Salvation City Part 1

Salvation city.

by Sigrid Nunez.

PART ONE.

The best way to remember people after they've pa.s.sed is to remember the good about them.

The first time Cole hears Pastor Wyatt say this he remembers how his mother hated when people said pa.s.sed, or pa.s.sed away. He'd come home from school one day and repeated the teacher's announcement: Ruthie Lind was absent that day because her grandmother had pa.s.sed.

"Died. Say died, pumpkin," his mother said. "Pa.s.sed sounds so silly."

She had called him pumpkin and she did not seem to be angry with him, but he had felt obscurely ashamed. Later he was told that people were afraid to say died because they were afraid of dying. Pa.s.sed was just a euphemism. The funny-sounding word was new to Cole and for a time it kept recurring, floating into his head for no apparent reason. But the first time he saw the word in a book he did not recognize it, he was so sure it began with a u u. Followed by an f f, of course.

Pastor Wyatt does not always say pa.s.sed. More often he says went home. ("Had a great-aunt went home at a hundred and three.") It all depends on whether the person he is talking about was saved or unsaved.

When he is preaching, Pastor Wyatt never says pa.s.sed.

Pastor Wyatt is not afraid of dying.

"That's my job in a nutsh.e.l.l. I've got to teach people not to be afraid. We're all going to die, that's for certain. And the thing for folks to do is stop wasting their energy being all headless and fearful like a herd of spooked cattle."

At first, whenever Pastor Wyatt spoke directly to him, Cole would watch Pastor Wyatt's hands. He was not yet comfortable looking Pastor Wyatt in the face. Cole was keeping so much in-he had so many secrets-he did not like to look anyone in the face if he could help it. He knew this gave the impression he'd done something wrong, and that is just how he felt: as if he'd done something wrong and was trying to hide it.

He still feels this way much of the time. He thinks he will always feel this way.

Pastor Wyatt himself has a way of looking at people that Cole would call staring. His mother would have called it f.u.c.king rude. But from what he can tell, other people are not at all disturbed by the way Pastor Wyatt looks-or stares-at them.

Cole understands that Pastor Wyatt is thought to be handsome, though Cole himself has no opinion about this. But he has observed that people are delighted to have Pastor Wyatt's attention on them, especially if they are women.

Pastor Wyatt always looks right into the face of the person he is talking to, and his eyes are almost like hands that reach out and hold you so you can't turn away. Somewhere Cole has read about a person giving someone else a searching searching look. He thinks this is a good description of what Pastor Wyatt does, too. But with Pastor Wyatt it's not something that happens once, or once in a while, but more like every time, and in the beginning Cole hated it. look. He thinks this is a good description of what Pastor Wyatt does, too. But with Pastor Wyatt it's not something that happens once, or once in a while, but more like every time, and in the beginning Cole hated it.

He has never known anyone who looks so hard at other people. (He's got Holy Spirit high beams, members of the congregation like to say.) Cole has never known anyone who smiles so much, either. He smiles even when he preaches and when he is preaching about bad things, like temptation and sin. He smiles so that people won't be afraid. He is a tall man with a wide neck and naturally padded shoulders, and around shorter people he tends to slouch, bending his knees if need be-he does not like the feeling of towering over anyone. (Cole always thinks of this when Pastor Wyatt tells him to stand up straight, or not to hunch at the table.) When he is among children, Pastor Wyatt will sometimes do a full knee bend, balancing on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet. It would break his heart to know that any child was afraid of him.

Pastor Wyatt still shakes hands with people. He pays no attention to the warning to switch to the elbow b.u.mp. Cole remembers learning about this while he was still in regular school. Public health officials were trying to get people to switch because touching elbows did not spread infection the way touching hands did. Cole knows there are many people who have switched, but he sees the elbow b.u.mp only when he is around strangers. The people he sees every day make fun of the elbow b.u.mp. They shake hands and they hug one another, even though Pastor Wyatt says the disease that spared them all this time around is neither the last nor the worst of its kind. Other plagues are coming, he says, smiling. And he thinks they will be here soon.

Pastor Wyatt's hands are of a whiteness and a softness that make Cole think of milk, of goose down, of freshly washed and bleached flannel sheets. It is impossible to imagine flu germs, or germs of any kind, lurking on such clean hands. Pastor Wyatt has never been sick a day in his life. If anyone else made such a claim, Cole would surely doubt it. But if Pastor Wyatt says it, he thinks it must be true.

