Lee knew she had a problem, had suspected it at supper. The girls had been less spontaneous than usual. Then, after dessert, they'd sat a few feet apart on the sofasat upright!reading. Raquel, whose evening it was to be first, had not gone to the computer, and Becca hadn't asked if she could.
Which made it difficult to concentrate on the News Hour. The Mexican government had collapsed that day, and the Mexican army had taken over. General Montoya was talking good intentions. One might hope. The fighting in Yucatan and Chiapas, and up north in Chihuahua and Sonora, had slackened, but it was unclear whether the rebels were interested in negotiations, or were simply shifting gears.
Ben came from the kitchen after cleaning up, and plopped down in his recliner. Then Becca, as if she'd been waiting, got up soberly from the sofa and walked over to her mother.
"Mom?"
Lee hardened inwardly. It seemed to her she knew what was coming. "Yes?" Her voice was hard.
"I've got a question."
"What is it, dear?" She said it stiffly.
"Well, Dad has finished the Millennium Procedures and started on the Advanced Spectrum. And Raquel and I . . ."
"No!"
Becca continued evenly, but there was hurt and resentment in her eyes. "I am the only child in sixth grade who hasn't done Life Healing."
"We went over this last fall. I will not . . ."
Lee stopped herself short of saying "allow you to be brainwashed by this cult." I am the only child . . . Not all the other kids. Not even the only kid. I am the only child.
Somehow that choice of words hit Lee. And Ben had done Life Healing before she'd met him. Now he'd done far more. And his only fault was, he handled situations smoothly and considerately, though occasionally that irritated her when she thought he should be angry. And there was Mr. M, and the Crow nation, and everyone here including Susan Klein, whom she liked more than any other woman she'd ever known.
She bit her lip and looked at Ben, who pretended to be intent on the News Hour, leaving her on her own.
"The only child," she echoed.
Becca nodded soberly, and from the sofa came another voice. "I'm the only one who hasn't in the fifth grade, too, who's old enough. But that's all right for a little while. Becca can start first, and when you see it isn't hurting her, you won't feel as bad when I ask to."
Lee looked at her husband, his gaze still on the television. "Oh Ben!" she said, half irked, half plaintive.
He looked at her, smiling slightly. "Why don't you and I talk about it in private. You can ask questions and I'll answer them. Maybe it'll seem less threatening."
"Or maybe it won't."
"True, but you'll have a clearer sense of what it is you'reumprotecting them from."
She wondered what he would have said if the "um" hadn't saved him. Or her. "Becca, Raquel," she said tightly, "your father and I are going in the breakfast nook to talk. You will go to your room. Or to the computer room. Do not interrupt us. And don't get your hopes up!"
"Yes, Mom." Solemnly.
"We won't, Mom." Also solemnly.
Lee led the way into the kitchen area and slid the door closed behind them. Then they sat down across from each other at the table. "All right," Lee said, "talk."
After a moment he did, for fifteen minutes. "It might help to evaluate the people who find it useful," he finished. "Susan and the other teachers you know, and the people you work with."
She nodded. "And you, most of all. You're good people, all of you, but . . ." She pressed her lips together.
"But it's a cult, right?"
She nodded.
"Define cult for me. Your own definition."
"What good would that do?"
"Well then, let me try. A cult is a group that has beliefs falling outside those of the group that calls it a cult."
"Oh cut it out, Ben!" Her voice was sharp, angry. "That's sophistry!" She paused, frowning, the anger suddenly sagging. "You know, I can almost accept the stuff about past lives, even if it's not true. If it works in therapy, as apparently it doesif it helps peoplethen a person can make some sort of case for it. But the rest of itoverleaves and the rest of itthat's cult crap!"
His nod was acknowledgement, not agreement. "Nominally my mother was Catholic," he said, "and my dad Jewish, but so far as I could figure out, they were actually somewhere between agnostic and deist. So it's hard for me to really get your point of view. What were you taught in church and Sunday school?"
She took a deep breath, and exhaled through pursed lips. Beneath the surface of her consciousness, memories of lessons flickered. Hell and heaven, loaves and fishes, wine out of water. The Red Sea parting, the pillar of fire . . .
She spoke without looking at him. "I remember the last service I attended in my parents' church," she said quietly, "the church I grew up in. I was home from college, on spring break. After that I always found a reason not to attendwhich brought me some lectures from my parents, believe me."
She raised her eyes to Ben's. "The preacher was new since the last time I'd been there." Her voice was little more than a whisper. "He was an older man named Holst, and he opened the sermon with a story of his first parish. There was a young girl in the town who wanted to go to church, but her father wouldn't let her. She begged him, but he wouldn't change his mind. Then she got leukemia, and he still wouldn't let her go. Finally one day her mother called the preacher. She told him her husband was away, and asked him please to come at once."
Lee's lips twisted. "The way he told it, the girl was dying when he got there, screaming 'My feet are burning! My feet are burning!' He'd gotten there too late."
