36 Arguments for the Existence of God

by Rebecca Goldstein

  “You’re reading it.”

  “Not really. I’ve simply incorporated it into my weight-lifting regimen.”

  “That’s why I added all those extra arguments for God’s existence. The publisher was supposed to mention its physical-training possibilities on the back cover.”

  “I find it makes a rather good stepladder, too. Easily transported from room to room. Had you intended that as well?”

  “As a stepladder to enlightenment!”

  Lucinda laughed, throwing back her head. She had a brave and sweeping peregrine of a laugh. And just like that it was back, reconstituted, the sense of blessed ease they had shared inside that dappled afternoon. Cass felt the way her whispering breath had warmed his ear.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me whether I like your book? Or are all other opinions beside the point now that the New York Times has found it ‘invariably engaging and provocative,’ and The New York Review of Books has described you as ‘the William James for the twenty-first century’?”

  He couldn’t believe it. She had actually memorized the choice bits from his reviews that were used in the ads for the book. Not even his mother had memorized the quotes.

  “I’m afraid to ask you what you think of it. I’m afraid you’re going to fang me.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that. The fanger of my fangee is my friend.”

  “Funny, I don’t think of myself as a fanger.”

  “Oh, but you are, my friend, a fanger of no mean talent. You fanged God!”

  “Can I have them quote that on the cover of the paperback? ‘A fanger of no mean talent: Lucinda Mandelbaum, author of the Mandelbaum Equilibrium.’”

  She quickly cast her eyes downward, so that her long lashes rested on the ridge of her cheekbones for a few seconds, and when she raised her eyes again it was with a different expression altogether.

  Lucinda’s lips were thin, and if there was any imperfection in her face, it was in her stiff upper lip. But now her upper lip quivered slightly, and the transformation was complete. It was a thing counter, original, spare, and strange, what had happened to her face. He could imagine no face more beautiful in all the world, no face more touching in its exposure. He could never go back and recover the face that had been there only moments before.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “For what?” he whispered back.

  “For saying that that’s who I am. That that’s who I still am, even if I’m here.”

  Cass could have taken offense, but he didn’t. With that strong sense of gazing directly into another, soul to soul, of seeing it all and all at once, as if it were an endless vista laid out before his eyes, he grasped the sorrows behind Lucinda.

  Her move to Frankfurter had obviously cost her dearly, but she never let on. She could have just bided her time here instead of giving it— giving them—everything she had. There was nobody at Frankfurter she needed to impress. But she carried on as she always had, performing at peak, a prizefighting champ. And just for the sheer sport of the thing, for the reasons sustained in her own ardent heart. She wasn’t competing against anyone but herself. That’s what people like Mona didn’t get. He hadn’t altogether gotten it himself until this moment of seeing straight through to the soul of her.

  Lucinda Mandelbaum, of the famous Mandelbaum Equilibrium, just kept playing the game with her heart and soul, making everybody here feel that by her very presence they had all been admitted into the insider game, when all the while she was aware that that insider game was transpiring elsewhere, away from Frankfurter and away from Lucinda Mandelbaum, and maybe she would never get herself back into it the way she had been, the way she had been born to be.

  That transformed face of hers that she was holding out to him told him everything. It was astounding that she would trust him with the sight of it. What had he done to earn the trust of Lucinda Mandelbaum?

  He saw the fragility within the fanger, the willed boldness and gumption of this brave and wonderful girl.

  He saw the dappledness of her.

  Glory be to God for dappled things, he silently quoted his second-favorite poet.

  IV

  The Argument from the Irrepressible Past

  Despite the metaphysical exertions of his night, suspended over sublimity on Weeks Bridge, Cass remembers that he has a meeting with Shimmy Baumzer at eleven in the morning. So, before settling down again beneath the luxury of Lucinda’s comforter, he sets his alarm for 9 a.m., and then, just to be safe, he sets the second alarm clock, on Lucinda’s side. It’s already after six, the bedroom on the top floor of the duplex brightening, and he wonders whether he’ll be able to fall asleep at all, hugging the last tattered bits of epiphany and Lucinda’s fragrant pillow … and is awakened into terrifying confusion, the awful ringing setting his frantic heart to pounding, while he is desperately trying to make it stop, scuttling back and forth across the mattress, fumbling with the two alarm clocks—which one the hell is it?—until he finally realizes it isn’t an alarm clock at all.

