I Want to Show You More (9780802193742) (13 page)

The waiter hangs his head and sighs.

“My restaurant used to be so busy,” he says. “Then again, there were far fewer restaurants to choose from. And people used to listen when I made recommendations.” He walks back to the foldout screen, then turns to face us.

“I suppose I can't blame them for leaving,” he says. “After all, I
am
just a waiter.”

When he's gone and the camp director starts talking, I pull my hand down from the ready position and turn to Wren.

“Can you come to the waterfront with me?” I say. “I need your help with something.”

Wren's chewing on her pinkie nail. “When?”

“Now,” I say. “Right now.”

“Can I meet you? I want to stop by my cabin first.”

“Let's go now. I'll walk you to your cabin and wait.” Wren's knees bounce; she keeps swallowing.

“And now,” the camp director is saying, “before the music team comes up, we have another god.”

“I'm going to stay and see this one,” Wren says. “I'll meet you down there, okay?” As soon as she turns away my hand starts moving.

Frank Collins scuffs out in slippers. He's wearing Bermuda shorts hiked way up with a belt and has a pair of reading glasses down on the end of his nose. He keeps gumming his tongue, which rests on his lower lip. He sticks a pipe in his mouth, then takes it out, looking around like he's expecting something.

“Hold on,” he says. “Lemme turn up my earpiece.” He pretends to twist something in his ear. “My name?” He digs around in the pocket of his shorts. “This is why I keep my ID with me.” He pulls out a card. “My name is . . . Blue Cross Blue Shield!”

Laughter.

“That ain't right,” he says, feeling in his pocket again. “Ah, here it is. My name is American Express!”

More laughter. God smacks his lips. “Well, never mind who I am. It's more important what I do. And what I do is . . . eh . . .”

He inserts and removes his pipe a few times.

“I guess I don't know what I do. Ha! Mostly I just sit around here. Where's here? I don't know. It's not important. I'm here and that's all there is to it. Wherever this is, it's pretty boring, truth be told. I used to be busy. I remember this one time I created a whole universe. Took me a week! That was some hard work. But I liked that seventh day. I got hooked on that seventh day. After that seventh day, I decided I was going to just keep on having seventh days for the rest of eternity.

“Every now and then I peek down at what I made, poke around in a few of the old hangouts. Cathedrals and such. But it's discouraging. People don't like me 'cause I'm old. But if I ignore what everyone is saying and just sit up here real quiet, I can remember the days when I was busy. And that makes me happy.”

Frank Collins shuffles out while the music team starts to set up.

“That was him,” I say to Wren. “The real God.”

“Sure,” she says, sort of laughing. Then she looks at my face.

“You figured this out, right,” she says.

“Figured what out,” I say.

“None of them are God. That's the point.” She frowns. “I wish he would be the real God, though. So I could picture who it is I'm mad at.”

I stand. The room tips sideways, the sinkhole is squeezing, I sip air between my lips.

“Meet me at the canoe dock in half an hour,” I say.

* *
*

It's dusk. Tree frogs tuning up, fireflies drifting just above the grass. My sinkhole is on slow rotation,
you you
vibrating in my ribs. An accusation, not a request.

I walk past the elementary cabins and dining hall to the staircase leading down to the water. The stairs are roped off for the night. I unhook the rope and lay the slack end on the hillside, then walk down and take the path to the canoe dock, which is tucked beneath a rocky overhang surrounded by bushes and trees. The dock is totally hidden; you can't see it unless you're on it, or approaching it from the water.

I find the towel. Unroll it and remove the supplies. It's completely dark now. I light the candles and set the Advil bottle, New Testament, and flashlight beside the towel. I take off my shoes and sit on the edge of the dock, let my feet hang down into the water while I wait for Wren.

When she comes around the bend I can tell something's different. She seems sort of stiff, hunched up in her shoulders. Her hair is pulled back and she's changed into a short white skirt. I notice that one of her legs is brighter than the other—it takes me a minute to realize she's not wearing her compression stocking.

“Ohhh,” she says, looking at the candles. “That's pretty.” She twists and untwists a section of her ponytail.

