Rick Moody - The Diviners

1 As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”

2 “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

So it follows that edifices will fall, just as we all are fallen men and women, just as I am myself, who has given to this parish things he does not have, namely charity and love. Your faith gives me faith today, when my own family most needs it.

Dusk already! The days are getting so intolerably short, and the end of the year is coming, with all the dread of winter. His wife comes back into the house, and he doesn’t even call out to her. She has gone and she has returned, and he has taken no notice of it. The tension would seem to call for something, but what is the something that it calls for? He has not had a stiff drink in many a year, but maybe tonight is the night for a stiff drink. He doesn’t know how to sit still, nor what to do with himself. He hasn’t done a legitimately ministerial thing all day, nor has he spoken to anyone but the police and his wife and son.

When he goes into the kitchen, his wife has some pasta boiling, which he might as well have made himself, as he is an expert boiler of pasta. They are here when the knock at the door comes. The two of them go to the door, he with the dishrag in his hands because he just tasted the pasta and pronounced it not quite ready, and when they open the door it is the door opened on the lesson of prodigality, on the lesson of the son who wastes his advantages and resources only to return home to be loved, to be loved because the prodigal son is now in the light on the front step, here he is, and the prodigal son is loved! He looks as if he has never been looked at, he looks as if he has set a new world record for dishevelment, and he has on no shoes at all, and his shirt is untucked, and his hands are waving madly, as if his hands have now liberated themselves, and he is crying this low, savage cry, the cry of relapsed madness; or the son seems to come in from the wilderness, even though there is no wilderness in Newton; there is no topographical wilderness here, the reverend knows, and yet tears are streaming down the face of the adopted son, and his parents are on the step, and they have their son in their arms, because the son has come home, and he is in their arms, and the three of them are there, in the light of the step, and the neighbors must be watching, but what does it matter if the neighbors are watching, damn the neighbors, what is God to the reverend and his son but an inadvertent thing, unless of course there is the action of grace in the moment of the return of the son, the son on the front step, wearing no shoes, cuts upon his feet and hands, who may or may not have done whatever it is he is accused of having done but who is now here, is now home, and his parents are with him, for he has no other place to go, and his father is the agent of forgiveness, and the agent of forgiveness is bringing the son into the house, all the things that divide us should not divide us, because those things are nothing, those things are just hesitations, and the wife of the reverend, the mother of the son, is saying, “Mercy, mercy,” and she is picking up the phone, but the phone will not help, because the son’s wickedness is now commuted, whatever it is, whatever it was, because the reverend is holding his son, his gigantic son; his son is in danger, and his father has not yet done everything he could do, nor has he believed as strongly as he could believe, but now he will, and now the father loves the son again, because the scriptures are correct:

It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

You would think that the ward throve at night, that the inpatients of detoxification were at their best overnight, in half shadows, stirring up from their apnea. You would think that the wraiths would be up and wandering, mumbling as they passed. But you’d be wrong. Rosa alone is up, gazing out the window at the neon of the chain bookstore on the next block over. Maybe if she listens carefully enough to the sounds of the nightscape, cars toiling up Seventh Avenue, sirens, jets overhead, then she’ll hear what’s genuinely taking place, rather than what is not. It doesn’t matter, though, how loud she gets them to turn up the television in the dayroom.

There are events that are almost certainly taking place, and then there are dubious events. Those conversations she heard today, those girls, the ones who work in publicity or whatever it is that they do. They were gabbing with the development expert at her daughter’s company, gabbing about some intern she’d hired. “You wouldn’t even believe how lazy this girl is; she sets a new record for laziness. She’s so lazy that she can’t be bothered to refuse to do anything, because it would take too much energy to refuse. She’s so lazy that it’s amazing she even comes in; she just sits there like a bump on a log, and it’s not like she’s doing her nails or anything because she doesn’t have any nails. She chews at her nails, all the black nail polish is chipping off, and she bites them anyway.” “Doesn’t that make you sick? Plus, aren’t you supposed to avoid eating your nail polish?” “Totally. You shouldn’t eat it. I guess someone should design edible nail polish; maybe we should tell Mercurio.” “Reminds me of those. . those edible panties that that girl, who was that, used to talk about, remember?” “Wait, why does it remind you of. . never mind, ick.” Then, after Rosa overhears this conversation in her detoxifying head, she can’t stop saying the words edible panties, as if these words are somehow the key, as if they are deeply relevant to the present, edible panties, and over dinner she can’t stop herself from saying it. When she’s at the dining table with the girl, the one with bleeding problems, she keeps saying “edible panties,” and the girl keeps asking why. But Rosa, who finds the whole notion of these underdrawers shocking and improper, can’t figure out why she keeps saying it, she just does.

