Lance Olsen - Calendar of Regrets

The mirror over the backbar had a bullet hole in it dating, not from the days of the Wild West, but from the 1970s.

Newcomers to the town had to learn to lean forward slightly when walking along the sidewalks because the harsh wind never stopped blowing in from the prairies.

Two years ago the postcards stopped.

Who? Iphi's father asked when someone mentioned Mike's name after that.

This is why you always have more than one baby, explained Iphi's mother. You don't want to start liking one too much, just in case something like this happens.

Dan, the younger one, the one with a girl's fragility and tendency to blush easily, flunked out of tenth grade last year. To him, sentences resembled messy piles of kindling waiting for a match. Math problems looked worse. Fractions, division signs, x 's and y 's clogging the page of a textbook tightened his stomach, made his mind go empty as a pair of cupped hands.

Iphi started worrying about Dan when he started staying out all night, sleeping in till four every afternoon, but not as much as she started worrying about herself.

Clayton and his gifts had become the same thing in her mind.

She couldn't stop thinking about either one.

Iphi said: I've never tasted a soft drink as good as this.

Holding the green, yellow, red, and white can in her hand. Rotating it. Examining the label as if maybe it held the secret that would explain this afternoon.

Sometimes on commercials you hear a drink is “refreshing.” A drink is “thirst quenching.” You don't pay any attention. But that's exactly what you've got yourself here.

When it arrived, it wasn't a waterfall of voltage rippling down over her. When it arrived, it was a quiet voice whispering into her ear one evening on the sofa in her living room as she waited for Clayton to pick her up after dinner.

I'm beside you , the voice said. I'm right here beside you. Don't be afraid.

This is what happened: Jesus simply appeared in her living room. One second he wasn't in Iphi's house. The next he was.

She was conquered by his presence, could sense him sitting there beside her as she smoked a cigarette, loving her, bleeding from his wrists, his feet, the wound in his side. She could sense how she had become perfect in his eyes, despite everything she had done, despite everything she had failed to do, how everything had grown warm, correct.

She understood completely how the reason there aren't any dinosaurs left on the planet is because they couldn't fit on Noah's ark.

How it is impossible to imagine the number 4,500,000,000 and so it simply stands to reason that the earth has to be fewer than 10,000 years old.

How you either believe God's Word all the way or not at all.

She saw how when the Rapture arrives Jesus will reach down into her body, pluck out the handful of white light called her soul, and carry it with him up to heaven. On that day, pilots will disappear from their cockpits, truck drivers from their cabs, commuters from their cars. At dinner tables all around the world, some family members will vanish while others will burst into flames.

You either believe or you do not.

You either open your arms to Jesus, or Jesus will close his heart to you.

I thought about how all anybody really wants is somewhere to go when they're finished here.

I thought about how, in Matthew, Jesus says: Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

Eyes shut. Water lapping. Iphi sipping.

The general chatter of pigeons and people passing.

I thought about how, in Ezekiel, God says: I will leave your flesh on the mountains, and fill the valleys with your carcass. I will water the land with what flows from you, and the riverbeds shall be filled with your blood.

I opened my eyes and glanced up at the sky to see if it would explode.

We sat across from the two Church brothers in our living room. We couldn't afford real furniture, so we improvised with lawn chairs, a chaise lounge, a camping table we bought on sale at Target. Iphi offered them apple juice and fresh-baked butter cookies.

Smiling with their tiny teeth, they said thank you, but no.

They told us how sorry they were about what had happened to my mother and asked if we could all take a few moments to pray for her.

We kneeled on the bare wood floor.

Lowered our heads.

Opened our hearts, but not enough.

Afterward, they posed questions to us. Did I ever think about what must have gone through my mother's mind as the first bomb erupted in the movie theater where she was sitting at the Mall of America? As hope started collapsing down around her? As she lay leaving us under the heap of rubble, waiting for the rescue workers, but less and less?

Did I ever think about how much anyone should bear before he begins to match sacrifice with sacrifice, thunder with thunder?

I had, I said. All the time.

It was past midnight when they left. Iphi and I washed dishes and went to bed. We spoke in voices low and quiet as Christ's until dawn.

She understood completely how hell looked just like the painting by that guy.

What was his name?

Bird monsters with glossy dead eyes gnawing on the heads and shoulders of naked sinners. Gigantic machines in dark niches grinding up the fallen like so much hamburger meat. Huge rats raping the crucified. Men shitting coins, lapping at tubs full of vomit. Women being eaten alive, yet still unable to tear their eyes away from the hand mirrors they're holding before them. Thick brown smoke churning across the glowing orange nightmare horizon.

Imagine, Iphi said, how that scene doesn't happen once. How it is happening right now, but also a thousand years ago and next week and next year and forty billion years after that.

Forever.

Forever and ever without end.

The painting says: I was there .

The painting says: I saw what you are seeing .

The painting says: Beware, for this is what awaits all who believe in empty expressions rather than the rabbit punch of deeds .

12:46. We were sitting on the park bench at the edge of the boating lake, and then we were approaching the mosque. Time and space winked, lost me, found me. I watched the minaret swing into view, the large golden dome, the library, the rest of the concrete-and-glass complex on the far side of the green hedge, the barren trees.

My chest a chaos of sparrows.

My mind a squall of luminosity.

The bored security guard, a gray-haired Pakistani with pink-rimmed eyes, gave us the once-over from his chair by the entrance and waved us through without rising.

We walked down the sun-flooded hallway, the double brass doors at the far end swelling to meet us. We paused just outside the prayer hall, my mouth suddenly dry, gummy, Iphi's eyes suddenly rich with panic and shock through the slit in her burqa.

Once upon a time, you weren't here. Now you have never been anywhere else. You are the Lord's story. Now it is nearing its end. It has been a good one.

Calm yourself , you tell your wife without using words. This is how we will return to God. Others find other ways. This will be ours .

You want to reach out. You want to touch her face one more time in this world, but know you will have to wait. A few minutes, less, and then you will be standing together again.

All this thinking, all this practice, and the instant finally happens around you and through you like a heavy wind.

You take her hands without taking her hands. You tell her you love her without telling her you love her. She looks at you. She looks at you.

And then she turns and is walking away from you, moving toward the library.