The Good Atheist (29 page)

Forty-five minutes later we reached a high-rise apartment complex facing Central Park. The park came into view as our car swung around, then ascended rapidly straight up. We came to a stop at a dizzying height hundreds of feet off the ground and backed towards the building. I hoped someone remembered to open the garage door. It was a long way down if we had an accident. The dark interior of the parking bay slowly engulfed us as the driver expertly backed in.

Once fully inside, the limo settled to the floor, and we got out. We were in a small parking bay. There were slips for four other limousines, but only two of them were occupied. A sleek white limo sat next to us, almost as long as ours.

Our limo lifted up and exited the parking bay. I never did get a glimpse of the chauffeur. Haddie led the way through a steel doorway and down a hall to a set of elevators. She punched some numbers into a keypad beside the door, and we got in. The elevator shot upwards, and we watched the floor numbers above the door scroll higher. A few seconds later the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened.

The first thing I noticed was the black marble floor. It shone like a mirror and looked like it had never been walked on. The entire far wall was glass from floor to ceiling with a view of the city that took my breath away. A huge white sectional couch and white cushioned chairs sat next to the windows. They looked like real leather, and given the obvious wealth of the owner, probably were. There was a glass-topped coffee table with a silver-colored frame between the couch and chairs.

Dad and Haddie kicked off their shoes and walked in. I followed suit and walked across the floor in my socks. It felt like I could skate on the smooth floor, and if my mood had been lighter I probably would have tried.

There was an alcove with a kitchenette that had a fridge, stove, food replicator, and an island counter surrounded by tall stools. Haddie went towards it. “I’ll put on some coffee. I hope you both plan on staying up for a bit. I know I can’t sleep.”

That worked for me. This was the first time I’d seen Dad since I was eight, and my mind swirled with questions, my emotions on a roller coaster. Sleep was the last thing on my mind.

I crossed the floor towards the picture window and took in the view. It overlooked Central Park, and we were at eye level with the tops of the surrounding towers. We were in a penthouse suite, in one of the richest neighborhoods on the planet. I looked around the place, taking in the richness of their ‘safe house’. Chauffeurs. Limousines. Luxury Manhattan apartments. “Tough life you’ve got here, Dad. If this is what life is like for intellectual anarchists in hiding, I’m going to have to consider converting.”

Dad chuckled and took a seat at the end of a sectional. “It’s not mine. Our accommodations are usually much more…modest. It belongs to a friend who’s letting us stay here while he is out of the country.”

“Nice friends. You have an interesting way of hiding.”

He looked around. “We’ve been enjoying it, but we can’t stay much longer. We have to move around a lot to stay ahead of the Inquisitors.”

I turned back towards the window and thought about my next words. Small talk at a time like this felt pretty lame. There were so many questions, so much history to get caught up on. He seemed to be as much at a loss for words as I was. We stood for several long moments in the living room, the weight of the lost years hanging in the air between us. I felt a toxic mixture of hurt, bitterness, and joy. Overjoyed that I’d found him, yet bitter over the life we’d missed sharing while I was still growing up.

I sat down across from him, and we both awkwardly looked around without saying anything. He seemed to be as lost for words as I was.

It was a good thing Haddie was there. Without her, we might have remained like that all night. Her laughter and joyful demeanor helped ease the tension. “You two are pathetic. Are you both just going to sit there and stare at each other? I’ll be there in a minute with the coffee.”

Dad was the first to break the verbal impasse. “It’s been a long time, son. I hardly know where to begin myself, but I know you must have questions. You were very young when it all happened. Anything you want to ask, I’ll do my best to answer.”

There was one thing I had to get out of the way before I could move onto anything else, and there was no point in putting it off. “Why’d you leave?” It was hard not to sound bitter.

A pained expression flickered through his eyes. “What makes you think I was the one who left?”

I straightened up in the chair. “Mother said you ran off.”

He shook his head. “Hardly,” he said gently.

“Then what happened?”

