Diary of a Heretic

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To Our Impoverished Souls
2007-12-29 04:35:00
An excerpt from my novel, Diary of a Heretic: Click here to read the previous episode, and here to start from the beginning. I ought to be grateful. Carlos is eagerly, efficiently, helping me out. Mr. Raging Superiority is pouring coffee, wiping away crumbs. He’s laying out napkins and dispensing miniature jugs of cream for god’s sake! Is this going to be a regular thing? Until the New C. of C., Carlos was always the genius and I was the dullard with purse strings. He’s ridiculed and berated me for twelve years straight because he’s a fabulously gifted baker and he knows it. People come from all over for Carlos’s creations. Newspapers and magazines semi-annually pronounce his pastry the best in Chicagoland and invite local celebrities to write about their favorites. So I’ve always put up with a lot of shit from him. But only in the last two weeks has he taken to sidling up to me, casually massaging my shoulders, and whispering, “Relax.” His shoulder or forearm ...
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Incandescent Sailboats
2007-12-28 02:42:00
An excerpt from my novel, Diary of a Heretic: Click here  to read the previous episode, and here to start from the beginning. By now the lunch crowd’s descending.  (You’d be surprised how many people want custard-filled coffee cake for lunch, even though we offer three kinds of sandwiches.)  I double-check the alley to see if the beverage truck’s coming when I’m seized by the ethereal shivers that have been visiting me several times a day, on and off, for weeks. Every hair on my body stands on end and I float back inside with the sense that if I wanted to, I could rise off the floor. I think I can see every molecule in the room:  they look like infinitesimal, incandescent sailboats. Carlos taps me on the shoulder. “Don’t go too far, man, you might not get back.”  A line unfurls in my mind:  Everything that happens has already happened.  From the front comes giggling. Four college girls accompany a rotund character in cape and beret,...
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An Honest Mistake
2007-12-27 03:58:00
An excerpt from my novel, Diary of a Heretic: Click here to read the previous episode, and here to start from the beginning. Louie Duvall swore on his mother’s grave that the business with my flour, mealy moths two weeks in a row, was an honest mistake. He threw an arm around me and slipped me an uncovered CD. “All original, man.”  Louie by night is a blues singer.  He yelled into an intercom and a muscle-bound teenager dollied in three 50-pound bags.  Louie slit each bag and we leaned over the stuff together to make sure it wasn’t infested.  Louie’s tiny teeth gleamed and the edges of his round little stick-out ears turned translucent. The teenager loaded the bags in my car. Louie pumped my hand and slapped my back and said my next two orders were on the house. The whole visit took less than ten minutes. Driving back, though, I had to roll down the windows. An intense flowery fragrance enveloped me. Louie must wear an intense cologne. Because even af...
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Perfect Waste
2007-12-26 02:40:00
An excerpt from my novel, Diary of a Heretic: Click here to read the previous episode, and here to start from the beginning. All week I’ve jumped up and down, thinking, “The first New C. of C. meeting was perfect, it was perfect!”  Then this afternoon, driving west on Armitage, I got distracted and skipped a beat and the next thing I knew, doubt crept in, changing the refrain to:  “How do you know it was perfect? What if it wasn’t?” In front of me was a low-riding station wagon with half a jacket hanging from the trunk. One sleeve was dragging on the ground and the back kept filling with air, forming half a torso and then deflating as the car slowed down. Was the first meeting of the New College of Complexes really perfect? Or really a waste? This billowing worry thrummed through me: perfect, waste;  perfect, waste. . . (To be continued)
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Try This
2007-12-24 23:36:00
     

What Next
2007-12-24 03:33:00
An excerpt from my novel, Diary of a Heretic: Click here to read the previous episode, and here to start from the beginning. ·    Everyone Has Something To Hide.·    Everyone Wants More.·    Is Prayer Addicting?·    Six Ways To Overcome Loneliness. That last one sounds good for the second meeting:  Six Ways to Overcome Loneliness. But what if that topic mostly attracts a bunch of singles despairing over the big date they can’t get.  Then what? (To be continued)

The Problem Was Wholly My Own
2007-12-22 03:33:00
An excerpt from my novel, Diary of a Heretic: Click here to read the previous episode, and here to start from the beginning. Neither Carlos nor anyone else has asked why I’m calling the group “The New College of Complexes.”  They think it’s because these days everything is new.  New Mind.  New Men.  New Women.  New Life abounding in our relatively New Millennium. But there was an old College of Complexes. More than ten years ago it disbanded when its meeting place was demolished by bulldozers. And each of its members mysteriously surrendered to whatever individual fate he or she had been valiantly staving off. Either that or they bribed the manager at the McDonald’s across the street to tell me so, so as to get rid of me. Not that I’d been hanging around the first C-of-C all that much.  In two years I attended six of their meetings, and only then in response to their bold-faced motto:  Everybody Welcome.  The group impressed me ...