Eyes blazing with anger now, she continued, almost hissing the words. "That asshole! He told us she was descending into hell because her father hadn't let her go to church!"
Lee sagged then, and for a moment said nothing more. When she did, the intensity was gone. "I don't know whether he actually believed it or not. Maybe he did, and couldn't help himself."
She inhaled deeply, and sighed. "Most preachers would probably puke at a story like that. At least I'd like to think they would. But it really really got to me."
Ben smiled gently. "I can see it did."
"Huh!" The sound was half chuckle. "You noticed!" She straightened. "I'll admit I never heard anything so repulsive from Reverend Haener when he was there. And our Sunday school teachers never told us anything approaching that. But compared to some of the things they did tell us, overleaves may turn out to be pretty mundane.
"So," she said, "explain overleaves to me."
"Hmm. Overleaves are parts of the basic personality."
"Like . . ." She paused, fishing up a memorysomething Raquel had said. "Like 'old sage in passion mode'?"
Ben grinned. "That's part of a set, yes."
"Why are you grinning?"
"I'm thinking of Raquel. It's a perfect fit."
"Why not just say 'personality'? Or 'personality element'? Instead of confusing people with new terms?"
"Because the term personality hasn't been functionally defined. It means different things to different people. That's confusing. Overleaves are explicitly defined, and come without baggage. And they explain a lot of phenomena."
"Why call them overleaves though?"
"I suppose because they overlie the soul, in a manner of speaking."
Lee frowned. It was time, she decided, to nail this down.
Half an hour later they came out of the kitchen. She was far from sold on overleaves, but at least they weren't alarming anymore. She could even see how observations could lead to the theory. So instead of going to the girls' room, it was the phone she went to. She dialed, waited a moment, then spoke. "Hello, Susan, this is Lee. May I . . . may I come over and talk awhile? Privately? Something's come up. . . . Thanks. I'll be right there."
Ben said nothing, his smile subdued as he watched his wife put on coat and snow boots. When the door closed behind her, he went to the girls' room. "Mom hasn't decided yet," he said. "She's gone to talk with Mrs. Klein." He held up his right hand, fingers crossed.
"Thanks, Dad." They said it in nearly perfect unison. Then their stepfather returned to the living room and his book.
"I know that may sound strange to you," Lee said, quietly, over the table in the Kleins' breakfast nook. "But I feel driven into a corner by this. Ben is so patient with meeven the girls are, mostly. But I'm really afraid of thisLife Healing. I don't mean to be insulting, but I feel, really feel . . . I don't know. Millennium seems like a cult to me, and . . ."
Susan Klein nodded, and laid her hand atop Lee's. "My mom felt the same way when I told her I was going to do it. And from a certain point of view it is a cult. But I was twenty-eight and a divorcee with kids, so she wasn't in a position to do more than wring her hands.
"Actually I felt a little like she didafraid, that isbut I'd met Chuck a few months earlier. He'd proposed to me, and I really wanted to say yes. I'd dated quite a few guys, but he was in a class by himselfconsiderate and mature. The problem was, he'd gotten Life Healing at Denver the summer before, and been so impressed, he planned to go back after graduation. To train as a Millennium facilitatora counselor! Hoping to practice in a center they planned to open in our home town, St. Louis. Chuck! A man with a shiny future in electronic engineering, switching to counseling!
"And it seemed to me I needed to know, really and personally know, what I'd be getting into if I married him." She shrugged, then grinned. "So I did it, and here I am. You might say I'm hooked, but I think of it as convinced."
Lee looked at her searchingly, not sure what she hoped to see.
"One possibility," Susan said, "is to try it yourself before you approve or disapprove the girls taking it."
Lee shook her head, small quick movements, as if trying to ward off gnats. "No," she said. "I need to . . . to keep my own . . . objectivity intact. In case it doesn't work out well."
Susan nodded, her reply cheerful. "Sounds like a workable approach. Evaluate the results on Ben, and maybe the girls, and from there, do whatever makes the most sense."
Lee did not brighten.
"Dear," Susan said, "it may help to keep this in mind. In a few years the girls will overrule you, as I did my mom."
Lee looked at that. "What does your mom think now?" she said after a moment.
"She treats us all lovingly when we visitthe girls, me . . . and Chuck. When she met him, she soon adored him. She was always a woman with lots of love. And quite good at compartmentalizing, in that case, the cult member from the man and fiancé."
Lee nodded, still visibly troubled. "Thanks, Susan," she said soberly. "You've helped. You truly have."
She left then, her coffee untouched. Through a window, Susan watched her walk the shortcut home, a path trodden by their daughters through the snow. She hadn't added that her mother had later taken Life Healing herself. It seemed best to leave the subject where she had.
Lee and Ben went to the girls' room. Becca and Raquel sat reading at their desks, and turned as their parents came in. Lee sat down on Becca's bed, facing her daughters.
"Girls," she said, "Dad and I have talked it over. Becca, you have my permission to door take or whatever they call ityou have my permission to do Life Healing. She turned to Raquel. "And you can start when she's finished. Ifif everything goes to my satisfaction."
