Can I Get An Amen? (22 page)

“In the general area,” I said. “Maybe near Kat’s.” From Mark’s description of his neighborhood, I figured he wasn’t more than a fifteen-minute ride from my sister’s place.

“So,” started Mark, “are you still in contact with your ex-husband?” He had made the uncomfortable segue to my divorce.

“We aren’t on terrible terms or anything, but I haven’t really spoken with him much.” I thought for a moment, my hands dug deep into my pockets. “I wouldn’t call us friends yet.”

Mark hesitated. “If you don’t mind my asking, what happened?”

It was the question I had been dreading, but coming from him it somehow seemed neutered. It was as though my fear had magnified it so much that when it was actually asked, I was prepared. Confronting the beast in the flesh was sometimes easier than confronting it in your mind.

I watched my feet as I spoke, avoiding the cracks in the concrete. “Gary really wanted children,” I started. It was the first
time I had spoken his name to Mark. “But we had a lot of trouble conceiving. We just couldn’t.” I kept my focus on the ground. “
I
couldn’t.”

“And so he left you?” asked Mark, with a deep furrow in his brow.

“I mean, I guess that’s the story. But it’s probably not that simple.” I watched my breath cloud in front of me before continuing. “I think Gary and I seemed right for each other on paper, but something was… missing.”

It was hard to describe what that something was. Gary and I had loved each other; at least we did when we got married. But I had begun to realize that I loved the idea of Gary more than I loved Gary. And maybe it was the same for him. We each had all the résumé points the other was looking for, but somehow they never exactly added up.

Mark took my hand and pulled us gently to a stop. I expected the standard follow-up questions, on why we didn’t adopt, what else we had tried, but he just brought his hand to my chin and studied my face for a moment before he kissed me.

We stood there, our faces flushed with the cold, our noses and cheeks red, our warm breath mixing with the winter air, and just kissed.

Later on, I would remember that night as the night I fell in love with him. It was what everyone and everything had told me not to do, the classic mistake after a divorce or breakup, falling in love with the first guy you meet.
Don’t look for your self-worth in another man! You need to reconnect with you!
shouted all the books, shouted reason and logic and good judgment.

But maybe it’s fate,
I whispered back. Now, of course, I’m certain it was, though for quite different reasons.

. . .

“You’re home late,” said my mother. I hadn’t expected her to be awake, but she was sitting in the living room in her bathrobe, her feet propped up on an ottoman. The only illumination in the room came from the blue glow of the TV, which frenetically cast and then withdrew light from the dark room. The volume was so low that it was almost inaudible. She wasn’t watching TV; it was just keeping her company.

“Yeah, I had plans after work.” I hadn’t thought to let her know; I never did when it was Luke or Kat or Jill that I was with.

“With who?” she asked. She looked tired, too tired to fight.

“A guy I met.”

I waited for her reaction. It was her reflex to disapprove, to assume that no man I found would be good enough, smart enough,
Christian
enough. That was the one chink in Gary’s armor with my parents—he wasn’t a devout Christian. He was brought up Catholic and attended Mass on major holidays, but that was it. And though she would never say it, I’m sure she believed that was why he was capable of leaving, because he was somehow corrupted. And he was corrupted because he was corruptible.

“What did y’all do?” asked my mother.

Though I could have and should have lied, though I knew what I was about to start, I told her the truth. “We went to dinner.” I dropped my bag by the couch. “And then we went to watch a group of Buddhist monks perform these chants.”

She brought her hands to her face and covered her eyes. “Ellen!” she gasped. “Why would you drink from another well when you have the everlasting spring of the Holy Spirit living in you!”

I felt a surge of what closely resembled satisfaction. That was
why I told her, because I knew that she was going to say something like that: a dogmatic, overblown line that made Christianity sound small and petty and insecure.

“Mom, please,” I scoffed, “there is nothing wrong with listening to Buddhists chanting. Didn’t you hear the sermon yesterday in church? Wasn’t it about acceptance and tolerance?”

She was on her feet. “Ellen, that’s not what Reverend Blanchard meant and you know it! I just don’t know why you would open yourself up to that!”

“Listen, Mom. It’s a part of their culture. It was a performance. They weren’t signing up new monks or anything.”

She propped her hand on her hip. “So, what is this
guy
you’re dating, a Buddhist?”

“No, Mom,” I said. “He’s not a Buddhist. He was a religion minor in college.”

