The Leftovers

Rapture as an explanation for the events of October 14th. Everyone had. It couldn’t be avoided, not when so many people were proclaiming it from the rooftops. But it never made any sense to her, not even for a second.
    “There was no Rapture,” she told him.
    The Reverend laughed as if he pitied her. “It’s right there in the Bible, Nora. ‘Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left.’ The truth is right in front of us.”
    “Doug was an atheist,” Nora reminded him. “There’s no Rapture for atheists.”
    “It’s possible he was a secret believer. Maybe God knew his heart better than he did.”
    “I don’t think so. He used to brag about how there wasn’t a religious bone in his body.”
    “But Erin and Jeremy—they weren’t atheists.”
    “They weren’t anything. They were just little kids. All they believed in was their mommy and daddy and Santa Claus.”
    Reverend Jamison closed his eyes. She couldn’t tell if he was thinking or praying. When he opened them, he seemed just as bewildered as before.
    “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “I should’ve been first in line.”
    Nora remembered that conversation later in the summer when Karen informed her that Reverend Jamison had suffered a nervous breakdown and taken a leave of absence from the church. She considered stopping by his house to see how he was doing, but she couldn’t find the strength. She just mailed him a get-well-soon card and left it at that. Not long afterward, right around the first anniversary of the Sudden Departure, his newsletter made its first appearance, a self-published five-page compendium of scurrilous accusations against the missing of October 14th, none of whom were in any kind of position to defend themselves. This one embezzled from his employer. That one drove drunk. Another one had disgusting sexual appetites. Reverend Jamison stood on street corners and passed them out for free, and even though most people claimed to be appalled by what he was doing, he never had any shortage of takers.
    *   *   *
    AFTER HE left, Nora wondered how she could have been so stupid, so utterly unprepared for something that should have been obvious the moment he’d stepped out of his car. And yet she’d invited him into her kitchen and even made him a cup of tea. He was an old friend, she told herself, and they had some catching up to do.
    But it was more than that, she’d realized, studying his sallow, haunted face from across the breakfast island. Reverend Jamison was a wreck, but some part of her respected him for that, the same part that sometimes felt ashamed of her own shaky sanity, the way she’d managed to keep going after everything that had happened, clinging to some pathetic idea of a normal life—eight hours of sleep, three meals a day, lots of fresh air and exercise. Sometimes that felt crazy, too.
    “How are you?” she asked in a probing tone, letting him know that she wasn’t just making small talk.
    “Exhausted,” he said, and he looked it. “Like my body’s full of wet cement.”
    Nora nodded sympathetically. Her own body felt great just then, warm and loose from the shower, her muscles pleasantly sore, her wet hair gathered snugly in a terry-cloth turban on top of her head.
    “You should take a rest,” she told him. “Go on vacation or something.”
    “Vacation.” He chuckled scornfully. “What would I do on vacation?”
    “Sit by the pool. Forget about things for a while.”
    “We’re past that, Nora.” He spoke sternly, as if addressing a child. “There’s no sitting by the pool anymore.”
    “Maybe not,” she conceded, remembering her own misguided attempts at fun in the sun. “It was just a thought.”
    He stared at her in a way that didn’t feel particularly friendly. As the silence grew strained, she wondered if it would be a good idea to ask him about his kids, find out if they’d had some sort of reconciliation, but she decided against it. If people had good news, you didn’t have to drag it out of them.
    “I saw your speech last month,” he said. “I was impressed. It must have taken a lot of courage for you to do that. You had a really natural delivery.”
    “Thank you,” she said, pleased by the compliment. It meant something coming from a veteran public speaker like the Reverend. “I didn’t think I could, but … I don’t know. It just felt like something I needed to do. To keep their memory alive.” She lowered her