“Wow,” Doug says softly when the song ends.
I agree, but I don’t say anything. I have my notebook in my hand and I just make a notation. “Opening Hymn: Amazing Grace.”
I am expecting it to be difficult to take down the notes that I promised Doug, but it’s not. The Reverend Johnnie isn’t very flashy considering he is speaking to a whole crowd of people. He does tell a few funny jokes. I don’t put them down completely because I figure Doug wants the notes to be more about the serious part of what the man is saying. I do jot down a clue, though, in case Doug wants to remember the jokes.
I want to ask Doug if the man is saying the same things that he said when Doug was here before, but I don’t. Doug is listening carefully and I don’t want to interrupt him.
The man keeps referring to the fourth chapter of first John. I’m sure Doug doesn’t know what this first, second and third business of John is all about. There are other writers like that, too, in the Bible. I make a note in the margin of my outline to tell Doug what I know about how the Bible is set up. I did, after all, go to Sunday school for years so I know how to get around in the Bible. It’s really organized very well. Surprisingly well, really. I think a little bit on how the Old and New Testament are divided and then the books and the chapters and the verses.
Now that I’ve been doing the filing at the Big M I can appreciate a good filing system and that is really what the Bible has going for it. Anyone can come in and find the same information as someone else in only a few seconds if they know how the system works and they have the code for finding it. I call it the code, but it’s just the chapter and verse combination.
You know, someone must have added that to the Bible after everything was written. I hadn’t really given it much thought before, but I must say the organization in the Bible is brilliant. I’d like to shake the person’s hand who decided to add chapters and verses to all of those words. It’s absolutely perfect. We use an alphabetical system at the Big M. I wonder if Mr. Z would approve using some sort of code instead of the deceased’s name.
I might have mentioned before that I like to distract myself in church and I’m feeling even more nervous here tonight than I usually do in a church service. Maybe it’s because there’s no roof between me and God so He can see right down at me. That’s a little scary.
I’m trying not to listen too much, but I do want to listen enough to write down the man’s key points for Doug. The basic points the reverend is making are these:
Number one, God loves us;
Number two, God showed His love by sending us Jesus; and
Number three, if we love God, we need to make a commitment to Jesus and then love each other.
Well, that pretty much sums it up. No obscure points here. If you’ve been to church, you’ve heard it before. I remember that Doug hasn’t been to church. Maybe that’s why he’s sitting here looking so interested in everything the man has to say.
I’ve noticed that a person can’t be alive in this world without somebody going on about loving this or loving that. I’ve heard people say they love a television show or a haircut or a jelly doughnut. Love isn’t really that big of a deal—well, except for when it happens between a man and a woman. That still seems to be important. Look at all the fuss Elaine’s wedding is causing and that’s simply to mark a man and a woman telling the world that they love each other.
Weddings are good things. But God loving us? Isn’t that like saying the government loves us? Or that we love our government. You’ve seen those Love It or Leave It T-shirts, haven’t you? So I would say we are used to loving things that are bigger than a person. That’s all that this God loving us or us loving God stuff is.
When I was eight years old, I had a Sunday school teacher—there was no escaping Sunday school when I lived with Aunt Inga—and she asked me if I might not be afraid to love God because my mother had left me. The teacher sounded nice when she said it, as if I already knew my mother wasn’t making any plans to have me live with her. This was before I’d given up on living with my mother, though, and I told her my mother hadn’t left me, she just needed some time to get a place ready that was big enough for me. The teacher nodded when I said that and didn’t say anything more about it to me.
I can’t help but wonder what Doug thought about God when he was doing his rotation circle with his aunts. He probably never gave Him any thought at all. Maybe he liked having a new house every few weeks and maybe the aunts all lived close enough together that he could stay in the same school even when he switched houses. Maybe it wasn’t totally horrible.
Still, the picture of Doug carrying that suitcase of his from house to house is one that has stayed with me since he told me about it. I feel really sorry that he didn’t have a place like I did with Aunt Inga where he could at least unpack his T-shirts. I guess it’s like that old saying about a man who complains he has no socks until he meets a man who has no shoes.
I am trying to keep my mind on my notes and not think about what the man up front is saying, but even I recognize silence when I hear it. I look around me and everyone is starting to bow their heads. Some people are lifting their arms to the sky and some are folding them together in the way little children do when they pray.
Everything is so quiet, even the air feels somber.
Oh, no. I forgot to warn Doug about this. I think the man is going to ask people to raise their hands or something to say they have decided to love God. Since Doug doesn’t know about church, I could see where he might think this is a simple vote and, if it was, who would want to vote against God? But I know that it is more than that. This is what people do when they want to make a big deal about God in their lives. This is the Big Commitment.
Sure enough, the reverend is asking people to come forward and dedicate their lives to Jesus. I really should have talked to Doug about this. Hopefully, he realizes that the dedication the reverend is talking about is supposed to last for more than just tonight. With that moving-around history of his, Doug might not realize what a long-term, until-you-die commitment the man is talking about.