She acted like I had just punched her in the stomach and she gripped the side of the chair for support. “Jesus,” she muttered, not as an expletive but as the beginning of a prayer.

“Good night, Mom,” I said, rolling my eyes. My mother could always be counted on to do what we expected. She was a familiar, exasperating constant.

. . .

“Ellen,” called my mother as I rushed out the door for work, “remember you need to come with me to the airport on Friday.” Aunt Kathy was flying in from California later that week, and my mother, who hated to park at Newark airport, insisted that I circle the terminal while she went in. “So don’t make any plans with that
Buddhist
.” That was what Mark was now known as, “the Buddhist.” After a few attempts to set her straight, I had thrown in the towel.

“I know, Mom. I got it,” I said.

“I mean it, Ellen. I don’t want to leave my car there for even a minute. The
Ledger
ran a story just the other day about how Newark leads the nation in car thefts.”

“You told me.” Aunt Kathy would be staying for three weeks, spending Christmas and New Year’s with us while her husband, a retired naval captain, went on a sailing trip down the coast of Central America with his brother. Aunt Kathy’s only child, my cousin Libby, was married to a Swede and living in Stockholm.

. . .

Mark and I were having a quick lunch on Wednesday; then we would see each other again Saturday night. I was planning on taking him into New York, where we would meet Luke and Mitch for a drink after, as Luke had suggested, going to the Pierre-Alain Rigauraut exhibition at the MoMA.

“Are you sure that’s a good date idea, Luke? I mean, I don’t exactly frequent museums.”

“So?”

“So it just feels a little fake. A little not me.”

“You don’t have to pretend to be Peggy Guggenheim. And who cares if the only reason you are going is because Mark will be with you?” His voice took on a dreamy quality. “Relationships should get us outside of our own little worlds.”

I smiled. I knew how much Luke loved Mitch. He had been reading more, recommending books to me that Mitch had suggested to him. Mitch was bringing out the best in Luke.

“You’re right,” I agreed.

At lunch I told Mark about our plans. “I thought we could go
into the city,” I said, as I tried to eat my Reuben, thinking that it was a poor choice. No man should see you eat a Reuben until after you’ve slept together. “There is supposed to be a great exhibition at the MoMA; then we could meet my brother and his boyfriend for drinks.”

“Oh, the Rigauraut thing.”

“Yeah,” I said, impressed that he had known about it.

He popped a potato chip in his mouth. “I’m meeting the family, huh?” he teased.

“Is that weird?” I asked self-consciously. I knew that we hadn’t been together long, if we were even officially together. “It’s just that Luke is great, and Mitch is great, and I think you’d really like them.”

“Relax,” he said, rubbing my knee. “I’d love to meet your brother. Hey, invite your parents!”

Though he was joking, I gave my usual disclaimer regarding my parents. “All right. I just hope you like talking about Jesus.”

“Oh, are they Christians?” he asked. In my experience, people only ever asked this question in one of two ways: with Moonie-like enthusiasm that they’d found some like-minded soul, or with a combination of disbelief and disdain, similar to the way you might ask someone if they’d just farted. But Mark seemed entirely neutral.

“Yeah, you could say that,” I said sarcastically.

“Are
you
?” he asked. Shockingly, no one had ever really asked me that before, not in any meaningful way. An assumption was always made one way or the other, depending on the audience. My friends and peers marveled at how I managed to escape indoctrination, while my parents’ set—the Arnolds, Donaldsons, and the like—assumed I shared my parents’ views. I had never
been called upon to communicate the complex and personal matter of my faith and consequently had no idea how to answer. So I answered honestly, taking a deep breath first.

“I don’t know what I am.” Mark looked at me as if he understood entirely. “But my mother calls you
the Buddhist
,” I added, seeking to bring some levity back to the conversation, to move away from the more weighty side of faith and religion.

“The Buddhist?” He laughed. “Why, because of the monks?”

I nodded. Mark looked at me, shaking his head and quietly laughing, as if it was funnier than I even knew.

A
unt Kathy was already waiting by the curbside pickup of Terminal C when we pulled up. The moment she and my mother made eye contact, they screamed like teenagers. My mother swung open the door before I had even come to a complete stop and hopped out of the car to embrace her sister. They stood there, not even speaking, just gripping each other like they couldn’t let go.

I rolled down the passenger’s side window. “Come on, you two,” I called. A police car idled behind us, monitoring the area.

