You sure? Well, now, you have nothing to worry about."

173 Deirdre whispered the words again, "nothing to worry about". She tried to sit up a little straighter but the hard plastic back on the chair pressed painfully against the bones I in her spine. She was carrying this baby low and in the back. "i Verdad, un hijo !" Maria

Rosa chuckled and nodded sagely, oblivious to the look on Deirdre's face. Deirdre pulled the saint's card her mother sent her out of her purse. "Saint Gerard Majella, beloved servant of Jesus Christ, perfect imitator of your meek and humble Savior, and devoted Child of the Mother of God: Preserve me from danger and from the excessive pains accompanying childbirth, and shield the child which I now carry, that it may see the light of day and receive the lustral waters of baptism through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen."

"(,Senora O'Brien?" A young woman smiled shyly at Deirdre. "The doctor will see you now."

Dan fiercely contemplated the ice cubes in his glass as Deirdre recounted what

Dr. Hernandez told her; the baby seemed fine, there were no indications of any proble ...

"There weren't any last time," he shot, "until you insisted on staying in the camp to have him."

Deirdre shook her head, opened and closed her mouth. "Isabella was born here ... ," her voice trailed off and she gestured vaguely around the kitchen.

"Isabella was not born here, she was born in Caracas - in a city, where it's safe!

This is not the bad old days, in the old country where women have babies on the farm. I pay servants to help you! The Marias will take care of the girls. And the wives -every

174 man jack in the office said his wife would have helped- and they did. Afterwards." Dan slammed his glass on the counter. "Why didn't you ask them first?"

Automatically, Deirdre straightened her spine, as she had been taught by the nuns; the brides of The Lord did not slouch. She composed her face as her mother composed her face when her husband cursed the dinner not to his liking. She took a step back as her grandmother stepped back to avoid her husband's fists.

"Dan. Please. Keep your voice down, you'll wake the girls." She rotated her engagement ring diamond towards her palm so it wouldn't snag on the rubber gloves she pulled on. She shook Polvo onto the sponge and scrubbed the stovetop, shaking her head at the spills. Maria La Secunda, Maria Rosa's daughter, never remembered to put the lids on pans and they messily boiled over every time she cooked.

The refrigerator hiccupped, resumed its electric hum. Relatives and acquaintances, the living and dead, all the angels and saints, moved in and out of the silence, chatting and opining. The ceiling lights shone starkly, lengthening the shadows cast.

"This stove needs a light on the hood. I can't see the top when the lights are on because of the shadows. It's not a problem during the day but once it gets dark it's hard to see."

"You'll either go to Caracas or The States to have this baby. And this time he'll be baptized in the delivery room - make sure you call the priest first."

Deirdre gripped the edge of the counter top and stared out the window at the dark that swallowed everything in it. The ruffle she'd put up over the window last week moved softly in response to a desultory night breeze. The cotton fabric was white, with

175 robin's egg blue flowers wreathed in green. A soft green that made her think of spring.

Not a brash green ready to tum brown in the tropical sun or black with rot in the jungle's I shadows, but a green that held the promise of life and renewal. Ginny Adams gave her the fabric to make a dress for Isabella and there had been enough left over to also sew a ruffle for the kitchen window.

"Bob Adams' wife, Ginny, gave me the fabric I used for this window. Do you like it?"

Dan scooped the remaining solid pieces of ice from the bottom of the ice bucket and shook the drops off before he dropped the ice in his glass. On his way to the liquor cabinet, he turned in the doorway. "I won't have another son condemned to eternity in

Limbo, Deirdre."

The swinging door slapped back and forth behind him. Deirdre removed the rubber gloves and turned her ring back around. Her palm bore the imprint of the diamond, skin drained white, the outline of the stone drawn in blood. Holy Mother,

Daniel Malachi didn't go to Limbo, did he? There wasn't time, we would have if we had time, you know all the others were ... But I didn't know, by the time I woke up ... They won't punish a baby for that, will they? Please, dear Lady, intercede with your most gracious Son- ask them to punish me instead, spare the baby. She stared at the curtains, remembering how adorable Isabella looked in the dress. The blue matched her eyes perfectly. I could ask Ginny for help, she thought. Bob works with Dan, maybe she can keep an eye on the house for Dan, if he's here. The girls will have to go stay with someone. I wonder if I could send them home. She surveyed the kitchen. It was clean.

Done.

176 On the patio Dan sat back and stared up at the stars. Pedro el Ciego was teaching him how to read the constellations. When the men went deep-sea fishing they departed and returned in the dark, navigating by the stars. The best guide and unofficial captain of the native fishermen was old Pedro, known as el Ciego because one eye was a collapsed socket, covered over by scarred and puckered flesh. It was rumored he'd lost the eye in la revoluci6n. The previous one or the one before that, no one was sure. But Pedro knew how to read the skies and the waves, knew the haunts of the fish, knew when they'd be running and where they would scatter. Dan prided himself on having instinctively recognized the blood of a chief in Pedro and soaked up his tales, and the tales told about him and the revolution. Dan wanted to remember them all to tell Malachi, to sit his stories beside the stories Malachi told about the old days with Pearse and O'Donovan

Rossa. That was history; this was now. Some said the revolution was finished when

Betancourt was elected in 1958 but there were whispers.

There were always whispers. Some said Betancourt was too close to the US oil companies. Some said he had forgotten the people who supported him. Some talked of

Castro, so close, so very close. By now Castro had succeeded in ousting Batista, who had been a good friend to the United States. Before Castro Havana had become a playground for wealthy Americans, her citizens treated like chattel owned by the Americans - just like the British, Dan thought. It's exactly the way the British treated their colonies. And

Pedro had fought. Still did, some whispered.

But this time Dan was at the center of it, not Malachi. So he paid close attention.

And studied the stars, which were different in the southern hemisphere. Or so people said. Coming from New York City, he had never noticed the stars before moving to

177 Venezuela. Here they dazzled him, causing him to catch his breath in awe every time he looked up in the night sky. A sky so dark it had depth, going further and further back I until he thought he would drown. When Dan was a child he had believed he would become a priest. His love for God filled him with such certainty it made him complete.

But as he grew older he was unable to hold on to his certainty and it slowly, sadly slipped away, seemingly while he wasn't looking. Dan never recovered fully from the loss, never stopped trying to return to the one place he had felt whole. There were moments, while gazing at the tropical night sky, when that certainty of so long ago brushed over his soul again. Dan wept the first time he felt his heart touch the hem of God's robe again after all those lost years. He discovered that if he aggressively sought the feeling it would not come, but occasionally, on nights when he merely waited, it would. Then the stars, every color in the spectrum combined to create a ferociously freezing white, seductively drew him into the infinite darkness; simultaneously warm and cold, welcoming and dangerous, soft and razor's edge sharp.

After the baby died Dan often sat on the patio and waited, his soul holding its breath in anticipation. But the stars now barred the entrance to the darkness; instead of welcoming him in, they created a wall that kept him out. On the other side of that wall lay his son's soul, and God's mercy. For now there was no explanation that made sense, nothing that could unlock the wall of frozen mocking light. Dan could feel the cold from the stars reaching out from the sky, weaving itself invisibly around him, seeping into his bones and preventing him from being able to reach beyond it to touch anything on the other side of this barrier that separated him from the world of the living. Nothing that

Father Soledad said to Deirdre and him helped; how could he know the pain that

178 shattered your heart sometimes while looking at a living child of your own, much less a lifeless one? Deirdre was even further away than the stars and refused to speak about I

Daniel Malachi at all; any time he mentioned the baby she simultaneously conducted an irrelevant one-sided conversation.

Heat was the only thing that enabled him to communicate with others. During the day, the unrelenting intensity of the sun melted the ice that surrounded him and he could talk to the men in the office, reach out and shake hands with them, laugh over drinks after work. But as the sun set the cold crept in. More and more scotch was needed before its warmth would start to affect the cold. Accidentally, he discovered pain also kept the cold at bay. One night, angry because the scotch was not having any effect, he jammed ice into his glass, which shattered and sliced open the side of his hand, requiring stitches at the clinic. The pain Dan experienced while getting stitches shattered the wall around him. For several days, when sorrow started to separate him from the world, all he had to do was lightly knock the bandaged hand against something, causing exquisite razor lines of pain to slice up the back of his neck, clearing out the cobwebs the scotch left in his head. The stitches healed and the walls returned at night but Dan remembered the clarity the pain caused. Once, on Pedro's boat, a fish hook jammed itself in his thumb so badly

Pedro needed to use his saw-toothed fish knife to cut it out. One of the other American men on board vomited over the side of the boat while Dan sat stoically through the procedure, grateful to know he would be able to see past the stars into infinity that night.

When Pedro was done he nodded grudging approval and presented Dan with the knife and the bent and bloodied fish hook as souvenirs.

179 Dan watched his wife break eggs into a bowl while he smoked. The girls liked scrambled eggs so Deirdre always made theirs first, in one batch. Dan had his over easy, not overcooked, but just enough so that the yoke could soak into the toast, with bacon on the side. Just the way his mother always made them for his father.

Unbidden, old Father Callahan's lectures on "a man's responsibilities" surfaced.

"Kill-Joy Cally", the boys called him, as his Friday sermons at St. Ignatius High School stressed their future responsibilities as husbands and fathers, stressed the need to stay on the straight and narrow path over the course of their sinful, filled with temptation, weekends. "Only St. Mark acknowledged how hard it was for St. Joseph, earthly father to Our Savior - and, hard as it was, St. Joseph still did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him and did not put his wife away." Women were to be treated with reverence,

Kill-Joy insisted, even if they were the daughters of Eve. The artists may have loved the apposition of the Marys at the Tomb, but it was Joseph who had to beg Pilate for the body of Our Lord, Joseph who wrapped Jesus in linen and Joseph who buried his only son far from his home. No angel bid Joseph thus.

Dan continued to watch as his wife belted his youngest child into her high chair, and smoothed out a wrinkle in the old shower curtain under the chair. Deirdre was a remarkable wife and mother, everyone said so. As she stepped away, Dumpling shrieked and grabbed at Isabella, who was slowly working her way around the table assembling place settings, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth, showing her focus.

"Mommy," Isabella whined. "Dumpling's bothering me!" She waved a fork threateningly at the baby, who shrieked even louder.

180 Deirdre looked over her shoulder, but continued taking food out of the refrigerator. Jars and bottles in the door of fridge rattled noisily when she pushed it shut I with her elbow.

Dan sighed. Even after a shower he was still slightly hung over and wanted another cigarette. But the pack in his pocket was empty, and someone had moved his cigarettes to the kitchen windowsill, instead of leaving them in the living room. He could never understand why people wouldn't leave his things where he left them. If he had ever dared to touch Malachi's pipe, the old man would had his belt off before you could say damn the British. Now, the thought of crossing Deirdre's line of fire was more trouble than it was worth. The longer he watched his wife, the more he wanted a cigarette and the more annoyed he became. Dan checked his watch.

"Deirdre, where's my briefcase?"

Deirdre concentrated on scrambling eggs while watching Isabella set the table.

"You left it in the front hall Friday night when you got home. Don't forget napkins.

Maybe one of the girls put it away while they were cleaning up."

"They know not to touch my briefcase."

"Yes, napkins go on the left. Not open it, just put it away."

"Hi, Daddy."

"Hi, Daddy."

Meg and Maureen slipped around their father like cats and slid into the kitchen.

"Have either of you seen my briefcase?" Dan asked.

Both stopped short.

"I can find it for you, Daddy." Meg answered quickly.

181 "But I know where it is," Maureen assured him.

"I said, I'll find it." Meg shouldered Maureen.

"Not if I get it first," Maureen turned for the hall.

"Daddy! I said it first- I said I'll get it," Meg objected.

"Girls!" Deirdre widened her eyes at her husband.

Dan raised his arms and turned sideways to allow his daughters to fight their way past him into the hall. "Who ever finds it. .. Chris is picking me up in a few minutes."

"Well, then hurry up - your eggs are ready." Deirdre quickly moved to the kitchen table. "No, forks on the left too, yes, spoons and knives on the right." She pushed Isabella aside. "Now move, you can finish later. Let your father sit down, there's toast-," she turned and almost bumped into Dan who had moved into the middle of the kitchen. He awkwardly stepped back, muttering.

Deirdre and Dan had perfected their dance steps when they had company.

Entertaining others, they smoothly orchestrated drinks and food with aplomb and banter­ and with enough subtle jabs to make their guests feel at home by recognizing their own small estrangements. The most delicious hors d'oeuvre of all is the knowledge that, even if, or especially if, your hosts' lives look more charmed than yours, they are nonetheless subject to the same imperfections. However, once the O'Brien's guests departed, the scree underfoot reappeared.

At 7:19am on his first Monday due in at his new office, the fact that Deirdre was showered, dressed and efficiently preparing breakfast for six people while his briefcase was missing, an interruption for her and an occasion for slammed doors and bickering

182 between his two eldest, was particularly galling. He lit a cigarette. "I don't know how many times I've told you I don't want the children playing with my briefcase."

"If you would put it away ... " Deirdre flared briefly.

"I found it!" Maureen burst into the kitchen. "I told you I knew where it was."

"Because you hid it there," Meg, on her heels, snapped.

"Did not! Here you go, Daddy." Maureen proudly proffered the briefcase to her father.

"Did too! That's not fair, is it, Daddy?"

"Oh, for the love of God, will you two stop?" Dan looked in his briefcase. "If any papers are missing ... "

" .. .it would be Maureen's fault, because she's the one who took it," Meg supplied helpfully.

Dan picked up a piece of toast. "I'm going to wait outside for Chris. See you all tonight."

"Dan -," Deirdre held a frying pan, spatula poised to serve. "It's your first day in the new office- you have to eat."

"Not that hungry," he mumbled around the toast, on his way out the door.

"Meggle, bring me a cup of coffee."

"You bet!" Meg pushed around her mother. "I'll be right there, Daddy."

Deirdre looked down at the table. "What did I tell you? Forks on the left,

Isabella, the left!"

"Su izquierda," Maureen prompted Isabella, who was looking from one hand to the other.

183 "This left." Deirdre rapped Isabella's hand with the spatula. Isabella jerked back with a little cry. "How many times do I have to tell you we speak Englisp in this country."

Meg announced importantly, "I'm taking coffee out to Daddy."

"You have to," Maureen responded. "Because I found his briefcase."

"I wanted to look for Daddy's briefcase, too." Isabella started to cry. "You didn't let me look for it too."

"Here," Deirdre handed Isabella a plate with eggs. "Eat. Meg- out."

Meg carefully balanced the brimming coffee cup as she turned sideways to push open the screen door with her hip. "Here, Daddy. Here's your coffee."

Dan was in the Raga's driveway with Chris, admiring their car. "Nice." Dan shook his head. "Dodge Polara. This is a '62?" Dan shook his head again.

"Convertible. Very nice."

"Daddy, I brought your coffee." Meg touched his arm.

"I heard you, Meg. Just put it down on the step. And a V8? Really?"

"Morning, Red," Chris smiled at Meg. "Aren't you nice to bring your dad coffee."

"Yes, thanks." Dan said absently. "I guess with one kid you didn't have to get a station wagon, huh?"

"Our car is prettier," Meg said. She patted it loyally. "Look - it has two colors­ green and white. Yours just has one."

184 Dan laughed harshly. "Our 'pretty' car, Meg, is a '56 Ford Ranch Wagon. With a dented roof where the dam goats climbed on it."

"Goats?" Chris looked at Dan quizzically.

"Goats," Dan nodded, then shrugged. "If you park under a tree for some shade, the goats climb on top to eat the leaves. See the dents on the hood- and the roof?"

Chris started laughing. "Hey, c'mon- that's a great story! We'll take your car down to Joey's on Friday night, see if any of the guys can guess how it got dented. Loser buys the drinks!"

·Dan squinted at his car, then laughed. "You're right- they'll never guess, will they? Friday night, after work- you're on."

Chris looked at his watch. "Speaking of which, you don't want to be late on your first day. Let's ride on out!" He waved, "Bye, Meg."

"Daddy!" Meg hopped from one foot to the other. "Your coffee! Don't forget your coffee."

"No time, bye." Dan waved as the men got in the car.

Meg wandered to the end of the driveway to watch the car until it turned a comer and went out of sight. She looked up and down the street. The only thing moving was a fat Chihuahua schnuffling in the grass across the street. Meg watched him for a moment.

She couldn't remember his name, even though she had just met him Saturday morning.

Only day before yesterday - it seemed like a lifetime now, after meeting Mr. Eckberg

Saturday afternoon. The dog seemed to belong to a more innocent time, a time when she was younger. Meg listened for The Winds but the air was still. A radio announcer's voice floated faintly from the Rago's kitchen window, " ... barometric pressure still

185 dropping. Low 90s today, rain this afternoon." She poured the coffee behind a bush before taking the cup back to the kitchen.

"He didn't drink it, did he," Maureen said placidly.

"He did so! He drank all of it." Meg put the cup and saucer in the sink.

"Mentira." Maureen said under her breath.

Meg leaned close as she sat down for breakfast. "I'm telling," she whispered.

"Tell what?"

"Estas hablando Espafiol. You're not supposed to. Mom said."

Maureen rolled her eyes at Meg. "You just did."

"But you did it first."

"Did not."

"Did too."

Isabella had been watching her older sisters, her head turning back and forth.

"Did what, Meg, did what? t:,Que hiciste Maureen?

"jNada!" Meg and Maureen chorused.

Isabella slumped in her chair, with her eyebrows drawn down and her lower lip pushed out. Her sisters ignored her. She bounced up as soon as Deirdre returned to the kitchen with Dumpling.

"Mommy," Isabella announced, "Maureen and Meg are being mean to me!"

