We all climbed out of the car and Dale got behind the wheel. He rocked the car back and forth a few times, racing the engine loudly while the Caddy lurched forward, then back, almost coming out of the deep ruts but then sinking back in at the last second. Viv and I watched while Stump snoozed in my arms, bored.
“We need more weight in the back.” Dale got out and leaned over to check the growing pits beneath the back tires. He looked up at me. “Salem, you’re gonna need to get in the trunk.”
“What?!”
“I’ll leave it open,” he said, as if pointing out something that should have been obvious. “Just sit cross-legged in the trunk to give it some extra weight back there. We’ll get some traction then.”
I looked around, furious. The sun was heading toward the horizon with a nice pink glow and pickups raced by, headed for evening chores and dinner. No alternative to Dale’s plan presented itself.
“Here,” I said huffily, placing Stump into Viv’s arms. I climbed over the back bumper and sat on the spare tire, leaning forward to keep my head from bumping against the raised trunk lid.
“That’s perfect,” Dale said. Because he was an idiot.
He raced around to the wheel and rocked the car back and forth a few more times. It was like being on the back of the world’s most sluggish bucking bronco. I was about to let him know how furious I was about his failed plan, when it suddenly succeeded. The Caddy lurched out of the hole and Dale drove it onto higher ground.
Because Viv was not quite the idiot Dale was, she kept her mouth shut as she got behind the wheel and I climbed out of the trunk and into the backseat.
I fumed all the way back into town.
Exodus Ministry was in yet another shopping center full of potholes and faded striping. Viv pulled the Caddy into the lot and then froze.
There was a lot to take in, for one thing, the news vans. There were three of them, with the big antenna on top, and lots of other cars, much more than the usual Exodus bunch. Apparently they were looking for more fuel for the Les fire.
Then, there was the banner, stretched across the front of the building.
“Happy ninetieth Birthday ‘Viv’!!” it read.
“What the hell?” Viv said.
“Look at that!” Dale shouted and pointed to the banner. “Somebody remembered!”
Viv rolled her eyes. “You – you –” But whatever she was going to say, she thought better of it. “They didn’t remember, Les just had them do it after Salem called.” She glared at me.
“Come on!” I hopped out of the car and grabbed the balloons.
“Would you look at this, Viv?” I said. I leaned in close and took her by the elbow, like she needed the assistance. “All your friends have come out to wish you happy birthday.” I talked slowly and raised my voice like her hearing was bad. “Isn’t that so nice?”
Viv batted my hand away and looked mad enough to spit nails.
Not even the fact that the Exodus crowd was ninety percent male pacified her.
Les came up and gave Viv one of his signature bear hugs. “Viv,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and looking into her face. “Happy birthday, friend.”
Viv tugged her lips back in a flat smile and nodded, but even she couldn’t be mad at Les. Les was just too good, too honestly good, through and through, and people couldn’t help but feel that when they were around him. That was the main reason I’d enlisted him to help with this ‘party.’ Viv wouldn’t be able to be mad at him, so she would have to feel guilty for all the fuss made under her false pretenses. She had nowhere to go but guilt.
A tapping at the door caught my attention, and I looked up to see the annoying reporter from Channel 11 looking hopefully through the window.
I pushed the door open two inches and said, “There’s no controversy swirling around here. It’s just a birthday party.”
“I see that,” she said brightly. “I wondered if Mr. Nolan would be willing to give us a few minutes of his time for a follow-up interview.”
Mr. Nolan has given you more than enough, I thought irritably, but didn’t get the chance to say anything because Les reached around me and took hold of the door.
“Thanks, but this is a private party.” He smiled benignly and closed the door.
The girl looked surprised, then – seriously, a grown woman – she pouted. I guess the bright smile and wide eyes usually worked, and she wasn’t sure how to proceed when they didn’t. She raised her hand to try the door again, but the cameraman lowered the camera and held up a hand to stop her. At least one of them had sense.
I wandered around the periphery of the party and called Trisha on her cell. “You have to call off your cub reporter,” I said when she picked up.
“Which one? Oh, Katelyn? She’s not my problem tonight. Scot and I are going to dinner and to see that new Julia Roberts movie.” She said something – I assumed to Scot – then came back. “Where are you?”
“At Exodus. We’re throwing Viv a surprise ninetieth birthday party.”
“What’s Katelyn doing there?”
“She’s not here for the party, she just wanted to talk to Les. Actually, a whole flock of you guys are here,” I said. “She was the only one brave enough knock on the door, though. She said she wanted a follow-up interview.”
Trisha laughed. “She’s got enthusiasm, I’ll give her that much. She’s all excited about getting the scoop.”
“She’s a pain in the ass,” I grumbled.
“We all are. She’ll calm down, don’t worry. She just needs a few doors slammed in her face. Listen, do you know what time the Fat Fighters meeting is on Sunday? I might need to go to that one instead of our regular Monday meeting.”
“I don’t know, I think around 2:00 in the afternoon.”
