This Side of Salvation

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “The question is,” Kane says slowly, “would she let your dad end his life without her? They’ve been married how long now?”

  “Thirty years this August. They renewed their wedding vows on their twenty-fifth anniversary, right after I turned thirteen.” Mara strides over to the mantel and lifts the eight-by-ten framed photo, the one I was staring at last night. “John was here at the time. He hadn’t gone to Afghanistan yet.”

  Her voice chokes with tears again, but before I can figure out how to comfort her, she gasps. “Wedding bands! The bed!”

  She drops the photo on the sofa and races up the stairs, stumbling halfway. I look at Kane, who shrugs and reluctantly sets down his half-finished breakfast so we can follow.

  We find her in my parents’ room, peeling back the maroon-and-gold bedspread, with the careful precision of a medical examiner uncovering a corpse.

  No rings.

  “Wait a second.” Mara lifts the gold-cross necklace from Mom’s pillow. “David, this isn’t hers.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “It’s not twenty-two karat. It’s a cheap knockoff.”

  “So someone else laid out their clothes, probably after your parents left.” Kane runs his finger along the edge of Dad’s tall mahogany dresser. “But why? Just to mess with you two? Or did they think you’d believe in the Rush and call the media?”

  “No idea,” Mara says. “I wonder if any other Rushers got the pajama treatment.”

  My phone buzzes in the pocket of my sweatpants.

  A text from Bailey: Are you awake? Matinee?

  I answer without consulting Mara. We need help, and I need Bailey.

  Don’t buy tickets—just come over.

  CHAPTER 14

  SEVEN-ISH MONTHS BEFORE THE RUSH

  When we picked up Kane for my sixteenth birthday dinner at IHOP, I could tell my mom was seeing him with new eyes. It was embarrassing the way she studied his outfit as he got in the backseat and strapped on the safety belt (which he never had to be reminded to do).

  She looked vaguely disappointed. Maybe she was expecting gayer clothes than his neat blue rugby shirt and jeans, which were not too new but not too ratty either. Over the rugby shirt he wore an unbuttoned flannel shirt with a red-white-and-blue checkered pattern. Your basic American boy next door, the one who mows your lawn and shovels your snow for free just to be a good neighbor. The same kid she’d known and loved for ten years.

  Over dinner, Mara and I managed to keep the conversation on sports and music as much as possible. One of her dreams was to be on Joyful Noise, the Christian version of American Idol. The new season had already started, so that gave her and Mom something to talk about. Then pancakes arrived, and we were all quiet and happy.

  While we waited for dessert, Mara, Mom, and Kane brought out my gifts: his in a white plastic bag, Mom’s wrapped in a metallic blue paper, and Mara’s in a card.

  “Family first,” Mom said.

  I opened Mara’s card, which contained a ticket to Tree of Life at the Trocadero Theatre. “Sweet! You told me the concert was sold out.”

  “It was sold out,” she said. “Just not before I bought the tickets. Francis and Brooke are going to the concert too. Also my friend Aleesha and her boyfriend, Nate. I think he’s on your team?”

  I didn’t look at Kane, for fear of giving away his crush. “He’s our first baseman.”

  “Small world,” my best friend said under his breath, sadly.

  Mom handed over her gift. It was the exact shape and size of the MLB 2K video game I’d been whining about since March. Getting it in September meant missing most of the real-time season updates, but I didn’t care. I wanted—no, needed—the new features and better graphics. I would’ve even been happy with the new Madden NFL game, though I wasn’t as much a football fan.

  I yanked off the paper, expecting to see a high-res graphic of a major league star at bat or, worst case, a Pro Bowl quarterback.

  Tribulation Squad 6.

  “It’s the latest installment,” Mom said quickly, “but you don’t need the first five versions to understand how to play. According to the online reviews.”

  I turned the game over to read the back. The Rapture has occurred, and you’ve been left behind. Time to gather your army against the Antichrist. Convert your foes and rise in rank!

