Chapter 33
Tara remains fixated on the role, waiting to hear back. One April afternoon, she bounces down the Inn’s outdoor stairs and
through the front door, brimming with news.
“I got the understudy!” she announces. “For Jarena!”
She’s beaming. I’m frowning. I went to cheer Tara on at one of the callbacks, and she blew the competition out of the water.
A dolphin gliding among minnows—it wasn’t even close. “Why are they having you as the understudy?” I ask. “You should be the
lead.”
“Shila got it, remember her?” Tara says. “Her range is insane, way better than mine.”
It’s not true, but I don’t want to piss on her excitement. “Good job,” I say, standing up from the couch, where I’ve been
drinking alone and talking to my AI app, telling it to write me a three-act play that I can sell for a million dollars. It
spits something out, not any worse than what you see onstage, but my pride won’t let me steal it. My conscience doesn’t have
any problem with the plagiarism, but my ego can’t handle being outdone. It’s a real bitch sometimes. “And I’m sure I can orchestrate
something so Shila gets sick or breaks a few ribs the day before the show so you have to fill in,” I say. “Not to worry.”
“EJ,” Tara warns, but she’s grinning as I pour her some whiskey. “The director, Niles, has just got this vision for the show. It’s going to be incredible.”
“Of course it will be, because you’re a part of it,” I say. Affirming with words is something I’m working on because maybe
I didn’t do the best job of it with Jenni and Hal. Chris either, not that I’m thinking about that.
I ask Tara how she wants to celebrate. She says she just wants to stay in and practice her lines and watch that new show about
the women spies of World War II and the men who stole the credit.
“So are we going to church tomorrow?” I ask, a couple episodes in.
She gives me a curious look. “I wasn’t planning to go anymore,” she says. “It was just prep for the audition. Now I’ll be
busy with rehearsals so that’ll be my immersion.”
“Right.” I’m annoyed with my annoyance. “Makes sense.”
But the next day I find myself back at Mother Zion alone. I sit up in the balcony this time so I can hide better and also
look down and observe more as a third party, trying to pinpoint the root of what’s hypnotizing everyone. I even close my eyes
and pretend I believe in God just to see if it makes me feel like I’m floating like they seem to think they’re floating.
It doesn’t work. I’m still alone in my little pew, feet very much on the ground. There’s nothing inside me except an abstract
emptiness, exacerbated by the fullness that everyone else seems to be experiencing. I can’t even feel any connection to my
intuition these days; it’s like the signal has been cut. Jenni was definitely wrong about me having any kind of connection
to the divine.
I find myself thinking about Chris’s wedding again, wondering if it’s going to be in a church and if he and Olivia both believe in God and throw their hands up like the people here do.
Chris and I never really talked about spiritual things, except when he told me he has a hard time believing in heaven after Luke’s death.
I wish I’d probed more about his beliefs.
It feels important now in a way it didn’t back then.
Olivia will probably want to get married in a church just so her family doesn’t bicker.
There’s nothing I dislike more than people going along with something simply to avoid conflict.
My favorite thing about the people at Mother Zion is that they’re not playing it safe or half-assing this Jesus thing. They’re
bold and loud with their whole heads dunked into water that I still don’t believe in, but they do and so I have to respect
their grip on the delusion. It makes mushrooms look like child’s play, really.
Another Sunday, some weeks later, I arrive late to church and take my usual seat up in the balcony. There’s this little old
woman sitting next to me and I like her right away. She’s poking her cane up toward the ceiling dome like it’s a circus baton.
Her tiny hips are swaying side to side. She beams at me with tea-stained teeth, says it’s so good to see me again, which is
odd because I don’t think we’ve ever met, but I guess she’s noticed me. It’s kind of a nice feeling, like I’m one of the regulars,
like I have a place here.
I don’t sing or raise my hands or say anything at all; that part hasn’t changed. It’s not that I’m self-conscious—well, that’s
part of it maybe—but mostly I just don’t want to pretend or fan their hallucinations, however fun that might be.
At some point, though, my foot develops a twitch and starts tapping lightly on the hardwood floor.
“Do you feel her?” the old woman beside me asks, leaning over during a pause between songs. It’s possible she’s been talking
to me for a little while but I haven’t heard her over the trumpets.
“Feel who?” I ask.
“The Holy Spirit, of course,” she says, reaching for my hand and giving it a little squeeze. Her crinkled skin feels like
velvet.
“You think the Holy Spirit is a woman?” I ask. “Shit.”
She doesn’t seem shocked by my language, so maybe her hearing isn’t so great.
She just says the Spirit isn’t a man or a woman, but the energy feels feminine to her, so she goes with that.
“Especially since Mary Magdalene’s gospel was omitted from the Bible,” the woman carries on.
“So this feels like a nice way to even the tables.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. I don’t recall ever learning much about Mary Magdalene except that she was unclean, a whore, which
makes me feel some kind of bond with her.
“Oh yes, her gospel is very real,” the woman says. “It was hidden and destroyed, and no wonder. It’s all about how we all
have the power of God inside us, how we don’t need to rely on anything external. Think of how different things might have
been for women, for all society, if her words weren’t silenced. But men have a way of curating things to encourage hierarchy,
don’t they?”