There was more mumbling talk with Scot, then she came back on. “I might do that. Although I’m a little nervous about weighing after a restaurant meal. Have you tried the fish tacos with mango salsa at Tuco’s yet? I heard they were fantastic and they’re only three units each. I’ve been saving up my bonus units all week because I knew we were going out tonight, but I might not even need them.”
She sounded way too excited.
“I haven’t been to Tuco’s,” I said, making an effort not to sound pouty, after I’d just stood in judgment of the cub reporter for doing the same thing. Tuco’s was a trendy new ‘fusion’ restaurant downtown in the old library. I’d heard you could count on spending about fifty bucks a head for a dinner, so I figured I’d be sticking with regular old six-unit tacos at Taco John’s.
“Do you want to check out the Sunday meeting with me?” Trisha asked.
“I can’t. I volunteered to help with the Friends of Joshua house from one to four. We’re doing demo.”
“You?” She laughed.
I didn’t care for her tone. “Yes, me.”
“Well, it is demo.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I should be able to get that right.”
“I’m sorry, Salem, I just can’t picture you doing anything...handy.”
“Me either. But Marky assured me they can put anyone to work.”
“Marky. He’s the guy CJ Hardin left his fiancée for?”
I made a noncommittal noise, because I wasn’t sure about the sequence of events, and I was still kind of irritated with her for her disparagement of my handyman skills.
“Is Tony going with you?”
“To the Friends of Joshua thing? No, why?”
“You should take him. He’d be a big help.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” I said, although it also felt like a bit too much, seeing Tony twice in one week. Like things were moving too fast.
He would be a big help. Tony would more than make up for whatever damage I was guaranteed to do. He’d built the most beautiful cradle for our baby when I was pregnant. He had some handyman skills.
“I need to go, the movie’s starting soon. If Katelyn bugs you again, tell her I said she needs to get back and ed
it her piece for tomorrow... Tell Viv happy birthday for me. I can’t believe she’s ninety years old. That’s incredible.”
Viv stood and received her well-wishers. She looked like she was starting to enjoy herself, which was obviously not acceptable. So I was glad to see Cecil Turnbull milling around at the back of the crowd, waiting his turn.
Cecil was somewhere around Viv’s age (although who the heck knew what that was) with white hair and the wardrobe that (I imagined) an insurance salesman would wear while taking the weekend off to putter around the yard. He was a couple of inches shorter than I was, and I didn’t want to think about how many pounds lighter. He was pudgy, but not fat.
He habitually walked with his elbows out, his wrists on his hips, and his hands to his back. It was almost like he was subconsciously hiding something, but it was an unusual enough stance that he actually attracted attention to himself. What he lacked in physical stature, he more than made up for in ego. He’d been convicted of embezzling from the bank where he worked, and served almost four years in prison. After he got out, he had volunteered at Exodus because there wasn’t much else for him to do. He and his wife had sold their big house and bought a little condo, and none of his old friends would talk to him, but he still acted like he ran the place.
I was pretty sure he had a thing for Viv. Viv wasn’t going near him. Although she loved men, she loved her money way more, and she wasn’t letting any known thief near it.
“Vivian,” he said, unclamping his hands from his side to reach out to her. “Many happy returns of the day.” He was the kind of guy who said stuff like that.
He leaned in to hug her, and she dodged sideways, patting him on the arm. “Thank you, Cecil. That’s very kind of you. Is that cake?”
After we sang “Happy Birthday” to Viv and she cut the cake, we all milled around talking and eating. Les walked up to me with a small plate full of cake. “Did you tell me you just met this guy?” he asked, nodding toward Dale.
“Yeah, Monday,” I said. And now here he was, a constant fixture in my life.
“But he knew Viv before, right?”
“No, she met him when he showed up at my house Monday evening.”
“Really?” He smiled as he watched Dale and Viv holding forth in front of a group of people. Whatever story were telling, apparently it was funny. “They act like old buddies,” Les said.
I jabbed at my cake and remained silent. I wasn’t in the mood to talk about Viv and Dale. Plus, I found that I couldn’t look at Les without seeing the comedian with the banjo music playing in the background, so I wasn’t really in the mood to talk to him yet, either.
“You too?” he said after a moment.
“Me too what?”
“You’re disappointed in me too?” He gestured with his head toward the front windows, where the small crowd of reporters waited for something newsworthy to happen.
“I’m not disappointed,” I said. “I’m just...” I wasn’t sure what I was, actually. “Confused, I guess.” I remembered what Marky said, about people like Les being the biggest part of his problem. It hurt my heart to think that – it felt like a betrayal. Les was good. He was a good man. It didn’t make sense to me that anything he did or said wouldn’t make the world a better place.
“Do you really feel that way?” I blurted. “What you said on TV. Is that what you really think?”
He gave me a tolerant smile that made me suddenly want to smack him. “Have you ever known me to be untruthful?”
“No, but...”
“But what?”
“Are you sure about that? I mean, have you really...did you think your answer through?”
This time he didn’t even try to look patient, he just gave me a very bland look and remained silent.
