Our Lady of the Forest (39 page)

She took the teacup down the hall and handed it in along with the Tylenol and a packet of Phenathol. Ann looked cute in the toilet stall with her pigeon-toed pose and her jeans at her ankles and her perfectly white trim teenage legs with their calves tensed, firm arches of muscle. Carolyn felt a pang of jealous angst. God, she said. You're sweating.

I'm sick to my stomach.

Something's like wrong. Seriously.

I've got what they used to call at my school Montezuma's Revenge I guess.

The runs.

Yeah.

At a time like this. Flu, cramps, the runs.

Yeah. Not to mention I'm wheezing again. My asthma is acting up.

Sometimes it's time to call a time-out. You know what I mean? Do you know what I'm saying? Because the body speaks, my dear sweet Ann. And what your body is saying right now is, Help, let's go see a doctor.

I'll go tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon. After Our Lady comes. Then.

Carolyn rolled her eyes at this. Too many oranges, that's all, said Ann. I just have to ride it out.

Carolyn shuttled back to the office. The priests were slumped in their chairs trading yawns. We were just reflecting, said Father Collins, on the phenomenon of the victim soul that Ann's ill health brings to mind.

Victim soul, said Carolyn. That sounds like a reggae band.

It's a soul appointed by God, said Father Butler, to suffer various pains and ailments in penance for the sins of man. A soul participating in the suffering of Christ. Supposedly—that's the gist of it. For crackpots who believe that sort of thing. The best example that comes to mind is the eminently absurd Veronica Lueken, otherwise known as Veronica of the Cross, the seer of Bayside, in Queens.

Never heard of her, said Carolyn.

She suffered from everything. Diabetes, gallstones, I don't know what else, problem after problem for decades on end, all manner of ailments. There was also a seer named Mary Ann Van Hoof who ranted famously about Yids and Commies. She supposedly manifested painful stigmata and vomited all the time.

Enough, said Carolyn. I don't want to hear this. I'm going back to check on Ann.

Excellent, said Father Butler.

In the bathroom Ann stood washing her hands. She wore her sweatshirt hood cinched tight. No more oranges, I agree, said Carolyn. They're too acidic or something.

She helped Ann back down the hall to the priests, settled her on the couch again, and wrapped her in her blanket. I hope you're better, Father Butler said. I don't want to press this interview if it means further strain on your health.

I'm okay.

Are you sure about that?

I feel okay.

All right, said Father Butler. Then I'm going to ask you to tell me a little more about your religious background.

What do you mean? said Ann.

Father Butler looked fleetingly exasperated. I mean, he said, before all this. What was it that made you feel spiritual?

Spiritual? said Ann. I guess… the sea. The sea did. The sea does. I like the ocean a lot—I like to go there. When I see the ocean I get… spiritual. But I guess a lot of people are like that too. When they're at the ocean.

And stars, she added. Definitely stars. I got into camping on ridges this September where I could check out the stars if we had a clear night and definitely that was spiritual. I mean it's kind of obvious to say it but since you asked, okay, it was, to see the stars that way.

And a bunch of little things. Like if I see the little whatchamacallits that fall off maples when it's windy in the spring I think about how few of them will grow into trees and you know what? That's spiritual. Or I end up looking at a beetle for a long time or an oyster mushroom or something like that and the feeling I get is… spiritual. From looking at those things. All the time. It happens to me constantly. It's totally all the time for me to feel spiritual about just the wind or something.

I love this, said Carolyn. You're a nature poet.

Father Butler, hulking over his notepad, said Please Ann, go right ahead talking, I'd love to hear more of your thoughts.

What should I tell about?

Whatever you want. Free association is dandy with me. Old stories, memories, high points, low points. I—

She's not insane, said Carolyn. If that's what you're getting at. She's not.

I didn't say that.

You're implying it, though.

No I'm not.

Yes you are.

I'm not implying anything.

I'll bet you suspect schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenia. Or a borderline histrionic.

