Norman Rush - Mortals

Something nice was happening. She was joining him in the tub. He hadn’t proposed it. “Take me in your legs,” she said.

…

It was still about Morel, on the subject of religion. Ray hadn’t been listening. He had to listen.

“But this is what he says. How he says it. That … That , separate from any problems the particular narrative your denomination has decided to believe in might have, might have regarding ordinary reality, the virgin birth or whatever, there’s the problem of how it articulates with the rest of what’s in this sort of narrative heap, the Bible, which is somehow both internally contradictory and holy . To the naked eye the Old Testament disagrees with the New Testament, very much. So the Bible is put in your little hands and the fact that it doesn’t add up is supposed to be beside the point. So in church you’re undergoing modeling in overlooking contradiction, being trained to push contradictions out of your consciousness just like the respectable adults who run the church do. They seem to thrive on it. But you slowly turn into a dunce, of sorts. You could call this the original sin of religion, is the way he puts it. You become a Christian by ignoring contradictions, not only between the magic-contra-reality elements in your own denominational story but between it and the other weird flowers in the folly garden you got it from.”

He thought, She has no idea how obvious the novelties in her vocabulary are, like contra and folly garden and narrative, the way she just used it.

“I think he’s right about this. Ray, I was such a serious child. I was so good. I wish I could remember more about my wretched time in Sunday school. I was so good while all this was leaching into me. I wanted my parents to love me, obviously, which is why I went along, obviously. The thing is that I think I liked Sunday school, being a dunce, and even looked forward to going. I don’t know. I think I was even sort of thrilled when I had confirmation. We were Episcopalians then.”

“So you were a believer for how long?”

“Well, a believer … I don’t know. I went to church, I was in a club called Chi Rho. What I mean is I don’t know how actively I believed. I try to recapture it and I can’t.”

“So you were an Episcopalian and what happened? Because when I met you there was no sign or real residue of that, at least so far as I can remember.” His cheek was against her temple. He was speaking against her skull. They were bone to bone, almost. If only his love could travel into her mind physically, by pure resonance in some way, straight in, so she would feel it and know it. Her hair was perfect. Her body was heaven to him, the pastures of heaven, perfection.

“It was funny because I think once I was confirmed and had gotten into adolescence it was as though my parents lost interest, almost as though they had done their job by exposing me to Jesus. And I suppose they thought it had taken, I was inoculated to be good, and so that was that and they could go back to not going to church once that seemed to have taken place satisfactorily. It was like what they do to cattle here, for ticks, run them through a spray, or like orthodontia. My parents stopped going, my father first. Then my mother. And then I kept going to church, and then just to Chi Rho, and then I stopped going to that. There was never much discussion around it.”

“Did your family say grace?”

“We did for a while at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. I remember it as feeling awkward.”

He pressed his cheek harder against her. Her breath was empty, neutral, which meant ideal. He was cupping her breasts lightly, protectively, was what he was aiming for. Getting erotic was wrong for this juncture. He asked if her family had tithed.

“Tithed? No of course not. I don’t know. I don’t think Episcopalians tithe. I think Jews do, and Mormons. They did put money in the collection plate, but secretly from me. It was always already in an envelope, so I have no idea how much they gave. Parents are odd. They were odd. They never got in line to shake the minister’s hand on the steps after services. They slid around, somehow, nodding. Of all the events the church gave, we only went to the massive ones, where the crowds were. Don’t get an erection, I beg you. We’re not doing anything tonight. Don’t get an erection and make me feel guilty.”

“I’m trying,” he said.

“Well succeed.”

Touching her between the legs at times like this was something they liked to call getting away with murder. He was never absolutely sure when she was going to permit it, when they were in casual mode, which was a good thing, no doubt. Take nothing for granted was what it said.

“Even after my religion went away I kept putting Episcopalian on the line that asks for your religion on application forms, like a robot. Then I began putting Protestant. And then I started leaving it blank and to my astonishment discovered that nobody cared if I did. What I really wanted to write was None of your business. But I never did. I’m sure the reason we were Episcopalians was because St. Michael’s was the church closest to us in our neighborhood, walking distance.

“So there went my religion …”

“Your shackles turned to dew,” he said.

She was struck. She swallowed. He felt it. She sat up a little.

“That’s a beautiful line, what is it?”

There was a problem. The line happened to be his own. Let your shackles fade like dew, or as the dew, he couldn’t remember which, came from his delusional period as a would-be poet. What he did not need just now was admiration for his aesthetic ejecta, leading to questions about what else he should be doing with his great talents rather than working for the agency.

She sat up fully. He kissed the nape of her neck.

“What is that from?”

All he remembered about his poem at this point was the struggle to get it right, which he had lost because he hadn’t found the right image for shackles turning to dew and then subsequently rising away like mist, dew in the morning sun, something like that. Fade was wrong.

“I don’t know what it’s from. I don’t know. I’ll try to think …”

“I have to know,” she said. “Can you track it down for me? I’m asking you to.”

“Tasking me. I’ll try.” May your shackles turn to dew , had been the original line …

“I’m going to remind you,” she said.

Then he understood. It was for Morel, for his use, for his armamentarium, he knew it as clearly as he knew anything. She loved it as an image of liberation and she wanted to bring it as a gift to her mentor, which was what he was becoming, not that she would ever admit that that was why she wanted it.

She said, “Because I would love to pass it on to Davis. For his writing. He’s constantly writing.”

She sank down again, to her former position, drawing his hands back to her breasts. Everything is a wound, he thought. He didn’t know what to do. Everything with her was Morel, not that she could help it. He was afraid. He wanted to know if behind all this declared attraction something worse was moving its slow thighs, something like individual vacations, something middle-class decadent like open marriage, whatever that was. He was afraid of conceptualizing what he was afraid of. Something was coming. He thought, She’s wounding me, I could die … She doesn’t know. His heart was beating rapidly. She should be able to notice that, unless she was dismissing it as sex, which she didn’t want, tonight. Was it because Morel was black? Was Morel using that? Would this be happening if Morel were white? Injustice to blacks had been a preoccupation of Iris’s. Of course suppose the Africans had had the Renaissance first and then gone off to conquer the world, how different would it have been? Every race is as bad as its power permits it to be was his opinion.