Over dessert, Becca and Raquel began to argue about a friend. “It’s natural for her to act like that,” Becca said. “She’s a mature artisan in the caution mode.”
“She’s not either! She’s an artisan-cast scholar in the observation mode, with an attitude of skeptic. She spends half her time reading the encyclopedia!”
Lee frowned, half afraid to ask. “What are you girls talking about?”
“We’re sorry, Mom,” Becca said. “It’s nothing.”
Lee shot a glance at Ben, who pretended not to have heard. Inexplicable fear and anger rose in her. “Nothing or not,” she said, “I expect you to tell me, young lady!”
Becca looked at her stepfather apologetically, then back at her mother. “It’s about overleaves. Basic personality traits, that is. Each month, each study group is given a book we’re supposed to read and discuss. This month’s is The Michael Primer. That’s all.”
“Yeah!” said Raquel. “It’s neat! Between lives you decide the kinds of lessons you want to learn in your next life, so you pick overleaves that will help. They give you personality tendencies”—she said the words as easily as an adult might have—”to help you experience those lessons. Each set of—”
With a stricken expression Lee jerked to her feet, bumping the table and knocking over two water glasses, then turned and fled to her bedroom. Becca gave Raquel a dirty look. “And you’re a young sage with a mode of big mouth and an attitude of stupid,” she muttered.
“Okay, girls,” Ben said, getting up, “enough of that. Help me take things to the kitchen. Then you can finish the cleanup.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Sorry, Dad.”
With the table cleared and the girls wiping up the spillage, Ben went into the bedroom. Lee lay on her back with a forearm across her eyes.
“Hi, kiddo,” he said. “Want to talk?”
“Oh, Ben, talk is useless. I just want to leave this place. The girls! They’re being turned into cultists!”
“Because they talked about overleaves?”
She nodded. After a moment she spoke again, coldly, with a tinge of a sneer. “I suppose that’s part of Life Healing.”
“No, it’s part of the Michael teaching.”
“Michael who?”
He didn’t answer at once. She wondered if he was trying to compose a reply or avoid one.
“I think of Michael as—possibly the source of stories of an Archangel Michael, but that’s just a notion that occurred to me.”
“Archangel!? Are you serious!?”
He nodded. “Yep. I was then anyway, more or less.”
“Good grief!” She paused. “Where did you run into that?”
“The Michael teachings? I heard about the books maybe twenty years ago. Read them and reread them. They were one of my New Age interests.”
Lee sighed—perhaps in resignation—and sitting up, turned on her reading lamp. “I need to be alone awhile,” she said, “to read something; clear my RAM. I can’t deal with this stuff right now.”
Ben nodded. “You produced a marvelous pair of daughters,” he replied. “As you know. I’ll check the mail, and maybe browse the Web a while—let the girls work things out on their own. They’re good at that.”
* * *
The suds had risen well above the rim of the sink before Raquel turned off the water. Then, with her small bare hand and forearm, she swept the topmost layer off into the other half of the sink. Her older sister watched. “You know,” Becca said, “it wouldn’t foam up so much if you didn’t set the head to spray. Or at all if you waited till near the end to add detergent.”
“I know.”
“Then why do you do it?”
“Because I like to watch it foam up. It’s fun.”
Becca shrugged. “That’s why you like to wash by hand, too, instead of using the dishwasher.”
Raquel nodded. “Uh huh. I’m an old sage with a goal of acceptance and a mode of passion, only I think of it as enthusiasm. In the intellectual part of moving center, so usually I act first and think later. You’re an old scholar in moving part of intellectual center, with a mode of observation and a goal of dominance. The only overleaf we have in common is a soul age of old, and strictly speaking, soul age isn’t an overleaf.” Becca regarded her thoughtfully. “You know, we really have to avoid upsetting Mom like this. It’s mean and thoughtless.”