"Oh, Isabella, honestly! Too much whining this morning - and where does whining get you?" Isabella kicked at a table leg. "Nowhere." Deidre leaned in to smack her leg, "and don't kick the furniture. I'm going to put Majella in the play pen - I want

186 you to keep her company while you girls," nodding at Meg and Maureen, "get cleaned up. We're going shopping!"

Her daughters looked at her blankly. "Shopping for what?" Meg asked.

"Clothes shopping." Deirdre looked around at her daughters. "We can buy clothes from stores here and we're all going clothes shopping."

Isabella looked to Meg and Maureen for their reaction. Maureen clapped, excited.

"We can buy clothes, Mommy? You're not making them or ordering them?"

Deirdre laughed. "Nope, not this time- we're actually going to try on clothes and buy them. Today! Right now!"

"Yippee!" cried Maureen. "Mommy, can I have a coat? A princess-line coat?"

"Yippee!" echoed Isabella. "Me too, me too!"

Dumpling clapped and crowed.

Deirdre nuzzled the baby's neck. "We'll buy you something too, sweetie-pie!

Maureen, where on earth did you hear about a princess-line coat?"

"Remember Annie Rankin, in my Brownie troop? Annie's mom said she was going to buy one."

"Ah. Well, the Rankins moved to Pedemales, so I don't think they're going to be needing coats, princess line or otherwise. In fact, neither are any of you. Not while we live here in Florida, anyway."

"Where are we living next, Mom?" Meg looked up.

"Where's Pedemales, Mom?" asked Maureen.

"It's over by Caripito," Deirdre answered. "But on the coast. Now - let's get ready to go shopping!"

187 "I don't want to go shopping - I want to know where we're living next." Meg said.

·Deirdre regarded her steadily. "Watch your tone, young lady." Meg looked down at her plate. "Oh, c'mon!" Deirdre patted her shoulder. "We're not moving today so what difference does it make. C'mon, you've never been clothes shopping before- this will be fun!"

Meg put her breakfast dishes by the sink. Outside the window, the palm fronds on the tree next to the house swayed lazily. "Mom, how about if I stay here and you go shopping? I can work on unpacking since I didn't finish ayer." She reached for the baby in her mother's arms. "I'll watch Dumpling, too."

"Meg, nothing you own fits on you - you've outgrown everything. I need you to try on clothes." Deirdre smiled, trying to convince her first born to enjoy herself.

"Sweetie, this will be fun - all girls like to shop for clothes! I bet you'll see girls from your school shopping for clothes, maybe you'll meet someone."

"Monsignor Parsloe said we need uniforms for school - and we have to order them."

"Yes, but you still need clothes for when you're not in school." Deirdre looked at

Meg's mulish expression and frowned. "I am not making your clothes while we're living here in The States, do you understand? Americans buy their clothes in a store. That's what we do." Deirdre turned to leave the room. "Now wash those dishes and then brush your teeth. We are all going clothes shopping."

"I don't like being here!" Meg burst out. "I don't want to stay. Why can't we go home? Then you can make our clothes and there won't be any trouble."

188 "Trouble?" Deirdre stopped. "What are you talking about? Meg, you never like any place when we first move there. Remember? In Amuay you asked Mr. Johnson to transfer Daddy back to Caripito. In Caripito you cried for a month because you wanted to go back to Las Salinas. In Las Salinas-"

"No, Mom, this is different," Meg insisted, looking nervously out the window.

"Daddy should ask them to send us back to Venezuela. Where we belong."

"No." Deirdre shook her head. "No, it's not different- it's always the same with you, always complaining. You're American, you belong here."

"But-"

Deirdre held her hand up. "Not another word. Dishes. Teeth." She waved her hand behind her as she walked out of the room. "And don't dawdle - we're leaving in twenty minutes."

Meg turned to look out the window again. The palm fronds were now still, except for one that bobbed slightly in concert with a lizard doing push-ups as he showed off his throat fan. The orange red skin pulsed like a heartbeat on the dusty screen. The lizard stopped and looked around. "Very nice," Meg assured him before he leapt out of sight.

She listened for the winds, wondering how she could get a message to them here in the

States. In Amuay the winds were everywhere, all the time, bending palm trees, whirling curlicues of dust or leaves, sliding in under doors. She'd never had to wonder how to contact them; like the Saints and the Angels, they filled the air around her. Meg's eyes slid out of focus as she thought about home. Memories filtered through the shadows outside the window, uneasily shifting shadows that still harbored the remnants of the night.

189 A scritching noise caught her attention. The lizard's back, she thought and stood on tiptoe to peer through the screen. A face appeared on the either side, inches from hers. I

Meg screamed and stumbled backwards.

"Shh!" Mr. Eckberg put a warning finger to his lips.

"Mother of God!" Meg clutched the edge of the sink. "What are you doing here- you almost scared me to death!"

"Sorry 'bout that." Mr. Eckberg scrubbed his nose with the heel of his palm.

"Didn't think I could last much longer without sneezing."

Meg frantically whispered, "What if someone sees you?"

Mr. Eckberg shrugged. "Not too many folks around here, I'm keeping a weather eye out."

"I mean, someone in here." Meg looked over her shoulder.

"Meg, Maureen- you girls almost ready for shopping?" Deirdre's voice floated from the back of the house.

"Coming, Mommy!" Maureen shouted from their bedroom.

"That's my mother." Meg grimaced. "We're going shopping. For clothes."

"Well, I came by-"

"I looked for you this morning, after Daddy left," Meg interrupted, leaning closer and closer to the screen on a tide of words. "But you weren't there, or the Winds- or at least I couldn't hear them - and I looked - and then I tried to get Mom to let me stay home today but she wouldn't let me, and-"

"Shh, all right now, shh, shh ... " Mr. Eckberg tried to calm her down. "Tell you what, if you just get the Brooch now, Hera-"

190 "Meg!" Deirdre's voice sliced through their conversation. Meg whirled around as Mr. Eckberg dropped back into the shadows.

"Mom!"

Deirdre poked her head around the door frame and smiled happily. "Ready, sweetie? C'mon, live a little! Leave those dishes for once and let's go! Don't worry about that shirt- we'll buy a new one!"

Meg stared at her mother, momentarily distracted by the fact that she seemed almost giddy. A rustling in the palm fronds caused her to look frantically behind her.

"What was that?" Deirdre followed Meg's look.

"A, a lizard." Meg flapped her hand at her throat. "I was watching a lizard."

"Oh, doing a throat display?" Deirdre laughed. "That's fun, isn't it? C'mon," she put her arm around Meg's shoulders and steered her out of the kitchen.

"Mom-"

" ... do you remember the time Mrs. Duke's Maria found the lizard the Duke boys put in the deep freeze? Oh, she told that story so well, she'd have the whole bridge table in tears!"

As Deirdre firmly guided her out of the kitchen, Meg glanced back at the window.

She thought she saw a brief flash of red but wasn't sure. She wasn't sure if it was the lizard, or Mr. Eckberg's shirt, or even if she had seen it.

Her sisters were clustered at the open front door. Meg pushed past them and ran to peer around the edge of the house. The stand of palms by the kitchen window was still and dark.

191 Suddenly Meg stumbled, off-balance, as something almost knocked her leg out from under her.

"Boo!" cried Isabella. "You weren't looking, I got you, I got you!"

"Stop it!"

"All right, now, everyone in the car," Deirdre tripped gaily down the front steps.

"I want to sit up front, Mommy!" Isabella hopped up and down Mommy, I want to sit up front- I never get to sit up front."

"Mom, here, I'll take Dumpling." Meg pulled at the baby in her mother's arms.

"She can sit in the back with me."

"Mommy, Mommy, I want to sit up front."

"Yes, Isabella! I hear you." Deirdre shook her head, then laughed. "You'll be the shopper girl, won't you?"

Meg looked up and down the driveway but didn't see any movement. She sighed deeply, then opened the back door of the car and handed Dumpling in to Maureen. As

Deirdre backed down the driveway Meg craned her neck to see out the windshield.

Nothing.

"Honey, I can't see around you, please get down." Deirdre paused at the end of the driveway.

Meg sighed noisily as she threw herself down on the back seat. "Mom, you just don't understand!"

"Understand what?" Deirdre laughed. "Girls, make sure she's not dying back there."

192 Maureen pounced on Meg to tickle her while Dumpling, caught in between her sisters, started laughing and clapping.

Isabella turned to watch the melee. "Mommy, I want to sit in back," she cried.

"No!" Deirdre pulled her down on the front seat and looked in the rear view mirror. "All right, no more roughhousing. Meg, hold Dumpling, please, make sure she stays on the seat."

Dumpling had already slid down on the floor and started eating something she'd found. She squawked indignantly when Meg pulled the sodden mass out of her hand and threw it out the window. Dumpling grabbed at air, furiously and incoherently berating

Meg. "I know how you feel," Meg whispered. She smoothed the baby's hair. "I know exactly how you feel."

The parking lot at the Sears store contained only a few cars, parked under the solitary tree at the end of the lot. Deirdre idled the car, looking around uncertainly. "I wonder if they're open, maybe we're too early. Maureen, hop out, honey, and see what time they open."

Maureen skipped up to the front doors. "9 o'clock, Mommy," she called back.

"Oh, nuts, not for another half hour." Deirdre drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. "Ok, let's go look at that movie theater across the street, see what's playing." Maureen had cupped both hands around her eyes and was peering into the store. Deirdre frowned, "C'mon, Maureen, back in the car," she called.

193 Maureen tumbled into the back seat. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Oh, wait until you see! They have everything in there, it looks like. Everything! And clothes and clothes ' and clothes- more clothes than I've ever seen anywhere! It's beautiful!"

"l,De verdad ?" breathed Isabella.

"See? I told you," Deirdre smiled. "You girls are in for a treat."

"How long is it going to take to go shopping?" Meg asked.

Deirdre looked at her in the rear view mirror. She turned to the other girls, "All right! Everyone out -let's see what's playing at the movies! Just think- we can actually see new movies now, not movies that are a couple of years old."

"We had old movies?" Maureen asked. "I liked our movies."

"Me too," Meg chimed loyally. "Remember the one where Jane was trying to teach the monkey how to wash the dishes? And he threw the plates in the river?" Both girls started laughing. "Mom, do you remember that one?"

Deirdre looked over the daughters and smiled. A trip to the movies had been a

Saturday afternoon affair, one all the children in the camp attended, dropped off by parents delighted to be able to take advantage of the time. The movies started with black and white Korean War news shorts, followed by cartoons, then the main attraction; an installment adventure film that usually ended with Tarzan about to tumble into grave danger, deep in the African wilds, while "To Be Continued" was emblazoned across the screen. The children would charge out of the theater, ready to continually reenact the adventure, while waiting for the next installment. If the next installment didn't show up, as happened occasionally, they would make up their own endings, especially in Caripito,

194 where the rain forest surrounding the camp looked remarkably like the African forests in the movies ..

As Meg stepped out of the car, she looked around. Unlike the overgrown lushness around their new house, this part of town looked deceptively like Amuay; flat, scrubbed clean by the wind, and with an endless sky overhead. The sky was white blue, already reflecting heat through different layers of cloud types. In the west, large banks of clouds billowed up. "Cumulus," Meg whispered, trying to remember the name for the wispy clouds sketched high across the sky overhead. They seemed to be moving south but there was no wind blowing over the parking lot.

On either side of Deirdre, Maureen and Isabella skipped ahead to look inside the movie theater. Meg shifted the Dumpling to her other hip and turned to follow them onto the sidewalk. As Isabella swung back and forth, a woman appeared fleetingly behind her.

Meg froze. The woman wore what looked like a toga, tied tightly at her waist, and heavy gold serpents wound on her arms. She was strikingly beautiful, with dark, ridged hair and heavily lined eyes. Hera.

Meg held her breath and clutched Dumpling until the baby screeched. Mr.

Eckberg had tired to tell her something about Hera this morning, but hadn't finished.

Meg's heart slammed so hard it deafened her. She couldn't move, she could only wait for Hera to stand up behind Deirdre. The heat from the sun pressed at her back, while the

shadows under the marquee lay frozen in front of her. It was the same feeling she'd had when the soldado came towards her with the knife, but this time she wouldn't be able to run, not with her mother and sisters standing right in front of her. She couldn't leave

195 them to Hera's wrath. Meg could see Maureen's mouth moving, but only heard the roaring in her ears.

Deirdre looked over her shoulder to see Meg gasping and struggling to hold

Dumpling, who was flailing as she awkwardly slid down. "Meg, what on earth are you doing?" She reached for the baby, "Don't drop her, give her to me."

Meg could see around Deirdre now. Hera was in a huge picture on the wall. Meg pointed at it, her hand trembling. "Look, look," she stammered.

"What?" Deirdre looked around. "It's a new movie, Cleopatra. That's Elizabeth

Taylor, haven't you ever seen a picture of her before? Beautiful, isn't she? You should have seen her in Black Beauty, that was always one of my- ow! What are you doing?"

Meg had grabbed her mother's arm, holding on tight enough to leave nail marks.

"Mom! We have to go home. Now!" She looked around the empty parking lot. "It's not safe here, we're not safe here."

Deirdre looked around at the empty parking lot, then back at her eldest. "Meg, don't start. I'm not in the mood for any of your stories."

"Mom, it's not safe," Meg insisted, "this isn't a story."

"c:,Porque no estamos safe?" Isabella reached for Deirdre's hand. "Mommy, I'm scared."

"Now look what you've done! You're frightening your sister." Deirdre briskly patted Isabella's back. "We're safe, of course we're safe - your sister is being overly dramatic." She narrowed her eyes at Meg. "Per usual."

Meg looked at the other posters. One showed Hera reclining, with two men standing behind her. One man was old and stem, the other young and handsome. Either

196 one could be Zeus, she thought. "Mom," she said urgently, "I think it's a sign, a sign that we're in danger."

Isabella started to wail.

"Oh, for the love of God, Margaret!" Deirdre cried. "Can't you ever stop?!

Isabella, stop that, stop right now. There is no danger, Meg is looking at movie posters," she glared at Meg, "-movie posters, that's it." She grabbed Meg's shoulder. "Get in that car, young lady and don't you say another word. Let's go kids, everyone in the car!"

"But, Mom-"

"No! No 'but Mom', no words, Margaret. You don't get to start any more trouble right now, do you hear me? We are going to buy clothes. We are going to have a lovely shopping trip and buy some clothes. And we're doing it now." Deirdre had all the car doors open, bustling around, loading children in the car. Isabella was still sniffling and Maureen looked confused.

"What did you do?" she whispered to Meg.

Meg opened her mouth to defend herself. "No!" Deirdre shook a warning finger.

"No more cockamamie stories, none!"

Meg turned around on the seat to look out the back window. Now she could see the posters clearly. One showed Hera seated, wearing a crown. Her hands were crossed over her breasts, each holding a golden scepter, like Mary, triumphant after her assumption. As the car pulled away, the posters receded in the marquee shadows. There was a flash. Meg pushed at her glasses to see better but the shadows only deepened. It looked as if Hera pointed one of her scepters at the car. Meg turned around and sagged

197 against the back seat, wondering if this was what Mr. Eckberg had tried to warn her about this morning.

Maureen slid down so their mother couldn't see her. "What did you do?" she mouthed to Meg.

"Nothing!" Meg vigorously mouthed back.

Maureen rolled her eyes.

Meg stuck out her tongue.

Both girls jerked forward as Deirdre shifted unevenly into Park. "Here we are!"

she announced brightly. "And the store's open!"

"Yay!" Isabella and Maureen scrambled out of the car.

Meg started to open her door when Deirdre turned around and put a warning hand

on her arm. They regarded each other in silence until Meg dropped her gaze. Deirdre nodded and let go of Meg's arm. She checked her lipstick in the mirror, then got out of the car. "Put Dumpling in the stroller."

Meg stared at her mother's back as Deirdre walked up to Isabella and Maureen.

"But, she hates the stroller," she said. But she couldn't bring herself to say it loud

enough for Deirdre to hear. "I'm sorry, sweetie" she whispered to the protesting baby,

and hurried to follow her mother into the store.

Isabella and Maureen had stopped just inside the door, gasping in amazement. In the camps, children were not allowed in the commissary store and the little bodega they did go to sometimes was small and dark. Meg had seen inside the commissary once so

she was better prepared. But the younger girls had never seen anything like the Sears, with seemingly endless racks of clothes and display cases on one side and rows of

198 gleaming appliances on the other side. Even Meg had to admit she was impressed as she followed her sisters gaping wordlessly at the sights.

"Hello! You're Mrs. O'Brien, aren't you?" A smiling woman offered her hand to

Deirdre. "We saw you at Mass yesterday. I'm Gladys Gordon, and this," she pulled a

1 girl in front of her, "is my daughter, Joan. She's going into 6 h grade, I think that's the same grade as one of your girls, isn't it?"

Deirdre smiled and nodded at Maureen, who happily stepped forward. While the mothers chatted, Maureen and Joan poked through a rack of clothes, discussing what girls were wearing to school this year. Isabella trailed along behind them, hanging on every word.

Meg looked around the store. The mannequins seemed eerily real, but frighteningly soulless with their blank stares and startled, frozen stances. "Like the

Gorgons were here," she muttered.

"Yes, dear?" Mrs. Gordon smiled at Meg.

"These clothes statues," Meg exclaimed, waving her arms. "They look like the

Gorgons looked at them."

"Oh," Mrs. Gordon laughed. "I thought you said Gordon. I don't know the

Gorgons. Do they go to St. James, too?"

"No," Meg was happy to explain. "The Gorgons are monstrous mythological creatures who are-"

"Meg, I really don't-" Deirdre started.

"-savage women, with hair made of living snakes. They have fangs and long beards and hands with brass nails!" Meg bared her teeth and clawed the air in front of

199 her to help Mrs. Gordon see how terrible a vision the Gorgons were. "Anyone who looks at them turns to stone!" she finished. "Like these statuesc" and waved her hands around.

