The Second Coming

then push her by one hand and the cart by the other while she snatched cans off the shelves, Celeste pizzas, Sara Lee cream pies, bottles of Plagniol, brownies, cream butter, eggs, gallons of custard ice cream. For her the pleasure came from the outing with him and from her “economizing” by doing her own shopping.
    Twice a week he took her also to St. Mark’s Home, where he wheeled her down the halls and she knew every resident by name and visited, wheelchair to wheelchair. Looking down, he could see her welted forehead and cheeks foreshortened and her burly forearms, resting now, while he pushed.
    She ate more. She grew bigger, fatter, but also stronger. She ate more and more: Smithfield hams, Yamaiuchi’s wife’s shirred eggs, Long Island ducks. Cholesterol sparkled like a golden rain in her blood, settled as a sludge winking with diamonds. A tiny stone lodged in her common bile duct. A bacillus sprouted in the stagnant dammed bile. She turned yellow as butter and hot as fire. There was no finding the diamond through the cliffs of ocherous fat. She died.
    Both Marion and Leslie his daughter were religious in ways which were both admirable and daunting. He could not disagree with them nor allow himself the slightest distance of irony. How could he disagree with them? Both seemed to be right or at least triumphantly well-intentioned. It was odd only that though he had no quarrel with them, they quarreled with each other.
    Marion had been an old-style Episcopalian who believed that one’s duty lay with God, church, the Book of Common Prayer, family, country, and doing good works.
    Leslie, his daughter, was a new-style Christian who believed in giving her life to the Lord through a personal encounter with Him and who accordingly had no use for church, priests, or ritual. She believed this and Jason believed a California version of this. They got along well together, did good works, and seemed to be happy. How could one find fault with Leslie?
    Leslie was leaning forward, speaking slowly to Mr. Arnold. She was helping him with his speech. She was a speech therapist. When he tried to say something, his lips on the slack side blew out like a drape. Leslie grimaced impatiently.
    Now Leslie was arguing with Jack Curl, the minister. The three Cupps stood by silent and agreeable, tall as trees. The argument was not disagreeable, there were smiles and laughter, but it was an argument nevertheless. He could tell by the arch of Leslie’s back and by Jack Curl’s terror. Serious arguments, especially theological arguments, terrified Jack. They were probably arguing about the wedding. Marion had wanted a traditional ceremony. Leslie and Jason wanted to write their own ceremony.
    Marion had been a conservative Episcopalian and had no use for the changes in the church.
    Leslie and Jason were born-again Christians and had no use for anything, liturgy or sacrament, which got in the way of a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.
    Ed and Marge Cupp were Californians.
    Jack Curl, the minister, had no strong feelings about woman priests or the interim prayer book. He had been terrified that Marion, who had found him through her search committee and who considered the interim prayer book an abomination, would fire him. He attended ecumenical councils in the Middle East and Latin America. He had even visited a Russian bishop in Odessa and had started a collection of ikons. He wore jump suits.
    Kitty believed in astrology.
    Yamaiuchi was a Jehovah’s Witness. He believed he was one of the 144,000 who would survive Armageddon and actually live in their bodies on this earth for a thousand years—and reign.
    Yamaiuchi’s wife, the cook, was a theosophist, who believed in reincarnation. She believed she had once been a priestess on Atlantis before it sank.
    Is this an age of belief, he reflected, a great renaissance of faith after a period of crass materialism, atheism, agnosticism, liberalism, scientism? Or is it an age of madness in which everyone believes everything? Which?
    The only unbelievers he knew in Linwood were Lewis Peckham and Ewell McBee, and they were even more demented than the believers.
    Leslie, who was sitting bolt upright on the couch, legs folded under her, took off her glasses to clean them, a habit she’d always had, leaving her eyes naked and hazed. Looking at her, his daughter, he found himself thinking not about her or the wedding or the argument but, strangely enough,