The Whole Beautiful World

by Melissa Kuipers

  The group dwindled to seventeen devoted members who kept up with the bi-weekly fasts and were willing to answer their phones for random 2:00 AM prayer walks around campus as the Spirit led, when Mark couldn’t sleep. When the school year ended the white-haired congregants agreed to let the group rent out the entire church building to live in, with an arrangement that the students would take over the janitorial duties and grounds upkeep.

  Only fourteen of the seventeen were willing to stay over the summer and move in together, and of those, two left after the first month. They waited in tear-stained shirts with their luggage on the curb for their older siblings to pick them up while the others yelled that they hoped they knew what they were leaving, that not everyone was ready to walk the narrow road. One girl’s sister skidded up in front of the church, slammed the car door and yelled at Mark, “I could kill you for the way you’ve made my sister feel about herself! I hope you realize that you’re ruining lives, and the rest of you,” she threw her arm around above her head in angry circles, “should leave while you can.”

  “We can charge her with death threats,” Marci said to Mark.

  “In this life we will have trials,” he said gently, “but I have overcome the world.”

  Mark watched the wayward followers slouch in their cars and drive away, and remembered that few were chosen. The group spent the summer gardening together, writing songs with Mark on guitar, plastering the walls of the nearly dead church with paintings of verses from Scripture or sayings Mark had invented and everyone quoted all the time, like “Love till it breaks you,” and other poetry like “It’s when you think you have nothing left that you are the strongest.”

  Stan continued to call every month or so, “Just checking in,” as he would say in the cheery messages he left for Mark on the answering machine, “seeing how life is treating you.” There was a sadness Mark could hear behind the cheeriness—or was it fear?—that reminded him of Frank’s constant chiding about Mark’s diet and weight. Mark avoided picking up the phone, knowing now that Stan’s influence could only pull him away from his vision. And yet part of him longed for Stan to come and pick him up, the way the families of those who had left had. It wasn’t that Mark wanted to go home. He wanted to be in the car, with Stan driving and navigating, and Mark could sit in the back seat, turn off his brain and watch the trees and billboards fly by.

  In September Mark stopped wearing a watch. He felt free and naked without it, without Time holding him in place. The Spirit reminded him when he was supposed to go to class, if he was supposed to go, but often he skipped for more important things, like talking or bonding with the community over homemade lemonade. Every decision he made left him confident, flattered by divine guidance.

  “You’ve been praying that God would make you beautiful, haven’t you?” he asked Marci one day after individual prayer hour. She blushed a little. “Don’t be ashamed,” he said. “I can see it.” He could hear the rest of the group laughing in the kitchen, and wondered why they were having so much fun without him, but knew he needed to be with her in that moment.

  “I guess . . . I guess I’ve been longing for it my whole life. But it’s only been in the last several months that I’ve been feeling it.”

  “That’s what happens when you believe,” he said, grasping her knee. He kissed her gaunt cheek, looked into her eyes, and left, feeling her gaze on him all the way out the door. He was so close to having her, and stronger for resisting every day. He had impressed upon them all that romance would distract from what they were called to do. But maybe he would change his mind, in a few years, when the others were strong enough.

  In October, a writer for the student paper called and asked if he could stay with the group for a few days. “I’ll have to pray about it and get back to you,” Mark told him kindly. The following week, Andrew showed up with a sleeping bag and an air mattress, and the others, who had been toughing it out on the hard Sunday school floors, looked enviously at his fluffy bed, but Mark insisted living for God wasn’t comfortable; why did they need beds when Jacob used a rock for a pillow and the son of God had no place to lay his head?

  Andrew sat quietly in the corner during worship time, talked for hours with Mark about music, joined in their massage lines and scribbled happily in his notebook during foot-washing.

  “So what inspired you to do this whole thing you’re doing here?” Andrew asked after one late-night worship service. Everyone else had gone to bed.

