Dateline: Atlantis (13 page)

He stretches out his hands on his desk and handles the various file folders that represent the holdings of Logos Enterprises: the churches, the schools, the hospices, the nursing homes, the survivalist camp in Idaho where he lives. There's even an off-color file that he doesn't bring out into the open often. It merely says Guns, but it represents the army of God that he is creating for the time when the End Times near and chaos ensues. Lastly, he fingers the Committee folder. Here's an enterprise that most preachers would never dream of joining, a group of scientists who sit around talking about archeological digs and dust-dry papers on ancient languages. He chuckles at their stupidity.

However, he learned long ago that the Committee was of invaluable help to him in the volatile and politically charged
subject of Creationism. The professors hate the idea of an ancient civilization in the Neolithic Age (which he doesn't even believe in) and he despises it, too. They laugh at the idea of Atlantis and he growls at the very idea. Darwinism is bad enough, but if you get people thinking God didn't create the Earth when the Bible says He did, then you've got trouble.

No, Atlantis and all theories like it need to be wiped out. And he has the means to ensure eradication. The Committee stands able to make his sometimes extreme measures look reasonable to the secular public. He winces a bit at the thought of the academics. So bereft of belief. So far from the Kingdom of Heaven. What is he doing working with them? Then he smiles at the thought of the Godless people out there, just waiting for him to say the word and save them. That's why he toils with these stodgy pagans, to help them see the light.

If he has to make some strange bedfellows, so be it. This is war. Those who hate the Lord must be dealt with. And hate is something the Rev. Caine deals out with judicious care.

Amaryllis arrives at Freya's house, her childhood home, with a man on each arm. Wright insists on going despite the fact that Amaryllis explains about her “date” with Donny. Outside the door, Wright tucks her right hand next to his elbow. Donny takes her by the left hand and leads the group to the front door. A fine entrance they make: Wright dressed in his most dapper London tweed coat, Amaryllis breathless in her anticipation, and Donny, looking alarmingly handsome with his beach-blond hair and brown eyes fringed with dark lashes.

Freya fusses with their coats and Uncle Sean shakes the men's hands. Then he grabs his adopted daughter in a squeeze that impresses twenty years of love into her body. Amaryllis emerges from the bear hug to see the old colonial-style dining table set with the fine Victorian china and crystal goblets. A large splash of red and pink roses puts a shock of color into the otherwise muted winter décor.

She's intrigued at how Donny has grown in bearing and demeanor over the years. No longer the same joking jock, not the kid who sneaked stalks of celery into her milk at mealtimes. He's at once amiable and sympathetic, yet imposing and virile in a way that makes Amaryllis feel a tinge of weakness in her abdomen. She realizes he has changed from a mere fine-featured boy to a blond, square-jawed man with ideal proportions, from his wide, muscular shoulders to his trim and taut abdomen. And the rear view is pretty entertaining, too. That just can't be right.
He's Donny.

Freya kisses Donny on both cheeks, rambling on about how much he'd been missed, while Donny tries to remind Freya he'd
been over on Christmas Day. Amaryllis draws Wright to the side and fills him in on a few family details: her adoptive parents, her old pal from childhood, the death of her parents when she was small. No matter how she explains it, Wright can't seem to make any sense of the relationships. Family gatherings seem to send him into shock—the loss of Priscilla still too deep, the grief etched on his wide face, creating caverns where only smooth skin had stretched before. Amaryllis takes his arm and gives him a squeeze and begins to lead him into the living room, where she assumes Freya will lay out cheese and flatbread for an appetizer.

“Whereya going?” Freya yells over the small gathering. “We're heading straight to dinner. No time for cocktails.”

Cocktails? When have they ever had cocktails in this home?
Sean was as sober as a rock and Freya only dabbled with Irish coffee now and then. Amaryllis and Wright follow beckoning hands and move from the dusky living room by the force of Freya's gestures. They shuffle into the dining area, and Amaryllis is familiar with its wall full of family pictures and Sean's fish plaques. Everyone stands around the table, reluctant to be the first to sit down. Amaryllis is aware that her nerves are standing on edge as she waits to learn the secrets that have been hidden for twenty-five years.

