The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

"I didn't mean—"

  "I know what you meant." Kirsten stared at me, and now, really, she had changed; she was angry and I could see hatred on her face. It made her look older. It made her look, in fact, physically ill. She had a bloated quality and I felt uncomfortable. I thought, then, of the pigs that Jesus had cast the evil spirits into, the pigs that rushed over the cliff. This is what you do when an evil spirit inhabits you, I thought. This is the sign, this look: the stigma. Maybe your son did inherit it from you.

  But now we had an altered situation. Now she was my father-in-law's pro tem lover, potentially his mistress. I couldn't tell Kirsten to go fuck herself. She was family—in an illegal and unethical way. I was stuck with her. All of the curses of family, I thought, and none of the blessings. And I arranged it. The idea of introducing her and Tim had been mine. Bad karma, I thought, come back from the other side of the barn. As my father used to say.

  Standing there in the grass near the San Francisco Bay, in the midafternoon sunlight, I felt uncomfortable. This is really in some respects a reckless and savage person, I said to myself. She dabbles in the life of a famous and respected man; she has a psychotic son; pins bristle from her as from an animal. Bishop Archer's future depends on Kirsten not flying into a rage one day and phoning up the Chronicle—his future depends on her unending goodwill.

  "Let's go back to Berkeley," I said.

  "No." Kirsten shook her head. "I have yet to find a dress I can wear. I came to the City to shop. Clothes are very important to me. They have to be; I'm seen in public a lot and I expect to be seen much more, now that I'm with Tim." Rage still showed on her face.

  I said, "I'll go back by BART." I walked away.

  "She's a very attractive woman," Jeff said that night when I told him. "Considering her age."

  "Kirsten is on reds," I said.

  "You don't know that."

  "I suspect it. Her mood-changes. I've seen her take them. Yellow jackets. You know. Barbiturates. Sleeping pills."

  "Everybody takes something. You smoke grass."

  I said, "But I'm sane."

  "You may not be when you get to be her age. It's too bad about her son."

  "It's too bad about your father."

  "Tim can manage her."

  "He may have to have her killed."

  Eying me, Jeff said, "What a strange thing to say."

  "She's out of control. And what happens when Bounding Bill the Dingaling finds out?"

  "I thought you said—"

  "He'll be out. It costs thousands of dollars to be in Hoover Pavilion. You stay about four days. I've known people who passed in their front door and out the back. Even with all the financial resources of the Episcopal Diocese of California, Kirsten can't keep him in there. He'll bound out on kangaroo-spring shoes one of these days, his eyes rolling around in their sockets—that's all Tim needs. First she has me introduce her to Tim; then she tells me about her son the madman. Tim'll be preaching a sermon some Sunday morning at Grace Cathedral, and all of a sudden this lunatic will stand up and God will grant him the gift of tongues and that'll be the end of the most famous bishop in America."

  "Life is a risk."

  I said, "That's probably what Dr. King said that last morning of his life. They're all dead but Tim anyhow; Dr. King is dead; Bobby Kennedy and Jack Kennedy are dead—I've set up your father." I knew it that evening as I sat with my husband in our little living room. "He stops bathing; he stops taking out the garbage; he writes letters; what more do you need to know? He's probably writing a letter to the pope right now. Martians probably walked through the wall of his room and told him about his mother and your father. Christ. And I did it." I reached around under the couch for my beer can of grass.

  "Don't get loaded. Please."

  You worry about me, I thought, when madness rules our friends. "One joint," I said. "Half a joint. I'll toke up. A puff. I'll look at the joint. I'll pretend to look at the joint." I fished the empty beer can out. I guess I moved my stash, I said to myself. To a safer place. I remember; in the middle of the night, I decided that monsters were going to rip me off. Mad Margaret from Ruddigore enters, the picture of theatrical madness, or however Gilbert put it. "Maybe I smoked it all up," I said. And I don't remember, I thought, because that's what mary jane does to you: fucks up your short-term memory. Probably I smoked it up five minutes ago and already I've forgotten.

  "You're borrowing trouble," Jeff said. "I like Kirsten. I think it'll work out. Tim misses my mother."