I rolled my eyes, frustrated. Just as Les was never untruthful, he was also never flippant. He never spoke lightly. “But, Les, seriously. How can – how can it be sinful to love someone? If God is all about love, why would he disapprove of two people loving each other, even if they are the same gender?”
Still with the bland look. “When did I say it was sinful for two people to love each other?”
“Les, don’t tell me you have not heard the way people are making fun of you.”
“Of course I have,” he said mildly. He raised an eyebrow. I knew him well enough that I thought he wasn’t as impervious to all the commotion as he wanted me to believe.
I took another bite of my cake, not sure what to say. I guess if he didn’t think it was a big deal that half the country was making fun of him, I wouldn’t either.
That resolve lasted roughly fifteen seconds. “I hate this,” I said. “I hate seeing you be the butt of jokes. I hate people calling you a hater. And I hate...” I hadn’t even realized I thought it, until the words came tumbling out of my mouth. “I hate wondering if you’re wrong.”
“And I hate you thinking that I can’t possibly be wrong.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you can’t put me on a pedestal, Salem. You can’t make a false god of me.”
“I’m not making a false god of you, Les. I just...I trust you. I know you’re a person who prays all the time, who studies your Bible. I know you’re someone who has no agenda except to please God. I count on you, Les.”
“That was all good up until that last sentence. You can’t count on me, Salem. Not to know the answer to everything.”
“Then what? Are you saying you were wrong?”
He shook his head. “No. She asked me a question and I answered it truthfully. If she asked me again right now, I would say the exact same thing.”
“Really? I mean seriously, Les, think about it. The Bible was written a long time ago. People have changed. Rules of society have changed.”
“God hasn’t.”
“But the Bible wasn’t written by God, it was written by men who were speaking for God. What if they were wrong? I mean, they were people. They were human. We all see things through the lens of our own understanding, right? We – we have certain assumptions based on what we’ve been taught, based on how we’ve experienced the world. Those guys did, too. They weren’t completely neutral. They couldn’t have been. So why should we live our lives based on the prejudices of a guy two thousand years ago?”
“Why would we live by anything in the Bible says, then? Salem, I can’t just take out the parts I don’t like and pretend they don’t exist.”
“I’m just saying, maybe it’s not as black and white as you think it is. Maybe there’s room for interpretation there.”
“Of course there’s interpretation. Salem. We’re all interpreting. That’s all we’re doing. In the absence of God coming down with a PowerPoint presentation and a bulleted list, we’re interpreting what has been written. Even if he did come down with a bulleted list, we’d be interpreting the list. What I gave was my interpretation. My understanding, based on what I’ve read and understood, and what people – people who are a lot smarter than I am – have read and understood.”
“Well, if we’re all interpreting, then...we could be wrong.”
He nodded, as if this was a given. “Yep.”
“Maybe you could go back and talk to that reporter. Tell her there’s a possibility you were wrong.”
He laughed. I wanted to take the last bit of my cake and throw it at him, but instead I popped it into my mouth.
“I just got through saying that if she asked me again, I would give the same answer.”
I sighed and tossed my paper plate into the trash can nearby. “I get it. You need to take a stand for what you think is right.”
“Salem, I’m not taking a stand on anything. She asked me a question, I answered it. I’m not the one who blew it into this big social commentary mess.”
“I hate it.”
“You said that already.”
“But I really hate it.”
“I know.”
“You know that people think you’re the face of oppression and intoler
ance.”
He nodded. “Some do.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“Of course it does. But does it bother me enough to lie? No.”
“Stubborn,” I said, wrapping an arm around his waist and leaning my head against his shoulder.
“There are worse things than people thinking badly of you,” he said, his hand warm and a little clumsy on my head.
“I know,” I said. “There’s people thinking badly of you.”
He sighed and stepped away. “Count it all joy, Salem. Let patience have its work and all that.” Then he nudged me gently back toward the center of the room. “Now go wish your friend a happy birthday. I can’t believe that woman is ninety years old.” He shook his head.
“I know, right?” I said.
Nine
I waited until I got home before I called Tony. The instant the phone rang, I realized it had been a colossal mistake to call him and I almost hung up in a panic. I hoped I would get his voicemail.
I got him.
“Salem,” he said, before I’d said anything. “I was just about to call you.”
“Why?” I blurted.
“Diane and Robert are having a cookout tomorrow. Would you like to go with me?”
“Oh.” I said. Stunned. Tony’s older sister and her husband. Two of the many people who had predicted the end of everything promising in Tony’s life when he married me. That did not sound like a fun way to spend my Sunday. “I’m sorry, I promised this guy I would help with the Friends of Joshua house rehab.”
“What time?”
“What time?” I said, as if I hadn’t heard the question very well. I tried to think quickly, but my brain has never been good at thinking under pressure. That’s probably why I had made many of the stupider choices I’ve made in my life. All I could think of was Mrs. Solis’s stink eye aimed at me, times every member of his large family.
A cookout would probably be Sunday after church service, I thought. So I said, “One to four in the afternoon, I believe. Actually, I was calling to see if you wanted to help. But I guess if you already have plans...”
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