Please now, Father Butler said, and sighed. Why don't I just ask a simple question? He scratched the corner of his mouth and winced. I hate to ask. I really do. But honestly I have to—point-blank, just ask. So here we go. Drugs and alcohol. I have to ask about that.

Neither, Ann said. I don't use either.

I don't use either can mean many things.

I mean it to mean just one thing—I don't.

But have you ever?

Yes. I admit it.

How recently then?

Like a few weeks ago.

A few meaning what? A few means how many?

Like three, maybe. Three or four.

Drugs or alcohol?

Marijuana.

Only that?

Marijuana and magic mushrooms.

So I don't use either means, then, that you last used marijuana or magic mushrooms three or four weeks ago, yes, correct? Isn't that what it means?

The mushrooms more like four.

Father Butler scribbled notes with a knit brow. Excuse me, he said. I write very slowly. He looked up and the light struck off his glasses so that they obscured his eyes and appeared luminescent. This is important, he muttered.

He put down his pen and clasped his thick hands in the traditional manner of a Church functionary, fingers intertwined above his heart. In the considered view of our Church, he said, the character of the purported visionary is as critical as the character of the purported visions. The two are considered inseparable. There is no true vision without a true visionary. And a true visionary is free of drugs. So of course the admitted use of drugs not only argues against your legitimacy but also provides us with a ready explanation for the phenomenon at hand. In an obvious way, inarguably. I think you'll all agree with me. The authenticity of an apparition is naturally compromised by the very good and reasonable question of whether a chemically induced hallucination isn't the best and foremost explanation. A magic mushroom specter or phantasm is not, after all, a Marian apparition. We can all agree on that.

Granted, answered Carolyn. But Ann hasn't tripped in a month or so and she's seeing Mother Mary right now.

Father Butler set his elbows on the desk. You know, he said. I've been at this for years. I've been from here to say Haight-Ashbury investigating Marian apparitions. So this isn't my first time coming across mushrooms of the genus
Psilocybe.
With their well-known and documented power to elicit vivid psychoactive experiences long after the waning of primary effects. Otherwise known—known in the vernacular—as flashbacks, but of course you know about that. Certainly you know all about flashbacks.

I'm not having flashbacks, said Ann.

She's not having flashbacks, Carolyn said. Flashbacks are kind of mellow and dreamy. What's been happening to Ann every afternoon is hugely extreme and intense.

I wouldn't know, answered Father Butler, how best to describe the foggy parameters of the delayed psychoactive psilocybin experience. I'm not sure anyone has described it scientifically or determined its maximum intensity—there's nothing I know of extant in the literature—but I do have to say at this point in the proceedings that we have to take into account, strongly, the possibility that the visions in question are induced by the psilocybin mushroom.

Ann shook her head and tried to answer, but no words emerged. Carolyn took hold of Ann's small hand, held it tightly in her own ample lap, and said Now wait a minute, hold on here, I've never heard of someone beshroomed seeing the Virgin Mary every day at the same place and about the same hour and the rest of the time they're completely normal, right up to the minute before it happens, and normal right away afterward, no tripping up and then coming down, and for sure I've never heard of any flashback that sounds remotely like what's happening to Ann, so your explanation doesn't make sense.

Your opinion is noted, Father Butler replied. But not in the official record I'm keeping of this initial discernment interview.

He swiveled a few degrees in Father Collins' chair. Ann, he said. Help me with something. Do you remember exactly when you started in using psilocybin mushrooms?

Sixth grade.

That seems sadly young.

We sold them. My mom and me. Ann covered her eyes momentarily. I'm confessing right now to a crime, she said. We sold 'shrooms. To make a living. And I took them too. Sometimes.

You know, said Father Butler. This reminds me of something. And turned his gaze on Father Collins. Have you heard of Pahnke's Good Friday experiment? Does Walter Pahnke ring a bell with you? It was written up in
Time
magazine I'm guessing approximately thirty-five years ago or somewhere thereabouts.

I wasn't even born, said Father Collins.

