Hunters and Gatherers by Francine Prose Read Free Book Online Page A

equipment to arrange for a four-wheel-drive vehicle.”
    “Not at all,” agreed Titania. “A telephone and a fax are sufficient.”
    “Maybe Joy should be dealing with it,” Diana suggested. “She’s the one who’s going to be driving.”
    Joy glared at Diana. “You deal with it,” she said.
    “Ladies, please,” said Bernie. “I’m hearing a little hostility here.”
    Starling was practically shouting. “That jerk thinks because we’re women he can do whatever the hell he wants. I’d like to see him interrupt a priest in the middle of mass…”
    With a rueful smile, Isis offered one limp hand to her friend. The effect on Starling was sudden and dramatic. Her eyes filled with the milky calm of someone coming out of a seizure.
    “Well, exactly,” Isis said. “Isn’t that the point? The male God sends you straight to hell if you whisper in church. But Goddess knows the sacred is in the interruptions—the crying baby, the ringing phone, the mail person at the door. Divinity is in the practical: the laundry, the cooking, the cleaning. How much smoother our lives would be if we accepted that, if we could believe the answering machine was broken for a reason, in this case to explain to us why we couldn’t get centered.”
    Everyone stared at Starling, who was smiling shyly, proud that the fit she’d thrown had become the occasion of a spiritual lesson. Martha was impressed by the effortless grace with which Isis had accomplished this, by her kindness to Starling, and by her desire to make someone look better instead of worse.
    There was something so soothing about how Isis saw the world! You certainly would be happier if you reached a spiritual level which let you see a broken answering machine as a sign from God. Er, Goddess. Martha envied believers their serenity, their faith that an eye was on every sparrow, a hand on every steering wheel as the speedometer crept up past the limit. How jealous she was of the rosaries draped over rearview mirrors and appearing from purses and pockets when an airplane pilot warned, in those confident tones that fooled no one, of turbulence up ahead.
    Spiritual comfort and the peace that passeth beyond understanding were not among the options offered by First Lutheran of Bloomington, which Martha had attended sporadically as a child, and where the best one could hope for were the covered-dish suppers. Martha’s mother went to church without pleasure or conviction, but as another misguided attempt to “do something as a family.” Martha’s father came along, grumbling, and fell asleep, often noisily, during Pastor Jensen’s sermons. Martha stared at the pastor, unable to hear a word as she warded off comical images of him marching in holiday parades in his Cub Scout leader uniform: the stupid hat, the pointy kerchief, the vast expanse of dimpled knee between his khaki shorts and knee socks. The catch in his throat when he said the word “God” made her skin crawl with embarrassment.
    And that was it for religion, except for a month in high school when Martha read Franny and Zooey and repeated the Jesus prayer, waiting without the least success to see a blinding light. In college she took a religions course from a German theologian who lectured in a warbling chirp with her eyes shut tight. Martha never believed in God, not even as a girl, and later listened with envy and covetous curiosity to her Catholic friends’ merry nostalgia for faked confessions and vicious nuns.
    For a few months she’d had a boyfriend who meditated in a spare bedroom, empty but for a poster of an Indian swami in sunglasses and a top hat. At first this seemed exotic but then grew rapidly less charming. Why was she so hard on him? He’d been one of several men who confidently predicted that Martha would always be unhappy because she always had to analyze and dissect every little thing that anyone (by which they meant themselves) happened to do or say. They were right! Why couldn’t Martha quit