Only Begotten Daughter

by James Morrow

  Julie had broached the issue subtly, or so she thought, taping her column on substance abuse to the temple door with a 3×5 card saying, “If you ever want to talk about this, I’d be open to it.” The next day the clipping reappeared on Julie’s computer. “If you ever want to mind your own business,” ran Phoebe’s note, “I’d be open to it.”

  Every Friday afternoon, Julie and Melanie would attempt to cleanse the cottage completely. A morbid game, this business of searching out Phoebe’s little liquor bottles and flushing away their contents, a kind of perverse and mandatory Easter egg hunt conducted for the rabbit’s feces. At Angel’s Eye the damn things might turn up anywhere—the washing machine, the toilet tank, a hollowed-out dictionary. Once, when Melanie was checking the oil in her Honda, her eye wandered to the plastic container of windshield cleaning fluid. On intuition she uncapped it, dipping in her finger. Rum. A few days later, while commemorating the wreck of Lucy II, Julie noticed a curious purple cast to the flame. The beacon was running on gin.

  Intervene? wondered Julie. Kick her habit? The obvious option, of course: a half-hour of pressing her fingers against Phoebe’s forehead, driving out the desire. But that way Phoebe would never learn to stand on her own two feet. That way Phoebe would never grow up. As with the rest of Phoebe’s species, Julie must not let her become dependent upon supernatural solutions, trading one addiction for another.

  Baby bank aborted.

  Blown to bits.

  She had a thousand enemies, each waiting for her to start acting like God.

  For all of Julie’s valiant efforts, for all the rum and gin she poured down the sink, Aunt Georgina remained dissatisfied. Georgina the whiner, the worrier. She called Julie selfish and solipsistic. She accused her of cowardice and denial, of treating symptoms instead of causes—of failing her best friend. How long, Julie wondered, before Georgina’s misplaced resentment came boiling over? How long before a major showdown?

  It happened at breakfast. Sunday, 11:05 A.M.

  “Cure her,” snapped her aunt. “You understand, Julie? I can’t take this anymore.” She nodded toward the bathroom, where Phoebe was loudly purging herself of the previous night’s binge. “Maybe your father didn’t want any interventions, but I do.”

  Julie whipped up the French toast batter. Cure her. Intervene. It sounded so simple, so righteous, but Georgina couldn’t begin to grasp the historical and cosmological implications. “Humanity—and this includes Phoebe—will never learn self-reliance if it’s got me to bail it out.”

  “Come off it.”

  Phoebe’s retching reverberated through the cottage, a sound like a canvas tent being torn in half.

  “Know what we should do?” said Julie. “We should go to some Al-Anon meetings, you and me.” She set a slice of bread afloat on the batter; a raft of whole wheat. “They’re for people whose kids and spouses drink too much.”

  “I don’t want a meeting, Julie, I want a miracle.”

  Julie laid the sopping bread on the griddle. “Look, she functions, doesn’t she? Keeps the books straight as an arrow, doesn’t bawl out the customers, never smashes up the car…”

  “Fix her.” Georgina pushed a slice of bread into the batter like a sadist drowning a kitten. “Just fucking fix her.”

  “You think it’s easy for me to say no? I love Phoebe, damn it—but we must consider the greater good.”

  “What greater good? Phoebe’s killing herself.”

  “If you can’t see my logic, Georgina, there’s no point in our talking.”

  “Even you can’t see your logic, shithead.”

  “I don’t think name-calling is necessary.”

  “Shithead. Asshole. Turd.”

  Sliding the spatula along the griddle, Julie pried up the half-cooked bread and flung it across the kitchen as if firing a catapult. “I have enemies, Georgina! They’re out to get me!” She backed away from the stove. “Eat this crap yourself—I’ve lost my appetite.”

  “Same here, you little snake, which is exactly what you are, Julie Katz, a slimy, selfish snake.”

  Gills gasping with frustration, ears hot with Georgina’s anger, Julie ran from the kitchen, dashed across the jetty, and dove into the soft and understanding bay.

  Bix said, “I’m sorry.” His face resembled a meteor, ashen, craggy, cold.

  “Sorry?” said Julie. Now what? He was dropping her for some pert little Princeton philosophy major?

  “We’re twenty thousand readers shy, and that’s that. Tony wants a pet-care column instead. Mike Alonzo will write it.”

