It was the opposite of home, a place that was clean and sanitized and standard in every way. Irvine was predictable. You didn’t even have to notice the town around you, because it was completely utilitarian. Things were built to serve a purpose—form followed function, always. But what was the function of all this conspicuous wealth, all this artistic beauty? If its purpose was to incite awe, then it was a success, at least as far as I was concerned.
I walked slowly, aimlessly, unable to absorb even a fraction of what I encountered. How had the sculptors make cold, hard stone fall in gentle waves like fabric on the skirt of that angel? How had the goldsmiths shaped such fine filigree? How had the painters rendered such realistic clouds up high by the ceiling? And who on earth had had enough money to pay for all of this?
“Teresa is down there,” Mom said quietly. I followed her down the left-hand side of the church. The middle of the church was filled with two parallel rows of wooden pews. A few people sat in them, looking as awestruck as I felt. A couple of older women were on their knees, hands clasped, eyes closed.
Mom stopped. “There. That’s her. Saint Teresa.”
It was a woman made of marble and a smiling angel above her, feathery wings spread behind him, a golden arrow held in his right hand, pulled back as if he was preparing to pierce her with it. But he was smiling, and his left hand was holding the fabric of Teresa’s gown gently, lovingly, like he was about to take it off.
Her face. Head thrown back, eyes closed, mouth open. Her shoulder, curled forward as if in spasm. The tension in her fingers and bare toes. The energy, the movement captured in the stone. She was on the edge of something, in the middle of something, and I didn’t know what I was seeing, I didn’t know how to feel about what I was seeing. All I knew was that I wanted to feel like that. I wanted to be Saint Teresa, in that moment.
“Pretty wild, don’t you think?” Mom stood next to me, her arms at her sides. For some reason I found myself hoping that she wouldn’t reach over and touch me right then.
“You studied this in college?”
She nodded.
“What does it mean?”
“It was created by Bernini,” she said. “It was a commission by Cardinal Federico Cornaro. This is his burial chapel.” She pointed to the floor, near our feet. There, set into the mottled red marble floor, were two round portraits—two skeletons, one clasping its hands and seeming to smile, the other with hands raised high and its skull face twisted as if in pain.
“He’s buried here?”
“Along with the rest of his family. Commissioning Bernini for this sculpture was an unusual choice.” She looked at me, appraising. “Are you really interested in all this?”
I couldn’t think of anything that had ever been more interesting to me than this figure, this swooning woman, this smirking angel hovering above her, arrow in hand. I had seen sculptures, of course, on field trips to museums in LA, but nothing like this. I nodded.
“Well,” Mom began, “Bernini was a sculptor, of course, but he was interested in architecture and theater, as well. This is more than a statue. It’s an entire installation. Look.” She pointed up to the ceiling just above Teresa. Clouds seemed to float there, with light penetrating through them. I followed her hand as it gestured to a fan of golden rays behind the sculpture, glistening with sunlight. “Bernini understood the power of the stage,” she said. “There’s a window hidden back there, up high, to let in light and make the gold shine like that. And there—” She gestured above us to the sides of the statue. There were more sculpted figures there, which I hadn’t noticed before, as all my attention was focused on Teresa and the angel. “That’s the benefactor Cornaro himself, along with his family.” All eight of the seated figures, four on each side, were men. Some of them were whispering to each other, some gazed intently at Teresa and the angel below, even leaning forward to get a better look. “They’re seated in theater boxes, see? They’re watching.”
It felt creepy, these eight old men witnessing such an intimate moment between Teresa and the angel. Like they were spying on her in a moment that was meant to be private.
“And we’re watching, too,” Mom said. “Bernini makes us part of the audience, by positioning us here, in between these other spectators. We are witnesses right along with them.”
“But . . . what’s happening to her?”
Mom looked at me frankly, eyebrows raised. “She’s having an orgasm.”
An orgasm. I had heard the word, of course. It had to do with sex, I knew that, but Teresa wasn’t having sex. She was fully clothed. The angel wasn’t even touching her, just her gown.
“She didn’t think of it as an orgasm, of course,” Mom went on. “She thought she was being visited by God. Which, in a manner of speaking, may have been true. Read that,” she said, gesturing to a plaque in front of the statue.
Beside me, on the left, appeared an angel in bodily form. . . . He was not tall but short, and very beautiful; and his face was so aflame that he appeared to be one of the highest rank of angels, who seem to be all on fire. . . . In his hands I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he pulled it out I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease, nor is one’s soul content with anything but God. This is not a physical but a spiritual pain, though the body has some share in it—even a considerable share.
Pain so severe that it made her moan. Sweetness caused by the pain so extreme that she never wanted it to cease. Was that an orgasm?
“When people don’t have words to describe what they’re experiencing,” Mom said, “they think it’s magic. Or mystical. Or God.”
My mother had never talked to me like this before—like a grown-up, like an equal. The subject matter was awkward and uncomfortable, but I didn’t want her to stop, so I asked a question. “Like the Greeks? The way they thought thunder was caused by Zeus?”
“Exactly. People will create an explanation for a phenomenon they don’t understand.”
“But . . . how could Teresa have . . . you know . . . without anyone touching her?”
“The female body is a powerful and wonderful thing,” she said. “Some women experience sexual climax just from thinking about it, sometimes even in dreams.”
“You think Saint Teresa had a dream? Just a . . . really vivid dream where she had an . . . orgasm?”