Thumbsucker

by Walter Kirn

“I am. I feel it.”

  My testimony, despite its hesitancy, made me an instant hero. I’d scored big. On the way downstairs the group congratulated me. Girls hugged me and boys slapped my back. “Good work,” one said. I felt lifted up, admired, wanted. I’d attracted a fan club, a cheering section When someone thrust a stick of gum at me and I bit down on it, the taste transported me. It was the taste of knowing that I belonged.

  The bus drivers revved their engines and opened their doors. Elder Tinsdale called us to attention. “You’ll notice we’ve changed the seating, so check for name tags. Kids who didn’t have windows should have windows now. What’s more, this should give you a chance to make new friends.”

  As I made my way down the aisle my spirits fell. I didn’t see my name tag anywhere. A kid named Tim Kriss had taken Orrin’s old seat, and Orrin was in mine, across from Opal. She hadn’t moved. When I passed her, she looked down and turned a page in her Book of Mormon. I felt a spike of anger. My forehead tensed. The headache that I’d been waiting for materialized.

  Finally, I found my place—in the very last row, a three-seater by the bathroom. I sat down. Beside me was Sister Helms, the chaperon.

  “We thought you might be more comfortable back here. We noticed you had to go a lot,” she said.

  “That was my medication. I’m off it now.”

  “Medication for what?” said Sister Helms.

  The headache intensified, spreading down my neck. My breathing sped up, but it seemed to yield less oxygen. I was falling apart. I couldn’t concentrate.

  “You’re grinding your teeth,” Sister Helms said. “Settle down.”

  “I am settled down. I’m completely calm.”

  Sister Helms nodded and moved over a seat.

  We parked in the Garden of Eden’s parking lot, next to the outdoor toilets and the garbage cans. We’d stopped at a Burger King that afternoon and everyone had trash to throw away. Kids stretched and yawned and took deep breaths, then walked in circles, working out their leg cramps. It was evening, and cool, with a breeze that riffled my hair and sent me back to the bus for a jacket. I spied the bus driver’s Camels on the dashboard and snatched the whole pack, as well as his matches. What I really needed was some aspirin, but Mormons viewed pills with suspicion, no matter what kind, and even if I found the courage to ask for some I doubted that anyone would admit to having any.

  The group formed a circle in the parking lot to listen to Elder Tinsdale’s lecture. Orrin and Opal seemed to be avoiding me. They stood at Elder Tinsdale’s side, shoulders identically hunched against the chill, and gazed intently at his moving lips. Orrin’s face had lost its pinched expression. He’d pushed his sunglasses up into his hair and there was a bright smudge of mustard on his chin. Opal licked a finger and wiped it off for him.

  I felt a twitch of betrayal. My hands made fists. I couldn’t believe how quickly she’d moved on, how easily she’d shifted her devotion. To forget her, I turned my attention to Elder Tinsdale, but I found what he was saying hard to swallow. I had ideas about the Garden of Eden, particularly concerning its location. I pictured it in the Middle East somewhere, covered in sand, an unmarked, windswept ruin. I pictured dry riverbeds, mountainous horizons—not an ordinary Missouri valley covered in brush and grass and knotty hardwoods. Still, Elder Tinsdale assured us that it was true: God had breathed life into Adam on this spot, and it was here that Jesus Christ himself would someday return and gather the elect—a hundred and forty-four thousand faithful saints who would follow him, carrying tools, to Independence, and break the ground for his everlasting temple.

  Elder Tinsdale concluded his talk with yet another personal testimony. Next to me, Tim Kriss had started shaking. Sister Helms reached over and patted his hand. Even more palpably than in the jail cell, deep waves of feeling were surging through the group—though not, this time, through me. A boy cried, “Father!” A girl began to bawl. Our basketball team’s star center hugged himself and gently rocked from side to side, eyes shut. Even Orrin seemed moderately uplifted; he tilted his face back to catch the setting sun while Opal, serene as ever, stood by him, smiling.

  Elder Tinsdale brought order to the scene by instructing us to wander as we saw fit along the footpaths that led from the parking lot into the surrounding woods and fields. “Find somewhere peaceful to sit and pray and meditate. In forty-five minutes the buses will honk their horns.”

