by Daniel Klein
Digby wonders if Mary is too old to bear children. His.
“Twenty-five hundred words by May first,” he says to Mary.
“Thank you, but maybe you should hear what I have in mind first,” the reverend replies. “Like at my sermon this Sunday.”
Digby does not immediately reply because he is momentarily distracted by a figure passing outside Louden Clear’s windows. It is Rosti, the logician, and he does seem deep in thought; in fact, he is jabbering to himself whilst poking at the air with his right index finger. Digby considers rushing outside and—what? Collaring him? Ordering him to turn himself in to Madeleine? And by virtue of this interruption missing even a few seconds of sitting next to Reverend Bonavitacola? Not a chance.
“I am not a good hymn singer,” Digby replies.
“Mouth the words,” she says, smiling and standing.
Don’t go!
She goes.
“I need to nap,” Mrs. Hastings says as she prepares to leave. “I think that went well, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Digby says. “By the way, Felicia, what’s this gossip about somebody trying to get his hands on Hastings Towers?”
Felicia smiles and exits too, leaving Digby to pay the bill.
CHAPTER 6
For church, Digby wears his magazine-awards-dinner tan suit complete with a black silk tie which gives him the appearance of a South American mayor on the Day of the Dead. The few times he has been to church in the past thirty years have been solely for funerals and weddings, including his own wedding. Undoubtedly, someone put in charge of such things will outfit him in this very same suit for his funeral, at a church or otherwise.
Louden’s Universalist Unitarian Church is housed in a close-to-the-road, red brick building that clearly served some other function not too long ago; extrapolating from its clunky, foursquare appearance, that function was as a five-and-dime store before it went the way of all such stores when malls K-marted them up to five-and-dime heaven. The edifice still has its original display windows on either side of the entrance, both crowded with upstanding books on social problems like African starvation and AIDS, plus assorted posters advertising local lectures and meetings, most of these devoted to heartbreaking social problems too. The only sign of cheeriness is a hand-lettered poster that names Mary Bonavitacola as the pastor in residence and her sermon topic for today: “Heaven—Been There, Done That.”
Digby makes his way inside and takes a seat in the last pew, although it is far too plushy to qualify as a genuine, New England pew; Digby’s guess is that the chairs were purchased at the liquidation sale of a bankrupt funeral parlor. Just as Digby sits down, a bearded young man appears at the altar, guitar in hand and neck-braced harmonica in mouth, and begins playing, “Sweet Beulah Land.” His rendition, like Unitarianism itself, wavers between the gritty and the wry. Some congregants start singing and swaying. Digby mouths the words.
Clearly, Digby is overdressed for this group of worshippers. Not a suit coat or tie in sight. Instead, work shirts, cardigan sweaters, jeans, and, at least in his row, a good number of heavy work boots, some on strapping young women. The music man moves on to the hymn, “Count Your Blessings,” and Digby finds himself drifting off as he tries to conjure thoughts of gratitude.
Actually, he is feeling surprisingly grateful these last few days. He is experiencing a form of contentment that until recently he believed was lost to him forever—job security. With Bonner Hastings’ otherworldly help, he has quelled the Goldenfield-MacLane insurrection; those two are busy as drones working on their indignant dissent column. Digby often hears them laughing derisively in their offices when, it would appear, they fashion a particularly snarky sentence attacking him and his heaven. Plus, Digby’s relationship with his daughter has taken a pleasant upturn, even if it is founded on his somewhat disingenuous enthusiasm for her interactive smut-lit. And then there is Mary . . . but alas, Digby’s blessings-counting reverie is abruptly interrupted by a warm hand that has landed in his lap.
It should be noted here that the mix of religion and sex has always had a strong appeal to Digby. Like most forced-to-attend-church adolescents, he experienced his share of erotic fantasies involving horny nuns and nubile young choirgirls naked under their robes. Furthermore, before he even snaps open his eyes, he knows that the hand frolicking in his lap belongs to Winny, she of the robust sexual appetite. Nonetheless the entire maneuver strikes him as sacrilegious. Yes indeed, he feels a buzz of righteous indignation as he lifts off her fingers. Terrific feeling, righteous indignation. No wonder entire political movements have been built upon it.
