The Great Derangement - Matt Taibbi [49]
“He’s got a two hundred IQ, honey,” she whispered. “I mean, he’s brilliant. He’s not like you or me.”
“Wow,” I said.
“We were a good couple in that way, though,” she added. “My IQ is one eighty-nine.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said, reading about the Barry Bonds contract dispute on ESPN.com. “Right.”
“I mean, we had this remarkable energy—”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What did you say your IQ was?”
“A hundred and eighty-nine, honey,” she said.
I frowned. “Wasn’t Einstein’s IQ around there somewhere?”
She paused. “Well, probably, honey,” she said. “I had that test taken when I was a child. Of course, I’ve lost some of it since then—I just don’t read enough.”
“Naturally,” I said. “Who has the time?”
“Oh, tell me about it, sweet baby,” she said. “I just get so tired after work…”
The conversation ended an hour later. I could see very clearly that Laurie was suffering; she was terribly lonely and still coping with the death of her husband from the year before. But for some reason her anxiety had gone into overdrive in the past week. She was fidgeting, calling everyone, fussing—she couldn’t sit still. Her storytelling was increasingly manic. In this latest call, the Rick story was evolving. Apparently the cad not only owed her money but earlier in the week had given his cell phone to his new younger girlfriend and had the younger girlfriend call up poor Laurie and bitch her out. Much drama ensued, with Laurie—“just to help her out”—quickly informing the new girl that Rick would never give her a baby, because he hates babies. And also because, Laurie added, he had problems with his libido, problems that were exacerbated by his mother’s habit of stealing his Cialis, which she diabolically did to prevent him from getting it on with women. Without Cialis, Laurie insisted, “it wadn’t happening.” By the time I had all this grasped in my head, she had gotten back to the money.
“It’s like you said, he used me,” she said. “And I don’t think I’m ever going to get that money back.”
“Mmm, probably not,” I said.
“I was even thinking about 1099-ing him,” she said.
I had no idea what she meant by that, but I played along. “Good thinking,” I said. “Let’s see how his two hundred IQ copes with that!”
“Exactly, sweet baby, exactly.”
I was starting to get calls like this every day, which was another reason I skipped the Friday class. However, I decided to go to the one the next day. When I arrived, I was shocked to find that Laurie wasn’t there. I slumped in a pew and began taking notes as the pastor, Stephen J. Sorensen—a paunchy, impatient-sounding man with a Rumsfeldian voice who looked like he’d just shot a 98 on the links and was scanning the audience for someone to blame for it—explained the vagaries of membership. I arrived during some kind of sermon in which Sorensen was comparing God to alcoholism:
“When you take on too much alcohol,” he said, “you as you begin to disappear!”
He pantomimed a drunk’s stagger down the street, ending in a collapse.
“It’s the same thing with the Holy Spirit,” he said. “The more drunk you are with the Holy Spirit, the less in control you are. The more God, the less you. The more God, the less you act like yourself.”
There were about a hundred people in the church; all nodded eagerly.
I nodded too, but just as I did, I saw a familiar face in a center pew. It was Laurie, shouting and gesturing for me to come and sit near her.
“Come here, baby!” she said.
I sighed, gathered my shit, and walked over.
Laurie