The Returning

by Ann Tatlock

  “Except for at night when he isn’t in bed. Really, Andrea, think about it. You know the man’s history. If he’s cheating on you, it wouldn’t be the first time. Oh, honey, don’t you wonder?”

  She hadn’t wondered. Not about another woman. Not until this moment. She felt her stomach drop, pulling her heart along with it. She looked up quickly at Selene’s reflection. “What should I do?”

  “You’ve got to confront him. Ask him straight out if he’s having an affair.”

  “And if he is?”

  “Well, Andrea, you know what I’ve said all along. But since you won’t listen to me, I’ve decided I can’t help you there. Only you can answer that question.”

  Hours later, at two-thirty in the morning, Andrea pondered the answer to that question as she gazed at the solitary strip of moonlight falling across what was once again John’s empty bed.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  After a long silence John sensed Pamela rising from the cool ground. He lay on his back with his eyes closed, his right arm thrown over his face like a shield.

  “John?”

  A moment passed. Then, “Yeah?”

  “I have to get going.”

  He tried to nod, but he wasn’t sure he succeeded.

  She sounded irritated when she said, “Are you leaving or staying here?”

  He didn’t know. He couldn’t give her an answer.

  “John?” She kneeled down beside him and lifted his arm from his face. Reluctantly he opened his eyes. Her features were soft in the moonlight, but her voice held a sharp edge. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  “Aren’t you going home?”

  “I guess not right now.”

  “Well, I have to go. Don’t fall asleep here. It won’t look good if Larry finds you here in the morning.”

  He wondered briefly whether she was joking, then decided she wasn’t.

  “I won’t fall asleep,” he said.

  “Why don’t you go home?”

  “I will in a minute.”

  She looked at him askew. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  A heavy silence settled between them.

  At length she said, “I’ll see you again, won’t I?”

  She didn’t give him time to answer but leaned over and kissed him. His arm rose up and encircled her. He didn’t want her to go. He wished they had never come.

  “I’ll see you again, Pamela.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  He knew his answer didn’t satisfy her, but she rose anyway, dusting the earth off her bare knees and off the hem of her summer dress.

  In another moment he heard her car start up in the parking lot, then turn onto Lake Road. Finally the purr of the engine faded into the distance.

  When he couldn’t hear the car anymore, he rolled over and pressed his forehead to the ground. He clenched one hand into a fist and pounded the grass. Each stroke kept pace with the repeated cry, “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.”

  The night offered no response. John didn’t expect one. He exhausted his plea and lay silently on the cool earth beneath the distant moon and the uncaring stars.

  He told himself to get up and go home, but he felt too heavy to move. His own body was too much for him.

  “Dear God, help me,” he whispered.

  He waited, but the words fell back on him, drifting out of the sky like flakes of ash. They had nowhere to go. The door to heaven was bolted now, hurled shut and locked and double-locked.

  Slam.

  Click.

  Click.

  The moon was swallowed up by a cloud. John lay in the dark among the dead, his moist breath like dew on the brow of the slumbering grass.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  “John?”

  “Yes, Andrea?”

  “You were up late again last night.”

  John settled his nearly full mug of coffee in the sink. To Andrea, he appeared to be moving in slow motion. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said.

  She waited for him to look at her. He kept his eyes on the mug.

  Her heart pounded, stealing the air from her lungs. She tried to steady herself, not wanting to show her fear. “Why can’t you sleep?”

  He glanced at her, looked away. “What’s that?”

  She tried to speak more loudly. “I said, why can’t you sleep?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I have a lot to think about, I guess.” He glanced at his watch and moved toward the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going down to talk to Larry. I want to catch him before Billy and I leave for work.”

  She hesitated. She didn’t want to sound like she was prying. Finally she asked, “Why do you have to talk to Larry?”

  “Well,” he shrugged. “I need a sponsor. I’m supposed to have a sponsor for A.A., and I’ve been putting it off. I thought Larry could help.”

  “I see.”

  He shrugged again, pushed open the screen door that led out to the side porch. “I’ll be back soon.”

  She took a step forward. “John?”

  “Yeah?”

  He was anxious to leave. She could see that. “Are you—”

  He waited. His eyes grew small. “What, Andrea?”

  “Are you . . . um—”

  His hand gripped the door handle more tightly. She looked at his hand, his face, his eyes.

  “Are you going to ask Larry to be your sponsor?”

  He hesitated, then said, “I think so. Why?”

  “No reason. I was just wondering.”

  They gazed at each other in silence a moment. She didn’t need to ask what Selene had told her to ask. He would only deny what she already knew. She had seen that look in his eyes more than once before.

  “Well,” she said, “I’ll tell Billy you’ll be back in time to catch the bus.”

  He nodded.

  She watched him walk down the drive and disappear down Lake Road.

  She thought it was a bitter thing to keep losing the same man over and over again. There really had to be a final time. She had to find the strength somewhere to make sure this was it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  “So, John, you’re troubled.” Larry Gunther’s face held a pained expression, but his eyes were kind. He appeared to study John intently. “You’ve done something you don’t like to think about.”

  John dropped his gaze. “Yeah.” He tried to laugh, but it came out a defeated sigh. “How’d you guess?”

  “I don’t have to guess, my friend. I’ve been a pastor a long time. I’ve been human even longer than that.”

  Larry leaned back in his desk chair and put a finger to his lips thoughtfully. John braced himself, glanced up, looked back down at his clasped hands. He’d shown up unannounced, found Larry alone in his office tediously two-finger typing a sermon on an outdated computer. Pastor Larry had welcomed the interruption.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?” Larry asked.

