Drowning of Stephan Jones (6 page)

“I’m pleasantly surprised to learn that you saw anybody
besides
Andy Harris,” said Judith as she stopped at the driver’s side of her aged Volvo to reach deep into her purse for ignition keys.

“Fooled you, didn’t I?” Carla laughed. “I saw Mayor Edwards with his new wife, Coach Early, Ginny and Paul Williams, Tom and Jeannette Hackett. ...”

“I wonder why it is,” Judith asked as crinkles formed over her high, cool forehead, “that if you pushed organized religion on your kids, they’d reject it, but don’t give it to them and they scream for it. Somebody please tell me why?”

The same crinkle that was on Judith’s forehead now was on Carla’s. “Oh, I don’t know, Mom, only don’t make it complicated
because it’s not! I just think that it’s time that we stopped being outsiders and joined something bigger than ourselves. This church, you’ll have to admit, is the absolute perfect church to join and Reverend Wheelwright is a real dynamo. Andy thinks he’s great. Don’t you agree?”

Judith took a right turn on Main Street, passed the town square with its garish string of alternating red and green Christmas lights, and thought once again how very dreary downtown Rachetville really was. The Atkins County Courthouse was the only nineteenth-century building in town that actually survived into the twentieth century. It was also, arguably, Rachetville’s most preserved and beautiful edifice, and the fact that the courthouse sat on a square patch of lime-green grass added to its grandeur.

Even though she was wearing her sunglasses, Judith squinted in the unaccustomed brightness of sun and snow. “Reverend Wheelwright? Believe me, you don’t want to know,” she said after a pause, “what I think.”

“I honestly don’t think you could help giving me your opinion, Mom, ’cause admit it—you’ve got more opinions than anyone I know. Why even your opinions have opinions!”

At that, Judith reacted. “All right, you asked for it, and you’re going to get it! You want to know what I think? I think he’s a living, breathing bigot who believes, or pretends to believe, that Jesus Christ whispers only in his ears. And therefore he, and only he, as Christ’s messenger, is qualified to lead all of us pathetic sinners to salvation.”

“Oh, Mother, why do you
always
do that?”

“Always do
what
?”

“See things that nobody else sees?” Carla’s voice was pitched a good half an octave higher than usual. “I never heard Reverend Wheelwright say that Jesus whispers in his ear, not once!”

“Then allow me to back up so that I may be as accurate as I
know how.” If Carla in her excitement had pitched her voice higher than usual, then Judith’s pitch seemed consciously and noticeably lower than usual. “What the good pastor said was that Jesus had spoken to him ‘in his spirit,’ telling how deeply disturbed he was by the continuing gay rights activists picketing in front of the Arkansas statehouse. So what does Jesus do? Jesus of Nazareth, Son of the Living God, bypasses the five billion people now inhabiting this globe to speak directly (via, no doubt, some great celestial eight-hundred number in the sky) to none other than our very own Reverend Roland Wheelwright. Explaining to the Reverend Wheelwright precisely what he should tell his congregation today. And so presumably he did.”

“So ... what’s wrong with that? That’s just the way preachers talk. Everybody
knows
that’s just the way they talk, only nobody else treats it all that seriously. At least nobody but you!”

Without any comment other than the tightening of her hands on the steering wheel, the librarian made a left turn into the third driveway on River Street, and in front of the freshly painted single-car garage, she cut her motor and then turned to face her daughter. “Let’s just say that I have
real
trouble believing that the only way I can get through to God is through his only son, Jesus of Nazareth, and the only way I can get on line with the son is by first going through his only earthly spokesman, Roland Wheelwright.”

The girl shook her head with clear disgust. “Oh, please ... you’re making the Baptists out to be a lot worse than they are! He can be a spokesman for Jesus without his being Jesus’
only
spokesman. Now can’t you at least admit to that?”

Judith jerked the keys from the ignition. “And did you happen to notice that the good reverend has an assistant minister named Weldner? Does that mean that you have to first go through Reverend Weldner to reach Reverend Wheelwright who will put you through to Jesus Christ who in turn will put
you through to God?”