“I came home early from work one day. Your mother had the day off, and I thought I’d surprise her. Things had been very strained between us since my conversion. She’d already arranged a couple of interventions, threatened to report me to the Tolerance Bureau if I didn’t recant. But I still hoped we could work through it. So I came home early to surprise her, thinking we could all do something together as a family.”

“But when I got home I found the place cleaned out. She’d left, taking you with her. No note. Nothing. I tried calling her cell, but no answer. She’d probably already changed phones. In retrospect, I suppose I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Your mother told me she would leave me if I didn’t renounce my new faith. I guess I just never really thought she’d do it. I was still looking around the empty house for some clue to where she was going when a friend from work called to warn me that Inquisitors had arrived at the office looking for me. It wasn’t hard to guess what had happened. I couldn’t go back to work. I went straight into hiding that afternoon. Friends in the church put me in touch with the underground. I’ve been in hiding ever since. I guess if your mother had tried to get word to me, let me know where you were, she couldn’t have anyway.”

“Why haven’t I heard from you in all these years?”

He looked away from me and out the window. For a long moment he just stared out the window in silence. “I tried, but when your mother left she moved across country and started using a different name. And she was smart about the internet and social sites. She didn’t post any personal information, like your address or anything else that could be used to identify and locate you. I couldn’t find you for a long time. I had no idea where you were.”

“Why would she do that? You were the one wanted by the police, not her. Seems pretty extreme,” I said.

He shrugged. “She wanted a new life, I suppose. It was a chance to start over. Escape the shame and public humiliation of my fall from grace. It was very embarrassing for her. I was a well-known, highly respected scientist. We moved in some pretty high circles – even had dinner with the President once at the White House.”

He continued with the story. “It took me a long time. And I was in hiding, so my ability to travel and use the internet was very limited. All public places - airports, bridges, toll roads, trains, fuel stations. Most cafés, restaurants, libraries – heck, even public washrooms – have electronic surveillance and monitoring. Any hint of my presence on the net would have alerted the Tolerance Police. They had net tracers out for me, probably still do. They were watching you like hawks, waiting for me to make contact.

“And then the Tolerance Bureau put out that fake report of my death to explain my disappearance to the public. When I finally found you, you had already settled into a new life and believed I was dead.”

“Mother told me you were dead,” I said.

“I can’t help what lies you were told. But you seemed to be settling into a new life…”

“How did you know that?”

“When I found you, Grandpa drove me across country to see you. We sat in a car across the street watching you play in the park with your mother and her new…friend. I didn’t know what else to do, so I decided it was best to let you keep believing I was dead so you could move on.”

“You could have found a way.”

“What was I supposed to do? Hang around the schoolyard? Follow you home on the street and wait for a chance to get you alone? And then what? Pop back into your life for a few minutes, only to disappear again for who knows how long? It’s not like you could have seen me very often, and I couldn’t just keep popping in and out of your life. It would have been cruel to mess with your head like that. You were just a child.”

He returned to staring out the window. “I don’t know if I did the right thing, but it seemed to be the best thing for you at the time. It’s not how I wanted it, but I had to think of what was best for you, not just what I wanted.”

Seeing the pain in his eyes, it struck me for the first time that I wasn’t the only one hurt. I looked away, staring out the window at the brilliant night skyline of the city without really seeing it. I wasn’t being fair, trying to assess the level of his guilt. I’d known guys who never knew their fathers, and it didn’t seem to bother them, maybe because they’d grown up that way and didn’t know any different. But we had been close once, which made it all the worse when he was torn away. But whatever had happened, there was plenty of blame to share and spread around. It wasn’t entirely his fault – if there was fault. He’d done his best to cope with what must have been a horrible situation for a young father. I didn’t want to try to assign blame. It was time to move on. Nursing my boyhood wounds would get me nowhere and only keep me locked into childish emotions.

