The Secret Gospel of Mark by Spencer Reece

Author:Spencer Reece [Reece, Spencer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: biography;biographies;god;autobiographies;biographies and memoirs;biographies of famous people;memoirs;memoir;autobiography;afterlife;religious books;religion;autobiography books;memoir books;spirituality;essays;writing;american literature;family;collection;memory;short stories;classic;americana;families;buddhism;philosophy;marriage;nature;aging;love;spiritual;coming of age;historical;parenting;inspirational;omnibus;education;poems;friendship;holiday;book club books;literary fiction;music
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2021-01-21T20:58:40+00:00

68.

The Florida sun sizzled the dew on the puzzles of the ficus hedges. Bright-green parrots in the gumbo limbo trees sang. The sea sparkled in the bright light like crushed glass.

I interviewed for store 28 and they did hire me. I was Peter in the boat: I had to look ahead and trust and trust, holding off any false tremble of fear, or I’d sink in the water. But hadn’t my life been built on such unlikely improbable physics? Accidents formed the best of me.

I began work in Palm Beach County, Florida. I found a modest apartment in Lantana after one week. My whole apartment could have fit inside Dickinson’s bedroom. The tiny kitchenette, sitting area, and bedroom were in one of those old Florida motels. “State with the prettiest name,” Bishop said, in her understated way, about perhaps the most overstated state in America. People make fun of Florida: Disney, heat, no culture. I called Durell every other day or so, between my shifts, giving him updates on how my Florida life was going, how happy I felt in this strange and tropical world where the people made up who they were. Sometimes now I regretted calling him because it had become a recital of complaints followed by requests for money to be sent. When he mentioned his estranged brother and sister now, he cried. I didn’t think anyone had heard this man cry.

I settled on that peninsula of flowers and bees flamboyant as a million Liberaces. Improbably, there, between all the strip malls and strip clubs, I began to entertain the idea of Christ as a companion. Durell encouraged this investigation. He’d attended church in youth, had played the organ, but in the intervening years he’d grown estranged from the Church. Our unspoken difference from the heterosexual world had everything to do with it. The idea of Christ as something I could meld to my life, something practical, began to make sense to me. I started going to church on Sunday. I sat in the back. I didn’t have a Bible.

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