  “Life’s too easy,” Mark said with heavy eyes. He was tired and wanted to sleep, but he liked Andrew’s curiosity, wanted to honour it. “We’re coddled in our society. We want everything to be comfortable. But Jesus calls us to challenge ourselves, to be different than everyone else. If we accept that call, we get jolted out of our day-to-day existence. We connect with each other, with ourselves, on a deeper level.”

  “Reminds me a bit of mountain climbing,” Andrew said. “Life here, in the city, starts to wear on you. I start to feel like my soul is empty. Until I’m up on a rock face, and then I feel like I’m connected with everyone and everything, the way it pulls me out of the monotonous, reminds me there’s more to life.”

  “Yeah, exactly!” Mark said.

  “And then I come back home,” Andrew said, “and it’s like I’m walking around with the blinders off and no one else gets it.”

  “Yep,” said Mark. “That’s God trying to get your attention.”

  “Ha—maybe,” said Andrew. “Maybe.”

  They talked for another couple of hours, Mark in his exhaustion drifting off into a trance-like state, letting the words flow from him with little attention to what he said. Andrew seemed rapt with Mark’s words, in a way the group used to be, before they had grown lazy of listening. Mark woke up the next morning with his head resting on Andrew’s air mattress, Andrew’s sleeping bag draped over him.

  Andrew seemed at home with the group, and Mark delighted in watching their hospitality. He wondered if the article might lead more people to make this pilgrimage, if their numbers might increase again and revival might break out now that people would know the kind of radical love the group shared. Every night after the group wrapped up, Andrew and Mark stayed up, jamming on the guitars, reflecting on how few opportunities there are in life for true highs, for true deep connection. At the end of the week, Mark was surprised when Andrew reached out his hand and said, “I guess my time here has wrapped up. This has been great.” Mark pulled him into a hug, and Andrew leaned in.

  “Please don’t be a stranger,” Mark said, and he felt a heaviness in his chest, heavier than when the backsliders had left the group earlier that summer. “You belong here,” he said. Then he handed Andrew Stan’s bible, believing he could sense the preciousness of the gift.

  Two weeks after Andrew left, the dean of students emailed Mark to come in for an appointment in his office. As Mark settled his thin buttocks in the soft peach chair, the dean leaned forward, his forearms pressed along the centre of the desk, hands clasped in front of him, and said, “I’m just going to come out and ask the obvious: what do you make of these rumours that you’re running a cult?”

  Mark laughed out loud. He laughed so hard his stomach hurt, his eyes watered, and the dean had to look away uncomfortably. Something about the dean’s tone, gentle and concerned, reminded Marcus of his coffee with Stan. “Why,” asked Mark, gasping, “how—who thinks we’re a cult?”

  “You haven’t seen the paper?” the dean asked. He pushed it across the table to Mark. His eyes grew wet as he ran them along the tiny black print, scanning for key words: love, kindness, cult, high, countercultural.

  “This is ridiculous. The guy had a great time—he had a great time. Look—see here? He says ‘undeniably the kindest people you’ll ever meet.’ He’s just trying to publish a crazy story for shock value—get a lot of publicity for the paper.”

  “Marcus, everyone in the group is doing poorly in school, some are on academic probation, some failing courses. You’re
only enrolled in three courses and failing two of them. I want to be upfront about it with you, as you’re adults and all. But when parents are funding their children’s education, I need to inform them when I’m this concerned about their academic, and general, well-being.” He breathed deeply.

  “That’s all, Marcus. That’s all.”

  A WEEK LATER, Marci’s parents showed up and insisted on taking Mark out for coffee. As Mark fervently stirred a stream of sugar into his mug, Marci’s dad began.

  “We wanted to meet with you because we appreciate what you guys have been trying to do.” He used Frank’s “have a salad instead” tone of voice, intentionally generous, the one that insisted things were going to change. “We know you’re all adults and we’ve wanted to give Marci the freedom to be a part of this experiment. But we’ve become quite concerned. She’s distant, and we can see that she’s exhausted—”

  “Well, I understand it’s tempting to think life shouldn’t be challenging, but we need to show the world that things can be different.”

