Atheists Who Kneel and Pray Read online

  And then, on a Monday in November, a year to the day he pulled the splinter from my finger, he asked me to marry him. It went something like this…

  I was sitting on the floor in front of the fire, my back resting against the sofa and my legs spread out in front of me. David’s head was resting in my lap, and as we spoke I played with his hair.

  “It’s a completely different language,” I joked. “When I first got here I had no idea what you guys were talking about.”

  “Come on,” he said. “It can’t be that different.”

  He had a bowl of sweets balanced on his chest. They looked like gems in the firelight. He took turns putting them in my mouth and then his. I felt perfectly chubby, and happy, and content. He was shirtless, his jeans sitting low on his waist. I could see the logo strip of his boxer briefs. I ran a hand down his warm chest before saying, “All right, American boy. Are you ready then? For a true lesson in British lingo?”

  He dropped a couple of M&Ms in his mouth and winked at me before singing a few lines of “American Boy.” I waited for him to finish before I said:

  “Skin and blister means sister.”

  “Da fuck?” he said. “How’d they come up with that?”

  “I don’t know. Sisters rub on your nerves, I suppose.” This seemed to appease him because he nodded solemnly. He’d told me that his sister tormented him throughout their childhood.

  “It gets better,” I said, “so hush. Apples and pears…are stairs.”

  He sat up. “You’re messing with me.” His hair fell over his eyes and I wanted to touch it and leave it at the same time.

  I laughed. “I’m not. Lie back down.” He did as he was told, but he had a funny look on his face.

  “Pete Tong means wrong.”

  “Okay, give me that one in a sentence.” He put a red M&M between my lips and I frowned as I chewed.

  “This whole situation’s gone Pete Tong,” I offered.

  “Poor Pete,” David said. “What did that guy do wrong? The whole of England is taking the mick out of him.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Imagine how Jesus feels. He’s a word for disbelief. Seems rather ironic.”

  “I’m not ever going to take the Lord’s name in vain again,” David vowed, a hand over his heart. “You should stay away from Pete Tong. That poor fucker.”

  He set the bowl aside and rubbed the inside of my thigh with one of his hands. I knew where this was going.

  “Girls say spend a penny when they need to piss. I need to go spend a penny.”

  “That’s fantastic. That’s my favorite,” he said. “Now, are you up for a shag?”

  I threw back my head and laughed. “That’s the only one you know.”

  He flipped over until he was on his stomach and he kissed slowly up my thighs.

  “You. (Kiss) Are. (Kiss) Right.”

  And then out of nowhere he grew serious. “Your work visa expires soon.”

  My hand froze in his hair. It was true.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Marry me, Yara.”

  I thought he was just throwing out an idea, and I was just about to shoot it down when he produced a ring from the bottom of the M&M bowl. My mouth fell open.

  We knocked the bowl over as we both stood up and jewel colored ovals skittered across the floor. I turned my head to watch them, my shock palatable.

  It was a mistake—saying yes. I knew it even as my eyes traveled from one M&M to another: red, and blue, and yellow. I’d remember them scattered across the floor like that forever, his proposal still wet on his lips. The earnest fire in his eyes.

  “We’re precise chemistry, Yara. We’re so good this feels like a dream. I want to marry the shit out of you.”

  And in that exact moment, I thought of Petra, the way she was creeping toward him, and my mouth opened to say yes.

  “Yes, David,” I said, my eyes filling with tears.

  And then he slid an oval diamond onto my ring finger. I stared at it as it caught the light, too beautiful for words. He kissed me and I wrapped myself around him, euphoric, my Monday memo forgotten—everything forgotten.

  There once was a girl who never dreamed of a wedding. Weddings, and marriage, and commitment were for people who wanted the same thing for a long period of time. The same person. I mocked that sort of mindset, the basicness of it. Those dreams were sweet vibrations of stability that lulled you into a deep, psychological sleep. I didn’t want sleep. And it all started with flowers, and silk, and stiff-faced cake toppers holding hands. I knew that I wanted to be awake. I wanted my wit and my sense, and by God, I wanted to own my own heart. So when David asked me to marry him, I was surprised when I said yes. And not just any yes, but the type of yes a girl who’s always dreamed of a wedding would say. I let him slide the ring on my finger, and then I threw my arms around his neck, climbing his body in excitement until my legs were wrapped around his waist. I held up my hand behind his head so I could see my new ring. And then I rewrapped my arms around his neck and squeezed and squeezed until he told me I was choking him.

  “Get used to it,” I’d said. “This is your life now.”

  We got matching tattoos the next day to celebrate. David suggested it and I liked the permanency of my mark being on his body. They happened on our shoulder blades, his right and my left.

  “Now there is love marked on your skin,” he said to me after, kissing the spot.

  “Are you sure?” I kept asking him.

  For weeks after he gave me that ring I was still asking, “Are you sure?” on a daily basis like he was the one doubting rather than me. Our tattoos scabbed and healed, and I’d ask him, “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” he’d say—steady, anchored—completely and unequivocally sure. We decided we didn’t want a large wedding. I didn’t have much in the way of family, just a few close friends I’d collected over the years, and David had a very large family, most of whom he said would either get too drunk or not drunk at all.

