“That's where TV comes in. We need a half-hour spot on the local channel to telecast our service. Let your father invite the TV viewers to come out and visit us Sunday mornings.”
“Let me out,” Ginger pointed at the McDonald's, “I need a milk shake.”
“Sure,” Mulhoffer said, clearly pleased with himself. “I'll take you through the drive-thru.”
“No thanks,” Ginger said coldly. “I want to get out.”
Mulhoffer snarled at her angrily, his white knuckles clenching the steering wheel. “Let me tell you, young lady, that I won't sit back and watch your father run the church into the ground. Mrs. Mulhoffer wants me to move with caution. She's always had a soft spot for people like your father. She calls them antiquated and dear.”
“Right here is fine,” Ginger said, focusing inside the restaurant at the sleepy couples in back booths drinking giant-sized Cokes and sharing piles of ketchup-strewn fries.
“I just hope you'll pass all this along to your dad,” Mulhoffer said as she grunted and slammed the door. She felt his eyes between her shoulder blades as she knelt in front of the restaurant's glass doors, let her breath fall into a melody with her heart and began to pray. Mulhoffer kept his hand on the horn so long the sound made her light-headed and she thought she might faint.
Behind McDonald's, just inside the tree line Ginger came upon a configuration of objects. In the middle was a dead cardinal, a muted female, its belly split to expose shiny red innards, gluey and crimson as menstrual blood. Nightshade berries circled in the soft dirt followed by a wreath of white plastic roses. In the roots of a maple tree a motor-oil can filled with pee balanced in front of a ravaged doll's head. Someone had scribbled swastikas into her forehead with green magic marker.
Fear spread like sun rays out of her nervous heart, infiltrating every vein and capillary. She felt a dreamy reverence because the Protestant ritual of wine and water was wearing out. The dead bird's nightmarish holiness demanded silence. She bowed her head and touched her cold fingertips to her lips.
Steve clenched barbells in his fists and with a fast, synchronized Hex of his elbows swung them to his shoulders, then back down to his thighs. Wearing a pair of cut-off sweatpants, the fabric hung low around his sculptured waist. His Hushed chest held a sweat sheen and the hairs were so blond they lost definition and reflected like neon light. He must have worked late at the hospital and couldn't sleep. The night shift was particularly bloody: car crash victims, shootings, stabbings—all these happened almost exclusively at night. And the sight of blood leaking from flesh, spilling off the tin tables and dripping ink-spot patterns onto the white floor, was always miraculous to him. He usually came home invigorated, ready to pump weights for hours.
Ginger watched him stare at the TV. His biceps stiffened up like dinner rolls. His face reminded her of the wolves she'd seen on TV. He took pride in his physical perfection. Transparent enough to project your desires onto, he made you feel part of a glamorous world, usually available only through the spy hole of television. His girlfriends behaved like actresses, exaggerated their gestures, and spoke only in flippant one-liners that were supposed to sound like movie talk. And in a town like this, where everyone felt like the party was happening somewhere else, Steve was a lethal character.
“You're the last person I expected to see here.” Surprise registered in his eyes.
“I thought you might have heard from Ted,” Ginger said.
Steve shook his head. “He don't want to hear from you.”
“Can you just tell me if you've seen him or not?”
“He split·town.”
“Without telling me?”
“Yeah, well, he met up with a sweet little piece of poon-tang at the mall.” Ginger could tell Steve was lying by the way he looked over the top of her head at the cars parked outside. “He got himself a girl that won't preach at him all the time.”
“Is that right?”
Steve nodded. “I'm available though,” he said, pushing his hips forward, puffing up his chest, “if you're interested in a dance with the devil.” He reached up and grazed Ginger's neck with his hot fingertips, but she recoiled and ran over the grass, back into the woods.
The clouds outside darkened the altar. During prayer she heard a truck fade into the distance. Her father stood in the pulpit in his rumpled linen robes, unshaven, goggles of gray around his wet eyes. He was trying to convince the congregation that their minor missteps allowed evil to flourish.
