The House of Tomorrow Read online

  “GOD IS A VERB, NOT A NOUN.”

  That is arguably the most famous of Fuller’s comments about religion. It is also the closest he ever came to clarity on the subject. He made many other comments, but they weren’t as direct. He said, for example, that he feared the use of faith for ulterior motives. He said he believed most in the individual’s power to form ideas, not the group’s. And when asked about his personal beliefs, he exclaimed things like “God is the everywhere and everywhen evolving omnireality.” Or: “God is the eternal integrity of the omniregenerative universe!” Usually, at that point, an interviewer moved on to the next question.

  Nana had always spoken about religion in much this same way. The result was that I had very little idea what to expect of the evening ahead of me as I pedaled my Voyager on the newly familiar route to the Whitcombs’. Much like God, I was also a verb that afternoon. I was a verb in slacks. My only pair of creased pants was from a few years ago when Nana briefly considered the idea of dressing me up in a suit to greet our dome visitors. The pants were too short, and left small patches of skin vulnerable to gales from the expressway. Fortunately, I had managed to find a scarf, earmuffs, and my puffy winter jacket from the year before. So I was not in serious danger of frostbite and amputation.

  I had actually purchased Nana’s paint the day before, during her afternoon nap, and I had ferreted it away in the shed where I kept the Voyager. So all I had to concentrate on was the mission at hand. My plan was a simple one. Before the meeting of the youths, Jared would show me where the bass guitar was stored. I would remember this location. Then, at some point during the course of the meeting, Jared would provide a distraction and I would slip away. At that point, I would stash the bass guitar somewhere outside where I could pick it up later. I had e-mailed this plan to Jared the day before, and he had seemed satisfied, replying only, “That’s not completely asinine.” Now the plot just had to be implemented correctly.

  I arrived at the Whitcomb house at four-fifty P.M. and parked my bicycle alongside the house. The wind blew a tremendous gust right when I hopped off the seat, and I heard the angel chime on the front porch, tinkling away. I walked past the windows of the house. Evening was approaching, and all the shades were pulled. In the orange light of Meredith’s room, I saw a shadow moving back and forth. I watched a moment, trying to distinguish her features. But I couldn’t quite make them out. Her silhouette was moving too quickly. I realized she was dancing, her shadow playing over the shade. She swayed her hips and shook her head wildly.

  I pulled myself away and wandered around to the front of the house. I knocked loudly. Nearly a minute passed before I heard her voice. “Fine, if everybody else is paralyzed or something!” The door flew open and there was Meredith, standing before me in a close-fitting green sweater and a dark skirt with tights. Her hair was down and a lock hung over her left eye. Her face was slightly moist. She smelled like peach lotion.

  “Oh,” she said. “You.”

  She didn’t tell me to come in. She just left the door swinging open and stepped away. I noticed as she moved into the hallway that she had a thin silver phone pressed to her ear. Had she been dancing and speaking at the same time?

  “No,” she mumbled into the phone. “Just this little weirdo that my brother’s in love with or something.”

  I watched her walk away, her tights swooshing as her thighs rubbed together. In front of me, Jared walked in from the kitchen. He wore a diminutive black suit jacket over a black T-shirt that read “WWJD.”

  “What Would Jared Do,” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “It’s not a question, asshole,” he said. “That’s what the shirt stands for.”

  He pointed to the thick letters on his T-shirt. Then he looked at me.

  “Your pants are small,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “Where’s your mother?”

  He pointed toward her bedroom.

  “Still in communion with the Lord or something,” he said. “She always spends time by herself before we leave. Who knows what she’s doing.”

  He sat down on the floor and pressed a few buttons on his music player, scrolling through a list of songs.

  “She seems like a very . . . devout person,” I said.

  Jared chuckled without looking up from the tiny screen.

  “These days, yeah,” he said. “She didn’t use to go to church at all. When I was younger, all we did on Sundays was dick off and eat pancakes. But the last couple of years she’s suddenly Saint Janice of North Branch. And of course she has to parade us around everywhere like her mini colony of lepers. The tiny cripple and the whore.”

