Joshua Ferris - To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

Looking at Bernadette in the chair, sallow, wrinkled, bald, and happy, I felt I had no choice but to tell her. But tell her what? I didn’t know. What good would it do, what action could she take? She was being consumed in some way, literally consumed before my very eyes, and no one, probably for fear of offending her, had said anything. As a medical professional, it was my obligation to do so. I just didn’t know how to put it into words. No matter how well intentioned, I might only end up offending her and then losing her as a patient. Did I want to sacrifice Bernadette’s billings to my observation that she appeared to be growing older faster than the rest of us? No, I thought. I will just ignore it. But how can anyone in good conscience ignore it? “Bernadette,” I said, and she turned to me in the chair. You’ve grown old, Bernadette. No, I couldn’t say that! Bernadette, your best days are over, it’s all downhill from here. Good God, no! You’re fucking dying, Bernadette! No! You’re practically decomposing on a cold slab! Oh, God, she was looking at me so intently now, I had to say something.

“Bernadette,” I said, “I mention this only out of…” I stopped and began again, saying, “Bernadette, have you, or your new husband perhaps, noticed that, well, how shockingly—”

“Dr. O’Rourke?”

“Oh, Connie!” I exclaimed.

“When you have a moment,” she said.

I looked happily down upon Bernadette. “That’s Connie,” I said. “I must go and talk to her.”

But on my way over, I saw that she was holding her iPad, which could only mean more unpleasantness.

“What is it this time?” I said.

“Twitter,” she said.

In the last week, the comments, messages, and postings made in my name continued to appear on respectable sites like ESPN, HuffPost, National Geographic, while expanding into darker recesses, into fringe chat rooms, unmoderated forums unfurling sex and death, my brand proliferating across platforms, burrowing ever deeper into the shallows… and now, two weeks after the O’Rourke Dental website appeared, “my” first tweet entered the world. It came from the account of @PaulCORourkeDental (New York, NY www.drpaulcorourke.com) and it read:

Error and misfortune arise in the world from the belief that God’s chief aim for creation is universal belief

Connie and I puzzled over that one awhile.

“I think you’re saying you shouldn’t believe.”

“ I’m not saying anything,” I said.

“I know it’s not you, Paul,” she said. “You don’t have to keep insisting.”

“I just want to make clear—”

“I know it’s not you. There’s no reason to be defensive.”

“I’m not being defensive, I’m being pissed off!”

“You sound defensive,” she said.

I read the tweet again. I thought she was right. I was advocating, or my impostor was advocating, possibly on behalf of God, against belief. I fired off another email while Connie watched.

Twitter now, huh? Why are you doing this to me?

I handed the iPad back to her, and she read the tweet again.

“You know what it sounds like to me?” she asked, before walking away.

“What?”

“Something an atheist would say.”

I knew I was in love with the Plotzes when I felt embarrassed to be an atheist, and instead of insisting upon it as a declaration of my essential self, around them I kept it under wraps. Rejecting God seemed an affront to their entire way of life, at least as I understood it: to the prayers sung on Friday night, to the commandments kept on the Sabbath, to every God-directed effort made throughout the week. They worked hard at their faith. They made it as much about the body as the soul. Sure, the Catholics crossed themselves upon entering the church, they touched holy water, they knelt before climbing into the pew, but these were but the throat clearings of a proper Plotz. The old-timey sway-and-song of charismatic Protestants was a set of Plotz knee bends. That’s why it came as such a surprise when Connie told me that Ezzie, another uncle, was an atheist. I was really shocked. I’d watched the guy. He looked as devout as the rest. “He doesn’t believe in God?” I asked. “Nope.” “Why not?” “Because… I don’t know,” she said. “You’d have to ask him.” I wasn’t going to ask any Plotz about atheism. “Is it because of the Holocaust?” I asked. She looked irritated by the question. “Not every Jew who doesn’t believe doesn’t believe because of the Holocaust,” she said. “We don’t have a specifically Jewish set of reasons for not believing. Hello?” she said, pointing to herself. “Sometimes we just don’t believe.” “But Ezzie acts like he believes,” I said. “He bows his head. He wears the whatchamacallit. He goes to synagogue.” “But that’s different,” she said. “What’s different?” “Of course he does those things.” “Why?” “Because it’s important to him. He’s a Jew, it’s important.” “Because of the Holocaust?” “What is it with you and the Holocaust? Do you think everything we do centers around the Holocaust?” “No.” “The Holocaust, sure, a very big deal. But it was a while ago. We don’t wake up every morning asking ourselves what we should or shouldn’t be doing on account of the Holocaust.” “Sorry,” I said. “It’s new to me.” “Ezzie’s an atheist,” she said. “Why? I don’t know. Why are you an atheist?” “Because God doesn’t exist.” “Well, there you have it. That’s probably what Ezzie would say, too.”

But why did it remain important for him to go through the motions? More than that: to actively and willingly participate in customs and rituals whose essential purpose was the glorying of God?

Who cared! What a way to be an atheist! When you were born a Christian and raised a Christian and then slowly awoke from the dream song of Christianity to face its philosophical absurdities and moral outrages, you stopped doing everything you once did (which was very little to begin with, maybe a little prayer, a little Bible study, a little church on Palm Sunday) and sat alone with your disbelief — conscientious, yes, and principled, but also a little bereft, left to make meaning on your own and to locate a source of continuity somewhere in the structureless secular world. Not Ezzie. Ezzie could pop by Rachel and Howard’s house on a Friday night and just jump in and do it all and then pop out again, spiritually restored but still on firm ground. He wanted to do such things. He had an obligation, as a Jew, if only out of loyalty, to continue a tradition that had received its share of knocks, or more practically to remain connected to his family, his childhood, his forefathers, his people. To remain connected! I didn’t know why he did it, but that, I thought, would be reason enough. And reason enough to make an atheist like me envious of all Ezzie could discard and still hold dear to his heart.

It was different with Mrs. Convoy. With Mrs. Convoy, I was a big loud brawling debunker. I wanted her to confront the follies of the Bible and to face the plain reality of a world without God. So I’d avail myself of the arguments, and she’d say to me, “But how do you know?” I’d avail myself of more of the arguments, and she’d say, in a slightly different tone, “But how do you know?” And I’d avail myself of still more of the arguments, and still she’d say, “But how do you know ?” What we were really arguing about, of course, was how we should define the word “know.” But in the heat of debate we skipped right over that. She knew I couldn’t say with absolute certainty that I knew as she insisted I know (a higher standard of knowing than she demanded of herself), which left the door cracked open to the most maddening of counterarguments: “How — do — you — know?”