I feel Doug’s leg move against mine and I reach out my hand to put it on his thigh and hold him in place.
“It’s not what you think it is,” I whisper to him. “You don’t want to go forward.”
I see an older woman looking at me. I think she heard me.
“But maybe I do want to go forward,” Doug whispers back. “I need to do something in my life.”
“There’s that ice plunge in Sweden,” I hiss as I press down with my hand a little harder. “You could do that. That’s exciting.”
An ice plunge is just about the right amount of excitement, too. You go there. You do it. You take a picture. You come home. That’s what an exciting adventure should be. There’s a short-term rush, but no real long-term harm. It doesn’t change your life.
“I could do them both,” Doug says as he starts to rise.
I grab for his knee as he stands and, while I don’t get my hand around his knee, I do get a good grip on the denim of his jeans in that place that’s baggy behind the knee. “You don’t know what you’re doing by going down there.”
“Yes, I do,” Doug turns to whisper. “I’m making a commitment.”
So, now Doug decides he’s okay with the commitment thing. “But you don’t like commitments. You’ve got that suitcase packed. Remember?”
“Let him go, dear,” that older woman leans over and whispers to me. “He’ll come back to you a better husband.”
The surprise of that makes me let go of the denim of Doug’s jeans. “Oh, but we’re not—he’s not…” I look up at Doug for support and all I see is his back as he walks to the end of the aisle so he can go down. “We’re not together in that way.”
“Oh, well, obviously you care for each other,” the woman says as she pats my arm in a comforting way. “You’ll see, it will be all right.”
“I don’t see how,” I say as I turn to watch Doug make his way down
the outside aisle. He’s one green T-shirt in the maze of color.
I feel as if I’ve lost a friend. I look up at the woman who’s been patting my arm and say, “He doesn’t even know what it means. He probably thinks it’s like when a baby gets dedicated in church. Everybody smiles and takes a picture and that’s it.”
She smiles down at me. “It’ll be fine.”
I turn around and see the whole section of my gang neighbors start to make their way to the outer aisle, as well. There’s the guy with the black lipstick and the woman with the spikes around her neck and all their friends. Commitment doesn’t seem like their style, either. I wonder if they’re going down just to start trouble. Doug wouldn’t be any match for that guy with the lipstick, or the woman and her spikes. Now I have a whole new set of worries.
I lose track of Doug’s green T-shirt. He gets swallowed up in the sea of colored shirts.
“I hope there’s someone down there to keep track of everyone,” I say. They need a big white board like Mr. Z has at the mortuary. You just can’t have people wandering around at a thing like this. “I don’t even see a line forming.”
“I think they’ll pray first,” the woman says. She looks like someone’s grandmother so I suppose I can trust her to know what she’s talking about.
By now, people all around us are talking with each other in low voices. The soloist who sang “Amazing Grace” earlier is now singing “The Old Rugged Cross.”
I must admit I am feeling a little abandoned. If I had thought Doug would walk down to the front of this, I would have—well, I guess I would not have come. I don’t like being left behind while he walks on to his commitment. It makes me feel the way I felt when my mother left me at Aunt Inga’s—as though I was something that wasn’t important enough to stay put for or take with her when she moved. Not that I wanted Doug to take me with him when he went down. It’s just that—
“He’s my ride home,” I turn and whisper to the woman. That, at least, anyone could understand as a reasonable concern. They really should have these things organized better.
“I’m sure they won’t keep him long,” she says.
If I wasn’t afraid of getting caught up in the group of people going down to be prayed over, I would get up from my seat and make my way out of the Bowl. I guess I could always call Cassie and ask her to come pick me up. There’s not much parking left around the Bowl, but I could meet her at the entrance and she could pick me up without needing to park.
I look up at the woman. For the first time, I notice that she is sitting alone just as I am. “Thanks for everything.”
“You’re welcome, dear.”
I notice now that she has a cane so I ask if she needs help walking down the outer aisle to the exit.
She shakes her head. “I’ll be fine. I just need to sit here to let the rest of the people leave so the aisles are clear.”
“I’ll wait with you,” I say. “I’m going to call my friend to pick me up and it will take a little while for her to get here anyway.”
Okay, so I know the woman’s a stranger and that I’ll never see her again. But I don’t want her to have to walk down the aisle by herself. It’s steep and she could stumble. Besides, I know how it feels to be left until the last and it’s always a little sad. She’s been kind to me and I want to return the gesture.
“Thank you,” the woman says. “I just lost my husband last year and I’m still not used to doing things alone.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say. “I work at a mortuary and I hear people say that a lot. It must be hard getting used to not having him with you.”
“You never do get used to it,” the woman says and then brightens. “But I’m so pleased you work at a mortuary. The staff people at my husband’s mortuary were so kind. That’s such an important job.”
“Yes, I guess it is.” I smile.
