Beloved (46 page)

She nodded.

"
And of all the thousands who have mourned, has there been a
single other one
who has chosen to mark the gravesite of a loved one?
"

"
Perhaps they never thought to do it,
"
she said ironically.

"
Do not toy with me, child! I ask thee one last time: Wilt thou own to thy vanity and repent? Wilt thou remove the rose?
"

"
I will not,
"
she answered in a clear and calm voice.
"
I loved Ben, and I want to be able to visit his grave and to reflect on the life we shared, and to say a prayer for his soul. There is no vanity in that, only simple, human emotion.
"

Jabez drew his white, bushy brows together in a searing scowl. His blue eyes burned bright with terrifying self-righteousness as he said,
"
Then, child, thou hast lost that which thou holdest most dear.
"

He threw
an imperious look at the other Overseers, willing them into a show of support.
"
We have much discussed this among us.
"

They nodded timidly.

Then he turned to her and intoned,
"
For this and other disregards of the way of truth, thou art to be set aside from the Society of Friends. Thou mayest no longer be present at Meeting, and thou mayest not set thy foot on the burial ground.
"

Stunned, she watched the play of muscles in his jaw as he added,
"
We
will remove the rose for thee.
"

She had expected to be disowned, had accepted the fact that she would have to come to terms with her Maker on her own; but she was not prepared for this. To be forbidden even to walk over the general ground where Ben lay
—
it was not to be borne.

For one crushing moment, her spirit collapsed completely. She was overwhelmed with a sense of deprivation.
"
No!
"
she cried, her face contorted with grief.
"
How can you? Have you no heart? Have you no kindness?
"
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she clutched her hands in supplication.

But she could see, even as she begged Jabez Coffin, that
it was a waste of time. He was enjoying her distress, just as he would doubtless enjoy tearing out the rose from Ben
'
s grave.

Something died inside her then. She could feel it go, just as she could feel something else begin to stir, a superhuman determination not to let this withered soul come between Ben and her.

"
Go, then!
"
she cried.
"
Leave my house. Thee has made a mockery of Christ
'
s teaching. There is no love in thy heart, only envy and meanness. Is it any wonder that the Society is splintered, that Elias Hicks draws away Friends from thy rigid, uncaring ways?
Go!
"

She watched, trembling with fury, as Jabez Coffin drew in a sharp breath and held it. The veins in his temple pounded; his cheeks flamed. She thought that the heart in this hard-hearted man might be about to fail at last, but Jabez was stronger than that.

He took one last, sweeping look around the little sitting room with its cheery rag rug, and its yellow export vase filled with pussy willows, and its bright curtains thrown open to the day
'
s gray light, and in a low and deadly growl he quoted a passage from Scripture.
"'
Set thine house in order,
'"
he said with vicious irony.
"'
For thou shalt die, and not live.
'"

He swept out of her house with his deputies in tow. She slammed the door on their backs and only then did she understand that she had slammed the door forever on any possibil
ity of being buried next to Ben.
She had slammed the door on eternity.

She let out a long, agonized scream and collapsed onto the floor. It was a cry of despair, a cry from the deepest part of her heart, a cry from hell.

****

A horrible, shrill sound, the sound of harpies shrieking and tearing at entrails, jolted Jane awake from her agony. She opened her eyes, and she saw flames.

T
he edge of the Oriental rug nearest the fireplace was covered with embers and on fire. Bounced into action by the din of the smoke detector, Jane ran for the fire extinguisher in the kitchen. But the lights were still out and she stumbled, first into a stool, then into Billy
'
s stepladder, which crashed to the floor. She groped in the corner where the fire extinguisher was supposed to be
— i
t wasn
'
t there. She ended up crawling around on her hands and knees, feeling for the metal cylinder.

It was on the floor beside the stove; she snatched it up and ran back to the fireplace room. Fighting panic, she sprayed a blanket of white chemicals on the aged and burning rug until the fire was extinguished. Then she took down the shrieking smoke alarm and collapsed on the Empire sofa, where she sat clutching the empty cylinder and staring at the mess by the fading light of the fireplace, watching for flareups. But it was over.

For now.
The thought bubbled up from some hidden depth, unnerving her.
This was no accident, no renegade ember popping out of the flames and creating havoc.
There were a whole bunch of embers on the floor, hurled there
by
—
by what? Certainly not by any human being: the windows were locked, and so were the doors.

Judith.

The dream began coming back in fractured, incoherent pieces. Something about an Overseer
...
and a picture frame.
And a door; a door figured prominently in it.

