Chapter 12 #2
I still didn’t believe Candy’s story because, by believing it, I thought I might make it real.
I would have sensed something, wouldn’t I?
Sarah’s voice would have called out to me, or some animal would have appeared in my path.
But nothing like that had occurred. I went through the previous day in my head, looking for any signs or portents, but I couldn’t find any, not a single ripple in the fabric.
How was it possible that Sarah had exited the physical plane without telling me?
I walked outside to get some air as flashes of guilt began detonating on my skin.
They clustered on my arms, my toes, and my scalp, coming in hot waves.
Already, it was occurring to me that the accident might be my fault.
Was that possible? I had to admit, the universe had been pretty clear on the matter.
The whole idea had been to let Sarah go in order that she might live, and yet I’d walked away from the agreement and done the exact opposite.
For the past weeks, I’d been seeing her, touching her, ignoring the whole covenant, assuming I was living in a rational universe.
But now, too late, I was seeing the consequences.
I’d disobeyed a divine command and I was paying for it with Sarah’s life.
I felt like I was being x-rayed by God. I was suddenly exposed in my deepest recesses.
What a fool I’d been! Willfully blind to His authority, willfully ignorant of His absolute might.
All this time, He’d been shining His light in my face and I’d pretended not to see it.
I understood now, too late, that God was in fact everywhere.
He was the author of everything, rationing every moment, coloring every image.
His moods of mercy, anger, love, and boredom were the very texture of our days. How had I not been aware?
I bowed my head and tried to pray, imploring God to bring Sarah back like He had before.
But this time, the prayer didn’t catch. I couldn’t seem to marshal the right concentration.
I kept murmuring the words over and over again, in different configurations, but they were leaden and flat.
They didn’t pick up any energy, they didn’t float.
I tried orienting my prayers elsewhere, into the ground, toward the trees, but nothing happened.
We’d been through this before, and the prayer was used up.
It was like a parody now, a sad, belated simulation.
Still, there were many mysteries that I couldn’t understand.
If God was everywhere, I wondered, and in everything, then why wasn’t He in me, too?
Or if He was, why didn’t I feel Him? And why would He implant me with the illusion of freedom, and offer me a seeming choice, only to make me choose wrongly?
Why would He imbue me with these desires only to hunt me down for my mistakes and punish me with such cruel, asymmetric force?
What kind of system was that? As I stood on the deck, gripping the railing, the whole rabbit hole of free will opened before me.
And so, within moments of feeling God’s power, I was already doubting Him again, and hating Him, too.
I hated Him even though I didn’t believe in Him.
And then, even as the rage and wonder got tangled, and tangled again, I could see I was thinking about the situation all wrong anyway.
What kind of egomaniac was I, to put myself at the center of this?
I wasn’t the origin of these events. They weren’t my doing.
Sarah and Phil had been in a terrible accident.
Sarah had died. They were the victims here. I was barely even a bystander.
I stood on the deck and stared at the sky, the cirrus clouds like marbled fat in the sky’s blue flesh.
In an oak tree, a robin was staring at me.
Up until that moment, I’d been holding Sarah’s death at arm’s length, thinking about it as an abstraction.
But now, at last, it hit me as reality. She was gone.
I’d never touch her again. I’d never kiss her lips or feel her fingers in mine.
I’d never see her drinking wine or walking in the park in the sunlight.
I’d never see her lifting her hips to slide off her underwear, or staring at her computer, or chopping garlic on a wooden block.
How was that possible? How was I supposed to live in a world where she wasn’t?
Even though I didn’t believe in God, I cursed Him.
What the fuck is Your problem? I asked the clouds.
You could have done anything. You could have moved Sarah to another city, or changed her heart and saved her marriage.
Instead, You murdered her in cold blood.
The punishment was so out of proportion to the crime.
It was the act of some deranged cartel boss, not the wise, loving father or mother we heard so much about.
I got no answer from the clouds. How could it be, after all this divine activity, that I still expected a sign?
I staggered back indoors and lay on the couch and spent the next hour trying to stockpile every memory of her I had.
I tried to harvest every sense impression from my synapses before they disappeared.
I thought about the sound of her voice on the phone, the sound of her peeing in a toilet.
I traced the curve of her back, the freckles on her shoulders.
I imagined the diameter of her ankle, the funny, splayed arrangement of her toes.
It was her body that kept coming back to me, in every light, naked and clothed.
I tried to recall her smell, the feel of her hair.
I wanted to remember all the clothes she’d worn, like those black galoshes, and the tan shorts that’d ended up crumpled on the floor.
I wanted to map all the rooms she’d walked through, the logic of all her arguments.
I wanted to imagine how she might have aged.
There were calls coming in but I ignored them.
It seemed the news of her death was traveling fast. The librarians knew, and the people from her solstice party, judging by the numbers appearing.
Her parents must know by now, too, I thought.
How horrible. They’d received the worst news two people could receive, and they were surely pulverized.
I wondered if I should call anyone to tell them the news myself, but I didn’t move from the couch.
All around the world, her memory was lighting in people’s minds, connecting us all in a spherical constellation of grief.
Most of all, I began to think about Phil.
He was lying in a bed somewhere, broken and afraid.
I pictured him being dragged from the smashed car, placed in a gurney, and driven through the pine wastelands to the hospital.
Was he awake for any it? I wondered. Was he awake now?
He’d been through hell, and he’d awaken in hell.
He’d seen his wife die in front of his eyes, and now he had to live with that image for the rest of his life.
He was in wracking physical and emotional pain. How thoroughly I’d wronged him.
I thought about going to see him in the hospital, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea.
I doubted he wanted a visit from me at the moment.
In other circumstances, I would’ve gone immediately.
If he’d been in an accident alone, Sarah and I both would have been there, waiting in the room.
But in this situation, considering everything I’d done, it was more complicated.
I doubted Phil wanted to wake up and see his wife’s lover hovering over his bed.
Lying on the couch, staring at the wall, I debated what to do.
What was I being called upon for? And for that matter, who was doing the calling?
I wanted nothing to do with God’s calls anymore.
But what about my own calls, the calls to myself?
If only I knew exactly how much Phil knew about Sarah and me, I would’ve had a better idea of what the moment demanded.
But I didn’t know how far the conversation with Sarah had gone.
Had they already gotten to the confession when the buck hit, or had they only gotten partway?
And if they’d only gotten partway, how far?
The specifics mattered, because if Phil knew about the affair, I probably needed to stay away and give him space.
But if he didn’t know, maybe I was in a position to help.
In the end, I decided to go. It seemed worth the risk.
If Phil didn’t want to see me, he could always tell me to leave.
But if he did want to see me, I wanted to be present and accounted for.
I figured we’d blown beyond the point of normal etiquette by now anyway.
Whatever betrayals had occurred were over, and the moment had come to be together, human to human.
It was time to go offer myself as a friend.
I drove slowly through town, careful to obey every traffic signal and stop sign.
I wanted to avoid any more judgments, even the petty kinds.
Plus I now saw every car on the road as a possible projectile of God.
Every cat, dog, and plant was a possible spy, fabricating their reports, all agents of His cosmic police.
They might appear as living creatures, with their own agency and appetites, but in fact they were instruments of God’s surveillance.
Or maybe they weren’t. I had no idea. Maybe He granted us all life and then turned His back on us.
Maybe He allowed His machine to operate without any attention. He let His monsters run wild.