“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this!” said Carla, who jumped out of the car and began walking double time toward the front door.

“Hey!” said Judith, racing up the front-door steps to touch her daughter’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. Really I am! I should be able to state my honest concerns without stooping to ridicule.”

“Then why do you do it, Mom,
why
?” Carla queried. “I know you believe in God because we’ve talked about it often enough! Is this ridicule only because one single nun, Sister Staten, was bad to you thirty years ago? Is that what this is all about?”

“I wish I could deny it, but I can’t. That experience certainly started my distaste for organized religion—it started my questioning the entire process. And the nuns, not just Sister Staten but
all
the nuns, insisted that we were not to reason, but we were to accept the Church and its teachings
on faith.
That’s what I was
always
taught, but it never came close to silencing the rumblings within me, the rumblings that kept asking, If God gave us the power of reason, then why would he ever want us to suspend that reason? Fish can swim better. Deer can run faster. Cats are quieter. Canaries can sing better.

“So if God gave me this one special gift, this ability to reason things out for myself, why, in God’s name, would he ever want me to suspend that reason? I went to the nuns so they could help me sew up this gaping hole in my garment of faith. But their all-too-predictable response—‘That’s only the devil talking to you, child’—never even came close to covering my spiritual nakedness.”

Judith searched her daughter’s eyes as though asking—no, begging—for understanding. “I can tell you that for the first few years at St. Joseph’s Academy—roughly from the time I was five to when I was nine or ten—I really believed that I must have been the most evil girl in the entire school. Because
you see, I simply did not love the holy sisters the way I was supposed to.”

Once inside the cheerful but old-style kitchen, the women went about their respective jobs without any unnecessary discussion. For a long time, all kitchen work had been divided roughly into two distinct categories: the creative and the noncreative. Under the creative came planning menus and making shopping lists, as well as doing the actual cooking, which was Carla’s work. She took pride in doing it because she knew she did it well. Judith never interfered and never complained, not even when an occasional disaster struck and the results were less than wonderful.

For her part, Judith always much preferred the noncreative kitchen work that she could do almost completely by rote, allowing her mind to roam free and far. Her ideal jobs, for example, were scrubbing pots and setting the table.

By the time the paprika chicken, vegetable casserole, and noodles were taken piping hot from the oven and placed on the table next to the sunny breakfast-room window, it was almost one o’clock. Both women realized that they had come about as close as they could get to having a blowup without actually having one. Arguing was a downer at any time, but on Christmas day, for both mother and daughter, it would have been almost too upsetting to contemplate.

After the main course, but before the dessert, Carla touched the napkin to her mouth before asking, “Now that you understand that your anger toward Reverend Wheelwright is merely something neurotic left over from your parochial school days, do you think we could calmly and sensibly talk about joining his church?”

Judith lifted her eyebrows. “I never said that.”

“Are you kidding? I
heard
you say it.”

“Whatever you heard, you can be certain of this: You didn’t hear me say that I have
no
objection to Mr. Wheelwright. It is
not only perfectly possible, but it is perfectly true that one could have a bad parochial school experience and still be capable of making sound, rational judgments.”

“What are you getting so testy about, Mom? I honestly don’t see anything worth getting riled up about. Only thing I can see is you ... you getting so damned worked up over ... over nothing. Nothing!”

Suddenly Judith’s eyes flashed fire and Carla could tell that she was about to receive far more of an answer than she had bargained for, far more of an answer than she had ever wanted. But then, just as Carla had emotionally buttoned herself down in preparation for the verbal assault that was a-coming, she heard her mother sigh deeply, and she knew that much of the anger had dissipated and was riding out on that sigh.

“You’re quite right, of course,” Judith admitted, “I am worked up. Things bother me that don’t seem to bother anybody else. Injustice, for example, bothers me more than I can say. And when I see a man of God standing before the altar putting homosexuals in the same category as child molesters and pornographers—well, then, I’m more than bothered. I’m angry! I’m very, very angry because a minister of God has changed before my very eyes into a peddler of hate.”

