Our Lady of the Forest (6 page)

Okay, said Father Collins. Whatever it is. Have you committed some kind of crime?

No.

Is there something you feel you have to confess?

I've been sent to you, said Ann.

         

The priest had to ask a great variety of questions, so they were there for a long time. At first he sat with an elbow on his knee and a hand clamped over the lower half of his face, as though afraid that but for his hand he might be compelled to interrupt. He was a good listener, his posture intimated, though at the same time he appeared eager to retort at any point. At moments in the narrative most outlandish—the attack of the ball of light, the advent of the Virgin, Our Lady's six-point bulletin—he pressed his hand even harder to his mouth in order not only to maintain his composure but to keep himself from responding in a fashion derisive or prosecutorial. Father Collins had a modest familiarity with prominent apparition narratives like those that unfolded at Lourdes and Fátima and was aware that in their standard tellings the local priest was an insular bureaucrat, at odds with the inexorable groundswell of sentiment in support of the peasant visionary. Given this, he did not interrupt. He would not play the role of ecclesiastical authority. His view of himself was adversarial. He wanted to reform the church.

He had wanted to reform the church, in fact, ever since middle school. He'd incited concurrently running arguments with the instructor of his confirmation class about the pope's positions on abortion and birth control, the existence of the devil and hell, and the nature of the Holy Trinity. He was one of those pent-up sensitive boys whom classmates mistake for a homosexual because he did not express himself crudely, was open about his intelligence, wore saddle shoes and corduroy slacks, and was passive during gym class. Faggot, other boys said to him. I'm not a faggot, he answered. But why would you care if I was anyway? How come you're thinking about faggots constantly? Why is it such a big deal to you? What is this weird obsession you have with faggots all the time?

He'd been shoved against a locker once for saying just this sort of thing, the other boy closely breathing on his face, fist poised, waiting. I have an idea, said Donny. If we're going to get in a fight over this, why don't we do it where we can impress some girls? Or maybe you don't care about girls. Anyway, there's guys around, and maybe you're okay with that. So go ahead, hit me!

Donny had smoked a lot of marijuana as a preventative against school boredom and because it made large questions palpable, allowing for their contemplation. As a teenager he'd formulated a metaphysics that was sequenced like a geometrical theorem or a formal causal argument and had presented it, stoned, to a friend named Jerry: that human behavior acts like a wave, a wave has mass as in particles of light, mass has gravity and as cosmologists know, gravity determines the fate of the universe, therefore the behavior of individual human beings, good or bad, right or wrong, contributes either to eternal oscillation or to a cold and lifeless steady-state entropy, to fire or ice, darkness or light, we each make our personal contribution, that was the critical thing about free will, the fate of the universe was literally at stake, the word
gravity
had two meanings, now do you think maybe you could be less selfish and stop bogarting that bong, Jerry? Wait, answered Jerry. There's a major flaw. You presuppose action is like a wave. It's all contingent on that being so. Karma, said Donny. Cause and effect. Now quit stalling and pass me the bong. Effects aren't waves, Jerry said.

Donny's parents, eventually, had become uninflected background noise, Muzak played in an elevator. Their moral impact dwindled steadily until he was able to lie to them with pleasure and aplomb. Chess Club meeting at Jerry's house. We're going to watch hockey. The International Brotherhood of Left-Handed Basket Weavers' Fifteenth Annual Rendezvous. It hadn't always been that way. The prepubescent Donny and his sisters were sometimes arrayed as though for a firing squad, his father pacing, his mother at hand, his father fulminating and venomous to a degree incommensurate with circumstances, his mother obviously rent by crisis, yearning to support her spouse and also yearning to protect her children, by these opposing intentions paralyzed, and his father might say—his father had once said—I'm asking only one more time, and this time I want an honest answer: Which one of you got into the hi-fi this morning and scratched my Sinatra record?

They would have been sequestered in their several bedrooms for two hours and forty-five minutes with a decree to give this question thought since none of them would admit their guilt, all three deflecting blame when asked, and so, it was certain, one of them was lying, a crime far worse than touching the hi-fi, which heightened the stakes, compounded the mystery, and left Donny feeling deeply troubled about the looming culmination of events. The innocent had already suffered because of the persistent cowardice of the guilty, a cowardice charting a line parallel to the line of the father's wrath. The culpable party was keenly aware of the moral complexity of the situation and of what that meant for sibling relations but also admired the father's strategy, so Machiavellian and fantastically medieval, to divide and conquer was an art. Which one of you? his father said. Which one did it? Or do you all want to spend the whole day doing nothing in your rooms? Or the whole weekend as far as I'm concerned. And you can miss school on Monday too because we're going to get to the bottom of this. I want to know who scratched my record and who answered no when the truth was yes, that's the thing that's got me. If it was just the record that would be one thing, that was something I could have addressed, but the lying, the lying, that I can't accept, I can never trust you again if you lie, and in a family you have to have absolute trust, now which one of you scratched my record?

Donny's endurance wilted. He was whipped ten times on his bare backside, the number ten emblematic of order—his father was a proponent of the metric system—not too many but not too few, an amount that would have to be endured and was not mere symbolic punishment but the real thing, authentic pain. His father, it was obvious, held something back but nonetheless delivered pain in a measure intended to be permanently memorable and forever associated with the notion of lying, using the belt holding up his pants, then threading it back, retucking his shirt, yelling hysterically all the while in a reedy shrill voice they all recognized, Don't you lie, don't ever lie again, don't you
ever
lie to me!

His father became inarticulate. He sat down on a chair and checked his belt. Look, he said finally, I don't want to be mean. Now wait a minute I take that back. Yes I do really want to be mean because I want you to learn a valuable lesson and there just isn't any other way besides a real punishment that will make an impression. Right and wrong, Donny, right and wrong, it's not about the Sinatra record. I can always buy a new one of those. Now pull your pants up and buckle them. And stop whimpering like a little girl.

