by Roger Bruner
“I wouldn’t expect to smell that ‘perfume’ on Geoff. Not anymore. He’s pretty much admitted he doesn’t care about not being a Christian.”
Once I got my second wind, Aleesha and I whispered long into the night. We’d likely suffer from the loss of sleep, but Geoff’s situation seemed more important. We agreed that he’d maintained a good front the first couple of days in Santa María, but we couldn’t imagine what made him take down his mask.
Or trade masks.
We tried assessing his spiritual condition, but we could only guess at it. I was more concerned about his attitude toward Aleesha than about the way he’d treated me, but she disagreed. We discussed his motives and ways I might respond.
After hours of batting ideas around, nothing was more conclusive than when we started. We didn’t have a God’s-eye view of the facts, and neither of us could see inside Geoff’s heart.
“I think you should talk to Mr. Rob,” Aleesha said when we started yawning and digressing. We got giggly, too, and we were in danger of falling asleep with mouths still moving.
“I don’t want to rat on Geoff.”
“Somebody besides you and me needs to know what’s going on—especially now that it’s reached this point.”
“I suppose I could tell Rob I’m concerned about a team member who isn’t a Christian.”
“That’s good, Kim. It’s true, and if God leads you to share more, you’ll do it out of genuine Christian concern.”
It was beyond me how she could think—much less express herself clearly—when she sounded as tired and sleepy as me. I barely took in her last comment, but I managed to mumble “Amen.”
At least I think I did.
chapter forty-two
Day 5
I got up extra early the next morning, but not because I felt like it. Aleesha was still asleep, and I didn’t wake her. Would I ever rub it in that I’d gotten up first for once.
My mind was still on overload, and some of the specifics were foggier now than last night. I wanted to catch Rob before anyone else could. He was always the first person up, or so he claimed.
But despite my intentions to find him quickly, I wasn’t moving very fast. I giggled at myself for yawning in rhythm to my dragging footsteps—or perhaps plodding along to the beat of my yawns.
Each of the other early risers I ran into told me I’d just missed Rob—sometimes by mere seconds. I’d already spent five or ten minutes looking—there weren’t many places for him to be—when Anjelita appeared out of nowhere. We hugged.
On impulse, I grasped her shoulder firmly with my left arm. As if she understood what I wanted to do, she took hold of mine, and I started swinging her around and around in a circle. That probably wasn’t the safest thing to do, but we had so much fun I never considered the dangers.
Anjelita couldn’t keep from laughing when I set her on her feet and promptly fell down. Although she staggered the first couple of steps, she remained upright. Her sense of balance never failed to amaze me.
I tried to imagine her reaction to the rides at Six Flags. Although we still had well over a week to spend together, my eyes welled with tears at the thought of going home without her.
Looking at her from the ground, I noticed that her hair now had a braid like mine. She must have gotten Aleesha up as soon as I left our sleepsite. I jumped up awkwardly, brushed myself off, and wiped my left hand on my work pants. I didn’t want to touch Anjelita’s hair with filthy hands. I hadn’t thought about it before, but her hair was always clean at the beginning of the day. I wish I could have asked her how she did it.
“So pretty!”
She hugged me as if those words had made sense.
“Belle …” I slipped into French for a moment.
Anjelita looked at me curiously. “Bella?” she asked.
I was about to learn that the two words for “pretty” were similar. But because they didn’t sound that much alike, I didn’t catch on at first.
“Belle,” I repeated. I got out my notepad, turned to a clean page, and wrote it down for her.
“Bella!” She grabbed the pen and pad from my hand and wrote down “bella” for me to see. Although the similarity between the Spanish and French words was more visual than auditory, the discovery was fun.
Rob joined us. “Buenos días, Anjelita,” he said. “And to Miss Kimmy as well.”
I smiled.
Rob’s greeting had probably exhausted all the Spanish he knew, but it made me wish I could pick the brains of every team member who knew any Spanish. I could build up quite a vocabulary that way—more than I could possibly master in the limited time available.
I still wouldn’t know how to string the words together sensibly, though, and I couldn’t justify distracting the builders with a personal project, especially one so unlikely to prove beneficial.
I was only vaguely aware of Anjelita’s convincing, “Hi, Rob!” response. She’d picked up a number of English words, and she’d learned almost all the team members’ names. The guys’ names, anyhow. Smart girl! Rob’s voice brought me back to the real world.
“Kimmy, I understand you’ve been looking for me all over the vast acreage of Santa María.”
“Everywhere except where you were at the time,” I said. I didn’t try fighting back a giggle.
“No wonder. I was out looking for you.”
“You expected me to be up this early?” I grinned.
“Divine revelation.”
“Ah.”
“So here we are. Ladies first.”
“Can we move to a more out-of-the-way spot, please?”
He led the way with Anjelita and me trailing behind. Anjelita was so good at amusing herself while others conversed in English that her presence—even during the most serious of discussions—never created problems.
Rob picked a spot well out of the flow of normal foot traffic, but I still looked around to make sure no one was nearby. Paranoia about Geoff, I suppose.
