The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [94]
"What makes you say that? I ask as one semicommitted agnostic to another, you understand."
"Well, okay, I take it back about Puerto Rico, but it’s not fair for God to play favorites. What makes me so special that God would bother to tell me anything, right?"
He ran out of steam for a while, and Anne let him stare and gather his thoughts. Then he looked at her and smiled and climbed down off the bed to sit next to her on the floor, their shoulders touching, knees drawn up. The difference in their ages seemed less important than their near equality of size. Anne had a flashing memory of sitting like this with her best friend when they were both thirteen, telling secrets, figuring things out.
"So. Things kept happening, just like God was really there, making it all happen. And I heard myself saying Deus vult, like Marc, but it still seemed like some kind of huge joke. And then one night, I just let myself consider the possibility that this is what it seems to be. That something extraordinary is happening. That God has something in mind for me. Besides sewer lines, I mean ... And a lot of the time, even now, I think I must be a lunatic and this whole thing is crazy. But, sometimes—Anne, there are times when I can let myself believe, and when I do," he said, voice dropping to a whisper and his hands, resting on his knees, opening, as though to reach for something, "it’s amazing. Inside me, everything makes sense, everything I’ve done, everything that ever happened to me—it was all leading up to this, to where we are right now. But, Anne, it’s frightening and I don’t know why..."
She waited to see if he had more but when he fell silent, she decided to take a shot in the dark. "You know what’s the most terrifying thing about admitting that you’re in love?" she asked him. "You are just naked. You put yourself in harm’s way and you lay down all your defenses. No clothes, no weapons. Nowhere to hide. Completely vulnerable. The only thing that makes it tolerable is to believe the other person loves you back and that you can trust him not to hurt you."
He looked at her, astounded. "Yes. Exactly. That’s how it feels, when I let myself believe. Like I am falling in love and like I am naked before God. And it is terrifying, as you say. But it has started to feel like I am being rude and ungrateful, do you understand? To keep on doubting. That God loves me. Personally." He snorted, half in disbelief and half in astonishment, and put his hands over his mouth for a moment and then pulled them away. "Does that sound arrogant? Or just crazy? To think that God loves me."
"Sounds perfectly reasonable to me," Anne said, shrugging and smiling. "You’re very easy to love." And saying it, she was pleased to hear how natural it sounded, how unburdened.
He reared away to look at her and his eyes softened, doubts set aside for a truth he was sure of. "Madre de mi corazón," he said quietly.
"Hijo de mi alma," she replied, as softly and as certain. The moment passed and they were back together, staring at their knees, companionable again. Then the spell was broken, and he laughed. "If we stay in here much longer, we shall give scandal."
"Do you think so?" she asked, eyes wide. "How flattering!"
Emilio got to his feet and offered Anne a hand up. She stood easily in the low gravity but held onto his hand a moment longer than necessary, and they embraced and laughed again because it was hard to decide whose arms should go over whose shoulders. Then Anne opened the door and called out wearily, "Okay, somebody get this man a sandwich."
Jimmy yelled, "Sandoz, you jerk! When’s the last time you ate? Do I have to think of everything?" And Sofia said, "Maybe we should play for raisins next time," but she and Jimmy already had a meal ready for him. And things went back to as normal as they could get, inside an asteroid, above Alpha Centauri, looking for signs from God.
"MY DADDY HAD a Buick once, drove like this," D. W. Yarbrough muttered at one point. "Sumbitch handled like a damn pig in a wallow."