The-Infinite-Sea-Pdf

doesn’t like dogs wouldn’t be God, but anyway, there was this big debate about wasted prayer, which
became an argument about if there could be such a thing as wasted prayer, which turned into a fight
about the Holocaust. So in five minutes it went from a nippy old purse dog to the Holocaust.”
“So what happened? Did they pray for the dog?”
“No, they prayed for the souls of the Holocaust. Then the next day the dog died.” And now he was
nodding thoughtfully. “Grandma prayed for him. Prayed every night. Told all us grandkids to pray, too.
So I prayed for a dog that terrorized and hated me and gave me this.” He swung his leg onto the bed and
pulled up his pants to expose his calf. “See the scar?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Well, it’s there.” He pushed down the pants leg but kept his foot on the bed. “So after it died, I said
to Grandma, ‘I prayed really hard and Flubby still died. Does God hate me?’”
“What did she say?”
“Some BS about God wanting Flubby in heaven, which was impossible for my six-year-old brain to
process. There are nippy old purse dogs in heaven? Isn’t heaven supposed to be a nice place? It
bothered me for a long time. Like, every night, while I said my prayers, I couldn’t help but wonder if I
even wanted to go to heaven and spend eternity with Flubby. So I decided he must be in hell. Otherwise,
theology falls apart.”
He wrapped his long arms around his upraised knee, where he rested his chin and stared into space.
He was back in a time when a little boy’s questions about prayer and God and heaven still mattered.
“I broke a cup once,” he went on. “Playing around in Mom’s china cabinet, part of her wedding set,
this dainty little cup from a tea set. Didn’t totally break it. Dropped it on the floor and it cracked.”
“The floor?”
“No, not the floor. The cu—” His eyes widened in shock. “Did you just make the same . . . ?”
I shook my head. He pointed his finger at me. “Naw, I caught you! A moment of lighthearted levity
from Ringer the warrior queen!”
“I joke all the time.”
“Right. But they’re so subtle that only smart people get them.”
“The cup,” I prodded him.
“So I’ve cracked Mom’s precious china. I put it back in the cabinet, turning its cracked side toward
the back so maybe she won’t notice, even though I know it’s only a matter of time before she does and
I’m dead meat. Know where I turn for help?”
I didn’t have to think hard. I knew where the story was going. “God.”
“God. I prayed for God to keep Mom away from that cup. Like, for the rest of her life. Or at least
until I moved away to college. Then I prayed that he could heal the cup. He’s God, right? He can heal
people—what’s a tiny freaking made-in-China cup? That was the optimal solution and that’s what he’s
all about, optimal solutions.”
“She found the cup.”
“You bet your ass she found the cup.”
“I’m surprised you still pray. After Flubby and the cup.”
He shook his head. “Not the point.”
“There’s a point?”
“If you’d let me finish the story—yes, there is a point. Here it is: After she found the cup and before I
knew she’d found it, she replaced it. She ordered a new cup and threw away the old one. One Saturday
morning—I guess I’d been praying for about a month—I went to the cabinet to prove the prayer circle
wrong about wasted prayer, and I saw it.”
“The new cup,” I said. Razor nodded. “But you didn’t know your mom replaced it.”
He threw his hands into the air. “It’s a fucking miracle! What’s cracked has been uncracked! The