Part 30 (2/2)

You can't die, I say That's just unacceptable tofan of the idea, either He wheezes for a , I can't talk Telldrop in the tower; and the wonton soup at Epcot; and Tinker Bell sliding down on her cable through fireworks; and a baby bird we found under a park bench, fallen froon, hoe sat with it till a guy with a brooasps You've done

The line between us is crackling, and I know I' him on the line for oes out farther every time

Tell me some noble deaths, he says

I remind him that when Socrates had drunk the heether-the cold was creeping up his legs, how his students bent over his, how his students bent over hiraphy I just finished, he was coughing into his napkin bright red arterial blood, and once the doctor announced it was hopeless, chane was called for

Dev coot that crease in his forehead that co, and his hand settles on my shoulder

Remember back when I was in school, I finally say into the putty-colored receiver, how you bought all those lunches and theater tickets for me, when I asked how I'd ever pay you back? Remember what you said?

He's too breathless to respond

You said, It's not that linear You're gonna go on to help soo on to help soot a chance to help my assistant out of a pinch And she asked how she'd pay me back, and I told her the story I'd never have done that without you

He's struggling to say so, barely audible his voice is, a plume of air, the smoke trail a voice leaves behind He says, Tell her to thank natius Late have I loved you, O Beauty, so ancient and so new, late have I loved you For behold you ithin ht you outside and in s which you have made You ith s, yet had they not been in you, they would not have been at all You called and cried to me to break open my deafness and you sent forth your beams and you shone upon rance upon ustine, City of God City of God After ten natius received a vision that pers to see God in all things-the stated goal of his Spiritual Exercises, which are part of each Jesuit's novitiate

This doesn't innately appeal to me Despite s I prefer to find God in circumstances I think up in advance, at home in my spare tiumball machine when I put the penny of my prayer into it

It's not virtue that leads me to the Exercises but pain Only a flamethrower on my ass ever drives me to knock-knock-knock on heaven's door Pain, in hteous action

After six years in Syracuse-Dev's eleven-I lost a love; or more accurately, I drove one aith a stick It see for the purposes of this narrative, so here's the short version On tour in London, I'd taken up with a tall Cah work (Let's say his job was in TV) Our littery aspect He owned more tuxedos than a maitre d', and I jetted over for his black-tie soirees He spent a sureen Syracuse with Dev and me But the distance was a misery He ran a company in London, and I could never ed-as in to be

For a few months I deluded ed on fancy barrister bookcases for his five thousand, first-edition books, which arrived in duct-taped bubble wrap I cooked steamshi+p roasts

But Syracuse was drearier than London, with exactly zero tuxedo-specific events beyond the occasional pro bachelor with time on his hands wasn't exactly a couture fit for a fortysoled while chucking a basketball at said bachelor's crotch (Youinto my computer) The burden of the move quite literally broke the Brit's back-a slipped disk flattened hi his dinner to him on a tray, I wanted to bubble-wrap him and stick stamps on his forehead (So much for in sickness and in health in sickness and in health) We scheduled back surgery in London, Dev and I letting a sum if we could get the deposit back on the reception hall, envisioning the dress I'd bought boxed up withlike an adult instead of a gradeschooler with a Cinderella costuive up a fancy job and house in Notting Hill) I broke things off, but his departure tore open an old wound

Once he's gone, I begin to sense-as I shove h the superiant S on my chest for Spinster Dev's preoccupied with friends and rap records Despite Patti and friends, the old lack of close faly mad at God, who, it may seem nutty to say, is real to me after years of prayer, not like the Easter Bunny or anything All pain stillJohn, who steers race We iven he's six-five and a former Oly, I only have to score a single point to win

As a young man, John had been torn between a career as an athlete and the Jesuit seetting sober, he'd started a swi Olyuy with curly brown hair and eyes the color of pool chlorine, he pursues that Oly

When we er than I a whether he's called to be a Jesuit To discern the answer, he undertakes a lay version of the Exercises, e nine months later like a creature dipped in finecareer takes off like gangbusters His swi down Olyold-natius jacked up both his mood and his productivity, and-competitive bitch that I am-this spiked my interest