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Talk Dirty To Me
2007-12-21 04:00:00
An excerpt from my novel, Diary of a Heretic: Click here to read the previous episode, and here to start from the beginning. The café was almost half full: old men, students and professors—and Carlos leaning on the wall behind me near the rest rooms. Feedback from the microphone concealed the catch in my voice as I opened the meeting.  “Welcome to the New College of Complexes.  Where everyone gets a say.  To get things started, we have as a topic:  ‘How Can We Know Anything When We Only Believe What We Want to Believe?’” Everyone was looking at me.  No one spoke or moved and I had to conquer my panic that this might never pass. I might waver there forever, staring at these people. Carlos broke the spell. “Who wants to go first?” he asked, arms folded. A man and woman stood up, and I hastily added, “The main thing is: No rules. Anyone can talk about anything. ” The couple introduced themselves as university professors. He tipped the ...
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Show Time
2007-12-20 04:03:00
An excerpt from my novel, Diary of a Heretic: Click here to read the previous episode, and here to start from the beginning. The World’s Most Pink Skinned Saint? What’s a snappy rejoinder for that?  It was 7:45 and people nibbled at tarts and cakes and spooned up chocolate mousse from bittersweet shells. “One rule,” Carlos gripped my arm and hissed, “whatever you make the big sin—money, sex, ambition—will pervade your religion.  Law of nature, Malcolm:  the thing you try hardest to overcome will corrupt you in the end.” “I’m not starting a religion!  And I don’t want followers!”  My eyelids burned.  “I only want a discussion group.” “Call it what you want,” he said, drawing a knuckle down my left side.  Making the walls shift, my hair prickle, my tongue slide over my lips. “Don’t touch me!” And twisting the ends of his mustache (also dyed, though not as thoroughly), Carlos patted my cheeks, saying, “...
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The World's Most Pink-Skinned Saint
2007-12-19 03:53:00
An excerpt from my novel, Diary of a Heretic: Click here to read the previous episode, and here to start from the beginning. Yesterday at about six o’clock, when I got back from Louie’s (my flour supplier), I saw this sign flapping across the plate-glass window, announcing the first meeting of the “New College of Complexes.”  And beneath that, my topic, spelled out! How Can We Know Anything If We Only Believe What We Want to Believe? Apparently while drinking the New Year’s champagne, I had divulged my opening topic to Carlos. I remember drinking and talking. About the topic, I remember him frowning.  But he must have decided he liked it, despite himself.  For Carlos has seen and done everything six times over, something he never lets me forget.  In the seventies, he worked in every ashram and monastery between LA and San Francisco.  He’s studied religion his entire life and considers himself an authority on cults.  Nonetheless, the ...
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Too Late to be Sentimental
2007-12-17 04:28:00
An excerpt from my novel, Diary of a Heretic: Click here to read the previous episode, and here to start from the beginning. I remembered my manners and asked Carlos, “What about you?  What do you want to happen in the New Year?” He planted a hand on either side of my thighs and smirked. “You’ll never believe it.” “Yes I will.” “I want the same as you,” Carlos said. “And I want it this year.” “With me, it’s just something I dream about, but not in any real context.” “Name one reason we can’t do it,” Carlos said. “It’s bound to make money.” “It’s my private fantasy. And actually starting an after-hours group, were it possible, would change everything.” “Everything’s changing anyway,” Carlos said.  “I’ve watched you a long time, Malcolm, and I can tell:  You can do it. And with me orchestrating—”  he refilled our glasses, “We’ll get very rich, very fast.” I laughed and the worst of my fear a...