“Thanks for coming,” I say.

“No,” she says. “I mean, sure. I wanted to.” She stands there, shifting her weight, then comes over and sits beside me. She smells good—summery—a mixture of grass and sunscreen and something like cake frosting. I feel myself start to get hard. The sinkhole picks up some speed. I need to get this over with, I think. I realize I never thought about how to get things started.

“So I'm super-nervous,” Wren says, turning to look at me. She's blinking a lot, keeps plucking at her skirt.

“Me too,” I say. “I've been wanting to tell you about this thing for a really long time. Something that happens sometimes, in my chest . . .”

Wren's not looking at me. Her hand is moving around in one of her skirt pockets.

“When the doctor told me about the buildup of scar tissue, I knew I'd have to find out,” she says. She draws this long, shaky breath. “I was hoping you'd be the one.”

I feel her shove something into my hand. It's a wrapped condom.

Wren's crying now. “It's because of all the surgeries. The doctor said he wasn't sure if it would, you know. Fully
work
for me.”

She takes my hand. “Please,” she says. “I need to know.”

The sinkhole is expanding, making it hard for me to speak.

“You don't have to wear the condom. I don't even know why I brought it.”

“Wren,” I say. “There's this thing in my chest—”

But she's pulling at the hem of her skirt, getting it higher and higher above her knees. Her breath is coming in sharp sucks. Then she's lying back on the towel, and the sinkhole is huge, it's squeezing my heart.
You, you, you
.

I lie beside her, take off my shirt, start to do the Gesture.

“Listen,” I say. “I need your help.”

She moves my hand away and starts kissing my chest all over, quick, light presses, and the sinkhole is tightening around my heart but now she's kissing my mouth and I taste salt, some kind of peppery spice. I reach for the Advil bottle.

“Use this,” I say, handing it to her. “Pray for it to stop.”

“For what to stop?” Her voice sounds far away, like I'm talking to her on the phone. She sits up and looks in the Advil container, sniffs. “Is this olive oil?”

“Say,
In the name of Jesus
,” I tell her. My hand is circling, fast.

“Why do you keep doing that?”

“It's right in the middle,” I say.

Wren reaches up and sort of smooths her bangs. Her hand is shaking.

“I thought you wanted—you brought candles.”

“Even if you just breathe on it—” But she's pouring the oil out on her hands, she's reaching down inside my shorts, beneath my boxers, moving her fingers around till she finds the tip. I feel myself getting harder and the sinkhole is squeezing my heart so tight there are long pauses between beats.
You. You. You
. I hear a wail, the voice high-pitched like a girl's. I'm terrified the voice is mine.

I feel Wren sliding onto me, the tight squeeze of it. A door swinging open.

The sinkhole contracts, moves toward the door, starts to go through it.

“Don't let it get inside you,” I say.

“But I want it to,” she says, crying hard now.

“You don't understand,” I say, but it's too late, I am
letting it happen
, the sinkhole is spiraling into a thin funnel and exiting through the door.

“I think—I think it's working,” Wren says. She lets out a sob.

The sinkhole, narrow as a pencil, turns from black to gray to white, like rising smoke. And then everything is clear, the
you
s are gone and I can hear my heart beating in my ears.

I take a few deep breaths. I open my eyes and see Wren's face, eyes closed, mouth open. Behind her the sky is a dark bowl pocked with stars.

“I think it's gone,” I say.

Wren lifts up and falls onto her side, then curls into a ball at my feet. Her whole body is quivering like she's cold.

I sit up. The river looks flat and still as a lake, all that power churning just beneath the milk-spill light on its surface.

I put a hand on my chest.

Both hands.

“Wren,” I say. “It worked.”

“I knew you'd be the one,” she says.

She covers her face with her hands.

“I'm so sorry,” she says.

“No,” I say, touching her leg, the one without the stocking. “That was amazing. You didn't even have to pray.”

She sits up. “What are you talking about?” Her eyes are all squinty, her face so pale it's almost green, like a glow-in-the-dark toy.

“My sinkhole,” I say. “You healed it.”

