Afterward, they lay together on the mud-colored carpet with their arms around each other, tender and disheveled, talking in whispers, conscious of Mary Martha asleep above them.
“I thought about you all day,” Rebecca told Mike.
“Me too. I kept burning hamburgers.”
She laughed. “Are we ridiculous?”
“I hope so.”
“No, seriously.”
“We are seriously ridiculous,” Mike said.
A last smear of shaving cream under his ear lent credence to this. Rebecca scraped the white foam off his jaw and transferred it to the tip of his nose. He ran his finger along the ridge of her collarbone, to the point of her shoulder and back, and she closed her eyes, savoring the garden-toughened rasp of his fingertip.
“I want a painting,” Mike said.
She opened her eyes. “What?!”
“I want one of your paintings from the garage. The pick of the litter. I think it would go great on that wall.”
“No way.”
Mike smiled, unperturbed, absurdly dignified with the shaving cream on his nose. “Way.”
He had gotten that from Mary Martha, Rebecca knew. She considered the bare wall uneasily. It was strange. Here she lay, naked on the floor with this man, but it seemed too intimate to let him hang one of her paintings in his apartment.
“I’m prepared to pay top dollar,” Mike persisted, and Rebecca laughed in spite of herself.
“Bonnie thinks we’re moving too fast,” she said.
“Look who’s talking.”
“That’s what I told her. But maybe she has a point.”
“Of course she has a point. But this is how fast love moves.”
“So what should we do?”
He mulled this mock-solemnly, then suggested, “I’ve got more shaving cream in the bathroom.”
Rebecca laughed. “See, this is what I don’t understand. You spent all those years praying and fasting and practicing God knows what kind of medieval self-denial, and yet you’re a completely silly man.”
Mike shrugged modestly. “I knew it would pay off eventually,” he said.
She slipped back up the stairs soon after that, reluctantly, but not wanting to leave Mary Martha alone too long. As she readied herself for bed, Rebecca realized that she had forgotten to give Mike his present. The gift-wrapped box of underwear, still in its bag, sat on the floor by her closet. It seemed outrageously glitzy amid the rest of her mundane debris. But that was okay, Rebecca thought contentedly. It was a future of sorts.
Dear Brother James,
Thank you for your very frank letter in response to the news of my renewed relationship with Rebecca. I had not expected what you call my “most recent fling” to cause you such dismay; I had actually imagined that you would be pleased for me. But I realize now that you have continued to think of me as a renunciant, even as I suffered through the confusion of my faith—that you “believe in my vocation,” as you put it, and that by falling in love I have somehow invalidated myself in your eyes.
It is true, as you point out (intending, I am afraid, to bring me up short), that “one cannot go far in prayer without being horrified by the poverty of the self.” But there are richer fruits of prayer. Deeper than a sense of sin and unworthiness, deeper than the self-contempt, the dryness, and the futility of will, the truest revelation of the endless fall through the self toward God is a sense of genuine nothingness. This “humility” is no affectation; it is no false modesty calculated to ease the usual traffic of egos; it is simply realism. I am nothing. I have looked within, long and hard, for the soul that would hasten into God, and in the end I was not there. What is left when we get to the bottom of the self, when we have exhausted all our tricks? Real prayer is a disappearance, a surrender to the embrace of deepening mystery, in darkness. In that darkness, finally, God alone is. And God is infinite surprise.
So say that I have been surprised by love, surprised by desire, surprised by my fear of inadequacy and the fear of loss. Say that I have been surprised by the way a woman’s hair falls across her eyes and by the tender movement of my hand to lift her hair away. Did we really expect to turn into beings of light? Did we really believe that radiance would be best? Say that I am surprised by how much I want to be a man now; say that I have finally found a reason to struggle with myself.
You insist that the image of my living “a monk’s life in the world” had given you heart. But what is the point of the monastic life, in the world or out of it, if it is not perfect openness to the surprise of God? The monastery walls do not exist to protect your calling, Brother James; nor did I escape my calling in leaving those walls—or my celibacy—behind. The ancient monks, seeking quiet for contemplation, found the desert’s emptiness perversely hectic, wild with inner demons, and were tempted to despair; the tidy faith they had brought with them failed before such overwhelming bafflement. But that failure eventually revealed itself to be the point. The faith the desert teaches is a faith that risks and trusts, a faith that survives in the wilderness of the world not through fortresses of routine and unassailable vows but through simple reliance on the mercy of God. And God in His mercy has made us human beings.
I know you wrote from the heart, in genuine concern for the state of my soul. And so I write back from the heart, to assure you I am well. You have mistaken me, I am afraid, if you believe that I am somehow taking the side of “the world” now while you represent “the transcendent.” It is really so much simpler than that.
Yours in Christ,
Mike
On a Thursday afternoon about a week and a half after she had started up again with Michael Christopher, Rebecca had lunch with her mother. She’d been preparing Mike for this all week, gently and a little uneasily, since it was the point at which the wheels had fallen off before. But Mike seemed prepared to take the announcement of their relationship in stride this time.
