FICTION
“Act of God”
by Jill Ciment
Pantheon, 192 pages, $24
Forgive me, mycologists and ‘shroom-heads, but few things unsettle me more deeply than the unexpected discovery of fungi where fungi are not supposed to be. Adult twin sisters Edith and Kat make such a find in the opening of Jill Ciment’s novel “Act of God”:
“A small phosphorus organism, about as bright and arresting as a firefly’s glow, bloomed in the seam of the hall closet…. A swell rose out of the glow until the head of whatever was fighting to get born pushed through… Kat gasped. Her breath must have disturbed the new life, or awakened it, because a puff of spores sprayed out, luminous and ephemeral as glitter.”
Oh dear.
“Pour bleach on it and keep your air conditioner on high. Someone will call you Monday,” the answering service for a mold removal business tells them.
Soon enough, the glowing mold forces the evacuation and eventual destruction of this Brooklyn row house, leaving Edith, Kat and two other people homeless: Vida, an actress who owns the house, and Ashley, aka Anushka, a former Russian au pair squatting illegally in Vida’s part of the house.
Ciment gets off to a satirical start, especially regarding Vida, a Shakespearean actress whose notoriety comes from starring in a commercial for Ziberax, the first female sexual enhancement pill, subjecting her to leering grins from many of the men she encounters.
But this short novel deepens into a darker, Job-like comedy, as each woman struggles after the dislocation. Essentially, each becomes a refugee in the city. Kat, a restless, boozing aging hippie with few resources, hopes to turn her late mother’s advice columns into a book that will turn into money. Courtesy of Vida’s Rolodex, Ashley/Anushka finds another actor’s apartment to squat in, but she’s not finished with neither her fellow evacuees nor the police.
Vida lands a role as Goneril in an outdoor “King Lear,” but thoughts about the row house intrude on her performance. She had no mold rider, and the insurance company considers the strange mold an act of God that it won’t cover. Some acts of God, like a flash flood or tornado, wreak their havoc and move on. But the supermold won’t let go of her personally, and taints her morally, too, leading to a strong counterargument to the notion that any publicity for an actress is good publicity.
The unraveling of their lives and a death lead to a restorative-justice encounter that won’t be added to the restorative-justice training manual any time soon. In the course of “Act of God,” each survivor hits rock bottom; unlike Job, they don’t have their riches restored to them twofold. But several do gain a deeper appreciation of their own frail humanity.
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