  It’s the telephone.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me!”

  “Lucinda?”

  “Lucinda? Who the hell is Lucinda? It’s me! Roz!”

  “Roz Margolis?”

  “Is there another?”

  “Roz. My God. Roz. My God.”

  “For a famous atheist, you sure call out to the deity often enough there, sweetie.”

  Roz is laughing, girlish peals that contrast with her husky voice. It brings her home to him as nothing else could. Say what you will about Roz Margolis, she certainly knows how to laugh.

  “Roz,” he repeats. There’s still some small chance he’s dreaming.

  Roslyn Margolis had been Cass’s girlfriend years ago, when he had first come to Frankfurter to study with Jonas Elijah Klapper. She had spent ten months at Harvard, and that’s how long she and Cass had been together. Still, those ten months had been something. They had been so packed with drama that they had left the impression of being ten years, ten decades, ten eternities.

  They had never lost touch. Over the years, he had been wakened often enough in the middle of the night to answer the phone and hear Roz on the other end, always calling from some remote time zone, miscalculating the hour that it was for Cass, apologizing profusely in between her laughter and questions and unbelievable news. News from Roz always came filed under “Unbelievable.”

  “Cass, I can’t believe how famous you’ve suddenly gotten yourself. It’s incredible! I’ve heard you on NPR at least a hundred times. And I read that feature in Time magazine. The atheist with a soul! Since when are you an atheist? I remember when you were contemplating the Kabbalistic meaning of potato kugel!”

  “Where are you calling from, Roz? Are you still studying the fearsome people of the Amazon rain forest?”

  “No. I’m here!”

  “Where ‘here’?”

  “Cambridge! I’m studying the fearsome people of Cambridge!”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s a good thing I’m not the sensitive type, Cass. You’re supposed to be shouting out, ‘Yippee! Glory be! Hallelujah!’ Or whatever you atheists with souls call out in your ecstasy!”

  Cass moves the phone receiver slightly away from his rattled ear. He’s becoming increasingly convinced that this is no dream.

  “Well, contain your excitement, because I’m going to be in your Roz-starved arms in a few minutes! I’m calling from my car! I’m just passing Porter Square now. What do I do, make a right or a left?”

  “Neither! Listen Roz, I can’t wait to see you, but I’m not even dressed and …”

  “Not dressed? Okay, I just went through a red light!”

  “And I’ve got an important meeting this morning.”

  “I’ll drive you! I’m already in the car.”

  “Roz, you can’t come now.”

  “But I’m here, Cass! I’m literally here! You can’t stop me.”

  How
literally true Cass knows this to be.

  The doorbell is ringing.

  “Guess who-oo!” She’s laughing into the telephone. “You know, I thought of giving you some advance warning, but I know how much you love spontaneity and— Well, will you look at that? Here you are! Cass! Sweetie!”

  Cass has opened the door in his blue terry-cloth bathrobe and slippers, and Roz has thrown her arms around him in a viselike grip, nuzzling him on the neck so that her last words come out muffled.

  “Roz,” Cass is saying as he tries to loose himself from Roz’s amazing clutch. Or not so amazing. Roz has to be in tip-top shape for her field-work. Her sheer physical presence has certainly helped her to gain the respect of some serious hunter-gatherers, who had named her Suwäayaiwä, which translates, at least according to Roz, as “a whole lot of woman.”

  “Roz.” Cass can’t help himself, he’s laughing along with her. “Come on, let go of me. You’re hurting. Let me get a good look at you.”

  Those last are the magic words. Obediently, Roz drops her arms from around Cass’s neck and takes a giant step back on his front porch. She wafts her arms out into the air and executes a little pirouette, something you would think would make a woman of her height look silly, but Roz brings it off with panache. She’s always been quite the dancer. She had certainly led Cass a wild dance in their day.