  “She’s not happy, Mark,” Marci’s mom said.

  “Happy? What would you know about happiness? She’s told me she’s never been more fulfilled in her life! You just can’t tell because it’s a different kind of happiness than you’ve ever been able to offer her—”

  “It’s clear that I can’t change your mind, son,” said the father loudly, and Mark flinched a little in his seat, “but we need to tell you we’re taking Marci home with us.”

  “Well, I think that’s Marci’s choice, isn’t it?”

  “It is and she’s made it. She was scared to talk to you about it, and quite frankly, I can see why. She’s packing up now, and we’ll come by again this evening to pick her up.”

  Mark didn’t have much else to say.

  AFTER MARCI’S PARENTS dropped him off, he seethed down the hallway and stood in her doorway, hands pressed on both sides of the doorframe. She was pulling down hand-painted posters of bible verses—PERFECT LOVE DRIVES OUT ALL FEAR, one said in Marci’s rounded letters, with heart-shaped O’s.

  “You’re invaluable here,” he said as he stepped into her room. “We can’t keep being who we are without you. You belong with us. Don’t you know how much you mean to me?” He wrapped his arms around her, pressing his chest tight against hers.

  “I know, I know—I’m sorry,” she sobbed, and her aggravating tears soaked through his T-shirt. “I’ll come back,” she said as he pulled away from her. “I just need a break for a bit—”

  “Marci, that’s not how commitment works!” he shrieked. Her eyes went wide. He wanted to slap them shut. “You’re in it or you’re not! I guess living radically got too hard for you, and the Enemy has cushier shit to offer you! So go, Marci! But you can’t come crawling back when you have enough money but you feel so damn empty that life isn’t worth living anymore!”

  He slammed the door as she wailed on. It was for the best, he thought, while his pulse raced, his head throbbing.

  Mark walked slowly down the hall, dragging his fingers along the walls, towards the music wafting from the living room. He could hear the phone ringing at him from another room, their landline, the one invasion from the outside world. He now realized it had been ringing throughout his conversation with Marci. He thought it might be Frank or Mom, or maybe Niko, none of whom had offered to visit, to meet “the kindest people you’ll ever meet,” see what he was capable of making. Maybe it was Andrew, realizing what he was missing, calling to say that he was finally accepting that the high he chased up those mountains could be with him all the time. Over the phone’s buzz, in his mind he heard Frank’s voice—“Marcus, could you get off the couch for once and answer the phone?” He sent Frank’s voice and the ringing phone and Marci away to the place in his mind where he sent all of the people who tried to pull him away from his vision—his RA, Stan, the dean, Andrew. He walked away from the ringing, towards the music. He stood outside the living room door, the bold fluorescent light of the hallway shining around him against the dimness of the candle-lit living room.

  Brandon was playing a hymn softly on his guitar. It bothered Mark, Brandon playing so often, almost more than Mark, but he could talk to him about his spirit of arrogance later. Some were prostrate on the floor, curled inward as fetuses, a few were swaying with eyes half closed, half leaning against the walls. Mark stepped in, and the lamp shook as he began to jump up and down. He threw his head back for the last line of the song. “And now I am happy all the time,” he screamed.

  MATTRESS SURFING

  BODIES JOSTLE AND SETTLE INTO place on the silky mattress plunked in the middle of the gravel driveway. Like some kind of failed orgy, Emily thinks, her skin bristling against the pink evening air. She stands watching while the rest shimmy around for the best spots—the women clamber for safety in the centre, and then men plunk themselves down along the edges, beer bottles nestled in their elbow crooks. They laugh and shove and link arms like a game of Red Rover–meets–Sardines.

