meditation and that even sunlight became semithoughtful sliding through colored glass into the incense-marbled air.
The sermon began but I didn’t pay any attention. Although it was not impossible to fool me, I had never believed for a second in God. So I thought not about Him and his Son but about Abulinix. And yet in listening without listening to Reverend Withrow I adopted the look of pious and unhungover contemplation his voice encouraged among more earnest-type congregants, and before long I found myself actually praying. May I discover, so I prayed, or otherwise locate, during this, my limited time only, and even ideally in the next few weeks, before my high school reunion—and with or without the aid of pharmaceuticals—such clarity and justice and stillness of heart as have so far eluded me during my dark but not uncomfortable sojourn here, while I wasn’t looking for them, at least under those exact names, though I mean to embark, very soon, on the pilgrimage of starting to. Then I realized that praying for stillness of heart wasn’t such a good idea. I added, May my gist nevertheless be made plain.
When the time came mom got up to take communion, and I watched her walk away in her fancy suit, with her neat, bobbed hair. “Mom looks swank,” I said.
“Dwight do you realize what’s going on?”
“I’m sure in part I do.”
“Our mother has become a de vout Episcopalian—she’s an Episcopal nun.”
“But I thought there weren’t any—”
“Exactly. Charlie”—dad called mom Charlie, and so did Alice—“Charlie’s a sect of one.”
“That’s not good? It sounds kind of good.”
“Why do you think she’s so careful to be pretty?”
Al had been mad at me for a while and I wanted to say whatever she wanted to hear. “Um, because we live in a superficial media-driven culture? All of whose products are converging toward a pornographic norm?”
“Shut up. She dresses like that in order to assure herself that celibacy is her choice. ”
“I don’t know, Al.”
“Well if you thought about it you’d know.”
Whether my own mother ought to be having sex, and how often, and who with, and in what positions, employing what toys or lubricants, really wasn’t something I wanted to think about. But Alice is a brave person unencumbered by politeness or most taboos.
She said, “We have got to get mom eating meat again.”
“What are you saying?” Because it was Alice’s sullen anemic picking at even the cruelty-free portions of our family dinners, while the rest of us scarfed up dead flesh, that had probably struck the first blow against the omnivorous patriarchy run by dad. “You always used to complain you could never convince them of anything, and now that mom is veggie . . . You should be happy, Al. You and the animals should be happy.”
“Mom has become an ascetic. That’s why she’s vegetarian, okay? I have nothing against pleasure.”
“Like which particular ones don’t you have anything against?”
But she just glared and shook her head a tiny little bit.
To wrap things up churchwise a hymn was sung—“Morning Has Broken,” as immortalized by Cat Stevens—and when mom returned to our pew I stood up to add my wobbly tenor to the unmistakably white-person chorus. I couldn’t help wondering whether this song had been a suggestion of mom’s and thus another device to trick kids like Al and me, weaned on classic rock and known to include vegetarians, back into the fold. She’d always tried to keep from losing us by dabbling in our interests. She was all right with books but not so much with the music. A few months after Kurt Cobain had died his epochal death her first comment—or momment, Al would say—was, “I saw a photograph of the poor young man. He seems to have had just terrible posture.”
At the time Al and I were creeping out of our classic rock ghetto, had semi-grungified ourselves, and therefore wanted to defend the musical genius of our own best
The sermon began but I didn’t pay any attention. Although it was not impossible to fool me, I had never believed for a second in God. So I thought not about Him and his Son but about Abulinix. And yet in listening without listening to Reverend Withrow I adopted the look of pious and unhungover contemplation his voice encouraged among more earnest-type congregants, and before long I found myself actually praying. May I discover, so I prayed, or otherwise locate, during this, my limited time only, and even ideally in the next few weeks, before my high school reunion—and with or without the aid of pharmaceuticals—such clarity and justice and stillness of heart as have so far eluded me during my dark but not uncomfortable sojourn here, while I wasn’t looking for them, at least under those exact names, though I mean to embark, very soon, on the pilgrimage of starting to. Then I realized that praying for stillness of heart wasn’t such a good idea. I added, May my gist nevertheless be made plain.
When the time came mom got up to take communion, and I watched her walk away in her fancy suit, with her neat, bobbed hair. “Mom looks swank,” I said.
“Dwight do you realize what’s going on?”
“I’m sure in part I do.”
“Our mother has become a de vout Episcopalian—she’s an Episcopal nun.”
“But I thought there weren’t any—”
“Exactly. Charlie”—dad called mom Charlie, and so did Alice—“Charlie’s a sect of one.”
“That’s not good? It sounds kind of good.”
“Why do you think she’s so careful to be pretty?”
Al had been mad at me for a while and I wanted to say whatever she wanted to hear. “Um, because we live in a superficial media-driven culture? All of whose products are converging toward a pornographic norm?”
“Shut up. She dresses like that in order to assure herself that celibacy is her choice. ”
“I don’t know, Al.”
“Well if you thought about it you’d know.”
Whether my own mother ought to be having sex, and how often, and who with, and in what positions, employing what toys or lubricants, really wasn’t something I wanted to think about. But Alice is a brave person unencumbered by politeness or most taboos.
She said, “We have got to get mom eating meat again.”
“What are you saying?” Because it was Alice’s sullen anemic picking at even the cruelty-free portions of our family dinners, while the rest of us scarfed up dead flesh, that had probably struck the first blow against the omnivorous patriarchy run by dad. “You always used to complain you could never convince them of anything, and now that mom is veggie . . . You should be happy, Al. You and the animals should be happy.”
“Mom has become an ascetic. That’s why she’s vegetarian, okay? I have nothing against pleasure.”
“Like which particular ones don’t you have anything against?”
But she just glared and shook her head a tiny little bit.
To wrap things up churchwise a hymn was sung—“Morning Has Broken,” as immortalized by Cat Stevens—and when mom returned to our pew I stood up to add my wobbly tenor to the unmistakably white-person chorus. I couldn’t help wondering whether this song had been a suggestion of mom’s and thus another device to trick kids like Al and me, weaned on classic rock and known to include vegetarians, back into the fold. She’d always tried to keep from losing us by dabbling in our interests. She was all right with books but not so much with the music. A few months after Kurt Cobain had died his epochal death her first comment—or momment, Al would say—was, “I saw a photograph of the poor young man. He seems to have had just terrible posture.”
At the time Al and I were creeping out of our classic rock ghetto, had semi-grungified ourselves, and therefore wanted to defend the musical genius of our own best
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