  “Roz, you look fantastic!”

  “Don’t I?” She puts her two hands together in a fist and shakes them above her head from right to left, a champion’s gesture.

  “No, really, Roz. No joke. You look … you look just amazing.”

  Of course, there have been significant changes in her appearance since Cass has seen her last, but, remarkably, the changes seem to be all for the better.

  Roz has to be forty-six, forty-seven, … no, Roz is nearing fifty. When they broke up, Cass had been twenty-two, stranded on the shoals of a graduate-school debacle, and Roz had just completed her Ph.D., had gotten herself a contract to turn the dissertation into a book, and had nabbed herself a plum tenure-track job in the Anthropology Department at Berkeley.

  In the interim, she’s become a blonde of various artfully alternating and blended tones, and it suits her. Everything about her appearance suits her.

  The Roz whom Cass had loved wore disintegrating jeans or long hippie skirts and preferred to go barefoot, as she had in the rain forest. She could never get the bottoms of her feet entirely clean.

  There’s nothing remotely hippie about the woman on Cass’s front porch, except that she still has hair that reaches midway down her back, full and glossy and conspicuously expensive in its shaping and shading. It’s a much sexier head of hair than she had tossed around at the age of twenty-nine. She had always had good skin, glowing with natural color, and she’s still glowing, though it could be from the cold, or maybe the ars obscura concocted by the cosmetics industry. There are laugh lines lightly traced around her laughing green eyes, but that seems only right for Roz, considering how much laughter must have seized her in these passing years. She’s wearing a short, swingy red wool coat, beautifully cut, with fur round the collar and cuffs that looks undeniably authentic. What would it be? Sable? Seal? Mynx? Or is he conflating mink and lynx? Mynx, if there is such a thing, would definitely suit her. She’s in high-heeled black boots that put her almost nose-to-nose with Cass, and she’s carrying a large black quilted purse whose tasteful gold trim has “Chanel” embossed on it. The only remote reminder of the old hippie attire is the long gold-and-ebony earrings dangling out from under her lustrous hair.

  Smiling seductively, she slips off her black gloves and unbuttons her coat to reveal a swanky red wool suit underneath, with great shiny thick buttons down the jacket front. There’s an ebony-and-gold choker around her throat to match the earrings. The suit skirt is cut short, and the long span of leg above the boots is spectacular. Them’s some gams, as Roz herself had once observed to Cass, and them’s still are.

  The smile above the choker is vintage Roz, halfway between a grin and a leer. She looks, as Shimmy Baumzer might put it, like the fox in the cathouse that swallowed the canary.

  “I’m reversing the clock. I’ve taken control of my biochemistry.”

  The mention of the clock pressingly reminds Cass that he’s going to be late for his appointment with Shimmy.

  “I have a matching mink hat, too, only I didn’t want you to see me with hat-head. It’s in the car.” She tosses her unhatted head in the direction of the red Mercedes she’s parked haphazardly on the street. If she doesn’t get a ticket for parking without a Cambridge-resident sticker, she’ll get one for having her backside sticking out far enough to obstruct traffic.

  “I’m impressed. I’m more than impressed. I’m speechless with admiration. But, Roz, I wasn’t kidding about that appointment.”

  “Who you going to see who could possibly be more important than your best girl, whom you haven’t seen in at least a hundred years?”

  “I’ve got an appointment with the president of Frankfurter. I have to be there in about half an hour.”

  “Frankfurter? That’s perfect, sweetheart! I’d love to see the old place. Get some clothes on! We’re going to be late!”

  So Cass skips his shower and heads upstairs to throw on some clothes, leaving Roz in the living room below. Roz is never shy about poking around and has an anthropologist’s instinct for fieldwork, so it wouldn’t surprise Cass if, by the time he’s loping down the stairs, she’s more familiar with his present life than she was a few minutes before.

  “If you want, I’ll take the wheel, since, as you might remember, I drive like a maniac.”

