Graham took a chair in front of the screen displaying those rapt, excited, tormented faces and carefully considered his options.
Should he wait, observe, and report the facts that were unfolding before him? Should he do his job? Or should he commit journalism’s greatest sin by interfering in this true epic drama? If he did that, he might very well change the outcome.
Two
Cambridge, Massachusetts
I WAS trying to get my seven-year-old, Gillian, ready for the day. She is a funny little girl, bratty and bright. And clever. And slippery. She’s the apple, peach, and plum of my eye, and I love her to pieces. Thank you, God.
It was Easter Sunday, and Gilly was in the closet trying on various articles of clothing, some of which were actually hers, and she was telling me about her dream.
“I finally found out where the polar bears went.”
“Oh. So, where did they go?”
She leaned out of the closet, showing me her darling face, her bouncing curls, and her bony shoulders.
“Gilly, you have to get dressed. Come on, now.”
“They were on the moon, Mom. They were on the moon. And I was there. I had a special car with skis instead of wheels, and, even though it was nighttime, it was soooo bright that I could see the bears everywhere. You know why they’re on the moon?”
“Why?” I said, lacing up my shoes.
“Because the moon is made of ice. The ice covers the oceans of the moon.”
People had been talking about colonizing the moon for the better part of a hundred years. It was still an impossible hope. A total fantasy. But there it was every night, right up there, pristine, visible, and with historic human footprints still in the moon dust. And now Gilly’s dreamed-up polar bears were not facing earthly extinction. They were partying on the moon.
As Gilly, now back in the closet, told me, “the man in the moon” provided the bears with food and volleyball.
I laughed, thinking about that, and she said, “I’m not kidding, Mom.”
I was folding up the discarded clothes Gilly had flung all over the room when I heard her cry out for me.
“Honey, what is it? What?”
She came out of the closet showing me the blood coming from the web between her thumb and forefinger of her left hand. She still held a piece of broken lightbulb.
“It just rolled off the shelf and broke.”
“Let me see.”
She showed me the glass, with its sharp edges.
“No, silly, show me your cut.”
She held out her hand, and droplets of blood fell on the front of her chosen Easter dress, a froth of ruffled pink with an overskirt of spangled tulle. It was excruciating, the sweetness and the vulnerability of this little girl. I stifled my urge to cry and said, “Let’s fix this. Okay?”
A few minutes later, Gilly’s finger was washed and bandaged, the glass shards were in a box in the trash; and now I was focused again on the time.
Gilly wriggled into her second-best dress, a blue one with a sash of embroidered daisies.
“Gorgeous,” I said.
I stepped into my clean, white surplice, and, peering into a small mirror propped on the bookcase, I finger combed my unruly ginger hair.
“You look beautiful, Mom,” she said, wrapping her arms around my waist.
I grinned down at her. “Thank you. Now, put on your shoes.”
“We’re not late, you know.”
“Not yet, anyway. Let’s go, silly Gilly. Let’s go.”
Three
I BRACED myself, then Gilly and I stepped out onto the stoop.
The shifting crowd filling the street roared. Communicants, neighbors, people who had come here to catch a glimpse of me, ordinary people of every age and description, reached out their hands, lifted their babies, and chanted my name.
“Bri-gid! Bri-gid!”
I’d seen this outpouring of passion before, and still I wasn’t sure how to act. Sometimes the mood of a crowd turned dark. I’d seen that, too.
Gilly said, “Mom. You’ll be all right.”
She waved, and the crowd went wild again.
And then they pushed forward, toward the stoop. News broadcasters, megabloggers, televangelists, and entertainment-TV hosts pointed their microphones toward me, asking, “Brigid, are the rumors true? Have you gotten the call? Are you ready to go?”
I had answered their questions in the past but was always asked for more, and by now, I didn’t have any more. Gilly was too small to walk through this groundswell, so I hoisted her up, and with her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist, I stepped carefully down to the street, where the crowd was at eye level.
“Hey, everyone,” I said as I waded into the river of people. “Beautiful Easter Sunday, isn’t it? I would stop to talk, but we have to get going. We’ll be late.”