Most marvelous are the fingernails, each tipped with a perfect little white crescent moon. He knows these nails are the work of Tracy, Pastor Wyatt's wife. He has caught her giving Pastor Wyatt manicures. Not that they try to hide it. They do the manicures right at the kitchen table, usually while listening to the radio. There is a television in the house, but Pastor Wyatt disapproves of television-the idiot box, he calls it-and Cole isn't allowed to watch much. But the radio is often on, playing Christian tw.a.n.g (Tracy's thing; Cole and Pastor Wyatt prefer Christian rock), or tuned to some talk show or sermon. Pastor Wyatt himself is a regular guest on the local station, on a weekly program called Heaven's A-Poppin'! Heaven's A-Poppin'!

When he sees Tracy doing Pastor Wyatt's nails, Cole is embarra.s.sed, almost as if he'd caught them having s.e.x. He has no idea if Pastor Wyatt and Tracy have s.e.x; he chooses to think they do not. He is a hundred percent certain he will never catch them having s.e.x. He will never see either of them naked. It simply must not be allowed to happen. If it happens, he will have to die.

He thinks of the time he saw his parents lying naked on top of their covers, in broad daylight-the shades were up, sun fell across the bed-and how it was one of the worst moments of his life. He would have given all his toys to undo it.

First his parents pretended it never happened. Then something-most likely his behavior-must have changed their minds, and they insisted on talking about it. Which Cole would not do. Worst of all was when they tried teasing him about it. He would have given all his toys a second time for them just to forget it. Secretly he had vowed that no one would ever see him naked.

About s.e.x he knew then just enough to feel shame. Certain photos he'd seen-ripped from magazines and pa.s.sed around at school-had left him with images of unhealthy-looking grayish-pink flesh, like meat that had turned, and hideous tufts of dark hair where hair shouldn't even be, images that soured his stomach. It would have taken a miracle to connect them with the time he stumbled on Jade Korsky during a game of hide-and-seek. In the dark closet their teeth had clicked together like magnets, and they had tongued her cherry cough drop back and forth till it was the size of a lentil.

The moment he heard what intercourse was, instinct told him it was true. The knowledge had brought an anxious and bewildering sorrow, a feeling that would return when he learned what his mother's box of tampons was for. He did not share the excitement about these matters other boys couldn't hide. From what he could tell, his responses weren't normal, and he would not dream of revealing them.

Sometime-he cannot say exactly how long, maybe a year-sometime after he'd walked in on his parents lying naked, he walked in on them fighting and heard his mother say, "We never f.u.c.k anymore anyway, what the f.u.c.k do you care?" When they saw him they tried to explain, but only halfheartedly. And it was this halfheartedness that had enraged him, moving him to perhaps his first real effort at sarcasm. "Sure. I know. You guys were just rehearsing for a play."

No one had tried to stop him as he turned on his heel. He remembers his cold satisfaction, leaving them speechless behind him. He remembers thinking, Now they'll know how much I've grown up. Now they'll know how much I've grown up.

But he is not sure anymore if in fact it was his mother he heard that day. Maybe it was his father. This has become a familiar problem. Cole gets mixed up. He is never completely sure of anything he remembers anymore. He was told that after his fever broke he did not even remember his own name. It wasn't exactly amnesia, but the illness had damaged his brain. He was not the only one to whom this had happened. It happened to many other people as well. It happened to the president of the United States.

Even now there are important things Cole knows he should remember that he cannot remember at all. He has resigned himself to perhaps never remembering them again. He knows he is lucky to know his name, lucky not to have worse damage, lucky to be alive. Though he wishes ardently to learn not to be afraid to die, he cannot help being glad-even if it sometimes makes him feel base-that he survived.

It was his mother, he decides. Both his parents used swear words all the time, but it was more like his mother to swear twice in one sentence.

Pastor Wyatt uses a cream that makes his hands smell like cookie dough.

Cole has nightmares. Some contraption is crushing him, some ferocious animal is about to devour him, an object he cannot live without is lost or taken away. He cries out, doggy-paddling in the dark. Then there is light, impossibly bright, stabbing his eyes. It is always Pastor Wyatt who comes, never Tracy. Because Tracy never says anything about these nights, Cole thinks maybe she sleeps right through his screams and Pastor Wyatt getting out of bed. He knows married people don't always tell each other everything.