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Lifelong Desires
2007-12-16 04:54:00
An excerpt from my novel, Diary of a Heretic: Click here to read the previous (and first) episode. Was it a joke?  Was he reading my diary? After closing yesterday, after all the money was counted and our customers had gone home to prepare for whatever New Year’s Eve rituals they would endure or enjoy, my head baker, the impossible, arrogant Carlos Villalobos, produced a bottle of Taittinger champagne and two tulip-shaped glasses. With his weathered, houndish face and dyed-brown braid to his waist, Carlos works hard to project a sinister air, but he suddenly was Mr. Friendly. “To the New Year!” he said. Soon, feeling loose and flushed, I sat back on the countertop.  Carlos and I have worked together for two years. And though our relationship is uneasy, he does know me.  He knows I’m socially out of practice. Do people still describe their pet fantasies the way they might let you know about their childhood? Do they consider it socially acceptable to talk ...

The Cop Who Hated Me
2007-12-14 03:41:00
Under threat of arrest, I resumed my position inside our dented old Honda and hung my head, trying to appear remorseful. Officer Minnerly and one of his four backup cops loomed large in my peripheral vision. Two uniformed cops grew closer, flanking my rightly disgusted son, who had run from his mom’s insane contentiousness.  My long-limbed, long-suffering son jumped in the car, careful to belt the restraint tightly. He stared at the floor for a minute and slowly whispered (as if to an ornery animal), “Take it easy, Mom.” Soon Officer Minnerly was bending inside, through my rolled-down window, trying to  appraise my expression. He handed me the three moving violations and the parking ticket we had gotten outside the DMV. Beneath these were my still-temporarily-valid driver’s license, registration, and insurance card. “Can we go now?” “Not until I say so.” Minnerly returned to his phalanx of backup officers, who had gathered around his squad car, parked ...

Bad Driver, Bad Cop
2007-12-13 03:19:00
Unlike many mothers, I anticipated relief as my son approached driving age. He, and later my daughter, almost certainly would drive more capably than I ever could. They had grown up alert to the road, quick to point out the semi bearing down on us from the right-hand lane. (Among other bad habits, I favor the left-hand lane, perhaps because of my pronounced left-handed, whole left-side-of-body, and thus right-brained make-up.) A sixteen-year old in Westchester can obtain a learner’s driving permit by passing a written test, a vision test, and paying a fee. Before my son applied for the learner’s permit, my husband took him to the Union Carbide parking lots for driving practice. He used our “station car,” an automatic transmission Chevy we’d bought from a neighbor. He’d learn to drive the stick shift Honda next month. My son’s birthday lands at the end of September. I picked him up from school. For some reason, I had failed to bring apples and cheese and water bot...
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Accidents Happen
2007-12-11 03:20:00
When my children were nursery school age, I drove them to a half-day program half an hour away. I drove them to school and play-dates and birthday parties; I drove to the Bronx Zoo and the Museum of Natural History. Despite loud music and louder conversation with them as they learned to talk, I focused too intently on how fast the traffic moved, stalled, and accelerated as everyone made up for lost time.  I tried to stay in the moment and not anticipate an inevitable sudden impact. The anger of people in the cars surrounding me heightened my fear, as did drivers whose idle swerves made me wonder if a day dream had captured them or if perhaps they were watching the world outside their windshield as if it were a movie. I lacked all faith that any driver but me would stop at the light or give the right of way.    The car stalled at stoplights.  I hopped out and waved jumper cables until someone took pity. Occasionally that someone was a police officer checking out...
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Justifying My Existence
2007-12-10 04:04:00
An excerpt from my novel, Diary of a Heretic: For years I adhered to the idea that if I lived spartanly and maintained hope, a day would come when I would metaphorically if not actually be invited to speak my mind.  And someone would listen. Someone would understand. The way I imagined it:  When you were called upon to speak, you were supposed to say why you think you’re alive, why you were born, and why you’re still around: What are your reasons? Everyone needs to come up with his or her own personal answer. After all, no one gets through life without having to justify his or her existence. The biggest problem is that there is so much stuff we don’t know how to talk about. At least in my experience, whenever I ask someone: Does it ever hit you how weird, how really extreme it is being a person, this thing, yourself? Generally whoever I’m asking is like: “What are you talking about?” Oh, occasionally someone quick, who was actually listening to me, will sa...
