Prophecy (4 page)

Maggie had thought for a while that time itself would bring them closer together. But it was not happening, and she felt she could wait no longer. In recent weeks she had been waging a battle with depression. Not the kind of feeling she once referred to as the blues. This was different; a desire, when she awakened each morning, to close her eyes again and find oblivion in the deathlike darkness. She had even thought, at odd times of the day, for no apparent reason, of suicide. Of being found dead in some bizarre way. Once when she saw a blood-donor truck, on that day of the year when everyone is suppose to give blood and get a boutonniere in return, she wondered whether if she went from hospital to hospital giving blood, she might simply expire. A noble death. One that Rob might approve of. Giving her all to those who needed it.

The depression lifted, however, when she realized she was no longer menstruating and might be pregnant. For the first time in months she felt the loneliness leave her. She felt somehow warm and loved. Loved by Rob, even though he knew nothing about it.

She had not intended to become pregnant. She had merely relaxed her precautions. She and Rob were so rarely together, in the same bed at the same time, with enough energy to make love, that the exercise of inserting a diaphragm became in itself a rejecting experience. When it had to be removed, unused, in the morning, it accentuated her feeling of being unwanted.

Maggie knew that if she were pregnant, it would provoke a crisis beyond any she had ever faced. It would cause anguish and recrimination, and would possibly confront her with the kind of decision that she did not even dare to think of. Rob would refuse

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to have a child. And the need within her was overwhelming.

“Maggie?”

The doctor who summoned her was someone she had known since they first moved to Washington. Peter Hamlisch had been Rob and Maggie’s next-door neighbor in their first apartment in Georgetown. When Maggie had come in earlier that week she was turned over to a laboratory technician. This was the first time in three years that she had seen Peter.

“My God,” he said. “Look at you.”

“That bad?” Maggie smiled.

“That good. Come on in.”

She followed him down a corridor and into his office, where he closed the door, gesturing toward a chair. Maggie remained standing.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “Has it been two years?”

“Going on three.”

“How’s Robert?”

“Fine. Working hard.”

“Still keeping the same hours?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And how ‘bout you?”

“Busy.”

“We keep meaning to get to the symphony …”

“That’s okay.”

“I saw your picture at the White House …”

“Bad picture.”

He smiled, delighted to be with her. “You look glorious. But then again, pregnant women always do.”

It took a moment to sink in. Then it hit like a body blow.

“Sit down.” Hamlisch laughed. “I didn’t know you’d be so surprised. Women are usually very certain about these things.”

“Are you sure?” Maggie asked in a shaky voice.

“Yes,” Hamlisch answered, somewhat puzzled by her tone.

Maggie slowly sat in a chair, feeling so many con-

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flicting emotions that they all blurred into numbness.

“You all right?”

She nodded, trying to force a smile, but was unable to sustain it.

Hamlisch’s intercom buzzed, and he hit one of the buttons. “Hold the calls,” he said. Then he turned his eyes to Maggie.

“I take it this isn’t good news.”

Maggie shook her head, not knowing how to respond.

“I assumed it was a planned pregnancy,” Hamlisch said. “I wouldn’t have been so casual about it.”

Maggie’s fingers touched her parched lips. She didn’t trust her voice.

“It’s not the end of the world, you know,” Hamlisch said. “You’re very early in your pregnancy. Women deal with this every day of the week.”

She shook her head quickly, pressing her hand to her eyes in an attempt to halt the tears that she feared would slip past them.

Hamlisch put his hand on hers, and the moment of touch released her emotions. She wept quietly, the sounds soft, childlike.

“I want you to sit in this office for the next fifteen minutes,” Hamlisch said. “I have one patient to see. Then I want to take you to lunch.”

They didn’t go to lunch; Maggie had no appetite. Instead, they walked the hot streets of Washington, Maggie wiping her eyes as she talked, until she was finally talked out. She described, in every way she could think of, how and why her marriage was wrong; how and why she so desperately needed Rob and didn’t know how to reach him. She felt disloyal to be divulging her unhappiness, but somehow relieved to hear herself expressing it.

Hamlisch had listened, mostly in silence, occasionally asking a question, encouraging her to continue until he was sure she had said everything there was to say. He was compassionate and understanding. And he cared for both of them.