“No place tags. Sit where you like, but Amy, gal, you sit next to me.” Freya drags her away from the moor-less Wright, who still drifts Amaryllis' way, determined to find the nearest seat to her. When the bodies arrange themselves like atomic particles buzzing about a nucleus, searching for structure, they finally slip into the ladder-back pine chairs, and each diner gazes at the china, as if entranced by their own reflections. Amaryllis shudders from a chill as she sees her own visage in the only-for-company plate. She's ghastly white with eyes the size of walnuts. Everything about the room is the way it used to be, but she has a sense of loss, as if pain lives in this room, too. She looks about the ivory walls and studies the artwork, but can't find anything amiss.

Sean, perched at the other end of the long table, offers a clue.

“That was your parent's wedding china, you know,” he says, head bobbing as he speaks, as if giving himself permission to let out that little fact. “When they were…lost, we took it in.”

Before Amaryllis can comment, Freya begins to bring in the meal, followed closely by Aunt Nora, bearing side dishes, and some skinny kid Amaryllis has never seen before. Or has she? It's been six years. Can that be Nora's boy? They plop down dishes of good old American food: mashed potatoes, gravy, a gleaming roast, a flurry of salads and green beans. Wright looks at the repast as if shocked. A man who practically lives on goat-cheese pizza and turkey glazed with kiwi compote must not know what it's like to really eat a homey meal.

“You must think you fell into a Norman Rockwell painting,” Amaryllis says. He continues to stare at the roast, which is releasing the most tempting of fragrances.

“We had roasts in England…” he starts to say.

“Oh, Lord, this isn't English food and thank the angels that it isn't,” Freya jumps in. “Welcome to the Heartland, my new friend.”

Amaryllis looks across the table and catches Donny's eye. He's grinning like a pirate from some community theater production. All he needs is a knife between his teeth to complete the scene. Her instincts are correct, for he grabs the carving utensils and begins slicing into this carnivore's dream.

“I don't know if I can trust you with that knife,” Amaryllis says, ribbing her old pal.

“You don't know the half of it. I can saw a woman in half.” Donny takes a pretend swipe in her direction. She pretends that she's going to hide under the tablecloth until Sean makes a “quit it” gesture. They've seen that move since they were eight years old. They obey.

Chitchat spins around the table, nervous and curt at first, then long and gossipy. Nora introduces her son, Ian McWhelty.
Ian. The last time I saw my cousin he was dressed for Little League.
The kid, about fourteen and shy as a feral kitten, slumps in his seat and attempts to avoid eye contact. Sean rambles on about politics, and Freya is busy giving cooking tips to Nora.

Just when Amaryllis is about to sag into the plate of mashed potatoes, Sean straightens and addresses the group.

“We promised to tell Amy the truth. And now, we shall.” Amaryllis looks around the table to see everyone eyeing her. “We always meant to tell you,” Sean continues, “But we made a solemn vow to keep you safe. The less you knew the better. Recent events mean we can't keep you in the dark any longer.”

Freya cuts in. “We've always had a guilty feeling that we've been keeping secrets. A skeleton in the closet, you know.” She pats Amaryllis' hand. “We're truly sorry for that.”

Nora winces at some unknown memory, while Sean gets up and retrieves a huge, leather-bound photo album from a drawer in a forgotten cabinet. He thumbs backward through the well-worn pages, and Amaryllis can see glimpses of herself at seventeen (so skinny!), Donny at the amusement park (so blond!), Freya holding her when she was three years old. Finally, Sean finds the photos of a grand wedding. There stand her parents, both resplendent in their formal attire. Amaryllis notices that Wright's interest is resurrected.

“That's Irish lace she's wearing in her veil,” he says, pointing to the black-and-white image.

