said there had never been any knife at all.
“Talking to you,” she said, “your reality is so warped. It’s like talking
to someone who wasn’t even there.”
I agreed. It was exactly like that.—I HAD A GRANT to study that summer in Paris. Drew came with me. Our
flat was in the sixth arrondissement, near the Luxembourg Gardens.
My life there was entirely new, and as near to a cliché as I could make
it. I was drawn to those parts of the city where one could find the most
tourists so I could throw myself into their center. It was a hectic form
of forgetting, and I spent the summer in pursuit of it: of losing myself
in swarms of travelers, allowing myself to be wiped clean of all
personality and character, of all history. The more crass the attraction,
the more I was drawn to it.
I had been in Paris for several weeks when, one afternoon, returning
from a French lesson, I stopped at a café to check my email. There was
a message from my sister.
My father had visited her—this I understood immediately—but I had
to read the message several times before I understood what exactly had
taken place. Our father had testified to her that Shawn had been
cleansed by the Atonement of Christ, that he was a new man. Dad had
warned Audrey that if she ever again brought up the past, it would
destroy our entire family. It was God’s will that Audrey and I forgive
Shawn, Dad said. If we did not, ours would be the greater sin.
I could easily imagine this meeting, the gravity of my father as he sat
across from my sister, the reverence and power in his words.
Audrey told Dad that she had accepted the power of the Atonement
long ago, and had forgiven her brother. She said that I had provoked
her, had stirred up anger in her. That I had betrayed her because I’d
given myself over to fear, the realm of Satan, rather than walking in
faith with God. I was dangerous, she said, because I was controlled by
that fear, and by the Father of Fear, Lucifer.
That is how my sister ended her letter, by telling me I was not
welcome in her home, or even to call her unless someone else was on
the line to supervise, to keep her from succumbing to my influence.
When I read this, I laughed out loud. The situation was perverse but