When Professor McFee steps out on the stage, there's immediate applause.
The applause goes on and on.
The professor looks happy but embarrassed. He nods into the applause as if it were a wind. He glances into the audience nervously.
He isn't a young man, but he has a child's eyes—darting and bright blue. He's wearing a suit, but it looks a bit rumpled, uncomfortable, as if it's hung in a closet for many years without being worn. He has a neatly trimmed beard and mustache with just a touch of gray.
When he puts the folder he's carrying onto the podium, the audience quits clapping, but there's still a feeling in the air like applause—goodwill, appreciation—before he has even spoken.
Professor McFee at the podium looks up, nervous, and says, "It's one of the greatest honors of my life to have been asked to give the Arthur M. Fuller lecture this year."
One of the girls—the one who wanted to come to the lecture in the first place—looks at the other and rolls her eyes.
But the other looks away from her, back to the man on the stage.
He begins by clearing his throat, looking down at his notes, then up at the audience, and then he says, "Many have asked the question Why is there evil? The question I want to ask tonight is, Why is there good?"
For the two hours of his lecture, one of the girls never again takes her eyes from the reddish light around this man, whose humility and brightness are greater than anything she's ever seen. Until this moment she didn't know such men existed in the world.
Professor McFee talks about good and evil as if he has thought a lot about them, as if he has spent a lifetime thinking about them, reading about them, wondering...
"Why," he asks, "are human beings capable, as no other animals seem to be, of intentional evil? Can it be so that human beings will therefore also be capable of intentional good?
"If evil exists, as the Old Testament implies that it does, to test and strengthen the virtue of the good, to what high angel may we turn for guidance when faced with a choice for evil or good?"
A long pause.
"To the conscience," he answers his own question, "which is the mirror that can't be tarnished but must be located. Conscience is the voice of God in the nature and heart of man..."
One of the girls takes a pen and a piece of paper out of her purse and writes that down.
SHE BEGAN TO RUN...
Out of the jungle tunnel littered with peanut shells and back into the clearing where she'd seen Mr. McCleod. Now there was no one there. Just the jeep with its blank-eyed driver and his female companion leaning awkwardly away from him as if she'd been jostled on a bumpy road and never propped back up.
And the natives, who didn't bother to look at her.
Diana ran toward the steps that led up to the lion's den, stumbling in her sandals, out of breath.
What if her daughter wasn't there?
She looked at her wrist, but she hadn't put her watch on this morning. Instead she had an armful of useless silver bracelets. What time could it have been? How long had she stopped to talk to Mr. McCleod? How long had she stood looking at Ella, the elephant? She looked at the sky, and the sun was directly in the center of it—noon—but could it have been only noon?
Of course...
Of course it was only noon.
The sun couldn't just stop like a dead watch in the sky.
It was only noon. They had hours until they were supposed to meet again at the entrance of the zoo.
But Diana continued hurrying up the stairs to the lion's den, feeling weak with breathlessness. Hot and tired. The glare of the summer sun on the tropical leaves of the African safari seemed so bright—brighter than the sun itself—that Diana could hardly see. And there was a high whining coming from somewhere over her head and in her inner ear at the same time. She put her hand to her temple as she hurried up the stairs and tried to stop the pain there before it started, but when she did this she dropped her purse.
It fell tumbling behind her down the stairs, and Diana turned and watched it tumble, hoping it wouldn't spill...
But it did.
She saw her wallet fall out, a small shower of silver and copper coins, and then a tampon, and then—though she knew it couldn't have been—a clear plastic Baggie of marijuana.
It was wrapped up tightly with a rubber band, but even from where she was standing many steps above it, Diana could see the crushed, illegal leaves of it gleaming darkly in the sun.
"Mrs. McFee?"
Diana turned around fast to see Sister Beatrice standing above her, a black silhouette with wings. She could only blink up at her, because the sun shining behind Sister Beatrice was so brilliant and her dark robes only barely blocked it out. She was still carrying her load of manila folders and notebooks. They looked disorganized, unwieldy, as if they'd been dropped and picked back up and insufficiently reorganized.
"Oh," Diana said. "I—" She pointed to the stairs that rose behind Sister Beatrice in dusty stations. "I was just on my way ... there ... to find the girls."
"You dropped your purse," Sister Beatrice said.
"I know," Diana said, and smiled weakly. She felt afraid to move, to hurry toward the Baggie of marijuana, which would have been an admission of guilt.
But it wasn't hers.
It hadn't been hers for more than two decades...
How—?
Sister Beatrice was looking at it. There was a tension around her eyes. A recognition.
"I found your girls," Sister Beatrice said. "They're not at the lion's den anymore. They've gone to look at the wolves."
Sister Beatrice pointed to the path that led back out of the African safari, and when she did, the manila folders in her arms shifted and a few papers flew loose from her grasp. They floated downward on the breeze, landing on the stairs at Diana's feet.
Diana bent over and picked them up, brushed a bit of dirt off of them, and then she put them neatly together and held them up to Sister Beatrice. "Here you go," Diana said, trying to sound helpful, obedient, a good student.