Pastor Wyatt sits with him for a while, stroking his head, praying with him. Jesus is here, he croons. But it is the smell of those hands that soothes Cole most.

In the upstairs bathroom one day, he uncaps every bottle and jar till he finds it. The cookie-dough smell is vanilla. It is one of his secrets, how much he loves that smell, and how he sometimes goes into the bathroom just to take a deep whiff. He believes that if he tells anyone, the smell won't have the same effect anymore. It is a secret also because he thinks of it as a girly thing. He pictures Les Wilbur and Peter Druzzi jeering.

Les Wilbur. Peter Druzzi. Cole wonders about them, as he wonders about all the other kids from school. He thinks he remembers that Les was sick, but it could have been Pete. Or it could have been both of them. He wonders if they have pa.s.sed. Cole wonders about them, as he wonders about all the other kids from school. He thinks he remembers that Les was sick, but it could have been Pete. Or it could have been both of them. He wonders if they have pa.s.sed.

Died. Say died.

Ruthie Lind has pa.s.sed, that he knows for sure. It happened before Cole himself got sick. Ruthie was one of the first to pa.s.s. Jade Korsky? He doesn't know. He and Jade hadn't been in the same school anymore. The closet, the cherry cough drop-all that was back in the city. Ages ago. When was the last time he'd played hide-and-seek?

His mother and his father, both of whom were afraid of dying, have pa.s.sed.

The best way to remember them is to remember the good about them.

He knows that Pastor Wyatt is right. He does not know why it is so hard.

ONE OF HIS BIGGEST SECRETS IS THAT he does not like Tracy. It is a guilty secret, because Tracy has always been nice to him. She cleans his room and washes his clothes and asks him every day what he'd like for lunch. She gives him only light ch.o.r.es to do and praises him for the smallest things, like helping to load the dishwasher. ("What a peach!") Once, when he accidentally breaks a ceramic bunny he knows she loves, she looks crestfallen. But before he can apologize, she says, "Jesus hates it when we care too much about some silly old thang thang."

Tracy is Pastor Wyatt's second wife. She calls him WyWy, which embarra.s.ses Cole, though not as much as her calling him Daddy, or DaDa, as she also sometimes does.

Pastor Wyatt tells Cole to call him PW.

Cole knows that Tracy is younger than PW, but he does not know how much. She will not say her age. Certainly she is too old to be saying DaDa. But she often talks more like a child than like a grown-up. PW drops his watch and she says, "Did it get hurt?" To her an alarm clock is a "warum." Her favorite letter is b. b. She says "bamburger" and "b.u.mbrella." She says "bamburger" and "b.u.mbrella."

Cole finds it strange that PW laughs at Tracy's mistakes but never corrects them. "We were going full bottle." "The house was infected with termites."

Why doesn't he correct her?

Cole knows Tracy doesn't have children not because she didn't want any ("It was my dream since I had my first doll"), but because of a kind of cancer she had before she was married. When he asks if the cancer treatments made her go bald, she looks startled, but she tells him. All her straight blond hair fell out and grew back the way it is now, chestnut and wavy. She tells him also that because she lost so much weight when she was sick, even some people who'd known her all her life would walk right past her without recognizing her.

Cole would have thought that having cancer-which he knows can always come back and kill you even if it didn't the first time-and not having the thing you most want in life would keep a person down. But though at times he sees PW with a faraway expression on his face that could be called at least partly sad, Tracy always looks as if everything is going her way.

Sometimes she accuses herself of being negative, or she apologizes for getting up "on the bad side of the bed." Cole never knows what she's talking about. Even when the subject is something she hates-abortion, unnatural marriage, the elbow b.u.mp-Tracy does not seem particularly angry or upset. She'll bunch her lips or shudder or shake her head-"If that isn't enough to make you spit"-but in the very next breath she'll say, "How about yegg salad on rye fer yer lunch?"

He thinks of his mother and the pills she took every day to make her less negative. There were other pills she took to make her less afraid, especially if she had to get on a plane, or to help her sleep. When she did not get enough sleep, almost anything could make her cry. A dead robin on the lawn . . .