I took advantage of the short delay to find a starting point. I’m not great at thinking on my feet, so deciding what to say before I start not only prevents me from blurting out words like machine gun rounds but also minimizes my self-consciousness about speaking.
“Rob, everyone on this project is supposedly a Christian—it was the first requirement on a list of many. For the evangelistic project, anyhow. But I’m concerned about one team member. He hasn’t done anything ‘wrong’ yet”—I used my fingers to put quotation marks around wrong—“but the way he talks and acts around me makes me nervous. He’s as much as admitted not being a true believer, and—”
“I know,” Rob said. Heavy sadness wiped the twinkle from his eyes. I hadn’t seen him look this serious since he picked me up at the airport. “Geoff.”
The amazement on my face apparently gave Rob all the confirmation he needed. I’d wanted to avoid telling on Geoff or identifying him specifically, but Rob had just taken that option away.
“Don’t worry, Kimmy. You didn’t tell me anything new. I’ve known about Geoff’s problems long before this morning. Long before this trip, in fact.”
His words shocked me into speechlessness. He’d dumped a puzzle in my lap, one I couldn’t possibly solve on my own. I looked at him, desperate for clarification.
“Geoff is my nephew—my only sister’s only child. They live in San Francisco, too.”
“You’re kidding! I’ve never seen the two of you together. You don’t even act like members of the same family.”
“That was part of the deal.”
“The deal?”
I wished Rob would move his story a little faster before I died of both curiosity and concern; but he, too, probably needed a good starting place.
“Here’s the scoop. Geoff’s mom, Jill, has been divorced for five years. Almost six. Geoff never got over it, and he’s made her life miserable. He wore her down by constantly harping at her and accusing her of being responsible for the breakup. The opposite was true—and she has
irrefutable proof of that—but she loves Geoff too much to tarnish her ex-husband’s image by revealing his unfaithfulness.
“Jill and I held a number of brother-sister coping, crying, and praying sessions about Geoff, believing he’d eventually come around.”
I gave Rob a sympathetic “but he didn’t?” look. He shook his head.
“We took him to several sessions with a Christian counselor, but changes didn’t come fast enough, and Jill couldn’t afford to continue. I offered to pay for them, but she wouldn’t let me. I should have insisted.”
I nodded. Rob’s generosity didn’t surprise me. I’d benefited from it myself.
“Geoff became a loner after the divorce. He spent practically all of his time in his room with the door shut. I told Jill I didn’t think that was healthy, but she didn’t want to disturb the status quo. I couldn’t blame her. The only hours of peace she enjoyed were the ones she and Geoff spent apart.
“Then he became friends with some boys at church. We hoped his new friends would set a good example. They were the same age and attended the same school. We’d known their parents for ages—fine, respectable Christians. Hanging around kids like theirs could only help. And so it seemed.
“We didn’t know Geoff’s friends were teaching him an act for home that would free him to do whatever they wanted him to outside. His relationship with Jill moved from a zero on the scale to a nine. Maybe a ten. Jill didn’t have to ask him to do chores around the house, and he started earning the best grades ever. He must’ve been starving for his friends’ approval, though, for he began making a series of foolish decisions.”
I couldn’t imagine what Rob would say next, but I dabbed my eyes once with my shirtsleeve. Anjelita snuggled up in my arms.
“He’d probably fooled us about some lesser things, but he really pulled the wool over our eyes when he pretended to become a Christian. Not every seventeen-year-old boy has the courage to come forward at the end of a worship service and request baptism at the earliest possible opportunity. His friends sat together at his baptismal service several weeks later. Several of them took some great photographs.
“Geoff’s hair was still wet from his immersion when he went joyriding with his friends, drinking beer one of the boys got somewhere. The police stopped them, and the driver lost his license. Underage DUI. We thank God daily they didn’t have an accident. The scales dropped from the parents’ eyes that day, and we saw things clearly for the first time.
“The other boys blamed Geoff for getting the beer. He didn’t deny it, but neither did he admit it. Although Jill and I still don’t know the truth, we suspect he meant to ingratiate himself with his friends by keeping them out of additional trouble. We don’t know where he would have gotten beer, anyhow. Jill and I don’t drink, and neither of us keeps anything like that at home. I don’t know about the other boys’ parents.”
“Rob! How awful! But he made a profession of faith and was baptized.” I couldn’t imagine that he’d only pretended to become a believer. “As for his actions, well, he was still a baby Christian. He still is ….”
Rob’s news, no matter how upsetting, boosted my spirits. My greatest concern for Geoff was spiritual, although the trouble he’d gotten into was too serious to gloss over. But this was the information I’d been dying for.
I needed to learn everything I could about Geoff if I had any hope of helping him. “Maybe so, Kimmy. But Jill and I are skeptical. Although he told us he and the boys were just drinking to ‘celebrate’ his baptism, Jill and I are scared that his profession of faith was a sham—a mockery. Something the other boys put him up to.”