  “What is it?” Kane asked. I passed it to him without comment, then put my hands under the table to hide their trembling. I couldn’t believe Mom and Dad would get me any game with weapons after what had happened to John. Even my friends knew better than to play shooter games around me.

  “It’s a strategy game,” Mom explained. “Like the Sims you liked when you were a kid, remember, David? In Tribulation Squad, you build a life for yourself after the Rapture. Gather food for your flock, raise their spirits with song and Scripture, defend yourself against enemies—”

  “Convert the nonbelievers?” Kane finished, reading the back. “What if they don’t convert? Is that what the weapons are for?”

  “No,” Mom said. “It’s intended to be a nonviolent game. In fact, the reviews say that your spirit points drop if you kill your enemies. Except in self-defense, of course.”

  Predictably, my father rattled off one of the Ten Commandments. “You shall not murder.”

  I shut my eyes, twisting my hands in my lap. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to tear a tendon, which would totally screw up my off-season training schedule. I focused on steadying my breath.

  “Check this out,” Kane read on. “It says you can play for the Antichrist’s team. Then you get points for killing.”

  Mara scoffed. “Leave it to boys to turn Bible strategy into bloodshed.”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “David!” My mother’s voice rang out. “Do not tell your sister to shut up.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Mara has a point,” Kane said with a laugh. “The Bible is a very violent book.”

  “It’s a multiplayer game,” Mom added, “so if you buy a copy for yourself, you and David can play over the Internet.” She adjusted her gold-cross necklace so that the clasp was at the back. “Until then, you should probably withhold judgment.”

  “I’ll burn a copy.” Kane handed me the Tribulation Squad 6 game and his plastic bag. “Open my present now. I spent hours wrapping it.”

  I tossed the Rapture nightmare aside and reverently drew Kane’s gift out of the bag. It was, in fact, the new MLB 2K.

  “Yes!” I pumped my fist. “My life is complete.” I tore off the plastic wrapper, then picked up my knife to remove the annoying anti-theft tape holding the case together.

  Mara kicked my ankle under the table and whispered, “Thanks for the birthday present, Mom and Dad.”

  “Sorry. Thanks for the game,” I told my parents with as much enthusiasm as I could conjure. “I’m sure I’ll play it . . . a lot.” I placed MLB 2K on top of Tribulation Squad 6. Just seeing the baseball game made me giddy all over again. I tapped my finger on it and grinned at Kane. “Awe-sooooome!”

  He beamed back at me, then glanced at my parents. His smile faded. They looked like two sharks circling a fish.

  My mother cleared her throat. “Kane, for David’s sake, we weren’t going to use this happy occasion to address your spiritual affliction—”

  My stomach dropped. “Whoa, what?”

  “But you’re like a son to us,” she continued, “and we want you to know that you have our full support.” Eyes glistening, she pressed her palms to her heart. “We’re praying so hard for you.”

  Kane stared at her, then glanced at my dad, then me, before returning his eyes to hers. “Thanks?”

  “I have some pamphlets here in my purse. They might help you in your journey back toward Christ.” She reached into her bag, then whipped out a stack of folded papers. Clearly they’d been stored in a special pocket for easy deployment.

  “I’m—I’m okay, really. Thanks, though.” His voice was steady, but the tips of
his ears were turning red.

  “Kane’s getting confirmed next month, Mom, remember?” I made a shooing motion toward the pamphlets she was still holding out across the table. “By the bishop, no less.”

  “Does the bishop know that our friend here is a deviant?”

  “Mom!” Mara said. “How could you?”

  My mouth was frozen open. I’d prepared myself for arguments, not name-calling.

  Kane let out a deep breath and folded his hands on the table. “Mrs. Cooper, the bishop isn’t aware of my orientation. But Reverend Llewellyn is, and he’s fine with it. Everyone is welcome at St. Mark’s.” He swept his gaze over all of us. “Including you guys, whenever you’re ready to come back. I hope to see you there soon.”

  Whoa, masterful turning of the other cheek. I wanted to applaud.

  And then my father weighed in.

