Jack O'Connell - The Skin Palace

“Have a seat, dear, I’ve got the pen here somewhere,” and she starts pawing around the coffee table. “You’re such a help. Such a nice girl. The one before you, she was as surly as they come. A policewoman, of all things. Now she lives with an asthmatic mailman about a mile from here. I say, good luck to her.”

Sylvia looks at the clumps of cat hair covering the plaid wool sofa and sinks into the matching rocking chair. The television is on but the volume is turned down and she sees the Reverend Garland Boetell hopping around a red-carpeted stage in a huge auditorium, waving a Bible and thrusting his microphone around like a stiletto.

Mrs. Acker sees her watching and says, “Isn’t he just wonderful?”

“You’re a fan?”

“Sylvia, we need a man like the Reverend. We need him desperately.”

Sylvia nods agreement and looks back to the TV.

“The Reverend is here in Quinsigamond—” she starts.

“I know,” Mrs. A says. “Isn’t it exciting?”

Sylvia motions to the television and asks, “Is this a tape?”

Mrs. A raises her penciled-in eyebrows and steps over to a cherry bookcase filled to capacity with books and video-tapes. She puts a hand on top of the case like some bizarre display model and says, “I’ve got the entire library. Three hundred and sixty-five hours of wisdom. And all the books.”

She pulls out a volume and shows the dust jacket. The title is Tear Out the Offending Eye and the cover art is appropriately graphic.

“The books are divinely inspired, you know.”

“Is that right?” Sylvia says. She can smell cinnamon coming from the kitchen.

“He just sits down and turns off the business of his brain and the words flood into him. That’s what he says. They just flood in.”

Mrs. A sits down on the edge of the couch and a cat pops its head out from underneath the fringe and starts to mewl around her ankle. She picks up the cat absentmindedly, puts it in her lap and starts to stroke it. “I’ve never been a particularly religious individual, Sylvia. But this isn’t just about religion. This is about cleaning up. This is about restoring things to the way they should be. We’ve drifted, Sylvia.”

“I guess so,” Sylvia says and stares at the cat as its tongue comes out and swipes around its mouth.

“And the time is short,” Mrs. A says. “The time is dwindling. It’s upon us. The prophecies are all there, plain as day for anyone who’d take the time to look.”

The coffee table in front of them is blanketed with crumpled envelopes, manila folders, coffee mugs, a pair of scissors, and a pamphlet with the words Revelation Can Be Yours on the front flap.

“You mentioned a favor,” Sylvia says, pushing her wet hair behind her ears.

“When your Perry told me he was working with the Reverend, well you can imagine, I just about died. When he told me the man himself was in your living room the other night, I could barely contain myself. It’s as if it were destined, don’t you think?”

“That’s how it seems.”

“Perry’s told me about the important work they’re doing. How our city is going to be the springboard. They talk like such crusaders. Such passion. Springboard. Don’t you just love it?”

Sylvia’s head fills with a picture of a naked Perry and a naked Candice bouncing into the air off a monstrously high diving board. Intertwining during their free fall.

“You have to love it,” she says.

“But this morning I saw the forms required a witness—”

“The forms?”

Mrs. Acker nods and leans forward, pulls up one of the manila folders and hands it across the table. Sylvia opens it and reads Last Will and Testament of Roberta J. Acker. She looks up and Mrs. Acker is holding a pen out.

“You’re leaving all your money to Reverend Boetell?”

Mrs. A smiles and nods, proud and determined. “And the house. And all the rental properties and Louie’s antique coins and the greyhound I keep down in Rhode Island, though to be honest, Sylvia, I think his best days are over.”

It takes Sylvia a second to realize Mrs. A means the greyhound.

“Don’t get me wrong. It doesn’t all go to the Reverend personally. It goes to Millennial Ministries Corporation of Macon, Georgia. And there is a small clause for the cats.”

“The cats?”

“Perry’s assured me they’ll be taken care of.”

“I’m sure.”

Sylvia starts to read through the first paragraph of the will and stops and says, “I can’t witness this, Mrs. Acker.”

Mrs. A looks confused.

“What’s the problem, dear?”

“It’s just,” Sylvia stammers, “I can’t—”

But Mrs. A suddenly ignores her and lunges for the remote control to the TV and the cat leaps over the coffee table and disappears in the direction of the kitchen.

“I just love this part,” Mrs. A says, focusing in on the screen, and Sylvia turns to see the Reverend in a brown suit that looks a little like cowskin. The man is furious, worked into a lather that puts his art museum spiel to shame.

The volume on the set comes up and the Reverend’s eyes roll back in his head and he slaps a hand on his forehead and falls to his knees, brings his microphone up until it touches his mouth and gets assaulted with spittle. It’s as if he’s launching into a seizure that will require long-term medical care. His whole body starts to buck like a rodeo rider on a ghost-bull.

“I saw a vision,” he screams, in a roar so intense it appears likely he’ll rupture blood vessels. “I saw a vision of the coming rapture. I saw the future of the coming war when blood will engulf this wretched planet. And I heard the voice of the Holy One calling down to me, calling down with the mission I could not refuse, calling down, dauuoown upon my pitiful human ears. And he said the battle is now upon us, my miserable servant. The battle is here and the time is now. And he says unto me the tha- rone of Satan rises in the east. The time of the tribulation screams down to our feet and none can escape the ravagement of these horrors. And I saw the son of may-ann with seven stars in his right hand and the key of David in his left hand and a raayzor -sharp two-edge sword issuing from his mouth. And his face was like the sun shining in full inferno. And I looked upon that face of the Master, seated there in the golden throne, and he showed me the scroll and the seven seals and said, it must be you, Garland, it must be you and you alone who will break open these seals and prepare my people for the coming Armageddon …”

Sylvia closes the manila folder and puts it back on the coffee table, but Mrs. Acker doesn’t seem to notice. She’s fingering the remote control box like prayer beads and Sylvia gets up and leaves the apartment without another word.

Down in the darkroom, she mounts the step stool and makes herself look at the seven pictures.

And all the surety of last night is gone.

There’s nothing in these images to suggest that this woman was Sylvia’s mother. That Sylvia is the infant in her arms. That a man named Terrence Propp took the shots. Or that the man named Terrence Propp is Sylvia’s father.

Playing the idea back now, like this, it sounds ludicrous to her. The kind of thing you can only conceive of at the height of your most outrageous drunk. The kind of thing that in a day’s time and sober, you can’t imagine having considered.

She imposed that meaning on these photographs. She took the essence of these seven images and imbued them with a need completely specific to her, and yet one that, until now, she’s not sure she knew existed.

And if she can do that with random pictures, chance images that happened to come into her possession, she has to wonder what else, what other artifacts, what other identical and meaning-free objects she commonly acts on. What other haphazard items does she mindlessly change into something she wants or needs them to be?