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They stood now by the long reflecting pool in front of the Washington Monument, a place Maggie had once journeyed to by bus to join twenty thousand black people in their demand for freedom. The grass had grown back now where it had once been trampled down; a group of small children floated toy boats in the water as Maggie and Hamlisch looked on.

“You know,” Hamlisch said with a sigh, “I once heard a description of Albert Einstein. Someone said he was a ‘visionary’ not so much because of what he saw, but because of what he refused to see.”

“That wasn’t Einstein, it was B. F. Skinner,” Maggie replied softly.

“Was it?”

“Scientific Monthly. Rob gets it.”

Hamlisch sat down at the edge of the reflecting pool. Maggie sat beside him, using a wadded-up handkerchief to wipe her eyes.

“I was thinking of Rob when I said that,” Hamlisch added.

“I know.”

“He has blind spots, but men who accomplish things always do.”

“So you think I’m selfish?” She did not ask it defensively; more as confirmation of what she herself believed.

“I think you’re in a bind.”

She dipped her handkerchief into the water and wrung it out, pressing it to her forehead and eyes. “God, I’ve cried so much lately, I think I’m going to get dehydrated.”

“Do you love him, Maggie?”

“Yes.” Her answer was without emotion or hesitation. It was a simple fact of life.

“What if you have to make a choice?”

“I’m unable to make that choice.”

“Is it possible that if you waited … ? To have a child, I mean? Maybe in a few years he’d feel mellower about it.”

“I couldn’t do that.”

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Her eyes went blank. “I’m unable to kill anything. I couldn’t do it.” She turned to Hamlisch, trying to make him understand. “I already love it. And I feel like it loves me.” She shook her head, feeling foolish. “Is that just nonsense?”

“No.”

“No matter what happens, 111 never …” Her voice broke off and her posture stiffened. “No matter what happens, it’s going to be born.”

Hamlisch watched her closely. “Then I guess you’ve made a decision.”

She didn’t respond.

“When are you going to tell Rob?”

Maggie rose and moved slowly away from him. “How long before it shows?” she asked.

“Two months. Maybe three. Women who want to conceal it can sometimes go to four.”

He’d read her thoughts.

“It’s not a good idea, Maggie. I’ve seen women do that. Unmarried women, usually, who try to ignore it until it’s too late for an abortion. They weaken themselves emotionally. The one time in your life you have to be adult is when you’re pregnant.”

“When is it too late for an abortion?”

“Don’t do that, Maggie.”

She knew he was right.

“No matter how he feels about it,” Hamlisch said, “it’s his life, too. He has a right to make his decisions, just as you have a right to make yours.”

“Just a thought,” Maggie whispered.

“Go to his office right now,” Hamlisch advised. “Get it out in the open.”

“I’m frightened, Peter,” she whispered.

“He’ll say no, and you’ll get angry. I think anger is more appropriate than fear right now.”

He took her hand and they walked to the street; Peter snotted a passing taxi and hailed it down. She directed the driver to take her to the Public Health Building.

But Rob was not in his office when Maggie arrived.

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She waited a full two hours and in that time the anxiety built up within her to a point where she knew she couldn’t face it. At the last moment she fled. The confrontation would have to wait. She would carefully choose her time.

It was 2:00 a.m. when Rob returned home. The tenement infant had died. The infection caused by the rat bites had been complicated by anemia. The heart had given way to a conspiracy of assaults. Rob had seen infant deaths before. This one had hit him particularly hard, accentuating his sense of futility.

He moved quietly into the bedroom, not wanting to awaken Maggie. The moon’s soft light spilled throueh the window, illuminating her face as she lay in slumber. He sat on the bed beside her and brushed a wisp of hair from her eyes, noticing a faint mark running from the corner of her eye across the bridge of her nose. It was a path traced by tears. She had been crying.

He studied her for a long time, swept with sadness that he did not know the reason for the tears. He thought to awaken her, but decided against it. Tomorrow was Thursday. She had an early rehearsal. He leaned down and kissed her, hoping it would somehow reassure her that she was safe. Then he slipped off his clothes and lay quietly beside her.

