Airplane Rides (8 page)

“What business are you in?’ he asked, taking control of the
conversation.

I gave him my stock answer designed to prevent further
inquiry.  The effort proved ineffective and so I decided it harmless to tell
him of my meeting with Martin Bowman as it had just taken place hundreds of
miles behind us.  I took the opportunity to laugh out loud as I spoke of the
man’s discomfort and embarrassment as he ran back and forth to the men’s room.

“I guess you could say that was a two million dollar
breakfast,” I finished through a final chuckle.

“Fascinating,” said the little man. “Your compassion is
overwhelming.”

“Well, perhaps it wasn’t so funny for him.”

Seeing no need to explain myself, I quickly changed
conversational lanes.

“So what do you do?”

He paused for a moment but politely permitted the question.

“I’m a minister.”

He watched me carefully and smiled slightly as my eyes widened.

“Really?”

“Really,” the man confirmed, mocking my surprise.

I enjoyed that he had descended from his altar enough to
demonstrate his conversational gamesmanship.  I examined him sideways to
confirm that he wasn’t pulling my leg.  He caught the look and in response
extracted a worn brown leather business card case from his front pant pocket. 
He handed me a white card with a red flame and crucifix in the upper left
corner.  Along the bottom was his contact information at a church in Los
Angeles.

“Where’s your outfit?” I asked, motioning to my collar.

“You’re thinking of priests.”

I let it go, noting his decision to correct my impression
rather than answer my question.

“So what kind of minister are you?”

“I’m a Senior Minister in the Methodist Church.”

“What do I call you?”

“You can call me Daniel,” he replied, again enjoying my
surprise.

“Father Daniel?”

“Just Daniel is fine.”

“Been at it a long time?”

“Over thirty-five years,” he replied, marking himself older
than I had guessed.

“The church must be paying well these days?” I asked
rhetorically, referring to our first class status. The capitalist in me would
never have forgiven myself for not putting it out there.

Daniel reached over and patted my forearm the way a father
might an incorrigible son.

“I have a friend in New York who arranged the trip,” Daniel
replied, permitting the inquiry.

“Some friend, making you connect in Chicago.”

I looked Daniel over again, leaning in to see if I could feel
the radiance of his goodness.  Maybe there was something, but I couldn’t be
sure.

“Do you give mass?”

“Every Sunday,” he replied, nodding his head with solid
affirmation.

“Do you enjoy that?”

“Sometimes,” he responded with a chuckle.

“Do you give confession?” I asked, my eyebrows probably halfway
up my forehead.

Daniel laughed out loud at the transparency of my inquiry.

“Methodists don’t have formal confession the way Catholics do,
but I have counseled many people who have come to me with their problems.”

“Then how does the whole absolution thing work?”

“God forgives those who ask for it, regardless of ceremony,”
Daniel responded with almighty patience.

We were interrupted by the flight attendant who was balancing a
cocktail glass on a small silver tray, announcing the contents as she placed it
on my armrest.

“Stolichnaya rocks,” she proclaimed, as though it were a party
guest I hadn’t yet been introduced to.

“As much as it may look as though I need this, I didn’t order
it,” I stated, politely rejecting what I knew was probably an excellent
suggestion.

The flight attendant looked at me blankly and without
acknowledging the mistake picked up the glass and moved it to the same position
one row back.

I returned to Daniel, trying to regain the momentum.

“How many people are in your congregation?” I asked, trying not
to sound overly focused on market share.

“We have about seven hundred people.”

“Is that a lot?” I asked, looking for a benchmark.

“Not really, business is not so good,” he replied, graciously
speaking my language.

“Why is that?”

“I expect it’s because people are less certain about why they
want faith to be a part of their lives.”

His delivery was laced with understanding.

“This must be frustrating for you?”

“Not really.  Religious faith is very abstract and life is
filled with tangible distractions.”

Once again I found myself holding my tongue.

“Does this affect how you feel about being a minister?”

“I love my job, if that is what you are asking,” he retorted.

“What I am asking is, has it ever caused you to question your
own faith?” I responded, perhaps more directly than he was accustomed to.

“No way you’re sidestepping this one,” I thought to myself.

Daniel paused and his eyes narrowed as I watched him, waiting
for the response.

“Yes, something happened that caused me to rethink things,” he
replied.

“Will you tell me what it was?”

Daniel folded his hands across his lap and let out a sigh that
sounded like a door opening to a difficult memory.

“A woman in our congregation came to me to let me know that she
was leaving the parish.  She had been with us for twelve years and I was surprised,”
he stated honestly.

“Did you ask her why?”

“I did,” replied Daniel. “She told me that she was looking for
something different.”

“What does that mean?”

“I wasn’t sure, but it was something different from what our
parish offered,” he replied helplessly.

“Did you take this personally?”

Daniel sat back in his seat and once again gave me his patient
smile.

“Of course not.”

I didn’t believe him, but pushed on anyway.

“So where is the part about questioning your faith?”

I suspected that the story had been a diversion to buy time.  I
waited patiently, respectfully giving him the room to continue.

“About two weeks later, I received a phone call.  A young girl
from our congregation had committed suicide,” Daniel said heavily.

“Nothing abstract about that. How old was she?”

“Sixteen.”

“Did she have problems?” I asked, giving him the opportunity to
point me in the direction of the various unspoken.

“No,” he replied, as if it were a question he had asked himself
a thousand times.

I sensed the older man’s difficulty and called a time-out.  I
hailed the flight attendant and requested a couple of vodkas, figuring that
Daniel could use the hard stuff.  The woman returned in a first class minute
with her little silver tray.

“I don’t really drink.”