Don't call him that, Donny's mother said. I don't approve of this.

You be quiet, said his father.

They went to Alaska one summer on the ferry and there was a girl with red hair and a backpack on the top deck who had staked out a chaise longue, laid her sleeping bag on it, and passed the miles reading John Muir and eating soy nuts from a bag. She and Donny smoked pot together and rummaged inside each other's clothing until the ship was halfway to Sitka. The logistics of their liaisons were particularly challenging because passengers tended to linger at night to gaze in search of the northern lights and generally to partake of the solstice dusk, so there was little in the way of darkness or privacy; nevertheless they found furtive corners, places where she pushed against him, reached inside his pants with a cool hand, and whispered encouragements in his ear like
Love the one you're with.

He was sixteen. He became ill while they were under way and could not continue with these assignations, but in Sitka he saw her at the Raptor Rehabilitation Center—a ceremony for setting free an eagle that had successfully convalesced. How are you? she said. Better, he answered. I think I'm in love with you.

I'm not with you. What is love? I think you mean lust, not love.

The liberated eagle flew two hundred yards, settled on a limb, and looked back. Some of the tourists clapped and cheered but something about this conventional response, as if they were spectators at a football game, seemed inappropriate from the moment it started, and a hush soon descended. They stood waiting for the eagle's next move.

I mean love, insisted Donny. I think I know the difference.

No guy knows, said the red-haired girl. Don't be completely ridiculous.

Jilted, he mooned through the chamber musical festival. She was there, too, and afterward he approached her. You're not for me, she said.

Why not?

You're too intense.

What do you mean?

You're just too wired. You think too much. It's not something I want to deal with. I didn't come up here for spiritual angst. Is there a God, isn't there a God—I don't want to approach it with words.

Sorry for ruining your vacation, said Donny.

Fuck you, too, she answered.

         

Ann told her story with chronological precision, as if the order of things was the point. Finally she pulled out her rosary. Everything is totally true, she said. In Jesus' name, Father. I swear.

Father Collins scratched his brow, shook his head, and sighed. This is—how to put it—I don't know. This is just really… mind-boggling.

Nice description, said Carolyn.

This is a serious claim you're making.

All I know is what I see. And hear, too. What I hear.

You see and hear her.

Ann nodded.

But no one else does. Not these others. Not your friend here or any of these other people who went into the woods with you.

I didn't see a thing, said Carolyn. And didn't hear anything, either.

I did, said Ann.

But, said the priest, like you see and hear me?

No. Not the same.

Well how does it differ?

I can see through her. Like she's made of light. I can't see through you. You're solid.

Like looking through a window?

No. Not really.

Like what then?

I can't put it into words.

Well what about her voice. Is it just like mine?

It's a woman's voice.

But is it like a person speaking?

It's far away. Like under water. That's the best I can describe it.

People can't speak under water, said Carolyn.

I think I can see what she means, though, said the priest. It's a figurative description. Not literal.

I mean
if
you could speak under water, said Ann. If you could, that's what you'd sound like.

Right, said the priest. But does it seem to you that the words you hear from her travel to you directly through the air—like ordinary words, like my words, sound waves—or is it that you hear them in your head as if they arrived there by telepathy? Instead of hearing them through your ears?

Telepathy. In my head.

A telepathic voice then? Not like thoughts? Not the sound of your own internal voice? Not the sound of your own thinking but somebody else's voice?

It's the sound of her voice in my head—her voice. That's how she speaks to me.

But do you see her lips move? Is it something like lip-syncing? Her lips move, and telepathically, you hear her words in private?

Her lips aren't moving, no.

You can see that clearly? She's close enough?

Her lips aren't moving. Definitely.

And how close is she?

Like twenty yards.

Does it seem to you that you could touch her, though? If you reached out, could you take hold of something? Or would your fingers—I don't know—maybe go right through her? Like a ghost or like us, three dimensions?

You'd go right through her. I guess. Sort of. I can't explain it very well.

Would there be, say, a ripple, do you think? Like parting water with your hand? Or nothing—like parting air?

I think it would be more like parting mist. Like putting your hand through a cloud.

What makes you say that?

It's just an impression.

An observation?

Yes. Observation.

So her texture is like the texture of a cloud?

I guess so. I don't really know.

Well how does seeing her compare to a dream? Is it the same sort of thing? Like dreaming?

No. I don't think so. I know it isn't. It's not like dreaming, no.

How is it different?

What do you mean?

What are the differences between this experience and the experience of having a dream?

The difference is, it's not dreaming. I'm awake when this is happening. It's more like now—like right now. Don't you know for sure right now that you're awake and not asleep?

Yes.

Well that's what it's like when I see her.

I didn't mean to imply otherwise at all. I'm sorry if it seemed that way.

It didn't.

I apologize.

It's okay, Father.

I'm pressing you, forgive me for that. He lifted his crossed leg, set it on the floor, and brought the other up. I'm acting like a lawyer, he said.

Not really, answered Carolyn. You haven't billed us yet.

Do you think, said the priest, that you could tell me the whole thing again, just repeat everything that happened? And would you mind if I stop you along the way and ask a few more questions?

It's after seven, said Carolyn. Maybe we'll go eat and come back.

Please, said the priest. Eat with me. Stay. I was just about to throw something together when you two knocked on the door.

He noted the disdain of the visionary regarding the subject of dinner. It was clear to him from the tension 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. Let's just take a time-out, he said. I'm going to cook—linguini marinara. I'll be in the kitchen. Read something, or take a nap. Nurse your cold, turn on the television. Relax for a little while.