  “Pet care? You’re not serious.” A hundred-degree tear rolled from Julie’s right eye. She pressed a crisp Gluttony Forgiven napkin to her nose and blew. “You should’ve fought for me. Pet care?”

  “I did fight for you.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “I did.”

  So it was over. The Covenant of Uncertainty had become fish wrap and hamster litter, there was nothing left for her but confusion and guilt, nothing but Georgina’s misguided anger and God’s malicious indifference. “Be honest, Bix, you never believed in my ministry.” The tear reached her lips, and she licked. Battery acid. “You pretended to care because you had the hots for me.”

  Bix crushed a roll in his fist, the crumbs spurting between his fingers. “Dammit, Julie, I’ve been running interference for you ever since you walked into my office. The entire staff thinks you’re crazy, you know.”

  “What about you? Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “Sometimes. Yes. This whole God’s daughter mystique—why do you push it so hard? You don’t have to pretend around me. I’m not one of your stupid readers.”

  “I’m not pretending.”

  “Prove that you’re God’s daughter. My standards aren’t high—take the wart off my ass, fly, anything.”

  “I don’t do proofs, sweetheart. Not for traitors.”

  Bix pulverized another roll. “You little fraud.”

  One word, fraud, that was all it took, and Julie was on her feet, sprinting out of the restaurant and down the stairs to the casino floor. Traitor, traitor. I did fight for you: oh, sure, Bix. Sure. Traitorous bastard.

  Such clockless worlds, these casinos. It always seemed like the same hour at Dante’s, Caesar’s, or the Nugget, always the same day—three-thirty on a Sunday afternoon, Julie decided.

  Her ministry mattered. Why couldn’t Tony Biacco see that? “Heaven Help You” had forestalled dozens of suicides, divorces, wife batterings, and child beatings. Last week, a compulsive gambler had written to say that, thanks to Sheila, he’d finally kicked the blackjack habit.

  Blackjack: a fine game, Julie mused, sidling toward a remote and unpatronized table. She put on her sunglasses—the dealer might be a Sheila fan—and bought a hundred dollars in chips. At least she wouldn’t have to disguise herself much longer; soon Sheila’s photo would fade from the communal memory. The dealer, a grim, slender woman who handled the cards with the professional ennui of a whore unzipping flies, glanced nervously toward the Wheel of Wealth, as if being watched, tested.

  Ah, sweet mammon. Luck, or God, was with Julie, tripling her investment in ten minutes. No matter what she did—splits, doubles, insurance bets—she came out on top. She might have a failed ministry, a traitorous lover, an hysterical aunt, and a rummy friend, but tonight she’d get rich.

  Darkness slid across the table, human in shape, thick and palpable as spilled ink. “Vanish,” a man said. The grim woman departed, the shadow stayed. “You picked the right table—this is where the big winners play.” The dealer’s voice conjured a vanished elegance, European aristocrats listening to Mozart. Julie didn’t look up. A dealer was a dealer.

  She placed four ten-dollar chips on the table, twice her usual bet. Slap, an ace of hearts for the player, slap, a ten of spades for the dealer. Tony wanted pet advice. Dear Dr. Doolittle: My canary has stopped singing. Why?—Worried In Milwaukee.

  Dear Worried: Because it can’t stand you.
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br />   “I’ve been thinking about your question,” said the dealer.

  Julie fixed on her ace. The pip, a large red heart, seemed to move. To vibrate. Throb. Lub-dub. She blinked. Lub-dub. A beating heart? Was her mind becoming unhinged?

  She faced the dealer. On neither of his previous visitations had she appreciated how handsome Andrew Wyvern was. High cheeks, obsidian eyes, strong sculpted lips. His beard, gray and soft, seemed a thing more of fur than whiskers: a werewolf in bloom, shaved everywhere but his jaw. “What question?” she asked as the scent of honeyed oranges drifted into her nostrils.

  “About God.” Slap, slap. A three of diamonds for the player, a down card for Wyvern. “You wanted to know why she allows evil.” His tuxedo gleamed like black marble. Julie beckoned: hit me. Slap, a ten of clubs, making her ace count low. She beckoned. Slap, a jack of diamonds, twenty-four, bust. The devil collected her bet. “I noted that power corrupts,” he said, whisking away her cards, “but there’s more to it.” Julie bet fifty dollars. Slap, slap. A king of clubs for her, a nine of spades for Wyvern. “Everybody thinks if he were God, he would do a better job. Such vanity. The math alone would defeat most of us.”