“We give evil a name,” her father said with a tinge of real desperation in his voice. “Evil always comes at us directly.” He wiped his brow. “Lucifer searches for a chink in the armor!” Ginger saw a trustee shake his head in the direction of another.
“As modern people and as children of the Enlightenment, we are not as realistic about the power of evil. We figure that if we ignore evil, especially our personal brand of it, it will simply disappear, or at least lie low. We blindfold ourselves from it. In fact, the more it's hidden, the more vicious it becomes and the harder it looks for a whipping boy.”
She'd heard every kind of sermon. Her father preached on obscure theological points and horrific current events, the bombing in Oklahoma, the massacre in Luby’s, now Sandy Patrick. And while his subject varied, his theme never did—the familiar form of evil and how everyone is implicit in the lie.
“We deny the evil lurking within us because if the truth were to be exposed, we would be consumed and obliterated from this community. We would be swallowed by evil itself.” His pause was supposed to signal a tone change, but when he looked up he saw in-difference stiffening the people's faces and, like a lounge singer desperate to hold a crowd's attention, he raised and animated his voice. “But the truth is that we can live together in such a way that the world's deep structures of evil begin to wither away. We do it by being faithful to each other. We do it by casting off power and intimidation. We do it by surrendering our claim to any kind of superiority over anyone. We give up our desires to make excuses for our behavior and we give up our constant claim of innocence, a claim we make despite the sure evidence that we are up to no good. In other words, we decide to be accountable to each other—all of us. We can do these things and more, because in Jesus, God has given us the grace to do them.”
Resistance hung in the air like humidity. The congregation pushed their backs into the pews and braced themselves as if the church was an airplane hijacked by a religious militant. The tips of Mulhoffer's ears were red as bell peppers; he was furious her father hadn't taken his advice and preached about future growth, or at least copped the mega-church pastors’ down-home style and talked about television or sports. Even Mrs. Mulhoffer, who always hid her emotions behind a smile, looked surly.
Her father quickly intoned the benediction, then hurried down the pulpit steps to the bench by the altar. He hid his face behind the hymnal as the organ started up.
Thou most kind and gentle death / Waiting to hush our latest breath /
O Praise him, Alleluha / Though leadest home the child of God /
And Christ our Lord the way hath trod /
Praise, Praise the father, praise the son /
Praise the spirit, three in one.
The people sang off key, unable to disguise their hostility. She'd asked her father when he planned to move on to another theme and he said, When they hear this one.
Fourteen: SANDY
The troll threw a banana onto the yellowed newspapers. Sandy crawled over, frantically peeled down the fragrant skin, and shoved the fruit into her mouth, almost choking. The troll laughed, my little monkey girl.
Chained by the ankle to an exposed pipe in the basement, Sandy squatted on the cement floor next to the bucket filled with pee. She sucked the moisture from inside the banana peel and watched to see if he held anything else in his hands. She was the little monkey that sat on the wheelchair of the man with no legs in front of the gumball machine at the Walmart. The monkey wouldn't sit on the man's shoulder, wouldn't take the peanut
from the man's lips. She jumped from the Pez machine to the top of the tall one that sold Pepsi and Diet Coke.
“Good night princess,” the troll said, closing the door. The light went out and she was alone in the dark basement. How could she make the smelly stuff in the bucket into milk and where could she find a horse made out of white chocolate and a pink teddy bear that could sing the national anthem without looking at his notes?
She curled up on the newspapers. In a dream she spit gold coins and dried rosebuds fell out of her ears. She smelled like lake water, like a girl who'd been swimming all day in a pond where cows drink and frogs splay out from lily pads. Bits of leaves and blades of grass stuck to her cool skin under her bathing suit. Every word she whispered was trapped in a bubble and the bubbles formed a long necklace and her hair unfurled and she heard his footsteps above her, pacing this way and that.
Everything was right here. Furry blue elephants hovered like kites above her face, moving to the bouncing melody of “My Funny Valentine.” She turned her head, watched Elena the ballerina twirl as the notes grew farther apart and more sluggish. Inside her jewelry box, along with the gumball machine rings and the silver cross her aunt sent from Illinois, was the pink plastic bracelet she'd worn in the hospital, her name written in black magic marker with the officious slant of a nurse's handwriting.