  Mrs. Whitcomb walked into the room in a hurry, holding a tote bag of supplies.

  “What did you say, Jared?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Good evening, Sebastian,” she said.

  She looked at my ill-fitting pants and smiled. Then she looked around the living room and shouted Meredith’s name down the hallway. Meredith sauntered back into the room, holding the phone at her side.

  “I’m ready,” she said. “God!”

  “Please don’t blaspheme on group night,” said Janice. “Is that so much to ask you? To not be profane, one night a week?”

  “Busted,” said Jared. “Busted by God.”

  “And none of your cursing tonight,” Janice snapped at Jared.

  “What cursing?” he said.

  “The kind that comes flying out of your mouth whenever you open it,” she said.

  Jared shrugged his shoulders. I looked over at Meredith, but she only met my eyes for a second. Then everyone was looking at me. Meredith turned to her mother.

  “Is Sebastian going to take off his stupid helmet?” she asked.

  I reached my hand up and felt the hard plastic of protective gear.

  IMMANUEL METHODIST LOOKED MORE LIKE A MINIATURE of a church than a real one. I had seen a few churches previously, but this was the first time I had ever entered one. I was surprised to discover that it was only two stories high, and in most ways resembled an ordinary living space. There was worn tan carpet in most rooms, mint green tile in the halls, and the smell of old coffee in the air. Yet the windows were painted with splendid artistry, complete with robed and bearded men who gathered and wept and bled and bled. And above us (I had noted outside) an ornate cross-topped spire stuck into the darkening evening sky like a finger pointing up toward the cosmos.

  Janice left us in the “Recreation Room” while she went down the hall to set something up in another location. Jared and I sat down on a threadbare couch. Meredith leaned against a Ping-Pong table and began typing on the buttons of her phone. The walls were bare save a few photos of sunsets and streams.

  “We’re going to the bathroom,” said Jared. “Tell Mom not to freak out if she comes back.”

  “You guys going in there to bang your wangs together?” Meredith said, still typing on her device.

  “Yeah,” said Jared. “A round of wang-banging.”

  “Thought so,” she said.

  We walked out into the hallway and made our way past a series of classrooms with children’s drawings on the walls. Our foot-scuffs echoed in the empty space.

  “What a worthless hooch,” said Jared.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  All around us there hung crayoned portraits of Jesus. “Keep Him with You Every Day,” read a banner over the drawings.

  “You don’t know what?”

  “I don’t know,” I repeated.

  I followed Jared down the dim hallway. It smelled like dust and the citrus-scented cleaner I used on the dome. The light of dusk shone through a glass door at the end of the corridor, turning the space into a pink tunnel. Jared stopped in front of an unassuming closet and pulled a single bronze-colored key from his sock. We both stared at the door. He held out the key.

 
“This is it,” he said. “This is the spot.”

  I reached for the key. But he tugged it away.

  “Do you even understand how important this is?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I understand. Napoleon.”

  “Is this some kind of joke to you?”

  “No,” I said. “No, I promise you it’s not.”

  “This is a defining moment for our band,” he said.

  He pressed the bronze key into my palm. It was warm from his grip. We said nothing else. There was, I suppose, nothing left to say. Either I went through with it now, and we had a band, or I didn’t, and Jared’s dream was crushed. It was all remarkably simple. We returned to the room and found a few more group members lounging around. No one appeared to be friends. They just sat in isolation, listening to headphones or picking at the frayed cuffs of their khakis. Two large kids tried to hit each other with a Ping-Pong ball.

  “One thing to know about Youth Group,” Jared whispered. “It’s filled to the brim with dickweeds.”

  Just then Janice reentered the room carrying a stack of note cards and a small tin can filled with pens. She beamed at the hang-dog gathering around her.

  “Hello, all,” she said. “So good to see everyone here.”