Mrs. Gordon stared at Meg.

"Yes, thank you, Meg," Deirdre pushed Meg's hands down. "So," she smiled

1 brightly at Mrs. Gordon. "Meg starts 7 h grade this fall. Do you have one in that grade?"

Mrs. Gordon looked over at her daughter, deep in conversation with Maureen.

She shook her head. "No, but maybe your other daughter would like to come over some time?''

"Oh, lovely."

Meg lost interest in listening to her mother chat to Mrs. Gordon. Thinking of the

Gorgons made her wonder again just what Mr. Eckberg had tried to tell her this morning.

She didn't think they were affiliated with Hera, but wasn't sure. Medusa was a Gorgon­ and she had killed her children. Meg paused to consider that. Hera was the Queen of the

Gods, she could command any of her subjects, including the Gorgons. Meg pushed the stroller slowly, taking care to stay away from the mannequins.

Maureen's voice drifted through a rack of skirts. "You wear two petticoats?

Wow!"

"i Yo tambien!" Isabella piped up.

"What does that mean?'' Joan Gordon asked.

"You do not," Maureen huffed.

"I do too," Isabella insisted. "All the girls are going to wear two petticoats at their

First Communion, and Mommy said I can too."

200 "It may be different here, Isabella." Maureen sounded doubtful. "Remember how different the Mass was?"

Meg struggled to push the stroller through a line of clothes. It was difficult to do so with Dumpling grabbing skirts they passed. "That's right!" she announced as she burst into the aisle next to her sisters. "And that mean priest yelled at me."

Joan laughed. "Was that Monsignor Corrigan? He yells at all the kids. Did he ask you a really hard question?"

"No."

"Yes!"

Maureen and Meg answered simultaneously. Maureen shrugged, "I didn't think he was that bad."

"Ha! That's because you got an easy question." Meg was still smarting. "He asked me a really, really hard one. And," she informed Joan, "he said Mass wrong."

"They just changed it a little while ago." Joan waved her hand airily. "No more

Latin- that makes me happy! Do you like this skirt?" She held up a pleated skirt. "It's what all the girls are wearing now."

Maureen and Isabella ooed and abed. Meg shook her head. "No, it's not. The girls' skirts are big, like this." She held her hands in at her waist, then drew them out over an imagined full skirt.

"Oh, no," Joan said authoritatively. "That's not right. We don't say Latin anymore in Church and the skirts look like this." She smoothed the skirt on the hangar.

Maureen smoothed the fabric and nodded. Isabella grabbed a bit of the hem.

"Toadies!" Meg hissed at her sisters.

201 "You're not nice!" Isabella cried.

"Girls ... " Deirdre's voice wound warning! y ahead of her.

"Look, Mommy!" Maureen held up the pleated skirt.

"Oh, very nice," Deirdre approved. "Why don't you try that on? Meg, how about you, did you find something you want to try on? No? All right, here, I picked out some things for you - go try these on." She held up an armful of clothes. Ignoring Meg's martyred expression, Deirdre herded them into a dressing room.

The dressing room was mirrored on three walls, with side mirrors that could be further angled in, and a padded bench. Meg was startled to see herself, her mother and sisters reflected from all angles, sliding back into infinity. It was disconcerting to see her front and back at the same time, especially the back of her hair, which was marked by patches of color. Meg peered closer but the mirror was full of shifting images as her mother and sisters moved around the dressing room.

Deirdre handed Meg clothes to try on.

"Mom, these are all skirts!" Meg objected, as she sorted through the pile. "I need shorts."

Deirdre was busy checking the fit of a blouse Maureen had tried on. "mm ... maybe a size bigger." She considered the hanger Meg held up. "That's pretty," she approved.

"Mom!" Meg looked scandalized. "It's pink. This is a stupid skirt. I need shorts."

Deirdre shook her head. "You're starting junior high. And you'll be taking dancing lessons. You need skirts now, more than shorts."

202 Meg pulled in on, then slumped to the floor in despair. The skirt billowed up and she beat it down as if she were putting out flames.

"Skirts generally fit better if you take your shorts off," Deirdre observed dryly.

"Meggie, I think it's pretty." Isabella touched the skirt.

"Oh, shut up," Meg muttered and kicked her foot in Isabella's direction.

"Mommy!" Isabella objected.

"Margaret!"

"What?! My foot slipped," Meg cried defensively. "She was in the way."

"My hand is going to slip on your bottom," Deirdre warned Meg.

"Mommy, look at this!" Maureen twirled and pranced. Her reflections swirled dizzyingly.

Meg took her glasses off and the reflections blurred, swirling like the Busby

Berkeley dancers her mother loved. The synchronization was soothing, organized, predictable. Megs watched, mesmerized, as Maureens twirled, Deirdres pulled dresses over Isabell as' heads and Dumplings kicked their arms and legs.

Mothers, daughters, sisters: when she told her daughters stories about her mother,

Deirdre sometimes referred to her mother as 'Mother', other times as 'Nana Margaret'.

The aunts, grandmothers and great-grandmothers shared titles, first names and patron saints, chins and noses that blurred across generations to reappear in permutations that bespoke the connection denied them by surname. Like the figures in the mirror, receding into an infinite bygone, the connection was direct yet evanescent, more easily viewed by an outsider than those inside the reflection.

203 A movement deep in the mirrors momentarily broke the rhythm, jarring the pattern. Meg fumbled for her glasses, hands shaking. She crept up to the mirror, peered I intently and waited, holding her breath to avoid fogging the mirror.

"Quit it, I can't see," Maureen objected.

"Didn't you see that?" Meg pointed, "There- in the mirror! Something's in the mirror!"

The reflections broke and came back together as the girls crowded to peer into the mirror. "What? What? What are we looking for?" In order to see better, Maureen pulled a side mirror in. Fabrics rustled, giving the images a whispering quality as faces and backs of heads turned towards Meg, surrounded Meg, pushed at her, filled up the sides of the mirror, taking up all the air as the mirrors became busier and louder while the room became smaller and smaller.

"I have to get out," Meg jumped up. "It's too crowded in here- I have to get out of here."

"Meg," the Deirdres reached towards Meg. "Wait!"

"No," Meg hopped on one foot, stumbling as the skirt flopped off her foot. "No, I can't- I can't." She dashed out of the dressing room. She could see the mirror images in her peripheral vision, moving with her, following her. Don't look, don't look, don't look, she thought.

Outside the dressing room she stopped to lean against the wall and catch her breath, perspiration trickling between her shoulder blades. The mannequins held their positions, frozen. There were too many of them to look at all at one time, to make sure they weren't moving. Meg looked back and forth, then gave up. She slid slowly down

204 the wall to crouch on the floor. Tinny music, a badly rendered orchestration of Mack the

Knife, filtered through the background. " ... lies a. body, oozing life," Meg mindlessly hummed. A memory shimmered; watching her father dance to the song with Mrs.

Vasquez at a party last year. Dan was laughing, twirling Mrs. Vasquez, whose skirt lifted and swirled, while people applauded.

How could things have gone so wrong, Meg wondered, looking around the store.

She could see shoppers moving their lips but the bits of language she heard were guttural and curt, while their movements were stilted, tense and small. Everything was so foreign, so out of place. God must be very angry, Meg thought. What did I do that made everything go so wrong. 0 my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee ... Meg put her head back against the wall and closed her eyes ... and I detest all my sins, because

I dread the loss of heaven, and the pains of hell; but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all good and-

Her arm was yanked up and Meg stumbled forward.

"Margaret!"

"Ow!"

"Get. Up." Deirdre hissed in Meg's ear. "What on earth do you think you are

doing?"

Maureen and Isabella stood behind Deirdre at a respectful distance and watched

carefully.

"I was praying!" Meg cried.

Deirdre regarded Meg suspiciously. "Praying. In Sears Roebuck."

205 "Well," Meg brushed herself off. She glared at Maureen and Isabella. "What are you jerks looking at?"

"Would you like some help?" A young sales clerk smiled tentatively at Deirdre and pointed at the armload of clothes she carried. "Maybe I could take some of those for you?

"Oh. Yes, thank you." Deirdre handed the clothes to her. "We'll take all of them, please."

"Very good, m'am- I'm on this register, right over here."

"Thank you. I'll be there in a moment." Deirdre waved off the clerk and continued to regard Meg.

Meg stared at her shoes. Then up at her mother. Then back at her shoes.

Maureen rolled Dumpling's stroller back and forth in place.

Finally, Meg said, "I'm sorry." She didn't know why it was her fault but she knew it was and that her mother would continue to stand there until she apologized.

Deirdre surveyed the sales floor. "All I wanted to do was to take my daughters clothes shopping for the first time."

"And I LOVE my new clothes, Mommy!" Maureen cried. "Really, I love them!"

She made a face at Meg. "Stop!" she mouthed.

"Me too, me too!" chimed in Isabella, tugging on Deirdre's skirt. "Mommy, I love my new clothes. Can I wear them today, please, Mommy, can I?"

"May I," replied Deirdre absently. She looked through Meg, then followed the saleslady to the register, Isabella trailing.

Maureen stayed with Meg. "(,Que pas6?

206 Meg shook her head, "No se." Looking down the main aisle in the store, Meg could see out the store's windows into the parking lot The pavement stretched in all directions, grey unrelieved concrete. Their Ford sat under the only tree in the parking lot, its branches hanging limp and unmoving. There were no winds, no ocean birds making swooping detours over land, no riotously colorful flowers, insects and lizards. Meg looked at her sister sadly. "We never should have moved here, Maureen. We don't belong."

"It'll be all right," Maureen encouraged. "Really. Here -" She offered Meg the stroller. "Do you want to take Dumpling?"

Dumpling had pulled one of Isabella's new skirts onto her head and was crowing, shaking her head back and forth. Meg watched her for a moment, then burst out laughing. "A ww.. . chiquitica, i eres tan preciosa!" She hugged Dumpling, squeezing her tighter and tighter until the baby yelped in protest.

At the cash register each girl accepted a bag of clothes from the cashier after she rung them up. "Aren't you girls lucky!" she exclaimed. "Hope to see y'all again, soon!"

Isabella and Maureen skipped ahead of Deirdre, swinging their bags. Meg followed, carefully balancing the stroller laden with bags hanging from the handles, when

Isabella suddenly darted down a side aisle. "Look!" she cried. She held up a baby's snap pajama outfit. "We didn't get Dumpling any new clothes, Mommy -look at these!"

Deirdre looked startled.

"That wouldn't fit Dumpling, would it, Mom?" Meg objected. "She's way too big."

207 A saleswoman materialized and smiled at Meg. "You're right, honey. This is a newborn size." The woman looked at all the girls and smiled sympathetically at Deirdre.

"You look like you certainly wouldn't want any newborn size clothes right now."

"What's 'newborn'?" Isabella asked.

Deirdre reached for Isabella but was blocked by the stroller and the bags of clothes.

"A newborn? Why, honey, that's a brand new baby, a little just born baby. Even smaller than this little cutie."

"Oh," announced Isabella, "We didn't see her when she was newborn. She carne after. But Mommy had a newborn, before her - my baby brother - but he dieded."

The saleswoman opened her mouth, then closed it. Several women in the area glanced at Deirdre, then quickly looked away. Isabella swung her bag of clothes back and forth in front of her, the crinkling cellophane sounding exceptionally loud in the silence. Meg and Maureen watched their mother closely.

"Isn't that right, Mommy?" Isabella asked. "Daniel Malachi dieded. And went to Limbo."

Deirdre straightened her spine. Meg and Maureen stood up straight. Isabella stopped swinging her bag and looked around uncertainly.

''I'll put this back for you." The sales woman picked up the baby pajamas.

"Thank you." Deirdre smiled thinly. "Girls." She tilted her head towards the door. "We're going home."

208 Deirdre cradled Majella on her shoulder and leaned back in her seat to look out the window as the airplane taxied to a stop. She had been up since before dawn, and was worn out after their ten hour flight from Idlewild. The plane took off that morning flying north, before the pilot looped east and then south, paralleling Manhattan. The rising sun had shone down the avenues, bathed Central Park in a poetic dewy glow, and sparked a pyrotechnic display of red, silver and gold flashes on the windows of the city's skyscrapers.

By contrast, the airfield in Amuay was barren: a sagging Quonset hut sat off to the side, glinting dully in the dimming sun of a long tropical evening; a few trees, permanently bowed by the incessant winds, struggled to survive in the dirt. Even at this hour, a few heat mirage ribbons shimmered off the blacktop. The night would bring scant relief, as relentless mosquitoes descended in buzzing clouds, like tiny Furies.

Deirdre wondered if anyone had thought to get mosquito netting for the baby's crib.

Beyond the slowing propellers, she could see Dan and their daughters waiting by the side of the airfield. Meg stood next to Dan, leaning against him, with Maureen slightly off to the side. Isabella hopped anxiously from one foot to the other in front of them. She looked like she had gone through a growth spurt in the three months Deirdre had been away.

It was like watching people she didn't know. The man looked tan and relaxed, smoking a cigarette, his blonde hair sun-streaked white. The oldest girl's shirt and shorts didn't match, and her knees were badly scabbed and scraped. The middle girl, with the same tan skin and blonde white hair as the man, was dressed for church, holding down her skirt against the gusts kicked up by the plane. The youngest girl was waving madly at

209 the plane with both hands, her too-small shirt rising up over a belly still softly rounded with baby fat.

"This is your home - those are your sisters," Deirdre whispered to the baby in her arms. "How will you all do together, do you think?"

She closed her eyes, exhausted by the thought of four children. The past few months, at her mother's house, had been a time of relative privilege. She had only one baby to care for, and, unlike when she had her first baby, now she knew what to do, so the mechanics of caring for the baby were very straight forward. Besides, her mother and sisters had been there, charmed by the new baby, and willing to do most of the work.

And Deirdre was willing to let them: she found that if she held the baby for too long, her thoughts turned to her son. What would he have looked like? She had only seen her daughters, surely a son of hers would look different from a daughter. Had he suffered, was he suffering now, consigned to eternal twilight? The unknowns were overwhelming, the emotions incomprehensible. She became increasingly leery of Majella, and found it easier and easier to let her mother and sisters take the baby. This flight was the longest time she and Majella had spent together since her birth.

Deirdre shook her head. She should be grateful this baby was healthy. And safely baptized. "Saint Gerard Majella, beloved servant of Jesus Christ, perfect imitator of your meek and humble Savior, and devoted Child of the Mother of God: Thank you for preserving me and this child from danger and Thank you for seeing that she was baptized. Hail, holy Queen, mother of mercy-" the plane shuddered to a stop. "Pray for us, 0 Holy Mother of God. That we may be made worthy." Deirdre made the Sign of the Cross for herself and the baby, then stood up to go meet her family.

210 They stepped out of the plane into a furnace blast of heat and gritty wind. Deirdre paused before descending the rickety airplane stairs, trying to steady herself and balance with the baby. Her heels wobbled on the open metal framework. To grasp the low railing she would have to bend her knees and lean sideways. She teetered, afraid to move.

"Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!" chanted Isabella at the base of the stairs. Dan,

Meg and Maureen followed her over to the airplane.

"Senora," the man who had pushed the stairs against the plane started up the stairs, holding his hand out to her.

"Gracias, hombre," Dan clapped the man on the back. "Meg - help your mother: get the baby."

Meg climbed the stairs. It was windy and the metal steps reverberated with the thrumming of the airplane engines, the propellers still slowing. She braced her legs and held her arms out.

"Careful, now." Deirdre placed a cocoon of cotton blankets in her arms. "Her name is Majella Teresa."

When Meg looked down she saw a round face staring at her intently. The baby had a dusting of duckling fuzz on the top of her head, enormous violet blue eyes traced by long, dark eyelashes and a tiny red mouth. Her skin was the whitest Meg had ever seen, even softer looking than the white fur on Poobah's belly.

Majella and Meg stared at each other. The winds lifted momentarily and swirled up, frilling the edges of the blankets. Majella frowned slightly and turned her head, pulling her fists up to her face. Meg instinctively pulled an edge of the blanket up to

211 protect Majella and in response, the baby smiled and kicked her legs. At that moment, in awe, and without reservation, Meg fell in love with her baby sister. No other creature, I not even Poobah, had evoked such a willingness to offer up her heart and soul. '"Thy countenance, so full of grace, Is heaven on earth, for me, today'," she whispered. "Just like St. Teresa said."

Meg looked up at her mother and smiled. "She's beautiful."

"I wanna look, I wanna look, too!" Isabella hopped up and down, held back by

Dan.

"C'mon, Meggle, let's all take a look- and let your mother come down."

Meg turned and carefully walked down the stairs. Isabella and Maureen stood on tiptoe to peer into the bundle of blankets. The sisters watched each other in silence for a few moments.

"All right, step aside, let her father welcome his daughter!" Dan dropped a kiss on the baby's forehead and whispered something in her ear. He turned to help Deirdre down the last few stairs. "Welcome home, darling! You look tired - how was the flight?"

Deirdre looked over at the baby. "What do you think?"

Dan kissed her forehead. "She's beautiful. Now, let's get all of you home."

"Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!" Isabella and Maureen threw themselves against

Deirdre in an explosion of greeting.

Deirdre laughed and hugged them both. "Oh, it's wonderful to see all of you!

Isabella, you've grown a foot, I swear. And Maureen -look at you, all dressed up! What do you think of Majella?"

212 Maureen twirled. "Maria ironed my party dress to meet you and my new baby sister in."

"Mommy, can I hold Ba-... Ja-... " Isabella shook her head in frustration and struggled through a few more syllables. "I can't say her name, Mommy. What's her name, again? Daddy said it's Dumpling."

"Dumpling?" Deirdre looked at Dan.

