Fire Sermon

by Jamie Quatro

  Have you been pulling your hair, Katie bug? Maggie says.

  Sometimes, Kate says. I promise I won’t do it anymore.

  Her grandmother’s basement in Cleveland: the magic of looking up to the ground. At the foot of the staircase, galoshes and coats and shovels and a cupboard beneath the stairs, big enough for all three grandchildren—Maggie, Sarah, and Steven—to hide in. A pool table, old records, dozens of jars, most empty, some with buttons or spools; a half-done puzzle of a red barn at sunset, cows in the foreground. Life magazines, Band-Aid tins with Cracker Jack prizes inside, shoe boxes with hardened photographs, all the horrified doomed ancestors. On a pedestal table, hatboxes containing lacy fascinators, plates filled with jeweled brooches and gaudy clip-on earrings. What woman wore these things? Surely not her grandmother. And Uncle Rick, her father’s brother, who used to be in a band—upstairs he sat, in front of the television, watching football, the fat bald uncle who never married and smelled of Ben-Gay. His only way of relating to his nieces and nephew was to buy them presents, or stick out his arm and let them hang from it like a monkey bar. Was he the thin man in these photos, dark hair slicked back, wearing a white suit and lurching into the microphone, like Elvis?

  Uncle Rick never married because he fell in love with a black woman, Maggie’s mother told her once. Your grandma wouldn’t let the woman inside the house. He didn’t have the guts to choose her over his own mother. Try not to fault Grandma, it’s how things were back then.

  The basement smelled of laundry detergent and cedar mixed with wet wood and mothballs. Life and decay in coexistence. Above the washing machine was a laundry chute, out of which tumbled toys and books, sent by her siblings from floors above. In the attic three floors up Sarah would whisper into the chute and it was as if she were speaking directly into Maggie’s ear. Anything was possible in this house. She could float down her grandmother’s stairs: attic to bedrooms, bedrooms to living room, living room to basement. So many stairs, nothing like the flat houses in Phoenix. Some impulse—a flutter of nerves in her stomach—and she would drift down to the next landing, her feet never touching the steps.

  At home, too, lying in bed at night, she could hover on a horizontal plane above her mattress. A lovely feeling, warm and silent, as if she were suspended in thick gel. She knew the gel was God, he was all around yet nowhere she could see—outside the planet in the stars and also inside it, in the ball of burning lava. God was in the spangled light at the bottom of the swimming pool; he was in the shifting sun and shadows on the white-painted brick wall in her bedroom, a film of pure motion, the patterns like a code or language she felt always on the cusp of understanding. He was in the circles that spun on the backs of her eyelids when she tried to fall asleep and in the glowing visions of bodies of water appearing and disappearing, swelling and drying up.

  Sometimes, with her eyes shut tight, she saw a head circled in thorns, too close to glimpse the face before it disappeared.

  God wasn’t inside the church—a low brick building with potted palms in the foyer and orange-cushioned pews in the sanctuary. Inside the church people didn’t act the way adults were supposed to act. They cried, or made typewriter sounds with their teeth, their hands stretched out like they wanted something. It was as if they’d forgotten who they were: her father’s partner, the principal at her school, the lady who worked at the country club snack bar. A retarded teenage boy with sweaty hands liked to touch her hair. Let him do it, her mother said, children like that are God’s angels, they bless us with their touch. Sarah and Steven would run away when they saw the boy, so she had to be the one to stand still. Pretty, the boy would repeat, his moist hand swirling on her scalp.

  At the end of the sermons the people would sing Just as I Am until a man in waders appeared in the little Jacuzzi above the altar. Any man could baptize someone, not just the preacher. The man in waders would push a person backward, underwater. Amen, amen! people would yell. She would never do such an embarrassing thing. Jesus had been embarrassed for her. He’d been naked and whipped and everyone had seen it. Why should she have to be embarrassed too?

  It’s a way to show our love and gratitude, the Sunday school teacher said. To be a little embarrassed. To go under, and come up again – a painless participation in Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection.

