The Wolves of Midwinter

31

GRACE DID NOT DISAPPOINT Reuben. As he poured out the story on the phone, his mother was quiet for far longer than he had ever known her to be in any conversation. He was on the landline when he told her, and with his iPhone he texted pictures of Christine, of Jamie, and of Lorraine that he’d only just taken in the breakfast room.

He could hear his mother crying, he could hear her struggling to say they were beautiful, he could hear her struggling to say, “Please, please, Jim, come home.”

There was no way Grace could come up to Nideck Point. She wanted to come with all her heart. “You tell my grandchildren that,” she said. But she was on call for the entire weekend, and she had two cases in ICU she couldn’t leave under any circumstances. But she insisted Reuben put Lorraine on the phone.

They talked for perhaps a half hour.

By that time young Jamie was in a fierce argument with Phil about “violent” varsity sports and whether it was fair to pressure children to play soccer or football. Jamie himself refused to engage in such sports, and while Phil thought they served a purpose and tried to explain the history of sports, Jamie was adamant that a boy his age had a right to sue the school authorities to remain out of sports in which he could break his neck or his back, or fracture his skull. Jamie had researched this question quite fully.

It was amazing, the rapid young British voice, so crisp, so unfailingly polite, firing back with such speed at Phil. And Phil was trying hard to keep a straight face as he punched the opposing view. “What is the school board to do with a young male population pumped with testosterone at an early age and absolutely unable to work it off or—.” Phil was clearly crazy about Jamie.

“Well, certainly, they have no right to deplete our numbers through violent death and injury,” Jamie retorted. “Look, Mr. Golding, certainly you know as well as I do that the state and all its subordinate institutions face the same problem with the young males of any society. The armed services exist to siphon off the dangerous exuberance of young males.…”

“Well, it’s good to see you know the background of all this,” said Phil. “You have an astonishing grasp of the big picture.”

Christine dozed against the back of the breakfast room chair. Phil tried to bring her into the conversation, but she said sleepily, “Jamie gets all worked up about these things.”

“You have no idea,” said Jamie in a low confidential voice to Phil and Reuben, “what it is like to be the twin of a girl!”

The next morning, Lisa drove south to collect clothes and personal items for the Maitland family, and Phil took Lorraine and Christine and Jamie for a walk in the woods as soon as the sun came out from behind the clouds.

Reuben spent the morning calling guesthouses and hotels throughout the little city of Carmel with no luck in finding Jim. Grace found out Jim hadn’t used his credit cards or ATM cards since his disappearance.

Felix and Sergei asked Reuben if he wanted them to join in the search. They could easily fly down to the Monterey Peninsula and start looking for Jim. “If I was certain he was there, I’d say yes,” said Reuben. “But I’m not certain.” He had a hunch. He started looking for monasteries—isolated monastic communities that had guesthouses anywhere within a hundred miles of San Francisco. It was frustrating making the calls. Jim might not have checked in under his own name. And he was reaching out to remote rural places that obviously knew nothing of the San Francisco daily news or that Jim was missing. Sometimes he couldn’t understand the thick accent of the person who answered. Sometimes no one answered the phone at all.

By afternoon, Lorraine seemed to be completely in love with Phil, laughing irresistibly at his little jokes and catching his most obscure witticisms and literary quotes.

Jamie was so drawn to Phil, so eager to argue a million questions, that Lorraine tried gently to separate them now and then, but it didn’t work, and Phil was clearly impressed with Jamie, and holding forth on everything from the superiority of baroque to the current state of San Francisco politics. Laura and Felix took Christine throughout the whole conservatory, explaining all the various tropical plants to her. Christine loved the orchid trees, and the exotic lobster claw palms. She asked what Father Jim Golding thought about these plants. Did he have a favorite? Did Father Jim Golding like music? She loved to play the piano. She was getting better at it, she hoped, all the time.

Jamie not only looked like Jim, he sounded like Jim. Reuben thought he could see Jim in Christine as well. She was the shy one, the quiet one, the sad one, and Reuben knew it was going to be that way until Jim appeared and took her in his arms. But she was a very clever little girl. Her favorite novel was Les Misérables.

“Because she’s seen the musical!” said Jamie scornfully.

Christine just smiled. Who was her father’s favorite author? she wondered. Did he read the poems of Edgar Allan Poe? What about Emily Dickinson?

