Only Begotten Daughter (16 page)

She marched forward and presented him with a manila envelope. Coarse white tissue covered her right palm like a wad of chewing gum. “Read this.”

“I’m a busy man.”

“My column—the preamble, actually. I can’t give advice till I’ve stated my principles.”

“We
have
an advice column.”

“Mine’ll be different—a kind of covenant. I want to rescue the masses from nostalgia, and yours is one of the few papers they read.”

“Not enough masses.”

“I could always take my message to
Scientific American
or
The Skeptical Inquirer,
but why preach to the converted?” That lascivious smile again. “My brother Jesus made a big mistake. He didn’t leave any writings behind.”

“Your brother
who?
”

“Jesus Christ. Half brother, technically.”

“Jesus’ sister, eh?” Bix drained his coffee. Jesus’ sister: that, at least, was a new one. “On Mary’s side?”

“God’s.” She gave his shoulder a patronizing squeeze. “It’s hard to accept. I barely do myself.”

Bix had spent most of his adult life dealing with self-appointed saints and saviors. With faith healers, fortune tellers, crystal gazers, spirit channelers. With people who took their vacations on Venus and their sabbaticals on the astral plane. Now came a woman with the grandest claim of all, yet she bore about as much resemblance to the average visionary as an interim report did to an orgasm.

He said, “Maybe if you changed my coffee into gin …”

“You’re an agnostic, Mr. Constantine?”

“Used to be.” Bix refilled his mug. “Then one day—you want to hear about it?”

“My favorite subject.”

“One day I picked up my cousin’s new baby and realized how at any moment this pathetic, innocent creature might die in a car crash or get leukemia, and in that moment of revelation, my Road to Damascus, I went the whole way to atheism.”

Of all things: she laughed. A spontaneous display of amused assent. “Hey, if I weren’t divine,” she said, “
I’d
probably be an atheist too.” In a gesture he found both erotic and endearing, Julie Katz wrapped her hands around his coffee mug and, leaving it in his grasp, lifted the rim to her abundant lips and sipped. “It’s certainly the more logical choice.”

I’m in love, Bix thought. He opened the manila envelope and lifted out a one-page letter stapled to a black-and-white photo of its author.

Dear
Moon
Readers:

God exists! Oh, yes! I have proof! Imagine!

“What proof?” you ask. Picture a female reproductive cell, rocketing through time and space from the regions beyond reality, passing through the walls of a crystalline womb, and coming to rest in a Jewish celibate’s sperm donation. Thus did I enter the world. Yes: I am she. God’s daughter. Water-breather, kin to Jesus, confessor to Satan, confidant of fish and fireflies. Proof!

Now: the bad news. Like all deities, I am a product of my era. I live in my own time, in this case the bewildering and uncertain twentieth century. Sorry. I wish I could comfort you with pretty promises of healing and immortality. I cannot. But God exists! Think of it!

Are you in pain? I understand. Does death frighten you? Tell me about it. Has your marriage or career brought disappointments you never anticipated? You are not alone. I look forward to receiving your cards and letters, along with whatever mementos you feel might help me to comprehend your suffering. Together we shall topple the empire of nostalgia!

Love,

Sheila, Daughter of God

“Well? What do you think?”

What did Bix think? He thought Julie Katz had dug up the basement of the
Moon
building and found a chest of Spanish doubloons. This wasn’t ESP or the Loch Ness monster or the boy who filled the bathtub with piranha thinking them goldfish until they ate Gramps—this was genuine lunacy, this was playing to win. The ailing tabloid would either rise on Julie Katz’s dementia or she would bury it forever.

“We don’t need this bit about nostalgia,” he said.

“Yes we do. Humanity must stop living in the past.”

“Why’d you sign it ‘Sheila’?”

“I require anonymity. I’m expected to have a life.”

“This put-down of healing and immortality should go. Our readers are into those things.”

“The Age of Miracles is over.”

“The Age of Reason is also over. This is the Age of Nonsense. We have a policy.”

“I don’t care about your stupid policy.”

“Hey, honey, do you want an editor or not?”

“Do you want a column or not?” She pushed back her hair, uncovering a thin, S-shaped scar. “I imagine the
World Bugle
would be interested.”

“Look, it doesn’t really matter what I think. Mr. Biacco has final say on any new feature.”

