Let the Great World Spin (9 page)

Corrigan rolled down the window of the van and sprinkled some tobacco on a thin piece of paper, lit up.

“So, fair enough, I get it seen to. And she’s bang on. I have this thing they don’t know much about. It’s idiopathic, you know, they don’t know what causes it. But they say it’s serious enough, you can get real sick from it. I mean, you gotta eventually get the treatment or you can die. And so I go home at night and I call on God in the dark, and I say, ‘Thanks, God, another thing to worry about.’ But the thing is, God’s there this time, McCa_9781400063734_4p_01_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:31 PM Page 50

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brother. He’s there. In plain sight. It would be easier if He wasn’t there. I could pretend I was searching for Him. But no, He’s there, the son of a gun. He’s telling me all the logical things about being sick and getting over it and dealing with it and looking at the world in a new way, the way He does, the way He should talk to you, the Body, the Soul, the sacrament of being alone, being furious with an aim, using it for the greater good.

Opening yourself to the promise. But, see, this logical God, I don’t like him all that much. Even His voice, He’s got this voice that I just can’t, I don’t know, I can’t like. I can understand it, but I don’t necessarily like it.

He’s out of my range. But that’s no problem. Plenty of times I haven’t liked Him. It’s good to be at a disturbance with God. Plenty of fine people have been in my place and worse.

“I figure being sick is old news anyway and dying’s even older than that. What’s fatal is the big hollow echo every time I tried Him out. See, I just felt hollow every time I tried talking with Him. I gave it everything, brother. My proper confession, you know, about maintaining faith and all. I talked with Father Marek there in St. Ann’s. A good priest. We struggled together, him and I. Hours on end. And with Him too, with God, at all hours of the day. Used to be, though, that the arguments with Him stirred the depths of my heart. I wept in His presence. But He kept coming back at me with all His pure logic. Still, I knew it would pass. I knew I’d get over it. I wasn’t even thinking about Adelita then. She wasn’t even on my mind. It was losing God. The prospect of losing that. The rational part of me knew it was me—I mean, I was just talking to myself. I was obstructing Him. But being rational about it didn’t cure it. You meet a rational God and you say, Well, okay, that’s not my cup of tea right now, Heavenly Father, I’ll come back at a better time.

“You know, when you’re young, God sweeps you up. He holds you there. The real snag is to stay there and to know how to fall. All those days when you can’t hold on any longer. When you tumble. The test is being able to climb up again. That’s what I’m looking for. But I wasn’t getting up. I wasn’t able.

“So, anyway, I’m in the nursing home one Friday afternoon and Adelita was sitting in the stock room, going through the bottles of cough mixture. And I just sat down on the low ladder and was chatting away with her. She was asking me if I was getting treatment in the hospital and I find myself lying, flat-out lying, saying, Yes, of course, everything’s fine, McCa_9781400063734_4p_01_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:31 PM Page 51

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not a bother on me. ‘That’s good,’ she said, ‘because you really need to be looking after yourself.’ Then she stepped over beside me, pulled up a chair, and started rubbing the inside of my arm. She said that I had to keep the blood flowing. She pushed her fingers into my arm here. And it was like she put her hands down deep in the earth. That’s how it felt. I got goosebumps, my blood moving under her fingers. My other hand gripped the side of the ladder. And there was a voice inside me saying,

‘Strengthen yourself against this, this is a test, be ready, be ready.’ But it’s the same voice I don’t like. I’m looking behind the veil of it and all I see is this woman, it’s a catastrophe, I’m descending, sinking like a hopeless swimmer. And I’m saying, God don’t allow this to happen. Don’t let it.

She was tapping the inside of my arm with her fingernail, just flicking it.

I closed my eyes. Please don’t allow this. Please. But it was so pleasant. So so very pleasant. I wanted to keep my eyes closed and pry them open at the same time. No words for it, brother. I couldn’t stand it. I got up and stormed out of the place. Stumbled out into the van.

“I think I drove all night. I just kept going. Following the white lines.