His father didn't take any pills and Cole had never seen him cry, but he can't remember a time when he didn't have to watch out for his father's moods. A bad mood often had something to do with work. His father and his mother were both overworked. One time he heard his mother tell someone on the phone, "I have to work as hard as she does and I've got a kid. Compared to mine, her life's a f.u.c.king piece of cake." Too much work. But also, as Cole understood it, fear of not having enough work. Or of losing the work that they had.

The people his parents disliked most were people who cared about money. But from the way his parents talked, money was the most important thing to them, too. He remembers the time their accountant made a mistake and they ended up owing a lot of taxes. When the accountant called to break the news, his father had started screaming at him, and when the accountant hung up on him, he threw his cell across the room. For days after, the house was like a tomb.

Cole knew the school he went to was expensive, as the schools his parents had gone to were expensive, so expensive that they'd had to keep paying the bills for years after they weren't in school anymore. He knew they were worried about paying for his own education for years to come, and he wished he could bring them around to his own view, which was that school was not worth it.

As Cole understands it, if things had been different-if his parents had not had to work so hard all the time, and if they had not had to worry so much about money-he would have been born sooner. But he has always wondered about this. If he had been born sooner, on a different day in a different year, would he be exactly the same? Would he still be himself?

And if they had never moved, if they had stayed in Chicago, would his parents still be alive? Cole thinks the answer is yes, even though he knows that many people got sick and died in Chicago, too. In the big cities, so many people died so fast that bodies kept piling up and there were corpses everywhere, even outdoors. It is another one of Cole's guilty secrets that he wishes he could have seen this with his own eyes. That, and the riots.

Cole has heard people call Tracy pretty, but again he has no opinion about this. Or rather his opinion is that although grown-ups can sometimes look good in photos or in movies or from far away, up close there is always something blotchy or hairy or saggy, and most grown-ups, even the ones who don't smoke, smell.

The big exception was his great-grandmother, Ginia, whom he'd met only once, when he was six. Ginia was old but her face was freakily beautiful, like something carved out of soap, with eyes like Blue Jay marbles. She was teensy teensy. A grown-up no bigger than himself! He could not see how anyone could stand, let alone walk, on such matchstick legs. When he thinks of her now, he thinks of an egret.

But she, too, had a smell. And in general old people are the ugliest and smelliest people of all.

He has always been sensitive to smells, but since his illness he is more so. His memory may be worse, but his senses seem to have got better. He is sure he hears better than he used to. PW says it's because Cole has never lived so far out in the country, where it's so quiet, especially at night. But being in the country is not a whole new experience for Cole. He has been to the country on vacations, and he has been to summer camp.

From school he knows that Native Americans had much sharper vision and hearing than the white settlers had, and he likes to pretend he is one of them, a brave brave (how he loves that word), able to hear a fly land on the windowsill. (how he loves that word), able to hear a fly land on the windowsill.

Riding a horse, he has also imagined himself a brave, nothing between him and the horse's warm, broad back. He has never understood why white people invented the saddle.

Tracy and PW say the Indians were not the first people in America, there were white people here before them. Cole is surprised to hear this. He is sure that's not what he learned in school-unless it's one of the things he no longer remembers.

It was his mother who'd pointed out that it was only human smells that bothered him, which is true. But then it is also true that he likes animals more than he likes people. He does not mind the smell of horses or dogs; in fact, he thinks horses and dogs smell good. He has never been bothered by the smells in a zoo. He could stay in the monkey house all day long. But once when he was sitting on a park bench and a homeless man sat down beside him, he had jumped up and fled without even caring that the man's feelings might be hurt. He does not feel so guilty about this because he knows he's not the only one who'd find the man's smell worse than a monkey's. But he has always wondered: why was that?

Besides keeping house, Tracy does church work, of which there seems to be no end. She is good with her hands, and in every room of the house there are things-quilts, pillows, ceramics-that she has made. Though constantly busy, she is always looking for more to do. ("Devil ain't gonna catch this this lady with idle hands.") Yet the word Cole is unable to separate from Tracy is lady with idle hands.") Yet the word Cole is unable to separate from Tracy is lazy lazy.

They don't read, and they can't write to save their lives. They've never heard of most of the presidents of the United States, they think America won the war in Vietnam, they think Prohibition was a law that made it illegal to own slaves.

That was Cole's father, fuming about his students. Cole suspects at least some of this could also be said about Tracy.