  “You’re saying God gets overwhelmed?”

  “Exactly.” Slap, a six of diamonds for Julie.

  “Liar. You don’t know any more about God than I do.”

  Slap, the dealer’s down card. “Very well—but just as my deceptions are obvious to you, then so are my descents into integrity. ‘Come sailing in my schooner tonight—no harm will befall you,’ says the devil. ‘He’s telling the truth,’ notes Julie Katz.”

  “Schooner?” It would be crazy to accept a card now, but she did. Slap, a queen of spades. Bust. “Tonight?”

  “A crusade is coming.” As Wyvern gestured over her king of clubs, the flesh melted from both its heads, leaving only skulls and eyeballs. “You must intervene.”

  “I intervene all the time.” Her king’s eyes blinked. “Read my column.”

  “Your column’s dead, Julie—didn’t they tell you? It’s all holy water over the damned.”

  “True, true,” she moaned. As her king drew his sword from behind his crown, the adjacent queen cringed, trapped by the geometry of her universe, armed with only a flower.

  “I greatly admired ‘Heaven Help You’—read it every week.” Wyvern collected her bet. “Once I even wrote to you. I was that shy Lutheran minister in Denver whose congregation misunderstood him.” The devil pointed to Julie’s cards. “Still, there are situations in which the sword is mightier than the pen.” The king slashed, making the queen’s upper head tip back like the lid of a cigarette lighter. Blood leaked from the wedge; the flower turned black and fell from the queen’s hand. “Tomorrow a thousand such deaths could occur. Ten thousand. Did you know that when the eleventh-century crusaders took Jerusalem, they ran through the city disemboweling the citizens, hoping to find swallowed coins?”

  “I wasn’t there.” Julie bet sixty dollars.

  “You should’ve been.” Wyvern pushed her bet aside. “A short voyage down the coast, that’s all. I’ll have you home before dawn.”

  “I’m not responsible for this crusade you’re talking about.”

  “Then what are you responsible for?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “Pain.”

  “What?”

  “My schooner is called Pain.”

  The queen’s upper head rolled onto the green felt. Laughing a small depraved laugh, the king slashed again, neatly decapitating the queen’s lower self.

  “Impressive ship,” said Julie as the devil led her along Steel Pier, its rusted remains stretching into the Atlantic like the back of a decaying sea serpent. Pain, a huge three-master with sails suggesting a bat’s wrinkled and membranous wings, lay moored to the dock by a live python.

  “I’m a man of wealth and taste.” Wyvern gestured proudly toward the hull. “Newly painted with the bile of ten thousand unbaptized children. Her spars are made from the bones of massacred Armenians. Her ropes are woven from the hair of Salem’s witches. Her jib is Jewish skin. People give me all my best ideas, Julie. Like you, I can never count on your mother for inspiration. Bubonic plague is as creative as she ever got.”

  He helped her onto the foredeck, where dark, stooped figures scurried about like beetles responding to the loss of their rock. “Say hello to Anthrax,” he urged, indicating the cockpit with a quick nod. The helmsman was fat, bristled, and plated, like something resulting from the love of a boar for an armadillo.

  “Hello.” She felt schizoid, half her psyche planted in South Jersey, half in whatever quantum alternative objectified the devil and his brood.

  Anthrax smiled at her and tipped an imaginary hat.

  Foul breezes arose as the demons cast off. “From my angels,” Wyvern explained. “They spread their buttocks, and the rectal zephyrs fill our sails.”

  Pain headed south, cruising past the casino-hotels—bright Bally’s, lurid Caesar’s, the mighty Atlantis, the epic Golden Nugget. The moon hung over the city like a white cork.

  Gradually Julie’s anxiety yielded to an odd inner buoyancy. She laughed. A swift boat, a major ocean—a person could just pick up and go, couldn’t she? Anywhere. Sunny Spain, exotic Thailand, Howard Lieberman’s beloved Galapagos Islands, that South Seas paradise she and Phoebe had seen in the Deauville.

  “You were barking up the wrong tree,” Wyvern informed her. As the schooner blew into Great Egg Harbor, Anthrax kicked the anchor—evidently some species of sea urchin. Dragging its chain behind it, the great pulsing ball of spikes crawled across the deck and flopped over the side. “You wanted the masses to embrace reason and science. It will never happen. They can’t join in—there’s no point of entry for them.”