Of course, Digby’s real reason for distancing Winny’s fingers from his midsection is that he has come to church this Sunday not only to evaluate Mary Bonavitacola’s sermon for its possible inclusion in Cogito, but to gaze upon the reverend’s remarkable blue eyes, eyes that—not to put too fine a point on it—seem to offer him a finer life. The very notion of a finer life is new to Digby; he usually sees all lives as more or less equal in the sense that in the end they all add up to the same sum—namely naught. ‘Being’ swiftly followed by ‘Nothingness.’ And even in these recent days when he sensed that maybe there just might be something out there that could furnish him with a better, more meaningful life, he was convinced that he did not deserve it—or, certainly, did not deserve her. Nonetheless, for this remote possibility alone, Digby is certain that a fondle job in the rearmost pew of the Louden Universalist Unitarian Church does not seem like a good idea.
“Why Miss Winifred, I didn’t know you were a God-fearing creature too,” he whispers to his pewmate by way of apology for the finger removal.
“Oh, I’m not,” she whispers back. “I’m just here to stalk you.”
Digby fears there is truth in her jest.
Mary appears onstage in an unflattering, floral-patterned linen dress, and proceeds to read a verse from the Good Book, but this being a Unitarian Church, that good book is Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now.
Digby clenches his teeth. Dear me, have I misjudged Ms. Bonavitacola? Is she a New Age Airhead in flax clothing?
“ ‘ I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake,’ ” Reverend Mary reads. “ ‘ I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void.’ ”
Digby has more than a passing acquaintance with the void within; it is the one he has been trying to suffuse with marijuana smoke the past year or so. Mary closes the book and sets it down on her lectern. She smiles out at her flock. Digby smiles back sheepishly. Does she see me? Would it be inappropriate for me to wave?
“Usually, Eckhart Tolle gives me the fantods,” Mary continues. “A little too ‘golly gee’ for my taste. But that particular passage kind of knocked me out because I’ve had a few run-ins with the Big Void myself. Especially after Reuben died.”
Reuben?
“Her husband,” Winny whispers, reading Digby’s perplexed expression.
“People say that when a loved one dies, he remains alive in your heart,” Mary goes on. “But what they are reluctant to tell you is that part of yourself dies with your loved one. It leaves a void. And that void never goes away. Never.”
Here and there in the converted five-and-dime Digby hears muted sniffles. Mary acknowledges these with a respectful pause, but her resolute gaze is a peremptory warning against pity, for her or for oneself.
“It’s a battle,” she goes on. “Me against the void. A battle to the death. If the void takes over my life, I’m done for. And for a whole bunch of nothingness that void is a remarkably powerful adversary.”
The reverend offers a melancholy smile, one that resonates somewhere in the area of Digby’s voided soul. This resonance says to him that he has gone through much of his adult life confusing existential despair with mere discontent, mistaking angst over the meaningless of life for crankiness brought on by picayune peeves. I a
m superficial to the core. And the time is nigh—very nigh—for me to have a serious talk with my inner self. Possibly even a philosophical talk.
“Let me tell you about a moment,” Reverend Mary continues, “a moment that lasted no longer than it takes to scratch your nose—but nonetheless a moment that sometimes gives me an edge on that feeling of emptiness. That is, when I truly remember that moment. When I don’t simply remember that it happened, but I actually slip back into it. Live that moment again.”
As a point of pride, Digby has never allowed himself to feel a part of a rapt audience. It smacks of groupthink. And for him, a church congregation is the most flagrant laboratory of groupthink in the civilized world, the kind of groupthink that usually ends in group mayhem. That said, he is listening like an acolyte to Reverend Bonavitacola.
