Chapter 10 #2
Granted, Abraham had never asked God for his miracle.
He’d simply received his order and performed his task, which, one could argue, also made him a kind of a psychopath.
He was a person willing to murder his only son because a disembodied voice had entered his brain—madness, by definition.
It was also the source of the story’s great power.
If you doubted the existence of God, Abraham was a schizophrenic child-murderer.
If you believed, Abraham was the father of faith.
Granted, too, Abraham’s was a much more extreme case than mine.
To kill your child was a bloody, irrevocable act, whereas mine was more soft-edged.
To “give someone up,” I thought. What did that mean, exactly?
Was Sarah even mine to give? And giving her up, did that mean to give her up entirely, as in, never see her again, or did it only mean to give her up physically and emotionally, to simply withdraw?
I assumed in this case the deal definitely meant giving up having sex with Sarah, and with it, our whole dream of procreation.
Definitely that. But did it mean we could never speak again?
Was a platonic friendship permissible? What was the core intimacy here? What was the real her of her?
My thoughts kept turning this way, making analogs, seeking loopholes, as the morning shadows slanted and dissolved.
When I was done cleaning, I put on my shoes and went out for a walk, thinking some movement might bring more clarity.
I was already starting to wonder if I’d made a bad deal.
I was curious whether my prayer would have been answered if I’d made a lesser promise.
Abraham had talked God down from destroying Sodom unless a hundred pure souls could be found.
He’d worked Him down to one soul, which of course couldn’t be found, and God had destroyed Sodom anyway.
I could have promised to give up drinking or using plastic.
I wondered if a person could renegotiate a thing like that, if a prayer could be returned.
Apparently, anything could be returned. Death could be returned.
But how could I get back in touch with the store manager?
I walked into the trails near the house, fondling my phone, wanting to call someone but not knowing exactly who.
The main person I wanted to call was Sarah, of course, but she was the one person I was apparently prohibited from talking to.
Not that I could call her anyway. I’d been getting texts from Phil all morning, telling me Sarah was in the hospital in Medford, just down the highway, recuperating nicely but not yet ready for contact.
She’d been diagnosed with a concussion and a broken wrist and collarbone, he said.
She’d be fine, but needed some time to heal.
So the resurrection hadn’t been a complete success after all.
She hadn’t been returned from death totally intact. Maybe that gave me some leverage.
Other than Sarah, I couldn’t think of anyone else to call.
I had a lot of friends I could talk to about normal problems, the mundane issues of family and work and such, but this situation was too complicated to explain.
Also, I’d have to confess the adultery part, which was embarrassing and a betrayal of Sarah’s trust. It was too much to put on anybody.
And I could already predict what they’d tell me: see a therapist; get some sleep.
I arrived at a giant cedar at the edge of the neighborhood, a tree that I loved.
It had a massive, fluted trunk with branches starting about fifty feet up that radiated in near symmetry to the crown.
It was like a huge, circular stepladder into the sky, I always thought.
I stared up the tower, through the arms, at the bright sky beyond, smelling the tree’s spicy scent, listening to its soft needles whisper.
Craning my neck, I half expected to see horsemen or seven-headed beasts come galloping through, but there was only the slow movement of the clouds.
Already, the events on the mountain were becoming a dream.
I made it through the afternoon and cooked myself a stir-fry for dinner.
The smell of sautéing garlic brought me another step back into my body.
I had some beets and I roasted them as well.
The swirl of color inside the pink beets was beautiful to behold, these splashy watercolors on every cut face.
These were the kinds of miracles I understood.
If Sarah had been with me in the kitchen, I’d have forced her to stop and appreciate the beets’ beauty, too.
I ate out on the deck and watched the traffic on the distant freeway.
The more time that passed, the more comfortable I was feeling in everyday reality.
Back in the normal world, where people drove up and down I-5 and drank beer with dinner, it was getting easier to explain the miracle away as an elaborate hallucination, images lighting in the synapses of an exhausted, smoke-poisoned brain.