“Stop,” she said, “if you're going to be like that.” The sound of her own voice, muffled and discordant, was like the mumbling of the retards in special ed who walked as if their legs were attached upside down. The banana warmed her, snaked through her body. The floor didn't seem so cold and who cared about the white spiders hanging upside down from the water pipes and the mouse in the corner that sometimes ran over to gnaw threads off the afghan. Her brother said, “Just lie still.” And the darkness came into her like a mop's wet tentacles. The white kittens shouldn't be hard to find, or the baby-blue chick. And what about the little chipmunk in the floral apron who made tiny pink cakes, each layer no bigger than a quarter? It was cold down here and she let her teeth chatter like the Halloween sound-effects record her father'd bought the year they turned their living room into a haunted house. Sandy Patrick rubbed her arms and then her calves. But there was no way to warm herself; better to go sit in the lawn chair in the backyard, let sweat dampen the crotch of her bikini, let the deer look at her with his big brown bedroom eyes.
Inside the Barbie suitcase with the fat metal zipper lay a bathing suit with sand in the crotch, a pair of Snoopy shorts, and a T-shirt with a jelly stain. Underneath was her blanky, the silky top of a blanket worn to threads.
If you fell asleep too early at the slumber party, then the mean girls stole your training bra and put it in the refrigerator. They put plates of onion dip beside your cheek so when you turned your head, cool sour cream stuck to your eyelashes and oozed up your nose.
The boy was there, the one who sent the letter that read, “I luv U because your eyes are brown as the sequoias, your lips the fiery red of hell, and yourself like I like them best.” In the closet, during her seven minutes in heaven, he gave her an Indian handshake and made jokes about slobbery kisses.
As the night wore on the girls got crazy, dancing to their favorite songs like lunatics, arms flying everywhere and legs akimbo. They screamed out the lyrics and Robin told a story about how her mother bled through her white Easter pants suit, how their dog tried to get the used sanitary napkin out of the trash. The girls’ faces twisted up with exhaustion and they started telling each other that they were stuck up. Robin got so overheated that she went completely nuts and tried to strangle Sandy with a jump rope and the basement door opened and the troll came downstairs, holding a candle that illuminated his hunchback and runny eye. He scooped her up, carried her over his shoulder, walking in a slight incline deeper into the basement and farther into the woods. Her cheekbone bumped rhythmically against the small of his back as she listened to starlings call one to another. Leaves trembled and the troll squashed tender green seedlings with his heavy boots. She held the afghan to her face and sucked her thumb. Snakes hung like moss off tree branches.
The troll hurried along the path littered with plastic potato chip bags and french fry wrappers, then stopped abruptly. She heard his key chain rattle as he unlocked the little wooden door. The troll set her down in the dark and lit a paraffin lamp and she saw in its glow that the walls and floor were made of red dirt, the bed of green moss, and in the middle, before her, a giant tree stump for a table and fat logs for stools. On the table oatmeal waited in a little wooden bowl, and the troll pulled the silver spoon with the filigree handle out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her, then sat down to watch her eat.
* * *
“I got a letter from him,” the bear said sadly. “It seems we've grown apart.” He was smoking rose petals in his acorn pipe, puffing on the bamboo reed. From his birch-bark poach, with the leaf-stem latch, he took a pinch of yellow petals, struck a wood match against the tree stump table, and leaned forward to light up. The smoke smelled like sunshine heating up one's hair, and of yellow finches with singed feathers. “Letters from the other side,” he said, “are always filled with gobbledy gook.”
All afternoon the bear catalogued his sorrows. Summer was long over, so there were no more berries, just bark and weedy plants to eat. He was horribly lonely and missed the caterpillar so desperately, some nights he barely slept a wink. But she could tell by the preoccupied cast of his eyes and how he held his snout straight out that the bear loathed himself for sinking down so deeply into self-pity, and he said in a voice meant to chide himself, “For goodness sake, let's not whine about it. I have my health and my reputation. Life goes on. The earth circles the sun, the planets go around. It's all like some complicated game with different colored balls played by invisible and benevolent giants.” He puffed a huge cloud of creamy smoke. “Maybe that's why I feel so anxious all the time.”