Carla shook her head no. “And there you go again, Mom! If Reverend Wheelwright was that ... that peddler of hate like you say he is, then how come only
you
saw that? Explain that to me, ’cause I’d really,
really
be interested in knowing.”

Judith shrugged. “Maybe I’m not the only one who saw it. Who knows? Maybe others saw it, too. Maybe everyone saw it. Maybe nobody saw it. But remember: An artichoke is still an artichoke regardless of how many or how few people can identify it. And hate is still hate, Carla, regardless of how many
or
how few recognize it.”

“Just stop it!” Carla jumped up from the table. “He
is
a minister of God and whether you believe it or not, ministers of
God are in the business of preaching love. Love! And another thing: Everybody respects and likes him, but with you it’s different! Are you maybe a little upset because everybody respects you, but not everybody likes you? Well, I’ve got news for you. I’m tired of you finding fault with everything normal. I don’t want to be like you, Mother. I want everybody to like me! So what if once in a while I have to pretend to like people I don’t like or pretend to dislike people that I really like. What’s the big deal? It’s just that simple: I want to be liked. Why in all of your years of living haven’t you found out what I’ve already learned: There’s nothing more important or better than being liked!”

“You don’t want to be like me ...” Judith repeated softly, looking at her daughter through eyes that were beginning to be touched by a light mist. “That’s funny, so funny” A series of low, sad chuckles seemed to originate from somewhere deep within her.

Carla looked stricken as she followed her mother from the breakfast room into the book-lined living room with its small tree aglow with miniature lights. “What’s so funny?” But when she received nothing in the way of a reply except a slow, solemn shaking of her mother’s head, she demanded, “Mother, answer me, dammit!”

“How do I begin?” asked Judith as she took a seat in the only straight-backed chair in the room. Carla was not entirely certain whether Judith was gazing upward to seek heavenly inspiration or just because she was so fond of the vibrant foliage on her ceiling wallpaper—which, she said, reminded her of a place she had always hoped to see, but never had: a tropical rain forest.

Carla sat quietly but uneasily across from her before finally asking, “Will you please tell me what you’re thinking?”

Judith sighed audibly and then her gaze dropped from tropical forests to her daughter’s eyes. “I think you should know
that I wasn’t exactly born Judith Wayland who could always be counted on to come out punching for what she believed was right. Actually, when you were a baby, I’m afraid that I more resembled a frightened mouse than a lion for truth and justice.”

“
You
a frightened mouse! You’ve got to be kidding.”

Judith’s head rose up and then slowly fell back down again. “The thing is, I was so desperate to please Roy so that you would have a father and I would have a husband that I was terrified of possessing a single opinion that wasn’t precisely
his
opinion. And that, incidentally, is not offered as an excuse, but merely as a statement of fact.

“I guess it’s time for me to speak about it. For the first year, his friends were my friends, and his enemies were my enemies. It got so that the only time I could find myself was when I looked into the mirror, and even then I wasn’t completely sure. Well, early one evening”—Judith’s voice broke and she braced herself—“one evening I was preparing dinner when the phone rang.

“To this day I don’t know what it was, but something about the ring startled me and made me jump to the terrible conclusion that there had been a death in the family. It turned out to be not a death, but it was a loss. A very great loss. Terry Burke, a friend of your father’s from work, called to tell me that Roy wasn’t coming home that night ... wasn’t coming home at all. And I shouldn’t call the police or missing persons because Roy had left of his own free will. He wanted it explained that he wasn’t even mad. I was a good woman, but that when push came to shove he didn’t want marriage, wasn’t cut out for it. He just wanted his freedom back. No hard feelings, it was just one of those things. He even made a point to remind Terry to wish me and the baby luck, the very best of luck.”

Judith turned to gaze out the kitchen window, and for a while both mother and daughter stayed quiet while listening to the melting snow make plop-plop-plopping sounds
as the droplets fell one by one into newly formed puddles. But after a while Carla spoke to the back of her mother’s head. “You never told me that.”