Lisa cooked a huge dinner in the guesthouse, and Reuben tried to put on a brave face when he assured them they’d hear some good news from Jim soon. He went out into the night to call Grace, only to confirm there was nothing new. The police had confirmed Jim was on foot when he left the Fairmont Hotel. His apartment had been searched, and the little cashbox under the bed was empty.

“That means he probably has a couple of thousand with him,” said Grace over the phone, “and no need to touch his credit cards. Your brother always kept that much, just to be able to help people. If only he knew what was going on. The new rehab fund is up to two million! People are making donations in his name, Reuben! And this is Jim’s dream, this rehab shelter right by the church, where he can offer decent rooms to recovering addicts!”

“All right, Mom. I’m going back down to Carmel tomorrow morning, and I’m going to cover the entire area if I have to seek out every single little guesthouse or bed-and-breakfast in existence from Monterey to Carmel Valley.”

He texted the last four or five pictures he’d taken of Lorraine and the kids, being most careful not to include the robust and radiant Phil in any of them.

For a long time, he stood outside in the cold darkness looking through the multipaned windows of the guesthouse. Phil was sitting by the fire reading aloud to Jamie and Christine. Lorraine was lying, with a pillow under her head, on the carpet in front of the fire. He heard a footstep in the shadows behind him, and then he caught the scent of Laura, of Laura’s hair and Laura’s perfume.

“Whatever happens,” said Laura, “they’re going to be all right.”

“That part I know,” said Reuben in a thick voice. “They’re part of our family.” He turned and took her in his arms. “I wish we could be alone tonight in the forest,” he said. “I wish we could go off up there into the treetops, and just be us alone.”

“Soon,” she said. “Soon.”

Inside the warm cozy house, Lisa brought in steaming mugs on a tray. Reuben could smell the chocolate. He nuzzled his face into Laura’s warm neck.

“You’ve never told me,” she whispered.

“Told you what?”

“How did I do during the Twelfth Night Feast?”

He laughed. “Are you joking?” he said. “Your instincts were perfect.” He was thinking, remembering, and he could not bring his human attitudes now really to bear on what had happened. He could recall every second of it; but he could not feel what he’d felt when the Twelfth Night Feast had been in full swing. These are the monsters, these are the reeking killers who slaughtered a boy and a priest, who poisoned children, who sought to maim and murder Jim. “You were one of us,” he said to Laura. “And there was no male or female, really, or young or old, or lover and lover, or father and son—we were kindred. Just kindred. And you were part of it, as were we all.”

She nodded.

“And how was it for you?” he asked. “The first taste of human flesh.”

“Natural,” she said. “Completely natural. I think I thought too much about it beforehand. And it was simple. That’s the word. No conflict involved at all.”

It was his turn to nod. He smiled. But it was a slow and sober smile.

The little gathering broke up about eight.

“We turn in early in the country,” Phil explained. Lorraine was obviously exhausted. But Jamie wanted to know if he could stay up to watch the eleven o’clock news.

They climbed the hill to the house, and found Felix in his robe and pajamas in the library. He gave Reuben a knowing glance. Phil would change sometime close to midnight. That was the way with new Morphenkinder. And Felix would not let Phil go out into the woods alone.

The next day, the house was in a pleasant little uproar. Felix unveiled his plans to build, with Reuben’s approval of course, “a great enclosed swimming pool” off the north side of the conservatory, stretching along the western wall of the house. The architectural plans had already been drawn up. Jamie obviously thought it was the most exciting thing ever, and he stood gazing down over the intricate drawings with wonder, asking if people had done these on a computer or by hand. Of course the enclosure would be a dramatic and harmonious extension of the existing conservatory with lots of white iron, gingerbread, and beautifully shaped windows. And more tropical plants. And Felix was looking into the matter of geothermal heat. Jamie knew about geothermal heat. He’d been reading about it online.

Margon was watching all this with amusement, and Sergei came in with Frank for breakfast and expressed his usual friendly but cynical dismissal of Felix, who was “always building something, always making plans, making plans.”

“And Sergei will be the first one,” said Berenice to Laura in a polite voice, “to swim the length of that swimming pool fifty times each morning, once it’s built.”