Sandy offered some herbal brew in the chipped teapot the bear brought as a housewarming present. He found it wrapped in a moth-eaten cashmere sweater inside a bag of trash. But he waved her off and took the well-worn envelope from his pocket and began to read. “I have my memories. You dominate them. The space you fill in my mind is overwhelming and now being alone is the best way for me. I can live this way. But I still pull you out from my memories to spend time with you. The best times. The happiest times. When you and I were all that mattered. I miss you today, today especially. I want to hear your voice and listen to your words. I want to see your face and touch your cheek. There is a park here with a tree for you to sit lazily under. I would watch as you stray from the directness of the sun.” The bear's voice cracked and he trailed off but tried to act indifferent by rolling his eyes and flipping his wrist dismissively. “That sort of sentimental gibberish always puts me to sleep,” he said, faking a yawn. “If he really cared, he'd come back for a visit.”
Little Miss Nobody, the troll kept saying, his hand tight on her upper arm. First she heard the whoosh of the match, then a lush crinkling of paper and the smell of smoke. The red ant bit between her shoulder blades. The sting was accompanied by a smell like hair singed in a curling iron. Her brain went sliding backward, dissolving into vaporlike heat off summer asphalt. A spark snapped out of the fire and bit her knee and her father pulled her back, said that campfires were dangerous, that once he saw a little girl who wasn't careful get fire in her hair.
Over her shoulder, she saw the red bee floating toward her back and felt its sting a second time, the pain a star shape, hot and cold, and then the troll cleared a rag of phlegm from his throat and the cigarette tip illuminated his fingers and he pushed the fire into the valley between his hairy knuckles and a pinched growl came out of his throat.
Save me Jesus. Save me Lord. She smiled at the spiders dangling like acrobats above her head, listened to the mouse's minuscule feet gallop against the far wall. The bear wore a velvet top hat and his emerald ring. He said reading the letter put him in the mood to recite a
little poem he'd composed all by himself. Never eat porridge from an ivory spoon. Don't drink all the sumac wine or you'll die too soon. Kneel down by the tiger lilies on hot summer days. Don't ever bother reading those boring Shakespeare plays.
Sandy heard the troll lock the basement door. She blew her own warm breath down between her breasts in an effort to heat up her heart. A teaspoon of light glinted on the shovel lying against the far wall. She was a little monkey. She was a little bird.
Fifteen: GINGER
Mulhoffer, using an unsharpened yellow pencil to point out figures on a flowchart, spoke enthusiastically about the church's future. He had a folksy delivery and low-key self-confidence that was undeniably contagious. His bald, egg-shaped head flushed pink with enthusiasm and every once in awhile he hitched up his pants. This gesture gave his presentation a sort of agrarian earnestness that worked like an aphrodisiac on the crowd. Men and women sat on pew's edge nodding at the architectural rendering of the future church complex. Designed by the same person who built the mall, it was a nondescript cement-block behemoth with long thin windows and an indoor water fountain.
She sat in the back pew near old Klass. Taking a taxi all the way here from his garden apartment downtown had exhausted him and he dozed silently; a spot of drool grew on the lapel of his dandruff-flecked jacket. Her father sat in the front pew and, as usual, played it all wrong. His features set in an arrogant mask, he gazed out the window as if Mulhoffer's speech was of no interest to him.
But Ginger knew better. His flushed neck and trembling chin implied that he was nearly hysterical with worry.
In the pew ahead sat the couple with adopted children. They were nice; the woman brought over a tuna fish casserole when her mother died. The woman's husband, thinking she needed direction, cornered her in the church parking lot and spoke animatedly about his marketing firm. But Ginger could never follow his words: telemarketing, annual quotas, targeted merchandising. The words evaporated as he said them and she'd just stare at him blankly and nod her head. But he meant well, they all did. There wasn't a single person present who didn't smile at her on Sunday mornings. So why did she feel like they were all zombies waiting in line to suck her blood?
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