The Garden of Rama(Rama III)

RETURN TO THE NODE Chapter 7
And dear Lord, let me properly cherish this wonderful young girl that I am about to marry. Let us share Thy gift of love and let us grow together in our knowledge of Thee... I ask these things in the name of Thy son, whom Thou sent to Earth to show Thy love and to redeem us for bur sins. Amen."

Michael Ryan O'Toole, seventy-two years of age, unclasped his hands and opened his eyes. He was sitting at the desk in his bedroom. He checked his watch. Only two more hours, he thought, until I will marry Simone. Michael glanced briefly at the picture of Jesus and the small bust of St. Michael of Siena in front of him on his desk. And then later tonight, after the meal that is both wedding feast for us and birthday dinner for Nicole, I will hold that angel in my arms. He could not stop the next thought from coming. Dear Lord, please do not let me disappoint her.

Michael reached into his desk and pulled out a small Bible. It was the only real book he owned. All the rest of his reading material was in the form of small data cubes that he inserted into his electronic notebook. His Bible was very special, a memento of a life once lived on a planet far away.

During his childhood and adolescence that Bible had gone everywhere with him. As Michael turned the small black book over in his hands, he was flooded with memories. In his first recollection he was a small boy, six or seven years old. His father had come into his bedroom at home. Michael had been playing a baseball game on his personal computer and was somewhat embarrassed - he always felt ill at ease when his serious father found him engaging in play.

"Michael," his father had said, "I want to give you a present. Your very own Bible. It is a true book, one that you read by turning the pages. We've put your name on the cover."

His father had extended the book and little Michael had accepted it with a soft "Thank you." The cover was leather and felt good to his touch. "Inside that volume," his father had continued, "is some of the best teaching that human beings will ever know. Read it carefully. Read it often. And govern your life by its wisdom."

That night I put the Bible under my pillow, Michael recalled. And it stayed there. All through my childhood. Even through high school. He remembered his machinations when his high school baseball team had won the city championship and was going to Springfield for the state tournament. Michael had taken his Bible with him, but he didn't want his teammates to see it. A Bible wasn't "cool" for a high school athlete, and the young Michael O'Toole did not yet have enough self-esteem to overcome his fear of the laughter of his peers. So he designed a special compartment for his Bible in the side of his toiletry bag and stored the book there, enclosed in protective wrap. In his hotel room in Springfield he waited until his roommate took a bath. Then Michael removed the Bible from its hiding place and put it under his pillow.

I even took it on our honeymoon. Kathleen was so understanding. As she always was with everything. A brief memory of the bright sun and the white sand outside their suite in the Cayman Islands was quickly followed by a powerful feeling of loss. "How are you doing, Kathleen?" Michael said out loud. "Where has life taken you?" He could see her in his mind's eye, puttering around their brownstone condominium on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. Our grandson Matt must be a teenager by now, he thought. Are there others? How many altogether?

The heartache deepened as he imagined his family - Kathleen, his daughter Colleen, his son Stephen, plus all the grandchildren - gathered around the long table for a Christmas feast without him. In his mental image a light snow was falling outside on the avenue. I guess Stephen would give the family prayer now, he thought. He was always the most religious of the children.

Michael shook his head, returning to the present, and opened the Bible to the first page. A beautiful script writing of the word Milestones appeared at the top of the sheet. The entries were sparse, a total of eight altogether, the chronicle of major events in his life.

7-13-67 Married Kathleen Murphy in Boston, Massachusetts

1-30-69 Birth of son, Thomas Murphy O'Toole, in Boston

4-13-70 Birth of daughter, Colleen Gavin O'Toole, in Boston

12-27-71 Birth of son, Stephen Molloy O'Toole, in Boston

2-14-92 Death of Thomas Murphy O'Toole in Pasadena, Calif.

Michael's eyes stopped there, at the death of his first-bom son, and they quickly filled with tears. He recalled vividly that terrible St. Valentine's Day many years before. He had taken Kathleen out to dinner at a lovely seafood restaurant on Boston Harbor. They had been almost finished with their meal when they first heard the news. "I'm sorry I'm late showing you the desserts," apologized the young man who was their waiter. "I've been watching the news in the bar. There has just been a devastating earthquake in Southern California."

Their fear had been immediate. Tommy, their pride and joy, had won a scholarship in physics at Cal Tech after graduating as the valedictorian at Holy Cross. The O'Tooles had abandoned what was left of their meal and rushed into the bar. There they had learned that the earthquake had struck at 5:45 in the evening, Pacific time. The giant San Andreas fault had ripped apart near Cajon Pass and the poor people, cars, and structures within a hundred miles of the epicenter had been tossed about on the surface of the Earth like hapless boats at sea during a hurricane.

Michael and Kathleen had listened to the news all night long, alternately hoping and fearing, as the full magnitude of the nation's worst disaster of the twenty-second century had become better understood. The quake had been a fearsome 8.2 on the Richter scale. Twenty million people had been left without water, electricity, transportation, and communications. Fifty-foot-deep cracks in the Earth had engulfed entire shopping centers. Virtually all the roads had become impassable. The damage was worse, and more widespread, than if the Los Angeles metropolitan area had been hit with several nuclear bombs.

Early in the morning, before dawn even, the Federal Emergency Administration had issued a telephone number to call for inquiries. Kathleen O'Toole gave the message machine all the information they knew - the address and phone number at Tommy's apartment, the name and address of the Mexican restaurant where he worked to earn spending money, and his girlfriend's address and phone number.

We waited all day and into the night, Michael remembered. Then Cheryl called. She had managed somehow to drive to her parents' home in Poway.