“She did that to honor the Quigleys, she got it from grandmother, godresthersoul,” Freya says, bubbling.

“Which grandmother?” Donny asks.

“Why my mother, of course,” Freya answers.
Of course. Of course?

The story of the veil starts the revelations in an awkward way. Donny is frowning and Nora looks at Sean with a conspirator's shifty eyes.

“Your true name,“ Sean says with a dramatic pause, “is Amaryllis Amelie Lang. You bore this name for eight years until the accident in Florida changed everything.”

Amaryllis, confused, over-fed and bothered by the steam heat, finds her voice.

“Well, what the heck happened in Florida, anyway? It was always this big enigma. It's been driving me crazy for years.”

“Your parents were both archaeologists for Midwest universities,” Sean says. “They'd been dredging up ancient artifacts for years.” Amaryllis knew that much. But Sean continues.

“Despite their impeccable scholarship, none of their papers received good reviews from their university peers. They'd been finding evidence that the historical timeline is far lengthier than anything taught in schools. Their research had theoretically pushed back human civilization to 10,000 BCE. Or even earlier. Naturally, most of the other professors and researchers laughed at their theories.”

“They couldn't get a fair hearing.”

“Nope. Academics can be bloodthirsty when it comes to covering up competing theories. Your parents got a cold shoulder all over the world.”

To illustrate, Freya jumps up to show Wright and Donny the strange historical pieces that Amaryllis had been admiring earlier: the odd writing, the photos of sea-covered columns. They listen in silence as Sean drones on. Amaryllis can see her father wearing Sean's strong, serious features. She can imagine her father lecturing undergraduates with a beam of discovery in his hazel eyes. She closes her own eyes and tries to remember the feel of her father's touch. She sees his face, but were the eyes really hazel or were they green?
It's a trick of the light,
her mother always said. Her eyes fly open.

“They thought there was an ancient civilization. Like Atlantis,” she guesses.

Sean nods with solemnity, his bald spot coming into view with the motion.

“And the word ‘Atlantis' is just death in the academic world. Deadly. The kiss of the spider woman.” Sean laughs, then turns somber again. “So, they decided that being blackballed and remaining in Chicago wasn't going to get them anywhere,” Sean says, passing the photo album around the table. Nora jumps up to clear the plates; no one else moves. “They moved to Florida, which is near to many important dive spots. You've heard of the Bimini Road?”

Only Wright nods.
The man knows something about everything. When does he have time to read about all this?

“It's a long, rectangular structure beneath the clear waters of the Bahamas,” Sean says, fishing through a file of newspapers he's brought over to the table. He holds up a blazing blue photo of a J-shaped pavement below pure ocean. “A lot of crackpots say it is a wall of Atlantis, fallen over during the kingdom's final collapse. Others say it's an antediluvian road, now sunk to fifty meters below the surface.

“Geologists call it naturally formed beach rock,” Sean says. “But Maggie and Kristoff disagreed, wondering how beach rock formed so perfectly with no beach nearby. And beach rock, they pointed out, rarely cracks as perfectly straight as the ‘paving stones' of the sunken road. They also wrote of other anomalies—structures sighted off the Berry Islands, triangular shapes sighted by pilots. They just had to know.”

“Why didn't you tell me this before?” Amaryllis asks.

“Because the more you knew, the more danger you'd be in,” Nora says. Freya rebukes her with a sudden wave of a finger.

Amaryllis senses the burn of Donny staring but tries to fake interest in her angel food cake, which Nora has been delivering to each diner.

“Yeah, I see where I get the drive to uncover things, Donny. Stop being so damn smart,” Amaryllis mumbles.

Donny just rests his head in his hand, elbows on the table, and keeps listening.

Freya picks up the story as she pours coffee. Another giant, steaming pot stands on the table and Amaryllis reaches for it. Earl Grey tea. She can tell by the bergamot scent—like dried and sugared oranges. Her hand collides with Ian's, and they both draw back. The boy blushes to near purple.