An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [76]
What I found through that door was not my mother but a large, echoing hall that no doubt had once been where the Masons inducted their young members and practiced their white magic. The hall was as big as a high school gymnasium and was sheathed entirely in dark wood: the floors were made of wide, dark-stained planks, and the walls were paneled with that same dark-stained wood, and the high, high ceilings were tongue and groove, acres of it. There were large vertical boxes the size and shape of a confessional off to the side, too, the sort of containers in which you might cast your vote or confess your sins. The only things not made of wood were a pipe organ and the elevated marble dais on which it sat. At the foot of the dais was a group of people, sitting on folding chairs arranged in a circle. They hadn't heard me enter the room, and so I crept up to them, hoping to see whether my mother was among them.
She wasn't, I saw that as I got closer, and I also saw that the group was composed of both men and women ― maybe fifteen total ― who were dressed as wizards and witches, with pointy hats and black cloaks decorated with pictures of harvest moons and magic wands and boiling cauldrons and other half-assed symbols of the occult. This frightened me for a moment, and I wondered if the Masons had reinvented themselves and gone coed and Wiccan. But then I looked more closely and noticed that each man and woman was holding a book. I recognized the book immediately. My kids each had a copy of it, even Christian, who couldn't exactly read yet. It was one of those children's books out of England that are so popular that somehow they aren't considered children's books anymore and that have, in any case, so frenzied their readers that they dress as the characters in the books dress and stand in line at midnight for the release of the latest in the series and use the word "jumper" instead of "sweater." In fact, both Katherine and Christian for a time had, like diabetics with their insulin, refused to travel anywhere without their book; they dressed up as characters from the book for Halloween, and for the day after Halloween, too. This seemed right to me. This was the way children were supposed to act: children became obsessed, children wore costumes. But adults were another matter, were they not? Was this what love for a book did to you? Did love for a book make you act like a child again? Or was this what love did to you, period, book or no book?
Possibly. But that's not why these men and women ― my age and peers in parenting ― were dressed as they were dressed, gathered as they were gathered, clutching the book they clutched. They weren't there for the book itself (I was eavesdropping now) but to better understand their kids, to become a bigger part of their lives, the way you might listen to your kids' hard-rock music or become addicted to their hard drugs.
"We need to support our kids," one wizard said. He had large, elongated glasses that were in danger of becoming goggles, and a salt-and-pepper beard, which he scratched earnestly as he spoke. "If they're reading and loving the book, then we need to read and love it, too."
"But what if the book isn't any good?" a witch in Tevas asked. "I have to say, I read the first chapter and didn't much care for it." When the witch in Tevas said this, she didn't look anyone else in the face; she looked at her feet, which were wide and fleshy and oozing out of the sides and tops of her sandals like melted processed cheese.
"It doesn't matter whether the book is good or not, in a sense," the wizard said sternly. "And besides, in a sense, the book has to be good. It's part of the culture."
There was a loud hum and murmur of assent from the group, and I used it as cover for my own noise as I pivoted