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The Mysteries of Westchester
2007-12-08 07:38:00
Two days after my son turned two years old, we left Chicago on a flight to LaGuardia. My husband had already driven the brown Volkswagen Rabbit to our new home, which his job had allotted two days for him to find—a second floor apartment facing the Hudson River in Yonkers. Shortly after we married, his parents had bestowed the “like new” car upon us while Manny was doubling his course load at the U of C, determined to finish his long deferred BA in English before our first child arrived. While I bartended until I grew too unwieldy, he fulfilled his language requirement by taking three different French courses at once, managing to graduate two weeks before holding his newborn son. I paid scant attention to the brown car at first. Manny drove it to and from the U of C, finding it much faster than the el. I drove mostly when it was my turn to secure an eight-hour parking spot within a mile radius of our fifth floor walk-up. After we moved to Yonkers, however, with a rambuncti...
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Baby, You Can Drive My Car
2007-12-06 05:29:00
After our first semester together junior year, my boyfriend said, “I’ll teach you. It’ll be fun.” With that first lesson, while I buckled my seatbelt, a silly little fiction popped into my head. We should play roles, slide a fabricated layer between us to soften the dicey reality of him repeatedly telling me what to do now, and now, and now again.. A cute scenario arrived ready-made in my head. “Jimmy,” an affable, scholarly neighbor with a crush on “Maggie,” i.e., me, an easily distracted girl next door, knocks on his door, and bats her eyes, wondering, “I know I’m asking a lot here, Jimmy. But I gotta learn to drive. Otherwise, I’m like crucially stranded.” Leave it to him, Jimmy says. “Sounds fun.” So he patiently instructs Maggie in the art of driving his own manual-drive Toyota hatchback. He coaxes and teases her until she can change gears smoothly, execute a hairpin turn, a test-winning three-pointer, and a fast U, when necessary to avoid a cras...
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Bad Driver
2007-12-05 04:01:00
Here’s what happened first.  After my miserable ninth grade in Catholic school, I attended a huge public school serving four suburbs along Chicago’s wealthy north shore. The school required Driver ’s Ed for graduation. You needed to pass the course, but not necessarily acquire a driver’s license. I know, because while it took me two attempts  to pass the stupid course, I didn’t get a license until many years later. I failed first time around because it was easy to ditch. When I occasionally attended, I wrote high-school girl poetry in my notebook rather than commit the rules of the road to memory. Sometimes the classes required to play with driving simulators, which were like proto-computer games. “Watch out for the mail truck,” the teacher cautioned. “Get that skateboarder,” we whispered to the kid next to us. Once a week, a poor sap instructor supervised four tenth-graders inside a school-owned car. We each took a turn at maintaining the speed limit, s...

Back to the Beginning
2007-12-04 03:01:00
I’m back from vacation just in time for the final entry of “Diary of a Heretic,” the novel. During almost two years of weekend excerpts from Malcolm Tully’s diary, my blog of the same name has opened a new world to me, both as a person and as a writer. So while today marks the novel’s last post, I’m just starting. “Diary of a Heretic” is my banner and my ground. Reaching the end of a blog story, I feel as if I’m finding the right balance and pace, at least for the moment. Some people have indicated I shouldn’t post fiction on a blog. A few others, though, like it. That’s what keeps me going. And almost every day, I find other writers doing marvelous things with online fiction. I plan to rewrite “Diary of a Heretic,” the novel, and keep posting rewritten excerpts on weekends, just to see how it goes. It will probably work the way so much does in life and in art: the same but different. Monday, December 31*It’s not exactly business as usual.  Take-...
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If the Spirit Moves Me
2007-12-03 04:45:00
Saturday, December 29We are, thanks to my parents, well represented legally.  But bankruptcy, as Carlos has so adamantly insisted, is not an end but a beginning.  He has big plans to start over, while I do not.  Carlos and I are married in debt but divorced for life.  We’ll still stage events in auditoriums for a while.  I’ll still hold forth, putting in appearances at the surviving bakeries.  But eventually we’ll strike a deal.  Carlos will get money, property, even some kind of trademark if he wants.  And I’ll find another baker.  How hard can that be?  I’ll run a single, simple shop and sometimes, if the spirit moves me, I will sway and speak.  I will offer people my prayers, press their temples, kiss the tops of their heads.  Telling them each not to give up, to look deeper within for the immutable truth. --From Diary of a Heretic, a novel by Kathleen Maher, copyright 2007 *This excerpt continues the se...