“Did I say I wouldn’t swim in the pool?” asked Sergei. “But what about a heliport out back or a jet runway? Or better yet a harbor down there where we can dock a hundred-foot yacht.”

“I never thought of that,” said Felix with genuine exuberance. “Reuben. What do you think? Imagine it, a harbor. We could dredge a small harbor, a slip for a yacht.”

“I think these are marvelous ideas,” said Reuben. “The luxury of an indoor pool, totally connected to the house, is something unimaginably wonderful. Yes, go ahead. Let me get my checkbook.”

“Nonsense, dear boy,” said Felix. “I’ll take care of it, of course. But this is the question. Do we make the northern end of this new enclosure connect with the old household office off the kitchen? Does that room go, so to speak, and do we replace it with a bright dining area at the northern end of the pool?”

A sword pierced Reuben. Marchent had been in that office, working, when her brothers, her murderers, had broken into the house. From there she’d run into the kitchen, where they had viciously and brutally stabbed her to death.

“Yes, let’s take that room away,” said Reuben. “I mean, let’s open that space up into the new enclosure.”

Hockan drifted in, distant, but smiling agreeably enough, and deeply polite to Lorraine and the children as he had been all along. He gazed at the blueprints with respectful awe, murmuring something under his breath like “Felix and his dreams.”

“We all need dreams,” Frank muttered. He had been on the fringes, drinking his coffee in silence.

Hockan and Sergei pulled Reuben aside at the first chance. “When do you want us to start looking for your brother?” Hockan asked with obvious sincerity. “Sergei, Frank, the rest of us. We have ways of finding people that others don’t have.”

“I know, but where do we look?” asked Reuben. “We could go back down to Carmel and start there.” But he had his doubts.

“Say the word,” said Sergei.

“If we haven’t heard anything by tomorrow, I’m going back down there, with anyone who’s willing to help.”

That night was Saturday night, and the house was filled with a celebratory atmosphere, with a huge dinner in the main dining room and plenty of extraordinary wines. Everyone was present, and the little Maitland family seemed dazzled by the candlelight, the display of china and silver, the rapid-fire conversation flying back and forth, and the soft piano music floating from the living room where Frank and Berenice traded off playing Mozart.

For the first time since his spectacular arrival, Hockan was genuinely talkative, chatting about beauties of the British Isles with Lorraine and Thibault. He was so attentive and so unfailingly polite that Reuben worried about it a little, that there was a note of sadness and humiliation in it. He couldn’t be sure.

Stuart was in awe of Hockan but he didn’t trust him. That Reuben could tell.

Hockan is trying very hard, Reuben thought, to be part of all this. For others it’s natural. Felix makes it all natural. And Hockan is truly trying to fit in. But he couldn’t help notice the suspicion in Berenice’s eyes when she studied Hockan. Lisa watched him rather coldly also. Who knew what stories these two had to tell?

Each and every one of the Distinguished Gentlemen and the Distinguished Ladies made it a point to engage the newcomers in conversation, to ask polite yet slightly unusual questions, and to invite them into enduring threads of discussion. Phil and Jamie had called a truce as to certain irreconcilable differences over politics, art, music, literature, and the fate of Western civilization. Christine rolled her eyes when Jamie held forth and Jamie rolled his whenever she shrieked with laughter at one of Sergei’s jokes or Felix’s playful teasing. But Reuben detected a deep anxiety behind Lorraine’s unfailingly pleasant speech and expression. And he himself was both happy and miserable, happier perhaps than ever in his life, as if his life now was a staircase of ever-escalating happinesses, while at the same time he was so frightened for Jim, he could scarcely bear it.

Felix rose to make a final toast.

“Tonight, dear ladies and gentlemen, and beloved children,” he said, his glass raised. “This is the very end of the Christmas season. Tomorrow, Sunday, will be the official end with the Church of Rome celebrating the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus Christ. Then the church calendar will begin on Monday what has always been called so solemnly and beautifully ‘Ordinary Time.’ And we must reflect tonight on what Christmas has meant to us.”

“Hear, hear,” said Sergei, “and we shall all reflect on this as deeply and briefly and concisely as possible.”

“Oh, let Felix go on,” said Hockan. “If Felix finishes by tomorrow night at midnight when ‘Ordinary Time’ begins, we should count ourselves lucky.”