  Tim misses getting his rocks off, I said to myself. "That is a truly kinky lady," I said. "I had to come home by snail train. It took two hours. I'm going to talk to your father."

  "No you're not."

  "I will. I'm responsible. My stash is behind the stereo tuner. I'm going to get totally wasted and phone Tim and tell him that—" I hesitated, and then futility crushed me; I felt like crying. Seating myself, I got out a Kleenex. "Goddamn it," I said. "Fry the bacon is not a game bishops are supposed to play. If I had known he felt that way—"

  "'Fry the bacon'?" Jeff said wonderingly.

  "Pathology frightens me. I sense pathology. I sense highly professional, responsible people wrecking their lives in exchange for a warm body, a temporarily warm body. I don't even sense the bodies staying warm, for that matter. I sense everything getting cold. You're only supposed to get into such limited time-binding if you're on junk and think in hours; these people are supposed to think in terms of decades. Lifetimes. They meet in a restaurant run by Fred the Hatchetman, which is ill-omen incarnate, the ghost of Berkeley coming back to get us all, and when they leave they have each other's phone number and it's all accomplished. What I wanted to do was help a women's lib group, but then everyone queeged out on me, you included. You were there; you watched it happen. I watched it happen. I was as crazy as the rest of you; I suggested that Fred the Soviet narc get photographed with the Bishop of the Diocese of California—they should have been in drag, according to my logic. The trouble with seeing ruin coming is that—" I wiped at my eyes. "Please, God, let me locate my mary jane. Jeff, look behind the tuner. It's in a Carl's Junior bag, a white bag. Okay?"

  "Okay." Obligingly, Jeff rummaged behind the tuner. "I found it. Calm down."

  "You can see ruin but you can't see what direction it's coming from. It just sort of hangs there, like a cloud. Who was that character in Li'l Abner who had the cloud following him around? You know, this was the stuff the FBI was trying to hang on Martin Luther King. Nixon loves this shit. Maybe Kirsten is a government agent. Maybe I am. Maybe we're programmed. Pardon me for playing Cassandra in our collective movie, but I see death. I thought Tim Archer, your father, was a spiritual person. Does he dive into—" I broke off. "My metaphor is offensive. Forget it. Does he go after women like this normally? I mean, is this just merely the fact that I know about it and arranged it? Remind me not to go to Mass, not that I ever do. There's no telling where the hands that hold out the chalice—"

  "That's enough."

  "No, I get to be crazy along with Bong-Bong-Bill and Creepy Kirsten and Tim the No-Longer-Torpid. And Jeff the Jerk, you jerk. Is there a joint already rolled, or do I have to chew up grass like a cow? I can't roll a joint right now; look." I held out my hands; they shook. "This is called a grand mal seizure. Get somebody in here. Get up to the Avenue and score me some tranks. I will tell you what is coming: somebody's life is going to get destroyed because of all this, not 'this' that I'm doing right now but 'this' that I did at the Bad Luck, appropriately named. When I die, I will have a choice: head up in shit or head down in shit. Shit is the word for it, what I did." I had begun to gasp. Crying and gasping, I reached for the joint my husband held. "Light it for me," I said, "you fool. I really can't chew it up; it's a waste. You have to chew up half a lid to get off, or at least I do. God knows about the rest of the world; maybe they can get off anyhow, any time. Head down in shit and never able to get loaded again—exactly what I deserve. And if I could call it all back, if I knew any way
to call it back, I would. I am cursed with total insight. I see and—"

  "You want to go to Kaiser?"

  "The hospital?" I stared at him.

  "I mean, you're out of control."

  "That's what total insight does for you. Thanks." I took the joint, which he had lit, and inhaled. At least now I could no longer talk. And pretty soon I would no longer know or think. Or even remember. Put on Sticky Fingers, I said to myself. The Stones. "Sister Morphine." Hearing about all those bloody sheets calms me. I wish there was a comforting hand placed on my head, I thought. I'm not the one who's going to be dead tomorrow, although I should be. Let us by all means name the most innocent person possible. That will be the one. "The bitch made me walk home. From San Francisco."

  "You took—"

  "That's walking."