Pahnke gave psilocybin to twenty Protestant divinity students on Good Friday in 1962 in the chapel at Boston University, I think, or I guess it was in some sort of basement of the chapel, not the main but the secondary chapel, and he broadcast in the Good Friday service to see if that wouldn't maybe induce some sort of mystical religious experience in these spiritually inclined volunteers. And perforce they had these religious experiences, feelings of timelessness and eternity, of tasting everlasting life, of dropping away from the world as we know it, as if they were saints or visionaries, there were various sorts of hallucinations, in short the drug indeed facilitated full-blown religious and mystical interludes, I repeat, the drug known as the psilocybin mushroom facilitated in Pahnke's well-known study these intense subjective mystical interludes: now doesn't that apply to Our Ann?

Wait, said Carolyn. Let me say it again. Ann hasn't tripped in four weeks, okay? And her visions are happening now.

Another study, said Father Butler. Another tidbit from my years of files. This one, if I remember correctly, from the newsletter of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, of all things—can you imagine such an organization actually existing in the world? Father Butler shook his head, chagrined. At any rate this little story was about the fact that certain psilocybin users are prone to hearing an audible voice. A positive, insightful, reasonable voice. Perhaps a voice like the Mother of God's. Hearing a voice like Ann here does. Ann who is also a psilocybin user, not incidentally a psilocybin user. Doesn't that sound like it means something?

It's not just a voice, though. I see her, too. I don't just hear her, Father Butler.

Now I'm not saying—I'm trying not to say—that the use of psilocybin resolves this case. Only that the use of psilocybin is a factor that absolutely must weigh in. We'd be wrong to leave it out, I'm certain of that. Wouldn't we be wrong, Father Collins?

Father Collins concurred, wincing. But Carolyn has a point, he added. About the four weeks. And the nature of flashbacks. Carolyn makes a valid point.

Waffle on a tightrope, said Carolyn.

There was nothing to do in the face of this but serve more tea and quell the urge to sneer in return. Father Collins, good host, made the rounds. He poured Ann's tea and sought to catch her eye in order to remind her that the night before they'd lounged on his bed together. In order to confirm the intimacy he felt, if he could only elicit that confirmation from someone so natively off-kilter. Ann was now in a lather of sweat, bathed as if dying of fever. Her unblemished face, though gray, shone wetly. A sheen of fierce and passionate conviction was one way this might be read—death, suffering, God, rapture, an ecstastic bliss he might have envied if he had not already surrendered himself to a more mundane variety of faith and simultaneously, to doubt. Father, she said. Baptize me now. Keep me from the snares of the devil. And help me build the church, our church. The Church of Our Lady of the Forest.

He felt emboldened by Ann's plea to speak to her now as if Father Butler had ceased to inhabit the room. Ann, he said. I want you to understand. I want you to know why I can't do those things. Even though I like you very much. Even though I want to do them. I want you to know my thoughts, who I am. I—

I know who you are already, Father Collins. Because Our Lady sent me to you.

I'm quoting Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. The Little Flower. The Carmelite. To ecstasy I prefer the monotony of sacrifice. And that, in a nutshell—that's me, Ann. The monotony of sacrifice: I personify that. Or have. Or did. Or did for a while. Because right now I'm riddled with questions. Shot through with terrible questions. My humble path is so uncertain I'm afraid it will dwindle and end.

Father.

I'm just a man. Do you understand? I'm a man, weak. Just a man.

Jesus was a man, said Ann.

I'm not Jesus.

But we are all in his image.

I know that. Or I think I do.

The important thing, said Ann firmly, is to build the church Our Lady wants, and also to get the Stinson Company to let me go into the woods tomorrow. And I need your help with both those things. Father Collins—help me.

I wish I could.

You can, though. Help me.

But I don't believe, he said.

Ann rose and pulled her blanket around her head so that both the blanket and the sweatshirt hood cloaked her face in shadow. I'm going into the sanctuary, she said, to pray that the Stinson Company is touched by God and opens our path through the woods to the Blessed Mother. I'm going to pray for that, Father Collins. And for you. And for Our Lady's church. Excuse me now. I'm going.