  Now that she mentions it, he does remember.

  “No, we’ll take my car. I’ve got a faculty parking sticker. You might want to move your car into the driveway, though. You’ll probably get a ticket.”

  “But we’ll be late for your appointment! I’ll just take my chances. Life’s a thrill! Wait a minute, I just want to get my hat. You can’t leave mink lying around in Cambridge. Some PETA nut will break in and douse it with fake blood.”

  He waits for her to get back into the car and backs carefully out of the icy driveway.

  “You sure you don’t want me to drive? I could get us to Frankfurter faster than it’s taking you to get out of this driveway.”

  “It’s fine, Roz. I’ll drive and you’ll talk.”

  “Okay, but don’t think I’m not going to get everything out of you. For starters, I want to know who this Lucinda is. I hope she’s an improvement on that last woman of yours. What was her name? That batty poet with the red lipstick smeared across her teeth?”

  “Pascale Puissant.”

  “Pascale, right. Boy, that was a man-eater if ever there was one. Anyone ever told you you’re a philogynist?”

  “Is there such a word?”

  “Probably not, due to lack of demand. I remember you said her beauty reminded you of a wolverine.”

  “A wolf, Roz, not a wolverine.”

  “Same difference. Red in tooth and claw. Where’s that from?”

  “Tennyson.”

  “Did she stick it out with that doctor?”

  “They lasted less than a year.”

  Roz reaches over and ruffles Cass’s hair, letting her hand drift down the back of his neck. He wishes it didn’t give him the thrill it does. Men’s bodies are cads. Still, the sensation reminds him of Lucinda, if that’s any redemption.

  “You’re better off without her. You should be grateful to that brain doctor—what was his name again?—for luring her away from you.”

  “Micah McSweeney, and I am.”

  “Sometimes I think your mate-selection module got knocked out of whack in the commotion you went through with me.”

  “You may be right.”

  “Remember when you begged me to marry you?”

  “Did I? Sure you’re not mixing me up with some other bloke?”

  They’re both grinning.

  “D
id you? On your knees, did you!”

  “And what did you say? Did you by any chance say, ‘I need a life of maximal options’?”

  “You still remember!”

  Her voice is rich and husky, though the vibrating veins of animation that run through it make it sound as if it belongs to a higher range. It’s exactly the voice Cass remembers from twenty years ago. If Cass doesn’t glance over at her, he’d swear it’s the twenty-nine-year-old woman. Then again, even when he does give her a quick sidelong glance, she looks not much older than when they had been lovers. The biggest difference is, she looks a lot tidier and more expensive—though he wonders about the bottoms of her feet.

  “So tell me what you’re doing in these parts. You’re still at Berkeley?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m retired!”

  “Retired? You’re too young.”

  “That’s the beauty of it! The University of California is bankrupt! The only money they have is in their pension funds. They’re broke, and can’t pay our salaries, but they’re flush with pension cash! So they offered early retirement to any senior faculty that wanted it! They’re paying me a yearly stipend that just about matches my salary, only I don’t have to go to work! How sweet is that? I hit the jackpot!”

  “Are you staying in California?”

  “I’m keeping all options open. With a little encouragement, I’d dislodge that Lucinda person. I noticed you’re living with her.” He’d been right that she had devoted those five minutes to research.

  “I am.”

  She gives a melodramatic sigh.

  “I thought so. A girl takes her eyes off a guy for two or three measly decades, and the next thing she knows, he’s two-timing her.” This last is delivered, to perfection, in her Mae West impersonation. “You haven’t gotten married again, have you?”

  “No, we’re not married.”

  “I’d be hurt if you had gotten married and hadn’t told me.”

  “You know I wouldn’t do that.”

  They’re on the Larz Anderson Bridge, crossing the frozen Charles. Cass glances left and sees Weeks Bridge gleaming in the brilliant wintry light. As they make a left on the far side of the Charles onto Storrow Drive, Cass gestures and says, “Look over there, Roz. Do you see the way the rushing water has carved out a cathedral in the ice? It’s sublime, isn’t it?”