“Sure you do,” I replied, lifting my glass to him.

Daniel lifted his glass hesitantly to the same height.

“Believe me, it will help,” I offered reassuringly.

We each took a sip and carefully set the glasses down before
returning to eye contact.

“Very strong,” he said through contorted lips.

“Sometimes it’s not strong enough.”

“How do you know she didn’t have any problems?”

“Well I agree with your implication that there must have been
something or she would not have taken her own life.  I understand that.  What I
know is that she was an honor student and that she didn’t take drugs. She
attended mass every Sunday with both of her parents. Everything seemed fine.”

“How did she kill herself?”

“She hung herself.”

“Did she say why?”

“Not exactly. There was no note.  In fact, she had meticulously
cleaned and organized her room.  She even did her homework!”

“So what does ‘not exactly’ mean?”

“She left a journal that her mother found,” Daniel replied
cautiously.

I listened to his thoughts and heard him question the lines of
confidentiality.

“How well did you know her?” I asked, bringing it back to him
and testing for his discomfort with the direction.

“She was very involved with the church,” he explained.
“Community projects, fundraisers, those kinds of things.”

“Was she also of Japanese descent?” I asked, trying not to
suggest it made the connection any greater.

“Yes,” he replied, without taking any apparent offense.

“Did she ever approach you with any of the things that might
have been troubling her?”

“Not at all. In fact we spoke the day before she died. It was
on Sunday and I had just finished giving mass.  I was standing in the entrance
to the church and saying goodbye to people as they were leaving.  I remember
very clearly putting my hands on her shoulders while talking to her and her
parents.  Everything seemed fine, and yet she already knew what she was going
to do,” he concluded, shaking his head at his confusion.

I let him sit with his thoughts for a moment while I sorted out
his story.  I felt a little guilty about having treated him rudely, and wanted
to make it up to him.

“So what did she say in the journal?”

Daniel pressed his lips together in thought, developing the
paraphrase.

“It said she was missing something that caused her sadness.”

“Missing what?”

“She didn’t know.  Something was just missing, a void that left
her unhappy.”

There was a sadness of his own that tugged at the corners of
his eyes and mouth.

“So what about the departure of these two people makes you
question your faith?”

Again Daniel pursed his lips, but this time with more
introspection.  He took a sip of his drink to clear his throat and then turned
to face me.

“I guess I question why these people didn’t find what they were
looking for in my parish.”

I tried to hide my smile as the words rushed to the back of my
lips.

“So this is about your job.”

“These events don’t make me not like my job,” he responded with
less grace than he had previously displayed.

“Perhaps, but you are questioning whether you’re any good at it
because you lost a few customers.”

Daniel was not accustomed to being spoken to so bluntly, and I
reminded myself to be more delicate.

“You’re an interesting man,” Daniel said to me, letting the
sting of my statement wear off.

“How so?” I asked, permitting the conversational offensive.  It
was the least I could do, considering he was a man of God.

“You are unencumbered by the feelings of others.”

“Are we back on the guy from this morning or are we talking
about you?”

“Neither, the statement was about you.”

“And why would you find that interesting?”

“It just seems I keep running into that.”

“Maybe I can be a bit direct but…”

“I was talking about people who have stopped caring.”

There was a deafening pause between us while the question of my
hopelessness returned to mind.

“Let’s get back to what we have a prayer of fixing here. A
woman leaves your parish, worse yet a young girl commits suicide, and you start
questioning your faith.  I can’t help but think it sounds more like your
confidence is shaken.”

Daniel did not respond, and I could feel him drifting away.

“So the good news is you’re not questioning your faith, only
yourself,” I said trying to pull him back into the conversation.

Daniel remained silent, doing his best to appear unaffected as
I searched for ammunition.

“Say you’re a surgeon instead of a minister and a patient dies
on your operating table. Do you suddenly question your ability to preserve
life?”

“How is that relevant?”

“How is it not?  The surgeon heals the body and you, the soul.
Odds are, either of you is going to lose a patient once in a while,” I replied,
intentionally trying to shake the ego off his back with my words.

While I waited for the statement to sink in, a small lightning
bolt hit my brain.

“Daniel, why are you going to New York?”

Daniel turned and faced me, his eyes admitting what he had
omitted earlier.

“I need some time to think about my role in the church.”

“Thinking about giving up?” I asked in a hushed tone.

Daniel’s irritation with my inquiry was about to boil over.

“Why is this important to you?  Will you be making jokes about
my problem like you did about the man this morning?” he asked with more
skepticism than I thought a minister was allowed.

“Not at all…” I found myself searching for the words to
explain. “If I didn’t care I wouldn’t ask.”

The implications of my own statement flooded my brain and
warmed me like the blanket the gate attendant had promised.  I reached over and
gave his forearm a friendly squeeze.

“Because if someone like you loses faith, where in this hell
would that leave someone like me?  Take your walk, clear your head and go back
to your church.”

I followed my driver through the airport exit, across the
drop-off lanes and out into the parking structure.  The driver hit the alarm
and popped the trunk on a late model back DeVille using the remote from about
twenty-five feet out.  Comfortably tucked into the rear with my bag in the
trunk, I settled into the soft back leather seat and turned my thoughts to the
evening ahead, but uneasy about the intentions of my new acquaintance.  As we
circled through the lot towards the garage exit, I saw Daniel standing on the
curb in front of baggage claim.

“Swing around, I want to give a friend a ride.”

I nodded, confirming for myself that it was time well spent.

The driver obeyed, continuing through the exit toll and
circling back to the main departure loop.  I twisted around, trying to keep
Daniel in my sights, losing him several times behind passing buses and shuttle
vans.