asks.
“Not so much a missionary. It wasn’t about winning converts, more like patching people up. We never talked about it, but I imagine she would have considered ‘saving souls’ as above her pay grade. She was there to stitch up the wounds.”
“That’s important too.”
I know it’s important. That goes without saying. The fact that Holly feels the need to say it aloud reflects how warped, how disoriented we have become.
Let me be honest. On the subject of my pre-evangelical past, I tend to be tight-lipped, even with Holly. Originally embarrassment kept me from talking. After meeting Rick, I’d come to see the worldly piety of my youth as insincere. How can you care for a person’s body, his physical needs, when what’s important is the soul? The goodness of someone like Miss Hannah, who made people well without thinking to rescue them from hell, became problematic for me. I felt like this was obvious to the real Christian, and was ashamed it had taken me so long to realize it.
Now, though, I keep my counsel for different reasons. All I have to do to make Rick’s eyes roll is mention my Quaker upbringing. I stay quiet because I don’t care to hear the criticism anymore. Even Holly’s need to assure me that Miss Hannah’s work had value gets on my nerves.
“Let me ask you something,” I say. “Why is it that we talk about the importance of bodily resurrection, then act like our greatest bliss in life will be to shuffle off this mortal coil and float around like disembodied ghosts? Just because the body and the spirit aren’t the same thing doesn’t mean they aren’t intertwined. If our bodies didn’t matter, why’d God give them to us in the first place?”
“So we could buy clothes?”
“I’m serious, Holly. How can we talk so spiritualistic and be so materialistic? What’s the verse about the poor person coming to the door, and instead of giving them food, you say, ‘God bless you’? I think that’s what we do more often than not, and to feel better about it, we make donations or build a Habitat house.”
“Or try to, anyway.”
“Exactly.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, sister.”
“I’m preaching to myself. I’m guilty of this. What you said the other day about marriage, I think it’s right. You want a stable relationship, and you don’t get that by constantly nitpicking it, scrutinizing every little thing. But that’s exactly what we’re taught to do with God, isn’t it? Scrutinize the relationship, make sure it’s good enough, make sure we’re doing everything that’s expected and getting everything out of him that we want. If you spend all your time on that, what’s left over for the rest of the world?
“That’s the problem, isn’t it? That’s what keeps us cloistered in our little groups, insulated, always going deeper and deeper inside ourselves and finding less and less there. That’s what drives a guy like Rick into the shed and cuts him off from his wife and his kids. Thinking he’ll find God if he can just shut the world out. But what if God’s waiting . . . not in here”—tapping my chest—“but out there?”
“I’ve never heard you talk this way, Beth.”
“That’s because I never do.”
“You should,” she says. “I like it.”
In Savannah, we switch drivers. I’m petrified at first, but the car ends up working more or less the way they all do. As long as I don’t touch anything on the center console or the dash, confining myself to holding the wheel and pushing on the gas or brake, I figure I’ll be fine. My voice is scratchy from talking, and Holly’s worn out, so she takes a nap while I listen to the radio. Eventually we leave the station’s range and I listen to static instead, afraid to delve into the mysteries of channel changing.
We reach the beach house just before midnight, stopping along the way at a convenience store for groceries. While Holly sleeps, I run inside, grabbing juice and snacks, a box of swimsuit-unfriendly donuts, extra suntan lotion, some Diet Cokes. I try for some bottled water, but the store is sold out. Not surprising. The shelves are half empty as it is, like there’s been a run on fat-filled, carcinogenic treats. The guy behind the counter looks as worn out as I feel. He stares right through me, communicating in nothing but grunts.
I let Holly sleep until we’re at our destination.
Confession: I’ve never been to a beach house before. I always imagine them