“Ellen, honey,” said Aunt Kathy, bustling over to my side of the car and giving me a kiss through the window. “I am so sorry about everything with Gary.” I hadn’t seen Aunt Kathy since before the divorce.

“Thanks, Aunt Kathy.” A gray minivan flew by us and came within inches of Aunt Kathy, whose rear end was nearly in the next lane. “Oh my God!” I said, as air currents from the traffic whipped my hair around my face. “Just get in the car.”

Aunt Kathy and my mother sat together in the backseat
while I played chauffeur. They had a routine every time Kathy came to visit, which involved stopping first at White Castle for mini-cheeseburgers, then going to a liquor store to buy a bottle of Absolut Peppar. My mother wasn’t much of a drinker, but she and Aunt Kathy always had Bloody Marys whenever they got together. They had been doing it for almost forty years, ever since my father—who had been down in Georgia working on the Holster Dam—got a call from a friend who had a job for him, something to do with real estate development, up in New Jersey.

Aunt Kathy was a little plumper than my mother, with big, country-western blond hair and a new set of breast implants. “Feel ’em,” she urged me in a southern accent that had stayed even more pronounced than my mother’s, plunging her chest forward. “They feel just like real tits.” This was Aunt Kathy’s shtick; she played at being the bawdy broad, but underneath she was just as much a prude as my mother. Though she had always been the less inhibited of the two, she was just as devout a Christian.

I looked at Aunt Kathy’s protruding bosom in the rearview mirror. “Maybe when I’m not doing eighty down Route 78.”

“You’re going eighty!” gasped my mother. “Slow down; the police are all over this road and you still have Massachusetts plates. They’d just love to get an out-of-stater.”

My mother seemed instantly reinvigorated by Kathy’s presence, as did her appetite. “Just go through the drive-through,” she ordered when I pulled into the parking lot of White Castle, the fast-food chain whose outlets looked, indeed, like small white castles. “And get maybe eighteen, half without mustard and onion and half with.”

“Good Lord, Patty!” said Aunt Kathy, laughing. “I’m not going to eat
nine
cheeseburgers!”

“Well, we’ll just bring ’em home,” said my mother. “Roger’ll eat ’em.”

“Mom, leftover White Castle burgers are kind of disgusting.”

She crossed her arms, acting like everyone was spoiling her fun. “Fine. Just get twelve.”

Like a carpooling parent, I grabbed the huge grease-spotted bag from the drive-up window and passed the order to the backseat.

“Now, tell me again, when is Eugene White speaking?” asked Aunt Kathy between bites.

“The twenty-seventh,” answered my mother.

“I can’t wait to hear him again,” said Aunt Kathy. “You know I saw him that time when Bill and I were in Sacramento. Must have been about eight years ago now.”

“I remember,” said my mother, nodding as she blotted her still-chewing mouth with a napkin. “I wonder if he’ll be as good as he was back then. I’ve heard he’s changed since he’s become so successful.”

“Isn’t that a shame,” said Aunt Kathy, leaning over the napkin that was spread across her lap, a diminutive burger in her hands. “You know, I think Warren Allen is another one that’s getting a little big for his britches.” From overhearing my mother’s twice-daily phone conversations with Aunt Kathy, I knew that Warren Allen was the minister at the megachurch that Aunt Kathy attended in Orange County. “I heard from the church secretary that he’s been talking to the Christian Broadcasting Network.” Kathy and my mother both adopted the same resigned but knowing expression. They had seen it all before, the engulfing power of even just a little fame.

My mother and her sister grew up in the Pentecostal tradition,
the two daughters of a well-known but poor minister who often traveled to perform faith healings at revivals. “Everybody knew Daddy,” my mother used to say about the grandfather that I never knew. “He healed half the state of Georgia.” As the story went, as my grandfather’s acclaim grew, so did his legalism. “We weren’t allowed to wear makeup or cut our hair,” my mother had once told me. “He wanted us in skirts.” He became stricter and stricter, leaving his congregation for their inability to separate themselves from sin, and eventually alienating his wife, my grandmother. Though they never divorced, they lived separately for the last few years of his life. She moved out to take care of her dying father; after he passed, she remained living with her mother. “All he saw was sin,” my mother had said. “It eventually drove him out of his mind.” He died alone at the age of fifty-one of a brain aneurism. My mother was twenty-five.