  “You shall not lie with a man, as with a woman. That is an abomination.” Dad recited Leviticus 18:22 in a low, authoritative murmur. My face burned, and I wished that the Rapture or Armageddon or at least a 6.5 level earthquake would happen right then.

  But for this sort of attack, at least, I was prepared. “I have a thought about that passage. The eighteenth chapter of Leviticus is telling the Israelites not to live the way the Canaanites did. It lists all the Canaanite religious practices, right?”

  My father nodded and smiled, proud of my scholarship, I guess.

  “Well, isn’t that because Canaan was their archenemy?” I hold up a hand before my parents can interrupt. “It’s, like, if we were having a religious war with Canada, our leaders would tell us not to play hockey. Lots of Americans like hockey, and there’s nothing inherently evil about it—although I think the fights are getting really out of hand—but it’s such a Canadian activity, if you wanted to de-Canada-ize the US, the first thing you’d get rid of is hockey.”

  “The land was defiled,” Dad said. “Therefore I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out her inhabitants.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Kane clutch his empty water glass. “But that’s my point,” I said. “Was Canaan evil because they did those things, or were those things evil because they were done by Canaanites? If it’s the second, then the ban on homosexuality only applies to that time and place, not to our society.”

  My dad shook his head vigorously. “For in all these the nations which I am casting out before you were defiled.”

  “What your father’s trying to say is that the Lord condemns everything Canaan did, from child sacrifice to incest to—” Mom looked at Kane, then glanced away quickly.

  I forced my mind back to my argument before the rage could swamp me. “Listen, I’ve done the research. Back when Leviticus was written, if an army won a battle, it would take its enemy’s soldiers and—” I could barely get it out. “They would be raped.”

  “Ugh,” Mara said. “There goes my appetite.”

  I ignored her, keeping my focus on Mom and Dad. “When the people who wrote the Bible said, ‘Don’t lie with a man the way you would with a woman,’ they meant ‘Don’t insult him.’ Women were barely above slaves status-wise, so to treat a guy like you’d treat a girl would be like making them low.” I looked at my red-faced sister, then my father. “You can’t sell Mara into slavery anymore. That’s a good thing, right? Which means that loving a guy the way you’d love a girl also isn’t an insult anymore. Is it?”

  I challenged my parents with my eyes, daring them to say in front of Mara that women weren’t as good as men. They weren’t that far gone from the modern world. I hoped.

  Mom gave her coffee a hostile slurp. My father kept a stony silence. Maybe by digging deeper into the Bible, I had literally stolen his words.

  It had happened accidentally. Last year, I’d fallen behind in Bible-study class, so I’d looked up the lessons’ Scripture passages on Wikipedia. The entry not only summed up stories for easy memorizing, it also put them in historical context.

  That’s when I got curious and started doing real research in books and articles. For the first time, I saw the Bible as a human creation. Rather than making Scripture seem like BS, this discovery made it even more fascinating. Because what people are trying to say is even more interesting than what they actually say.

  Finally Mom slammed down her mug. “The Bible is not some dusty old history book.” She bit out each syllable with curled lips, like they tasted bad. “It is the living Word, which means every word in it applies to us today.”

  “Every word?” I wanted to add, Except the words Sophia Visser told you to ignore. But Kane didn’t know my parents were Rushers, and I wanted to keep that secret in the family as long as I could.

  The silence was shattered by sharp, rhythmic clapping, accompanied by staccato shouts. The noise was headed my way.

  Our waitress led the birthday procession, her hand guarding the top of a tall sundae glass. A candle flame reflected in her eyes as she focused on keeping it alight.

  The best thing about the IHOP signature birthday song is its brevity. Amid fading applause, I thanked the waitress as she set a giant fudge sundae in front of me. Mara and Kane blanched as they received the desserts they’d ordered. I couldn’t blame them for losing their appetites, but no way would I skip my birthday sundae.

  “We have drunken our water for money,” my father said to the waitress.