  One night she heard a voice outside her window, terrifying, as loud as a train roaring through her bedroom, or all the drums and cymbals in an orchestra sounding at once. Little Girl. The voice sounded exasperated, like a babysitter who was sick of playing games and wanted to watch TV. She ran through the dark house into her parents’ bedroom and stood by her father’s side of the bed.

  A man’s outside my window, she said.

  Sarah? Her father’s deep voice, a puff of stale breath beside her face.

  It’s Maggie, she said. The man said Little girl.

  You were dreaming, he said.

  No I wasn’t. I heard him. He yelled it through my window.

  Maggie? Her mother’s voice, from the other side of the bed. Come snuggle for a while.

  July 2017

  Dear James,

  If you and I were still in contact, I would write to tell you about the visions I’ve been having. Photographic negatives on the backs of my eyelids, arriving at the edges of sleep, as they did when I was a child. Likely the images are a by-product of the fact that I haven’t been able to sleep much since Chicago. Or else the intellect’s attempt to create a dark narrative around us. To convince myself it’s right, in the sight of God—and according to our agreement, and to the tenets of basic human decency—to no longer be in contact with you.

  Head giving Heart what it needs. Head saying to Heart, The two of you, together, are wrong.

  Still the visions come.

  1. A hawk at the bottom of its dive, talons extended; the slow-motion, downward beat of wings. When Tommy left for college I bought six pullets. All the years of daily caretaking finished, and all I wanted was something to take care of, daily. The chicks were pecking around beneath the azaleas. I sat in the grass nearby to make sure they didn’t wander to the neighbor’s yard. The day was warm. I lay back and fell asleep and woke just in time to see a flurry of white feathers. No, I yelled, standing and waving my arms. No no no. The hawk dropped the chick and, unharmed, it ran to join the others beneath the bushes. How long had the hawk been perched in the trees, honing in? Waiting for me to be still long enough to mean I was no longer a threat?

  2. A snake-faced man in a graveyard, at night, finds out his plans have been thwarted by some ultimate good. He turns on his heel, long cloak flaring out behind him. I admit this cloaked figure bears a resemblance to Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort in the Harry Potter films. (There was also, in the vision, a clawlike hand, bent fingers cradling a wand.) But it was the sense of the man’s anger that came across in the vision, his fierce intention to redouble whatever evil efforts were under way. Understand: this man isn’t you. The flare of cloak as he turns on his heel is an image of some dark intention behind us—the thing that wanted, and maybe still wants, to destroy me, and you, and our families.

  3. A tree limb penetrates a windshield as the driver is doing 45 on a two-lane highway; an explosive sound, glass like sugar coating the driver’s skin. This one isn’t a vision in the technical sense. You might remember when it happened, I wrote to you about it. Looking back I realize I should have seen it as a warning. It rained the day before and the hillside trees with their shallow root systems were saturated. I was on the phone with Kate, who was telling me what she wanted from the taco truck, and then a tree was hanging in front of me, upside down, as if dangling from the sky by its roots. The limb through the windshield was ten inches around. As the EMTs duct-taped the glass dust off my sweaty skin—it was Labor Day, I’d just come from the gym—the police officer who took the report walked around and around the car.

  So you didn’t swerve to avoid it, he said.

  No, I said, wanting to explain that in the spl
it second between tree-dangle and limb-pierce, a little eternity opened up during which I was able to almost leisurely evaluate the situation. Swerve right and hit the hillside, swerve left and risk a head-on collision, let the tree hit and give yourself the best odds.

  Six inches to the right and you’d of had a limb through your skull, the policeman said.

  When I wrote to tell you about the wreck, I wanted you to call and say—what? Get on a plane, let’s not waste any more time? I’m coming to see you, life is precarious, we should be together?

  I’m glad you’re okay, you wrote. Then shared a short history of your own car wrecks, one involving a school bus with a football team on board.