Still, I waffle when a nun outlines the time commitment-classes, spiritual direction, hours of prayer, journals Also, while I wasn't-for longer than I care to ad anybody, I didn't want to scare off any future prospects Iive up any nay-nay till your Franciscan spiritual advisor gives the thu back froap It's right before Christmas in a packed coach car, the overhead shelves craes I settle into aseat with the backrest tilted far back It's the only place left Behindwo with it for a second, I tell her it's stuck in a deep recline Then I lie back while passengers clot the aisles and jas She leans forward and says, very close to my ear, I bet if I yanked your hair, you could move that seat I bet if I yanked your hair, you couldstate of half-sleep, I snap awake and shoot back, You picked the wrong bitch to fuck with on this train

Around us, the entire car stops People hold gestures midair She starts to kick the back of my seat-hard and rhyth like anything but an aniized to her by now But I sit there fu this because I' this because I'e I', but eventually, she says with force, You better not get off in Albany, bitch, 'cause I'll slap your face

With blood pounding in my temples and all the veno to an instant, I press my face into the slot between the seat and theand hiss, If you touchhand off

I don't even knohere this sentence co off a hand-I lack even a pair of cuticle scissors All human activity within sound ofwith hatred for us both The girl withdraws like a slug doused with salt, and the train lurches west

About twenty minutes out of the station, while I sit infused with acid at the outburst, I try to write the girl a note, but I wind up crouching by her seat to apologize She shrugs coolly

Once home, I call my sobriety coach, Patti, who says, What d'you expect, Mare? Run around without a ain

I wasn't that bad back then

Silence from Patti, who knows better

Okay, soests I doctor bathwater with lavender salts, set votive candles all over, kill the lights, then step into my own baptismal fount Maybe there I can rethink events on the train Follow that, she says, with a list of how your life has changed since you quit drinking

Lying back in the fragrant water, I let a washcloth obliterate ot on the train

It's the old story Underslept and underfed, I'd been running withquarterback dodges and rolls on crowded holiday streets, while behind me, pedestrians dove for cover I was behind in every conceivable way So the old attack dog started howling through my head as I'd loped Take the subway, the sane voice had said Take the subway, you can buy a sandwich Then counterattack claimed I needed cardio for the blubber on my ass A sandwich isn't the solution You need to refinance You need five hundred dollars this week or Dev's Christht as well call it the voice of the Adversary, for once I tune in to it, I've lost my real self-the God-made one, akin to others The Adversary's voice can suck me into the maelstrom of my tornado-force will, which'll chew up anybody in its path, me included

The washcloth steams my features soft, and once the water's cold, I oil myself up like a bodybuilder, slip on sweats, then torapupair hockey in the baseed in ten years The boys clattering downstairs are a nightly antidote to the shi+pwrecked household I grew up in, and we no longer have to roll coins from the sofa cushi+ons in order to afford meatballs Last month at Mother's surprise birthday, I floated in the pool alongside her and Lecia while brother-in-law Torill and Dev and his cousin did cannonballs

The night after the train debacle, I drive under a sky black as graphite to meet my new spiritual director for the Exercises-a bulky Franciscan nun nalasses that les

Asked my concept of God, I , all-powerful, etc But as we talk, it bobs up that in periods of uncertainty or pain-forlorn childhood, this failed relationshi+p-I often feel intentionally punished or abandoned

How's that possible, I say, if I have no childhood experience of a punishi+ng God?

Margaret says, We often strap on to God the lected, God seems cold; if you've been bullied, He's a tyrant If you're filled with self-hatred, then God is ahere with me now?

I don't know, like sohs at this and says, I see you-she peers through those lenses-what I can see of you, as my sister, God's beloved child The hairs on your head are nuether, you and me, to shi+ne on each other a while

So you don't judge me? I want to know

For what? she said I don't even know you

Well, I say, I'ain soht ask: Should you be vulnerable to a man without some spiritual commitment? Is that God's dream for you?