Beyond the door, lighted by a round stained-glass window, was a staircase narrowed by stacks of hymnals. She followed it down to a wood-paneled space behind the sanctuary altar. As she pushed open the “secret” door behind the pulpit, she experienced another insight: the sanctuary was a sanctuary. A single warm light illuminated the hanging brass cross, and all the other doors were locked—she knew this.
With a shudder of deliverance, she traversed the altar and sat down in the first row of pews. Safe for the moment, she shut her eyes and surrendered to the waves of awfulness welling up in the blackness of her head. Between each of them was a space for regretting what she’d done and wishing it could be undone. But the waves kept coming. They wore her down until her only recourse was crying.
Please make it stop, please make it stop …
She was praying, but nobody was listening. After the next wave of stonedness, she addressed her plea more specifically.
Please, God. Please make it stop.
There was no answer. When she returned to herself again, she thought she saw the reason why.
I’m sorry, she prayed. God? Please? I’m sorry I did what I did. It was an evil thing and I shouldn’t have done it. If you make it stop, I promise I’ll never do it again. Please, God. Can you help me?
Still no answer.
God? I love you. I love you. Please have mercy on me.
When the next evil wave welled up in her head, she peered down and saw, beneath it, not a bottomless blackness but a kind of golden light. The wave was transparent, the evil insubstantial. The golden light was the real, substantial thing. The more deeply she peered into it, the brighter it got. She saw that she’d been looking outside herself for God, not understanding that God was in her. God was pure goodness, and the goodness had been there all along. She’d glimpsed it in the early morning, in her feeling of goodwill, and then more intensely in Perry’s kindness to her, the glow of forgiveness she’d felt. Goodness was the best thing in the universe, and she was capable of moving toward it—and yet how utterly awful she’d been! Mean to her mother, uncharitable to Perry, competitive with Laura, greedy with her inheritance, sneering with Clem at other people’s faith, conceited, selfish, God-denying, awful. With a sob more like a paroxysm, an ecstasy, she opened her eyes to the cross above the altar.
Christ had died for her sins.
And could she do it? Could she cast aside the evil in her, cast aside her vanity and her fear of other people’s opinions, and humble herself before the Lord? This had always seemed impossible to her, an onerous expectation with no upside. Only now did she understand that it could bring her deeper into the golden light.
She ran up to the cross, dropped to her knees on the altar carpeting, closed her eyes again, and put her hands together prayerfully.
Please, God. Please, Jesus. I’ve been a bad person. I’ve always thought so highly of myself, I’ve wanted popularity, and money, and social standing, and I’ve had so many cruel thoughts about other people. All my life, I’ve been selfish and inconsiderate. I’ve been the most disgusting sinner, and I am so, so sorry. Can you forgive me? If I promise to be a better and more humble person? If I promise to serve you cheerfully? I’ll take the worst kind of jobs to earn hours. I’ll be more loving to my enemies and more open with my family, I’ll share everything I have, I’ll live a clean life and not care what other people think of me, if only you’ll forgive me …
She hoped for a clear answer, Jesus speaking to her in her heart, but there was nothing; the golden light had faded. But she also felt delivered from her stonedness, at peace again. She’d glimpsed the light of God, if only for a moment, and her prayers had been answered.
The public library was a tall-windowed brick building, built in the twenties and seated on a lawn enclosed by dog-proof hedges. It stayed open until nine on weeknights, but it was desolate at the dinner hour, a single librarian holding down the circulation desk amid the silence of books waiting to be wanted.
Into it, through its little-used front door—most patrons arrived by car and parked in the rear—walked a disturbed person stinking of wet gabardine and cigarettes. Her face was shiny, her hair matted with melting snow. She shook herself and stamped her feet on an industrial rug that had been rolled out for the storm. From numberless hours of waiting for her kids to choose their books, she knew exactly where to go. In the reference room, behind the circulation desk, was a cabinet that housed the White Pages of major American cities and minor Illinoisan ones. Tax dollars at work, the phonebooks were all more or less current.