The response surprised Lee, though on second look it was predictable: It was Raquel who popped off her chair first, bounded to her mother, and threw her arms around her neck. "Oh, Mom, I knew you could do it! I knew you could! You're the best mom in the world!" Both girls kissed her before Raquel said chirpily, "I'll be in the computer room," and skipped off.
Becca still stood by her mother. "Mom, you really won't regret this," she said, then picked up her book and went out to the living room.
Lee sat thoughtfully for a minute, her attention inward, then looked up at her husband. "I'm going in the bedroom for a few minutes," she said. "Nothing's wrong. I just need to be alone for a while."
Ben nodded, and she left. Lying on their bed, she stared toward the ceiling, seeing nothing, reviewing first her talk with Ben, then with Susan. And told herself that whatever Millennium beliefs the girls picked up, they'd be no weirder than the things millions of children were taught in Sunday school each week. At least Life Healing didn't seem to fill them with prejudices and false fears. Whether they'd come away with false expectations was another matter.
But then, she'd graduated from college with false expectations. Brainwashed by society, no less! She'd married Mark with false expectations. Had quit a good joba good salary at leastand gone into business for herself with false expectations. The only major thing she'd done, she told herself, that had matched her hopes, exceeded them actually, was marry Ben.
And at any rate the damage, if any, had been done. The girls were already full of Millennium ideas, and Life Healing didn't seem likely to harm them. Looked at honestly, she told herself, it's just therapeutic counseling.
Life Healing. She still couldn't see what good it could do two girls as healthy as hers. Better adjusted than their mom, she told herself.
Sighing, she got up and returned to the living room.
A while later, Raquel came out of the computer room. "Mom," she said, "I'm going to brush and get ready for bed."
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing, really."
"You look like something is. Will you tell me?"
"Well . . . Sometimes I wish I was the oldest, instead of Becca."
"I understand. Okay. Go brush."
Raquel disappeared into the hall. "Ben," Lee murmured, "we might as well let both of them start at the same time."
He scowled a mock scowl. "If you say so."
"Snot!"
He laughed, then turned to their eldest. "Twenty minutes, Becca," he said.
"Yes Dad."
Gentle Ben, Lee thought. The strongest in the family.
The oven timer buzzed. Curious, she went into the kitchen and peered through the oven door. There was a cherry pie inside. She turned the buzzer off, turned on the exhaust fan, and opened the oven door. Ben, she realized, had put it in while she was in the bedroom.
"Thanks, hon," he said. He'd followed her in.
"One more question," she said.
"Yes?"
"Becca said something about the 'astral zone.' What's the astral zone? That really sounds New Agey."
"It is New Agey, like heaven without the harps and angelic choirs and pink clouds and alabaster pillars, or whatever. I think of it as a sort of graduate school for souls, without the bureaucracy and pressures, the campus and occasional desperation. But I suspect that's a pretty inadequate description." Again he grinned. "Actually I've never thought much about it. I'll just wait till I get there."
My pragmatic spiritualist, she thought. My tender, patient, loving man. "Have I told you lately that I'm the world's smartest woman?" she asked.
His eyebrows rose. "No, I don't believe you have."
"And I suppose you didn't notice for yourself." She moved to him, stood inches from him. He leaned backward in mock concern. "Well I am," she growled. "Because I married you."
"Oh. Well. Of course."
"In a minute I'm going to put your pie in the window cooler." She sounded more than a little like Lauren Bacall in an old Bogart movie. "An hour and a half from now, you and I will polish it off, and after that we'll polish off each other. The girls will be asleep by then."
They did. Afterward, lying side by side, Lee said, "I did it again. After I get upset, I always need you to make love to me."
He chuckled. "You know what they say."
"What do they say?"
"Every cloud has a silver lining."
She sat up and hit him with her pillow, not hard enough to start a pillow fight, then lay back down. "For about the thousandth time," she said, "I find myself awed by my daughters. Our daughters. They're an incredible mixture of the best aspects of children with the best aspects of adults."
"Yup."
"And my husband isn't so bad either."
"Yup."
She looked at him lying on his back with his eyes closed, a half smile on his face. "Remember what I said in the kitchen?" she asked.
"About polishing each other off?"
"No! About being the world's smartest woman. I take it back."
"You do?"
"I do. I'm the world's luckiest woman."
His eyes opened, and raising himself on an elbow, he kissed her. "Remind me to thank you properly some time. In half an hour or so."
She kissed him back, and this time did another impression. "Any time, pilgrim, any time."
Ben lay bemused. Lee could be playful on occasion, but this evening . . . First a recognizable Bacall, and now what had surely been John Wayne!
Mentally he grinned. The most inspired thing I ever did, he told himself, was to marry her. And I got her daughters in the bargain.
It was midnight when Lee went to sleep. She awoke in the morning aware of having dreamt, but not of what. Only that the dream had been long and rambling. She was also aware that she was comfortable with her decision of the night before.