Rapture (13 page)
Her heart, which had been bursting, now slowed down and everything was still.
The liquid settled in her mouth and she found that in addition to tasting numb, it also seemed to taste slightly forlorn, as if it were aware somehow of having been delivered to a warm wet place, but not the right one.
HE FELT
asif he'd emptied out everything good left in him. Then he wondered if, in fact, there had been anything good left.
Goodness was something way back there. He'd crossed the bridge away from it long ago. The moment he stepped off the bridge, up it went in flames. He could still hear the wood spitting and the planks popping. It had all burst into fire when he'd not been able to change his life for a person he loved.
Her head was resting on his upper leg which had fallen dead asleep up to the hip. He pushed the hair back from her temple and she blinked her eyes slowly, catlike. She murmured something. He couldn't hear what. He didn't want to disturb her dreamy mood by asking her to repeat it. At this point there wasn't anything he could imagine hearing that would make much difference anyway. He wished he felt as satisfied as she looked there, collapsed. She lifted her head with a wobbling effort. He saw her throat smooth out when she swallowed. She set her head back down. It was hard to say if her unblinking stare reflected bliss or the blankness you see in the traumatized.
He had a sudden sinking feeling. Something left him: the potential to do anything good again.
Then came a further sinking feeling, lower than all the other ones before it. A sharp little truth hunched there. Whatever goodness he thought he might have had was turning out to be less than he might have hoped.
SHE FELT HIS
hand stroking her hair. A need stirred in her, to say something, to tell him what this meant. She wanted him to know, and to tell him everything. What came out sounded much milder than she'd supposed, seeming so intense inside.
“That was worship,” she said.
She turned her face up to him and swallowed. Then she lay her head back down. The words shook her. She felt altered in some big nameless way. She stared, not focusing on anything, stunned.
HE WENT
to the Grand Canyon once. It was after college, driving out West on his own. He walked the steep paths down into the canyon and spent three days by himself, wandering around. He saw hardly any other people. One morning he woke and opened his small tent flap to all the cliffs and bluffs and ground which when he'd gone to sleep had been red and brown to now being covered in snow. It was like God was down there. When he climbed back up he brought that feeling with him, of there being a force behind everything, a big power. It was something he would always have, he thought, to fall back on.
But he'd lost that feeling now. He couldn't for the life of him recall it.
Here he was in a glowing bedroom which all of a sudden seemed lit up like some flower with the sun flooding the wall, with a woman whom he'd not exactly honored who was, for some reason beyond him, treating him lovingly. He couldn't for the life of him imagine why she was doing that. He couldn't for the life of him imagine that feeling he'd had of belief after being in the Grand Canyon. It was like trying to move your hand through space without muscles to grasp anything.
He shut his eyes. He saw the empty landscape. He knew he had to get out of bed and get going and soon, but he was mesmerized by this vision of emptiness. It was telling him something. The air above the pit began to move. All his sorrow and pain seemed to gather there. It began to swirl around and, whirlpool-like, to pick up force, attracting all the misery and grief in the whole world. The weight of it was being sucked down into the pit.
It was fucking sad. He wondered if Kay had any idea how really fucking sad this was, or how wretched he felt, or how polluted he was, or really how bad. He'd been sliding along in the shadows for a long time so no one could get a really good look at him. Because if they did, they'd see what a truly hideous human being he was.
Well, people found these things out in good time. And she'd learn, soon enough.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Susan Minot was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in Manchester-by-the-Sea. Her first novel,
Monkeys,
was published in a dozen countries and received the Prix Femina Ãtranger in France. She is the author of
Evening, Lust & Other Stories
and
Folly,
and she wrote the screenplay for Bernardo Bertolucci's
Stealing Beauty.
ALSO BY SUSAN MINOT
MONKEYS
LUST & OTHER STORIES
FOLLY
EVENING
Â
The author would like to thank her beloved editors, Ben Sonnenberg and Jordan Pavlin, and early readers Amy Hempel, Nancy Lemann, the Minots Carrie, George and Eliza, Lucy Winton and Tripp Lewton for their orienting feedback; and Charlie Pingree, for standing by.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2002 by Susan Minot
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Minot, Susan.
Rapture / Susan Minot.â1st ed.
p. cm.
I. Title.
PS
3563.
I
4755
R
37 2002
813'.54âdc21
2001038377
eISBN:
978-0-375-41442-8
v3.0