Wren just looks at me. Her chin is shaking and she has a dark smear going down one of her cheeks.

“I thought you wanted to,” she says. “I thought you liked me even though you knew about my surgeries.”

I reach out to touch her hair, but she moves her head away.

I scoot closer to Wren, till we're sitting within inches of each other, face-to-face.

“I need you to feel something,” I say.

I take one of her hands and lay it on the dime-sized spot of skin.

I cover her hand with both of mine and press.

Demolition

1

The deaf man came to our church the first Sunday in Lent. A teenaged boy, wearing khaki pants and a bow tie, entered the sanctuary with him. They sat in the front pew. From behind we could see the bald spot on the man's crown, dark strands of hair slicked across. The boy was a foot taller than the man, with a wizened face and blond hair. We assumed they were father and son.

Of course we couldn't tell the man was deaf—not at first—though we did notice the attitude in which he sat, waiting for the service, head tilted back and tipped sideways as if discerning a far-off melody. When the organ prelude began, the boy lifted his hands and began to wave them back and forth. Immediately the man did the same. Thinking our visitors were of the charismatic persuasion (it was our custom to tolerate demonstrative worship, though we couldn't imagine our organist ever moving
us
to such displays), we grew uncomfortable and averted our eyes. But when Don Holdings stood to deliver the Welcome, the boy began to carve shapes into the air.

We'd never had a deaf person among us. We had the elderly hearing-impaired, but their disability was in the natural order of things. We gave them amplification headsets and watched them twirl the volume knobs at their ears.

After the service, a deacon offered the deaf man a headset to use the following week.

That won't do any good, the boy said. The silence inside his head is impenetrable.

The following Sunday some of us moved closer to the front. We were eager to watch the boy—his translator, it turned out—take sentences into his body and churn them out with his hands. We wanted to give our children a better view. During the sermon the boy mimicked the snap of scissors across his uplifted forearm for
shepherd
, for
sorrow
stroked the air with fluttering fingers as if brushing aside a beaded curtain. There seemed to be no turn of theological complexity the boy couldn't grasp, the hands, arms, and torso moving in single purpose without thought for the strange and, in another context, embarrassing motions they were performing.

Gathered in the foyer after the service, we said it was like watching an Olympic athlete, the kind of ease that made you
feel in your bones
you could get up off the couch and do a triple axel. It partook, we said, of the nature of holiness itself: one man giving of himself in surrender, the other receiving in gratitude.

2

It was during Communion the third week they visited that we saw Christ's foot tumble from the stained glass window at the end of the deaf man's pew. Those of us sitting nearby heard the soft
shink
of glass hitting the flagstone pavers.

We looked: Christ in the Jordan River, standing on one foot like a pelican; John the Baptist behind, shell aloft, about to pour. Underwater, Christ's remaining foot was the frozen turquoise of an Alaskan glacier, while his calf—also submerged, though separated from the foot by a thin strip of black lead—was a lambent sea green.

The missing foot was the size of a lime. Through the opening, a shaft of sunlight, spiraling with dust, shot into the nave and hit the cheek of the pastor's wife, who turned to locate the source of light.

The deaf man stood. The boy, in a stooped pose, also stood. The man signed to the boy, who turned to face us.

Corbett Earnshaw would like to make a confession, the boy said.

We realized we'd never asked the deaf man's name.

The organist stopped playing. The elders paused in the aisles, holding their silver trays.

Again the boy spoke:

Mr. Earnshaw would like to confess that he does not believe in Christianity, he has never believed in Christianity, and he will no longer be attending this church, nor any other church, for the indefinite future.

Corbett Earnshaw walked down the aisle and disappeared into the foyer. Two elders followed Earnshaw out of the sanctuary. The boy, still hunched in what now seemed an apologetic attitude, also left.

In the rear corner of the chancel, the organist began to play again, sotto voce.

3

We've been duped, we said. The deaf man's signing during hymns, his rapt attention to the translator—it had all looked so
heartfelt
. We agreed that using one's hands in worship gave the impression of spiritual earnestness; that had Corbett Earnshaw sung like the rest of us—head down, gripping the hymnal—we might have detected his insincerity.