Haddie came in holding a tray with mugs, a creamer, sugar, a carafe of coffee and a plate piled high with cookies. She set it on the coffee table between us and then sat down next to Dad.

“How did you find us?” she asked. “Tell us the whole story, from beginning to end.”

So I told them, beginning with the clues I found at the cottage that convinced me Dad was still alive. Finding Lucius in Iowa and my meeting with him. How I became friends with Jorge and others in Aylmer who knew Grandpa. And about how Jorge brought me to New York to meet Zuebo. I told them what happened with Zuebo and how I followed him on his rounds to locate the soup kitchen. But I left out the part about Paige and Selene’s betrayal.

Dad and Haddie shook their heads in amazement through the whole thing. Evidently I had impressed them with my detective work and spy-like resourcefulness.

“I’ll have to have a chat with Zuebo,” Dad said when I finished. “He’s been a bit over-zealous with my protection.”

We still had a lot of catching up to do, and there was so much I wanted to learn of his life. What had he been doing all these years? Where had he lived? How did he meet Haddie? So I switched gears, and started asking about his life.

We talked for hours, as if trying to make up for all the lost years in one evening. The night deepened and blurred into early morning. I found myself liking Haddie. She was delightful, and I’m not sure my visit with Dad would have gone so well if she hadn’t been there. Her presence and insightful questions smoothed things between us, and she kept the conversation going whenever we lapsed into an awkward silence. I was able for the first time to forget about myself and simply feel happy for him.

“Dad, when I found out that you were still alive after all these years, I felt I couldn’t rest until I found you. And I’ve got a million questions, but there’s one in particular I’ve wanted to ask ever since this started.”

“Ask away.”

“Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Convert. Get religion. Whatever it’s called. Why didn’t you just recant, and save all this trouble? Why did you throw everything away for religion?” The force of emotion that came out as I asked the question surprised me. Dad, however, seemed to take it in stride.

“I didn’t throw anything away. Just the opposite – I gained everything,” he said.

“How can you say that?” I said. “You had everything. A home. A loving wife and family. A great career. And you tossed it all away for some fairy tales about Jesus.”

He leaned forward. If I’d offended him, he didn’t show it. No doubt he’d heard much worse since becoming a believer. “That’s a lot to parse out, but first – I didn’t toss you away. I never left. Your mother left me, remember?”

“What choice did she have?”

“She had lots of choices, and she made one – a bad one in my estimation. But I had no control over her decisions.”

“Why, Dad?”

“You mean, why do I believe in fairy tales?”

“Yes. It cost you everything. Why’d you do it?”

“As an astronomer, the evidence I came across was so overwhelming, there was only one rational decision I felt I could make. I couldn’t ignore it.”

“C’mon, what evidence? There’s no evidence for God,” I said. Therefore believing in God is irrational and delusional, I added silently. Everyone knew that, right? At least the reasonable, well-educated ones. Dad should know better, I felt.

But he shook his head. “There’s an overwhelming amount of evidence for God.”

“Like what?” 

“My research took me into the very structure of the universe itself, and it’s absolutely beautiful in its mathematical precision and harmony. Like a symphony by Beethoven or a painting by Da Vinci. But you don’t get the Mona Lisa by spilling paint accidently over a canvas. I think that was when I truly started to consider the awful possibility that there really is a God. It’s much too precise to be unguided.”

“What structure?” I said. “When I look up into the night, I just see a lot of empty black space and scattered stars.”

He took a sip of coffee, then looked out the windows at the night sky. “In order for the universe to be capable of life, any kind of life, there are dozens of properties that have to be set to within extremely narrow limits. Properties like the resonance of carbon, the amount of hydrogen in the universe, the ratio of the size of protons to electrons, the strength of gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism. And they all happen to be set to exactly the right values needed for life. The precision required is mind-boggling. If any one of these values were out by one part in a million, or in some cases one part in a hundred million or billion, there would be no life. No stars, or stars that are too unstable and short-lived. No planets capable of life. No people with all their hopes and dreams.