The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [0]
A Novel
Ariel Gore
Deliver us from sour-faced saints.
—TERESA OF AVILA
Contents
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
One Night Only
Chapter 2
Destiny
Chapter 3
Hunger
Chapter 4
We Welcome You to the Realm of the Blessed
Chapter 5
The Reporter Shows Up
Chapter 6
Famiglia
Chapter 7
All Saints
Chapter 8
Trust Life, Sleep Soundly
Chapter 9
God Hates Sinners
Chapter 10
Quick Prayer
Chapter 11
Refuge
Chapter 12
Lying Low
Chapter 13
After-School Cake
Chapter 14
Dot
Chapter 15
The Tomb
Chapter 16
Hands
Chapter 17
Why God Has So Few Friends
Chapter 18
Take and Eat
Chapter 19
Grief
Chapter 20
Confession
Chapter 21
Who Wouldn’t Die?
Chapter 22
All Sound Out
Chapter 23
Demerol
Chapter 24
A Monk in the Sky
Chapter 25
The Clay Face
Chapter 26
What You Would Have Me Do
Chapter 27
Highway One
Plus: Insights, Interviews, and More
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
My name is Frances Catherine, a.k.a. Frankka—Saint Cat onstage. With names like these, I guess it goes without saying that I’m Catholic. Or I was Catholic. Raised Catholic, as they say. Lapsed Catholic or recovering Catholic, like it’s some kind of drug you have to quit cold turkey. Twelve steps and maybe you’ll be free of the guilt that clangs like church bells. Newborn original sin washed away by a priest and I’m the only one who’s mucked it up since then: Sinner, impure, forgive me, it’s all my fault.
Was Catholic? Dream on. Fallen or faithful, what are you going to do? You’re given a mythology in this life, the way you’re given a body, a family, a country. You can reject it if you like—starve it, laugh in its face, run away into exile—but it’s still your mythology. There’s always the chance for redemption.
Things can happen so fast. One moment things are one way and the next it’s all completely different—bam—like some kind of mystical car crash and you’re so turned around you can’t even pinpoint the exact moment of impact. Was there a single moment of impact? What about warning signs? Nothing happens without a prophecy.
I’ll tell you a story.
Chapter 1
ONE NIGHT ONLY
Whoosh. Car tires through puddles. Gasoline rainbows. Picture this: Two beat-up candy apple red hatchbacks trailing a wildflower-painted caravan down a sogged main street that creeps southward along the waterfront.
Madre Pia shouts through a cracked megaphone from the back of the caravan as we roll into town: “The lost will be saved, the saved will be amazed!” She’s a vision, Madre is. Three hundred pounds of blithe drag queen cloaked in her old-school nun’s habit, great bellowing penguin. “Tonight only, ladies and gentlemen! Saint Cat will manifest the wounds of Christ.”
Rain-wet asphalt and dull brick buildings welcome us to empty streets. Steely June sky. We haven’t seen the sun in weeks. Northwestern springtime: damp, damp.
“Come and see for yourself,” Madre implores the rows of Victorian houses that cling like swallows’ nests to an inland hill. “Mary Magdalen will perform her death-defying midair acrobatics. Six P.M. tonight. Astoria’s own River Theater!”
A solitary freckled face peers out from a fogged pizza parlor window, kind bewildered reassurance that we haven’t stumbled into a ghost town.
Madre lowers the megaphone to clear her throat, then lifts it to her berry mouth again. “Barbaro the great fire spitter all the way from Venice, Italy!”
The baby, riding with me today, whimpers in his car seat, rubs his sleepy eyes, reminds me of a clean-licked newborn kitten. Shock of black hair. Wide, dark eyes. “I’m hungry,” he moans. Poor little fellow. This is our life: new day, new state, same show.
“The Virgin Mary herself will cast your fortune,” Madre roars, undaunted by the city’s silence. “Your destiny in Our Lady’s hands!”
A towheaded little boy, maybe five years old, pale face blushed against the ocean wind, leaps from the doorway of the “I Buy Almost Anything” antique store. “Is it a circus?” he calls out, excited. But before Madre can answer him,