“After his last round of chemo and the doctors giving Reuben only a few more weeks to live, we rented a small cottage out on Cape Cod. It was late fall, cold and raw, but every evening we would bundle up and sit on the wicker daybed out on the deck to watch the sunset. Just sit there and watch that ball of red slip into the sea. No words. Nothing to say, really. What can you say?”
Not so much as a rustle or murmur in the church.
“During one of those sunsets, just a few days before Reuben died, I had a peculiar thought about time itself. I saw time as a dimension that, for that particular moment, I was not a part of. It was just there by itself. Time. And I was looking at it. Very impressive thing, time. Even more impressive when, for that moment, I had the perspective of looking at it as something separate from me.
“Then another thought or feeling hit me. Right now, sitting here on the daybed with Reuben watching the sun go down, right now is eternity. Because eternity is not forever, the way I usually think of it, but eternity is being outside of time. And that’s where I was for that moment. Outside of time. But completely inside now. Now. The eternal now.”
Here, Mary lets loose with the most beatific smile Digby has ever seen this side of a Raphael.
“It was heaven,” she says.
The congregation waits for her to go on. But that is it. End of sermon.
“For those who pray, now might be a good time to do it,” Mary says, then nods to the music man to replace her at the altar. The music man obliges with a particularly sappy version of Bette Midler’s “Heaven.” If his intention is to break the mood, he succeeds admirably.
Digby is not one of those who pray, so he has some time on his hands. What he would really like to do is get out of here and get out by himself, but he is pretty sure that were he to make his way up the aisle, Miss Winny would follow close behind him. This is all his own doing, Digby is certain, and it is not the first time that by satisfying some free-floating lust he has implied promises that he had no desire to keep. In any other church, this would make him a sinner in God’s eyes, but today God is unnecessary. Sin has got him cornered in this church’s last pew.
Digby closes his eyes as the service goes on. Somebody talks about a local Habitat for Humanity project and the need for volunteers owning hammers. Digby is confident the man has come to the right place. Someone else talks about the need for condoms in Africa to stem the spread of AIDS. Digby has a fleeting vision of a plate being passed among the pews and his good neighbors dropping packets of Trojans in it. Actually, it occurs to him that Sylvia’s sponsor could spread a little good will by donating a shipload of rubbers to the Africans and then having one of their smiley-faced, spindly-legged mascots boast about it on her website.
More music, a breathy medley of Sweet Honey in the Rocks classics. Another speaker, this one going on about what everyone should be doing about childhood obesity. Digby is finally able to tune it all out and think. He tries to get his mind around Mary’s heaven-on-Cape Cod experience, but it keeps slipping away like the sun into the Atlantic. Still, for the first time since he was a teenager—the very embodiment of that adolescent archetype, the public wise guy cloaking a private brooder—he finds himself yearning for some kind of enlightenment. Nothing fancy, just a glimpse of the transcendental plane would do him for now. He glimpses not.
A final sing-along—some African ditty that everyone but Digby seems to know by heart—and then Digby is on his way out, thoughts of a few deep tokes dancing in his head. He is in possession of a Huxley-like intuition that what his mind needs to gather the full meaning of Mary’s eternal moment is a chemical nudge. But it is not to be, at least not yet. The unmistakable voice of Felicia Hastings is calling him by name. She is waiting for him at the exit.
“So, what do you think?” Felicia asks me. “You know, as an editor.”
It takes a moment for Digby to recall his original reason for coming to church.
“The eternal moment thing?” he says finally.
“For Cogito,” Felicia says. “She said it was heaven.”
“Well, yes, she did, didn’t she?” Digby fumbles. “I think it’s very promising. A little abstract, maybe. And I’d like to know a bit more about why she calls it heaven, you know?”
“I could have just as well called it Duluth, I suppose.” It is Mary Bonavitacola’s voice. She has just sidled up beside Digby and she is smiling. Digby turns and looks into her wonderful eyes. Stretching this moment for an eternity seems, at this moment, like a divine idea. Maybe he is getting the hang of this.
“That does it,” Digby replies. “I am devoting the next issue of Cogito to Duluth.”
