Lauren Grodstein - The Explanation for Everything

It was late, he was tired, he kept reading.

We are here to fulfill our divine purpose in life. To make the world a place fashioned in our image, which is, of course, to make it in the reflected image of God.

And everyone you have ever lost has fulfilled his or her divine purpose. And he or she is waiting in the presence of God until the day you will be reunited.

Andy rolled over in bed. He was becoming, now, too acquainted with four in the morning, and in the small bedroom which still felt weirdly unfurnished, papers everywhere, books everywhere, clothing in an Ikea bookshelf—what kind of grown man kept his clothing stacked in an Ikea bookshelf?—he took out his pen and underlined.

Have you ever spoken to a small, guilty child who’s trying to get out of telling the truth? Ever notice how, when the child starts spinning his story, it becomes more and more complicated, more and more fanciful? He would need a mere sentence to tell the truth; to tell his elaborate tale requires paragraphs.

Life is like that. It can be read in a sentence: in the beginning, there was God. But the fabulous tales of nonbelievers require paragraphs and paragraphs, books and books, nutty theories upon nuttier theories because fiction is always more dressed up than fact. God is a fact. Atheist theory is fiction.

And even if evolution were true, how did it get started?

And even if evolution got started by some freak lightning strike, what was here on earth before that?

Nothing? What is nothing, oh atheists of the world? Oh you who think you have thought your way out of God, tell us: what was the nothing that was here before us?

By the way, haven’t the scientists among you told us there is no such thing as nothing? Haven’t you said there are no vacuums, no great wide emptinesses?

Thus spake Stephen and Michelle Cling, and here Andy checked out, again, their picture in the back of the book, full-color, against a Sears studio backdrop: Stephen with glasses and strawberry blond hair, Michelle, looking like any fortyish resident of Mount Deborah, same dyed hair, same belted jeans.

There has always been something in the universe, and that something has always been God. You have never been alone in the world, reader. And those who have loved you love you still.

Andy put the book down next to his bed. He closed his eyes.

Lou’s funeral had taken place in a funeral home, without preachers or guides of any sort, because nobody had any ideas about who to call. A few of her friends spoke, her uncle. Her sister sat outside with the girls for a while, then took them to McDonald’s.

But during the funeral, formless, endless, Andy—desperate for anything to take him out of this place—tried to imagine Louisa in heaven. Because he had never allowed himself the lunacy of heaven (or hell, for that matter; when you were dead you were just that, dead, so relax, everybody, and be nice to one another) he had no idea exactly how to imagine it. Was Lou dressed in a white dress? Sitting on clouds with angels? He was embarrassed at how his imagination took him to such childish places but he didn’t know where else to send it. Lou sitting on a cloud, strumming a lute. Lou looking down on him, telling him it would be okay. Her figure outlined in shimmering vapor.

Stephen Cling, in his picture, wore a Hawaiian shirt printed with crocodiles. Michelle wore a bright blue polo buttoned to the top. What did these two people know that he didn’t? What weren’t they afraid to imagine?

Fortunately for him, his girls had never asked if their mommy was in heaven, so he had never had to lie to them. They knew where she was. They had watched him sprinkle her ashes off the dock.

So to think of that now, that Lou’s body was in the Atlantic but her spirit was waiting for him, cradled by the arm of God, or cradled by clouds, or simply vaporous and translucent but watching him, knowing him—it was such a delicious idea that even to consider it felt sinful, like taking some kind of recreational drug. But God Is a Rainbow was so matter-of-fact about heaven and God and purpose and life. Stephen and Michelle just knew. Lou wasn’t a figment of his imagination smirking in the corner.

Again, eyes closed, he gave it another shot: really, what would it look like? Lou in a white gown. Her magnificent hair. He saw the white dress she wore to Rachel’s first birthday party. That she would have worn to their fifth anniversary dinner, if they had gotten around to it. (Why hadn’t they gotten around to it? They’d just assumed they’d have more time.)

“Lou,” he said. He said it out loud. “Lou, are you there? Baby, are you there?” He closed his eyes. He tried to imagine. He pushed out of his mind Stephen and Michelle’s airbrushed grins and instead tried to see Lou in heaven. She wasn’t the ghost who haunted him. She was an angel.

He tried to believe.

But after a while he started to feel ridiculous, so he got up, went to the kitchen, brewed some coffee. A little after six he completed the first part of his NSF grant. He clicked “send” and sent it into the system. He’d figure out the rest later; he’d make his experiments work. Then he got back in bed and reread the part of God Is a Rainbow about how he was here for a reason, how everyone is on this earth for a reason, and the reason belonged to God.

Because Rachel refused to spend another second in the company of Tiffany Goldsmith, and because Andy was still uncomfortable just handing her a key, he decided to hire Melissa Potter to babysit two afternoons a week. He wondered, briefly, about the ethics of this—was it okay to use undergraduates as domestic labor?—but the truth was she had offered, and he trusted her.

For her part, Melissa had decided to relax around him the moment he confessed, in office hours, to having read God Is a Rainbow, and to having found something worthwhile in it—which was not to say, he specified, that he thought the whole book was worthwhile, or that he accepted all its arguments, but he did appreciate Stephen and Michelle Cling’s comforting tone, and he could see why they made such good pastors.

“You could meet them!” Melissa said, unable to contain herself. “I could bring you to church! Oh, they would love to hear that you liked their book!”

“I’m not going to go to church with you, Melissa,” he said. “I’m just saying I thought their book seemed, in its own way—wise.”

Her smile refused to dim. “They’re going to be so flattered.”

“Well—”

“Really,” she said. “It’ll be the best news of their day.”

She had become like that, more and more—unable to contain herself. And how terrific she was with Rachel and Belle! Helping Belle build a dollhouse out of shoe boxes, making endless rounds of spaghetti pomodoro with Rachel, and doing everything with good cheer and a willingness to listen to whatever was on the girls’ minds. More than once, toward the end of the fall semester, Andy had come home from work to find Rachel and Melissa on the couch, head to head, talking about something serious—boys maybe, but could Rachel already be worrying about boys?—both of them refusing to let on to whatever it was they’d been discussing.

She wallpapered Belle’s dollhouse with scraps from magazines.

She made Rachel a mix CD with—Andy checked—no Christian rock whatsoever.

“Does she ever talk to you about Jesus?” Andy asked on Friday afternoon, having given Melissa her twenty dollars and sent her back to her dorm.

“Jesus?” Belle looked confused. “Why would she do that?”

“I think she just really likes us, Dad,” said Rachel. “It’s not like she’s trying to save our souls.”

In fact, the only soul she seemed even vaguely interested in was Andy’s, and this interest stemmed from her independent study as much as it did from any need to proselytize that burned in her heart. At first, she saved much of her debating for his office (where he really had no time or inclination for student visits and yet—how he brightened when he saw her!). But soon enough, she began gently teasing him at his house, his own turf, while wiping out an omelet pan or reheating macaroni and cheese for the girls—“Did I just hear you say, ‘Oh my God,’ Dr. Waite? Whose God are you talking to, exactly? Because I didn’t know you had a particular God.”