“Or are we going to get another toast tomorrow night,” asked Thibault, “as the last few hours of the Christmas season slip through our fingers!”

“Maybe what this house needs is a public address system,” Sergei suggested. “And Felix could broadcast at regular intervals.”

“And anyone turning off his PA system would be arrested,” said Stuart, “and confined to the dungeons beneath us.”

“And we should print out the entire liturgical calendar,” said Sergei, “and post it on the kitchen wall.”

Felix laughed good-naturedly. He was absolutely undeterred.

“And I must say,” he went on, raising his glass once more, “that this, our first Christmas season at Nideck Point, has been exceptional. We have given gifts and received gifts that we could not possibly have anticipated. Our old and dear friend Hockan is once again with us. And Jamie, Christine, and Lorraine, you come to us as gifts—and you too, Berenice—gifts to our beloved Reuben and his beloved father Philip, and to our entire household. We salute you. We welcome you.”

Clapping, cheering, with embraces and kisses for Lorraine and Jamie and Christine.

“And a prayer for James,” said Felix lastly. “That James will come home safely very very soon.”

And then the company broke up for dessert and coffee buffet style in the great front room.

An hour or so later, just about everyone had gone off to sleep, read, watch TV, who knows what? And the house suddenly seemed dark and empty, though its fires roared as always. Felix came to find Reuben in the library, where Reuben was at the desk computer searching for the numerous motels and guesthouses he meant to visit personally tomorrow.

“Don’t worry about your brother,” said Felix with an easy smile.

“And what in the world makes you say that?” Reuben asked gently. “For you—of all my beloved friends—never say anything that doesn’t mean something.”

“I know he will be all right,” said Felix. There was a light in his dark eyes. “I simply know. I have a feeling.” He drank the last of his wine and put the glass on the edge of the desk. “I have a feeling,” he said again. “I can’t say more, but I know your brother is all right now. And whatever happens when he knows about the children, well, he will be all right. And they are infinitely better off just now than they ever were before, without the loving knowledge and support of your family.”

Reuben only smiled. He couldn’t quite bring himself to answer.

“Well good night, dear boy,” said Felix. “And I should take this glass to the kitchen, shouldn’t I? I am so annoyed when people litter this house with cups and glasses!”

“And things go well with my father in the woods?”

“Splendidly,” said Felix. “But it’s good he had the Twelfth Night Feast. Morphenkinder by instinct want to hunt humans. I don’t think the forest is appreciated until that innate desire has seen some fulfillment.”

“Thank you, Felix,” Reuben said. “Thank you for everything.”

“Not at all. Don’t say another word,” said Felix. “I think I’ll walk down the hill and visit with your father.”

For a very long time, Reuben sat there, thinking, reflecting. Then he brought up a new blank page in his word processing program, and began to type.

“I died at the age of 23, in the season of the year which the church calls ‘Ordinary Time,’ ” he wrote. “And as we come once again to ‘Ordinary Time,’ I want to write the story of my life since that moment.”

And for another hour he wrote, stopping only now and then for a moment or two, until finally he had filled some fifteen double-spaced pages. “And so I went from being ordinary, terribly ordinary, shamefully ordinary—out of ‘Ordinary Time’—into a world of exceptional expectations and revelations where miracles abound. And though my place has been given me in this new realm, my future is in my hands, and must be shaped by me with infinitely more care and thought than I ever gave before to my actions.”

He broke off finally, and stared at the distant window with its inevitable silver spatters of rain. And he thought with a sigh, Well, that didn’t take my mind off anything. And if he’s dead somewhere on a motel room floor, well, I know I killed him. I killed him. I killed his soul before I killed his body. And he’s the first casualty among my family of what I have become. And if I ever breathe this secret to another living being who is not one of us, well, I will probably become the murderer of that one too. And that cannot ever happen.

If he didn’t stop thinking about it he’d go crazy. Better to go upstairs and pack a bag for tomorrow.

Three a.m.

Something had awakened him.

He turned over and reached for his iPhone.

E-mail from Jim.

He sat up, quickly scrolling through the writing.

“Back at my apartment. Just got in. Can I see you tomorrow after nine a.m. Mass at St. Francis? And thank you for sending Elthram. God only knows how he found me, but until he tapped on my window, I had no idea anybody was looking for me!”