  “Science is beautiful,” said Julie.

  “You think I don’t know that?” Wyvern opened the cockpit locker and, drawing out a brass telescope, eased the instrument against Julie’s eye. “Some of my favorite things are scientific—nuclear bombs, Zyklon B, eugenics.” He showed her how to focus. “The problem is, only a few people get to be scientists. You see the dilemma? Given the choice between a truth they can appreciate and a lie they can live, most people will take you-know-what.”

  A blur hedged with moonlight. Then, as Julie turned the focus knob: a solemn mob of well over two thousand men and women, dressed in bleached flak jackets and earnestly clutching red plastic gasoline jugs and battery-powered Black and Decker hedge trimmers. “The dark side of the American spirit,” said Wyvern. “Specifically, a Revelationist marina. The parking lot.” Juke shifted the scope, settling on a half-dozen pickup trucks, each bearing a large enamel bathtub. Two elaborately muscled men, hands sheathed in thick black rubber, approached the nearest tub, lifted out an enormous tuna—yes, good God, a sleek, wriggling, gasping tuna—and carried it over to a bowl-shaped barbecue grill. “Why a fish?” Wyvern anticipated. “Most venerable of Christian symbols. Fuse the initials of Iesos Christos Theou Yios Soter, and you get Ichthys, Greek for fish.”

  Shift, focus. A tall, middle-aged man—balding, smooth-shaven, one eye molten, the other covered with leather—stabbed the fish with a scaling knife. The blade ran a true course from trunk to anal fin, a letter V in its wake. Thick maroon blood dripped through the grate and, filling the barbecue grill, splashed over the sides. Shift, focus. A young redheaded man set a gold shaving basin beneath the grill and opened the flue, thus releasing a column of liquid Jesus. “‘And they have washed their robes,’” Wyvern quoted, “‘and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’” Cupping his hands, the young man reached into the overflowing basin and drew out a full measure. His mouth flew open to release a fevered prayer. “Death to the Antichrist!” said Wyvern, dubbing in the young man’s voice as he smashed the fleshy ladle against his chest. The folds of his flak jacket channeled the blood, giving him an external circulatory system.

  “Death to the Antichrist!” echoed the congregation.

&nbs
p; “Antichrist?” said Julie. “What do they mean?”

  The devil pulled his cigarette case from his overcoat and flipped back the lid, catching moonlight in the mirror. “These people have a full schedule tomorrow, a prophecy to fulfill—the fall of Babylon. Ever read the Bible?”

  “Babylon? In Mesopotamia?”

  “New Jersey.”

  Shift, focus. The congregation passed the basin around as if it were a collection plate, each crusader retaining it long enough to smear himself with Jesus. “Damn,” she hissed.

  “They’re planning to burn it,” said the devil.

  “The marina?”

  “Atlantic City.” Wyvern removed a cigarette, eyeing it with a mixture of revulsion and desire. “I really must stop smoking.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Smoking?”

  “Burning Atlantic City.”

  “Precisely.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Burn a whole city? Why?”

  “To trigger the Parousia, of course, Christ’s inevitable return.” As Wyvern snapped his fingers, a small flame rose from his thumb. “First they’ll tie up the fire department with a diversionary attack on Baltic Avenue, then they’ll strike the casinos.” He lit the cigarette, blew out his thumb. “Some of them aren’t convinced a holocaust is necessary, but their pastor, Billy Milk—the one with the eyepatch—he’s the most interesting thing in their lives, so they give him the benefit of the doubt. A remarkable man. With enemies like Billy Milk, the devil doesn’t need friends.”

  Shift, focus. A Coast Guard cutter lay at the end of the wharf. Julie’s heart bounded like a happy puppy. Oh, glorious, blessed Coast Guard, such brave men, always prepared to prevent crusades. How authoritative the seven uniformed officers looked as, armed with semiautomatic rifles, they disembarked and started down the wharf.

  Hands glistening with the by-products of sacrifice, Reverend Milk marched out to greet them, a mob of Revelationists close behind, somberly gripping their gasoline jugs and their Black and Decker hedge trimmers.

  Wyvern puffed on his cigarette. “‘And I heard a great voice saying: Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.’”