The Evening News by Tony Ardizzone Read Free Book Online Page A

third-floor ladies room. Marijuana pacifies her. Good marijuana puts a warm coat of varnish on her eyes. Then she is glazed, safe, protected by the haze the reefer gives her; the flow of life’s madness is slowed down, and she can cope.
    Maria accepts her Hispanic roots matter of factly, and she thinks that in a past life she once was Swiss. Though she claims she doesn’t believe in organized religion, she wears a gold crucifix on a chain around her neck and makes the sign of the Cross whenever she hears an ambulance. Maria believes in tarot cards, palm readings, astrology, the interpretation of dreams. Death always comes in threes and always knocks on the door or wall. One morning when she was sixteen she was brushing her hair, getting ready for school, when her grandmother rushed in to ask if she had heard the knocks. That afternoon her grandmother died. Then an uncle died, then Maria’s cousin. Maria is proud of the story. When Paul hears her repeat it and criticizes her for not being rational, she says, “Paul, you’re so limited I could laugh.”
    Maria is very aware of how tentative human life on the planet is. Secure on her ladder in the graduate stacks, she reads the predictions of Nostradamus. She studies the teachings of Edgar Cayce. She believes in good and evil, and she knows she has had many past lives. In at least one of them she knew Paul; that is why he seems so comfortable to be around. Their unconsciousnesses recognize each other. Maria can’t remember any details of her past lives. The fact that she has lived before is enough.
    People are born, she believes, and they live and do good and evil. Then they’re born again and again and again, until they do mostly good. Until they don’t have to work through anything anymore. She knows she has many more lives to live.
    She believes the body growing in her womb is just that, a body. It will become complete later, when a soul floating in the cosmos selects it. When a soul chooses her and Paul. Soshe and Paul need to be very good because many souls are judging them. Paul needs to fight against some of his rigidity. She needs more backbone, more courage to stand up, to define. She knows that this spring is a very special time, tentative as an interview. But if Nostradamus is correct, the world will end during the child’s lifetime. This worries Maria.
    Sometimes she sits by herself late at night, arms around herself, rocking, weeping. She weeps for the future her child will see. What a bitter world, she thinks. What an obscene, violent, horrible mess. Don’t come down to us if you’re frightened, she tells the souls in the cosmos. We have very little to offer, so wouldn’t it be better if you wait? If none of the souls choose to come down, Maria prays to God, let me miscarry. I’m not forcing you, she tells the soul of her baby. Choose me and Paul, if we are what you need. Come to us—we welcome you—even though I know your death will break my heart when the world ends, when the ground is shaken by earthquakes, when the end comes and death falls like a rain of hailstones from the broken sky.
    So Paul and Maria watch the evening news because it seldom fails to reaffirm their separate beliefs. Paul turns up the volume, adjusts the color, then settles on the couch. The best minds of the sixties had foreseen all of this, he thinks. But being right gives him little solace. He hopes the world can resolve its problems. He is tired and wants to grow old in relative stability and peace. Is that too much to ask for? he thinks. He knows the answer. Of course it’s too much, because he and the rest of America are still so damn privileged, and because order naturally deteriorates into chaos and chaos makes fertile ground for discontent, insurrection, and war. The next war will be with nuclear weapons, he believes. Has man ever made a tool he didn’t use eventually? It’s the bottom of the ninth inning, he