her: a whole course on Western civilization, he'd said. The Enlightenment, modernity, the deconstruction of the old beliefs. It was what connected her to him.
And she had abandoned it, all of it, everything she'd learned, to sink back into medieval superstition and hocus-pocus.
Look at her! I thought to myself wildly, staring wildly, gaping wildly. I was appalled. I was a modern man, an intellectual, sophisticated man. I was appalled to see such a smart, witty, knowledgeable girl kneeling there with her hands clasped like a child, with those wonderful green eyes lifted like a saint's and that valentine face upraised like the face of some pert, mischievous angel who seemed to give off an almost mesmeric radiance so that I couldn't stop staring at her, standing there at the window and staring and staring through the glass and feeling this tide, this wave, this surge of hunger for a lifetime at her lips and in her arms rising up through me, washing away every other thought and caution and consideration…
So that it was many long moments-I don't know how many, I don't know how long-before I realized I had been discovered.
22.
When I die and go to hell, they will lock me in a screening room and play the movie of that moment for all eternity. They won't need fire. I'll burn from within.
All this time later, I remember every detail. I can see it as clearly as if I were in hell already. My breath started it. In my curiosity to know what was going on, I had instinctively held my breath. Then, as the full truth hit me, the air poured out of my lungs in a long huff of surprise. It fogged the glass of the window I was peering through-a circle of mist blossomed on the pane. The preacher caught the movement of it in his peripheral vision. Halfway through an 'Amen,' he turned and saw me standing there.
Some part of my brain must have registered this, but it didn't fully get through to me somehow. I was too busy staring at Emma. She and the rest of the congregation were rising from their knees, settling back into their seats. And one by one, noticing that the preacher had turned his head, they were following his gaze.
Still, I didn't completely realize what was happening. I was staring at Emma. I was thinking about Emma.
Then she turned too. Emma turned too.
Our eyes met through the window. I came to myself with a jolt. The shock I felt was answered by the shock on Emma's face.
I remember thinking: Ah. Well. That's that…
Emma stood crisply. She gestured to the others to go on without her. Calm and stately, she walked out of the room.
The congregation was still staring at me, every one of them. I offered them a Cheshire grin of infinite apology and withdrew through the whispering pachysandra to stand abashed in the shadow of the lemon tree.
A moment later they started singing again. Why shouldn't they sing? I thought miserably. They aren't me. I stood and waited. I heard the front door of the house open and shut. I saw Emma walking slowly to the garden gate.
She opened the gate and came toward me over the brick path at a thoughtful, deliberate pace. She was not wearing the beret, but she'd put the long coat back on. It was unbuttoned, open on the white sweater and jeans underneath, the slim, elegant figure underneath.
It was a cool, crisp day. The sun was bright. The shadows of lofty clouds sailed swiftly over the grass. Emma's cheeks were already turning pink with the weather, a sensational contrast with her black hair and her green eyes. Those eyes were glistening with-what?-mainly bewilderment, I think, and maybe pain-yes, pain.
As for me, I was just sorry, so terribly, terribly sorry I had not called the number she had written on the coaster at Carlo's.
She came to stand before me. She looked at me a long time, studied my face, as if she might find some clue there to what was going on. Her lips parted, but she seemed unable to find the words to speak.
'Emma…,' I said.
'What are you doing here?'
I couldn't answer. Driving over the bridge, fretting over the disastrous possibilities, I had envisioned this scenario a dozen different times. I had prepared a dozen different lies to tell her if she caught me out. But now that it had actually happened, I was struck silent. Even I could see that a lie here would be quicksand. I would never get out of it. The truth, though-even if I weren't professionally bound to keep her father's case confidential, I wouldn't have had the courage to tell her the truth.
'Were you following me?' she asked.
I nodded.
'You were spying on me.'
I nodded.
She shook her head, bewildered. Bewildered, she gazed down at the path beneath her shoes with an expression of wonder. She moved around past me to the lemon tree. There was one of those circular wrought-iron benches surrounding the trunk. She sank onto it. She considered the bricks another moment. Then she raised her eyes to me and shook her head and gave a single laugh-bewildered, all bewildered.
'What are you doing here, Emma?' I blurted out.
'Well,' she answered quietly. 'I'm not really sure that's the question.'
'No, I know, but I mean: you looked like you were praying?'
'Did I?'
'I mean, you and I, we-talked… About poetry and philosophy and
… I mean, is it a play? Are you rehearsing a play or something?'
Another wondering laugh burst out of her. The sun through the lemon tree's branches laid a filigree of shadows over her cheeks. It had the weird effect of making her seem part of the scenery, at one with the surrounding garden.
'You're a Christian,' I said, appalled.
She nodded. 'I am; it's true.'
'But that… you can't… you can't be. You… I mean, your father…'
I stopped myself before I said too much. Or maybe I already had. Emma arched an eyebrow at me. 'What about my father?'
' Well, I mean, he's… I read his book; he's… I mean, he's an intellectual. You're an intellectual. We don't believe in God anymore. I mean, sure, if you want to pretend there's some amorphous, mysterious Oriental crap underlying actual real reality, fine, but this-this is organized religion.'
'It is a little organized,' she conceded, 'but I try to inject my own personal chaos into it whenever possible.'
'No, really,' I insisted. 'Christianity, Emma. It's for those guys on TV who go around telling people not to get laid and then get caught handcuffed to a hooker in a Motel 6 somewhere.'
'I guess I haven't quite reached that stage of spiritual development.'
'Nobody believes in this stuff anymore, none of the real people.'
She continued to look up at me, wondering, even amazed. 'You mean, real people like my father.'
'Well…'
Emma gave a slow nod. She looked away, off into the distance, where you could see, through the neighboring houses, glimpses of the tree-lined road. The people, the congregation, had stopped singing inside, and the low voice of the preacher had taken up again. The whisper of traffic reached us, too, and the songs of birds carried on the vital autumn air.
'Well, my father is a very brilliant man, that's for sure,' she said finally. 'And he's always been a man of deep convictions too. When he was younger, he was convinced that Freudian analysis would set us all free. Then he was convinced that communism would save the world, then he amended that to socialism-though I've never completely understood the difference. What else was there? Feminism was very big with him about ten years ago. And he's still