He laughed. "Henceforth, this baby shall be known as The Dumpling!" He pretended to knight the baby and the girls all cheered. Dan bowed to Deirdre, "In honor of all the dumplings you kept making before you left." He put his arm around Deirdre's shoulders and turned her around, pulling her close, so only she could hear him. "I didn't want them getting attached to a child that might not live. A joke name was better."

Deirdre stared at him.

Dan continued, "Mother wrote that Father Pastorelli baptized her. She said she'll send the pictures she took."

Deirdre nodded slowly.

"And did you talk to Father about making arrangements to have Daniel Malachi reburied in Star of the Sea?"

"Dan!" Deirdre tried to pull back.

Meg looked up from the baby to watch her parents. They had moved away from the girls and she couldn't hear them talking. The plane was emptied of luggage and was revving its engines to tum around on the airstrip. Meg put the baby up on her shoulder, the way she had seen the mothers and Marias do. She was amazed and delighted how

213 perfectly the baby fit, how she curled in to fit herself under Meg's chin. "Isabella,

Maureen- c'mon, let's get out of the way."

Deirdre let Meg hold the baby on the way home because Isabella wanted to sit on

Deirdre's lap. She kept touching Deirdre's face. "Mommy, you're so pretty."

"Thank you, honey." Deidre stared out of the car window. ''I'd forgotten how flat it is here."

Dan glanced over. "It's not exactly mountainous in Brooklyn."

Deirdre shrugged.

Maureen hung over the back of the car seat. "Mommy, we embroidered handkerchiefs in Brownies. I made you a handkerchief."

Deirdre reached up to rub the back of Maureen's head. "Thank you, honey."

"iQuftate! I was talking to Mommy," Isabella pushed at Maureen. "Mommy,

Meg and Maureen were really bossy to me while you were at Nana's."

"That's because I was in charge," Meg said mildly. She was too entranced with

The Dumpling to become incensed with Isabella's tattling.

"iNo me digas!" Maureen objected indignantly. "Maria was in charge."

"Actually, mavomeen," Dan amended, "I was in charge."

Isabella was twirling one of Deirdre's curls around her finger. "But you weren't here, Daddy."

Deirdre looked at Dan sharply. "What do you mean, Daddy wasn't here?"

"Yeah, bellabug, what do you mean?" Dan reached over to tickle Isabella. "I was here the whole time your mother was gone."

"But you were at the Club all the time."

214 "Oh, pshaw," Dan waved Isabella's comment off. "Deirdre, don't look at me like that. I cancelled two trips and had to swap one with B~b Hicksford just so I could stay here with the girls while you were putting your feet up at your mother's."

Deirdre rolled the window down all the way and leaned her head against the window frame.

"Mommy?" Isabella poked Deirdre's shoulder. "~Que pasa?"

Deirdre shook her head. "Nothing. I'm just tired. Even this unbearable heat won't keep me awake tonight."

In the front hall of the house, Deirdre stopped to admire a vase of flowers. "Mrs.

Adams brought those for you," Maureen told her. "I helped her arrange them."

"They're beautiful, thank you." Deidre touched one of the hibiscus blossoms, which were already drooping. "Sad- they're dieing."

"I put lots of water in!" Maureen hovered anxiously. "Honest."

"I know you did. But the flower is away from its horne. Everything dies away from its horne."

Maureen grinned at Deirdre. "Pues, isn't it good that you're home now?"

"Mmrn ... " Deirdre looked around. "The house looks nice, girls. You did a good job while I was away."

"Mom?" Meg hadn't put the baby down yet.

"When did - oh!" Deirdre yawned. "Excuse, me! Meg, when did you start calling me Mom, instead of Mommy?"

Meg looked nonplussed. "Nose."

215 "Well," Deirdre waved her hand. "I'm asleep on my feet, you can tell me tomorrow."

"Mom, Mommy- wait! Why don't we put Dumpling's crib in my room? Then you can sleep better."

"Dan?"

Dan took the baby out of Meg's arms. "The crib's all set up in our room, Meg.

We can change it tomorrow. If your mother wants. For now, c'mon, Dee, let's get you to bed."

"But, Daddy-"

"Later, Meg." Dan followed Deirdre down the hall.

"Looks like you're not Daddy's favorite anymore," Maureen taunted. "Now that

Mommy's home- and with a new baby."

"Yeah, and this one no estas muerte," Isabella added.

'"Eres', not 'estas', estupida," Meg snapped.

"I'm not an estupida!" Isabella punched Meg. Meg promptly punched her back, whereupon Isabella started wailing.

"jAy, ay! jChicas, chicas!" Maria La Vieja bustled m from the kitchen.

"jQuftate! 1.., Y donde esta vosotros mama?"

Isabella threw herself against Maria, crying and pointing at Meg.

Dan came swiftly down the hallway. "Five minutes?? Your mother's not home five minutes and you three are out here wailing like banshees? Making enough noise to wake every baby in the pafs?"

"Meg hit me!"

216 "She hit me first!"

"Out! All of you- out!" Dan pointed at the kitchen. "Maria- I want them quiet,

(,entiendes? La senora esta dormiendo. Y el bebe, tambien."

Maria ushered the girls into the kitchen, Isabella still sniffing. Maureen happily chattered away, describing her new sister to Maria.

Meg slipped out onto the dark patio and looked up at the heavens. The stars glittered brightly, resplendent against the velvet backdrop of the skies. Meg lifted her arms, "Thank you, God," she whispered. "She's perfect." She wanted to say more, much more, but there was so much to say she couldn't say anything. None of the words she knew came close to describing how The Dumpling made her feel filled up, made her feel that if she put her arms back and held her face up to the sky, she would expand to become part of the sky, filled with the radiant luminance of stars, accepted into the dance of the spheres.

Marcia and Sarah Rago were unloading groceries from their car as Deirdre pulled into the driveway.

"Sarah, Sarah- look at my new clothes!" Isabella clambered out of the car and went running over.

Marcia Rago came over to talk to Deirdre. "Chris called - he says the reports coming in from the Caribbean show that the storm is increasing. They'll probably post a watch tonight."

Deidre frowned. "What does that mean?''

217 "Well," Marcia turned her hand over a few times. "That's the problem: it might mean something or it might mean nothing. Hurricanes ar.e unpredictable. If it turns north or south, we get some rain, maybe. If it hits here, we get, well, we get a hurricane. It's better to prepare some things. Water, extra food- I can help you decide what to do, if you like."

"hrnm ... " Deirdre stared at the house, mentally calculating. "We often had to shop ahead for long periods of time for basics in Venezuela, but, yes - I appreciate your help. I don't know what we would need to stock up on around here."

Meg bounced Dumpling in her arms, and listened to the women discuss tuna fish and peanut butter. In the background, behind their voices, she could hear a rustling noise.

The sun seemed to be getting brighter as the rustling noise increased. She wasn't sure if she liked it or not. The rustling sounding like dry scratching, like the noise Mr. Eckberg had made to get her attention this morning. The edge of the rubber pants covering

Dumpling's diapers rubbed her skin, scraping back and forth. It felt like little beetles under her skin, trying to get out. Meg twitched. The noises made her nervous.

Looking around, she noticed the branches in the trees had started swaying. Meg held her face up. The wind was blowing from the south east, which meant Eurus and

Notus were about. If there was a storm coming in from the Caribbean, surely they would know about it. And so, she thought suddenly, would Mr. Eckberg. Her stomach clenched. Hera would know about a storm, too. Meg wondered if Hera could call up a storm. She was the goddess of marriage, and children, not storms. Zeus was the one associated with storms; in fact he controlled thunder, lightning and rain. But Mr.

Eckberg hadn't mentioned Zeus, other than in passing.

218 Finally Meg couldn't stand it any longer and let Dumpling slide to the ground.

"What is that noise?" she asked, frantically scratching her arms.

"Meg, don't interrupt." Deirdre looked at Meg and frowned. "What are you doing- you're bleeding, for heaven's sake, stop that!"

Meg looked down at her arms. Her ragged fingernails had left long lines oozing drops of blood. "Mom?" Meg held her hands up, and shook her head. "Mom, I don't have a good feeling about this."

"I think you're hearing the cicadas, Meg," Mrs. Rago said gently. "They won't hurt anyone, they hum to stay cool when the weather gets hot like this. You don't have to worry about them."

"No," Meg shook her head. "I don't think they're humming - I think they're warning us."

"Meg- inside." Deirdre waved her away. "Here, I'll watch Dumpling- you go wash your arms. And put iodine on!" she added as Meg headed towards the house.

"Is too a warning," Meg muttered as she stomped inside the house. "You'll be sorry." She detoured briefly through the kitchen and peeked out the kitchen window.

The palms were motionless. "Mr. Eckberg?" she whispered. There was no answer. She hadn't really expected to see anything, and didn't, but it seemed a good idea to check.

The late afternoon sun deepened the light yellow color of the walls in the Rago kitchen to a warm glow. In her pantry off the kitchen, Marcia Rago pointed up at a shelf filled with packages of paper plates, cups and napkins. "I know they seem extravagant,"

219 she said ruefully, "but if the water gets cut off, you don't want to use up drinking water washing dishes. Paper plates and cups will make your life so much easier."

"The water gets cut off?" Deirdre asked.

Marcia nodded. "If the electricity's out, the water doesn't get pumped. And when it starts again, you need to boil it before you can drink it."

"Like in Caracas, Mom," Meg said. '"member? It was poisonous to brush your teeth."

"It wasn't exactly poisonous, Meg. We only had bottled water," Deirdre explained to Marcia. "And Meg was terrified she'd swallow contaminated water while brushing her teeth. Every night it was a fight to get her to brush her teeth."

"I'm home!" Chris Rago tossed his briefcase on the kitchen table. "Here you are

- what are you girls doing hiding back here?'' He grabbed Marcia around the waist and kissed her ear.

"Hi, honey- I was just showing Deirdre our hurricane supplies, so she'd know what to buy to stock up."

Chris nodded solemnly. "Starting to look like we're in for a blow. We heard on the radio coming home that a watch was posted."

"Mom," Meg scratched her arm, then remembered to stop. "Mom, I'm worried."

"Nah - not to worry," Chris reassured her as he started rummaged in the refrigerator. "Beautiful, I'm starved!" Chris waved a beer bottle at Meg. "I told your

Dad I'd help him with the shutters. We'll do it tomorrow night after work, if we need to.

And besides, the storm might turn, in which case we just eat tuna fish until next time."

"No," Meg said gloomily. "It's not going to turn."

220 "The last one did." Marcia snapped out the pantry light. "C'mon, time for a cocktail. Dinner will be ready in about an hour, hon. Why, just a week or two ago, Meg. I

Isn't that right, Chris?"

"Yup. Arlene turned north around Bermuda. We had some rain, nothing to it."

"See that, Eyore," Deirdre teased Meg. "Now let's go see Dad. Thanks, Marcia."

As Deirdre ushered Meg out, Chris called, "I'll be over tomorrow!"

As they crossed the driveways, Meg looked nervously towards the stand of areca palms outside the kitchen windows. The rays from the setting sun illuminated its trunks and branches. Devoid of its usual shadows, the stand looked like an x-ray of tree trunks, instead of an amorphous mass of shade. Not even a cicada could be hiding in there now.

Dan sat on the back steps, watching Isabella teach Dumpling how to throw a ball.

"Well, there you are," he commented.

"Daddy!" Meg threw her arms around his neck. "Mr. Rago said you're going to protect us from the wrath of the storm!"

"Hey, now!" Dan leaned back to hold his cigarette out of the way. "They posted a

'watch', not a 'wrath'."

"Mr. Rago said you're going to put up shut-" Meg started.

"Maybe." Dan interrupted curtly. "We'll put up shutters when the watch turns to a warning. Right now we don't know yet. I'll get on the ham after dinner, see if anybody' s reporting anything."

Meg regarded him doubtfully. "But, Daddy -"

"And what in God's name did you do to yourself?" Dan inspected Meg's arm.

"Deirdre? What goes on here during the day? There's no one home when I get here-

221 that baby's running around the back yard unsupervised - Meg looks like she lost a fight with a wild animal - I don't knock myself out all day in the office so I can home and see I my children acting and looking like savages." He stubbed his cigarette out.

"Inside," Deirdre pointed inside the house. "Right now - everyone. Margaret, take Majella; Maureen, start making the salad; Isabella, set the table. Wash your hands first." She stood holding the door as the girls marched in.

They could faintly hear voices, pitched low, after the screen door swung shut.

The girls stood silently in the kitchen, trying to listen. Maureen played lookout, peering around the door jamb, and suddenly flapped her hands, "She's coming - look busy!" when Deidre and Dan turned towards the house.

Meg smiled winningly at her father as her parents entered the kitchen. "Daddy, can I get you a beer?"

Dan strode through the kitchen to the living room.

"I'll get his beer," Meg announced, opening the refrigerator.

"I'm sure your father is capable of fixing his own drink," Deirdre replied. She tied on an apron and looked around the kitchen. "Well?" she demanded. The girls scattered to their chores. "Meg, get out of that refrigerator and go wash your sister."

"I'm getting Daddy a beer," Meg said mulishly. She noisily rummaged in the drawer for a bottle opener.

"Margaret, I'm warning you-"

Dan walked back in the kitchen with a highball and reached into the freezer for ice.

222 "Wait, Daddy, wait," Meg rushed the words out. She rummaged faster,

''I' mgettingyouabeer."

"Meg, whatever your mother told you to do, do." He slammed the freezer door and looked at Deirdre. "Happy?"

Deirdre raised an eyebrow at Meg and turned back to the stove.

Meg stormed out into the hall. "It's not fair," she fumed, as she stomped into her room, and kicked the door.

"What's not?" Maureen's head popped out of the neck of a one of her new shirts.

"Look, do you like it?"

"Daddy loves it when I pour him a beer after work, and Mom spoiled it by making him angry." Meg kicked at clothes bag she had dropped on the floor.

Maureen looked over her shoulder in the mirror at Meg. "He does not. He only has beer on weekends. Sometimes. He always has Scotch on the rocks on during the week."

Meg huffed and puffed. "He does not! I pour him a beer. All the time. That's my job and Mom wrecked it."

"Who cares?" Maureen rolled her eyes. "Wear one of your new shirts to dinner­ it will make her happy."

"Stupid clothes," Meg muttered.

Maureen turned sharply and narrowed her eyes. "If you make her mad some more, Meg, I'm telling."

Meg froze. She tried to look around the room by moving only her eyes, so

Maureen wouldn't realize where she was looking. Her mattress didn't look it had been

223 pushed off the box springs, but she'd made her bed so sloppily that morning it was hard to determine if the Brooch's hiding place had been disturbed. "Telling what?" she asked I cautiously.

Maureen lifted one shoulder and looked down her nose. "You know."

"No. No, I don't."

"Yes, you do."

"No. I. Don't." Meg decided to call her bluff, "You're making it up."

Maureen raised one eyebrow and raised the stakes. "Want to bet?"

Meg was distracted by jealousy; she had tried unsuccessfully for years to teach herself to raise one eyebrow the way Deirdre did. "How did you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Raise-

"Girls, dinner!" Deirdre's voice drifted down the hall.

Meg and Maureen leapt for the door. "Move! Get Dumpling! Where's Isabella?

Hurry, hurry, hurry!"

Dan pushed back his chair. "I'll be in the garage."

"May I please be excused?" Meg had waited until her father finished eating to ask. She wanted to get back to their room to check the Brooch.

"The garage?" Deirdre looked up distractedly from supervising Isabella. "Yes, take your dishes out to the kitchen."

"I want to see if any reports are coming in on the ham."

"About the storm?" Dan had Deirdre's full attention.

224 "Mommy, are we going to die?'' Deirdre had Isabella's full attention.

"Judas Priest! No one's dying, everything's fine.'.' Dan sighed noisily.

Behind the commotion in the dining room, Meg trailed Dan into the garage, hanging back to watch as he concentrated on adjusting the dials on his short wave radio.

The headphones hung around his neck, static emanating from the earpieces in short, indecipherable bursts. Embedded in the static were sounds almost like words, occasional syllables coming through that could make sense if the listener knew the context. A secret language, on the edge of comprehension, like the speech in a dream that faded rapidly as the dreamer awoke.

Dan unfolded a letter and read it while he absently scanned the airwaves. Meg watched him shake his head a few times and then light a cigarette. "Daddy," she asked,

"do you want me to get you an ashtray?"

Her father started violently. "Damn it to Hell, Meg!" Dan thumped his fist on the radio bench. "Get out! Out! Don't ever sneak up on me like that, you hear me? Never!"

Meg stopped, and stared at her father in shock. Only once before had she heard him swear, after Father Soledad told him Daniel Malachi would not go to Heaven.

Dan pointed furiously at the kitchen door. "I mean it, Meg- out!"

Meg turned and ran. As the door closed behind her, Dan smoothed out the letter he had been reading and laid it next to the radio.

He sank back in his chair, running his hands over the arms. It was an old molded plastic chair, originally white, stained with the paint from the clothes and brushes used in various projects over the years. As his fingers traced the old swirls and stains, he thought about the times he'd painted Meg and Maureen's dressers, Deirdre's sewing machine

225 table, and the crib. The crib had been given to them by his parents shortly after his marriage. At the time, swollen with pride and fear over Deirdre's first pregnancy, Dan had blushed when Malachi advised him to fill the crib with seven sons, to carry on the

O'Brien name, and five girls to comfort and aid their mother. As an only son, Dan was responsible for making sure the name continued on. Father Micky blessed the crib before

Meg was born and Deirdre hung a St. Brigid medal on one of its posts.

Dan had painted the crib five times, although it was only used four. He'd only painted it blue once, during Deirdre's second pregnancy- at the time he knew the baby would be a boy. After Maureen was born Dan vowed to henceforth use neutral colors, convinced his hubris in painting the crib blue had somehow angered the heavens. The light green, tan and yellow swatches on the chair were faded now, but the memories of how he felt, what he thought and the saints he prayed to each time he painted the crib were as fresh as the paint looked each time a baby was laid in the crib for the first time.

