The House of Tomorrow (12 page)

Granted, her hair was curly, not brushed into straight sheets, and she wore so much dark goo on her eyes it was hard to tell if they were really there. But from the right angle, Nancy Spungen of the infamous Sid and Nancy slightly resembled Meredith Whitcomb. At least the sneer was identical. And the hunched posture. And this man who was skinny and strange and a tad weasel-like had managed to capture her affections. Of course, things had ended very poorly, but just the fact that they had been romantic at all was nothing short of inspiring.

I didn’t let my imagination wander any further than that. I just took note of the fact that at some point in history, an odd skeletal teen had entranced a beautiful angry woman. Such things were possible. And if this was possible, other things were possible. Like being in a band, for example. I checked my e-mail, to see if Jared had responded. His message was short and to the point.

I went back downstairs and found Nana in her room, sketching again. She was lying down with her head facing the sky, holding the drawing pad above her. The sounds of male orca whale calls emanated from the small stereo on her dresser. I smelled the aroma of a recently lit scented candle. Sage. Egyptian musk, perhaps. She paid little attention to me when I stepped into her room. Nana had entered these obsessive fugue states before, but this one was the most all-consuming I had seen. I walked slowly up next to her until my shadow was blocking her drawing light.

“He’s been dead for twenty-five years,” she said. “Did you know that?”

I thought immediately of my father, but that had been only ten years.

“Bucky,” she said, anticipating my question. “I . . . somehow. The day passed and I did not remember. It was the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death.”

She looked up at me, puzzled.

“He would have been one hundred and thirteen.” Her mouth stretched into a sad smile. “How could I forget? I never forget.”

“If he were here,” I said, “I’m sure he would have forgiven you already.”

Nana took a long drink of water from a smudged glass next to her. She closed her eyes and breathed in through her nose. The squawk of a whale brought her back.

“If he were here,” she said, “I wouldn’t have to remember his death.”

“Did you go to the funeral?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Not invited.”

“Why not?”

“His children never knew me,” she said. “No one close to him really did. But it was better that way. I never had to compete, you see. My time was my time only. And otherwise, I kept him in my thoughts. Like I do now.”

The flames of the candles shivered as Nana stood up and stretched. She coughed a little, and stood facing me. “Did you need something, Sebastian?”

“Yes,” I said, “but I can come back if you’re . . .”

“I’m perfectly fine,” she said. “What is it?”

“I wondered,” I said, a quaver in my voice, “how much paint will we need to begin with?”

Nana sat down on her bed. She shucked off a pair of slippers, exposing her small white feet. She cracked her toes. “A practical question,” she said.

Her eyelids dropped closed.

“I’m imagining a few gallons. Something green. We’ll want to start with Antarctica, the South Pole. It’s always blue or white on maps. But I just don’t envision that. On our Geoscope, it will be verdant.”

I took a deep breath and then looked down into Nana’s spacey gaze.

“When I purchased the spray paint, the owner of the shop told me about a sale . . . this upcoming Sunday. I think it would be to our economical advantage to buy the paint then. Is that satisfactory?”

Nana adjusted herself so she was recumbent with her back leaning against the wall. She picked up a drawing pencil and chewed on the end.

“Sebastian, Sebastian,” she said.

I waited silently for her rebuke. From the stereo came another honking shriek of an orca, and I flinched.

“Of course,” she said. “I’m proud of your business sense. Very shrewd. Bucky would be proud. It took him such a long time to . . . cultivate that talent.”

“Sunday, then,” I said. “I’ll go for you Sunday.”

Nana didn’t respond. She just picked up her sketch pad from the floor and began to draw again. As I was leaving, I heard her talking to herself again. “Twenty-five years,” she mumbled. I watched from the doorway as her pencil floated across the pad, her thin hand as steady and guided as always. When I was out of her sight, one last whale scream emerged from the distant stereo as if joining me in a private celebration.