I’m glad I didn’t have time to change after work so I still have my black suit on tonight. I think it helps put people at ease when they talk about their departed loved ones. We talk some more about Harry, the woman’s dead husband, and then Alice, that’s her name, tells me about her pet birds.
We’re silent for a bit, just sitting still under the night sky. Finally I pull out my cell phone and put in a call to Cassie. She says she’ll be happy to pick me up at the entrance to the Bowl.
I then call Doug’s cell phone and leave him a message that I called Cassie for a ride home. I also tell Doug that I’ll leave the notes I took for him with the guy behind the counter at the coffee shop. I suppose that’s a little cowardly, but I’m not sure I’m ready to have a friend turn holy on me. All Doug will probably want to do is pray all the time now anyway and I have Aunt Inga for that.
By that time, the aisles have cleared and I help the woman walk down the outer aisle to exit the Bowl. We go slowly and she holds on to my arm so she doesn’t have to use her cane. She’s planning to take a taxi home so I walk her over to the taxi stand and wait while she gets seated in a cab.
The taxi stand is close to the entrance and I only have to walk a few yards to find the place where Cassie is going to pick me up. People are driving their cars out of the Bowl parking lot and there is a steady stream of them going through the exit. It’s a chilly night and I hug the black jacket of my suit around me so I keep warm.
Cassie is there before I know it and I slip into the passenger seat of her car. Cassie has the car pulled over to the side of the road so she puts her blinkers on to enter back into traffic.
“Thanks for coming,” I say.
“Where’s Doug?” Cassie pulls out into the slow-moving traffic.
“He went down front,” I say.
Cassie looks puzzled for a moment and then she gets it. “Down front! But doesn’t that mean—”
I nod. “He appears to have no problem making a life-altering commitment to God.”
“Wow,” Cassie says. We’re waiting at a stoplight so she turns to look at me. “I thought he wasn’t ready for any commitments.”
I shrug. “I’m not sure he knows what he’s doing.”
“Wow,” Cassie says again.
Cassie wasn’t raised going to church every Sunday as I was, but she has gone enough times with Aunt Inga and me that she knows one doesn’t make a commitment to God and then just forget about it.
“I tried to stop him,” I say.
We drive together in silence for a while.
“I met a nice older woman,” I say. “Alice Green. She sat near us. All alone now that her husband is gone.”
“It’s sad to be alone.” Cassie turns from Vermont onto Melrose Avenue and then goes west toward her apartment.
There is a moment’s pause then Cassie continues. “I keep wondering if my mother is all alone somewhere like that woman. Do you suppose she can’t read and that’s why she never has registered with any of those agencies?”
“She might not know about them even if she can read,” I say. “I wouldn’t have known about them if you weren’t here to tell me.”
“But wouldn’t you think she would ask someone?” Cassie asks. “Like that woman would have asked you for help?”
I know how Cassie feels. I feel the same way. Sometimes it just seems that the people we love aren’t willing to go to much bother for us. I force some brightness into my voice. “Well, if she can’t read, I’d guess the people around her can’t read, either. But someone official will come along and tell her. I’m sure the letters you are writing will prompt someone to go talk to your mother.”
In actuality, I’m not sure of that at all. I don’t know if anyone in the adoption bureaucracy even cares about Cassie and her mom. The adoption was so long ago and I suppose no one can complain about the way Cassie was treated. She might not have been loved by Jim and Marge, her adoptive parents, but she had her physical needs met. She even has straight teeth today because of the braces they provided for her. And Marge had dinner on the table every night at six o’clock.
I don’t know if anyone
in a bureaucracy knows how much it would mean to Cassie to see her mother. At least I know what my mother looks like. I know what her voice sounds like. When I was younger, I used to fall asleep with a picture of my mother in my head. Cassie was never able to do that. She doesn’t know if her mother is tall or short, dark-haired or blond, pretty or plain. She could be a bank president or a cleaning lady.
“Maybe we should try some other way to locate your mother,” I finally say. “Maybe there’s a way other than going through these organizations.”
Cassie doesn’t answer as she turns her car into the parking lot of her apartment building. The building she lives in is an older brick building and there is no underground parking as there is in newer apartment buildings. There are a couple of security lights in the parking lot, but the residents have learned to look out for any strange cars that aren’t parked in the designated visitor spaces.
Cassie and I both take a look around the parked cars before we unlock her car doors. It’s about eight-thirty and, even though that’s not so late, we’re always careful when we walk through the parking lot at night. Parking is one thing that is better in Blythe than here. Aunt Inga has a garage and a wide carport so she and I always park close to her house, well within the circle of light cast by the porch light. But even the public parking lots in Blythe are not this scary.
The back door to the apartment building is not locked until eleven o’clock each night so it opens when Cassie turns the knob. Her apartment is on the third floor so we climb the wooden stairs. There is a thin carpet on the hallway, but everyone can still hear when someone is walking down the hall. The residents were going to complain and send a petition off to the building owner asking for new, thicker carpet, but then they decided it was good security to know when someone was walking down the hall.
Going to the Chapel Page 10