The Dumpling was close to outgrowing the crib, Dan mused. He idly wondered what color he would paint it next time. A sudden chatter emerging from the static broke his reverie. Chasing the frequency, he listened to some hams further upstate talk about the rising price of fertilizer for oranges. Losing interest, he picked up the letter again. It was from Ramon and, although it was dated August 1st, he had only received it that morning when he found it waiting for him in the office. The last time he'd spoken to

Ramon, before they left for The States, Ramon had said he would be in touch soon.

Now, "pronto," the letter advised, but without mentioning a specific date.

1 However, the trial was due to start September 9 h, only three weeks away. Dan lit another cigarette. The thrill that went through him was tempered by a sickening realization that it

226 had been easy to be brave when Ramon's plans were far in the future. Now they were

'pronto'. Malachi's tales seemed like fairy tales now; quaint stories he could tell his daughters about the long ago and far away. This was different, he thought, this was modem warfare in secret, deadly earnest. Dan smiled. He liked the phrase 'deadly earnest'. These were stories he would tell his sons. And Malachi too, when the time came, after he also had a successful outcome to report.

Dan leaned forward to search frequencies again. A weather report was what he needed now, before he decided about taking the boat out tomorrow. A status on the storm would satisfy Deirdre too, hopefully settle her nerves. She didn't understand that the real storm was so much larger in scope, a world wide political storm, not a local thunderstorm. A scratching noise made him peer into the shadows in the comers of the garage. But the single bare bulb hanging overhead was too dim to light the garage well.

He turned back to the radio.

When Dan looked up from the radio, Meg ducked down. The last time she'd watched her father through a window, she had felt the world moving farther and farther away from her. Now it felt like the world was closing in on her, crushing her under its weight. She tightened her grip on the Brooch in her pocket. It was heavier than it had been earlier. She slowly stood up to peer through the window. Her father was focused again on the radio.

Meg turned and leaned back against the garage. Although she couldn't hear her with her ears, her fingers counted off the rosary beads as Deirdre prayed her way through another decade. She had already seen the girls to bed, and heard their prayers. The house

227 was dark except for a single bulb burning at either end; one in the garage and one on her mother's bedside table.

Wisps of clouds scudded across the sky, darkened by the absence of a moon that had set earlier in the afternoon. At home the night was as warm as the day, adding an element of comfort and familiarity to the night. When Meg lay in bed the darkness felt like a hug from Maria. But here the night was cooler than the day. The unexpected chill gave her goose bumps, an unpleasant feeling. It also gave the stars a cast of judgmental animosity.

The tension that had been building all day rose in her throat, and Meg exploded into running down the driveway. She ran full pace to the beach, then stopped as a stitch burned through her side. Her gasps for air sounded horribly loud in the still night air.

She tried to stifle her breathing but her lungs squeezed convulsively.

The opening in the sea grapes was hard to see in the dark. Meg stumbled into the branches as she almost missed the opening. Her pace slowed as she came through the tunnel onto the sand. The ocean's surface reflected light, even though the sky was fairly dark. Small waves soothed the sand, murmuring to the night air. Meg took a deep breath and walked slowly towards the water, feeling her heart rate calm down.

She wasn't surprised to see the shadowy outline of Mr. Eckberg strolling south to meet her. Meg smiled. "I knew you'd be here," she said. "But how did you know I was coming?"

Mr. Eckberg took his cigar stub out of his mouth and smiled ruefully. ''I'm sure

Persephone heard you in Hades, with all the noise you made. Don't ever try and sneak up on someone, kiddo."

228 "Ah ha!" Meg wagged a finger at Mr. Eckberg. "But isn't Persephone here now?

I mean, she comes back for the spring or summer, doesn't she?"

Mr. Eckberg tipped his cap to Meg. "Very good- I'm impressed."

"Thanks." Meg sketched a curtsy. She took the Brooch out of her pocket and held it up to Mr. Eckberg. It was heavier, she was sure now it wasn't her imagination.

By nightlight the swirls of metal looked like they had slowed: dark drifts eddying, biding time, conserving strength.

Mr. Eckberg stared at it.

"Take it," Meg motioned to him, finding it harder and harder to hold her arm out.

Mr. Eckberg shook his head slightly. "Here, sit down." Mr. Eckberg pointed at the sand, then sat back on his haunches and looked out at the ocean.

"Aren't you going to take it?" Meg asked. She suddenly realized she was very tired and her shoulders slumped.

"The thing is, things have changed." Mr. Eckberg frowned at his cigar stub, rolling it back and forth with his thumb and middle finger. "Sit down, sit down."

"No. No, I don't want to sit down." Meg heard her voice start to shake and took a deep breath. "Here is the Brooch- you've been telling me since we met you wanted the

Brooch back. And now I brought it back. What's changed? Doesn't Hera want it back?

I don't want to keep it, I don't like it- you take it, you have to take it, you have to!" she finished in a rush.

Mr. Eckberg put his cigar down and looked straight at Meg. "She doesn't want it back."

229 Meg gaped. She opened and closed her mouth several times but no words seemed to fit the shapes her mouth made so she said nothing.

"I think I told you she wanted it back to wear for a ball?"

Meg nodded. She absently noted the drifts on the Brooch seemed to be moving faster, possibly because her hand was shaking, or maybe a trick of starlight.

"She got tired of waiting, she decided to wear something else, the pomegranate wasn't tart enough ... " Mr. Eckberg took his cap off and scrubbed his hand back and forth over his bald spot. "I don't know, I just don't know. She told Zeus you stole the Brooch.

Now Zeus is angry at you. That's the long and short of it."

Meg blinked several times. "Here," she held the Brooch out again. "You can just take it back, and tell them it was a mistake. You know I didn't steal it and can tell them

I'm sorry. It's not my fault, but tell them I'm sorry anyway. That will help."

The centaur stood up slowly. "Kiddo, you've read the books, you know what happens when a mortal defies a god ... well, they don't take too kindly to it."

"But I didn't defy anybody!" Meg cried. "That's not fair, it's not fair!"

"I didn't say it was," Mr. Eckberg agreed.

Meg looked around at the deserted beach. "But, but what am I going to do?" she asked.

Mr. Eckberg shook his head. "I don't know. This just happened a little while ago. I'm going back to the Pantheon, let me see if I can figure something out. I sent a message to Boreas before coming to look for you. In the meantime, put on your thinking cap." He patted her shoulder. "Maybe pray to your god."

230 Meg twisted away from his hand. "It was the gods who started it," she cried

angrily.

Mr. Eckberg shrugged. "That doesn't change the fact that you have to finish it."

He wheeled around and started up the beach. "I'll be in touch," drifted behind him.

Meg watched his hooves kick up wet sand. Her arm had long since fallen to her

side and she felt herself leaning towards the sand, the Brooch pulling her down as the

sand shifted uneasily under her feet, the soft murmur of waves brushing the shore

weighting her eyelids down. She started falling, then caught herself, stumbling

awkwardly backwards, arms flailing.

The Brooch flew out of her hand and landed, half-buried in the sand. I'll leave it,

she decided. Just leave it and go home and pretend it never happened. I hate these

people. And gods. And deities or demi-gods, or whatever they are. I hate them all. She

furiously kicked sand over the Brooch. The sand slid off the smooth edges of the metal

in little rivulets, piling up around, but not covering the Brooch. Then what, Meg

wondered, her anger slowing, now idly kicking sand. Zeus would never be mollified if

she didn't even have the Brooch to offer. If she at least had the Brooch, it would

probably be like Penance, with the possibility of forgiveness of sins and remission of

eternal punishment.

Meg scrambled to dig up the Brooch and dust it off. Better to keep it for now, she

decided. Mr. Eckberg was going to talk to Boreas, she'd try and talk to Zephyrus and

Notus. They had always been her favorites. She tucked it deep in her pocket. When she

looked up the beach, she could no longer see Mr. Eckberg. The waves had stopped

coming in, the water was just gently rocking. Nothing stirred; the Winds were clearly

231 elsewhere. Meg resolved to try and talk to them tomorrow. She stared at the water for a few minutes. No answers came to her, no revelations lingered on the horizon. Stumbling I a little in the darkness, she turned to go home.

232 TUESDAY

"What did you say?" Deirdre stared at Dan incredulously. The soap suds on the breakfast dishes she was washing started to pop and deflate as they went unattended.

Meg picked up Dumpling and gestured to Maureen to herd Isabella towards the back door.

"You heard me."

"But, Dan- I need the car today, plus those shutters have to go up tonight."

Dan pulled a banana off the bunch in the fruit bowl. "I'll grab something for breakfast in the office."

Deirdre tried again. "Marcia said-"

Dan turned quickly, "Dee, I'm sick and tired of hearing what Marcia Rago says.

That woman is obviously a worry wart. And, she does not dictate my schedule." He slid a letter into his briefcase and clicked it shut. "I've got a long day today - I can either take the car and probably get home in time to put up shutters or you can take the car, in which case I'll have to try and get a ride from one of the second shift guys and get home late.

Which do you want?"

"Why are you taking fishing clothes to the office?" Deirdre pointed at a bag next to Dan's briefcase.

"We're inspecting breakwaters in the Port," Dan said off-handedly.

Meg stopped at the door. "You're going out on a boat for work, Daddy? Neat! I didn't know accountants got to do that."

233 "Neither did 1." Deirdre bit off the end of each word.

Dan looked at Meg. "Am I talking to you?"

Meg looked at the floor. "No, Daddy."

Deirdre pointed at the back door. Meg quietly closed the door and sat on the step with Maureen.

"What does Daddy want?" Maureen whispered.

"He wants to take the car because he's going on a boat but Mommy needs it for hurricane shopping," Meg replied in an undertone.

Maureen nodded solemnly.

Isabella hovered in front of them. "Sarah dice que our roof will blow off when we have a hurricane," she offered.

"Ay, que mentira," Maureen scoffed. "Roofs don't blow off in storms, lz. We had plenty of storms, ~te recuerdas?, and nobody's roof blew off. Whoever heard of such a thing? ~No es verdad, Meg?"

Meg stared unseeingly at the backyard. She wasn't sure of anything. After she crept back into the house last night, she'd looked up Zeus in Bulfinch's, but the book kept referencing Jupiter, with Zeus in parentheses. The Roman gods were not summering just up the beach in D'Sol, she thought indignantly, the Greek gods were. It did no one any good to mix them up- that was like saying St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Thomas Becket were the same. However, Edith Hamilton was very precise on who was who: she made it clear that Zeus was the most powerful of all the divinities. But, she also wrote, at times

Hera had deceived Zeus, and even, that Zeus could not sway the Fates.

234 Zeus, angry with her; Hera, cast her to the wolves, or, more accurately, the Lord of the Sky; Meg ticked off deities on her fingers. Mr. Eckberg hadn't said if the Fates were with the Pantheon. The Winds had never mentioned them, and supposedly the Fates had no home. Besides, if they couldn't be swayed, even by Zeus, there didn't seem to be much point in trying to find them, since she probably couldn't expect much help from that quarter. It didn't look promising.

"~Verdad, Meg?" Isabella was poking Meg's knee insistently.

"What?"

"Are there going to be fish in the trees?"

"What?" Meg stared at her sister, puzzled, then remembered the dinner conversation about the storm. Their mother had said there were fish in the trees. "Lord of the Sky, the Rain-god and the Cloud-gatherer, who wielded the awful thunderbolt."

That was how Hamilton had described Zeus. He could send a storm like that. Meg felt suddenly chilled, sitting in the shadow of the house.

"Are there?" Isabella looked frightened and uncertain.

Meg, feeling the same way, was struck by unexpected sympathy for Isabella. She was just a kid. Meg tickled her tummy. "iChica! Don't be silly. Remember what

Daddy said? There's nothing to worry about. We'll watch the thunder and lightening the way we did in Caripito."

Maureen smiled. "That was neat, remember? Mommy used to bring us out on the patio so we could see the storms- the lightning was all different colors."

"I don't remember!" pouted Isabella.

235 "Maybe you don't. She didn't do it in Amuay," Maureen said doubtfully, looking

at Meg. "Actually, she didn't do it after. .. "

Meg stroked Isabella's hair. "You remember, querida. You were little, that's all.

It was before Daniel Malachi. But you remember. You liked it."

"Oh, yeah," Isabella perked up and nodded vigorously. "Yeah, I remember. I sat

on the patio contigo and Mommy. I remember now."

A door slammed inside. The girls jumped. They heard voices in the driveway

and scrambled around the side of the house to see what was going on. Dan was getting in

the car with Mr. Rago, while Mrs. Rago was waving to the men from the front yard.

Large pieces of wood, with letters and numbers painted on them, were leaning against the

side of the Raga's house.

"Daddy, Daddy!" The girls vigorously waved at their father but the car had

already pulled out of the driveway.

"Bye, Dad." Meg couldn't quell the fear in her stomach. It felt like very bad luck

that her father hadn't seen them waving good-bye. "Vaya con Dios."

"Girls!" Deirdre's voice was sharp and angry.

"Uh oh," Isabella sing-songed.

Meg looked back to see the Dumpling contentedly gnawing a stick.

"I can't trust you to watch that baby for five minutes?" Deirdre demanded.

"She's fine, Mom." Meg tried to pry the stick out of Dumpling's hand. It was

slick with saliva.

236 Dumpling started crying and beating at Meg. "She wants it," Meg defended herself weakly. "Besides, I don't think it's a really dirty stick, Morn- it's probably just a little bit dirty."

With an expression of disgust, Deirdre deftly plucked the stick from the baby's hand. Ignoring her cries, Deirdre picked her up, then made a sweeping gesture with her other arm, indicating everyone was to go inside. "Today we're getting ready for a hurricane," she announced.

"jAy, Mommy!" Isabella cried.

Deirdre's look stopped Isabella cold. "That's better. Now. Every one inside." In the kitchen cupboard doors stood open and cans were stacked on the countertops. "This is a practice. Do you understand, Isabella? A practice. Then we're ready for anything.

Just like we practice having a fire drill in each new house."

"jAy, fuego!" cried Isabella, frightened anew. Maureen grabbed her and pulled her into the hallway. Sputtering and a few thumps could be heard, then quiet.

Deirdre rolled her eyes. "Which reminds me, we haven't had a fire drill in this house, have we?"

Meg shook her head.

"Ok, well, not right now, but that needs to be done too."

"Is Daddy corning home tonight, Mom?"

"Of course, what kind of question is that? Here," Deirdre handed Dumpling to

Meg. She was reaching for a pencil, clearly making a list in her mind. "This is going to be just like when we stocked up on things to last until the next supply boat arrived. Do you remember that, Meg?"

237 Meg squinted. "Vaguely," she lied. She only remembered the little mercados and the Commissary that didn't allow children, but didn't want to disagree with her mother. I

Deirdre absently regarded Meg, her thoughts elsewhere. "Meg, I want you to go ask Mrs. Rago if anything needs to be done to the house, other than shutters."

Delighted to escape, Meg ran down the back steps. As she walked out of the shadow of the areca palms the heat of the sun struck her square in the face. Surprised,

Meg stopped. The sun hadn't felt this strong before, something was different. The heat felt unnatural, as if layers had been burned off between the earth and the sun. This is what Icarus must have felt, she thought. She shielded her eyes and peered cautiously at the sky. The intensity of the blue in the sky hit her like a shock wave. It was oppressive, smothering. Meg staggered slightly and gasped for breath.

Clouds, up high, raced across the sky, faster than she'd ever seen. Like they were running away to the west, which meant Eurus was behind them. Meg wondered if she would be able to talk to him. She looked back at the house and tried to calculate what her mother would want today. The radio suddenly blared out of the Rago's kitchen window, voices heard in spurts mixed with song snippets as Mrs. Rago ran through the stations on the dial. "Weather after this word from our sponsor, Sabal Palm Ford," a man announced.

Meg knocked on the door. "Come on in, Meg," Mrs. Rago called.

"How' d you know it was me?" Meg asked. She thought it was curious, and mysterious, how grown-ups seemed to know things.

Mrs. Rago smiled over her shoulder as she wiped off the kitchen table. "I saw you in the driveway. It looked like the heat hit you. Would you like some orange juice?"

238 "No, thank you." Meg thought about the heat again. "It was really hot - much hotter than before."

Mrs. Rago nodded. "Storm's coming. The watches have been changed to warnings. It's always like this."

"Why?"

"Who knows?" Mrs. Rago picked up a piece of paper. "I made some notes for your mom-"

"That means Heliosis driving his chariot too close to the Earth." Meg said.

"Excuse me?" Mrs. Rago looked up from her list, puzzled.

"Helios. That's why it's so hot." Meg explained. "He's the god of the sun- he's driving his chariot badly today. It's too close to the Earth."

Mrs. Rago smiled. "You've got a wonderful imagination."

"No, it's-"

"Ok, now listen, honey," Mrs. Rago continued. "Give this list to your mom. It's just suggestions, except for filling the bathtub with water. That needs to be done, but be sure to scrub it out with bleach first. Got that?" She handed Meg the paper.

" ... hurricane warning posted for south east Florida, from Vero Beach down to

Miami," the radio announced.

Mrs. Rago held her hand up for quiet and pointed at the radio.

"A watch is still posted for the Keys, and V ero north to Melbourne. Looks like tomorrow's going to be stormy, folks. We're getting some reports on short wave from friends in the Bahamas, they've got huge waves piling up on the beaches and winds really

239 kicking up down there. If you got something to do - shopping, a boat to tie up - get it done today. We'll keep you updated."

"Right, then," Mrs. Rago said briskly. "It's pretty definite, once the Bahamas are seeing it. Although, Arlene... Still, let's not take chances. Give that list to your mother and tell her I'll check in with her around lunch, see if she needs help. I need to get across the street, see how Mrs. Briggs is doing."