A faction of our congregation, however, admired what Earnshaw had done. College students, graduate students, young singles. Some had body piercings and tattoos; many raised their hands during the Doxology and Benediction. These young men and women began to say—first among themselves, and then to the rest of us—that God worked in all sorts of ways, not only through what we considered our religious life; that God could use, for His own purposes, experiences that seemed anti-Christian, such as Corbett Earnshaw's leaving the church, an act that reflected the divine trait of honesty.

In leaving us, they said, Corbett Earnshaw was nearer to the real presence of Christ than he was before he left. In this sense, couldn't we view his act as an inspired one?

Many of us agreed, though we kept our opinions to ourselves until the Session of Elders declared an official position on the matter.

4

The Elders declared Corbett Earnshaw's confession and departure either a) evidence his soul was still unregenerate, or b) an act of apostasy, but only if his soul was—and this was doubtful—regenerate to begin with.

5

The Saturday after Earnshaw's departure, Heinrich Lotz, performing his weekly deacon's service of cleaning the sanctuary the evening before worship, found three fragments of broken stained glass on the aisle floor. He stooped to pick up the pieces, thick and opalescent, deep aubergine. He looked up: the sun in the window depicting Satan's temptation of Christ was missing. Christ's bare feet rested on the milk-colored dome of the temple roof. Heinrich held the pieces to the window, rotating them to determine fit. Then he peered through the open space.

For the first time in the thirty-two years he'd been a member of Lookout Mountain Church, Heinrich could see the view outside the nave's south wall.

He was looking at an enclosed courtyard, its narrow lawn dormant, the color of wheat. Across the lawn was the north-facing side of what had once been the rectory, but was now divided into rental units. Standing in the open window of a downstairs apartment was a young woman holding a cell phone to her ear. She was crying. For a moment Heinrich thought the girl saw him there, looking through the chink in the glass, and was pleading for his help. He wondered how long the girl had been living there, how long she'd been looking at the words
Thou shalt not tempt the Lord
spelled in reverse.

Heinrich returned to cleaning the pew cushions with a handheld vacuum.

When he finished it was dusk. The light in the sanctuary was dim. Heinrich checked the window again. This time the girl was sitting on the edge of her bed, naked from the waist up. Her nipples arced upward and outward, delicate pink.

The next morning, between services, in an alcove space used for private prayer, Heinrich confessed to an elder that he had succumbed to the temptation of lust and could no longer be of service to the church. He said that he had seen more of God's glory in the body of a half-naked girl than in the worship services of thirty years combined. That he would like to continue meditating on the glory of God in this fashion.

6

Today was Friday. Log day. Judy Aldrich, secretarial assistant to Pastor Tom Robinson, put on her headphones.

Pastor's Log. Re: Stained glass. 3/18–3/22.

Mon, 3/18: Stone tablets missing from panel near pulpit. Fragments located in aisle. Maintenance to replace.

Wed 3/20: Missing: head of angel wrestling Jacob. Tablets repaired; cracks visible.

Thu 3/21: Loaf from feeding of 5,000 missing. Pieces located beneath pew.

Fri 3/22: Missing: Burning bush. Six apples from Tree of Life.
Judy
(she jumped),
please add an agenda item for Monday's Session meeting
:
discuss hiring expert to evaluate integrity of windows.

7

The SGAA-certified glazier flew down to Chattanooga from J&R Lamb Studios in New Jersey. Her evaluation was brief. The lead cames, she said, were
admirably
bearing the weight of the glass. The H-strips were thick and solid, as was the casing. No need to re-lead or caulk the perimeter or horizontal solder joints—the glass fit perfectly into the grooves.

But what you have here is interesting, she said.

She was standing in front of Noah's ark, running her fingers along the lead ridges between rainbow colors.

Interesting, Pastor Robinson said. And dangerous.

I meant the placement, she said. Usually in these historic churches it's Old Testament on one side, New Testament on the other—your typical poor man's Bible. Here you've got the empty tomb smack up against Jacob's ladder.

