The Illumination_ A Novel - Kevin Brockmeier [72]
It seemed to him that he had grown old not in the usual way, day by day, but in a series of sudden jerks. His sister died, and ten years fell on his shoulders. The flames burst from the building in Ouagadougou, and down came another twenty. The street tiles cracked, the stadium collapsed, the shanties were flattened, and the years fell over him like rain.
Why had he never married or fathered children?
He wanted a Heaven of starting over, a Heaven of trying again.
The pastor was speaking gently into the microphone. “And when you listen to the testimonials I’ve received, I am sure you will say to yourself, as I have, Truly, this is a man whose work has been blessed by the Lord. For what better life can we imagine than a life of Christian service, a life of waiting upon the Creator and His beloved children? Before I read the first of these letters to you, though, I’d like to ask that you all please rise and join me in a song that exemplifies the spirit with which Brother Shifrin has dedicated himself to the church, number two hundred fifteen in our hymnal, ‘Teach Me Lord to Wait.’ ”
As the organ resounded and the benches creaked, Ryan thought of his sister: how she had loved to sing, and how young she had been when she relinquished her life, and how assiduously he had taken it up and lived it.
What do you think, Judy? What do you make of that? Did I keep it warm enough for you?
Now the worshippers were on their feet, performing a hymn he knew by heart, their voices flowing just alongside the melody, as if tracing the banks of a stream. And if a bomb were to land on them as they sang so humbly and sincerely, the splendor of their bodies would bathe the town in silver. And if every bomb flew from its arsenal, every body displayed its pain, the globe would catch fire in a Hiroshima of light. And maybe, from somewhere far away, God would notice it and return, and the cinders would receive Him like a hillside washed in the sun.
Nina Poggione
“You quarrel with your sickness,” Thomas said calmly. “Everyone has a sickness. It should be cared for but not cured.”
“What?” Pearl said dully. She wished that he would pour more wine. Thomas’ way of talking made her dizzy.
“I said, each of us has a sickness. It is not something that should be cured. To eradicate the sickness would be to eradicate the self.”
—Joy Williams
She was in Seattle, at the bookstore across from the university, with the high windows and the wooden chairs and the microphone that lent a floating electric quality to her voice, and The Age of Girls and Boys kept creaking as she flexed its spine, and her mouth was shedding a raw white light that sharpened to a knifepoint every time her lips came together, and she could see that she had wrested the audience’s attention, their genuine attention, though whether they were listening to her or watching the light show was anyone’s guess, and there in the second row, sitting with his tousled hair and his loose-necked posture, was the man who had approached her the night before, at the event in Bellingham, to sign a galley proof of Off-Campus Apartments, her sad sunken ship of a first novel. She could hear him reacting to the story she was reading, making half-voiced subliminal noises of agreement or fascination, chuckling when she mentioned the widow’s inexplicable accent, and nodding vigorously, gymnastically, as if choosing sides in a debate, at “the world, the good and beautiful world, where people got married and had children and slowly grew old together.” Was he experiencing his feelings or merely demonstrating them? She couldn’t decide. Afterward, he made sure to claim the last spot in line, mothing away to investigate the new releases, when a woman with a tote bag fell into place behind him, then drifting back over to the procession.