  “I’ve seen them ruin weddings before,” he told me. And then he listed them off like he did every time: “My cousin Lydia, my brother, my great aunt Angela…they get drunk off their asses, or judgmental off their asses, and start fighting about stupid shit. And then there’s Sophia, but that’s a whole other issue.”

  And then like always, fascinated by the concept of family, I asked: “And what did they fight about? What did the bride and groom say? How long did it take for them to reconcile?” I was most interested in Sophia, so I asked about her too.

  He answered all of my questions patiently, his voice rumbling in his chest, even though I’d already asked them a dozen times before. As his full lips formed words, he traced the spaces between my knuckles with his fingertips. We were always touching, we couldn’t stop touching. I’d never been in love before, not like this. I thought I had, but everything before felt like a lie.

  “My cousin Sophia had an abortion when she was twenty, she marches in pro-choice rallies,” he explained. “My aunts are Catholic. Sophia’s own mother has disowned her. Sophia refuses not to come to family things because of them. I think you’d appreciate her—she has the same I don’t give a fuck thing you have going on.”

  “How do they treat her when she shows up?”

  “They ignore her, whisper, make rude comments.”

  “And how does she react?”

  “She doesn’t. She just lives her life.”

  Sophia was stronger than me, I decided. I wouldn’t even bother going. If my family treated me that way—with conditional love—I’d disown them too. She was the one showing real love: showing up, not retaliating.

  “And what do you say about all of that?” I asked him.

  “I don’t think there’s anyone right or wrong. We have to let people be who they are. Sophia does a good job of that, you know? She doesn’t fight with them or condemn them. She leaves them be.”

  “But, what about your aunts? To them she committed an atrocious sin. You can’t ask them to co
me down to her level, a level they don’t believe in.”

  “I’m not. No one is. I’m asking them to come up a level actually. To show love instead of judgment. Because if they’re right about their belief system, there is an ultimate judge anyway, isn’t there? We don’t need human judges.”

  Fact: I liked him more every day. Usually the more time I spent with someone the less I liked them. A good sign. By the time we were sixty I’d be so full of love I’d be ready to burst.

  I bought my wedding dress from a consignment shop in Queen Anne: white lace with long sleeves and a deep V-neck that almost reached my belly button. There was a spot of blood on the hem—two dark red droplets. When I told Ann she made a disgusted face.

  “Gross, get it dry-cleaned.”

  I nodded, but there was no way I’d wipe off someone’s history from my dress. How did it get there? Was it in love or lust, anger or joy? I spent so many days imagining that scenario that I was almost tempted to go back to the store and ask about its original owner. I decided not to dry-clean it, to wear it as is with all the bad or good still attached to the fabric. We planned on marrying in Vancouver, a favorite city for both of us, just a few friends in tow. David found a blue velvet suit in the back of his aunt’s closet and told me he would wear it. David told me that Lazarus Come Forth would sing a cappella as I walked down the aisle.

  “What aisle?” I asked him, and then he told me that he booked a church and a restaurant for after we’d taken our vows where we could all celebrate. I hadn’t done a thing, hadn’t lifted a finger. It was like he could sense my hesitancy and rushed into action making the plans.

  “Is there anyone you’d like to invite from back home? Like a friend…some distant family?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “My life is here now, my people are your people.”

  “Yara,” he urged. “You can’t just cut people off when you feel done with them. They’re part of your tapestry.”

  I watched his lips as he spoke. It was mesmerizing the way they moved. He licked his lips often and I always wished he were licking something else.

  “I don’t want anyone else to come,” I said with finality.

  I felt guilty. I thought of Posey, who didn’t even know I was getting married. She still texted me once a week and I told her about everything but David. There were a handful of others I could call. They’d all be excited and shocked to hear the news—some of them would even offer to fly out for the wedding. But, in the end, I chose to tell no one. What I had with David felt private, like it needed to be protected from the outside.

  And then it was time to meet his parents, who were angry with David and suspicious of me. I didn’t blame them. He asked a girl to marry him, a girl they’d yet to meet. They didn’t know it was my fault and not his, that I’d been dodging their dinner invites and weekend trips for almost a year. But I took the ring, and bought the dress, and now it was time.

  Dear Yara,

  The band’s in London November 12th. Want to catch up?

  David

  I re-write it twenty-four times before I send it. I don’t even know if she uses this e-mail anymore. If she answers, it will hurt. If she doesn’t answer, it will hurt. She replies three days later.

  Hi David,

  Yeah, sounds good. Let me know when and where.

  Yara

  She’s so cold.