The nun reached out to take them quickly, but before she could snatch the papers out of Diana's hand, Diana saw the paper that was on top.
It had been folded into fourths, then very carefully smoothed flat again.
The large bold type was in a familiar font. Her daughter's name was written in blue pen in her daughter's familiar writing in the upper right-hand corner of the page.
Bethany Maria Anna Elizabeth was an orphan in a convent until I adopted her. Her favorite food is Froot Loops. Bethany Maria Anna Elizabeth does not like math tests or science as much as she likes ice cream! When she grows up she wants to be a mommy.
"Give me that," Sister Beatrice snapped.
"But," Diana blurted, trying to hold on to the piece of paper, "it's Emma's story, the one—"
Sister Beatrice managed to snatch the piece of paper out of Diana's hand, and when she had it again she stuffed it among the manila folders and other papers. Diana saw it disappear and knew she'd never get it back again. She looked up. Now she was only a foot or two away from Sister Beatrice's face, and she could see how angry the nun was. Her jaw was clenched. Her eyes were narrowed, as if she were about to make a threat.
"It was you," Diana said. A realization, but it wasn't an accusation. She was simply understanding something aloud and for the first time. "You changed Emma's story?" She looked up at Sister Beatrice, full of wonder.
"Oh, shut up," Sister Beatrice said. She walked stiffly past Diana on the stairs. She hadn't said it loudly but had said it with such force that Diana felt, briefly, that it might have struck her dumb, that it might have been a curse, that she might never speak again.
But then Sister Beatrice's black robes brushed her arm, and Diana could feel her hot breath close to her cheek. It stank ... her breath. It smelled as if something had rotted in her mouth.
"Why?" Diana asked her as she passed.
Sister Beatrice turned and looked straight into Diana's eye
s, then smiled.
The smile was full of hate.
"Because I don't like you," Sister Beatrice said.
She stepped over the contents of Diana's spilled purse ... the coins, the tampon, the Baggie of marijuana.
"Why?" Diana asked.
But the nun kept walking. She reached the bottom of the stairs and began to walk faster, and from where Diana watched her, Sister Beatrice in her black habit looked like the shadow of a crow flying overhead, or a small and awful angel...
The avenging angel, the accusing angel, the angel who did not forget, who did not forgive, its shadow circling the world endlessly.
It's Saturday....
Nate Witt is at his job at Uncle Ed's Oil Change, so the girls are together without him for the afternoon. It's the end of April and everything has begun to melt. The smell of rot and fresh growth is in the air. The green swords of tulips and daffodils have made their way out of the earth.
The girls notice these as they go for their first walk through the neighborhood after so much winter. They're wearing tight jeans, black boots, short-sleeved shirts, and they've tied sweaters around their waists. One of the girls is wearing a silver ring that was given to her by Nate.
"I think you're going to be elected Mayqueen," she says to her friend.
"No fucking way," the other says. "It's you or Melissa Maroney, but I think it will be you—"
"Why me?"
"Because you're beautiful—"
"Not as beautiful as you." She means it. It's easy to say.
"Yeah, you are," her friend says, and nudges her with her shoulder. "Plus, I've got a reputation. No one gets elected Mayqueen at Briar Hill who's—"
"Well, it won't be me. Not now that I'm dating Nate. He's—"
"Oh, everybody loves it that you're with Nate. The born-again Christian and the biker boy."
The dark-haired girl laughs. "I don't know. Maybe. Probably Melissa."
"No," the other says. "Melissa's too out there. Mayqueen is usually some girl who's kept to herself ... a bit of a mystery ... not such a social butterfly."
"Well, I don't want to be Mayqueen."
It's a lie, and not.
They turn the corner near the Catholic girls' school. Our Lady of Fatima. It sits at the top of a hill. They've walked past it a million times on their way to other places. Sometimes the school yard is full of little girls in white blouses and plaid skirts.
One of the girls gasps.
At first she gasps because of what she thinks she's seen. Hundreds of little girls in stiff white blouses, but when she realizes it's something else, at first she thinks she's dreaming. The whole surface of the green hill is fluttering with something. It's dazzling, cumulative.
"What the hell?" she says, looking harder.
"Little crosses," the other explains.
"Why?"
"The unborn," the other tells her. "I saw the little girls putting out the crosses yesterday. And the pro-lifers..."
The other girl walks in the direction of the crosses. She's seen pictures of Arlington Cemetery, and it's like that—seeing that strange quiet from the sky—row after row of stiff white arms embracing the air, the emptiness and shadows.
There are hundreds—thousands?—of these small white crosses covering every inch of the hill. Plastic. White. Some have fallen over into the green grass, but most have been planted deeply enough in the ground that they're fluttering only a little in the breeze.
"Come on, let's go," her friend says, taking her elbow.
But her friend stands, still staring.
They're like a dream against the green. Stunning in their uniformity. The absolute conviction of their posture.
"Jesus," she says. "It's—"
"It's a statement, that's for sure," the other girl says.
