The Good Atheist (9 page)

I stopped what I was doing and told her what I learned from the letters.

“This is incredible,” Selene said when I finished. “Your dad is a believer?”

“Yes. And he’s still alive, at least until a few months ago. But I can’t tell from the letters where he lives.”

“I can understand your excitement, but what does that have to do with keeping these books?”

“Selene, don’t you get it? Don’t you understand what we’re looking at here? This is the first real connection I’ve had with my father since I was a kid. These books may help me understand him and why he converted. I’m looking at learning more about him than I ever thought possible. This cottage is the only link I have to my father. And reading these books may help me understand why he converted. He was a good atheist, and I want to find the reasons why he fell. I’m not getting rid of anything yet until I get some answers.”

“If we get caught with these books, we could end up in a re-education camp. Is that what you want?”

I shook my head. “These books have been here for years, hidden away in the middle of nowhere. I think we’re safe. Besides, if we’re caught, I’ll just tell the Tolerance Bureau the truth. I inherited the cottage and the books were in it.”

“Sure, and one of their first questions will be why we didn’t report the banned books sooner.”

“We’re devout Free Thinkers, Selene. They won’t send us to camp.”

But she wasn’t convinced. “This scares me. All these religious books make me nervous, and I don’t like the idea that you’re planning on reading them!”

“Oh, come on Selene. What’s the harm? I won’t be persuaded by any of this. I just want to understand my father.”

“Apparently your father was persuaded by these books! What makes you think you won’t be?”

I set down the book I was holding and went around the desk to her. I grabbed her gently by the arms and looked into her eyes. “Don’t worry, hon. I’ll be fine.”

She pulled away from me. “We can argue about this after I’ve had a coffee. And we need to pack up. We’ve got a plane to catch later,” she said.

She left me alone in the den. It was getting light out. I stood in front of the big picture window, watching the first shafts of morning sun break through the trees and mottle the grass with bright patches of light, and thought about what I’d read. He was out there somewhere, alive. I had no doubt in my mind about what to do. I had to find out where he was, and go see him.

But I felt too tired to think about it any more. The long night finally caught up to me, and I felt myself succumbing to a weariness that no amount of caffeine and determination would hold off. I sat down in the big leather recliner, and was fast asleep within seconds.

• • •

Selene let me sleep a couple of hours before waking me up. I finished putting the books away on the shelves, and then we packed up in a hurry. It was late in the morning and we had a long drive to catch our flight. I deliberated about taking some of the books with me, but decided it was too dangerous. The covers of the books were obviously religious, and airport security was very thorough. I didn’t want to risk getting caught with banned books in my luggage, especially with Selene at my side. It would be putting her at risk as well.

But I decided at the last minute to take the autographed manuscript, removing the top summary page. There was nothing inherently suspicious of a bundle of typewritten papers, unless the security personnel took the time to read it, and I doubted they would. The queues were usually long and they had better things to do, so I felt it was a safe gamble.

We packed our luggage in the car and locked up the cottage. I felt a tug on my heart as we drove away, and I hoped to return soon. It was almost midnight when we finally got back to Chicago. Ellie, the house system, greeted us cheerfully, like a neglected puppy. I had to be up in a few hours for work, so we went straight to bed without unpacking.

3

The very next day after work I drove to Battle Creek to see my mother. I sat in her studio sipping tea, looking around at the metal sculptures that filled the place. There seemed to be more than last time. “Have you sold any lately?” I asked.

She was a small wiry woman in her mid-fifties, with a thin face and sharp nose. Not currently married and, as far as I could tell, with no one presently on the horizon.

“A couple of small pieces. Enough to cover rent.” Her welder’s mask sat on the floor next to her feet. The piece she was currently working on was a large mass made mostly of old hubcaps. I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be.

She set her tea down and fixed me with a steady gaze. “So it’s been over three weeks since you last visited.” She had a way of making it sound like a million years. “What have you been up to lately? How is Selene?” she asked.

Selene begged off coming with me, claiming the onset of one of her migraines. But I knew the real reason. She and Mother had never really hit it off. It was just as well. It made the purpose of my visit easier.

“We’ve been busy, Mother.” I sounded more defensive than I meant to, but Mother had that affect on me.

“Yes, of course,” she said.

I leaned forward. It was time to get this over with. “My grandfather died,” I said quietly.

There was no noticeable reaction. “Your grandfather has been dead since before you were born.”

“My paternal grandfather. Grandpa.”

“I see.”

I took a hardcopy of Grandpa’s last will and testament out of my pocket. It was folded up, and I carefully unfolded it and laid it out on the table. “I learned a few things too, Mother.”

She looked at the papers without touching them. There was no way to ease into it, so I just said it. “Why did you lie to me about Dad running off with another woman?”

No response.

“Why did you tell me Dad was dead?”

She lifted her chin slightly. “What makes you think he isn’t?”

“Let’s just say I’ve found solid proof that he’s still alive. Why did you lie to me?”

“What kind of proof?”

“Letters from my dad.”

She looked out a window without saying anything, tracing circles around the rim of her tea cup with an index finger.

“Mom?”

She looked at me. “Yes?”

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“What’s there to say?” she asked.

“So it’s true. You lied about his death?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You were an eight-year-old boy at the time, Jack. I had to say something that you could understand.”

“So you lied. That was the best idea you could come up with?”

“The truth would have been too painful.”

“More painful than believing my father was dead?”

She jumped up and moved behind the chair. “Give me a break, Jack. What was I supposed to do?”

“Try the truth for once. That would be refreshing.”