  The room went quiet at the sound of her voice.

  “If I could, I want to start by doing something a little different this evening. So if you’d all follow me, I’d like us to go upstairs to the reading room.”

  There was a general hesitation, and then the group rose to its feet like sedated zoo animals. Jared and I were at the front of the room already, so we stood right next to Janice. Meredith brought up the back of the line, still typing away on her phone. We all walked out and headed single file up a narrow staircase. If anyone noticed me as an unfamiliar face, they didn’t say a word. We reached the top and convened in a room full of old books and stacks of programs. At the far end of the room there was a small fire burning in a fireplace. Janice walked through the group and handed us all note cards and pens. Then she stopped and closed her eyes.

  “Life is full of distractions,” she began softly. “Problems, too. Some we can’t help. But there are so many distractions these days that we often forget to concentrate on what is really important. And I’m not just talking about your spirituality here, folks. I’m talking about personal growth. Being a better you.”

  She opened her eyes. Her voice had sounded different than I’d ever heard it before. It was more even, assured. The group hung on her every word.

  “What I want you to do tonight,” she continued, “is to write down something that is holding you back. Something that is keeping you from committing entirely to God and to yourself. We’ll call it an idol. I want you to write down this idol, or draw a picture of it, and then we’re going to cast these idols into the flames. Does everyone understand?”

  There were a few nods, but nobody began writing.

  “This is how Mom thinks you communicate with God,” said Jared. “You burn stuff and God reads the smoke.”

  “No talking please, Jared,” said Janice. “Time for idol drawing.”

  Jared sighed and began halfheartedly scribbling on his card. I couldn’t make out what he was drawing, but it looked like the beginning of a family portrait. I stared down at mine. What was keeping me from God? Or from myself? I didn’t think it was a bad question necessarily. It was surprisingly valid. I noticed everyone else was connecting pen to paper. They appeared locked in unbroken concentration. I looked for Meredith, but she was no longer at the back of the room. She was gone. I began to perspire.

  Soon, the first few teens began walking up to the fireplace. They smiled at Janice for permission, and when she nodded, they flicked their little folded papers into the shuddering flames. A big kid with a hat that read “Broncos” had constructed a paper airplane, and he dive-bombed it right into the heart of the fire.

  “Praise Jesus!” he said, and high-fived Janice.

  Everyone laughed. I looked at my empty card again, and then turned to Jared. I needed to ask him a few more questions about this supposed communication process. But he had his eyes closed, and his card was wadded up in his fist.

  “This isn’t going to be pretty,” he said. “Just so you know.”

  “What isn’t?” I said.

  In front of me, the idol burning picked up momentum. A line of girls dropped their papers into the hearth, and then moved on to Janice Whitcomb for a big hug. Jared opened his eyes and adjusted his glasses. Then I watched him put his pointer finger directly down his throat. There was a loud gag, and then a second delay, before a staccatoed burst of vomit shot out of his mouth.

  “Aww, God!” shouted Jared, “I’m having a reaction!”

  Janice froze mid-hug and her eyes leaped immediately to her son.

  “Jared!” she yelled.

  Jared faked a terrific fall to his backside, deftly missing the small pools of his own vomit. The crowd backed away and looked down at him with contorted, deeply confused faces. Jared only glanced at me once, but the message was clear enough: it was time for me to go. I stuck my card in my pocket and headed straight toward the exit.

  “I’ll collect some towels!” I said, but I don’t think anybody heard me.

  They were all huddling around Jared. Janice was already kneeling, stroking his forehead. I managed to duck out in seconds, and found myself in the complete quiet of the stairwell. I took the stairs two at a time. My heart seemed to be beating in my forehead. My palms were slick on the railing. But I made it down without toppling over, and continued toward my destination.