“Yes, they do,” I agree. Before I can elaborate on how the entire premise of religion is patriarchal, designed to make us
obey man-made rules and leaders, the woman is speaking again.
“The Spirit doesn’t speak to everyone in churches, you know,” she says to me. Her style is very casual, not didactic, which
I like. “You might hear her better if you go into the woods. That’s what helped unlock the door for me back when I was lost.”
Staring at her, I try to determine if she’s gone loony, if she’s suffering from Alzheimer’s, maybe. But there’s no time to
evaluate. She salutes me like I salute doorpeople and then totters out of the pew as the service concludes. I don’t follow
her out. I just sit there on the bench for a while, rolling around in the implications. Would I have been more open to believing
in something bigger than myself if I hadn’t always associated God and church and religion with masculine structures and male
leaders? It probably wouldn’t have changed things much, but it might have changed them a little. You never know.
I try to talk about it with Tara when I get home but she’s all wrapped up with rehearsals, and the rare moments when I do overlap with her, she’s going on about the director, Niles, how he says Tara is a “rare talent.”
“I’ve been telling you that for years,” I grumble. “Why do you only believe it when some guy points out the obvious?”
“He’s not some guy.” Tara’s aghast. “He’s Niles Evans and he’s world-famous.”
“The Redstockings are world-famous too,” I remind her. “Or at least we will be someday. Posthumous legends.”
I don’t believe it anymore, but it’s good for morale to keep up the ruse. Retreating into my room, I try to scrape up some
sleep. I still haven’t gotten rid of my bunk bed. It’s the money holding me back, I tell myself, but it might be the memories
too.
My dreams are weird that night and keep getting weirder in the days that follow. There’s this recurring forest with bright
sunlight splashing through the thrashing trees, but I can’t reach the light. No matter how fast I run, I just keep tripping
over bulbous roots. I wake up all sweaty and itchy, a tightness in my chest.
I want to talk to Chris about my nightmares. I feel like he’d help me untangle them. It’s not like he’s in touch with emotions
or the subconscious or anything—exactly the opposite—but he’s got this practicality that would be reassuring. He’d prove that
I’m not going crazy, that the dreams can be explained by all the ice cream I eat right before bed or something like that.
I still scroll through his social media; it’s just a habit by now. I could stop if I wanted to, but I like feeling connected
to him. That’s not sad; it’s just the way the modern world works. I’m in the power seat here, getting to know what’s going
on in his life. He doesn’t get to know anything about mine because I never post anything. It’s satisfying to preserve the
air of mystery, let him wonder about me. He wonders a lot, I’m sure, and no doubt has regrets. He’s just not brave enough
to do anything about them, and that just proves that I’d never take him back. I’m as anti-coward as I am anti-marriage.
Briefly, I consider what would happen if Arnie got in another accident, if Chris’s instincts would take over and he’d call me first again.
I know he would, but it doesn’t comfort me the way I’d hoped.
It just gets me distraught thinking about Arnie getting hurt.
The little guy has already been through so much, losing Luke and all and then getting hit by the car.
He deserves a nice big yard out in the country with two parents who adore him.
He shouldn’t be cooped up in a Manhattan apartment with a stepmom like Olivia, who just sees him as a nuisance that sheds on her designer wardrobe.
I’d be such a good mom to Arnie. It’s a shame that can’t happen—not that it would happen even if Chris and Olivia weren’t
getting married. The stars would burn out centuries before they’d ever possibly align. I picture Arnie’s happy face when Chris
and I play tug-of-war with him. It makes me wish things might’ve been different, that I could’ve loved Chris in a kind of
way that lasts. But I don’t have those muscles and I don’t want those muscles, so there’s no point dwelling on it.
Mango and Squid die the same night, both of them floating on the top of their tank when I go over to feed them. I try to tell
myself it’s something poetic, that maybe Mango was sick and passed first and Squid chose to go too so they wouldn’t have to
be apart.
Really, I know it’s my fault, that I set the water temperature too cold. I contemplate burying them outside in the park, but
I don’t want dogs to chew them up, so I decide the toilet is the most humane way to go, as anguishing as that flush is, the
swirl of their departure.
I have a hard time sleeping after that, mired in guilt and extrapolating about how this is proof I’m not suited to care for
anything or anyone. Why did I think I was ready for goldfish?
One night I pick up my phone and I’m about to text any of the hundred people who could cure my loneliness, or at least aid in my procrastination.
But I can’t do it for some reason, so I go outside and walk backward laps around the block until Knickerbocker Bagel opens.
I talk Fred the owner into giving me a free egg bagel with extra scallion cream cheese because of what an integral member of the community I am and all that.
Sitting on the curb, I lick all the cream cheese off first, then go for the actual bagel. I like the feeling of separating
two things from each other. It doesn’t inject me with joy but it extracts a bit of the venom, so that’s something. I’ll take
it. I’ll take anything I can get these days, so long as it’s free.