I could see that a genie God who granted desperate wishes was fundamentally ridiculous.
If He existed at all, He wasn’t some Old Testament vaudeville act, extorting promises from His children with His rickety thunder-and-lightning machine.
By the time the sun went down, I’d begun folding the events into a story that I’d tell Sarah as soon as she was able to hear it.
I was beginning to appreciate the events in all their secular danger and suspense.
What a wild tale. I could see how we’d look back on it one day as our fiery passage from one chapter of our lives to another, the ultimate stepping stone on the path of our romance.
We’d tell our children about it someday around the dinner table.
As our lives went on, and our love grew, we’d bring it up every once in a while to remind ourselves of our dramatic beginning in this miraculous universe without miracles.
After dark, I made tea and lay down on the couch, planning to watch a movie.
I’d barely opened my computer, however, when my mom called.
She’d already called a few times during the day and although I’d reassured her of my safety a few times via text, I didn’t see how I could refuse her any longer, so I picked up.
“Arthur!” she said. “Jesus Christ! What happened? I can’t believe you were in that forest fire. I’ve been watching the news! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, already feeling assaulted.
“Are you sure?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “How did you even hear about it? I haven’t talked to anyone yet.”
“Jane told me,” she said. “She says everyone at the bookstore is talking about it. It’s big news. They say you’re a hero. What were you doing, running into a fire? Are you crazy?”
I didn’t want to tell my mom the whole story.
I loved her, but I didn’t always want to give her the details of my life.
Still, I felt obliged to tell her something, so I gave her the abridged version, spinning my relationship with Sarah as chastely as possible and downplaying the firefighting scenes, knowing she didn’t want to hear about her only son almost getting annihilated by flames.
I only slowed down once I got to the miracle itself.
I hadn’t intended to tell her so much, but I found it interesting to hear myself narrating the episode.
“My goodness,” she said when the story was done. “That is quite an adventure, Arthur. You’re sure you’re okay?”
“It’s been pretty intense,” I said. “But yeah. I’m all right.”
“That smoke can really do some damage, you know,” she said. “It can poison your whole system. You should probably see a doctor.”
“I don’t have smoke poisoning,” I said. “Don’t worry, Mom.”
“And your friend is doing all right?” she said.
“She’s in the hospital now,” I said. “But yes, doing okay.”
“And you’re sure you’re fine?” she said. “You sound a little… I don’t know… confused.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “It was just a very strange thing that happened.”
I could feel her letting the story settle on the other end.
She was smoking a cigarette, her lifelong vice.
I could almost see the gray sails curling out of her mouth, dispersing into the darkness above her frizzy head.
Some of my earliest memories involved smoke carving its elegant whorls.
Even three thousand miles away, I could almost smell that wonderful, acrid scent.
“It’s funny,” she said, exhaling. “I didn’t even know you believed in God.”
“I don’t know if I do,” I said.
“You write about religious things so beautifully,” she said. “But always in such an abstract way.”
“Thanks, I think,” I said.
“You know I love your books, honey,” she said. “I just never thought of you as a praying person, that’s all.”
“I’m usually not,” I said.
“Seems like God really did you a favor this time, though,” she said. “He helped you out, big time.”
“I’m sure there are other explanations,” I said.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m sure they exist.”
“It seems like you were talking to somebody up there,” she said. “Seems like someone answered. Why would you doubt it?”
I could tell she was fascinated by the whole situation.
She wasn’t someone who adhered to any particular system of belief, but she loved nothing more than processing a complicated, morally opaque dilemma.
I could see how this event held all the mysteries and metaphysical conundrums she most craved.
Not to mention she still sensed details regarding my relationship with Sarah to extract.
“Strange things happen all the time,” she said. “Blessings. Portents. I’ve had a lot of things happen to me that I can’t explain.”
“Oh yeah?” I said. “Like what?”