  Last week I wrote on my wrist, in a superfine Sharpie, in a tiny cursive script that only I could read: wings, cloak, sugar. To fortify my resolve to never contact you again.

  What’s that on your wrist? Thomas asked.

  Just a few things I need to pick up at the market, I said.

  One day, while the children are at school—Kate in third grade, Tommy in first—she goes into the bedroom and sees the cat pawing a string hanging from the edge of her pillow. Beneath the pillow she finds a drawstring bag with a tiny pink pebble vibrator inside, delicate, shaped like a kidney bean. She presses the button at its base, presses it again; the vibration quickens and changes pattern.

  At the bottom of the bag is a note from Thomas: This one’s just for you. Try it? And—if you like it—maybe we can use it together?

  God wants your holiness, not your happiness—this from a sermon in her parents’ church. All of history, the pastor said, is one long terrible story of men and women trying to make themselves happy. They try so many things. Nothing works. They cry out to God: Can you please give me something to make me happy? And God says: I give you Myself. Yes, yes, they say, but give me something tangible, something with skin on it! And God says: Unless you have me, I have nothing to give.

  At least three times a month, the pastor continued, an unhappy spouse would come to his office and say, This marriage can’t be God’s will for me. God wants me to be happy.

  And the pastor would say, Show me where it says that in the Bible.

  Uncomfortable laughter, a hand pulled through hair.

  I mean it, the pastor would say, sitting back as if to wait the person out. Open the Bible and show me the verse.

  Maggie and Thomas sit on the therapist’s couch with Kate between them. Thomas clears his throat over and over. Dr. Pierson is tall, skinny, with a full dark beard and rimless glasses. He sits in a chair across from them, wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and Puma sneakers. His office is like a living room: couches and chairs, a coffee table with a bowl holding chocolate kisses and peppermints. Toys, Harry Potter books, a game console.

  So, Miss Kate, Dr. Pierson says. I hear you’ve been having some thoughts that are bossing your body around.

  Kate is silent. Dr. Pierson doesn’t look at Maggie or Thomas. He reaches for a book, flips through the pages, holds it up.

  Have you read any of these yet?

  Not that one, Kate says. I just saw the movie, though.

  Which book is your favorite so far?

  I don’t know.

  You liked the first one a lot, remember? Thomas says. The one I read to you, with the owls?

  They all have owls, Kate says.

  Dr. Pierson pulls a plastic figurine from his pocket and hands it to Kate.

  Do you know who that is?

  Lupin, she says.

  Do you remember when he turned into a werewolf? That part scared me. And it scared my son, who’s twelve. Did it scare you?

  Kate nods.

  Let’s say you had a movie-theater clicker. Would you have wanted to change the channel?

  I just closed my eyes, Kate says.

  I want you to try something, Dr. Pierson says. I want to show you how you can make your own channel inside your head. What’s the cutest thing you can think of?

  Baby rabbit.

  Your favorite color?

  Blue.

  Okay. I want you to close your eyes and look at a tiny blue rabbit. She’s so fluffy you can hardly see her little eyes in all that fur. She’s sitting in a basket. The basket is attached to a giant rainbow-striped hot air balloon. I want you to watch her float up in the balloon. Not very high, just above the grass. She’s peeking over the edge of the basket. Her eyes are wide and her blue ears are sticking straight up. You with me?

  Kate nods.

  Now—this is the part where you have to be brave—I want you to change the channel. I want you to picture the scene in the Azkaban movie, where Lupin’s a werewolf and his mouth is open and you can see all his sharp teeth. I want you to really look at him. His mouth might be getting closer to you. Tell me when you see him.

  I see him.

  Good. Now—quick—go back to the baby rabbit.

  You can open your eyes, Kate, Dr. Pierson says. I’m going to ask you some questions. You don’t have to answer anything you don’t feel like answering. How did you feel when you were watching the baby rabbit?

  Happy I guess.

  What about your body? Did you notice anything about how your arms or your hands or your mouth felt? Your eyes or throat or tummy?

  Kind of peaceful?

