“I can't picture Uncle Joe making a pass at my mother. I'm sorry for you, of course.”
“So hard to believe? But this isn't about Joe, his brains were in his pants. And it isn't even about being a good sister and confiding in the one person who loves you unconditionally. It's about secrets and your mother and your daughter—”
Erica glared at her.
“The one pretending to be your daughter, or, should I say, pretending to be her granddaughter. Margaret is using her to put her world back in order. She's concocted some ruse as a way of finding forgiveness.”
“But who must be forgiven?”
“All of us seek forgiveness.” The baby boy in the row ahead stood on his mother's lap and peered over the top of the seat. Searching the faces swirling in his ken, he locked onto Diane and smiled, attempting to elicit a smile in return. When he was rewarded with not one but two admiring looks, his face lit with joy, and he bounced and clapped and shouted his wordless hosanna. Diane turned to her niece. “You … for leaving, and your mother for letting you go.”
“And what does this Norah have to do with it? How did she know where to find me or find my mother? Where do you suppose she came from?”
The boy was squealing, cooing, begging for their attention. “I'm afraid to guess,” Diane said, and gave herself over to the happy child.
16
In later years, when the incidents passed into legend, the acts became known as the Week of the Miracles and the Seduction of the Innocents. Each school day, Norah told stories about angels and the afterlife, luring a small clot of children to the radiant sound of her words, the inspiration of her very breath. On a damp March morning, a cluster gathered round her on the sidewalk in front of the school ahead of the first bell.
“The time is at hand,” Norah said on Monday. “I will tell you all my secrets if you will believe. I will answer every question and show you the way.”
Five third graders were there: Sean Fallon, Mark Bellagio, Sharon Hopper, Dori Tilghman, and Lucas Ford. They huddled close, noses red from the cold, vapors exploding from their open mouths with every breath. Teachers and students streamed by this knot on the walk, too busy to take notice.
“First you must understand what eternity is. Calendars and clocks are modern inventions to track time. Long ago, people watched the moon to tell the month and week, and used sundials and followed the stars to mark the hours. But these are measurements of what you cannot measure. This day, March fourth, is just one of many days that stretch out behind and forward in a line. This minute is but a point on a line.”
Sharon yawned and covered her mouth with the back of her hand.
“You believe in the immortal soul, don't you, Sharon?”
“After you die,” she said, “your soul goes on forever in heaven. Or hell.”
“Forever stretches both ways. No beginning, and no end. If you are eternal, you have no end, or no beginning.”
Lucas asked, “What about your birthday? The day you were born?”
“I know,” Dori said. “You live in your mother's stomach for nine months before you are born.”
“Right,” Norah said. “But where were you before that?”
“Nowhere?” Lucas offered.
“If a line extends in two directions from a single point, and it is called eternity, there can be no beginning, if it has no end. It simply is. You is. Are. My first secret is that you have always existed and will continue to exist.”
The bell rang and they entered the school in a daze. The morning snailed by: Mrs. Patterson talking without saying a thing. Problems on the blackboard, the messy business of fractions, piled up one upon the next. At the break for lunch, the six children grabbed their paper bags and lunchboxes and went to their table in the corner of the cafeteria. Small talk accompanied sandwiches and chips. They waited for Norah to finish her cup of peaches and begin again. In the waxy film of the table-top, she pressed her fingertip to create a point and drew a line that ended in a final point. “Those who truly believe must conquer time. It's not the length of your life that matters if you will always be—”
“Conquer time? You can't stop time,” Dori said.
Sean looked down at the remains of his tunafish sandwich and felt ill.
“Don't be so stubborn,” Norah said. “Who is good at counting off the time?”
Sharon raised her hand. “Like counting to sixty seconds to make a minute?”
“You have to say Mississippi or you'll go too fast,” Sean said. “One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi … like that. My dad taught me how.” He blushed, and Norah patted him quickly on the hand.