A Drink with God

I had been drunk for five days by that point, or it might have been six or ten. It was typical for my sense of time to recede with the tide during my episodes. The street stretched thin and bleary in front of me, and had it not been for the perpetual rain I would have wandered aimlessly all night. But I was soaked and dizzy, the alcohol no longer insulating me from the harsh December wind. Or it might have been January. 

These walks often started with no destination in mind and ended in places that appeared light-years away from the comfort of my home. Alcohol has a specific way of mellowing out situations that otherwise would send a sober person in a panic and I indulged in that. There were hours I remembered perfectly and hours I could not account for, even under the blinding light of an interrogation lamp. My friends would often inform me of the events that had unfolded during those gaps, and I would listen with the mild curiosity of someone being told a story about a mutual acquaintance. I had learned not to argue because there was very little dignity in insisting you weren’t somewhere when three people remembered you being there.

Through the thin film of raindrops I could faintly make out a chapel at the end of the street. If I said that something other than the open door and the roof above it drew me in, I would be lying. 

So I went. 

It was only after I had walked in and let my body soften in the warmth that I realized I was holding a bottle of gin and actively drinking from it. 

“Cheers,” I said toward the cross, lifting it in a mock toast. 

I waited for guilt to reach me, burning a trail from my mouth to my stomach alongside the gin.

It didn’t, so I took another sip.

I had never understood why God, assuming there was one, would care whether I drank gin inside a building erected in His honor. Everything was wood and stone and stained glass. Men had decided which way the pews should face and where the candles should go, and somewhere along the way removing your hat before entering became a gesture of respect. Perhaps God appreciated the effort—kept a list for the good and the naughty like Santa Claus.

Even as a restless child getting dragged by my family, I had always believed churches said considerably more about people than they said about God. Why would someone with, presumably, so much on His plate, care if a woman wore pants or a skirt? The world was in shambles and I was to believe He was cataloguing outfit choices?

There were rules about food and sex and language, and how much of certain body parts your clothes needed to cover so as not to offend the entity apparently responsible for creating them in the first place. I couldn’t decide what I wanted for dinner every night, yet entire institutions had been built around the assumption that someone had correctly interpreted the wishes of a being they couldn’t even see. 

At eight I didn’t know the word hypocrisy, so I simply thought it was unfair. 

I remember sitting next to my grandmother one Sunday, kicking the air beneath the pew and wondering whether God was mad at me for being bored. I had been told that he could see everything, a thought that only made me feel anxious instead of comforted. I envisioned a large, bulging eye following me from the bedroom to the bathroom, watching me cheat in class, and hearing the bad words I thought toward my sister whenever we got into a fight. By the time I was ten, I was certain that if I died, there was no chance I would be granted admission to the eternal “good place.”

Still, I prayed to Him. 

For a while, he took the face of my favorite grandfather, whom I had lost at the age of five. I suppose my young mind needed to give God a face if only to root the belief somewhere tangible. The result was an amalgamation of the person who had once made me feel safest and a higher power who could apparently grant wishes like a genie.

I asked for good grades and for my parents to stop being mad at me, and for my crush to like me back. Once, my sister broke the arm of one of my action figures and I asked Him to kill her. The next day, she developed a fever and I cried frantically, bargaining for her recovery. 

After a while, my brain began inventing trials God had apparently prepared just for me. If I didn’t get a good grade on the math test, Dad would die. If I didn’t make it to the end of the street before the light turned red, something terrible would happen. Or, more trivially, if I didn’t get out of bed before the next minute change, I wouldn’t be happy again for the next three years.

God apparently had free time to make games. 

I smiled at the thought and brought the gin back to my mouth.

“You’re going to be sick.”

The voice came from somewhere ahead. I lowered the bottle and tried to focus my vision. A few pews in front of me, an old woman was inspecting me through her round, thin glasses. I stared, wondering whether she had already been there when I walked in. I couldn’t come up with a definitive answer. But again, a mariachi band could have been performing on the altar and I might have missed it. 

Her eyes dropped to the bottle. I looked at it too, as though it was the first time I'd noticed it. 

“Does it bother you?” I asked her.

“The gin?”

“The gin in here.”

She looked around the chapel for a moment before answering.

“If I remember correctly, there are places more fun than a church to have a drink.”

This wasn’t an answer I’d been preparing myself for.

“I assumed you’d have an opinion.”

“I do,” she nodded. “It’s that you look terrible.”

The abrupt breath of laughter that escaped me bounced around the space. 

“I appreciate the honesty.”

I had expected disapproval. Some lecture about being disrespectful in the house of God. Instead, she had insulted my appearance. I walked along the aisle sloppily and chose a pew directly across from her.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Twenty-three.”

“You look forty.”

“It's been a difficult week.”

She looked at the bottle again and narrowed her eyes.

“Clearly.”

Only then did I notice the paper cup rested beside her. It was white with a brown plastic lid, the kind of drink sold in hospitals and the kind of places that didn’t require specialty coffee as much as something simply able to keep you alert. 