“There’s still time to wig out, you know,” Rebecca told him on Wednesday night as they sat on the back porch wrapped in a blanket against the night air. “This is your last chance before it all goes really public.”
Mike smiled. “I respectfully decline the chance to wig out.”
“She’s probably going to want to have us over for dinner right away.”
“Yikes,” he exclaimed, endearingly.
She laughed. “I warned you.”
“I’m still recovering from the last shindig at your mother’s house.”
“I could tell her you’re just in this for the sex.”
Their eyes met. She knew what he was thinking; she was thinking it herself. It was too soon to be performing as a Couple. It seemed like a lot of weight to put on something so new. But this was what he had gotten into. This was her life.
Mike, surrendering, said regretfully, “She’s already seen my best jacket, I’m afraid—”
“Phoebe doesn’t give a damn about your clothes.”
“I’m not going to baptize anybody this time. I’m not even going to say grace.”
“I’ll be happy if you just get through the evening without deciding to renounce the world again,” Rebecca told him, a little chagrined by the relief she felt at what struck her as perfectly normal in-law reluctance.
She and Mike sat quietly for a moment. Their time on the back porch together after Mary Martha was in bed had already evolved into a cherished ritual for them both. They would sit out here for hours at a stretch, sipping glasses of wine, holding hands and talking and smoking the occasional cigarette. It felt comically like dating, but dating without all the fuss and bother, the dinners out and the small talk, the events requiring tickets and costumes, heroic exertions in quest of a simple quiet moment with someone you could care about. She and Mike had cut to the chase somehow.
He had unerringly picked her favorite painting from the stacks in the garage, a modest study of the bend in the river where she had grown up in coastal New Jersey. She’d painted it for her mother not long after John Martin die
d: the view from their old back porch, golden marsh grass spilled against meandering blue, steadied by mud flats and sturdy green pines. Rebecca had called the work Low Tide, which in retrospect may have been too mordant; Phoebe, gently refusing the gift, had always said the picture made her sad. But Mike had gone right to it, and it opened inward now from the wall above his futon like an unsuspected window.
Rebecca gave him a sudden hug. “I don’t trust it,” she said. “It’s too good to be true. You are going to want to go back into the monastery. Or you’ll meet another woman—I’m just your transition relationship.”
“My ‘transition relationship’?”
“Between God and…whatever. The real world. I’m a scaffold, a temporary support during the construction of the actual building.”
“Which is?”
“I don’t know. It’s just my paranoid scenario; I’m not a placement agency.”
Mike laughed. “Well, I’m not going anywhere.”
“People never are. Right up until the moment that they do.”
But she didn’t really believe he was going to leave. To consider the possibility was more like watching a horror movie for the thrill of being scared. What Rebecca really believed was that she had been given a miraculous second chance in love. And she was determined not to blow it.
She met Phoebe at one of her mother’s favorite downtown haunts, an elegant place muffled in ivory and cream, too delicate to draw much of a business lunch crowd, on Fourth Street near Mission. Phoebe knew the waiter, who brought her a vodka tonic without asking; Rebecca had a glass of wine. The only other customers in the place were a man and a woman who were apparently beginning an expensive affair.
“Don’t you look pleased with yourself,” Phoebe noted as their salads arrived.
“Do you remember my mystery man, a while ago?”
“I’m sure it’s none of my business,” her mother said with a scrupulous nonchalance that made them both smile.
“It’s Michael Christopher, Mom.”
Phoebe gave a little squeal. “The monk!”
“He’s surprisingly dissolute.”
“Well, I hate to say it, but I told you so.”
“You did not tell me so.”
“I certainly did. I’m so happy for you, darling. You’ll have to bring him over for dinner sometime soon.”
“I told him you’d say that. He’s half a step away from bolting at the very thought.”
“It’s how these things are done, dear. He’s not in the monastery anymore.”
“I think that’s dawning on him.”
“How’s Mary Martha taking it?”
“A little grudgingly, I’d say. It’s all moved pretty fast.”
“She seemed fine with him at the baptism.”
“I think Rory’s put some kind of bug in her ear about it.”
“Ah. Well, she’ll be fine…. I truly am happy for you, dear.”
“I’m just trying not to jinx it.”
Phoebe rapped obligingly on the wooden table, then made a zipping motion across her lips.
Their meals arrived, and they talked of other things as they ate. Phoebe was thinking about a trip to Australia. Or maybe Kathmandu. It had something to do with Buddhism, but Rebecca could never quite keep up.
They skipped their usual coffee, as Rebecca had to get back to work. Phoebe insisted on paying, as she always did. The waiter brought her credit card back, and she signed off for her usual flamboyant tip.
“Shall we say Saturday then?” Phoebe said brightly as they stood to go.
“Saturday?”
“For dinner, dear.”
“I’ll check with Mike.”
“Tell him I promise not to bite.”
Rebecca laughed. “I’m sure that will help.”