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Neither One of Us Could Have Held On
2007-12-02 04:45:00
Wednesday, December 19 (continued) Was I afraid the boy might afflict me the same as Carlos’s lizardy maneuvers? How stupid. No, I couldn’t have supposed that. Carlos is Carlos and no one else could possible do to me what I let him do: manipulate me until I curled into his own soft mound of modeling clay. Had Colin lived would he have affected me as much? Would I have manipulated him?  Tyler reminded me of how eager and energetic we once were. I saw him as the soul of concern, of sweetness, light, peace, joy and hope. When, of course, that’s in everyone. There to be tapped or shining out right. We waste and exhaust it, and sometimes, even manage to replenish it.If Colin miraculously appeared, unchanged from the moment we headed for the roof, would I know him? I miss him and mourn him.  But there was nothing I could do.  I didn’t know, and couldn’t know. A chill courses through me, a rippling, feathery effect.  There’s no voice or vision. Nothing cer...
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No Plan B
2007-12-01 04:45:00
Tuesday, December 19 (continued)* White flecks cake the corners of Carlos’s lips.  We’re standing in the hall, and his voice is hoarse with fervor.  It cracks; it trills with misery. “Please!  Malcolm.  Listen.”  Wanting one more try, Carlos pins me to the wall and runs his hands over me. I tap his shoulder.  “You don’t have to do this.”But he grinds into me, kissing my neck.You’d think I’d relish a chance to laugh in his face, but all I feel is sorry.  Stopping his efforts, I can’t believe the emptiness.  “Carlos, Carlos!  On to Plan B .”And you know Carlos.  He shrugs.  “Fine.  Plan B.”But of course I hope it’s just me making stuff up and there is no Plan B.  “Carlos, we’re only in business till Monday.  Then we’re in bankruptcy court.” I’m asking his back.  For, there the boy is, sprawled in an armchair, listening to headphones, reading a magazine.  He smiles wh...

Where Do I Get Off?
2007-11-30 04:09:00
Wednesday, December 19This is what terrifies me:  Will I jump?  Will I push?  Knowing the breadth and depth and total irreversibility of every spontaneous move will I still succumb?  Will I run and scream, “Stop!  Colin, stop!” too late?  I mean not Colin—me.  Having caught myself inventing a paradoxical significance to the beautiful boy Tyler, will I now lose my desire for peace, joy, and hope, for the soul of sweetness and light? Or truly discover it, not in some unfair representation of was, but in myself? Where do I get off, coming up with such shit? Oh, oh, oh—all of these contingencies. Answer the most ridiculous, portentous riddles or else! Or else, get real, take a walk, play a video game. --From Diary of a Heretic, a novel by Kathleen Maher, copyright 2007 *This excerpt continues the serialization of Diary of a Heretic, the novel, which portrays the rise and fall of a contemporary spiritual movement that blossoms suddenly, and br...

The Play Has Changed
2007-11-29 04:45:00
Tuesday, December 18 (continued)* “Excuse me.”  I return my attention to Agnes McKinney.  “Before we were so rudely interrupted, I was about to say, try not to worry, but if you do. . . ”“I know!  I know what you’re going to say:  ‘Don’t worry about worrying.’ ”Agnes and I smile and Carlos dances around me, rubbing his hands.  “Well, well, well.  Lo and behold!”  Determined to claim me, he drops a heavy arm upon my neck.“The better to steer me with,” I say.“What?”“No need to carry me off, Carlos. You honor my conditions and I’ll honor yours.”“Okay, fine.”  He releases my shoulder, and holding up his wrongly accused hands, ushers me into the office.  From here, it’s like looking at a series of stills, pose after pose of Carlos in sympathy and regret.  I see the one where his head dips.  The one where his eyes turn up.  The one where he clasps his hands.  Now we’re at the on...
