ANYTHING BUT AN ANGEL'S FLIGHT

The flight from Pearson Airport to what was once known as 'Logan' was uneventful, albeit the first time I'd been on a Gilead airliner. I'd been on many Canadian airlines - I'm told that even the service one receives on them is not what it once was. It's what my MP said, anyway.

I was now his constituency manager, rarely made it to Ottawa where his chief of staff ran everything. Rarely needed to go. Because of my position in his circle, I had asked for - and got - this assignment. Only the chief of staff knew the personal interest I brought. I had been briefed by both Canadian as well as American security people - actually met the legendary Mark Tuello, now in his 70s and retired out west somewhere, called from retirement just for the briefing with me. He'd been the one supervising the attachment of a watch to my wrist - the equivalent to an ankle-bracelet, so that my whereabouts could be monitored. Cutting it off or having it lose power would be interpreted as a hostile act.

About that I had asked Tuello, what happened after that? He said in his most comforting drone, "We take it from there." Oh good. At the end of the session, he had stopped me cold by saying unasked for, "I knew your mother." That one caught me by surprise, and he wrongly seemed to assume that my silence was that I did not want to talk about her.

Canadian airplanes were spartan. You always had to buy stuff in the terminal because there wasn't much once in flight. But the comfort on them was miles ahead of Gilead-flight.

For one thing, since I was a woman, I had to have a male escort both in the air as well as while on the ground down south. I'd tried to drag Oliver with me, this was one time that my older brother had not gone 'all protective' about me. Our moms had been the ones to object - both to me going on this junket, as mom-Em said she wasn't going to lose either or both of her children to that 'evil world'.

My escort on the flight was what passed for a flight attendant. The only weird thing about that experience was that he said he'd have to escort me to and from the toilet on the airplane. All things turned out to be equal, because during the cruise I had no need.

Looking down from 35,000 feet, I tried to spot differences between Canada and Gilead. The Gardner Expressway in Toronto had been packed with cars, and Lake Ontario revealed no discernible difference or boundary between the two countries. The number of houses below betrayed Rochester, as well as eventually Syracuse. The highways were there, but very few cars. Trucks mainly, not a very busy landscape below.

Because this was classified as a Canadian government junket, I was told I'd be met on the tarmac outside of the terminal. But on arrival, the plane nosed into the terminal - he took my luggage and apparently only assumed I was going to follow him to the front of the plane. I quickly got my coat and scrambled to the front to the exit.

I was met at the Gate ticket-counter by another man holding a sign with my name on it. That part was actually funny, I mean, for one thing I was the only woman on the flight. The other dozen passengers had all been male, and all looked militaryesque. He introduced himself as 'Eye of God Josephson', and didn't really say much after that. I instinctively rubbed my wrist-bracelet watch, fidgeting with it so much that I tried to mask my anxiety by checking the time. Yes, it even told the time.

Another, smaller man with him took my luggage, and asked, "Is this all?" I assured him I had packed lightly, not repeating the last words my brother, Oliver, had said, "Don't take so much that you can't stick it under one arm and run like hell."

ARDUA HALL

Which is the answer I got once in the SUV, and leaving the old Logan Airport on to the old I-90, already we were in the tunnel underneath Boston Harbor.

I'd asked, "Where are we going?" Ardua Hall was the answer. As spartan as the airplane I'd just been on, the 'Eye of God' guy kept his remarks just as brief. As a woman, I'd had my fair share of condescending encounters with men, particularly in law school with some of the snobs who were students there. But the condescension with this guy was something a little different. It betrayed a veiled hostility which I was positive I had not earned. It was the bare version of what Tuello had covered, but which my mom-Em had recounted with far more emotion and fear in her voice.

My simple question about our destination was met with the coldest and most hostile tone I've ever heard, spoken in just two words, "Ardua Hall." It was enough to clam me up for the rest of the ride.

There it was. Ardua Hall. Mom-Em had called it the Former University Compound, the former and oldest part of Harvard University. She'd guessed that I'd be housed in one of the dormatories there, "Unless things have changed," she added. Mom-Em had studied there, which was a far cry from her childhood in Montana. Auntie Moira used to make fun of mom, because instead of clubbing and drinking - like Moira's friends had done at university - mom had buried herself in the library, wanting to get a Harvard Ph.D. to show everyone back home in Montana. Particularly, as mom-Syl said, "to show those mean-girls who'd bullied your mom so much."

In school, mom-Em had been tagged to go to the University of Montana in Missoula. Her marks made that almost automatic. That institution had produced Rhodes, Truman, Goldwater and Udall scholars, not bad for a town way out in five-valleys in the Rocky Mountains. Emily Malek was destined to be one of those kind of scholars, right out of high-school.

Yet, I remembered mom eventually saying - she was never big on talking about herself - "coming out in my senior year was not popular." She said she regarded all that stuff as no one's business, knew all too well the small-town gossip, about which she did not want to be the subject. She'd been 'blown out of the Big Sky," as she put it, when 'parking' with a guy from the football team, a guy she really liked - just not in that way. But he'd got a little rough, and she told him why it would never work out.

Next day her life was blown open - not to mention that she'd yet to tell her parents, who now knew.

As it was - mom always kept this part short - a school counselor told her to forget about Missoula, that it would be better for her if she headed for a New England big city. "No one would care, out east," the counselor had said, "besides, with your marks you'd be competitive at even places like Harvard. I can make sure the application, at least, goes smoothly."

The last words of that counselor always caused a wry-chuckle from mom, "Being a lesbian won't get you into trouble in Boston." The irony that mom-Syl filled me in on was that mom-Em's town on the Milk River was now part of the disputed zone near the Alberta border, and had it's fair share of gender-traitor refugees.

All that flashed through my mind as I was deposited in front of a grand, outdoor staircase of Ardua Hall. Finally, some women. Two brown-smocked women with two other white-clad girls coming down the stairs.

The older woman, herself looking almost 80, walked up to me, said, "Welcome to Ardua Hall, and welcome to Gilead. I'm here to make you comfortable as well as to coordinate your itinerary from this end. You can call me, Aunt Lydia."

THE AUNTS

These were the legendary Aunts. My God - Aunt Lydia. In the flesh. From that first encounter, I understood why both Auntie Moira as well as Auntie Rita had seemed to recoil at us kids calling them that. My word, I hope to God that I was not part of making life in Canada intolerable for them. We were just kids.

There I was, staring out the dormitory window. Imagining mom-Em reading out there in the old Harvard Yard. While others were partying. Like I'd done before law school. It was truly eerie being here.

Every once in a while, a group of red-clad women would pass by in that yard, two-by-two. A more disorderly group of white-clad girls would scurry about. I must be hearing things - suggestions put into my mind by mom - because I thought I'd heard the occasional, muffled scream.

I'd been warned about that by Tuello. But he also assured me that the Gilead state, "was not dumb." He had said, "You're an envoy of a Canadian member of parliament. They are going to be on their best behaviour around you. Just make sure your wrist bracelet doesn't slip off in the shower." At that thought I found myself checking it - yes, it was still secure and could not slip it past my wrist. I thought that the next shower I took, I'd really lather up my hands and see if it would slip off. But that was crazy.

What if it did?