"Georgianna," my aunt used to say, "was the most docile, uncomplaining human being on earth. A true Christian. If she hadn't met that vile seducer--that atheist, Willy Wilson--she'd be serving her Lord in some distant land to this very day. She expiated her sin, believe me. The night she died, she said so. 'I'm going, Effie,' she told me. 'Bring up the boy in the Master's steps.' I failed her! Willy Wilson insisted on taking the boy--and brought him up a nonbeliever, like himself. Poor Georgianna! "'I know He has forgiven me!' Those were her last words--excepting for what she said after the delirium set in." My aunt would frown and shake her head at that point. "Two more mortal hours she lay there, twisting and trying to sit up--with me holding her. And the whole time she cursed the name of Wylie with words you wouldn't believe a girl like that would know. Of course--she meant Wilson--it's a common befuddlement. But whenever I think of the language she heaped on that evil man, I know what human torture is!" It was one of our favorite family stories. And, needless to say, Georgianna didn't mean Wilson at all. He's still a good chemistry prof--a husky, redheaded guy whom everybody likes. Georgianna was cursing her own blood the way people curse the day they were born--and for sufficient reasons. She had glimpsed--all but too late--the hypocrisy implicit in Scotch Presbyterianism. The strong, lucid mind that burned in silence beneath her clumsy exterior had finally cut through that wall between reason and instinct which men call Faith. Just before her "delirium" Georgianna had realized that Willy, not Jesus, had forgiven her (or would forgive her) for deserting him after their marriage, for working as a farm cook, and (as the result of over-fatigue) for falling down a back stairs in the ninth month of her pregnancy, thus bringing about her own demise through stubbornness and vanity. She had figured out the family--and Willy too. She got at least one moment of transcendent understanding, and followed it with two sound hours of profanity--crowding into the racing moments as many repressed sensations of her life as she had time for. Not a bad job, on the whole. After Willy had explained it to me, I'd always wished I'd investigated Georgianna more attentively. There hadn't been much chance. Paul--her son--came in. The one we were so proud of. Pushed the door open, kicked the book away, and let the automatic closer snap the lock. He took off a seersucker jacket that had flapped around his slatty shoulders. He picked up the book and said, "Jesus Christ. I thought I explained quantum mechanics to you ten years ago!" He went through my bedroom to the bathroom. A firm, pounding stream. He kicked the toilet handle, missed, kicked again--and it flushed resentfully. His jacket had fallen to the floor. When he returned, he kicked that. It rose in the air and he caught it. He whipped off his shirt. "Buy me a drink," he said. "What?"