Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,26
you like. Call it joy, even. How can I pray with this inside me? How can I do what I’m supposed to do? I don’t even judge myself by my actions. I judge myself by what’s in my heart. And it’s rotten because it wants to own things, but it’s not rotten because it’s the most content I’ve ever been, and it’s the most content she’s ever been too, sitting there, together. We’re happy. And I keep wondering if we’re supposed to be happy. I haven’t slept with her, brother. At least not… We’ve thought about it, yes, but, I mean …”
He faded off.
“You know my vows. You know what they mean. I used to think there was no other man in me, no other person, just me, the devoted one. That I was alone and strong, that my vows were everything, and I wasn’t tempted. And I’ve turned it over and over in my mind. What happens if this? What happens if that? And maybe it’s not even a matter of losing faith. I stand in the mess of myself. It’s against everything I’ve ever been, and suddenly just watching it all disappear, and then also lying to her, even about my treatment.”
“What’s this sickness mean? This TTP stuff?”
“It means I’ve just got to get better.”
“How?”
“I have to get treatment. Plasma replacement and that sort of thing. I will.”
“Painful?”
“Pain’s nothing. Pain’s what you give, not what you get.”
He took out the slim pack of rolling papers and sprinkled the tobacco along the curved edge of a paper.
“And her? Adelita? What’re you going to do?”
He worked the grains over, looked out the window.
“Her kids are out of school for the summer. They’re running around. Lots of time on their hands. Used to be that I went over with the excuse that I was helping them with their homework. But it’s summer, so there’s no more homework. Guess what. I’m still going over. And no real excuse except the truth—I want to see her. And we just sit there, Adelita and me. I have to come up with other excuses for myself. Oh, they need someone to help clean up the rubbish in front of the apartment. She really needs to get that toaster fixed. She needs time to study her medical books. Anything. Except I can’t pretend that I can give them a catechism lesson because they’re Lutheran, man, Lutherans! From Guatemala. Just my luck, man! I find the only non-Catholic woman in Central America. Brilliant. She’s a believer, though. She’s got a heart, huge and kind. She really does. She tells me these stories about where she grew up. I go to her house every chance I get. I want to. I need to. That’s where I’ve been disappearing all these afternoons. I guess I wanted to keep it hidden from everyone.
“And all the time I’m sitting there, in her house, thinking that this is the one place I shouldn’t be. And I wonder what’s going to be left over when I extricate myself from the mess. Then her kids come in from outside and jump on the sofa and watch TV and spill yogurt all over the cushions. Her youngest, Eliana, she’s five, she drifts in trailing a blanket along the floor and grabs my hand and brings me into the living room. I’m bouncing her up and down on my knee, and they’re beautiful kids, both of them. Jacobo’s just turned seven. I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life. At the end of Tom and Jerry, or I Love Lucy, or The Brady Bunch, whatever dose of irony you want, I say to myself, That’s okay—this is real, this is something I can handle, I’m just sitting here, I’m not doing anything bad. And then I leave because I can’t accept the brokenness.”
“So, leave the Order.”
He knitted his hands together.
“Or leave her.”
The whites of his knuckles.
“I can’t do either,” he said. “And I can’t do both.”
He studied the lit end of his cigarette.
“You know what’s funny?” he said. “On Sundays I still feel the old urges, the residual feelings. That’s when the guilt hits most. I walk along, the Our Father in my mind. Over and over again. To cut the edge off the guilt. Isn’t that ridiculous?”
A car pulled up slowly behind us and a sharp light shone through the back window. The red and blue lights flicked on, but no siren. We waited in silence for the