And then the other girl notices that there's a name on every cross, on every one of the hundreds and hundreds of small white crosses on the elementary school lawn.
She bends down to look at one which is only a few inches from the toes of her black boot.
In a child's cursive, with a black Magic Marker, Emma is written there.
DIANA SAW HER DAUGHTER FROM A DISTANCE AND recognized her instantly. She was standing alone looking into the bars of a cage, her pink windbreaker tied around her waist.
"Emma!"
But Emma didn't turn to look. Either she hadn't heard her mother calling her or she'd chosen not to answer.
Diana began to run.
This part of the zoo was called the Black Forest. It was landscaped with pine trees and rocks, and a small waterfall that made the sound of mechanical splashing into a cement basin. There were fairy-tale characters, plaster statues painted brightly but amateurishly here and there—a woodcutter, a witch with a gingerbread house, ogres and dwarves, Rapunzel with ropes of golden hair, Sleeping Beauty laid out on what appeared to be a stretcher, with her eyes closed, surrounded by tangled briars—and the paths were scattered with redwood chips. The smell of forest and water was dank and dry at the same time.
Inside the cages there were dens for coyotes, foxes, wolves, and although Diana couldn't see them, she could sense their eyes watching her from the darkness. If there was an owl in the owl cage, it was standing so still she couldn't see it.
"Emma!" she called again.
This time Emma looked up. "Mommy," she said, but didn't move.
"Mommy," she said again, and pointed to a place just beyond the wolf's cage, where the wolf was....
"You're not going to believe it," one of the girls says to the other.
It's the end of April, and the cafeteria is humid with rain. Nate Witt has his arm around her. "I was elected Mayqueen. Mr. McCleod just told me."
The other girl stands up and puts her arm around her friend, who smells like chocolate milk and flesh. She presses her face into her friend's dark hair—her friend.
There's April in her hair. Motion and stillness. Wings and earth. There are tears, and there is ... friendship. There is velvet, and traveling, and distance, bones and blood, summer coming again as it always does, love.
"Are you jealous?" her friend asks.
"Hell, yes," she says. But everything is inside her as she holds her friend, her best friend, in this embrace....
Tomorrow. Last year. Her own daughter. Her mother, and her mother...
Life seems suddenly—in the general din of the world and the cafeteria, in the last months of her senior year—very short and also very long. Eternal.
All of it is inside her.
Her friend is smiling. Her friend's boyfriend is also smiling. They are both inside of her ... family... where everything else is and will always be. There's a place for both of them—just as there's a place for her heart, for her lungs. She can feel all of it inside her, all of it. Except for jealousy.
Where jealousy would be, there's nothing.
"Come on," her friend says. "If you're going to cry because I got elected Mayqueen, let's go to the girls' room, at least."
DIANA LOOKED IN THE DIRECTION OF THE WOLF'S CAGE, but it was empty. There was nothing other than a shadow moving around inside it, slipping between rocks, like the shadow of water.
Her breath was sharp in her lungs, she'd been running for so long...
When she finally reached her daughter's side, Diana sank to her knees and pulled her to her, smelled her golden hair, the side of her neck deeply, taking it in as if to memorize it—the crushed leaves and flour of her daughter, the whole melody of the baking aisle, the smell of the physical world and what was just beyond it, made of mercy and childhood and love—before she looked again in the direction of the shadow Emma was still watching with her wide blue eyes.
The shadow was moving around inside the cage, but the wolf was outside of it.
April
They're in the girl's room when they hear the first dot-dot-dot of semi-automatic gunfire.
It sounds phony and far away, and they keep doing what they're doing—brushing their hair, looking a
t their reflections in the girls'-room mirror...
Dot-dot-dot.
Dot. Dot. Dot.
"Want a LifeSaver?" one of the girls asks the other, then hands her the roll.
Her friend takes a piece of the chalk-white peppermint candy and puts it in her mouth. It tastes so clean it nearly takes her breath away.
Dot. Dot. Dot.
"What is that?" one of the girls asks the other. She stuffs her hairbrush back into her backpack next to her anthology of English literature. She was supposed to have read the first chapter of Daisy Miller for a quiz that afternoon, but she hadn't even started.
Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock...
This time it's followed by a soft and gurgling scream.
"Shit," one of the girls says.
"What the hell—"
One of the girls starts toward the door, but the other grabs her elbow. "Don't go," she says. "What if?—"
"What?"
"I don't know." She drops her friend's elbow.
"It's just a prank. It's probably Ryan Asswipe..."
Dot. Dot—
THE WOLF WAS PACING OUTSIDE THE OPEN DOOR OF THE cage, looking confused, as if someone had just opened it, just let him out at that moment, as if for the first time in his life he'd found himself on the other side.
Diana screamed, and when the wolf heard it, he looked up, sniffing at the air, then turned to look behind him, as if at his own shadow, which seemed to startle him, and he began to growl.
Low at first, like a tape recording starting slow, then speeding up, and then faster and louder. It was impossible to tell whether the growling came from the world or from the shadow—or, it struck Diana as completely possible, that the growling came from inside herself....
Emma didn't move.