"'Tie up a boat'? What does that mean?"

"Don't worry about the boats, now." Mrs. Rago hung her apron on the back of a chair.

"But what does it mean?''

"Sarah," she called, "I'm running over to Mrs. Briggs' -be right back. Boats get blown out of the water, Meg, if they're not tied up."

"Blown-"

"You don't have a boat, sweetie," Mrs. Rago pushed her gently out the door. "Go help your mom. And don't forget about the bathtub."

Meg stood outside and thought for a moment. It was hard to think because it was hard to breathe; the air felt like a blanket wrapped around her, while the sky pressed down ominously. Her father had said he was going out on a boat today, but boats were supposed to be tied up. Sweat gathered at her hairline, and started to run down her scalp.

Meg ran back to the house and burst into the kitchen. "Mom! Mom!!" she yelled.

Deirdre looked around the refrigerator door. ''I'm right here, Meg."

''MomwehavetocallDaddyattheofficeandtellhimnottogooutonaboat,'' Meg gasped.

"I didn't understand a word you said." Deirdre went back to the fridge.

240 "Mom!" Meg grabbed Deirdre's arm. "Dad! Boats are supposed to be tied up, we have to call him!"

Deirdre sighed. "Meg, we're not calling your father. I don't know what he's doing today in the office, but he'll be fine."

Meg was desperate, "Mom, please! It's dangerous-"

Deirdre whirled around, "No, Meg, you listen to me! We are not calling your father, we are not discussing this anymore because I won't have you frightening your sisters and I am not going to put up with your nonsense today. Am I making myself clear?"

Meg backed away, shaking her head. Zeus, Hera, her father, her mother: No one would listen. Why didn't grown-ups understand?

"Meg, listen to me," Deirdre leaned down to look Meg in the eye. "You're old enough to understand - we have a lot to do today and it's important that it get done. Do you understand?" She studied Meg's mutinous expression, then shook her head.

Deirdre looked down at Mrs. Rago's list, "hmm ... oh, I see, that will disinfect it.

Good idea. Ok, Meg - you clean the bathtub. Scrub it first with polvo, then wash it down with bleach. Let's test filling it this afternoon to see if the drain holds a seal."

Meg was staring out the kitchen window. Even though it was still early, the sun was so strong there were no shadows in the palms today, only pitiless light wilting the fronds. Maybe she was wrong, Meg thought, maybe-

A piercing scream echoed from the back of the house.

"Oh, Mother of God!" Deirdre threw up her hands. "Meg, see which one of your sisters is trying to kill the other, please. And tell them to stop."

241 Meg wandered down the hall, still trying to puzzle it out. She didn't think she was wrong, yet everyone else did. But- she started listing reasons: she had the Brooch; I

Hera had lied; Zeus was angry; a bad storm was coming ... She stopped to poke her head in Isabella's room. "Oye- Mom says quit killing each other."

"jMira!" Maureen pointed excitedly while Isabella hopped on the bed, squealing.

"Una culebra."

"Really?" Meg bent down to look. A tiny jet black snake, with a yellow ring around its neck, was twisting back and forth in a comer, huddled against the baseboard.

"Oh, he's beautiful." An orange red belly could be seen when the snake corkscrewed its tail off the ground.

"jCayese, Isabella!" Maureen hollered.

"What IS all the noise about?" Deirdre appeared in the doorway. "Isabella, get off that bed right now."

"Look, Mom," Maureen pointed.

Deirdre started laughing. "Today is getting positively Biblical in proportion - what's next, locusts?"

The girls stared at her uncomprehendingly.

"Nothing, nothing." Deirdre waved it off. "Get something to catch it in and take the poor creature outside. Isabella, all that screaming has scared that baby snake half out of its wits. Come with me- we're going shopping."

Maureen scrambled up, "Can I go, too, Mommy? Can I, please?"

"Yeah - that would good if Maureen went with you and Isabella, Mom," Meg said quickly. "I'll take Dumpling. Then I can scrub the bathtub while she's napping."

242 "Fine," Deirdre looked at Meg, surprised. "That will help, thank you. Ok, girls, let's go."

"jAdios!" Meg waved as her mother pulled the car out of the driveway after lunch. She ran back inside to grab Dumpling, who was yawning mightily. "Dump, darling, today you get to sleep in your stroller because we're going to the beach. Please don't hate it today, please just go to sleep." The baby fussed sleepily for a bit and Meg rolled the stroller up and down the hallway until Dumpling was asleep. Carefully carrying the stroller out the front door to a shady spot, Meg adjusted the canopy. She considered it for a moment, noting the sun felt even stronger than that morning. Fishing in the diaper bag, she found a spare diaper to drape lightly over the top. Meg surveyed the stroller and nodded, satisfied.

She went back inside and retrieved the Brooch from under the mattress. Meg balanced the Brooch in her palm, studying it closely. The metal felt hot, yet the whorls were quiescent until she tilted her hand. Then sunlight corning in the window struck sharp glints off the metal, like a flint creating fire; the silver began to appear restless as it absorbed more and more of the sun's rays, the ruby in the center began to pulse, and an audible heartbeat started to pound. Meg gasped, then realized what she was hearing was someone pounding a hammer. Disquieted, nonetheless, Meg quickly shoved the Brooch deep in her pocket. "No," she said sternly, "you don't get to start any more trouble right now."

The neighborhood seemed oddly deserted as she pushed the stroller towards the beach. In Venezuela there had never been many cars on the streets, but in The States cars

243 were seen driving all the time. However, this time Meg only had to wait for one car to pass before she crossed the street. The neighborhood was silent too; no children yelled at each other, no mothers called to their children, no dogs barked. From several directions now hammering could be heard, but she didn't see anyone. Some houses were already shuttered, turning blind staring eyes to the street.

The strangeness of the day felt like a pressure building in Meg's chest. Before slipping into the sea grape tunnel, she turned to survey the street. It had an unnatural clarity, like a vision in a dream, like being frozen, trapped in a scene. Except this time she was held by heat, not cold; by the intensity of the sun, not mists; by the sense of the sky closing in on her like a coffin instead of opening out into infinity.

The heat burning on her forehead broke the spell. Meg slipped back into the shadows of the sea grape, grateful to be out of the sun for a moment. The dark, after the intense light, was dizzying and she stopped to catch her breath. But when she wheeled the stroller out onto the beach, the sun struck her square in the face. Blinded, with flashes of light and dark bursting on her eyelids, Meg stumbled forward onto the beach.

The stroller wheels immediately sank deep in the sand, coming to a halt. Meg stopped. She had forgotten the same thing happened last time she tried to push the stroller on the beach. She peeked inside and saw Dumpling was sound asleep.

Painstakingly, she slowly dragged the stroller backwards to the shade of the lifeguard station, taking care not to jar the baby and wake her up. The station was shuttered.

Attached to its side, a red flag with a black square in the middle snapped smartly in the wind.

244 Leaving the stroller parked, Meg struggled down to the water's edge, her feet sinking in the sand. The wind blew hard off the ocean, hurling stinging apout and whipping her hair into her mouth and eyes. The waves were forming far out on the ocean's surface, gathering strength and rolling in to break hard, pounding on the sand. A muffled booming noise, emanating from no fixed spot, accompanied them.

"Eurus!" Meg cried, but the wind tossed her voice away. She spun around and threw her arms out. "Notus! Boreas! Zephyrus!" She waited, slowly turning to look in all directions. The beach was deserted. A lone seagull cawed, struggling against the wind. It was soon swept west, leaving the sky and sands empty. The building where the

Pantheon resided was barely discernible in the distance, concealed by the spray and mist thrown up by the ocean.

Meg faced the horizon and was forced to admit no one would answer her call.

The winds had deserted her. She was shocked, unable to move except for rocking slightly before the force of the east wind. The blown spray from the waves splattered her glasses and stung her face. Her fingers closed over the Brooch in her pocket and she slowly drew it out.

Seen dimly through the spray on her glasses, the silver was flowing freely now, a feverish whirlpool with a crimson heart, beating in time with the booming sound of waves forming in the distance. The silver swirled around, over and down, down, down.

Meg rocked back and forth, feeling her eyes lose focus as she was drawn into the bottomless crimson pool that waited, silent as death.

245 A sigh wrapped itself around Meg, a sound as light as the air, as soft as skin on the back of the baby's neck. Meg heard it as if from a great distance, a sound she knew from a different time and a different place.

She continued rocking, staring at the Brooch. Salt spray blown off a wave hit her face sideways, getting inside her glasses and viciously stinging her eyes. She jumped back, scrambling to get her glasses off, pressing her hands over her eyes.

After a few moments, with her eyes watering, she was able to blink enough of the salt out to see. She tried to clean her glasses on her shirt but the salt spray smeared in grimy streaks. The Brooch lay at the water's edge, the waves drawing back from it.

Meg stared at the blur of red and flashing silver. The pain in her eyes seemed to coalesce the fear and anger that had been building all week. Without thinking, in a blind rage, she snatched the Brooch, and yelling as loudly as she could, hurled it out into the waves. The force of the throw caused her to stumble backwards, falling onto the sand.

When she looked up there was no trace of where the Brooch had landed in the water. Meg slowly stood up, her legs shaking. She staggered backwards up the sand, struggling to gain footing in the shifting sands, half expecting Poseidon or one of the

Nereids to rear up out of the waves.

But nothing happened. The waves continued pounding onto the sand, the beach and the sky remained empty. With the east wind at her back, Meg walked back up the beach to the life guard station. "It's over," she whispered to a sleeping Dumpling.

"V amanos."

Meg walked home in a daze. Her vision was blurred and she kept running the stroller into little pieces of debris blowing across the sidewalk. The sun beating down

246 dried her face and hair, while the salt crusted on her skin. "It's over," she reassured the baby, "You're safe now." And prayed that was true.

As they walked up the driveway she saw Mr. Rago, and a boy she'd never seen before, putting up the shutters on the O'Brien windows.

"Hi, Meg," Mr. Rago called. "This is Peter Stephens."

"Hello," Peter said.

Meg nodded. She guessed he was a little bit older than she.

"Were you at the beach?" He asked.

Meg nodded.

"I bet the waves were awesome, weren't they? I like to surf, do you?"

Meg shook her head.

"Cat got your tongue?" Mr. Rago teased. "Peter, hold this one steady, now."

"Where's Dad?" Meg asked.

Mr. Rago mumbled something around a mouthful of nails.

Meg felt the fear starting to rise again. She pulled Dumpling out of the stroller,

"C'mon, sweetie, hurry, c'mon" and ran to the house. "Mom!" she shouted as she burst through the door into a darkened front hall. "Mom!"

Deirdre looked around the kitchen door jamb. "Oh, there you are. What's all the shouting about? And what happened to you- you look like a drowned cat!"

"Where's Dad?" Meg demanded. "Why is Mr. Rago putting up shutters?"

"Mr. Rago is helping us out because he's a Good Samaritan. Your father was getting a ride home from someone at the office, remember?"

247 "The boat!" Meg clutched her mother's skirt. "Mom - the waves are really dangerous, Dad shouldn't be out on a boat today!"

Deirdre smiled, "Did you meet Peter? He's going into eighth grade at St. James so you'll see him at school."

"Mom!" Meg was frantic, "Dad's in danger."

"I think he's nice. After the groceries are put away, I'm going to make some lemonade for them- why don't you take it out?"

Meg stared at her mother. She let Dumpling slide down to the floor. The baby crawled under the kitchen table and happily retrieved a teething ring. Meg admitted defeat. At times, when Deirdre wanted her daughters to behave a certain way, she erected a glass wall. From the other side of that wall she heard and saw only what she wanted from them. There was no defense, as the girls had never been able to find a chink. There was no alternative.

Shaking her head, Meg went to find Maureen. The rest of the house was dark and cool, even though it was still light outside. Walking down the dark hall, after being in the kitchen, where the western sun streamed in the windows, caused Meg to shiver. It was unnaturally dark. Glancing in her room she saw that the windows were blocked off completely. It was as if a wall had sprung up outside the house, trapping them all inside.

The shutters, Meg realized. They were horrible inside, making the walls seem like they were closing in.

Her room was empty. Meg found Maureen in Isabella's room, sorting through the game box. All the lights were on, but the windows looked like eye sockets with the eyes gouged out. Meg hurriedly drew the curtains.

248 Maureen started laughing, "Why'd you do that?"

"I can't stand it, can you?" Meg rubbed her hands on her arms. Salt and sand flaked delicately onto the rug.

"Stand what?"

"The windows! With the shutters on them- it's like ... It's too closed in."

Maureen considered that. "It's the same as nighttime, isn't it?"

"No!" Meg said vehemently. "No, it's not the same. We're going to be trapped!"

"No, we're not- Mr. Rago left the bathroom window clear. He said we should leave it open a little. To make things equal."

"Make what equal?"

Maureen shrugged, "I dunno. jAy, mira - Cooties!" She held up a box and

Isabella cheered.

"Oh, Cooties' fun! (,Te recuerdas?, we used to play that all the time." Meg peered over Isabella's shoulder into the game box. "What are you doing?"

Isabella held up a box, "Candyland!"

"Eww!" Maureen gagged. "I hate that stupid game!''

"Ami me gusta," Isabella pouted, holding the box to her chest.

"All right," Maureen relented. "C'mon, Meg, pick something- Mommy said we could play games after dinner. Anything we want!"

"And," Isabella added breathlessly, "we're having grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for dinner! As a special treat! No vegetables!"

249 "Yeah, we're having a hen party," added Maureen. "We get to eat in the kitchen so we don't have to vacuum afterwards."

Meg was astonished. Dinner was always formal in the O'Brien house, except for

Fat Tuesday, the one night of the year Deirdre relaxed the dinner menu. But that was because Lent was imminent; grilled cheese sandwiches weren't for anything, other than lunch.

She slowly sat down on the bed and looked around the room. '"The time is out of joint'," she muttered.

Maureen looked up. "That's what Daddy says Daddo Malachi says."

Meg nodded. "I think now I know what it means."

"What?"

"This," Meg waved her hands around.

"What?"

"Everything! Everything's wrong, or backwards - or, or something, I don't know. But nothing's right."

"Go Fish!" Isabella jumped up, waving a deck of cards. "Let's play Go Fish!"

"Let's take the whole box!" With that, Maureen and Isabella tossed all the games back in the box and carried it out of the room.

Meg sighed and stared at the curtains. She didn't want to, but she couldn't stop herself from peeking behind them. The shock, again, of not being able to see out the window repelled her. She sat back down on the bed and tried to calm her thoughts. With the Brooch gone, there should be an end to the problems. Mr. Eckberg wouldn't need to bring her tales from the gods anymore and she could be friends with the Winds again.

250 Life should return to normal. A loud thud on the window made her jump and scream.

Laughter could be heard on the other side of the shutte~. "Just checking!" an indistinct male voice said.

"Oh!" Fed up with everyone, including herself, Meg stood up indignantly and squared her shoulders. The smell of grill cheese sandwiches drifted down the hall, making her stomach growl. She'd forgotten lunch, Meg realized, surprised that all the commotion had made her forget to eat. In that case, she'd have two sandwiches, she decided, and headed out towards the kitchen.

"I'm finished eating- now let's play!" Isabella said excitedly.

Deirdre smiled, "What would you like to play first?"

"Go Fish!" "Scrabble!" "Cootie!" The girls responded simultaneously.

"Not Scrabble, that's too hard!" Isabella kicked the table leg.

"I love Scrabble!" Meg said hotly.

"All right, all right- c'mon girls, this is all for fun tonight. Let's clear the table­ take your plates over to the sink, then how about some Gin Rummy?"

"Mommy!" Maureen waved her hand in the air, as if she were in class. "Can I get

Daddy's poker chips?"

"Sure."

"I'll help, I'll help!" Maureen and Isabella scrambled off to find the poker chips.

Deirdre filled the sink with water and added some soap. "Let's just let the dishes soak for a while, shall we? We can wash them later."

251 "Mom, where' s Dad?" Meg asked. The kitchen window was shuttered, but the kitchen door stood open and through the screen she could see the sun setting. "It must be I almost eight o'clock."

Deirdre looked around to see where her other daughters were. Laughter and slamming doors could be heard in another room somewhere. She leaned down to speak quietly to Meg. "Margaret, do not try me." Meg started to tum away and Deirdre grabbed Meg's upper arms in a vice grip, her fingernails digging deep into the skin. She roughly pulled Meg close to her. "Did you hear me?" She asked the question softly, in a slow and careful tone, devoid of expression.

"Ow! Mom, you're hurting me," Meg whispered.

"Did you?"

"Yes!" Meg was staring at the shutters. Her mother gave her a little shake and

Meg met her eyes. "Yes, Mom."

Satisfied, Deirdre let go of Meg and stepped back. Meg rubbed her arms while she and Deirdre stared at each other.

Isabella and Maureen tumbled back into the kitchen. "I found them, I found them!" Isabella thumped the chip carousel onto the table and clambered onto her chair.

"Let's play!"

Meg walked over to the table, aware that Maureen was watching her carefully.

"C'mon, Mommy!" Isabella was doling out chips.

"I'm coming," Deirdre laughed. "Let me just refill these ice trays."

"Here, Meggie, you deal." Isabella handed the cards to Meg.

252 Maureen cheered and the Dumpling banged a spoon on her high chair tray. Amid her sisters' general hilarity, Meg started shuffling.

"Hellooo?" The front door slammed.

"Daddy!" Isabella cried, looking up expectantly. Meg jumped up.

Deirdre started to rise, "That doesn't sound like him."

"Hi," Chris Rago walked into the kitchen. "Didn't mean to startle you. I knocked but you folks were having so much fun you didn't hear me."

Meg opened her mouth to ask Mr. Rago if he knew anything about her father.