  She blinked at him. “I’m sorry?” When he held up his credit card, comprehension and relief washed over her face. “Oh, of course!” She opened her billfold and selected one of the white sheets inside. “Here you are, sir. You can pay at the counter whenever you’re finished.” The waitress turned away, instantly dropping her pasted-on smile.

  I stared at the candle in my sundae, deciding what I should wish for when I blew it out. A hundred desires and goals warred for supremacy in my head: that my father would talk normally and find a job; that Kane would forget about Nate Powers and start crushing on a guy who felt the same way about him; that I’d get to kiss Bailey a million times; that I’d finally master the knuckle curveball.

  All these things I’d prayed for on a regular basis. But birthdays came once a year. This wish had to be huge and audacious, bordering on the impossible.

  I closed my eyes and blew out the candle. I wish Mom and Dad could be happy again.

  • • •

  In the car on the way home from dinner, Kane texted me from the other side of the backseat: Thx for what you said. LOL @ hockey argument.

  I grinned at him over Mara’s head before replying. I came up with that myself.

  Kane: I didn’t know abt soldier-raping stuff & treating men like women.

  Me: Then how did Rev Llewellyn explain gay = OK?

  Kane: He basically said, don’t worry abt it. Most imp thing is love.

  Me: He’s a good Christian, haha.

  Kane: So are you. But you’re a sucky fundamentalist.

  • • •

  One morning in mid-October, I went out before sunrise for my run, since I had a heavy load of schoolwork ahead of me.

  I liked some aspects of being out before the world woke up, like not having to dodge cars backing out of driveways. But the silence unnerved me. Too long without sounds and my thoughts tended to run in dysfunctional loops.

  So music accompanied each step, keeping me going when my body begged me to stop. It helped me dig deep and remember the Joe DiMaggio quote hanging in my room: “You ought to run the hardest when you feel the worst.”

  That dawn was one of those increasingly common times when I felt like I was born inside my skin, rather than feeling like I was meeting my body for the first time. Most days over the last few years I’d looked in the mirror, or heard my voice, or felt a brand-new pain or pleasure, and wondered, Who is this stranger I share a skeleton with? But lately, I’d grown familiar to myself.

  I slowed to a walk as I reentered my scarecrow-and-pumpkin-bedecked neighborhood, rolling my shoulders in slow circles to ease the tension that always built up durin
g a run. When I lifted my chin to help stretch my pecs, I saw our silver minivan in the driveway. Dad was packing it. He tossed in a sleeping bag, then returned to the garage without looking my way.

  Though my legs protested, I quickened to a jog so I could peek inside before he came back.

  In the backseat lay a blue fishing pole and a bag we used to call Sack o’ Tent. I could see its signature bulge in the canvas where one of the poles was misshapen. On our last camping trip, five years ago, I chased Mara with what she thought was a snake (actually a piece of bicycle tire). She’d tripped into the side of the tent, bending the pole.

  In the far rear compartment, a boxy object lay under a dark-green tarp, but before I could climb inside the van to see what it was, Dad came out of the garage lugging his fishing tackle. I took out my earbuds, as well as the cotton I used to keep my ears from aching in the cold air.

  “Going fishing?” A stupid question, but unlike Mara I still talked to my father, despite my growing dread of his scriptural responses. I figured one day, if I kept trying, the old Dad would come back. Maybe I could save him from floating away into his own head.

  He gave me a warm smile, raising my hopes. “He said to them, ‘Come after me, and I will make you fishers for men.’ ”

  So much for hope. “Fishing with who?”

  “My brothers, beloved and longed for, my joy and crown.”

  I doubted he meant his literal brother—he hadn’t seen his siblings since John’s funeral three and a half years ago. We exchanged Christmas and birthday cards, and that was about it.

  “Someone from Sophia’s group?” I asked him.

  He nodded and smiled as he set the tackle box in the back of the minivan.

  “When are you coming home?” Geez, it sounded like I was the dad and he was the son.

  He opened the driver-side door. “No one was able to answer him a word, neither did any man dare ask him any more questions from that day forward.”