“Did it—my sermon—make any sense?” Mary asks, sounding winningly insecure.
“Perfect sense,” Digby replies. “Personally, I have always planned on living in the present.”
They have a lovely laugh. Digby’s, however, abruptly terminates when he sees Winny sashay up on his other side. She slips her arm through his.
“But don’t you think her sermon would fit just perfectly?” Felicia is saying.
“Not fair,” Mary says. “I’m sure Digby wants to think about it.”
Digby! She said my name! I am a teenager in love. Sing that one, Mr. Music Man!
“Yes, I’ll think about it. Then maybe we could have a talk about it,” Digby says in his best professional voice. However, this voice is difficult to maintain at the same time that he is trying, with body language, to express to Winny that he would like her to give him more personal space, both geometric and spiritual.
“Why, hello, Winny,” Felicia is saying. “Everybody knows each other, don’t they?”
They all acknowledge that they do.
“Winny has been introducing Digby to the delights of our little town,” Felicia goes on merrily, that still-in-her-sexual-prime sparkle flashing from her eyes again.
It occurs to Digby that Felicia Hastings is actually the devil. Just a passing thought, really.
“I’m late,” Digby blurts. And he is off, skedaddling out the church door and trotting toward Brigham Street without so much as a toodle-oo. He knows, of course, that this is a coward’s exit.
CHAPTER 7
Passing by Write Now, Brigham Street’s stationery, greeting card, and newspaper shop, Digby feels a yen for sensory overload, so he dips inside and buys a copy of the Sunday New York Times and a jumbo bag of Cracker Jacks. Combined with an infusion of Buenos Aires Red, he figures this should keep his options open—either deep philosophical understanding or mindless vegetation—for the rest of the Lord’s Day. His code-word for the day: The Void.
Only moments after Digby is out the door, he runs into Madeleine Follet, although it takes him a moment to recognize her out of Cogito context. She is wearing a khaki jacket dangling with binoculars and an iPhone, baggy jeans, and laced-up rubber boots that would have made her feel right at home at the Unitarian Church. Following behind her are a pair of similarly outfitted teenage girls and an elderly man, although this last has forsaken hiking gear for Bermuda shorts and a trademarked “Life is Good” sweatshirt. (Digby wonders if some enterprising college kid will trademark “Life is Bad” for the Goth set.) Digby
plays it safe and says simply, “Hi there.”
“We should have done this days ago,” Madeleine replies grimly. “You should put on something more substantial, Digby. We may be hitting some pretty heavy terrain.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Didn’t you get my email? We’re searching for Rosti. I figure he’s in the mountains somewhere. Totally lost and becoming dehydrated.”
Aha, the peripatetic logician.
“Actually, I just saw him the other day,” Digby says. “He was walking along the street right here. The only lost he looked was in his thoughts.”
“When?” Madeleine barks. “What day?”
“Thursday.”
“Jesus, that’s four days ago. Where did he say he was going?”
“He didn’t. I didn’t want to disturb him. He seemed on the brink of something important, possibly involving ‘X’s relationship to Y,’ but I can’t be sure.”
Madeleine does not find this in the least droll.
When Digby Maxwell first arrived at Cogito, Madeleine had found his boyish flippancy refreshing, especially in contrast to Goldenfield and MacLane’s relentless self-seriousness. Although Madeleine had never in all these years heard Mr. Hastings himself say anything about wanting the magazine to become more entertaining and relevant to the general public, Maxwell certainly seemed like the perfect man for that job. Yet in only a matter of days, Madeleine has found herself becoming more irritated than amused by him. It was one thing to be clever, but it was quite another to be seemingly incapable of taking anyone seriously.
“Look, you go ahead and I’ll try to catch up to you later, okay?” Digby goes on, doing some impromptu eyebrow pumping that he hopes comes off as worried concern.
Madeleine and her troopers start to move on, but not before she quips out of the side of her mouth, “Check your email. Duke has flown the coop.”