  “Come on, Emily!” the balloon pilot calls as if she were a mile away, waving his arm wildly above his head. She looks towards the farmhouse, and around the red barns behind them, trying to invent an excuse to avoid wedging herself into the mix of sweat and beer breath. She relents and shuffles onto the edge of the mattress where the pilot is perched, giving him the opportunity to reach an arm around her protectively. He doesn’t.

  “Have you been mattress surfing before?” he asks.

  “Can’t say I have.”

  A girl beside him leans too close and says, “He invented it,” tapping her plastic wine goblet against the pilot’s chest. “Always the adventurous one.”

  The pilot’s bearded cheeks rise with his smile. “It’s become a tradition,” he says. “Every time someone needs to get rid of a mattress, I guess. Started in high school when Jenny’s mom moved in with her new boyfriend and Jenny had to go with her. Kirkby picked the mattress up with his truck and hooked it up to the tractor, and we all piled on and drove along Dingman’s Lane. And then, when James moved in with his girlfriend and graduated from his twin bed, we had to pile on top of each other to all fit!” He exhales a chesty laugh. The girls beside him echo with drunk giggles.

  “This one’s Kirkby’s,” the pilot says. “His wife just left him.”

  Kirkby is hunched over the front of the mattress, stabbing it with a large hook on the end of a chain linked to a small tractor. He struggles to tear through the silky fabric that holds the springs and stuffing and other mattress innards intact.

  A puff of orange stretches above the alfalfa fields. Emily is drunker than she should be at a party this early in the evening. She still feels out of place around the pilot’s friends. It’s clear they all think she is lucky to be with him, and she is beginning to fear she doesn’t feel the same.

  They met two months ago at a stag and doe. She asked how he got into the air balloon business and he said he “started on the ground crew in high school—one of the guys who follows the balloon in the car and has to guess where it’ll land. Then you run up and anchor it. You have to jump on it while it’s still sort of dragging on the ground, add your weight to it.” He used his hands to demonstrate, one sweeping across the sticky table heel first, the other making a person out of two finger legs running across and then lunging at the basket.

  When she told him she was a prenatal ultrasound tech, he said, “Whoa. That must be empowering. To help people see right inside themselves. To be there for one of the most intimate moments in someone’s life.” He took a sip and looked at the counter fondly. “That’s meaningful work.”

  She pulled at the itchy collar of her shirt. “There’s a lot of gross stuff, and technical stuff. Most of it isn’t that interesting.”

  “Lots of technical stuff in my work, too. Waivers and driving, cleaning and repairs—but all worth it when you see the joy on people’s faces. You must know that feeling.” He perked up in an epiphany, a reaction Emily has come to expect every few
minutes in their conversations. “Hey, what you and I do is not that different! We help people see themselves from different perspectives, to see the world in a way you can’t on your own.” She thought this was sweet, self-aware cheesiness.

  At first it was endearing, the cartoonishness of his career and his passion, but it’s beginning to wear on her, the way he refers to himself as a “pilot, but not the traditional kind,” the same rehearsed story to answer the inevitable questions about how he got into such an interesting line of work. Besides, he seldom initiates anything physical. And she is losing hope that he will take her up into the air for a ride.

  She has imagined it more times that she cares to admit, the heat of the flame against their faces, how the balloon would catch boisterously in the wind and she would fall against him, and he would catch her and kiss her, pressing her against the edge of the basket, the land two hundred empty feet below.

  But he’s mentioned several times that they are booked solid all summer. And four out of five days they have to cancel, due to any amount of wind or rain or fog, or if the fields are too wet. “It’s my job to protect the passengers,” he said once. “So if that means they want to yell at me because they’re not getting the ride they want, that’s okay. I’d rather that than anyone be hurt.”

  “So essentially it has to be a perfect day for you to go,” she said.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Sounds like a scam.”

  “It does,” he said, “until you get up there.”

  Somehow this line gave her goose pimples in a way that felt like self-betrayal. She wondered if the same were true of his affection, that he did not show it until he considered the moment perfect, all the elements aligned in a way that neither of them could control.