Gibbon's Decline and Fall by Sheri S. Tepper Read Free Book Online Page B

and for you. Love, Aggie
. Enclosed with the invitation was a printed leaflet extolling the virtues of the contaminant-free and succulent oysters, ranch grown at the Abbey of St. Clare. Carolyn was a pig when it came to oysters. Ophy loved them, but there hadn’t been any edible on the East Coast for several years and might not be ever again.
    Stace asked curiously, “So Aggie is coming this year? She missed last year, didn’t she?”
    â€œShe did. The abbess, Reverend Mother Elias, had died at age ninety something, and until a new one was elected, none of the sisters could get permission to do anything or go anywhere.”
    Stace leaned across her mother’s shoulder to look at the framed photograph on the dressing table: the DFC, camping it up in costume, outside the kitchen door. “How long ago was this?”
    â€œYour dad took that picture when I hosted the 1994 meeting. Six years ago.”
    â€œWhy are you all dressed up like that?”
    Carolyn laughed. “We’d just remodeled the kitchen, and Sophy insisted we should have a dedication. She said the kitchen was as close as people in our culture ever got to the sacred hearth, so we ought to dedicate it as holy ground.”
    Stace, still peering at the photo, said, “That explains the drums, rattles, and panpipes, I guess. Why feathers?”
    Carolyn cocked her head, remembering Sophy’s explanation. “Symbolic, I think. Birds build nests. Humans build homes.”
    â€œWhat did you do?”
    â€œActually, it was rather fun. We did some chanting in what Sophy said was her native tongue. We did some drumming, Sophy burned incense and sprinkled the room with attar of this and essence of that, and we planted some herbs in a special container on the kitchen windowsill. Sophy brought the soil and the pot and the seeds, all blessed, she said. I never asked by whom.”
    â€œIs that the little herb garden? The pretty green trough with the wavy glaze?”
    â€œRosemary, parsley, and thyme, in an emerald pot, yes. I don’t know why they’ve outlived every other houseplant I’ve ever had, but they have. Maybe they really were blessed. Anyhow, we ended the ceremony with a festive meal, and we all drank champagne.”
    â€œWhy haven’t I ever met the rest of them?” Stace asked plaintively. “I only know Aunt Bettiann.”
    â€œTimes we met here, I think you were always off at camp or school or something.”
    â€œSo tell me about the others.”
    Carolyn ran her fingers across the costumed images, then set a fingertip on the oval-faced, olive-skinned image at the left, tassels of red flicker feathers dangling over her ears. “Thisis Jessamine Iolantha Ortiz-Oneil. Her mother is Japanese, her father is Hispanic, she’s a scientist married to a politician, a professional Irishman: all charm and no damn good. Patrick. They used to live in San Francisco. They moved to Utah in ninety-eight, when Bio-Tech went there, and she’s still up to her neck in genetic research.”
    â€œThis is the sculptor?” Stace asked, pointing to a sleek, dark-skinned woman with cornrowed and beaded hair decked with a long upright wing feather. “The one you say could have been an opera singer.”
    â€œYes, that’s Faye Whittier. She has a studio in the mountains outside Denver. She isn’t doing her hair like that now. Last time I saw her, a few weeks ago, she was back to the way I first knew her, with a very short natural cut. She can wear it like that, she has a gorgeous head.”
    â€œIs she married?”
    â€œNever. I guess you’d call Faye an evangelical lesbian. In my untutored opinion she’s a very great artist. She’s recently been commissioned to do a huge fountain for a new trade center in Europe, and she wants me to model for her. Don’t laugh. She has in mind some kind of heavy-bottomed earth-mother figure, no doubt.”
    â€œI