  My plan was to go off alone to smoke a cigarette, but when I saw Opal and Orrin leave the group and sneak off together through a stand of sumac I decided to follow them. They held hands as they walked. Their steps were light and synchronized. I hung back, downwind, and lit a Camel, toying with the idea of tossing the match into the dry brush along the path. To burn down the Garden of Eden would be a feat, and I was surprised it hadn’t been tried already. Orrin and Opal were out of sight by then. I had an idea about what they planned to do together, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted or needed to see it.

  I dropped the match on the ground and stamped it out, crediting myself with a good deed simply for having avoided an evil one. My thoughts had grown scattered, and when I closed my eyes and tried to pray I forgot what I was asking for halfway through. “Heavenly Father, preserve my family. Heal my antsiness. Guide my future mission.” I opened my eyes and started down the path again, following Orrin and Opal in spite of myself.

  I heard them before I saw them. Someone was sobbing—great snuffling, rattling sobs. Opal’s voice said, “Okay, okay, I’m stopping.” I stepped around the bush and looked below me. Orrin was sitting on his spread-out jacket with his Levi’s pushed down around his knees. Opal was beside him, kneeling, her open shirt revealing a shiny pink bra. Orrin kept slapping his hands against his cheeks, the way men do when applying aftershave. His eyes were wet red messes. He muttered the antisex incantation over and over.

  “She’s cut, she’s hurt, she’s bleeding …”

  The scene made me angry and a little sick, but I couldn’t stop looking. Opal grabbed Orrin’s wrists, but he resisted. “Off me. Let me be. Get off,” he said. Opal relented and started buttoning her shirt.

  “She’s bleeding, she has a wound …”

  “Shut up with that.”

  Orrin worked his pants up over his legs and fiddled with his belt. He’d held the line against something, he’d beaten temptation, but instead of respecting him for it I felt contempt. He was everything he pretended not to be: programmed, afraid, intimidated, weak. His skepticism, which I’d admired, was fake, which made me suspect his goodness was also fake. And though Opal’s idea of saintliness disturbed me, at least she had the courage to see it through. Orrin’s faith in God embarrassed him, while Opal’s, which seemed more real to me, confused her.

  I respected confusion. Confusion I understood.

  I crouched in the weeds and waited for them to go. Opal stood up and stepped into her sandals while Orrin sat on his jacket and hung his head. I could see his white underpants through his open zipper. My headache, which had receded for a moment, returned with new strength. I noticed my knees were trembling.

  Orrin raised his face. “Come back. Don’t go. Maybe I did the wrong thing.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You never do the wrong thing.”

  “I’ll pray for you.”

  Opal gave Orrin the finger and walked away. I waited, then followed her. I rehearsed my innocent face. I took a side path that cut across the path Opal was on. I got ahead of her. I tried to look pleased and surprised when she approached me.

  “Hi. I was meditating.”

  “Good for you,” said Opal. She tried to step past me, but I kept up with her.

  “Incredible place. Inspiring. I felt the spirit again.” My words ran together.

  Opal walked faster. “Go away. Stop bugging me.”

  “I miss you. I want to talk. Let’s talk. Wait up. Isn’t this place incredible? What’s wrong?”

  Opal halted and spun around and faced me. The wings of her nostrils were pink an
d flared and wet. “I mean it, back off. I’m tired of clingy guys. I’m tired of being everybody’s mother.”

  I couldn’t stand still. I nodded. I jiggled one foot. “Right,” I said. “Right. Okay. I see. Okay.”

  “You’re vibrating,” Opal said. “You’re scaring me.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Get a blessing, okay? You need a blessing.”

  “I tried once. It didn’t work.”

  “So try again.”

  On the trip’s final day we drove to Independence and stood around a grassy hilltop lot where Mormons believed the great temple would someday stand. Everyone seemed cramped and underslept. A virus had broken out inside the bus, recirculating through the ducts and ventilators, and every other person had caught the flu.

  Even Elder Tinsdale had fallen ill. As he lectured us about the temple he shifted a cough drop around inside his mouth, and some of his words were hard to understand.

  “The summons to build might come soon. Tomorrow, perhaps. Some of you kids might even join the effort. Imagine the thrill of wielding spade and chisel with Jesus as your foreman. What a feeling.”