“Are you waiting for someone?”

She glanced at the cup.

“My husband.”

I looked around.

“Is he hiding?”

“Yes, on an operation table.”

“Oh.”

It sobered me up for three seconds, enough to feel the guilt that never came when I toasted with Jesus.

“Is he dying?” I asked.

“I hope not.”

“That's good.”

“It is.”

I waited.

She offered nothing else.

“So why are you here?”

Her eyebrows lifted.

“That sounded worse out loud.”

“A little.”

“I mean, if he isn't dying.”

“He’s still having surgery.”

“Bad surgery?”

“Is there good surgery?”

“Cosmetic?” I shrugged.

She smiled at that and I let out a relieved breath.

The surgery was routine, she explained, though I had always found the word routine an odd one to use for cutting open a body. Her husband had been admitted the day before, and gone into surgery a few hours ago. Somewhere between the waiting room and the cafeteria that smelled of disinfectant, she decided to come to the chapel across the street. I took her word for it, despite the fact that I hadn’t seen a hospital nearby. I didn’t even know what area I had ended up in. 

She was scared, paralyzed with fear that she would lose the person she had shared life with for fifty years. I found something comforting in that admission. Something courageous. 

A row of half-molten candles burned near the altar, and I asked whether she had lit one. She pointed to the second from the left. It looked identical to all the others, which visibly disappointed me. I had expected a prayer for a loving husband undergoing surgery to burn with some distinguishing urgency. 

When I asked what she prayed for, she told me nothing. I was confused and it wasn’t the gin. Prayer, as I had been raised to understand it, was an exchange built around requests. Even as my faith had thinned with age, I had continued to approach it like an emergency service. 

The woman seemed amused by my explanation.

Apparently, according to her, prayer didn’t solemnly revolve around asking for things. She prayed when she was afraid and she prayed when she was happy. At times, she prayed when the weight of a thought was too hefty for her back to carry alone.

I couldn’t fathom the urge to pray if nothing were to change. I continued sipping from the bottle which had turned warm and thick. We sat in silence for a while. I studied the flames dancing in the corner and wondered what each one represented for the hand that had placed it there. I assumed it was a variation of wishes, waiting for an answer. 

“Do you believe God answers prayers?” I asked her.

“Sometimes.”

I was starting to feel agitated. I knew that if her husband came out of surgery, people would thank God for getting him through it. If he didn’t, they would praise God’s plan and the retribution it had in stock for her despite having endured the greatest heartbreak of her life. 

She agreed with me.

I drank again.

“What if you pray for something bad?”

She turned toward me. 

I immediately regretted the words but I continued anyway. I clarified that I was speaking hypothetically.

“What do you mean bad?”

“Something you can't take back.”

She didn't ask again. Maybe she knew that drunk people eventually fill silence if you give them enough of it.

I had been nineteen when my sister got sick. For the first few months, I clung to religion in a way that would have made my grandmother proud if she were alive. I prayed in the morning when I woke up and at night before I went to bed. I prayed in the hospital bathroom with the overhead, fluorescent light painting me just as sick as her. I prayed behind the wheel when I was switching lanes, and while the doctor spoke in careful, infuriatingly slow and enunciated sentences. I promised God everything I could think of, and were it not frowned upon, I would have promised him a human sacrifice only dedicated in His name. I would stop drinking, I would stop lying, I would become a better son, a better brother, a better follower.

She was twenty. The only thing I was asking in return was for her to live past that age. 

By then the woman had stopped looking at me. She watched the candles instead, which made it easier for the rest to say.

Near the end, she was either always sleeping or sighing in pain. 

I asked God to let her die with such shame that I almost took it back. 

The next morning she was gone. 

I had never admitted that out loud before. The woman was quiet for so long that I became alarmingly aware of everything around me. I expected her to reassure me that it wasn’t my foolish prayer that had sent her away for good. I knew I hadn't killed her. I understood biology and coincidence and all the scans and blood tests and numbers capable of explaining exactly why her heart had stopped.

Beyond the stained glass I could see that somewhere between my arrival and the confession, the rain had stopped. When I looked back at the woman where I had expected to be met with a horrified expression, I saw her smile. 

“Do you think she would have lived had you asked for something different?”

I didn’t know. 

The only thing I knew was that the bottle was almost empty and if I hadn’t wished her dead when she had broken my action figure, perhaps she would still be here.

It made perfect sense to me then, and the woman didn't correct me.

I could see my sister at eight years old, burning with fever beneath her duvet while I sat beside her with my hands clasped together. I had promised to let her play with my things. I had promised never to call her stupid again. I might even have promised to give her the action figure, though I doubt I actually did that.

She had recovered the first time. 

But apparently God didn’t do second chances. 

I was used to people speaking about caring for someone who was dying as though love purified the horrid experience. As though grief began only after someone was gone and everything before that was devotion. I sat beside her hospital bed, watching her burn with fever again, and felt bored. 

I had been grieving for months. 

I just wanted to go home.