I got snared up on bridges. Had no idea where I was going. Soon enough the lights of the city were fading. I figured I was out somewhere way upstate, but it was the island, man, Long Island. I thought I was going west, across some great open land, where I’d work everything out, but I wasn’t, I was actually heading east along this big highway. And I just kept going. Driving and driving. Cars zipping by me. I had to keep muttering to myself and lighting matches, smelling the sulfur, to keep awake. Trying to pray. To make two plus two equal five. And then the highway ended, middle of nowhere, it seemed like, and I just followed a smaller road. Out through farmland and past these isolated houses, little pinpoints of light. Montauk. I’d never been there before. The dark got thicker, no lights at all. And it turned into this little one- laner. That’s what takes you to the end of this country, man, a tiny little potholed road that ends up at a lighthouse. And I thought: ‘This is right, this is where I’ll find Him.’

“I got out and stepped in among the dunes, along the beach. I walked about and screamed at Him, under the clouds. Not a star shining anywhere. No response. You’d expect a bit of moon at least. Something. Anything. Not even a boat. It was like everything had deserted me. And I could still feel her touch there, on the inside of my arm. Like it was deep McCa_9781400063734_4p_01_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:31 PM Page 52

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and there was something growing there. And I’m out in the middle of an endless beach with a lighthouse twirling behind me. Thinking stupid things. The way you do. I’ll move away. I’ll give it all up. I’ll leave the Order, I’ll go back to Ireland, find a different poverty. But nothing made sense. The end of the country, man, but there was no revelation.

“After a while I gathered myself into that silence and finally I sat down in the sand and said to myself, ‘Well, maybe it will only make me better for Him in the long run, I have to fight this, battle it, use it for my own advantage, it’s a sign.’ I resigned myself to it. That which doesn’t break you, blah blah blah. I was running a fever but I left the beach, got back in the van and calmed myself down, and said good- bye to the lighthouse, the water, the east, and said it will be fine, nothing holy is free, and I drove all the way back to the flat, parked the van, fell into the lift, and closed the door. I actually fell asleep in the lift. Only woke up when it started moving. Found myself staring at the face of some frightened black woman. I scared her. I locked myself in for two days. Waiting for the bandages to blacken, y’know, that sort of thing. Waiting for it to blow over. And I bolted the chain. Can you believe that? I bolted the door shut.

So much for the crap I gave you, brother, about the locks.”

He chuckled a little and a spray of headlight went across his face from the far side of the boulevard.

“The girls thought I was dead. They were banging on the door, wanting to use the facilities. And I didn’t reply. I just lay there, trying to pray for some sign of gentle mercy. But I kept seeing Adelita in my mind.

Eyes closed, eyes open, it didn’t matter. Things I shouldn’t have been thinking of. Her neck. The back of her neck. Her clavicle. The side of her face in a slice of light. There she was, taking me in. And I wanted to scream at her, No, no, no, you’re just pure lust, and I’ve made a pact with God to fight lust, please just let me be, please just go. But she’s still standing there, smiling, understanding. And I’d whisper to her again: Please go. But I knew it wasn’t lust, it was so much more than lust. I was looking for a simple answer, the sort we give to children, you know. And I kept thinking that we were all children once, maybe I could return.

That’s what echoed in my head. Go back to being a child. Sprint along the strand there. Up past the tower. Run along the wall. I wanted that sort of joy. Make it simple again. I was trying, really trying, to pray, get rid of my lust, return to the good, rediscover that innocence. Circles of McCa_9781400063734_4p_01_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:31 PM Page 53

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circles. And when you go around in circles, brother, the world is very big, but if you plow straight ahead it’s small enough. I wanted to fall along the spokes to the center of the circle, where there was no movement. I can’t explain it, man. It was like I was staring at the ceiling, waiting for the sky. All this banging was still going on outside the door. Then hours of silence.

“At one time I heard Jazzlyn, you know, that voice of hers, like she just swallowed the Bronx, man, leaning in against the keyhole and screaming: ‘Okay! To hell with you, you dumbass cracker!’ It’s the only time I laughed. If only she knew. ‘To hell with you, you dumbass cracker, I’ll piss somewheres else!’

“Then they actually got the Guards in to bash down the door. And they come rushing in, flashing badges, guns drawn. They stop and stare.