Deirdre caught her eye and Meg looked down at the table.

"I'm winning, Mr. Rago!" Isabella held up handfuls of chips.

"I see that!" Chris ruffled her hair.

"Oh, I'll never get her to sleep tonight," Deirdre laughed. "Would you like some coffee, Chris?"

"No, thanks - I just stopped by to see if you folks need any help. Did you fill your bathtub?"

Deirdre clapped her hand to her head. "Oh! I knew we forgot something. Ok, girls - time to get ready for bed. Meg, did you scrub the tub with bleach - is it ready to be filled?"

Meg nodded.

"Good girl," Mr. Rago patted her shoulder. "So," he adopted a boxer's stance and mock punched Meg on the arm. "What'd ye think of Peter? He thought you were cute."

Meg rolled her eyes.

253 "He's in eighth grade, Mommy said, is that right?" Maureen perked up.

"That's right, next year he goes to high school."

"Oh, my," Maureen breathed.

"Chris, thank you again for all your help today. Have you heard any updates ... "

Their voices faded as the grownups walked to the front door. Meg slid over to the kitchen door to listen but could only hear murmuring. They had all made so much noise while playing cards, she hadn't realized how much the wind had picked up. When

Deidre opened the door for Chris, a'tiny whirlwind of leaves and petals blasted into the hallway. Meg pulled back into the kitchen, startled. She frowned, thinking about her father.

"~ Y?" Maureen poked Meg,

"~ Y que?" Meg looked at her blankly.

"Eighth grade." Maureen giggled.

"Oh, shut up!" Meg picked up Dumpling and started down the hall. "I have work to do. Go away."

"Meg and Peter, sittin' in a tree, k-i-s- eeek!"

Maureen ran screaming down the hall when Meg, shouting at the top of her lungs, unceremoniously dumped the baby on the floor and chased her. Isabella shrieked delightedly, hopping up and down, while Dumpling howled.

"What on earth-" Deirdre came down the hall, looking stunned.

Maureen, still screaming, slammed her bedroom door while Meg pounded on it.

"Enough!" Deirdre grabbed Meg and pulled her back. "That's enough!"

"She started it!"

254 "I don't care who started it- I want everyone to stop. Or else."

Isabella, still shrieking, charged into Meg's legs.

"Now look!" Deirdre grabbed Isabella. "I want you all to stop! Honestly, I'll never get her settled down tonight."

A thumping noise on the roof, loud enough to cut through the noise, silenced everyone suddenly. They stood, wondering, looking at the ceiling.

"Morn, what do you think ... " Meg trailed off.

Deirdre shook herself like a dog corning out of the ocean. "Something the wind blew, that's all. Nothing. It's gone now. Certainly no worse than listening to the rat traps snapping on the roof in Caripito."

"No me gusto rats," Isabella whimpered.

"There aren't any rats, Iz," Meg reassured her. "It was just the wind." But which wind, she wondered.

"Ok, tell you what, girls, let's skip baths tonight and read a story - how's that sound?" Deirdre suggested. The girls cheered. "Great! Everyone get in their pajamas and we'll all climb into my bed and read. Meg, in that case, help me move Dumpling's crib into your room."

Meg tucked the baby in, gently pulling a cotton blanket up over her. She sang quietly, "Out of my dreams and into your arms I long to fly, I will come as evening comes to woo a waiting sky," rubbing her back until the baby settled down. Meg leaned on the side of the crib for a while, watching Majella sleep. She loved to watch and listen to her baby sister sleep; it was often the one truly relaxing moment of her day. Dumpling

255 usually snored, a tiny sound that Dan liked to joke was a baby heffalump snore. This evening, however, even though she listened carefully, Meg had trouble hearing her because outside the noise was getting louder. It was hard to tell what was making the noise; there were unearthly squeaks, thumps, low moans and wails. Forgetting about the shutters, Meg opened the curtains to see. The unexpected sight of the boarded up windows felt like a slap in the face.

She retreated to her mother's room. All the lights were on, and Deirdre was reading to Maureen and Isabella, tucked under the covers with her. Meg flopped down next to Maureen.

"We're reading the Wizard of Oz," Isabella informed Meg. "I picked it!"

"Great, which one?"

Deirdre held up the book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

"That's my favorite," said Maureen.

"This is like our story now, isn't it?" asked Deirdre.

"We're going to get blown away?" Meg was alarmed. The winds sounded louder once Deirdre stopped reading.

"No, no, silly." Deirdre waved her hand negligently. "I mean all you girls went to a marvelous land and saw wonderful things and now you're home."

"But, Mommy," asked Isabella querulously, "Dorothy got blown away. I don't like this wind anymore, Mommy, I want it to stop."

"It's going to stop, Isabella, probably tomorrow. It's just wind, honey- the wind blew non-stop in Amuay, remember? You're used to this."

Isabella started to cry.

256 Deirdre sighed, exasperated. "Honestly, I don't see the difference. That dam wind in Amuay never once let up."

Meg saw the difference. The wind in Amuay was friendly, whereas this wind had a sense of malevolence - it was trying to get in.

"All right, that's enough for tonight," Deirdre shook her head. "It's late, way past your bedtime- everybody to bed now. We can read more tomorrow."

Isabella cried harder.

"C'mon, now, I'll take you to your room," Deirdre picked her up.

"You girls see yourselves to bed," she said and kissed Meg and Maureen good night. "I'll come in later."

"Mom?" Meg hesitated. "Will you ask Dad to come in when he gets home?''

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, Meg! Yes, yes, I will." Deirdre moved past Meg carrying Isabella to her room. " oof!, you're getting so big!"

Meg and Maureen listened to the wind as they climbed under the covers.

"Do you want to leave the light on?" Maureen asked.

"I don't know, do you?"

"I don't know."

They lay in the dark for a few minutes. The wind died down, then started up again.

"Yes!" Maureen said quickly. "I don't care what Mom says, it doesn't sound like

Amuay and I don't like it."

Neither do I, Meg thought but she didn't want to frighten Maureen by saying so.

''I'll tum the desk light on, how's that?"

257 "Much better, thanks."

The girls lay quietly.

"Meg?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think we're going to be all right?"

"Yes." Meg said it softly, then more loudly. "Yes!"

"Ok." There was a long pause, then Maureen added, "Good night."

"Good night."

After a while, Meg could tell from Maureen's breathing that she had fallen asleep.

Meg envied her, she felt wide awake. She couldn't sleep with a light on, but with the light off the wind sounded like a wild animal prowling inside her room. The shutters seemed to redirect the sound, so she couldn't even tell which wind is blowing.

Meg pulled the covers over her head to try and block out some of the light. She was exhausted but her thoughts were churning erratically and she couldn't muster them in the face of the winds. Did it matter anymore whether it was Eurus or Notus, she wondered. It frightened her to think the Winds, her friends, were now turned against her.

But they were Zeus' to command first, her friends second.

She was reminded of a story she'd read about a snake who promised he wouldn't bite the person who picked him up, but then did. When asked why, the snake replied,

"You knew I was a snake when you picked me up." She knew the winds were forces of nature, but she trusted them as her friends. She felt horribly unsure again, like when she was walking on the beach and the sand kept giving way under her feet. It didn't feel like

258 there was any solid ground anymore. Finally, despite the light and the noise, she fell asleep.

259 WEDNESDAY

When Meg woke, the room was unnaturally dark and loud. Noise filled the room, as the wind had increased in pitch, whistling under the eaves, accompanied by snapping and cracking sounds. "Maureen," she whispered. "Are you awake?" When there was no answer, she fumbled for her glasses on the bedside table. She reached for the lamp switch, but nothing happened when she flipped it on. She had never been in such darkness; no light shone in under the door, no light showed behind the curtains, there was not even the smallest reflection of light off a piece of metal somewhere. The darkness was absolute.

Meg peered at the clock but couldn't make out the numbers. She lay back down

and listened to the wind. Just as she couldn't see anything in the room, she couldn't recognize any of the sounds. Her mind told her it was the wind but these noises had an

inhuman quality that put them in a realm unlike anything she'd ever heard before. The

darkness seemed to magnify the noise, although she didn't understand how that could be.

A weak light flickered in the hallway. Meg jumped out of bed and immediately

tripped over something on the floor. "I can't see," she muttered and slowly made her

way across the bedroom, feeling with her feet. She partially missed the doorway and

bumped into the door jamb. Her mother was walking slowly down the hallway, holding a

candle in front of her. The flame leapt and subsided as currents of air shifted in the hallway.

260 A devil, blood red black death, momentarily raised its head out of the shadows on the hallway floor, spiral horns preceding it as it rose from the depths of H~ll. Meg stumbled backwards, pointing and babbling. She hadn't finished making the Sign of the

Cross before she realized in a flash that it was one of the wooden Guatemalan masks, resting against the wall. Meg bent over, gasping, her knees shaking.

Deirdre hadn't even noticed Meg. She was anxiously scrutinizing the ceiling, murmuring, " ... St. Thomas, pray for us. St. James, pray for us. St. Philip, pray for us.

St. Bartholo-"

"Mom," Meg whispered.

"Goodness, Meg!" The candle flame wavered precariously when Deirdre jumped.

"I almost stepped on you. Don't whisper, it's hard enough to hear anything as is."

"I didn't want to wake anyone up," Meg said.

Deirdre stared at her. "In this noise?" she asked incredulously, and then started laughing. "Oh, honey, I don't think there's a single creature in Desolasol who's asleep right now."

"Oh," Meg said sheepishly. "Right." She started to giggle and pointed at the floor. "I also thought the devil was coming up out of Hell to get us."

"The dev- oh! The masks!" Deirdre started to giggle too. "Lord! Remember how scared you used to be of those?" She clawed her fingers and made a terrible face,

"Boo!"

Meg and Deirdre both started laughing, then hiccupping, laughing harder and harder, holding on to each other.

261 An awful screech that sounded like metal dragging on concrete, followed by a heavy muffled thud overhead, cut the laughter short.

"What was that?" Meg whispered, still holding on to her mother.

"I have no idea." Deirdre looked up. "Oh, Buddy, I sure hope you worked on this roof," she murmured.

"Mo-oommy!" The cry echoed up the hallway.

"Coming! C'mon, Meg- everyone's in my bed, let's go."

"Great!" Meg dashed into her mother's room. There were lit candles strewn around the crystal Blessed Virgin Mary statue on her mother's dresser. Reflecting in the mirror, they showed the crib pulled up beside her mother's bed and her sisters in the middle of the bed.

"But," Meg turned to her mother. "Where's Dad?"

"At Port Everglades. Hey, move over," Deirdre didn't look up as she climbed into bed.

"Did you talk to him?"

"Get in, Meg." Deirdre patted the bed. "Your father spends the majority of his time traveling, honey. He knows when it's safe to travel and when it's not."

Frowning, Meg climbed onto the bed, listening to the noises outside, all the more frightening for being unknown. This was different from flying from Maiquetia to New

York. Maureen and Isabella were curled up on one side of Deirdre, Dumpling, half­ asleep, on the other. Meg lay down next to Dumpling and stroked her back. "Don't be afraid," she whispered in her sister's ear.

262 "Isn't this cozy?" Deirdre said brightly, tucking the covers more securely around those she could reach. She had to raise her voice slightly to be heard.

"Is there going to be a tidal wave?" Isabella asked in a quavering voice.

"No. No tidal waves." Deirdre smoothed her hair back. "Remember St.

Christopher? Remember how he carried the baby Jesus through the rising rivers. He'll protect you."

"Mommy, I'll get our medals," Maureen hopped out of bed and ran to her mother's dresser.

"Here," she held out a handful of medals. Solemnly, everyone reverently put a medal around their neck.

"Now," instructed Deirdre. "Say a prayer to St. Christopher." She tucked the covers around her daughters and started saying the rosary. Lulled by the soft repetition of her prayers, the familiar clicking of the beads, and the sense of safety invoked by snuggling like kittens, the girls fell asleep.

They woke when the wind became louder than before, with constant banging, and booming noises, thudding off the roof.

Isabella burrowed all the way under the covers.

"This must be the front wall," Deirdre guessed.

"The what?" asked Meg, not because she was interested but because it felt better to talk than to be quiet and concentrate on the noise.

"Mr. Rago explained there's a front wall in the beginning, then the storm stops.

That's called the eye and means it's the middle. Then it starts again when the back wall

263 comes." She patted the lump that was Isabella. "Then it's over! So, soon it will be over!"

"What makes that booming noise?" Maureen wondered. "Hey! Let's look out the bathroom window! Can we, Mom?"

"I don't see why not... I guess it's safe." Deirdre shook her head. "I just don't know what to expect now."

Meg and Maureen scrambled out of bed, and headed for the bathroom, bumping

into walls a few times on their way. The light showing through the unshuttered window

was a sickly grey white.

"It looks like the skin of a cadaver," Meg said.

"What does that mean?'' Maureen asked.

Meg shrugged, "I don't know. It was a description, in a book, of something that

was grey."

"Yuk! A cadaver is a dead person, right?" Maureen poked Meg, "That's gross!"

"You're gross!" Meg poked her back. Giggling and jostling for position, they

balanced precariously on the toilet lid, and peered out the window.

And stopped giggling, struck dumb by the sight; rain blew sideways, creating a

grey haze through which the backyard could be seen dimly.

'"now we see through a glass, darkly'," Meg murmured.

The trees in back yard were leaning parallel to the ground. One tree had snapped

in half, exposing raw, jagged edges. The broken half, still partially attached, swung back

and forth wildly as if it were no heavier than a piece of paper. Smaller branches, leaves,

and pieces of vines tumbled across the ground, rolling quickly out of sight.

264 "What a mess!" Maureen finally said, her voice shaking.

"I have the feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," said Meg.

"Mooommy!" Isabella wailed out in the hallway. "Wait!"

Deirdre walked down the hall, carrying Dumpling, who was fussing and clinging, her arms tightly wrapped around her mother's neck. "Is it the roof or one of the shutters?" she asked. She held a candle aloft, checking the ceiling, frustrated she couldn't locate the source of a steady banging sound.

"Mommy, pick me up, pick me up," Isabella sobbed, tangled around her mother's legs.

"iisabella - Basta!" she snapped. "I cannot carry this baby. And a candle. And you."

Isabella wailed, "I want a candle."

"No- you'll just drop it."

"Mommy, I'll get her," Maureen hopped down off the toilet. "Isabella, (,quieres ver? Come look out the window."

"No, no," Isabella screamed.

"Wait! Shh ... " Deirdre held the candle higher. "Listen! Listen, I think it's letting up." She let the baby slide to the floor.

Suddenly the noises stopped. In the sudden silence, the sound of water dripping from the eaves sounded incredibly loud. "Let's go look!" Maureen ran out of bathroom.

"It's over, it's over," Isabella cheered, running after her.

"Girls, wait - wait!" Deirdre stopped to pick up Dumpling. "It's not over.

Wait!"

265 Meg turned to jump down off the toilet. "Wait!" She thought at first it was her mother still, then realized the voice came from behind her. And it wasn't her mother's.

She turned to see Mr. Eckberg's face framed in the bathroom window. Bits of leaves stuck to the bill of his Yankee cap, which was dark with rain.

"What are you doing here?'' Meg gasped. "Are you all right?"

"Close the door," he gestured, looking over her shoulder.

"But are you all right? Is the storm over? Why are the Winds doing this to us?"

Meg couldn't stop herself from pouring out questions as she closed the door and climbed back up on the toilet. "Are we safe now, is it over?''

"Oh, kiddo," Mr. Eckberg shook his head sadly. "It's just starting."

Meg dug her fingers into the window sill. "What does that mean?''

"Zeus is in a rage. That's what this," Mr. Eckberg waved his hand at the debris strewn yard, "is all about. Hera and Zeus have been fighting for hours. He's marshaled the Winds to attack your house- and now Poseidon- to attack your father's boat."

His words whirled around inside Meg's thoughts, as she tried to sort through what he'd said. The Winds- and Poseidon! Her father was on a boat?

"Dad went out on the boat? He's not in the office?" None of it made sense.

"I don't know, I really don't," Mr. Eckberg admitted. "I know Zeus is in a rage­ and that's dangerous."

"I threw the Brooch in the ocean- I don't even have it anymore," Meg confessed.

A sudden gust of wind made Mr. Eckberg flinch. Meg squealed. "No," he reassured her, "it's all right- this is the eye. We have a respite before it starts again."

266 "I'm going." Even though she hadn't planned it, and the words came out unbidden, as soon as she said it, Meg knew that was what she had had to do all along, I what the entire week had been leading up to, since she found the Brooch.

"What?" Mr. Eckberg looked taken aback. "Going where?"

"To Zeus." Meg jumped down off the toilet.

"What!" Mr. Eckberg pressed up against the screen and hissed at her. "Are you crazy? You're a mortal."

Meg ignored him. "Meet me on the side of the house. I'll be there in two minutes."

"Wait!" But Mr. Eckberg was talking to the back of bathroom door Meg slammed on her way out.

Meg made her way as quickly as she could to her room. On her knees, she scrabbled madly for the clothes she'd thrown on the floor last night. She quickly pulled a shirt and shorts over her pajamas and laced her tennis shoes. Feeling her way down the hallway by running one hand along the wall and holding the other one in front of her, she hurried into the kitchen. Deirdre was making sandwiches by candlelight.

Deirdre turned to Meg, "Would you like some peanut-"

''I'm going out," Meg brushed past her mother quickly.

"What?" Deirdre was too startled to catch her. "No! Meg, no- I don't want you out-"

"Just checking that shutter - I'll be back!" Meg slammed out of the back door and ran around the side of the house, slipping on the wet grass. Skidding around the house, she stopped to look at her changed world.

