Fire Sermon
Page 13
His mind betrays him. He says teacup for glass, dryer for razor. She cooks with spices she’s never used, changes room fresheners. Stasis, she thinks, is the enemy. Stasis is where the end begins. She works out with a trainer. We trick the muscles, the trainer says, never give them the same exercise twice—and this is what she’s attempting with her husband’s diminishing senses: changing his shampoo, buying new sheets, repainting bathrooms.
She is putting meals before him. She cannot force him to eat.
They are circling the pond, slowing with each lap. She is dragging, he is stumbling. He loses a shoe and looks around with open mouth, his shirtfront a triangle of sweat. She helps him lower himself to the grass beneath a maple, retrieves the loafer, and slides it back onto his stockinged foot.
She sits beside him. They are quiet. From time to time she fans his face, and her own, with her flattened palm.
At the end of all things, when Love comes and asks me what I know, I will point to them, sitting there in the shade. I will say: This man. This woman.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my editor, Elisabeth Schmitz, and my agent, Anna Stein: Thank you for your faith in my work, and for giving me, always, the space and freedom to take risks. Continued thanks to my Grove Atlantic family: Katie Raissian, Morgan Entrekin, Judy Hottensen, Deb Seager, John Mark Boling, and Gretchen Mergenthaler. For bringing Fire Sermon to foreign audiences, and for their editorial insights, thanks to Paul Baggaley and Kish Widyaratna at Picador, Janie Yoon and Sarah MacLachlan at House of Anansi, and Jessica Nash at Atlas Contact. Thank you to The MacDowell Colony for giving me an “emergency” residency, during which I realized—finally—that this book would come first.
I’m deeply grateful to friends who read early drafts and offered invaluable feedback: Samantha Harvey, Roger Hodge, Elliott Holt, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, and John McElwee. For last-minute help with facts and permissions, thanks to Bo Bergman, Tiana Clark, and Tim Liu.
Finally, to my darling husband and children: Thank you for pulling me out of myself, and reminding me what matters.
The phrase “God, God, tall friend of my childhood” is a variation on a line in John Updike’s “Wife-wooing.” The phrase “guiltiest swervings of the weaving heart” is a fragment from “The City Limits” by A. R. Ammons. The novel’s final line is inspired by “Looking at Them Asleep” by Sharon Olds. I’d also like to acknowledge John Newton, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, C. S. Lewis, Simone Weil, Flannery O’Connor, Thomas Merton, Madeleine L’Engle, James Salter, Lydia Davis, Fanny Howe, Li-Young Lee, Maggie Nelson, and Christian Wiman, all of whose language and ideas informed and influenced the writing of this book.