“I gotta go. I think Brett’s here.”
“You think or you know?”
“I think I hear his truck.”
“You think?”
“Yeah. I gotta go.”
Jamie dropped the phone on the ground and watched as the cord retracted, pulling the receiver toward the wall. It would have been easy to have tricked herself into thinking that a spirit was pulling the cord. But she didn’t.
Jamie took the carton of ice cream into the TV room and watched The $10,000 Pyramid. (The day before she had been watching the same show, eating out of the same carton of ice cream, when her father had come into the room. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he had said, as he kissed the top of Ja
mie’s head, “we’ll get over this.” He had been talking about Lacey but Jamie, for once, hadn’t thought of Lacey that morning. In fact, she had stopped doing the triple count.
Her thoughts had turned to herself, to what she planned to eat and how fat she feared she was becoming. By the time Betty came home from the exorcist search, The $10,000 Pyramid was long over and Jamie had watched Pass-word, Treasure Hunt, Match Game ’76, and The Joker’s Wild.
“Helloooo,” Betty called.
In the kitchen Jamie found her mother standing with a man who looked as old and shriveled as a troll. She wanted to ask her mother if she had found the man under a bridge.
He wore a long black robe and a stiff, fabric hat, like what an organ-grinding monkey might wear. His eyes were a phlegm-blue, like an old dog’s eyes. There was a large wooden cross hanging from his neck, the ends of which bulged into bulbous geometric flowers. In his left hand he held what appeared to be a wrought-iron lantern on a chain.
In his right hand was a Bible.
“This is Father Telamon,” Betty said. “He’s going to do the exorcism.”
Father Telamon nodded his head up and down and up and down. He shuffled toward Jamie, put the Bible on the counter, and laid a hand on Jamie’s shoulder. His fingernails were long and mostly gray, although his thumbnail was black.
“Neh,” he said with a heavy accent.
“Father Telamon is from the Greek Orthodox church,” Betty said. “They don’t speak any English during their services. In fact, I don’t think any of the twelve or so members of the church can speak English.” Betty seemed excited to share this fact with Jamie.
“Amazing,” Jamie said flatly. She was glad Tammy and Debbie were no longer hanging out at her house. She didn’t want to view this scene through their eyes.
“Neh,” Father Telamon said.
“Should I show you around before you start?” Betty’s smile reminded Jamie of the stewardesses in the Pan Am commercials.
“Neh,” Father Telamon said.
Jamie waited in the kitchen, eating cherries, while Betty took the priest on a tour. She could hear her mother’s voice as they entered the dining room, then listened to it fade out as if it were a dimming radio signal as Betty took Father Telamon up the stairs. Ten minutes later, Betty’s voice came into the background—the radio signal returned. Jamie wondered if the father had ever uttered a word.
“Look!” Betty entered the kitchen holding up a Ouija board game in one hand and a pack of tarot cards in the other.
“You’re gonna play Ouija board with him?” Jamie spit a cherry pit into the hole of her fist.
“Diablos!” Father Telamon said, pointing at the game.
“I’m not exactly sure what he said,” Betty smiled at the priest before continuing, “but I think we summoned the bad spirits into the house with the Ouija board.”
“Renee and I must have played that a thousand times.
You think there are a thousand bad spirits in the house?”
“Diablos!” Father Telamon repeated.
Betty and Jamie followed Father Telamon outside to the pool. He pointed at a boulder. Jamie and her mother both leaned in and examined the boulder as if something might pop out of it.
Father Telamon snatched the game and cards from Betty
and placed them on the boulder. He put his Bible and lantern on the ground, pulled a small silver vial from his pocket, and dumped the contents on the cards and game.
Jamie never saw him light a match; it seemed as if the flames appeared by magic, licking the game and bending the loose cards into arcs that slowly dissolved to ash. Father Telamon’s lantern appeared lit suddenly too. It began to spew more smoke than the burning games. Father Telamon waved the smoking lantern over the flames and chanted in Greek.
“Put your hands in the prayer position,” Betty said, and she nudged Jamie.
Jamie placed her palms together and stared at the fire on the boulder. Father Telamon didn’t seem aware of Jamie or Betty; he chanted in a way that made Jamie think that perhaps his spirit had gone astray and this noise he was making was the elevator Muzak in his body. Jamie wanted to laugh, but her mother’s rigid face told her she wasn’t even allowed to smile.