267 The ground was covered with debris; branches, leaves, pieces of paper, palm fronds, unrecognizable pieces of metal and chunks of wood. A few trees were completely uprooted. They lay on their sides, roots dangling crazily in the air, gaping holes in the earth, where sections of grass and other plants had been ripped out along with the roots. Some trees leaned at drunken angles, still upright but with branches broken off or stripped clean of leaves. Meg stepped gingerly through the debris. The areca palm stand, yesterday full of shadowed depths, now stood bare and whipped. The wind blew fitfully, sending burst of rain and leaf showers intermittently through the air.

"Mr. Eckberg," she whispered, stumbling down the driveway.

"Over here." He was standing in the shadows of a hedge that leaned in a bizarre zigzag pattern, draped over with bougainvillea vines still attached to the trellis that had landed on top of the hedge. "You shouldn't be out here," he warned.

"Neither should you," Meg hissed. At the end of the block she could see someone standing in their front yard.

"Go back inside!" Mr. Eckberg insisted.

"No!" Meg slipped on wet leaves and scraped her knee but came up immediately.

"No - the Winds are my friends, they shouldn't attack my family. And Daddy-" her voice broke.

"Now, now," Mr. Eckberg reached out to pat her shoulder, but Meg twisted away from him and ran down the driveway, jumping over debris where possible, one time painfully cracking her shin on an upturned branch.

"Ow!" she kept on running, headed towards the beach. Although the streets were as littered with debris as the driveway, it was a little easier to run in a broader space. The

268 sun struggled to shine through the clouds, which raced across the sky. At times it seemed to be raining, but it was nothing more than sprinkles, more wind driven water than I anything else. It was eerily quiet - there were no birds, no cars. A lone dog barked

somewhere; Pedro, from across the street, Meg suspected. That single sound highlighted the fact that there were no other sounds.

Out of the comer of her eye, Meg could see Mr. Eckberg in the shadows on the

sides of the bushes and shuttered houses. He tried to wave her down several times, but

she ignored him and kept running. As Meg approached the beach, she could hear the

waves booming, a hollow sound that seemed to be coming from out beyond the horizon.

She ran through the sea grape tunnel, this time not stopping to look back, and burst out on

the beach. The roar of the waves crashing halfway up the beach slammed into her as she

ran flailing onto the sand, stumbling in sand that was wet and heavy even at the far

western edge of the beach. Her steps slowed as the fury of the ocean started to register.

The frightening sound of the winds howling in the dark had not conveyed the power of

the storm as much as going outside to see a tattered world and hear the ocean rage.

"You should go home," Mr. Eckberg huffed and puffed as he came up behind her

and stood catching his breath.

"Zeus did this?" Meg swept her arm out to encompass everything.

Mr. Eckberg didn't answer.

"This looks really bad."

"Yeah, well, later it's going to look worse," he said frankly.

That reminder started Meg up the beach. With every step her feet sank deep in

the sand, and she struggled to keep her balance as she strode towards the water.

269 "What are you doing?" Mr. Eckberg put a hand on her arm. "Meg, you have to stop."

"No!" Meg tried to spin, but just went sideways a little. She shook off his arm.

"Zeus has to stop- and I'm going up there."

"Of all the-" Mr. Eckberg bit off an oath. "Get on."

"What?" She wasn't sure she'd heard him correctly.

"You'll never make it- get on my back! I'll take you."

Meg jumped onto his back, the way she'd seen the Lone Ranger jump on Silver, and missed. She tried several times, grabbing the back of Mr. Eckberg's shirt and hopping up and down.

He looked behind him. "What in the name of all the gods are you doing?

Haven't you ever ridden before?"

"Of course," Meg said indignantly. "But not a centaur!"

"Not a horse either, I'll wager."

"Well, no. Burros, actually."

Rolling his eyes, Mr. Eckberg sat down so she could climb on his back. "Now, hold on!" He trotted down to the water's edge and started galloping up the beach. Meg lay flat, her arms wrapped around his waist. Sand, whipped by the wind and kicked up by his hooves, stung her legs. The waves were higher than she'd ever seen, crashing into each other before they reached the beach, showering them with salt spray.

Riding high up on the beach, because the waves were so high, the sand was pocketed with turtle nests. Covered with blown sand, they were impossible to see and

Mr. Eckberg stepped in a turtle nest. He cried out as he stumbled, and fell hard on his

270 front legs. Meg flew off, severely scraping her arm and leg as she was thrown onto the sand. Momentarily winded, she lay there, until she heard a groan.

"Mr. Eckberg!" Struggling to pull herself up, she staggered over to him. Please,

St. Francis, she prayed, let him be all right.

"My leg," he said through clenched teeth.

Meg threw her arms around him, knocking his Yankee cap off. "Is it broken?" she held on to him, rocking back and forth. "Please don't let it broken," she whimpered,

"Are you going to shoot me?" Mr. Eckberg adjusted his Yankee cap, and glared at her.

"No! I don't know- no, of course not!" Meg stood up, embarrassed.

"After all I've done for you." Mr. Eckberg continued to rub his leg and glare at her.

"Really. I don't have a gun," Meg reassured him. "And even if I did, I wouldn't shoot you. I do appreciate your help, honest, I do."

"hmph!" Mr. Eckberg snorted, then looked down. "Not much help now, I'm afraid. It's just a sprain but I can't carry you."

The wind was starting to pick up. Mr. Eckberg surveyed the sky and grimaced.

"The eye's almost over. You have to get inside- go on, and I'll follow."

"I can't leave you!" Meg objected. She rocked back and forth as the wind continued to increase in strength.

A sail tom loose from a mast tumbled messily past them on the beach, lines dragging behind it. They both jumped as a wave came further up the beach and broke at their feet.

271 "You have to- go!" Mr. Eckberg had to shout to be heard over the rising wind.

"Go!" he yelled again and pushed her ..

Meg started to run. She was running upwind, struggling to make headway. Her mouth quickly got dry as the wind blew the breath out of her mouth, tearing it out of her lungs before she had a chance to breathe properly. She put her head down and wrapped her arms around her body to keep her shirt from filling with air and sailing her backwards. On either side she could see things tumbling by in the opposite direction, going by too quickly to be identified. She gasped for breath, tiring rapidly.

Suddenly, the wind shifted to blow from behind her, changing so quickly she stumbled forward to her hands and knees, where sand blasted the back of her legs.

Caught by the wind, her forward momentum was almost faster than her feet could move through the sand. Feeling very out of control, Meg ran awkwardly up the beach.

The sky darkened and the booming noise she'd heard earlier began again. The winds started to moan and Meg realized, with despair, it was impossible to determine which Wind was blowing; they were merged into something she didn't know. Something angry; the sky was angry, with strange flashes of light starting to show through the clouds, and the ocean was angry, as waves pounded the sand viciously.

Her steps faltered when she moved into the courtyard garden and saw the mansion for the first time. The wind slowed, partially blocked by the wings of the building curving around the garden. Two massive doors were banging in the wind, booming as they bounced off of the building. The noise from the doors combined with the shrieking of the winds and the crashing of the waves to form an unearthly cacophony. Meg covered her ears and stumbled inside. As she stepped inside the doors blew shut behind

272 her, making the flames in the sconces, and all their reflections, flutter. Nerves strung tight, Meg held her breath.

Silence. The silence in the hall, after the torment outside, was deafening. Meg peered around her, but couldn't see through her glasses. Trying to wipe them off on her shirt, she realized the frames were bent. The hall appeared to be deserted. She walked into the middle, looking around. The only light came from candles flickering on the walls. Two rows of columns circled the hall, which was so large the columns disappeared in the shadows on the other side. Similarly, when she looked up, the tops of the columns receded into the darkness.

A percussive crash split the silence, echoing around and around the hall, as the doors behind her slammed open. Meg turned slowly, certain of what she would see. In the doorway stood Zeus, Lord of the Gods. A storm, oddly contained to where he stood, raged around him with rain swirling and flashing lighting. The dark clouds continually shifted, obscuring Zeus' visage. After a frozen moment of silence, Zeus raised his right arm. The winds broke free and screamed into the hall, swirling, howling, echoing her name off the walls. Zeus raised his left arm. The lightning broke its bonds and flashed, charring the marble columns. It left little flames licking up one set of curtains, and set them smoldering.

"Margaret Mary O'Brien." The sound of her name brought her out of her trance.

She tried to bow, then changed her mind and started to genuflect. Her knees and ankles tangled up, causing her to lose her balance and fall sideways, banging her elbow painfully on the marble floor. Blinking back stars from the pain, she struggled to her feet.

"Are you Margaret?" Zeus asked. He dropped his arms.

273 Meg nodded.

Zeus surveyed her, "You're nothing but an urchin." He sounded vaguely I exasperated.

Meg looked down. Her clothes were ripped and dirty. Her pajama top was exposed where the sleeve had tom off her shirt. She made a futile attempt to pull the edges together. Blood congealed on her knees, her arms were raw and scraped, and her elbow was swelling. She squinted at Zeus to compensate for part of her left vision blurring, since her glasses sat askew on her nose.

Zeus flicked a little lightning bolt at her. "A veritable child."

Meg flinched as the bolt sizzled by her ear.

"How disappointing. I thought you were someone," more bolts flicked by,

"worthy of my attention."

Meg stepped back, frightened by the bolts.

"I expected," Zeus continued, "someone brazen enough to steal jewelry from the

Queen of the Gods, a worthy opponent." Lightning crackled around her head.

The acrid smell of burning hair filled Meg's nostrils. She cried out and beat at the air around her head.

"Look at you!" The winds, which had been prowling around the edges of the hall, leapt up howling. "How dare you defy me!"

Meg fell back, cowering.

Zeus raised both arms. The storm around him rose to fill the ceiling of the hall.

The rumble of thunder and crackle of lightning echoed around the hall.

Meg threw her arms over her head, shaking uncontrollably.

274 Zeus regarded her for a moment, then dropped his arms. "You are not worthy."

Non sum dignus; the words rolled around and aro.und the hall, underscored by the fading thunder.

Meg slowly lifted her head. "I am worthy," she whispered. She leaned against a column and painfully climbed to her feet.

Non sum dignus. Zeus had turned to go. The massive doors blew open in front of him, crashing against the side of the building.

"I am worthy!" Meg screamed. She picked up a lightning bolt lying on the floor and tried to throw it. A flash seared her palm and she doubled over, whimpering, her mind whited out by the burning pain.

A gentle hand touched her back. "He's gone," Mr. Eckberg said.

Meg's knees gave out and she leaned against him, sobbing.

"I'm sorry I didn't get here in time." He held her, patting her back until she stopped crying. She sniffed loudly and inelegantly. Mr. Eckberg pulled back and regarded her suspiciously. "You're not blowing your nose on my shirt, are you?"

Meg held up a shred of her shirt. "I think mine will do, don't you?" she hiccupped.

Mr. Eckberg chuckled. Meg smiled. Then he laughed, and she laughed. They bent over, shaking with laughter until they were gasping for breath, spent and weary.

"Ah, me," Mr. Eckberg wiped his eyes. "What a day." He looked out the doors.

"Morning," he corrected. "It's still morning." He sounded a little surprised.

"It's still morning?" Meg peered around him. "Of today?"

275 "Hard to believe, huh?" He stood up. "C'mon, let's get you home."

Side by side, Meg and Mr. Eckberg walked slowly out of the mansion. The I clouds were still racing across the sky, but the light was growing stronger by the minute.

As they limped down the beach, Meg could see even more trees uprooted than before.

The waves were crashing as strongly as before, however, their vehemence was fading.

After a while, Meg spoke. "Is my father all right?"

"I don't know." Mr. Eckberg looked out at the ocean. "I'll ask."

They continued in silence until they reached the sea grape hedge, where they faced each other.

"Does that mean I'll see you again?" Meg asked.

Mr. Eckberg smiled. "You can't get rid of me that easily. You need to go home now, I'm sure your mother is worried."

"Oh!" Meg opened her eyes wide and inhaled through closed teeth. She hadn't thought about Deirdre.

"Exactly!" Mr. Eckberg laughed as he ruffled her hair. "Meet me here tomorrow."

They smiled at one another. Meg started to leave, then turned back and threw her arms around him.

"Hey now, hey now!" Mr. Eckberg awkwardly patted her back until Meg let go.

Meg ran through the hedge and kept running. People were milling about in their front yards, surveying the damage, talking in small groups. Her steps slowed as she came around the comer to her street. At first she couldn't see the O'Brien house, then realized

276 a tree from the Raga's yard had fallen across their driveways and its canopy blocked her view of the house.

The Ragas and her mother and sisters were climbing over branches in the yard.

Meg smiled to see Isabella and Sarah picking up leaves. Deirdre held Dumpling, who was contentedly chewing a twig.

"Meg!" Maureen came running up. "Where WERE you? You missed it - the tree crashed down and we can't get out the front door and Mommy won't let us use the machete but Mr. Rago has a chain saw and," she leaned in and whispered, "boy, are you in trouble!"

"Hi, Mom." Meg waved sheepishly to her mother.

"Meg!" Deirdre stared at her. Her lips moved silently, then she fiercely pulled

Meg to her. "You're safe!" She pushed Meg away to look her up and down. "You look like you've been through a war! What happened to you?"

Meg looked down at herself. Admittedly, she was a mess.

"You, young lady," Deirdre informed her, "are in serious trouble."

"I know," Meg grinned.

Deirdre shook her head and grinned too.

"Mom, what about Dad?"

"Oh," Deirdre waved. "The phone lines are down. But I'm sure he's fine."

"Hey, Meg!" Mr. Raga shouted. "Did you have an adventure?"

Meg smiled and waved. She held her arms up and her mother handed her

Dumpling. Meg whispered to the baby, "Dumpling, I had an adventure." The baby smiled and poked Meg's shoulder with the twig.

277 "All right," said Deirdre, "Let's start cleaning this mess up."

278 THURSDAY

A large bank of clouds, tinted pink and gold, hovered above the horizon, where the sun was yet an augury of the day. The water, still roiling, reflected the sky in shards of liquid light. Meg leaned forward, her arms wrapped around her knees. She could feel a slight chill starting as the damp from the wet sand slowly seeped through her shorts.

"Penny for your thoughts." Mr. Eckberg sat down next to her.

Meg shook her head. "I wasn't really thinking, just watching the sunrise."

Mr. Eckberg nodded. "Pretty, isn't it? I never tire of it."

They sat in silence as the sun broke the horizon and slid behind the cloud bank.

The clouds turned a deep crimson gold color, and a thin line of dark burning gold spread across the top of the clouds, while rays of light spread up from the top.

"How's your ankle?'' Meg asked.

Mr. Eckberg held his leg out in front and turned it gingerly. "Better, but still sore." He surveyed Meg. "You look rather ... colorful."

''I'll say," Meg laughed ruefully as she looked at her cuts and bruises.

After a minute, Mr. Eckberg asked, "Is your mother angry?"

"Ug- I'll probably be scrubbing floors for the rest of my life." She turned to Mr.

Eckberg. "Last night Mr. Rago spoke to a man from my Dad's office. He said they hadn't heard from my Dad, that his boat didn't come back ayer."

Mr. Eckberg stared out to sea. "I asked the Nereids. They said I should ask

Poseidon."

279 Meg stiffened.

"That doesn't mean he won't be found," Mr. Eckberg cautioned. "I also asked I that baby Bard how this story ends. She said it ends where all stories end, with the start of another."

"What does that mean?'' Meg asked quietly.

"Your story continues."

Meg shook her head. "The gods took everything. My home, my father. I thought

The Winds were my friends. They took all that away."

"You know, when the gods take something away, they always give you something in return for what you lost." Mr. Eckberg replied.

"They didn't give me anything," Meg said bitterly.

"Hey now- they gave you me!"

Meg rolled her eyes.

"It's true," Mr. Eckberg insisted. "They always give you something when they take something away. But what they give you looks different from what you lost. And you may not know what to do with it for a long time."

Meg shrugged.

Mr. Eckberg fished in a pocket, dragged out his cigar stub, and searched for matches in his other pocket.

Meg pulled a pack of Camels out of her pocket.

Mr. Eckberg choked, "Hey there!"

"Got a light?" Meg held up a cigarette.

"Where' dye get those?" Mr. Eckberg sputtered.

280 "They're Dad's, he left them on the bar. But he took his lighter. Can I get a

light?"

"Hell, no!" Mr. Eckberg cuffed the back of her head. "Behave yourself." He

plucked the cigarette out of her hand and broke it in half.

Meg laughed and slid the pack back in her pocket. She stood up and squared her

shoulders back.

"You do that a lot," Mr. Eckberg observed.

"What?"

Mr. Eckberg mincingly imitated Meg standing up straight and movmg her

shoulders back.

"Ah," Meg nodded. "My dad always quoted his dad, "Remember ye're an

O'Brien - stand up straight!"' She watched Mr. Eckberg stand up and dust off his haunches.

Mr. Eckberg regarded her steadily. "The Pantheon leaves this afternoon.

Summer's over. We're going home."

Meg nodded slowly, staring at the ocean. Finally, "Now what?" she asked.

Mr. Eckberg thought for a bit. "You stood up to Zeus. I don't know another

mortal who's done that."

Meg scuffed her toes in the sand. "Will I see you again?"

"You think I didn't see you sneak those cigarettes back in your pocket?" he demanded.

Meg grinned.

"Hand 'em over, kiddo." Mr. Eckberg put out his hand.

281 "They're not your brand!" Meg protested.

Mr. Eckberg kept his hand out.

"Oh, all right!" Meg slapped the pack in his hand.

They grinned at each other for a moment then Mr. Eckberg said gruffly, "Oh, come here!" He enfolded her in a rough hug, thumping her on the back so hard Meg started coughing.

She turned to walk up the beach, stepping around debris. At the sea grape hedge she turned back to look at the beach. Mr. Eckberg stood silhouetted against the rising sun. He raised his hand and waved. Meg waved back, then turned and walked through the tunnel.

282