Maybe I didn’t know boys as well as I thought, but I couldn’t picture a seventeen-year-old faking conversion to Christianity to please a bunch of other guys. Yet his conversion could have served as an initiation rite. Pretending to become God’s while intentionally denying God control of his life was horrible enough.
“Kimmy, the long and the short of it is the parents grounded the boys for the duration of their senior year. They permitted the guys to get together once a month—always strictly supervised—at one of their homes.
“Several of them—not Geoff, though—were star athletes. Their parents yanked them out of all sports activities. Popular athletes are apt to face temptations these boys had already proved incapable of resisting. They resented the curtailment of their activities more than anything else, but we didn’t know how much.
“Each boy reached his eighteenth birthday during the school year. They didn’t rebel openly toward their folks or assert their adult status. If anything, they acted calmer and more mature than ever. Geoff and Jill got along great. We were thankful for that.
“The boys attended church with their folks and became what everyone else considered model Christians. Jill and I were more skeptical than the other parents. But we gave them the benefit of the dou—”
I raised an eyebrow at Rob. He stopped in mid-word. Then I winked. “Other parents …?”
He thought for a second, laughed at the implication that he was one of Geoff’s parents, and then continued.
“And so the parents—along with one uncle—met one evening to evaluate the boys’ attitudes and behavior. Concluding that our punishment had been effective, we agreed to set them free on senior prom afternoon. That was around the beginning of May.
“When they voluntarily offered full details of their plans for the evening, we pronounced them successfully rehabilitated. Parents prayed with their sons before they left for the prom. They all looked clean and glowing in their suits. Poor guys probably thought we’d never finish taking pictures.
“None of them had dates. That seemed strange since Geoff had been dating a girl from church for about a year; but he didn’t offer any explanation, and we didn’t think we should ask.
“The parents—and uncle—met again sooner than expected, though. Late that night, several hours after the prom, we had to go to the police station. The boys were not only completely sober, they hadn’t been drinking. But had they evermore outdone themselves otherwise.”
I had the hardest time keeping from interrupting, but I needed to hear the whole story first. Rob would answer my questions after he finished.
“Months before getting out of their home-prisons, they’d decided to deface some tombstones with black spray paint. They searched online for local cemeteries and identified tombstones that looked so age weathered no one would care about them anymore.
“Each boy painted his parents’ names on different stones and entered the date of the prom as their date of death. If the results were any indication, they worked with a flourish, competing to see who could do the most professional-looking job. Just as they were finishing, the police showed up. The boys insisted they didn’t hate us. They just wanted to express their indignation over a wasted senior year. They thought this would be a fun way to do it, and no one would be hurt.”
My eyes began misting, and I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn’t.
“Yes, Kimmy,” Rob said, anticipating my unasked question, “Geoff planned to deface a stone for me, too ….”
“Planned to?”
“Yes. Turns out he was the only boy with the gumption to scrap the plan. That’s what we want to believe, but maybe he was too scared to do it. He still got in trouble, but not as much as the other boys. Unfortunately, he’d purchased spray paint, cans of paint, and brushes, so the judge couldn’t pretend Geoff had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have to give the other boys credit, though. They voluntarily told the police Geoff hadn’t done anything.
“But he’d been there supporting the other boys, and—after the trouble they’d gotten in before—the judge sentenced him to seventy-five hours of community service and scheduled it to begin during the summer after graduation. The other parents refused to bail their sons out, so their boys spent a few days in the pokey and faced stiff fines when they got out. The judge took a special interest in Geoff’s case, thoug
h. Said he’d wipe Geoff’s record clean—upon the completion of his public service.”
“How did all of this affect him?” I asked while Rob took a breath.
“I think it scared the daylights out of him. He acted embarrassed at first. But then he copped the attitude that’s bothering you now. It’s been a constant mask—his only companion—and rarely does he let it down. He can’t seem to face himself—or anyone else—without it. Worse still, he doesn’t think God wants to forgive him.”
“Rob, no. That is so sad ….” Tears streamed down my face, and Anjelita wiped my eyes with the sleeve of her whole arm. Although she didn’t understand what was wrong, she was crying, too.
“A public mask of respectability had been important before—when he was with his friends—but he won’t let anyone get close now. Various people have tried, but nobody can reach him.”
“What about Geoff’s girlfriend? Surely she—”
“Jane refused to go to the prom with him after he told her what the boys were planning to do. Although she wasn’t sure he’d go through with it, she was the one who called the cops. She broke up with him right after that and quit speaking to him at church. You can imagine how devastated he was.”
“Oh, man. I’ll bet he resents girls now. You don’t suppose he’d, uh …?”
“I could be wrong, Kimmy, but I don’t see Geoff as a potential rapist. I’m no psychologist, but I think Geoff is confused and angry about the way those guys misled him and messed up his relationship with Jane. He needs someone his own age to talk with, but he’s probably scared that any girl he’s attracted to will reject him once she discovers the truth.
“So no, I don’t think he’s dangerous—not to anyone else, anyhow. His anger is self-directed. It’s part of the mask. From what the pastor told us, Geoff probably believes no girl will accept the real him unless she first accepts the angry, obnoxious Geoff.”