Just when Jamie felt as if her knees would buckle from standing still so long, Father Telamon waved the lantern back and forth and marched into the house, continuing his chants. Betty and Jamie followed him, their hands still folded in prayer, their eyes and heads darting around as they went from room to room accompanied by a trail of pungent, woodsy smoke. Father Telamon even went into the kitchen pantry, opening the boxes of cookies and crackers, and the lid to every spice jar, to smoke out the spirits hiding there. Jamie’s mouth dropped open, her body on the verge of cracking apart with laughter. Betty plunged the nib of her pump into the top of Jamie’s foot until Jamie’s face went still and somber.
Eventually, they followed Father Telamon back out to the pool again, where the Ouija board and tarot cards were a smoldering gray pile, layered like feathery dead birds.
Father Telamon walked down to the shallow end of the pool, Bible and smoking lantern in hand, and descended the steps in his robe. He walked until he was hip deep in water, the skirt of his robe swimming up around him like an oil spill. He placed the lantern on the side of the pool and turned to Betty and Jamie.
“Come,” he said.
“Should we change?” Betty pointed down at her skirt.
“Ohkee!”
“No need to yell.” Betty smiled as she spoke, then turned to Jamie and said, “Remember this for when you go backpacking abroad: the Greek word for no sounds like okay, and the Greek word for yes sounds like nah.”
“Okay.” Jamie smirked, then took her mother’s hand as they walked down the steps into the pool—Betty in her yellow pumps and Jamie in flip-flops and shorts. They stopped and stood before Father Telamon. He wasn’t much taller than Betty, but somehow, to Jamie, he suddenly seemed huge.
Father Telamon turned toward Jamie and made the sign of the cross on her face, shoulders, and chest with a corner of his Bible while continuing to chant in Greek. Without missing a note in his prayer he handed the Bible to Betty, grabbed Jamie by the shoulder and the top of the head, and flipped her, head back, into the water. Jamie gasped and snorted. The water burned her throat and sinuses. When her head popped up, seconds later, she was coughing and blowing water out her nose. Jamie shook her ears clear, then glared at her mother. Betty refused to meet her daughter’s
stare; instead, she passed her the Bible and then gazed up at Father Telamon before submitting to him as he dunked her backward into the water. When she emerged, Betty was smiling.
Betty threw rainbow-colored pool towels onto the kitchen floor to absorb the water dripping from Father Telamon’s robe, Jamie’s shorts, and her own secretary uniform.
“Were we baptized?” Jamie asked.
“We were baptized,” Betty said.
“Dad’s gonna kill you.” Jamie finally let a laugh fly out, and she wondered who would find the baptism as funny as she? Certainly not Renee; Renee would be angry at having been excluded. (When Renee was feeling particularly penned-in by the oddity of the family she would threaten to become a born-again Christian.) Flip wouldn’t have found it funny—he loved Betty too much and thought everything she did was cool. But, Jamie reminded herself, Flip would never know since Jamie couldn’t imagine speaking to him for many, many years. And Tammy and Debbie? They probably wouldn’t laugh. When it came to God they were both as rigid as a cross.
For a moment, while Jamie watched her mother bending over straight-legged, mopping up a trail of water, as the priest sat on the kitchen stool and fiddled with the chain on his lantern, Jamie felt completely alone—stranded in her own, small life like an undiscovered island.
“Don’t tell your father we did this.” Betty scooped up some wet towels, threw them into a corner and took her place behind the kitchen counter.
“I’ve barely seen Dad lately,” Jamie said.
“I hope you like omelets,” Betty said to the priest. Jamie had the feeling that her mother never felt properly connected with anyone unless they ate together. If her mother could cook for the world, there would be no wars.
Father Telamon put down his lantern and smiled. He appeared to be a different man than the troll who had entered the house an hour earlier. This Father Telamon looked like he’d want to play Bingo and do the Hokey-Pokey. Jamie sat on the stool beside him, her legs sticky and wet, the crotch of her damp shorts feeling rashy already.
“Do you mind if I change?” Jamie asked her mother.