Tears welled up in her eyes. “Try looking at it from my point of view. Every day I had to face a small boy who wanted to know where his daddy was. Who kept asking me every day, incessantly, when he was coming back. I needed the closure. We both did. I had to tell you something that you could accept, that would bring closure so you would stop asking me where your dad was. I told you the lie so that we could get on with our new life – so that you would not spend the rest of your childhood waiting for him to come back. And so I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life trying to face you with those questions. I lied to spare you the ordeal of living with the truth.”

“I would prefer the hard truth to an easy lie.”

She threw her cup against the nearest sculpture, shattering it against the metal. “Don’t get sanctimonious with me. You have no idea what it was like for me,” she yelled.

“It’s a bit hard for me to know that, since I don’t know what really happened. Why don’t you try telling me the truth? What happened to Dad?”

“There’s not a lot to say, really. He got religion, and went off the deep end. Claimed that he had a living relationship with God.”

I had gathered that much from his letters, but I wanted hear her side of the story.

“I tried to get him help, but he refused,” she said.

“Did you try an intervention?”

“Of course. That’s what any good life partner would do. I tried everything. I tried to get him into counseling. I attempted several interventions along with friends and other family members. None of it worked.”

“Did he ever give an explanation? Tell you why he converted?”

She rolled her eyes. “Are you kidding me? That’s all I ever heard from him.”

“And what were his reasons?”

“He claimed to have had a personal encounter with Christ. I tried to talk sense into him, tried to show him how ludicrous and unscientific that was.” She shook her head slowly, sadness seeping into her voice. The sadness of losing a life that had once been happy.

“Didn’t the scientific evidence bring him back to reason?” I asked. We all learned in school how science had disproved God, and my father, an astronomer, knew the science better than most.

She shook her head. “No. He claimed that faith was perfectly compatible with science.”

It was hard to believe Dad could have said anything like that. “Is that what he really said?”

“Those were his exact words” she said. “One day, during one of my many attempts to talk sense into him, he looked at me with clear, calm eyes, and told me he believed the science too. He even enjoyed the science. Then he said, ‘The structure and origin of the universe support belief in God.’”

“I was shocked, of course,” she continued. “When I tried to point out that even if there was a God who created everything, it was monumentally arrogant to believe he was so special that God would have the time of day for him or want anything to do with him.”

I nodded. It was pretty sound logic. “How did he take that?”

She flicked a hand in frustration. “It just bounced off him. He laughed and hugged me and told me how much God loved me and all of us.”

“Wow.”

She nodded. “Yes. When it finally reached the point where I knew he was beyond any help I could give him, I warned him. I threatened that if he persisted in this religious nonsense I would leave him and take you with me, and I’d be forced to call the Tolerance Bureau.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked me not to, and that he didn’t want to lose me or you, but he could not deny the Lord who bought him.”

The Lord who bought him, I thought. What an odd thing to say. Whatever did that mean? It wasn’t hard to guess what happened next, but I waited for her to finish the story.

“I started making plans that very night. Not long after that, one day while he was at work, I had the movers come and pack up. I called the Inquisitors from the car as we left town.”

I remembered the move. At the time mother simply told me Dad would be joining us later at our new home. It never happened, of course.

“You could have given Dad more time to get better. Maybe with a bit more time he would have come to his senses and none of this would have been necessary.”

“Jack, you should know better. We could not take the risk that he would hurt someone or himself. Once a person catches religion, it’s only a matter of time before they start strapping bombs to their chest. You know that. We couldn’t let it go.”

“I know, but I wish you’d at least told me the truth. I deserved that much.”

“I didn’t want you to know what had happened. I didn’t want to have to talk about it, to you or anyone – it was too embarrassing. I needed the closure, and I didn’t want you getting teased at school by the other kids. So I told everyone he had run off. And I had to tell you the same thing to ensure that the secret was kept. It was, in a sense, close to the truth.”

It was nothing like the truth, I thought. But Mother always had a weird knack for believing her own lies.

“You didn’t allow Grandpa to contact me, did you?” I told her about the cottage and finding the letters.

“He tried for a while, but I threatened him with legal action if he didn’t stop.”

I didn’t say anything, but the look on my face must have betrayed my thoughts. Mother said, rather defensively, “It was my right as a citizen to protect my family from religious lunatics. I should have turned him in too.”

Then she slumped into her chair, tears streaming down her cheeks. I felt bad for bringing all this up and forcing her to relive it. “You must hate me,” she said softly.

I didn’t want to judge her. I didn’t like what she had done but I tried to understand. At the time, she had been a frightened young mother. And I was too shocked over the revelations to feel anger. 

“No, Mom, I don’t.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to go find him.”

She let out a whimper and shook her head. “Please don’t do that. It’s pointless.”

“I have to. He’s my dad. I’m not going to give up on him.”

“It’s useless.”

“Maybe so. But I want to ask him.”

“Ask him what?”

“I’m going to ask him why he did this to us.”

“Then you don’t blame me?”

“No, Mother. I don’t suppose I blame you. Not entirely. Dad brought it on himself.”

We both sat in silence for a while. I looked around the studio at her sculptures. Mother stared at the floor with red, watery eyes.

“How did you manage the news stories?” I asked.

She looked up at me and shook her head as if confused. “What news?”

“The stories on the news sites about Dad dying in the car accident about a year after you left him. How did you manage that?”

“Oh, that. Well, as it turned out, the Tolerance Bureau wanted your father dead, at least in the public’s mind. They arranged for the false news stories. It was their idea, really. They had to explain the disappearance of a famous astronomer somehow, didn’t they? I found it a convenient falsehood and used it to my advantage. By then I was at my wits end with your daily, endless questions about where your father was and when he was coming home.”

I stood up. “It’s getting late, Mom. I’d better get going.” She stood up and I gave her a hug. As she walked me to the door, something suddenly occurred to me. “Mom, can I ask you something?”