That’s a conversation composed of people she likes. If she has to be overhearing cellular phone traffic in her head, at least she’d prefer to overhear the conversations of people she favors. She could offer advice to the voices. “Is it true that you’re having a problem with. .” Whatever it might be. Unfortunately, her difficulty is not just with conversations of people she knows. Now if she stands too close to the window, she hears these telephone whispers from the entire expanse beneath her. They are out there in the universe, conversations drifting over her like a layer of digital smog. “Honey, no one is hotter than you; you are just the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Are you alone?” “Sure.” “And what are you wearing, baby?” “You’re not going to start in with this again, because last time you didn’t talk to me for like three weeks afterwards, and it made me feel dirty.” She doesn’t know for certain what these people are talking about, but she has an idea. No one should have to overhear these conversations, which are a layer of pollution.

She heads for the pay phone, the one in the corridor that they all share. At the nurse’s console, there’s a night nurse, asleep in her chair, chin planted in the middle of her chest, mouth open. A fusillade of snores issues from that mouth. Rosa pays the nurse no mind and slips past her to the wall phone. She presses the zero in the keypad and waits. A sequence of beeps. An actor’s voice comes on, the voice of Darth Vader. Before she can evaluate the particulars of the Vader voice, there’s a hiss and another voice comes on. This voice asks her what she needs. “Well, you see, I’m in a. . I’m in the. . I’m indisposed. . and I’m finding myself in this unusual situation. . ” She waits for supportive words from the operator; none are forthcoming. “The situation is. . well, uh, the situation is that there are certain telephone calls that are. . that are —” Rosa tries to whisper the complaint, so that the night nurse won’t be disturbed. The operator replies, “Do you need a number? Because that’s what we’re supposed to —” “Not at all,” Rosa says, shuffling in her paper slippers, back and forth. “I don’t need any numbers, I have all the. . ” “You’re complaining about people who talk too loudly on their cell phones? I’m sorry, but you can’t blame the telephone company for people who talk too loudly into their phones; you should take that up with the —” “That’s not. .,” Rosa says, “I’m saying that I. . I’m saying. . that I can hear the conversations —” “But where can you hear the conversations?” “ Everywhere, everywhere I go, I can hear them in my head. . I can hear the people and they’re having the. . and I can hear what they’re saying, even if. . people I don’t know very well. I keep expecting. . I’m going to hear my ex-husband. . with his floozies, I haven’t. . he hasn’t. . probably twenty years, but my daughter. . she might want to. . since he’s her father, and if I could hear that conversation, maybe, but instead. . or I hear some businessman who’s making some deal in a. . acquaintances. . or I —” “Excuse me, ma’am, we can’t —” “She ought to be able to talk to that. . her father. . I don’t give a goddamn whether I ever speak to him, but that’s just not right, and I want you to talk to whoever it is there that. .” “Ma’am?” “Your manager. . I am a person who has connections. . I was. . I used to know people who could get things done, and maybe now I’m. . maybe my circumstances. . no reason why your company needs to pick on an old woman,” and she tries to remind herself to pipe down, to keep it to a whisper, but she can’t help herself, because it’s an outrage, you know, these corporations, just not answerable. “You can’t go filling my brain up with these calls. . no reason why a woman like me should have to hear. . and I guarantee you. . you don’t want to have that kind of trouble on your hands —”