  I gazed around at the dirt and weeds, at the restaurant and parking garage across the street, at the cars and trucks and traffic lights, but I couldn’t picture the spires and buttresses Elder Tinsdale was describing.

  As usual, Orrin gave me the straight dope. “The church doesn’t even own the Temple Lot. Another religion does. Pretty ironic, don’t you think?” he said.

  “I’m tired of thinking. I’m trying faith.”

  “In what? A bunch of fairy tales?”

  “In some of them.”

  On the long ride home the seating system collapsed. People sat down wherever they wanted to and tended to their colds with wads of Kleenex. Elder Tinsdale, exhausted, fell asleep, and didn’t wake to eat the boxed Big Mac that Sister Helms set kindly on his lap. At sundown the driver dimmed the overhead lights and someone put on The Osmonds’ Greatest Hits. I walked to the back where Opal was sitting alone, the Book of Mormon open on her knee. She slid over to make room.

  “I caught the bug,” she said as I sat down.

  I shrugged.

  “It’s fine if you’re mad at me,” she said.

  “I’m just run-down.”

  “That’s the bug.”

  “It’s not the bug.” I said.

  The Osmonds tape played as we crossed a long steel bridge back into Illinois. It felt odd to be leaving the Holy Land so suddenly, not knowing when, if ever, I’d be back. I let my eyes close as Opal told me stories about the part of her family that lived in Utah. “I’ve been thinking about my grandpa. He had four wives. He lived in the desert—big tall man, with a beard. I visited him with my mom when I was nine. His fourth wife, June, was nursing a baby—my uncle. I watched my own uncle breast-feed. That must seem weird to you.”

  “What?” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m not all here tonight.”

  “Those pills you take.”

  I shook my head. “I quit them.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. They were in the way of something.”

  The tape switched sides. The bus was dark and cold. Opal put away her Book of Mormon and I fetched a blanket from the overhead rack. We kicked off our shoes and huddled closer together and spread the thin blue blanket across our laps. Beneath it our hands moved, quietly, like spirits.

  5

  Of all the places the General Authorities could have chosen to send me on a mission—South Africa, South America, South Carolina—they picked New York City. I couldn’t believe the letter. We’d moved to a house on the golf course that summer and Mike and Audrey were playing with the pro when a Federal Express van drove up with the envelope. I could see them out on the fairway as I opened it, and after I’d read it over a couple of times, I yelled to them to come over in their cart. My fingers were tingling. My mouth was dry from shock.

  I passed the letter to Audrey in the cart. She pushed her sunglasses up onto her forehead, under her white billed cap. Mike put his arm around her and leaned in. Golf, the new house, and the club’s packed social schedule had brought them closer than I’d ever seen them.

  Audrey’s tan seemed to fade as she read. She angled the letter toward Mike. His eyes went round. “Ding, ding, ding,” he said. “You hit the jackpot.”

  Audrey’s face hardened. “Well. I guess this changes things. No more second thoughts. Excited? Must be.”

  To spare her feelings, I tried not to grin. She’d been working on me to stay in Minnesota, attend the U of M, back off from church life. She and Mike spent their Sunday on the course now, attending services only when it rained. Joel, whose prep school had sent him to Chicago for a total-immersion summer tennis retreat, didn’t go at all. He’d found a new faith. On the strength of a book promoted by his coach, he called himself a Buddhist now. He claimed its teachings and practices helped his serve.

  “I still have some thinking to do,” I said to Audrey.

  “Come on, Mike. I’d like to finish the whole eighteen.”

  To double-check the letter’s accuracy, I had Bishop Salaman contact Salt Lake City. I sat in his office in a suit and tie as a chain of receptionists passed him up the line to someone who could speak definitively. I was thrilled about my assignment, but anxious, too. In New York, as opposed to Russia or Brazil, say, I’d come as a pest, I feared, an interruption. People were busy there. Their clocks ran fast.

  When Bishop Salaman reached a higher-up, he flashed me an okay sign with one hand. “Interesting,” he said when he was finished.

  “Tell me everything. I’m going crazy.”

