After Life (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) by Rhian Ellis & Nancy Pearl

Author:Rhian Ellis & Nancy Pearl [Ellis, Rhian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612182988
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Published: 2012-06-05T07:00:00+00:00

And as the summer wore on, Peter changed. He shoved his history books underneath his bed and began hanging around the library, reading up on spiritualism. A lot of what he read annoyed him.

“Did you know, Naomi, that after the Fox sisters admitted, admitted, they were dropping apples and cracking their toes to make the rappings, people refused to believe they were fakes?”

“Well,” I said. “They were only fakes in one sense of the word.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

I explained. It is possible, I told him, to begin with what may seem to you like fraud, but have it acquire truth. As an example, I asked him if he’d ever been in a horrible mood and then gotten out of it by smiling.

“Maybe, I don’t know. But I see what you mean. Go on.”

At first, I said, that smile is a fraud. You’re not in a good mood at all. But then, because you’re smiling, you are. Is that smile still a fraud?

“Hmm,” he said, dubious.

“Plus, most mediums end up fudging a bit, now and then. People pressure you to come up with something, no matter how crummy your day’s been or how rude they are or anything.” I told him about the intercom in our house in New Orleans, and about poor Miss Beryl. A lot of times, I said, what seems most faked to you can turn out to be the most true, and the most helpful. That, anyway, was how I saw it.

But what changed his mind, in the end, I think, was me. He came to message services and Circle Nights and watched me. Once I even had a message for him. It was during the four o’clock meeting at the Forest Temple.

I liked the Forest Temple—it was made of white painted wood, just an archway with a back on it, rather like an oversized shrine, with the words FOREST TEMPLE in old-fashioned green lettering—but it was right off Seneca Street. From the platform I could see tourists walking by with their dogs, and the old men coming in and out of Ferd’s grocery. It made it hard to concentrate. Peter sat in the back, the shadows of leaves moving over him.

“Peter. I have your father.”

Did I? I had a presence. I wanted it to be Peter’s father, and it might have been. Sometimes a presence was all I had to work with.

I told him something fairly general: how much he loved Peter, how Peter should study hard but remember there are things more important than school, and that he had to be careful not to become too self-absorbed.

“You know what I mean,” I added.

Afterward, Peter came up to me, furious. “My father would never say anything like that,” he said, eyes narrowed. “Fucking never.” There was a bright-red splotch on each of his sharp cheekbones.

“How do you know?” I said, just as angry. “Just because he never did doesn’t mean he didn’t want to. And what he said was true, wasn’t it?”

He didn’t say anything.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.