  I walked past the empty Recreation Room and back down the dim hallway of classrooms. The eerie portraits of saviors watched me from the walls. “God is a verb,” I said to myself, “not a noun. Not a picture.” I repeated the sentences like a mantra. Godisaverb. Godisaverb. The light from the end of the hall was now just a muted shade of rose. I was so focused on my task that I didn’t detect another human presence in the halls until I had reached the closet. It wasn’t until I had extracted Jared’s key from my pocket that I heard the first muffled moan. I whipped around and squinted into the tenebrous light of the doorway at the hall’s end.

  At the far right side of the entry was Meredith Whitcomb in the embrace of a boy. He was pressing himself firmly against her tight-sweatered torso, and one of his hands was actually inside her shirt, cupped over a breast. I started to feel sick to my stomach. I watched raptly while he massaged her body and kissed her thin neck up to her hairline. She made a series of soft whimpers, and the boy laughed and covered her mouth. It was while the boy’s hand was covering her lips that she happened to turn and notice me. Her eyelids flickered a moment as she met my stare. Then she closed them again. When the boy’s hand left her mouth, her lips had formed a tight smirk.

  As quietly as I could, I fit the key into the lock and submerged myself in the total darkness of the closet. I stood there huffing the musty air for a minute, attempting to get a full breath. In the pitch black, all I could see was that smirk. Meredith’s eyes closed. Her chin tilted upward in pleasure. I nearly gagged. Finally, I gained the wherewithal to feel for the light switch, and the room exploded in a flash of fluorescence. Along the back wall was a row of old instruments. A nicked-up acoustic guitar. A long keyboard. A set of hand-bells in a felt-lined case. And in the corner, like a neglected child, there was a dark-wood bass guitar. The strings hummed when I picked it up.

  It took me a moment to regain the will to leave. But then I thought of Jared, who had just induced vomiting for the sake of our endeavor, and I rushed out of the closet, sprinting down the hallway without looking back at Meredith. I ran away from her doorway, the one I had planned to use, and instead burst through the double doors of the front entrance. Night had arrived, and brought a deeper cold with it. I stuffed the bass under the lip of a hedge and then collapsed down in the grass.

  I stuck
my hands in my pockets for warmth, catching my breath. And I watched as a nearby streetlight flashed twice and popped on. My hand grasped onto something, and I knew before I took it out that I was holding Janice’s note card. I looked it over. It was just a yellow piece of paper with pink lines separating it, but it seemed like more. It was a vessel for communication with a higher power. It was like an e-mail to the Greater Intellect. I looked down at it. I still had my pen in my pocket and I took it out and wrote a single question. I wrote: “Please, what is my path?” Then I folded it in even fourths and tucked it in my breast pocket, where it hovered over my wildly beating heart.

  12.

  Transmissions

  THAT NIGHT, I RODE HOME WITH A FENDER BASS guitar fastened to my back with a single leather strap. I had no carrying case so the body of the guitar banged against my back as I rode up the hill to the dome. The strings made sounds like the whales on Nana’s tape each time my tire hit a bump. But when I arrived at the bicycle storage shed, the bass was still in one piece. I quickly hid it under a mesh tarp and exchanged it for two cans of Derbyshire Green paint. I had asked the ill-tempered man at the paint store for something “verdant and cheap,” and this is what he had given me. The brand was not on sale, but it was well within Nana’s budget. My business sense, I hoped, would still be celebrated.

  It was disquieting to think about all the lies I had told Nana in the past few days. It was new territory, and like anything unexplored, it conjured both fear and excitement. I tried not to let myself dwell on it as I walked through the moon blue woods. The dome was dark this time, and I couldn’t stop myself from speculating about the goings-on at the Whitcombs’, where I was sure the lights were still on.

  The van ride home had been one long argument between Jared and Janice about the severity of his episode, and whether or not a visit to the emergency room was necessary. Meredith sat in the very back of the van, utterly quiet. I could sense her back there, watching my head, perhaps noticing the yellowed collar of my only white dress shirt. As of yet, no one had mentioned her absence from the idol burning, and I’m sure she was pleased that Jared’s flop had overshadowed any other problems at the Group that evening.