Jane went straight to the phone
—
which was still work
ing, despite the power outage
—
and dialed Mac
'
s number.
"
He
'
s so s-smart,
"
she said through chattering lips.
"
Let
h-him
figure it out.
"

A sleepy voice answered at the other end. By now the reaction had set in; Jane was shivering violently, unable to control the chattering.
"
I j-just wanted you to know that we were
b-both
wrong. I thought she didn
'
t mean me any h-harm. F-f-fat chance. And as f-for you
—
wake up and s-smell the coffee, would you?
"

She slammed the receiver down before Mac had a chance to say a word, then dragged herself back to the Empire sofa, where she wrapped herself in the blanket and prepared again to wait for dawn. It occurred to her that she should
'
ve done a better job explaining things to Mac. It just didn
'
t occur to her how.

Why did I bother at all?
she wondered morosely, pulling the blanket up under her chin in an effort to warm up.
He
'
s no different from the rest of us: he sees what he wants to see.
And he did not want to see Judith.

She sat there shivering violently, wondering why it was she
'
d never read the instructions on the portable kerosene heater that was in the house when she arrived. A minute later she saw headlights flashing in the lane alongside. Almost before she could identify the truck as Mac
'
s, she heard banging on the back door. She ran to open it and was pelted by the slashing torrent of rain that drove Mac inside into the darkness of her kitchen.

"
What.
"
His voice was taut, anxious, illogically angry.

He had a flashlight with him. He flipped it on and kept it trained on the floor to avoid
blinding her. She saw his rain-
spattered, beltless slacks, and his sweatshirt, but she could scarcely see his face. The scene was eerie
—
ghostly
—
and it set her off again.

"
She
'
s back. She
'
s bac
k. I thought she was gone but ...
first the ladder, now the fire. The ladder breaking, okay, that could
'
ve been an accident like Jeremy
's gash, but the fire ..
. the fire
'
s different, Mac, she
'
s angry with me
—
"

"
Jane.
Stop.
Don
'
t tell me about Judith. Tell me about the fire.
"

"
Yes, yes, the fire, that
'
s what I mean. She
'
s not what I thought, Mac. She
'
s no grieving lover, she
'
s, she
'
s demented, she wants me to fix this thing with Ben but what can I do, I can
'
t dig her up and put her next to him, I don
'
t even know where he
'
s buried and it, I don
'
t know, it
's probably illegal ..
.
oh, God ... oh, God ...
.
"

She broke down into a series of bone-racking sobs, undone by the long and endless torment of her stay on Nantucket, unwilling and unable to hold herself together any longer simply out of pride.

Mac laid the flashlight on the counter, with its light facing the wall. Then he turned and gathered her into the rock-solid security of his arms and held her while she sobbed away some of the night
'
s terror.

"Shhh ..
. it
'
s over now,
"
he whispered into her hair.
"All over ..
. shhh
. Hey now ...
.
"

Through it all she was piercingly aware of his warmth, his hand cradling her head close to him, his simple words of comfort, even the barely perceptible and still endearing scent of Old Spice. It seemed incredible to her that she was in the arms of the one man on earth she could not talk to for more than eleven seconds without coming to blows. And yet here he was, and here she was, and she felt absolutely, inviolably
safe.
No one
—
not even Judith
—
c
ould touch her now. Not while she was in his arms.

He held her for what seemed like a passing lifetime, until her sobs calmed down and she was able to hear the storm outside over the storm within. She drew in a deep lungful of air and let it out in a long, shuddering sigh.
"
I
'
m better now,
"
she said at last, but she lifted her head from the sanctuary of his breast with reluctance.
"
You must think I
'
m an awful jerk.
"

He didn
'
t say yes, he didn
'
t say no. But there was something in the way he let her go, some ever-so-slight hesitation on his part, that made her wonder whether he didn
'
t need to protect her right now just as much as she needed his protection.

He brushed back a heavy lock of her hair that had fallen over her cheek and said in a husky voice,
"I ..
. ah
... the fire ..
. was in the library, it smells like. Let
'
s take a look.
"

He took up the flashlight again and led the way for her, pausing to stand the stepladder back up as they passed out of the kitchen. The embers in the fireplace were out. Mac swept his light across the floor of the room, highlighting the sticky white mess of chemicals on Aunt Sylvia
'
s fragile, worn-out Oriental rug. There were burns in the wood floor, too; those looked permanent.

"
See?
"
Jane said, her voice unnaturally high and excited.
"
Look! Look at it!
"

"Yes, I see it," he said, shoving some charred bits with a poker into the back of the opening.
"
That
'
s why people use fire screens, Jane,
"
he added in a gentle rebuke.