  I remember the smell of her clothes, her perfume, her skin. The tilt of her chin when she was offended and the way her mouth pulled in at the corners when she was wary of your motives. I remember the way the tip of her tongue peeked out and touched her top lip when she was having an orgasm. And the way she’d hold the first sip of wine in her mouth for what seemed like a full minute before swallowing it. The way she closed her eyes and moaned when she swallowed…the wine. And me. I remember how she wouldn’t take shit from me or anyone else. She didn’t care what you thought about her, she cared what she thought about you. She wouldn’t let you in just like that. You had to prove it. I remember the open bags of Cheetos, all lined up in her pantry. The first time I saw them all lined up like that I’d pulled a couple rubber bands off my wrist and started closing them so they wouldn’t go stale.

  “What are you doing?” she’d said, when she caught me tying one up.

  “Someone left them open,” I’d said. “They’ll go stale.”

  “That’s the point.” She’d taken the bag from me and pulled off the rubber band, handing it back to me.

  “Stale Cheetos are my favorite.” She’d pushed it between her lips, wagging her eyebrows at me.

  And then as she was walking away, she’d said, “Are you going to write a song about it?”

  I remember the way she’d always say: Are you going to write a song about it?

  And I’ll never forget that I did write a song about it. All of it. And those songs. I wrote one song, I wrote two songs, I wrote three songs, I wrote four songs. Yara gave me one gift: endless inspiration. One song, two songs, three songs, four songs go platinum. We make money, we acquire fame, we travel all over the world and live the very dreams we dreamed.

  But I’m poor.

  I have nothing but money.

  And her sweater, I still have one of her sweaters. Her smell has long since faded out of it, but if you look closely at the cuff of the sleeve, you can see tiny flecks of orange trapped in the wool. Cheeto dust.

  I lift it to my nose before every show, trying to find her somewhere. It comes with me when we’re on tour. I keep it in a box that looks like a coffin. The guys give me shit about it, but I don’t care. There was one time I forgot the box in a dressing room in Albuquerque;I only realized it by the time we reached Reno and we were getting ready to play a show.

  “I’m not playing,” I told them. “Everything will go to shit without the sweater.”

  Sometimes a man gets carried away, but what does it matter? That’s a man’s business. They convinced me to go on anyway; hard slaps on the back and looks that made me feel like I was overreacting. The sound went out during the first song. It had worked fine during rehearsal, but I didn’t sniff her sweater, so it stopped working. Then during the middle of the show, the stage manager started violently throwing up. She was rushed to the hospital in the middle of our set after passing out and was later diagnosed with the norovirus and severe exhaustion. Again, the sweater. Then Ferdinand broke three guitar strings, and I forgot the lyrics to “My Wife’s Wife.” By the time we left the stage and were back in the tour bus, all the guys were convinced about the sweater.

  “No more shows without Dave’s sweater,” Brick said.

  He stank of beer and sweat and I didn’t want him anywhere near Yara’s sweater.

  “Do we need to sniff it too?” Ferdinand asked.

  Ferdinand somewhat understood my grief over Yara—having watched the whole relationship unravel, he never questioned it.

  “No one sniffs the fucking sweater but me,” I said.

  So the sweater became a sort of Ark of the Covenant for us, with me as its handler and the guys as firm believers in its magic. We didn’t go on tour without it, and it’s on the cover of our second album. Sometimes we tell the story at our shows and the crowd roars. They want to see the sweater. But Yara’s worn grey sweater is only for me. I wonder if she’s ever seen our album cover and recognized it—I wonder that too often actually. The most twisted thing about being an artist comes when you understand you’re creating for one specific person. The painful part is realizing who that person is, and the devastating part is knowing the compulsion will never go away. And they mostly stem from a death: emotional, physical—it doesn’t matter. They die to you and their things become sacred. She doesn’t deserve it; she’s a coward. But trying to control who controls you is like dictating what the weather should do every day.

  We moved from Seattle to LA to pursue the music. Ferdinand, Brick, and our newest member, who we call Keyboard Carl. Carl came last but I like him most. He has greasy hair hanging around his face th
at reminds me of Kurt Cobain’s, and he wears 90’s boy band T-shirts. He gives Lazarus Come Forth a nice solid rock & roll vibe.

  The guys found the transition to LA easier than I did. I was leaving behind memories; they were wanting to make new ones. In truth, they’ve always loved the idea of fame harder than I do. I just love the music.

  We signed with a small indie label: a husband and a wife named Rita and Benny. They are so passionate about music they do little but eat, sleep, and talk music. They make me feel inferior but well taken care of. Everyone has a nickname in our circle, so we call them The Musics. We stayed in their house when we visited and by the end of the long weekend, they believed in us and we believed in them. I guess the rest is history.

  Ferdinand buys his mother a lake house in Chelan, and Brick buys his girlfriend new tits the size of cantaloupes. Keyboard Carl says he’s saving his to buy an island. I think that’s an excellent idea, but there’s no one I’d want to take to the island with me, so I deposit my checks and try to forget that the money is in there. Some guys would use it to ease the pain, I guess, same way as some people use drugs. I want the pain to stay where it is, hard and heavy. It makes me feel close to her. I am inspired, but I am empty. The month after the tour ends, Ferdinand comes to my condo, which I had purchased from my aunt.