  Jeff said, "I like her. I think she's a good friend. I think she will be—and probably is already—good for Dad. Has it occurred to you that you're jealous?"

  "What?" I said.

  "That's right. I said jealous. You're jealous of the relationship. You wish you were part of it. I see your reaction as an insult to me. I should be—our relationship should be—enough for you."

  "I'm going for a walk."

  "Suit yourself."

  "If you had eyes in the front of your head—let me finish. I'll be calm. I'll say it calmly. Tim is not just a religious figure; he speaks for thousands in the church and outside the church, maybe more so outside. Do you grasp it? If he tumbles, we all take a fall. We all are doomed. He is almost the last one left; the others are dead. The thing about this is, it isn't necessary. It's like he decided. He saw it and he walked right at it; he didn't duck and he didn't fight—he embraced it. You think this—what I feel—is because I had to come home on the train? One by one, they got every public figure and now Tim hands over the keys, hands them over under his own power, without a fight."

  "And you want to fight. Me, if necessary."

  I said, "I see you as stupid. I see everyone as dumb. I see stupidity winning. This is not something the Pentagon is doing. This is dumb. This is walking right at it and saying, 'Take me, I'm—'"

  "Jealousy," Jeff said. "Your psychological motivation is all over this house."

  "I have no 'psychological motivation.' I just want to see someone there when the firing ends, someone who isn't—" I broke off. "Don't come around later and say this was done to us, because it wasn't. And don't tell me it was a complete surprise. A bishop who has an affair with a woman he meets in a restaurant—this is a man who just finished backing over a gasoline pump and drove happily away. And the pump came after him. That's how it works: you flatten some joker's pump and he runs until he catches up with you. You're in a car and he's on foot, but he seeks you out and then, all of a sudden, there he is. This is that; this is someone chasing us down and he will catch up; he always does. I saw that pump jockey; he was mad. He was going to keep running. They never give up."

  "And you see that now. Due to one of your best friends."

  "That's the worst kind."

  Grinning, Jeff said, "I know that story. It's a W.C. Fields story. There's this director—"

  "And she isn't running any more," I said. "She caught up with him. They're renting an apartment. All it takes is one nosy neighbor. What about this redneck bishop prosecuting Tim for heresy? What would he do with this? If someone is after you for heresy, do you bang the next broad you meet for lunch? And then go shopping for an apartment? Look." I walked over to my husband. "Where do you go after being a bishop? Is Tim tired of that already? He got tired of everything else he ever did. He even got tired of being an alcoholic; he's the only hopeless drunk who sobered himself up out of boredom, out of a short attention span. People generally will their own misfortune. I see us doing that now. I see him getting bored and subconsciously saying, 'What the hell; it's dull putting on these funny clothes every day; let's stir up some human misery and see what comes out of it.'"

  Laughing, Jeff said, "You know what—who—you remind me of? The witch in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas."

  "What do you mean?"

  "'Who, like dismal ravens crying, Beat the windows of the dying.' I'm sorry but—"

  "You fool Berkeley intellectual," I said. "What horse's ass world do you inhabit? Not the same as me, I hope. Quoting some old verse—that's what did us in. They will report when they dig up our bones—your dad quoted the Bible in the restaurant the same way you're doing now. You ought to hit me or me you. I'll be glad when civilization ends. People babble out bits of books. Put on Sticky Fingers—put on 'Sister Morphine.' I can't be trusted with the stereo at this moment. You do it for me. Thanks for the joint."

  "When you've calmed down—"

  "When you've woken up," I said, "it'll all be over."

  Jeff bent to search for the record I wanted to hear. He said nothing. Finally he had become angry. A dollar short and a day late, I thought, and at the wrong person. Like with me. Destroyed by our giant intellects: reasoning and pondering and doing nothing. Nitwits rule. We squabble. The sorceress in Dido; you are right. "Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me; on thy bosom let me rest: more I would, but Death invades me—" And what else does she say? "Death is now a welcome guest." Shit, I thought. It is relevant. He's right. Absolutely right.

  Fiddling with the stereo, Jeff put the Stones' record on.