I believe the windows were commissioned that way on purpose, Robinson said. To convey the unity of the Testaments.

In any case, the glazier said, you need to talk to a contractor. Because I'm thinking,
foundation
.

8

Teddy Ellison, General Contractor, Expert Stonemason, drove in from Mentone, Alabama. When the eval request from the church came across his desk he'd pounced. A sure-bet gig: in a building as old and large as the one up on Lookout, there were bound to be foundation troubles—leakage, settling, cracks in the mortar, the like. Some nice cash in reinforcement work, or—with luck—a complete substructural redesign. The South was getting old. It was a good time to be in the restoration business.

In the cool basement beneath the sanctuary, holding a pencil flashlight between his teeth, Teddy wrote at the top of his clipboard:

Lookout Mountain Church. Erected 1898. Designed by Chattanooga architect R. H. Hunt. Foundation: granite grade stone set with quick lime mortar in a tight rubble design
.

Then he went down his usual checklist:

1. Are there any dislocations—above grade loose stones exposing the foundation to splashing roof runoff?
   [none noted]
   
2. Any obvious areas of discoloration?
   [none noted]
   
3. Any bulges created by frost, water leakage, or vehicle loading?
   [none noted]
   
4. Any obvious cracks in the mortar?
   [noted: eight cracks of negligible size/import; recommend polyurethane fill]
   
5. Have there been any interruptions (e.g., removing stones from the structural walls without adding lintels)?
   [noted: lintels in place where windows added; no loss of structural integrity observed]
   

Teddy stared at the list.

Then, because in twenty-four years of construction work not one building—certainly not one as old as this church—had ever passed inspection with such
absence of inadequacy
, he added one more entry:

1. [!!]
   

9

In the interest of safety, and to prevent further damage, the Elders hired a team from the Igneous Glass Company to remove, for the time being, all stained glass from the sanctuary windows. Using soft-nubbed medical reflex hammers, six artisans and their apprentices tapped out the glass. Each piece was sealed in its own bubble-wrap baggie; the baggies laid between sheets of foam eggshell; the sheets of eggshell stacked in lined crates roughly the size of coffins. The crates were then labeled by content—
Daniel w/ lions, Mary w/ Gabriel, Elijah w/ chariot—
and shipped to a temperature-controlled storage facility in Atlanta.

10

God's judgment, some of our members said. Perhaps there are some who, like Jonah, need to come up from hiding in the bowels of their ships.

With no shortage of churches in Chattanooga (none of them dealing with such
spookiness
), many began attending services off the mountain.

By the first of May, our membership had dropped from 150 to 78.

Only a handful of us—the faction that had favored Corbett Earnshaw's departure, and those of us who agreed with them—said the missing stained glass was a
gift
. With only the lead outlines remaining, the familiar Bible stories were now articulated in three dimensions: yellow-greens of spring maple and silvered sprays of pine; fade-to-gray of cloud; blue sky beyond. Could it be, we said, that in this fusion of the ancient stories with present-day creation, God meant to reawaken our childhood sense of mystery? Hadn't some of us noticed, lately, gilded horizon lines at the borders of things, a refracted spangling along the edges of sidewalks? Hadn't others of us sworn we'd felt a finger brush the backs of our necks or calves while we stood loading our dishwashers, brushing our teeth? Perhaps, we said, God wanted gently to remind us of the world we'd forgotten about, the
other
Nature hovering behind our own; and though we couldn't see it—not yet—we grew increasingly certain it was there, just in front of us, waiting on the other side of a one-way mirror, breath fogging up the glass.

Unwilling to abandon the church, the remaining leaders—an elder, the organist, and Robinson himself—formed a Committee for the Reestablishment of Order. Their first recommendation: the immediate removal of Sunday services to the windowless Fellowship Hall. But we refused to move. For the first time we could see each other worshipping in the natural light. Breezes fluttered our skirts and chucked our collars up under our chins. Through the empty lead cames drifted
scents of honeysuckle and wisteria, mown grass, grilled fish. We could hear weed trimmers, children's laughter; the whir of a moped, the drone of an airplane.