On the sidewalk, they kissed and parted, with Rebecca heading toward Fourth Street and Phoebe heading toward Fifth. At the corner, Rebecca glanced back affectionately and noticed that a small crowd had gathered not far from the restaurant entrance. Someone was lying on the sidewalk, a woman in a nice tweed suit. Her mother.
A jolt ran through her entire body, an electric horror. She raced back down the sidewalk and pushed through the bystanders. Someone had already put a jacket under her mother’s head. Phoebe’s face was slack and gray.
“Sthummled,” she murmured, her mouth lopsided. She seemed distressed to be causing a fuss. “It’s very odd.”
Rebecca took her mother’s right hand, which was unnervingly limp. “Are you all right, Mom? What happened?”
“So silly of me, really,” Phoebe said, her words slurring. “I don’t know wha—I don’t…It’s very odd.” Her eyes drifted, seeking words, and her brow knitted in frustration. “I can’t seem to…I’m terribly sorry…”
“Someone call an ambulance!” Rebecca screamed, but there were already at least three cell phones out. Everybody in downtown San Francisco seemed to be dialing 911.
“I’ll be needing an aspirin, I suppose,” Phoebe mumbled with an air of concession. “For the headache.” Her gaze drifted again, and then she said, quite distinctly, “It’s really most extraordinarily odd.”
PART V
In the beginning Love satisfies us.
When Love first spoke to me of love—
How I laughed at her in return!
But then she made me like the hazel trees,
Which blossom early in the season of darkness,
And bear fruit slowly.
HADEWIJCH OF ANTWERP
(ca. thirteenth century)
Chapter Ten
At the hospital, despite the genuine urgency of the attendants, the check-in process seemed maddeningly slow. Phoebe, upright in a wheelchair, gave a fair impression of normality. But Rebecca knew something was very wrong. Her mother was being polite and trying not to cause anyone any trouble, but she couldn’t seem to remember Rebecca’s name, and she was serene in the belief that when her husband arrived everything would be straightened out.
“Your father has always been at his best in a crisis,” Phoebe told Rebecca cheerfully. Her face was lopsided and her speech was still slurred, but there were three traffic accident victims and a gunshot wound ahead of her, and all that blood was undeniably more compelling than the fact that Phoebe believed it was 1973.
When Phoebe was wheeled away for a CAT scan, Rebecca hurried at once to a phone, conscious of juggling both Phoebe’s purse and her own. There were calls to be made; she had a critical meeting with Jeff and Marty Perlman that afternoon; the lightbulb man was on the verge of going into final production. But she found that she didn’t want to call anyone. It all still seemed unreal, and if she could put off that moment when she would have to say, “My mother has had a stroke,” then maybe somehow, magically, the beleaguered ordinary world could still win out.
She rummaged through her purse and found a quarter and a dime, and as she raised the quarter to the slot she began to cry. Because the coin was going to make that little rattle when it fell, because the dime would drop after it, because the dial tone would hum its small demand. She was standing in front of a row of pay phones in a hospital hallway, and everything was going to be different now.
Phoebe’s doctor was a smooth-spoken man named Pierce, incongruously dapper in a pink silk shirt, crisp slacks, and tasseled Italian loafers, smelling of mouthwash and cologne. Rebecca distrusted him instantly; she would have preferred a doctor more disheveled, someone more obviously in the fray. But Pierce seemed unruffled by the horror of her mother’s damaged brain.
“The CT shows evidence of an ischemic stroke, with obstruction of the carotid artery,” he told Rebecca. “We did an MRI, and there’s no indication of intracranial hemorrhage—”
“And that’s good?”
Pierce looked briefly disconcerted, as if such a notion would never have occurred to him. “It’s certainly less bad,” he said. “I’d like your permission to administer a tissue plasminogen activator—a thrombolytic agent, a sort of clot-busting
drug. Often a t-PA can help with the restoration of circulation to the damaged areas, if it’s administered within three hours of the onset of the attack. But there’s a danger of increasing any undetected intracranial bleeding.”
“If you think that would be best,” Rebecca said.
“Definitely.”
“Then do it.” She hesitated. “How is she?”
“It’s very hard to tell at this point how much permanent damage has been done. There is definite hemiplegia—”
“‘Hemi—’?”
“Paralysis, on the right side. There is confusion, some aphasia or loss of speech function. It’s impossible to say for sure how much can be recovered through therapy.” He hesitated. “I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t tell you that sometimes it gets worse before it gets better. And often the worst thing in the case of a stroke like this is the patient’s reaction to diminished capacity. There’s a tendency toward deep depression. She’s going to need a lot of support.”
“My mother is a fighter.”
“I’m sure she is.”
“Can I see her?”
“She was asleep when I left her. And—” Pierce hesitated again. “It’s often upsetting.”
“Then I might as well start getting used to it.”
He met her eyes fleetingly then shrugged. “It’s up to you. I’ll see to the t-PA. We’ll keep her in the ICU for at least twenty-four hours and monitor her closely—hopefully she’s through the worst of it. As for the rest—time will tell.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
The Monk Downstairs Page 17