  The music calmed me. A little. But I still cried, thinking about Tim. And all because they are stupid. It goes no deeper than that. And that is the worst of it all, that it is that simple. That there is no more.

  A few days later, after thinking about it and making up my mind, I phoned Grace Cathedral and got an appointment to see Tim. He met me in his office, which was large and beautiful, in a building separate from the cathedral itself. After greeting me with a hug and kiss, he showed me two ancient clay vessels which, he explained, had been used as oil lamps in the Near East over four thousand years ago. As I watched him handling them, the thought came to me that the lamps probably—in fact, certainly—did not belong to him; they belonged to the Diocese. I wondered what they were worth. It was amazing that they had survived all these years.

  "It's nice of you to give me some of your time," I said. "I know how busy you are."

  The expression on Tim's face told me that he knew why I had shown up in his office. He nodded absently, as if, in fact, giving me as little of his attention as he could manage. I had seen him tune out that way several times; a part of his brain listened, but the greater part had sealed itself off already.

  When I had finished delivering my set little speech, Tim said gravely, "Paul, you know, had been a Pharisee. For them a strict observance of the minutiae of the Torah—the Law—was everything. That particularly involved ritual purity. But later—after his conversion—he saw salvation not in the Law but in zadiqah, which is the state of righteousness that Jesus Christ brings. I want you to sit down with me here." He beckoned me over, opening a very large leatherbound Bible. "You're familiar with Romans, four through eight?"

  "No, I'm not," I said. But I sat down beside him. I could see it coming, the lecture. The sermon. Tim had met me prepared.

  "Romans five states Paul's basic premise, that we are saved through grace and not by works." He read, then, from the Bible he held open on his lap. "'So far then we have seen that, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by faith we are judged righteous and at peace with God—'" He glanced up at me; his gaze was keen and sharp. This was Timothy Archer the lawyer. "'—since it is by faith and through Jesus that we have entered this state of grace in which we can boast about looking forward to God's glory.' Let's see." He ran his fingers down the page, his lips moving. "'If it is certain that through one man's fall so many died, it is even more certain that divine grace, coming through the one man, Jesus Christ, came to so many as an abundant free gift.' He looked further on, turning pages. "Yes; ah. Here. 'But now we are rid of the Law, freed by death from our imprisonment, free to serve in the new spiritual way and not the old way of
a written law.'" Again he looked further along. "'The reason, therefore, why those who are in Christ Jesus are not condemned, is that the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.'" He glanced up at me. "This goes to the heart of Paul's perception. What 'sin' really refers to is hostility toward God. Literally, it means 'missing the mark,' as if, for example, you shot an arrow and it fell short, too low, or went too high. What mankind needs, what it requires, is righteousness. Only God has that and only God can provide it to men ... men and women; I don't mean—"

  "I understand," I said.

  "Paul's perception is that faith, pistis, has the power, the absolute power, to kill sin. Out of this comes freedom from the Law; one is not required to believe that by following a formal stipulated code—code-ethics, it's called—one is saved. That position, that one is saved by following a very intricate, complex system of code-ethics, is what Paul rebelled against; that was the position of the Pharisees and that's what he turned from. This really is what Christianity, faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, is all about; righteousness through grace, and grace coming through faith. I'm going to have you read—"

  "Yes," I said, "but the Bible says you're not supposed to commit adultery."

  Instantly, Tim said, "Adultery is sexual unfaithfulness on the part of a married person. I am no longer married; Kirsten is no longer married."

  "Oh," I said, nodding.

  "The Seventh Commandment. Which pertains to the sanctity of marriage." Tim set down his Bible and crossed the room to the vast bookshelves; he lifted down a blue-backed volume. As he returned, he opened the book and searched its pages. "Let me quote to you what Dr. Hertz said, the late Chief Rabbi of the British Empire. In connection with the Seventh Commandment. Exodus, twenty thirteen. 'Adultery. Is an execrable and god-detested wrong-doing.' Philo. This Commandment against infidelity warns husband and wife alike against profaning the sacred Covenant of Marriage.'" He read further silently, then shut the book. "I think you have enough common sense, Angel, to understand that Kirsten and I are—"