Sleep was difficult, for his mind was in turmoil. He thought of the offer that Victor Shusette had made to him. Perhaps a new job was what he needed. The only other alternative to the work he did now was private practice. It was somehow inevitable, but to Rob it seemed like retirement. He was still young enough to accomplish something on a global scale, and there would be other benefits in working for the EPA. No more emergency calls or all-night sessions at the hospital, no more early-morning appearances in court. It would mean he’d have more time to spend with Maggie. Perhaps that in itself was worth it.

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As he drifted into slumber, he was thinking about trees. Soon, he was dreaming.

He saw himself walking through the tenements. The tall, lopsided buildings with their zigzag fire escapes were nestled in the midst of towering trees. The fire escapes were filled with bodies. Black bodies. Hundreds of them. And they all held spears. Maggie was beside him and she was frightened. The black bodies began streaming downward, their faces covered with war paint, their voices rising in a shrill cry. Rob grabbed Maggie in his arms and ran into the forest, but became lost in the trees. She screamed and clung to him, begging him to save her, but suddenly they reached a drop-off and could run no farther. Rob paused and looked up into the sun. And, directly from the center of it, a spear came searing down at him.

Rob awoke panting. His body was bathed in sweat. He rose on trembling legs and pulled the curtains, to shut out the moonlight. But the moon was so bright he could still see it’s shape through the curtains. Returning to bed, he managed to close his eyes again, and this time fall into dreamless, exhausted slumber.

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4

The same moon that lighted Robert Vern’s bedroom shone down on the Manatee Forest, gently illuminating the tops of the endless expanse of trees. The wind was warm, rustling the surfaces of the lakes, creating tapestries of glittering sequins from the reflection of the moon.

From the time of the planet’s creation until now, this three-hundred-square-mile plot of earth had been allowed to remain as God meant it to be. The morning sun still filtered through the trees, given definition as clear as laser beams by the fog; the towering black spruce and red balsam still spiked a mountainous skyline. Dawn still came with the discordant orchestration of loons, dusk with the faintly drumrolling wing-beats of the ruffled grouse. And darkness was still punctuated with the sudden and unexpected cry.

It was the place where the Manatee River flowed into the Espee, creating a watershed known to the Masaquoddy, Ashinabeg, and Wampanoag Indians by sixty different names. All of them describing the bountiful life that existed within.

But in recent years, the Indian names had given way to others. The largest body of water, the lake with a small island in its center, once known as Lake Waba-goon was now called Mary’s Lake, named for the wife of Morris Pitney, an industrialist from Georgia who’d come in 1930 and founded the Pitnev Paper Mill on the shores of the swift-running Espee River. The pond

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once called Talak’tah was now listed on Forest Service relief maps as Flat-iron Pond because it reminded Mary Pitney of the steam iron she pressed her husband’s pants with.

The Pitneys were dead now, but their imprint on the landscape was permanent. The Pitney Paper Mill, now passed into other hands, had grown on the charts of stockbrokers and Wall Street economists into a corporate conglomerate, one of five absentee landlords who owned over half the land in Maine and looked upon its forests as a cash crop waiting to be harvested. The towering pines that were once called by the names of Indian ancestors, each one considered an individual personage, had now been counted and measured, classified by size and weight, and labeled with price tags.

The major products of the Pitney Paper Mill were wrapping paper, disposable grocery bags, and toilet tissue. For the latter product, and the noxious fumes that hovered along a three-mile section of the Espee River, the Indians referred to the paper mill as D’hanat Y’oah ‘tha. The Farting Giant.

Unlike the Indians of the American Western Plains, the American Forest Indians had been a passive people, conditioned perhaps by the gentleness of their environment to accept changes within their lives and to accommodate trespassers who came to live within their borders. Thus the small tribes of Masaquoddy, Ashinabeg, Yurok, and Wampanoag were content to give the paper mill its small share of the massive forest. As long as they gave wide berth to the lumberjacks with their trucks and chain saws, the two civilizations lived separate lives, occasionally crossing each other’s paths, gazing at one another with nothing more than curiosity. The lumberjacks felled trees and processed them into pulp; the Indians netted salmon and dried them in the sun. It seemed there was little connection between the two.