"The restaurant collapsed, Mr. O'Toole," Cheryl had said through her tears. "Then it caught fire. I talked to one of the other waiters, one who survived because he was out on the patio when the quake hit. Tommy had been working the closest station to the kitchen - "

Michael O'Toole took a deep breath. This is wrong, he said to himself, struggling to force the painful memories of his son's death out of his mind. This is wrong, he repeated. This is a time for joy, not sorrow. For Simone's sake I must not think of Tommy now.

He closed the Bible and wiped his eyes. He stood up at his desk and walked into the bathroom. First he shaved, slowly and deliberately, and then he stepped into the hot shower.

Fifteen minutes later, when he opened his Bible again, this time with pen in hand, Michael O'Toole had exorcised the demons of his son's death. With a flourish he wrote an additional entry on the Milestones page, pausing when he was finished to read the final four lines.

10-31-97 Birth of grandson, Matthew Arnold Rinaldi, in Toledo, Ohio

8-27-06 Birth of son, Benjamin Ryan O'Toole, in Rama

3-7-08 Birth of son, Patrick Erin O'Toole, in Rama

1-6-15 Marriage to Simone Tiasso Wakefield

You are an old man, O'Toole, he said to himself, looking at his thin gray hair in the mirror. He had closed his Bible several minutes earlier and returned to the bathroom to brush his hair one final time. Too old to be getting married again. He remembered his first wedding, forty-seven years earlier. My hair was thick and blond then, he recalled. Kathleen was beautiful. The service was magnificent. I cried the moment I saw her at the end of the aisle.

His picture of Kathleen in her wedding dress, holding on to her father's arm at the other end of the aisle in the cathedral, faded into another memory of her, this one also shrouded in tears. In this second image the tears belonged to his wife. She had been sitting beside him in the family room at Cape Kennedy when the time had come for him to check in for the flight to LEO-3 to join the rest of the Newton crew. "Be careful," she had said, in a surprisingly emotional farewell. They.had hugged. "I'm so proud of you, darling," she had whispered in his ear. "And I love you very much."

"Because I love you very much," Simone had also said when Michael had asked her if she really, really wanted to marry him and, if so, why. A soft image of Simone came into his mind as his memory of his final good-bye with Kathleen gently faded away. You are so innocent and trusting, Simone, Michael mused, thinking of his young bride-to-be. Back on Earth you wouldn't even be dating yet. You'd still be considered just a girl.

The thirteen years in Rama flashed through his mind in an instant. Michael recalled first the struggle of Simone's birth, including the glorious moment when she had finally cried and he had laid her gently on her mother's stomach. His next image was of a very young Simone, a serious girl of six or so, earnestly studying her catechism under his tutelage. In another picture Simone was skipping rope with Katie and singing a joyous song. The final fleeting image was a scene of the family picnicking beside the Cylindrical Sea in Rama. There was Simone, standing proudly beside Benjy as if she were his guardian angel.

She was already a young woman when we arrived at the Node, General Michael O'Toole thought to himself, his mind moving to a more recent sequence of images. Extremely devout. Patient and selfless with the younger children. And nobody has ever made Benjy smile like Simone.

There was a common theme to all these pictures of Simone. In Michael's mind, they were bathed in the unusual love that he felt for his child bride. It was not the kind of love that a man normally feels for the woman he is going to marry - it was more like an adoration. But it was love, nevertheless, and that love had forged a powerful bond between the unlikely pair.

I am a very lucky man, Michael thought as he finished adjusting his clothing. God has seen fit to show me His wonders in many ways.

In the master suite at the other end of the apartment, Nicole was helping Simone with her dress. It was not a wedding dress in the classical sense, but it was white and full with small straps over the shoulders. It was certainly not the casual attire that all of the family were accustomed to wearing on an everyday basis.

Nicole carefully placed the combs in her daughter's long black hair and studied Simone in the mirror. "You look beautiful," Nicole said.

She glanced at her watch. They had ten more minutes. And Simone was completely ready except for the shoes. Good. Now we can talk, Nicole thought fleetingly. "Darling," she started, her voice surprisingly catching in her throat.

"What is it, Mother?" Simone said pleasantly. She was sitting on the bed beside her mother, carefully putting the black shoes on her feet.

"When we had that talk last week about sex," Nicole began again, "there were several topics that we didn't discuss." Simone looked up at her mother. Her attention was so complete that Nicole momentarily forgot what she was going to say. "Did you read those books I gave you..?" she eventually stammered.

Simone's wrinkled brow revealed her puzzlement. "Yes, of course," she replied. "We discussed that yesterday."

Nicole took her daughter's hands. "Michael is a wonderful man," she said. "Kind, considerate, loving - but he is older. And when men are older - "

"I'm not sure I'm following you, Mother," Simone gently interrupted. "I thought there was something you wanted to tell me about sex."

"What I'm trying to say," Nicole said after taking a deep breath, "is that you may need to be very patient and tender with Michael in bed. Everything might not work right away."

Simone stared at her mother for a long time. "I had suspected that," she said quietly, "both from your nervousness about the subject and some unspoken anxiety that I have read in Michael's face. Don't worry, Mother, I do not have unreasonable expectations. In the first place, we are not marrying because of a desire for sexual gratification. And since I have no experience of any kind, except for holding hands occasionally during this last week, whatever pleasure I feel will be new and therefore wonderful."

Nicole smiled at her amazingly mature fourteen-year-old daughter. "You are a jewel," she said, her eyes brimming with tears.

"Thank you," Simone replied, hugging her mother. "Remember," she added, "my marriage to Michael is blessed by God. Whatever problems we encounter, we will ask God to help us with. We will be fine."

A sudden heartache devastated Nicole. One more week, a voice inside her said, and you will never see this beloved girl again. She continued to embrace Simone until Richard knocked on the door and told them that everyone was ready for the ceremony.