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100% Used-to-be
2007-11-28 04:45:00
Tuesday, December 18 (continued)* Carlos has been inside my head, tormenting my heart all year. He’s stayed with me and, yes, in his way, as long as Maggie was there to talk me down and hold my hand in the morning, he’s loved me.  But now, that’s gone; I’m holding his gaze without flinching.  Carlos ruling my body and soul is one hundred percent used-to-be.  He can’t hurt me!  He can’t touch me!  We’re standing across from each other as I spell this out in my head. So he has the message. I’m not fooling, Carlos. Either you contact the boy or I will turn him away the day he arrives. And if I seem cruel, all right. I’ll seem cruel. A lair, a fake—no one can think worse of me than I’ve already felt. Suffered, repented, and recovered. Once I was cruel. Now I’m not. So if anyone happens to think I’m cruel? Too bad. It’s shame but I’m only acting as necessary.And Carlos inching closer to me gathers all of the above. His eyes betray h...

A Brief Escape
2007-11-27 03:24:00
About three months ago my husband arrived home with the news he had been laid off. The little firm where he worked as editorial director needed to balance their books before year’s end and so had chosen to let go their editorial and art directors. (Good luck with that, little firm.) This happens all the time, I know, but it never happened to us before. Were I a different person, it needn’t have loomed as such a huge threat. But my nickname isn’t “grasshopper” for nothing. Manny’s pretty good at making money. I’m a chronic derelict, too busy jumping through fields and making up stories to earn anything close to my keep. I’m inept at gathering crumbs, can’t find my place in line, and contribute practically nothing to the ant hill. The day before Thanksgiving, he got the job he wanted most of the various few available to him. He works as a financial writer and when the financial business goes into a tail-spin, writers appear just as expendable to investment fir...
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All That Is Seen and Unseen
2007-11-24 04:14:00
This is the last post in a serialized story. Click here to read the previous post or here to start at the beginning. All through Thanksgiving dinner, I maintained a good front, entertaining the little girls: my heart’s own baby, Colette, and Kevin’s baby, Annabelle. I complimented Patrice, who’s always treated me kindly. And Kevin’s mother Rebecca, who epitomizes my ideal mother, drew me into the make-nice conversation. While on the other hand, Kevin sulked. As if he were the one losing her when Jeanne left for her 911 night shift practically before anyone had passed the gravy. For once Kevin acted all weird and I played the smooth social guy. Even Colette noticed, asking why weren’t Kevin and I eating? “You have to eat the vegetables,” she said, “or no dessert.” Getting through that meal required real endurance. And by the time I neared the end and could finally say “Thanks” for the thousandth time, and “Good-bye. It was great. See you soon,” for maybe ...

Reflowering
2007-11-22 04:07:00
This is a serialized story. Click here to read the previous post or here to start at the beginning. Oddly, seeing Hal’s car glide from around the corner and stop behind hers didn’t surprise Jeanne at all. Yesterday at dusk when his car swung around the same corner and into the same space along the O’Meara’s curb, the idea of Hal sitting in his car, waiting for two hours, had disturbed her. But Colette was in the car with her then and clamoring with glee at seeing Hal. Jeanne had expected yesterday’s Thanksgiving dinner to send her anxiety into outer space. But the overload of shame and responsibility had tripped her circuits the other way. What with Kevin’s suppressed jealousy and Patrice’s open friendliness and Rebecca’s suspicion of what was going on between her son and Jeanne—combined with Hal, her unwelcome suitor for which she had only herself to blame—she shut-down: Near death, that’s how lethargic she had felt. Now, however, when Hal pulled his car be...
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Hal's Stakeout
2007-11-21 05:11:00
This is a serialized story. Click here to read the previous post or here to start at the beginning. While waiting for Colette’s movie to end, Jeanne drifted off, her surroundings fading away. In her mind, guilt was a private condition; shame was public. She stood biblically naked, and everyone looking at her could see Jeanne, the woman stripped of cover. As she dozed, a forgotten memory surfaced. The blistering summer she was fourteen, when she had first started wearing a bra and so sometimes forgot, and she had walked into town wearing only a white t-shirt. An unexpected cloud burst drenching her and everyone else walking around Burlington, Vermont. And suddenly, Jeanne was not another teenage girl browsing through the harbor town with its rolling hills. Boys and men hooted and whistled and laughed at her. And two women had grabbed her, one at each elbow, hissing, “For shame!” The biting shock jolted her awake. She rested a hand on Colette’s little shoulder. Why feel as...