Predictably, she declined his request for her phone number, promising instead to call on Tuesday. His eyes remained rooted on her as she brushed past Madge Bronston and started down the hall, and seconds later he was bent over the
Moon’s
persnickety Xerox machine, rapidly reproducing her letter. That lush mouth, that luxurious hair. Why were the mad so singularly sensual?

Tony kicked off the lunch meeting exactly as Bix knew he would, noting that “a corpse’s corpuscles have better circulation than we do.” But today he went further. The time, Tony asserted, had truly, finally, irrevocably come to pull the plug.

“Let’s try this first.” Bix opened his briefcase. Within a minute each rat aboard the sinking ship called
Midnight Moon
was reading a copy of Julie Katz’s letter.

“A schizophrenic, right?” concluded Patty Roth, the circulation director.

“Hard to say,” said Bix.

“A paranoid schizophrenic, sounds like.”

“Crazy or not, I say give her a chance.” He had to see her again, Bix realized. Had to. “Look at it this way. The
Bugle’s
got that happy fascist Orton March and his outrageous editorials, the
Comet
seems to know exactly which movie stars’ penises people want to read about, but the
Moon
and only the
Moon
will have the living, breathing words of God’s other child.”

“Okay, okay, but she’s not up to speed yet,” said Tony. “I assume you’ll cut this crap about our bewildering century?”

“That was my first instinct. I’m beginning to think it gives her a certain authenticity.”

“It’s not us. It’s not the
Moon.”
Tony combed his graying hair with his withered fingers. “I want her to reveal what heaven’s like, okay, Bix? Then have her try a few low-key predictions.”

“Maybe she should help people explore their past lives,” said Patty.

“And give tips for winning the lottery,” said Tony.

“I doubt she’ll go for it,” said Bix.

“Hey, now that the concept’s nailed down, why do we need this girl at all?” asked Mike Alonzo, the paper’s science editor
(DEAD ASTRONAUTS BUILD CITY ON VENUS)
. “Why not just have Kendra McCandless write it?”

Kendra’s very name made Bix grimace. Kendra McCandless, the paper’s freelance astrologer, astral tripper, ecstasy monger, and goofball. “Nah, with Kendra all you get’s a lot of secrets-of-the-universe stuff. Transcendence as usual. With Julie Katz you get … I don’t know. Something else.”

“The divine spark?” sneered Mike.

“She’s ambiguous. Delphic. It might just work.”

“We can offer three hundred per column,” said Tony. “You think she’ll sign for that?”

“Don’t know.”

“Title. We need a title.”

“Hadn’t thought about it. ‘Dear Sheila’?”

“Doesn’t goose me. Paul?”

“‘Letters to Sheila’?” suggested Paul Quattrone, the paper’s financial reporter
(TOP PSYCHICS PREDICT MARKET UPTURN).

“‘Sheila’s Corner’?” offered Sally Ormsby, the film critic
(NEW ELVIS FLICK RECOVERED FROM UFO CRASH
).

“‘Notes from the Netherworld’?” ventured Lou Pincus, the sports editor
(DEVIL CULT USES HUMAN HEAD FOR HOCKEY PUCK)
.

“‘Advice from the Afterlife’?” hazarded Vicki Maldonado, whose beat was burned children and the Bermuda Triangle.

“Hold on,” said Tony. “This is hardball, people. This is Jesus Christ’s sister. We’ll be printing the stuff
everybody
wants to know.”

“Brainstorm, Tony?” asked Patty.

“Forty days and forty nights.”

“Give it to us.”

“The girl’s column will be called—now get this—‘Heaven Help You.’”

Heaven Help You

DEAR SHEILA
: My brother-in-law is writing this letter for me, because three weeks ago I was in a terrible car accident and broke my neck. Now I’m one of those quadriplegics, which makes me of positively no use to my wife or anybody else. You said to send a memento, so I’m enclosing a snapshot of me windsurfing on Cape Cod last summer.

Here’s my question, Sheila. What’s the very best way for me to kill myself?—
BROKEN IN MASSACHUSETTS

DEAR BROKEN
: In pressing your photograph to my heart, I have come to believe your future is much brighter than you imagine. You are definitely among the seventy percent of quads who can have normal genital intercourse. Beyond this inspiring fact, science and technology offer many resources for individuals in your situation: reading machines, robot appliances, computerized typewriters, electric wheelchairs.