And it's not just what they don't know, it's what they don't want want to know to know.

Tracy is what his father would call intellectually lazy.

Every time this thought occurs to Cole, he feels guilty.

Not that he would even care, if Tracy wasn't his teacher.

The hours he spends on lessons with her are torture. He cannot hide his feelings completely, but fortunately everyone thinks he's just a normal red-blooded boy who'd rather be off riding his bike, say.

Though he has shared some of his secrets with PW, about Tracy he knows he will never be honest.

HE REMEMBERS HIS LAST DAY OF SCHOOL as if it were yesterday, and at the same time as if it were very long ago. He was still the new boy then. He and his parents had moved from Chicago during Christmas vacation.

His father said, "I know how hard it is for you to leave all your friends and jump in with a whole bunch of new kids in the middle of the year. But try to think of it as an adventure."

His new homeroom teacher, who reminded him of his father but whose name Cole can no longer recall, made Cole stand in the front of the room and introduce himself. Cole had never felt so exposed. (That night he dreamed he was standing in front of a roomful of strangers again, this time naked naked.) Hating the teacher, avoiding eye contact with the two kids he instantly picked out as bullies, he prayed his voice would not crack. One bully glared at him the whole time; the other kept his eyes mostly shut. A boy in the front row with a face practically buried under freckles listened to every word with his mouth open, as if Cole were explaining s.e.x. Two girls farther back put their blond heads together and whispered about him (what else?). Everyone else looked as if they weren't listening, Mr. What's-his-name (staring out the window) included.

Cole kept it short. He was from Chicago, he didn't have any brothers or sisters, his father was a history professor, his mother was a lawyer. Or rather she used to be a lawyer, but not anymore.

A hand shot up. (The teacher had encouraged questions.) How come his mother stopped being a lawyer?

Cole shrugged. She didn't like it, he said. He did not say because it was a dull, heartless profession full of people who cared only about money, as his mother always said when people asked her.

His father used to say, "Serena, you should've been born rich. You're just not cut out to work." But in fact, except for right after Cole was born, his mother had always worked at one job or another. It was true she had hated most of those jobs. But about a year before they moved she'd started working as the manager of a small theater company, a job she had loved. "If only it paid more!" (Always, the problem was money.) Cole didn't tell any of this to the cla.s.s. He didn't say anything about the fights his parents had had about moving. His mother said it wasn't fair. Just when she'd finally found a job that was right for her! She blew up when his father said she could always find something similar where they were going.

"Don't patronize me, Miles."

Then it was his father's turn to blow up.

"Let me get this straight. I'm supposed to pa.s.s up a great opportunity just so you can keep working for a nonprofit company that pays s.h.i.t, and that you'll probably end up leaving anyway as soon as the novelty wears off?"

"But you don't even like like teaching. All you ever do is complain." teaching. All you ever do is complain."

"It's a great f.u.c.king job!"

"It's in f.u.c.king Indiana!"

In the middle of f.u.c.king nowhere, was how she usually described it. Not even a major city. "Like there are really major cities in Indiana anyway," she told her sister as she wiped her eyes-tears not from crying but from laughing at the name of the town: Little Leap.

No major cities. And no such place as Big Leap, either.

Aunt Addy lived in Germany but had come to Chicago for Christmas.

"I mean, the people are all right-wing, the climate sucks, there's no music or theater. There are no museums, no decent restaurants." The pills his mother was taking to make her less negative were not working at all. "All anyone cares about is f.u.c.king basketball. At least, I think it's basketball." Cole rolled his eyes.

Aunt Addy was more than his mother's sister: she was her twin. He never saw much of her because she lived overseas. She was good at languages and worked as a translator and an interpreter for an international bank. She hated America, even to visit, and came back as seldom as possible.

"There are some twins who always dress alike and do everything together," his mother told him. "But Addy and I were never like that. Even as kids we rebelled against matching outfits, and as soon as we were old enough we got different hairstyles." Nowadays their hair was pretty much the same, short and fluffy, partly dark and partly light. But of course they were rarely seen together.

Aunt Addy had Total Freedom, his mother always said. Meaning she wasn't married and she didn't have kids.

Cole's father was a runner, a racer, a winner of marathons. In college his nickname had been Miles-and-miles. Though he didn't compete anymore, he still ran every morning to stay in shape.