The Virgin Suicides

by Jeffrey Eugenides

The albums are—as we’ve listed in the Record of Physical Evidence—Songs of Faith, by Tyrone Little and the Believers, Eternal Rapture, by the Toledo Baptist Choir, and Singing Thy Praises, by the Grand Rapids Gospelers. Beams of light pierce clouds on each cover. We haven’t even played the records through once. It’s the same music we pass by on the radio, in between the Motown and rock and roll, a beacon of light in a world of darkness, and totally shitty. Choirs sing in blond voices, scales ascend toward harmonic crescendos, like marshmallow foaming into the ears. We’d always wondered who listened to such music, picturing lonely widows in rest homes, or pastors’ families passing plates of ham. Never once did we imagine those pious voices drifting up through floorboards to churchify niches where the Lisbon girls knelt to pumice calluses on their big toes.