  Peaceful. That’s a great word. What about when you saw Lupin?

  Scared. Only a little.

  Did you notice your arms or hands or face feeling any different?

  Not really. Maybe kind of stiff?

  Guess what. You know everything there is to know about doing my job now. Because all I do is help people understand how things they think in their heads and things they feel in their bodies are connected.

  I’m pretty confident you’re going to get this last question right, Dr. Pierson says. When the channel changed, who was holding the remote control?

  Me, Kate says.

  And we have a winner, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Pierson says. You can change the channel in your head anytime you have thoughts that start to boss your body around. We just need to spend a little time together, practicing.

  When the session is over, Dr. Pierson tells Kate she can play a video game while the adults wrap up the boring stuff in the waiting room.

  Anxiety’s incredibly common in precocious children, Dr. Pierson says. Their imaginations take them down roads their bodies aren’t equipped to navigate. I’d like to start with biofeedback exercises. No meds for now.

  Also, he says, I always ask this, so please don’t take it personally: anything else going on at home I should know about?

  August 2017

  Dear James:

  There was a fourth vision. This one doesn’t show me any darkness. But it was the same as the other three—vivid, insistent—so I don’t know how to weigh it.

  I was on the plane at LaGuardia, the day after I saw you in New York. We were twelfth in line for takeoff. I closed my eyes and pressed my face into the window and, against the darkness of my eyelids, saw the city divested of all its buildings but three: Freedom Tower at the bottom, Empire State in the middle, and at the top, somewhere in the Bronx, an enormous crucifix, as tall as the island was long. Had the cross been a human the Freedom Tower would have reached to its knees. While I watched, the cross lay itself down over Manhattan. Just bent forward and fell. The horizontal beam became a pair of arms and wrapped the island up, as if the cross were hugging a pillow to its chest. Manhattan curled in on itself. This much love. I don’t want to say I heard the words, but I felt them, a bass note throughout my body. All the mess and glory of this city, and still this much. And you, with your wayward thoughts, in the agony of temptation: I would have you no other way. Yet how to reconcile the other visions of the evil behind our situation—judgment, requisite obedience to an impossible standard—how do I balance these with this glimpse of unconditional love and infinite mercy? Who would make up such a contradictory religion? If there is such a thing as Divine truth surely it would come to us transposed in this way
, revealing the inadequacy of our brains to comprehend (we must hold A and not-A to be true simultaneously), and in so revealing our intellectual limitations, prove itself “true” beyond such binary categories as “true” or “false.”

  Or maybe the complexity is simply the human brain just before insanity, functioning at the peak of its evolutionary capabilities. No more black and white, everything gray. And then we disappear. A virus wiped from the planet.

  What if you woke one day to discover the corpse of Christ had been identified definitively? Or that an irrefutable, airtight scientific study had been devised to disprove the existence of God, and the study had—beyond any conceivable doubt—proved he did not exist? What would you feel?

  Relief.

  One evening in the fall, after Kate has been seeing Dr. Pierson for a few months, Thomas carries into the kitchen a television-sized box with holes in the lid. He sets it in the center of the table; the box jiggles and whines.

  Maggie has just taken the children to the market. On the table are pumpkins, carving kits; an army helmet, tiara and wand; camouflage face-paints, bags of candy.

  What do you think is inside? he asks the children.

  Tell us!

  You have to guess.

  Puppy, kitten, bunny, tell us!

  Thomas opens the lid and lifts out a black Lab, eight weeks old. It pees on the table, tail wagging.

  Look how excited he is, Maggie says.

  Can I hold him? Kate is half-crying. Can I name him?

  He’s going to sleep in your room at night, Kate, Thomas says. Let’s let Tommy name him.

  I want him to sleep in my room, Tommy says.

  You get to walk him, Tommy, his father says. That’s going to be your special job.

  Thomas sets the puppy on the kitchen floor; his paws are huge, they splay out. Flat on his belly, he sniffs and licks vigorously at a spot on the hardwood.