Read Online Our Lady of the Forest by David Guterson - Free Book Online
Authors: David Guterson
Tags: Romance
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in her posture that she had no inclination to eat. He thought it was in part the malaise of illness, in part her Marian obsession. Letâs just take a time-out, he said. Iâm going to cookâlinguini marinara. Iâll be in the kitchen. Read something, or take a nap. Nurse your cold, turn on the television. Relax for a little while.
Iâll help, said Carolyn.
No you wonât. The kitchenâs too small. Let me handle it. My blessing.
What a priest, Carolyn said. Equally adept on the pulpit and in the kitchen. Most priests Iâm guessing do frozen pizza or microwaved Mexican food.
I do those too, the priest answered.
He served pasta with basil tomato sauce from a jar, warm bread with butter and garlic salt, steamed string beans and a salad of iceberg lettuce dressed with ketchup and mayonnaise mixed to approximate Thousand Island dressing. While they ate on the sofa, holding their plates, he played a tape called
Beethoven Breaks Out:
the second movement of the Ninth Symphony, the Apassionata, the Kreutzer sonatas, the Egmont overture. Lively inoffensive music. Carolyn ate with gusto, Ann with a perfunctory charm. Afterward the priest did the dishes rapidly, then gave them bowls of Neapolitan ice cream, set out a plate of sugar wafers, and made them Darjeeling tea. Finally he told them that if they used the bathroom it was necessary to keep the toilet handle lifted in order to achieve a decent flush and apologized for not having cleaned the sinkâIâm not very neat and clean, he confessed. I donât stay on top of the housekeeping.
It was true, Ann found, that the bathroom sink was flecked with shaven facial hair and stained with nasal mucus. On an open shelf stood a package of disposable razors of the sort purchased in preposterous volume at warehouse discount stores. There was a twelve-pack of toilet paper, ten bars of soap, a large bottle of Tylenol, and a half dozen large toothpaste tubesâit was as though Father Collins expected a siege or sudden economic turmoil to disrupt the flow of goods. Two magazines and two books lay on the floor beside his toiletâ
Travel and Leisure, Vanity Fair,
J. P. Donleavyâs
The Ginger Man,
and Norman O. Brownâs
Loveâs Body.
The visionary, seated on the toilet, pigeon-toed and cramping now, the flow of her period at its heaviest pitch, blew her nose into a wad of toilet paper, opened the Donleavy to its inside cover, and read: A PICARESQUE NOVEL TO STOP THEM ALL. LUSTY, VIOLENT, WILDLY FUNNY, IT IS A RIGADOON OF RASCALITY, A BAWLED-OUT COMIC SONG OF SEX . What was the priest doing with a book like this? Curious, she opened
Loveâs Body
randomly, to page 63, noting on her way how the text was permeated by incessant line breaks, diced into endless cryptic snippets:
The vagina as a devouring mouth, or
vagina dentata;
the jaws of the giant cannibalistic mother, a menstruating woman with the penis bitten off, a bleeding trophyâCf. Roheim,
Riddle of the Sphinx. She combed through the rest and found that much was much like this, passages about sex and other matters lifted from writers sheâd never heard of and placed back-to-back and side by side, as if they added up to something by virtue of juxtaposition. And maybe they did. She didnât know. But why was a priest reading this sort of thing? While sitting on his toilet or anywhere else? Sheâd assumed when she came in that the magazines would have titles like
Priest Quarterly
or
Catholic Review
and the books would be Saint Augustineâs
Confessions
or a Mother Teresa biographyânot
Travel and Leisure
or
Vanity Fair,
not a woman with her penis bitten off or a bawled-out comic song of sex.
She couldnât help herself. She peeked into his bedroom. She saw where he slept under an unzipped sleeping bag with two empty pop cans crumpled on the nightstand, more magazines and books on the floor, a digital display alarm clock flashing all red zeroes in the dark. A
Iâll help, said Carolyn.
No you wonât. The kitchenâs too small. Let me handle it. My blessing.
What a priest, Carolyn said. Equally adept on the pulpit and in the kitchen. Most priests Iâm guessing do frozen pizza or microwaved Mexican food.
I do those too, the priest answered.
He served pasta with basil tomato sauce from a jar, warm bread with butter and garlic salt, steamed string beans and a salad of iceberg lettuce dressed with ketchup and mayonnaise mixed to approximate Thousand Island dressing. While they ate on the sofa, holding their plates, he played a tape called
Beethoven Breaks Out:
the second movement of the Ninth Symphony, the Apassionata, the Kreutzer sonatas, the Egmont overture. Lively inoffensive music. Carolyn ate with gusto, Ann with a perfunctory charm. Afterward the priest did the dishes rapidly, then gave them bowls of Neapolitan ice cream, set out a plate of sugar wafers, and made them Darjeeling tea. Finally he told them that if they used the bathroom it was necessary to keep the toilet handle lifted in order to achieve a decent flush and apologized for not having cleaned the sinkâIâm not very neat and clean, he confessed. I donât stay on top of the housekeeping.
It was true, Ann found, that the bathroom sink was flecked with shaven facial hair and stained with nasal mucus. On an open shelf stood a package of disposable razors of the sort purchased in preposterous volume at warehouse discount stores. There was a twelve-pack of toilet paper, ten bars of soap, a large bottle of Tylenol, and a half dozen large toothpaste tubesâit was as though Father Collins expected a siege or sudden economic turmoil to disrupt the flow of goods. Two magazines and two books lay on the floor beside his toiletâ
Travel and Leisure, Vanity Fair,
J. P. Donleavyâs
The Ginger Man,
and Norman O. Brownâs
Loveâs Body.
The visionary, seated on the toilet, pigeon-toed and cramping now, the flow of her period at its heaviest pitch, blew her nose into a wad of toilet paper, opened the Donleavy to its inside cover, and read: A PICARESQUE NOVEL TO STOP THEM ALL. LUSTY, VIOLENT, WILDLY FUNNY, IT IS A RIGADOON OF RASCALITY, A BAWLED-OUT COMIC SONG OF SEX . What was the priest doing with a book like this? Curious, she opened
Loveâs Body
randomly, to page 63, noting on her way how the text was permeated by incessant line breaks, diced into endless cryptic snippets:
The vagina as a devouring mouth, or
vagina dentata;
the jaws of the giant cannibalistic mother, a menstruating woman with the penis bitten off, a bleeding trophyâCf. Roheim,
Riddle of the Sphinx. She combed through the rest and found that much was much like this, passages about sex and other matters lifted from writers sheâd never heard of and placed back-to-back and side by side, as if they added up to something by virtue of juxtaposition. And maybe they did. She didnât know. But why was a priest reading this sort of thing? While sitting on his toilet or anywhere else? Sheâd assumed when she came in that the magazines would have titles like
Priest Quarterly
or
Catholic Review
and the books would be Saint Augustineâs
Confessions
or a Mother Teresa biographyânot
Travel and Leisure
or
Vanity Fair,
not a woman with her penis bitten off or a bawled-out comic song of sex.
She couldnât help herself. She peeked into his bedroom. She saw where he slept under an unzipped sleeping bag with two empty pop cans crumpled on the nightstand, more magazines and books on the floor, a digital display alarm clock flashing all red zeroes in the dark. A
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