“GOD IS A VERB, NOT A NOUN.”

That is arguably the most famous of Fuller’s comments about religion. It is also the closest he ever came to clarity on the subject. He made many other comments, but they weren’t as direct. He said, for example, that he feared the use of faith for ulterior motives. He said he believed most in the individual’s power to form ideas, not the group’s. And when asked about his personal beliefs, he exclaimed things like “God is the everywhere and everywhen evolving omnireality.” Or: “God is the eternal integrity of the omniregenerative universe!” Usually, at that point, an interviewer moved on to the next question.

Nana had always spoken about religion in much this same way. The result was that I had very little idea what to expect of the evening ahead of me as I pedaled my Voyager on the newly familiar route to the Whitcombs’. Much like God, I was also a verb that afternoon. I was a verb in slacks. My only pair of creased pants was from a few years ago when Nana briefly considered the idea of dressing me up in a suit to greet our dome visitors. The pants were too short, and left small patches of skin vulnerable to gales from the expressway. Fortunately, I had managed to find a scarf, earmuffs, and my puffy winter jacket from the year before. So I was not in serious danger of frostbite and amputation.

I had actually purchased Nana’s paint the day before, during her afternoon nap, and I had ferreted it away in the shed where I kept the Voyager. So all I had to concentrate on was the mission at hand. My plan was a simple one. Before the meeting of the youths, Jared would show me where the bass guitar was stored. I would remember this location. Then, at some point during the course of the meeting, Jared would provide a distraction and I would slip away. At that point, I would stash the bass guitar somewhere outside where I could pick it up later. I had e-mailed this plan to Jared the day before, and he had seemed satisfied, replying only, “That’s not completely asinine.” Now the plot just had to be implemented correctly.

I arrived at the Whitcomb house at four-fifty P.M. and parked my bicycle alongside the house. The wind blew a tremendous gust right when I hopped off the seat, and I heard the angel chime on the front porch, tinkling away. I walked past the windows of the house. Evening was approaching, and all the shades were pulled. In the orange light of Meredith’s room, I saw a shadow moving back and forth. I watched a moment, trying to distinguish her features. But I couldn’t quite make them out. Her silhouette was moving too quickly. I realized she was dancing, her shadow playing over the shade. She swayed her hips and shook her head wildly.

I pulled myself away and wandered around to the front of the house. I knocked loudly. Nearly a minute passed before I heard her voice. “Fine, if everybody else is paralyzed or something!” The door flew open and there was Meredith, standing before me in a close-fitting green sweater and a dark skirt with tights. Her hair was down and a lock hung over her left eye. Her face was slightly moist. She smelled like peach lotion.

“Oh,” she said. “You.”

She didn’t tell me to come in. She just left the door swinging open and stepped away. I noticed as she moved into the hallway that she had a thin silver phone pressed to her ear. Had she been dancing and speaking at the same time?

“No,” she mumbled into the phone. “Just this little weirdo that my brother’s in love with or something.”

I watched her walk away, her tights swooshing as her thighs rubbed together. In front of me, Jared walked in from the kitchen. He wore a diminutive black suit jacket over a black T-shirt that read “WWJD.”

“What Would Jared Do,” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“It’s not a question, asshole,” he said. “That’s what the shirt stands for.”

He pointed to the thick letters on his T-shirt. Then he looked at me.

“Your pants are small,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “Where’s your mother?”

He pointed toward her bedroom.

“Still in communion with the Lord or something,” he said. “She always spends time by herself before we leave. Who knows what she’s doing.”

He sat down on the floor and pressed a few buttons on his music player, scrolling through a list of songs.

“She seems like a very . . . devout person,” I said.

Jared chuckled without looking up from the tiny screen.

“These days, yeah,” he said. “She didn’t use to go to church at all. When I was younger, all we did on Sundays was dick off and eat pancakes. But the last couple of years she’s suddenly Saint Janice of North Branch. And of course she has to parade us around everywhere like her mini colony of lepers. The tiny cripple and the whore.”

