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over rocks without being changed or broken, fitting through crevices, quietly turning fissures into ravines. And in turn it changes the universe, through the actions of those changed by praying. Praying, chanting, meditating, spirit dancing. Everyculture has prayer forms, and words for them. For some natures the work is like hammering rocks, for some it’s as simple as breathing, and for all it grows by itself with practice. Ask and it shall be given. Seek and ye shall find. Those are not tricks or riddles, but simple truths.
    Unless you were serious about the Mercedes-Benz.
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    Jeannie Israel They had a little apartment across the street from General. It’s beautiful, General Theological Seminary, a peaceful cloister inside a brick wall in the midst of the city. Monica loved the chapel especially, but she also loved the whole conversation that went on. About the Bible. About Jesus. We’d both been dragged to Sunday school as children and Nika sang in the choir at boarding school because she liked singing. We’d heard a lot of Bible readings in our day, but did we understand them? Who the Gospels were addressed to, what the Old Testament had to do with the New Testament? No. Really shockingly little.
    Monica loved learning things. That first year, they’d moved too late for her to get a teaching job, so she was subbing. She had time to listen to the seminarians, and to read Norman’s texts on the lectionaries and things. We didn’t talk about faith as such at the time, but I had the feeling that was because she felt she’d pitched forward into a tub of butter and it would be rude to go on about it to those who hadn’t.
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    Monica Faithful Because we had moved to New York and didn’t see the children during the school year, I got them for half of summer vacation. I remember being terrified of how Mother was going to react when Sam fed his lunch to thedog from the table, or stood on the cane-seat chairs with his cowboy boots on, but instead I found myself in a competition with her. She just loved Norman. He flirted with her and asked her advice. They even started praying together for a while. So of course she wanted Sam and Sylvie to think Leeway was the best place in the world and that she was the world’s best grandmother. She was really pretty great that summer, except for the Affair of the Potion.
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    Ellen Gott I remember the summer Norman’s children first came to the cottage for the month. I’ll never forget it, I mean. Please and thank you were a foreign language. The little girl wet her bed so many times we had to throw the mattress out. Mrs. Moss was determined to love them to death, but when the boy made a “magic potion” out of Pepto-Bismol, her whole bottle of Chanel no. 5, and Mr. Moss’s prescription pills, that was over. Monica couldn’t eat, afraid of what her mother would do. I don’t remember what happened next.
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    Eleanor Applegate That was the year that Jimmy asked to have his inheritance in advance, and my parents gave it to him. I mean, they knew he was going to piss it all away, they knew he was going to sniff it or smoke it or give it all to some cult, to see what it was like to have nothing but lice and a begging bowl. What were they thinking?
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    Bobby Applegate I wonder what the conversation was like, when Sydney and Laurus were deciding whether to do what Jimmy asked. Here is their firstborn, Eleanor, a model citizen in every way, a college graduate, married, a mother…I had just gone to work for my brother and we could have used an infusion of capital, I promise you.
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    Eleanor Applegate It wasn’t the money. I mean, it wasn’t not the money, but what I minded was knowing that if I had asked, or Monica, we’d have been insulted or laughed at. Jimmy was just on a different plane for Mother. It didn’t matter what I said or did, or how many As Monica got. Don’t all those parables begin