Looking at me, lying on the couch, the Bible over my face. And one cop is saying, ‘What’s going on here, man? What the hell is this? He’s not dead. He smells bad, but he’s not dead.’ I’m just lying there and I swipe the Book off my face and cover my eyes with my forearm. And Jazz comes charging in behind them, saying, ‘I gotta go, I gotta go.’ Then comes Tillie with her pink parasol. Then both of them came out and started shouting. ‘How come you keep the door locked, Corrie? Asshole!

That’s mean and unusual punishment. That’s the honkypox, man!’ The Guards were standing there, open- mouthed. They couldn’t believe what was going on. One of them was wrapping a piece of gum tight around his finger. He kept winding it, like he wanted to strangle me. I’m sure they were thinking that they’d done this for nothing, for a bunch of working girls who just wanted to pee. They were not happy at all. Not at all. They wanted to give me a citation for wasting their time, but they couldn’t dream up anything. I said maybe they should give me one for losing my faith and then they thought I was really off my rocker. One of them said to me, ‘Look at this shithole—get a life, man!’ And it was just so simple, the way he said it, the young Guard, right in my face: ‘Get a life, man!’ He kicked over the flowerpot as he went out the door.

“Tillie and Angie and Jazzlyn and the girls threw a ‘not- dead’ party for me. They even bought me a cake. One candle. I had to blow it out. I was going to take it as a sign. But there were no signs. I went back down the nursing home and that night I asked Adelita if she’d mind just moving the blood around a little—that’s the way I said it, ‘Move the blood around McCa_9781400063734_4p_01_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:31 PM Page 54

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a little, would you?’ She gave me that big cheerful smile and said that she was busy on her rounds, maybe she’d get to it later. I sat there, trembling with God, all my sorrows, bound up inside. And sure enough she came back a short while later. It was all very simple. I just stared at the dark of her hair. Couldn’t look in her eyes. She was rubbing my shoulder and the small of my back and even my calf muscles. I kept hoping maybe somebody would come in the door and find us, make a big stink, but nobody did. And I kissed her. And she kissed me back. I mean, how many men can say they’d rather be nowhere else in the world? That’s how I felt. That moment. That I wanted nothing but the here and now, and nowhere else.

On earth as it is in heaven. That one moment. And then after a few days I started going to her house.”

“She’s got three kids, you said.”

“Two. And a husband who got killed down in Guatemala. Fighting.

For, I don’t know, Carlos Arana Osorio or someone. A fascist of some sort. She hated him, the husband—she got caught up in this marriage young—and still she’s got his picture on the bookcase. For the kids to know that he exists, existed, that they had a father. We just sit there and he’s looking out at us. She doesn’t talk about him. He’s got this hard stare. I sit in her kitchen and she cooks a little and I move the food around on the plate and we chat and then she rubs my shoulders while her kids are in the other room, watching cartoons. She knows I’m in the Order, knows the celibacy rules, everything. I told her. She says that if it doesn’t matter to me then it doesn’t matter to her. She’s the loveliest person I’ve ever known. I can’t stand it. I can’t deal with it. I sit there and it’s like these blades turning in my stomach. The voice I go home to is not the voice I ever heard before. I can’t lay a hand on the old one. He’s gone. I find myself stretching out at night, trying to grab a hold of it but He’s not there. All I get is sleeplessness and disgust. Call it what you like. Call it joy, even. How can I pray with this inside me? How can I do what I’m supposed to do? I don’t even judge myself by my actions. I judge myself by what’s in my heart. And it’s rotten because it wants to own things, but it’s not rotten because it’s the most content I’ve ever been, and it’s the most content she’s ever been too, sitting there, together. We’re happy. And I keep wondering if we’re supposed to be happy. I haven’t slept with her, brother. At least not . . . We’ve thought about it, yes, but, I mean . . .”

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He faded off.

“You know my vows. You know what they mean. I used to think there was no other man in me, no other person, just me, the devoted one. That I was alone and strong, that my vows were everything, and I wasn’t tempted. And I’ve turned it over and over in my mind. What happens if this? What happens if that? And maybe it’s not even a matter of losing faith. I stand in the mess of myself. It’s against everything I’ve ever been, and suddenly just watching it all disappear, and then also lying to her, even about my treatment.”