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Show Moon -172 Aunt Alice. Do I really want to see her again? I've driven my rented car up to Pound Ridge, not even calling Alice to give her a chance to refuse. Why am I doing this? I don't know, except that I've said no stone shall remain unturned. There's great risk here; old pain rushes into me like a gust of smoke. After my mother died, Alice invited me to stay with her for a while. She was so sincere in her blue eyes and I was so afraid to be alone with James or back in the city alone with myself, I said yes. All I really knew was that if I didn't have a woman's arms around me I would vanish. Peter granted me a leave of absence from my job and I spent a month with Alice. We weeded the garden together in companionable silence, and I was submerged in those long-ago feelings when my mother had left me with her. Alice showed me the best way to peel tomatoes, how to cook corn with the husks still on, how to search out the hidden specks of dust like a good woman should. She touched me often, and years of defensive fear began to fall away. I began to trust her. I even went to her strange prayer meetings where sometimes the people fell to the floor. Some of them laughed or convulsed as if they'd gone mad. This was called being Slain by the Spirit, a sign of grace. I could not, would not, fall down when I was prayed over, but the touches of hands were wondrously comforting. In that benign bedlam I could weep openly for my mother with no one getting nervous or even noticing very much. When Alice was slain, she lay smiling like a sleeping child. It was strangely touching to see her like that. When it came time for me to return to the city, Alice and I parted with hugs and sprigs of herbs pressed into my hands. We wrote each other often, news about gardens, the birds in her garden; the birds in Central Park. But then I wrote her that I was living with Josh. A |