“Don’t change!” Betty moved in fast motion, whipping eggs, laying out bacon on the grill, buttering toast to be cooked in the broiler. She even pulled out the juicer and began slicing oranges in half, rather than simply pouring orange juice from the carton in the fridge.
“Nothing better than breakfast foods for dinner,” Betty said.
“It’s only four,” Jamie said.
“Early dinner.”
“Good,” Father Telamon said.
“Why can’t I get changed?” Jamie worried about pimples blooming on her behind. Butt acne, Jamie thought, would change the baptism from funny to tragic.
“If Father Telamon is wet, then we’ll be wet.” Betty trained her eyes on Jamie for an extra second before turning to grab a spatula.
As soon as Betty picked up her keys to drive Father Telamon back to his church, Jamie ran upstairs and changed into dry clothes. The house felt the same as it had before
the exorcism: same air, same sunlight, same quietness. She looked in the bathroom mirror and studied her face to see if the baptism had given her some glow that would radiate out her ears, nostrils, or eyes. As far as Jamie could tell, she was identical to the person she had been that morning.
Jamie decided she would break her ban on calling Debbie and Tammy and went downstairs to the kitchen to phone them one last time. Maybe they’d be so curious about the exorcism and baptism that they’d paddle across the sea that seemed to separate them and dock on the island of Jamie.
“Is Debbie home from the beach yet?” she asked Debbie’s mother.
“She’s here,” her mother said. “They’ve been here all day.”
Tammy answered Debbie’s phone, giggling.
“Debbie’s busy,” she said. “I was sent in her place.”
“What’s so funny?”
“You’d have to be here,” Tammy said. “It’s too hard to explain.”
“So the house was exorcised by this old Greek priest,” Jamie said.
“Did your head spin around? Did you vomit pea soup?”
“Is that what happens in the movie?”
“Yeah. It was gross.”
“No, he just walked around with stuff burning in this lantern and chanted a lot. But guess what.”
“What?”
“I was baptized.”
“But you’re Jewish.”
“Just my dad.”
“I know, but I thought your mom was an atheist, so that meant that you’re Jewish.”
“It means I’m half Jewish and half athiest.”
“No. Because one plus zero equals one. So if your mom’s nothing, that’s zero, if your dad’s Jewish, that’s one. So Jewish plus atheist equals Jewish.”
“Religion isn’t math, Tammy. Besides, I think I’m technically Greek Orthodox now.”
“That is so freaky.”
“What exactly does it mean if you’re baptized? Does it mean bad spirits can’t enter your body or something?”
“It means if you die you go to heaven.”
“So if I hadn’t been baptized I’d go to hell?”
“Absolutely.”
“You can’t say absolutely. I mean, we won’t know for sure until it’s too late to tell anyone else. I mean, how could anyone ever prove this?”
“God knows. Jesus knows.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If you don’t believe in it just think of it as insurance, you know, just in case.”
“But wait a minute. If it’s true, then when my mom and I die, we’re going to a different place than my dad and my sister.”
“Would you really want to spend an eternity with your sister?”
“No way.”
“So you’re lucky then. And you’ll be with me and Debbie too!”
“How come you guys didn’t go to the beach?”
“I dunno. There were no waves today so everyone just wanted to hang out by the pool.”
“Why is he called Scooter Ray? Why not just Scooter?”
“I dunno. I gotta go.” Voices clacked in the background as if a mob had just entered the room.
“Who else is there? Is that Flip?”
“Yeah, I guess he’s here too.”
“With Terry?”
“I’m telling you, you’d like her if you knew her,” Tammy whispered. “Why don’t you just get over yourself and move on.”
“Fine. I’ll go out with Scooter.”
“Too late for that. He’s here with Kim Redson.” Tammy was still whispering.
“What? He was available five hours ago.”
“I know. They hooked up at the beach this morning, then they came over here and they’re, like, totally in love already.”
“That’s insane.”
“Well, who knows if it will last through Friday.”
“So, is she going camping with you now?”
“Yeah. She said she is.”
“Is Flip going?”
Tammy sighed. Jamie thought she could feel the wind from Tammy’s breath through the phone lines—it pushed at her as if she’d been hit with a bag of laundry.
“Can I talk to Debbie?” Jamie asked.
“She’s busy, Jamie. We’re all busy. Why don’t you call back later, okay?”