Mrs. Whitcomb walked into the room in a hurry, holding a tote bag of supplies.

“What did you say, Jared?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Good evening, Sebastian,” she said.

She looked at my ill-fitting pants and smiled. Then she looked around the living room and shouted Meredith’s name down the hallway. Meredith sauntered back into the room, holding the phone at her side.

“I’m ready,” she said. “God!”

“Please don’t blaspheme on group night,” said Janice. “Is that so much to ask you? To not be profane, one night a week?”

“Busted,” said Jared. “Busted by God.”

“And none of your cursing tonight,” Janice snapped at Jared.

“What cursing?” he said.

“The kind that comes flying out of your mouth whenever you open it,” she said.

Jared shrugged his shoulders. I looked over at Meredith, but she only met my eyes for a second. Then everyone was looking at me. Meredith turned to her mother.

“Is Sebastian going to take off his stupid helmet?” she asked.

I reached my hand up and felt the hard plastic of protective gear.

 

 

 

IMMANUEL METHODIST LOOKED MORE LIKE A MINIATURE of a church than a real one. I had seen a few churches previously, but this was the first time I had ever entered one. I was surprised to discover that it was only two stories high, and in most ways resembled an ordinary living space. There was worn tan carpet in most rooms, mint green tile in the halls, and the smell of old coffee in the air. Yet the windows were painted with splendid artistry, complete with robed and bearded men who gathered and wept and bled and bled. And above us (I had noted outside) an ornate cross-topped spire stuck into the darkening evening sky like a finger pointing up toward the cosmos.

Janice left us in the “Recreation Room” while she went down the hall to set something up in another location. Jared and I sat down on a threadbare couch. Meredith leaned against a Ping-Pong table and began typing on the buttons of her phone. The walls were bare save a few photos of sunsets and streams.

“We’re going to the bathroom,” said Jared. “Tell Mom not to freak out if she comes back.”

“You guys going in there to bang your wangs together?” Meredith said, still typing on her device.

“Yeah,” said Jared. “A round of wang-banging.”

“Thought so,” she said.

We walked out into the hallway and made our way past a series of classrooms with children’s drawings on the walls. Our foot-scuffs echoed in the empty space.

“What a worthless hooch,” said Jared.

“I don’t know,” I said.

All around us there hung crayoned portraits of Jesus. “Keep Him with You Every Day,” read a banner over the drawings.

“You don’t know
what
?”

“I don’t know,” I repeated.

I followed Jared down the dim hallway. It smelled like dust and the citrus-scented cleaner I used on the dome. The light of dusk shone through a glass door at the end of the corridor, turning the space into a pink tunnel. Jared stopped in front of an unassuming closet and pulled a single bronze-colored key from his sock. We both stared at the door. He held out the key.

“This is it,” he said. “This is the spot.”

I reached for the key. But he tugged it away.

“Do you even understand how important this is?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I understand. Napoleon.”

“Is this some kind of joke to you?”

“No,” I said. “No, I promise you it’s not.”

“This is a defining moment for our band,” he said.

He pressed the bronze key into my palm. It was warm from his grip. We said nothing else. There was, I suppose, nothing left to say. Either I went through with it now, and we had a band, or I didn’t, and Jared’s dream was crushed. It was all remarkably simple. We returned to the room and found a few more group members lounging around. No one appeared to be friends. They just sat in isolation, listening to headphones or picking at the frayed cuffs of their khakis. Two large kids tried to hit each other with a Ping-Pong ball.

“One thing to know about Youth Group,” Jared whispered. “It’s filled to the brim with dickweeds.”

Just then Janice reentered the room carrying a stack of note cards and a small tin can filled with pens. She beamed at the hang-dog gathering around her.

“Hello, all,” she said. “So good to see everyone here.”

The room went quiet at the sound of her voice.