The Wicked: A Love Story

Thirteen

Das ende Ihres Buches

Yet she shall be known & I never.

-The Book of the Law

I had not been pregnant in twenty-six years, and back then it was with Steiger. Now I took the train down south carrying Steiger’s child in my body. Before I had not known where to go, but this time I never thought twice about going to Augustus. He received me and I was nearly ashamed, but he said, “What is the matter?”

“You are unchanged,” I said.

“Nothing is unchanged,” he replied.

He told me of his children, and I was surprised for I had not known him to have any.

“My brother had the children until now,” Augustus said, “and it was I who watched over the family. Susanna and I had a child once, and now I have had others without her. Susanna and I no longer see eye to eye, and she has decided to age. It will be slow, for she is as old as I. It will not happen right away, but it is her decision.”

I did not say anything as pat as, she must have her reasons, especially since I thought, if there was a way to stop from aging, I would have taken it. But perhaps, in some way it age had stopped for me.

“It has not stopped,” Augustus said truthfully. “It has done something, but it has not stopped. How is it that you are with child, Pamela?”

Once he had asked, it did not occur to me to lie to him. I began at the beginning, with Germany and Friedereich coming to a wolf in the woods to beget me, and though, often, his eyes showed interest, Augustus was beyond condemnation or puerile shock, so when I had told my tale, he said, “and Steiger has no idea.”

“Nor must he ever,” I said. “How could one live with such knowledge?”

I remained in that lush southern land my whole pregnancy, and when the child was born, Augustus said, “You know, you need never return there. You could stay here if it suits you.”

It did suit me, and I did wish to stay but I said, “I may come back. I would be pleased to come back, but for now I feel I am needed. There are certain things to be worked through and I am not entirely sure anyone is ready to work them through yet who is not me.”

I was on a train fourteen hours and returned to Lassador in the night. It had never even occurred to me to hide the baby. It was a delight to hold her to my breast. I was full of milk and loved to suckle her, and her hair was red, much like Caroline’s. I thought to live in the coach house, the place where, really, Jimmy and Natalie should live, and I was setting myself up there, and putting the baby to bed when I decided to cross the yard and enter the townhouse. It was empty except for my sister Claire and her son, and she said, “They’re all at the hospital. Caroline isn’t well at all.”

“Caroline?”

“She went into labor.”

“Tonight?’

“Yes, Pam!” Claire nearly shouted.

“What hospital?”

“St. Joseph.”

“I’ll borrow your car.”

I took the baby with me. I did not trust Claire to watch her, and could not leave her in the carriage house, and it was a different time, a time when, if an old woman showed up to the hospital asking for someone sick and she had a baby, there would be someone to take the baby and watch it, some place she could put the child. So I went up, and here is all the family, weeping and strange, and here is Steiger looking heartbroken, and see, I go into the room, and Caroline is not merely sick. She is drained of color. Caroline is dead, and it is all too much, and they say, “Look, the baby died too, and its hair was red like hers,” and they take me into a room too large where there is, like some grave and sweet doll, a baby, like graying porcelain lain on a table, its blue veins showing through white skin, and then, like a miracle to a family so distraught, no magic worked at all, hardly any, I produce a living, lustrous red headed child and put it in Steiger’s arms and say, “Here is your baby. This is your baby, see?”

The baby who died is taken away and buried, and that baby is never named, but I have the Negro priest put water on its head and name it, make it ready for heaven. This is that same night, and I take my red headed baby from the weeping Steiger’s arms. He is so grateful. I take my daughter and Steiger’s daughter to my breast and continue to milk her.

“Delia is your name,” I croon to her. I thought of it in the warm air of the south. “Delia Frye.”

“Well, goddamn,” Marabeth put the book down.

It was so far removed from anything she had known about these people. Steiger she had known her whole life, but as a very old man. Pamela, she had known, but she had been an ancient woman. Grandmother… but Grandmother was always old and there had been no knowledge of her grandfather. Caroline, as the record told, had always been dead and Delia…

But I knew Delia. I knew poor mad Delia. She was Mother’s best friend. She was… she is Jim’s mother. Her own mother was Caroline Dashbach who died in childbirth. She was…But… it wasn’t possible.

“But it changes everything. It explains everything,” Marabeth said, conscious that she was walking around in the motel room talking to herself.

“That’s why Jim never had the Change. Why he’s different from Kris.”

All of their lives, Jim was their first cousin, the son of their Uncle Byron—someone Marabeth just barely remembered—and their Aunt Delia, the daughter of Steiger Frye, their grandfather’s best friend. But if this journal was true, and it was, then Delia was not just the daughter of her grandfather’s best friend. No, Delia was…

“Pamela’s daughter, the granddaughter of Friederich.”

And, and now she had to bend her mind, a child of deep incest, begotten by Pamela on Steiger who was not simply her grandfather’s best friend, but…

Pamela’s son. Friederich’s son. Delia was Friederich’s granddaughter twice over. Pamela’s daughter, Pamela Strauss’s daughter, and her granddaughter.

“And niece,” Marabeth murmured with a shudder.

“She was always so kind ot me,” Jim had said about Pamela. “I was never afraid of her. She used ot take me on her knees and tell me stories…”

Jim was Pamela’s grandson. He was Pamela’s great grandson, her soul scion. He was the only one of Friederich Strauss’s descendants who was….

But her mind did not go to incest.

“He is the purest descendant of Friederich. He is the only descendant of Pamela, several times over. He is… the only one of us who comes from the mating of Friederich and the wolf that created Pamela.”

It was the reason Delia had died insane, probably, but it was also the reason Jim of all the men in the family without the female female barrier, did not change, did not manifest the curse… or the ability.. in the same way.

Marabeth reflected that what she was thinking was so very German. A little too twentieth century German.

“He is the purest one of us all.”