Then she did look-but she was one second too late. Realizing how exposed I was, I had just moved forward to hide myself behind the low hedge dividing one lawn from another. It was from there I watched Emma scan her surroundings one last time. She peered down the hill toward me, then up the hill, then to the left and right. Then, pressing her chin to her chest as if to hide her face, she turned down the front path of a husky brown two-story house. In four steps she was at the door. The door came open before she knocked or rang. A man stuck his head out, glancing around. Then he pulled his head back and Emma followed him inside.
I came out of my hiding place and hurried after her.
Half a minute and I was at the house. Then I spent another half minute hovering like the stalker I was around the eucalyptus tree on the edge of the lawn. From there I could see through a front hall window. I saw Emma peel off the adorable red beret, peel off her flaring coat. She handed them both to another figure, a man, the man, I assumed, who had met her at the door. I saw the man put his hand on her arm.
My heart plunged. I'd been right. She was meeting a secret lover.
But the next instant, my plunging heart did a roller-coaster climb. I saw Emma and her companion walk deeper into the house, toward the light of an inner entranceway. There, just before I lost sight of them, more people came from the room beyond to greet them. It was not a lover's meeting. It was a gathering of some kind.
Now, strange as it is to relate, I forgot all my caution. A combination of urgent curiosity and desperate longing overtook me. I was so focused on finding out what was going on, so focused on getting closer to Emma, on knowing her secret, that the need for stealth-the stealth on which everything depended-simply slipped my mind.
Boldly, stupidly, I stepped forth. I crossed the lawn, the shaggy lawn, the grass above my shoes, the last dew of morning clammy on my socks. I went to the house. I placed a hand on the rough surface of one of its wooden shingles. I pressed my face to the window. I peered through.
I could see shadows-two, maybe three people-just within the inner entranceway. The rest of the room beyond the threshold was out of sight. I heard a voice-a man's voice-speak in there, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. What the hell were they doing in there that had to be kept so secret?
I needed a better view, a window at the rear of the house that looked directly into that back room. I didn't hesitate. In fact, I was so wrapped up in what I was doing now, I barely took the trouble to conceal my movements at all. Like an old friend or a meter reader or the guy who mows the lawn, I sallied forth to the gate in the white picket fence beyond the far wall. Without hesitation-without even covering the noise-I opened the gate and walked into the backyard.
It was just a little square of land between this house and the one behind. Brick paths through shrubs, a lemon tree at the center. The windows here were larger, tall and open and clear. I was completely exposed as I approached them. My footsteps whispered loudly through the pachysandra.
I didn't care. I didn't even think about it. I was too curious, too fascinated. What was this? What was going on?
I heard the people in the house start singing. It sounded like a church choir. In fact, it sounded like church music, like a hymn. What the hell?
Just as I came close enough to make out the words, the singing stopped. That voice, that man's voice, rose again. It sounded steady and sure, but it was still too damned low to understand. I had to get closer. I stepped right up to the window. I pressed my face against the pane.
I looked in. I saw everything.
There was a large, open room. There were benches, rows of benches, facing the rear wall, eight or ten benches with maybe twenty-five people sitting on them. There was the man, the man whose lone voice I'd heard. He was standing in front of the others. Standing with his arms half-lifted, his hands open at his sides. Behind him, on that rear wall, heavy purple curtains hung. In front of the curtains, held up by ropes or wires, I wasn't sure which, there was a plain wooden cross about the height of a man.
I watched. The people slid in unison from the benches and went down on their knees. All of them, Emma too, went down on their knees, clasping their hands in front of them. The man before them lifted his eyes to the ceiling. He began to recite the Our Father, the Lord's Prayer. The others joined in.
By this time my jaw had fallen nearly to my chest. My mouth was wide open.
They were praying. They were Christians. All of them. Emma too. Emma was a Christian.
I could not have been more shocked if I had looked in and seen her fucking a horse.
How on earth? How in hell? What was she thinking? How could she possibly be a Christian? What happened to all that stuff her father told me? Homer to the deconstructionists? The realms of gold? What happened to her high school paper about God being an illusion of an illusion of our psychology or whatever?
I mean, no wonder she was hiding from the old man. No wonder she was afraid someone would see her coming here, that word of these religious high jinks would get back to Daddy. He was so proud of what he'd taught her: a whole course on Western civilization, he'd said. The Enlightenment, modernity, the deconstruction of the old beliefs. It was what connected her to him.
And she had abandoned it, all of it, everything she'd learned, to sink back into medieval superstition and hocus-pocus.
Look at her! I thought to myself wildly, staring wildly, gaping wildly. I was appalled. I was a modern man, an intellectual, sophisticated man. I was appalled to see such a smart, witty, knowledgeable girl kneeling there with her hands clasped like a child, with those wonderful green eyes lifted like a saint's and that valentine face upraised like the face of some pert, mischievous angel who seemed to give off an almost mesmeric radiance so that I couldn't stop staring at her, standing there at the window and staring and staring through the glass and feeling this tide, this wave, this surge of hunger for a lifetime at her lips and in her arms rising up through me, washing away every other thought and caution and consideration…
So that it was many long moments-I don't know how many, I don't know how long-before I realized I had been discovered.
22.
When I die and go to hell, they will lock me in a screening room and play the movie of that moment for all eternity. They won't need fire. I'll burn from within.
All this time later, I remember every detail. I can see it as clearly as if I were in hell already. My breath started it. In my curiosity to know what was going on, I had instinctively held my breath. Then, as the full truth hit me, the air poured out of my lungs in a long huff of surprise. It fogged the glass of the window I was peering through-a circle of mist blossomed on the pane. The preacher caught the movement of it in his peripheral vision. Halfway through an "Amen," he turned and saw me standing there.
Some part of my brain must have registered this, but it didn't fully get through to me somehow. I was too busy staring at Emma. She and the rest of the congregation were rising from their knees, settling back into their seats. And one by one, noticing that the preacher had turned his head, they were following his gaze.
Still, I didn't completely realize what was happening. I was staring at Emma. I was thinking about Emma.
Then she turned too. Emma turned too.
Our eyes met through the window. I came to myself with a jolt. The shock I felt was answered by the shock on Emma's face.
I remember thinking: Ah. Well. That's that…
Emma stood crisply. She gestured to the others to go on without her. Calm and stately, she walked out of the room.
The congregation was still staring at me, every one of them. I offered them a Cheshire grin of infinite apology and withdrew through the whispering pachysandra to stand abashed in the shadow of the lemon tree.