  “After the interviews they held with you, they agreed you have a special power. You know how to break down barriers with words. New York is the perfect place for you, they feel, because residents tend to be tough, impatient, skeptical. We haven’t had much success there recently.”

  “It’s final?”

  “Of course it’s final. The church has spoken. Enjoy yourself these last few weeks. Be proud. You’re taking a blessing to people who sorely need it.”

  As word leaked out about my destination, people at church started giving me advice. Elder Munsen, who’d served his mission in Bolivia, wrote down a prayer for me and laminated it so I could carry it inside my wallet. The prayer dated back to the days of Brigham Young, he said, and was meant to be recited in emergencies, when a missionary faced danger or hostility. It called on Heavenly Father to strike mute anyone who opposed his earthly plan.

  The girls had advice for me, too: stay strong, stay chaste, and write. I suspected Bishop Salaman was coaching them. One by one, at dances and softball games, they took me aside and breathily assured me that when I returned to the ward two years from now they would be waiting for me, all grown up, eager to date, go out, get serious. They reminded me that, according to church tradition, returning missionaries had six months to do nothing but rest, and socialize, after which they were expected to get engaged.

  “If you’re interested, I’ll be waiting,” Maria Larson said, “but not if you do something stupid with some New York girl. I know they’re very experienced out east, but I can give you something those girls can’t.” She brushed my ear with her lips. “A family.”

  Jane Hatch’s proposition was more tempting. She promised to correspond with me about her deepest, most secret thoughts and fantasies; to open up her soul with no holds barred. “I’ve already done my first letter. It’s pretty filthy. I didn’t know what I had in me until I wrote it.”

  “Like what?” I said.

  “That’s for me to know,” Jane said, “and you to find out.” She kissed me on my nose. Her breath smelled of butterscotch ice cream and mint sprinkles.

  The other young men who were headed out on missions grew resentful when they heard my news. Sven Lind, who was off to Hungary that month after nine grueling weeks at the church’s language institute, accused me of pulling strings with higher-ups. Rob Farrell, who was Co
sta Rica-bound, hinted that missionaries in New York were favorite targets for pickpockets and muggers. When I told him I wasn’t afraid of criminals because I’d be making my rounds with a partner, Rob warned me that New York muggers worked in packs. “And that badge on your shirt pocket saying Latter-Day Saints tells them that you’re basically defenseless. You don’t have a knife, a gun, or anything.”

  I mentioned the prayer Elder Munsen had given me. “I have God,” I said.

  “That’s good. That’s funny. Make sure you know how to say that prayer in Spanish.”

  Elder Gorman, an old man in a wheelchair who’d spent his mission in postwar Germany bringing former Nazis to Jesus Christ, gave me the most unusual advice. “You’ll see it all in that town,” he said. “The best, the worst, and everything in between. Maybe you’ll stick it out or maybe not. Maybe you’ll find a new life. It happens. Often.”

  “You came back, though.”

  “From Düsseldorf? Who wouldn’t? There was nothing there for a young man. My friend Elder Bragg, who went to Rome, however …”

  “I’ll try to be careful. I’ll do my best,” I said.

  Elder Jessup raised a knobby hand and waved me in next to his chair so he could whisper. “Ignore what the girls say. Go wild, kid. Let rip!”

  At night, after Mike and Audrey went to bed, I’d lay out the clothes I’d purchased for my mission: dark suits, dark ties, white shirts, black socks, black shoes. I tried them on in my bedroom, standing in front of a full-length mirror that made me look like a cross between Abe Lincoln and a Chicago mobster. To complete the picture, I’d tuck my Book of Mormon under my arm and rehearse a line of greeting: “Hello, ma’am, I’m Elder Cobb. I’m here to help you.” If it didn’t sound convincing, I’d lower my voice.

  Through the ceiling I could hear Audrey crying in bed. I’d thought that the fact I was staying in the U.S. might comfort her, but the opposite had happened. Whenever New York was mentioned on TV or came up in conversation, fresh tears would surge up and she’d have to leave the room. One night I asked her what the trouble was. “Say you were going to Belgium,” she said, “or Chile. I wouldn’t be able to picture you. You’d vanish. In New York, though, I’ll have to imagine your every move. Justin at the fountain in Central Park. Justin in a taxi on Fifth Avenue.”