If you ultimately decide suicide is your only option, I urge you to do it right, as a bungled attempt can be both painful and a real mess for your survivors to clean up. Try contacting the National Hemlock Society, which helps the terminally ill out of the world. But please don’t kill yourself, Broken. Staying alive is the best revenge.

DEAR SHEILA
: Accompanying this letter is a peanut-butter jar filled with our daughter’s tears. Meggie is fourteen, sleeps poorly, and won’t get out of bed, not to mention her bad grades, almost no appetite, and usually she can’t stop crying. Is this growing pains or what?—
WORRIED, MISSISSIPPI

DEAR WORRIED
: I have drunk your daughter’s tears, and a single diagnosis keeps ringing through my head. I believe Meggie suffers from clinical depression, which actually strikes children as often as it does adults.

What to do? Psychotherapy is one route. Get Meggie to confront her unconscious demons, and there’s a chance her symptoms will vanish.

If Meggie were my child, I would take her to a hospital specializing in affective disorders. The doctor will probably prescribe amitriptyline or some other antidepressant. With the help of love and pharmaceutical intervention, your daughter has a good shot at recovery.

DEAR SHEILA
: If anybody thinks they’ve got problems, I’d like to mention my six no-good children, also my husband Jack (not his actual name), who hits me though not all the time, normally by punching, and with his feet, and to prove it my back and worse places have got these bruises, and if you think he’s any sort of father to these kids you’re dead wrong, and I never get a minute’s peace, besides which he’s always drunk and lately he’s been using his belt. I do love him, though.

Anyway, Jack has made me pregnant again because we’re not allowed to believe in birth control, and I want to be dead. If I get an abortion, will I burn in hell? Forever? My parents are good Catholics, so they’ll kill me if I do this. The thing I’m sending is the diaphragm I should have worn all along, because I thought if you touched it, Sheila, then maybe this baby I don’t want would go away.—
MISERABLE IN CHEYENNE

DEAR MISERABLE: AS
you might imagine, I am very torn on the abortion question. Freedom of choice? Let’s remember that our choices normally begin in the bedroom, not the abortion clinic. Let’s remember all those prime candidates for abortion who, reprieved at the last minute, went on to lead extraordinary and valuable lives.

On the other hand, pro-lifers have far fewer angels on their side than they suppose. The Bible teaches nothing about abortion. And have you ever heard of Saint Augustine? This famous theologian told us not to equate abortion with murder, the fetus in his view being much less aware than a baby. Thomas Aquinas, another major Catholic, allowed abortions until the sixth week for males and three months for females, the points at which they allegedly acquire souls. And I’m grievously troubled to see the pro-lifers shedding their crocodile tears over dead fetuses while thousands of
wanted
children die every day from causes no less preventable than abortion.

Like so much of this century, Miserable, your dilemma is fraught with ambiguity. You’ll have to let your conscience be your guide.

DEAR SHEILA
: I want you to know about our nine-year-old son, Randy, who succumbed to acute lymphoblastic leukemia last March after a valiant fight lasting many months. From the enclosed Pedro Guerrero card—Randy’s hobby was collecting baseball cards—I’m sure you’ll pick up his emanations and sense what a glorious little boy he was.

At first our grief was shattering, but then we realized Randy’s illness was part of God’s loving plan for us. Randy is now our angel and guide, preparing a place for us in heaven. When we walk with the Lord, the darkest tragedy becomes a gift, doesn’t it, Sheila?—
RENEWED IN BISMARCK

DEAR RENEWED
: It’s wonderful you’ve conquered your grief, and Randy’s spiritual beauty positively gushes from that Pedro Guerroro card, but I can’t help suggesting that a God who communicates with us through leukemia is at best deranged.

In my view, it’s time we stopped having lower standards for God than we do for the postal service. Suppose the doctors had cured your son. Then
that
would have proved my mother’s infinite goodness too, wouldn’t it? Follow my reasoning? Heads, God wins. Tails, God wins.

“To be perfectly frank,” Bix told Julie over the phone after she’d been at it for three months, “this isn’t quite the column we had in mind.”

“No?”

“It’s got to be more
spiritual.
Tony wants Sheila to tell people how they can tap their hidden psychic powers and tune in the rhythms of the cosmos.”