  John felt a twinge of nausea at the thought. For a brief moment he was sorry he’d come. He hadn’t intended to, didn’t know he was going to until he was drinking coffee in the kitchen and Andrea showed up. When he saw her, he knew he had to do something. He didn’t know whether Larry would be at the church or not, but he headed down the road anyway, his own sense of shame the shoes that brought him.

  Biding his time, John said, “Did you know there are empty liquor bottles scattered around the cemetery?”

  Larry nodded, offered a wan smile. “Kids. It adds to the excitement to drink in the backyard of a church.”

  Rebekah, John realized with a start. This was where she came to party. And this was where he came—

  “It keeps the janitor and me busy, gathering them all up and throwing them away,” Larry went on. “The town’s sanitation workers must think this is quite the happening church.”

  Larry chuckled quietly and looked at John.

&
nbsp; John cleared his throat, clasped his hands together more tightly. He knew Pastor Larry was waiting for a confession of sorts. He had to say something, to explain why he had come. “Listen, Larry, I’ve—” He felt his throat grow tight again, his eyes well up. That was the last thing he wanted.

  “Take your time,” Larry said gently.

  Drawing in a deep breath, John tried again. “I’ve cheated on my wife, Larry.”

  Silence. “I see,” he finally said.

  “My daughter was right.”

  “Right about what, John?”

  John fidgeted uncomfortably. “I don’t know if you know where I’ve been the past few years.”

  “Yes. It’s all right. Billy told me. He’s very proud of you, you know.”

  John’s brow furrowed deeply as he looked up at Larry. “Yeah? For what?”

  “He’s your son, John. He loves you.”

  “You can love someone without being proud of him.”

  “He told me how you came to the Lord in prison.”

  “Oh.” John sniffed sarcastically. “Well, he can stop being proud now. Like I said, my daughter was right.”

  Larry raised his eyebrows and waited.

  “My first night home she said it wouldn’t last. She said prison conversions never last.”

  “And it hasn’t?”

  “I’ve tried, Larry. But things were easier in prison than they are out here.”

  He watched as Larry leaned forward again and rested his arms on his desk. “Did you know,” the pastor asked, “that few people believe in sin anymore. Did you know that?”

  John shook his head slowly, his eyes narrowing. He wasn’t sure what he had come for, but he knew he wasn’t looking for a theological discussion.

  “People don’t like the idea of sin so—poof!” Larry threw his hands in the air to simulate something going up in smoke. “It’s gone. We don’t have to deal with it.”

  “Uh-huh,” John said dully. “Okay. Well, look, Larry, I’ve messed up. I’ve . . .”

  “Sinned?”

  “Yeah. I guess I have.”

  “So you believe in sin?”

  “Well, sure. I mean, maybe other people don’t, but I do. How could I not?”

  “And what about forgiveness? You don’t think you can be forgiven?”

  John looked directly into the pastor’s eyes. “I guess I don’t know what to think anymore. I’m not out of prison three months, and I’ve ruined everything. Me, with my big-shot ideas of making a new life, living for God.” He shook his head again, ran a hand through his tangled hair. “Well, I can’t do it.”

  “Of course not.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I said, of course not.”

  John stared quizzically at Larry, who was pensively drumming the desk with his fingers. He waited, wondering what was to come. Abruptly Larry silenced his fingers and said, “I think, John, you misunderstand the meaning of grace.”

  The two men looked at each other. After a long moment, John replied, “That may be, Larry. I’m not a reverend like you. All I know is, once God was with me and now He isn’t.”

  “Are you saying He left?”

  “How could He stay?” John shook his head. “I just can’t do it, Larry. I can’t keep it up, living like that. The alcohol—that’s nothing. I don’t want it. But the other . . .”

  Another heavy silence descended over the room. Larry sat motionless, his eyes piercing. When he seemed quite sure that he had John’s attention, he said carefully, “ ‘Of all man’s clotted clay, the dingiest clot.’ ”

  John shifted in the chair. He swallowed the annoyance that threatened to latch on to his next words. “I’m afraid I’m not following you. Is this about the whiskey priest?”

  “No, it’s about a great poet.”

  John’s knee had started pumping; he laid a hand on it to stifle the piston. “Okay,” he said.

  “Francis Thompson. Ever hear of him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “He wrote some of the most beautiful descriptions of God’s glory ever written. He’s best known for a poem called ‘The Hound of Heaven.’ ”

  John shrugged, shook his head.

  “It’s the story of Thompson’s own life, how he tried to outrun God. He spent years running, and during much of that time he was a homeless tramp, addicted to opium, which was the popular drug back in his day. People drank it as laudanum.” Larry paused, shrugged. “It was as common as beer and cheaper too.”

  When Larry didn’t go on, John said, “Well, I’m going to assume God caught up with him at some point.”

  “Oh yes. God has a way of doing that, doesn’t He?”

  “Uh-huh. So this guy kicked his addiction and went on to become some great writer? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “No, John, that’s not what happened. He did stop using for a while. Then he became an occasional user. Finally he became permanently re-addicted. He remained addicted right up to his death at the age of forty-seven or so. He died of what they think was a combination of tuberculosis and laudanum poisoning.”

  John thought a moment, cleared his throat. “Well, that’s not a pretty story, then, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “I have a feeling you’re not finished, though.”

  “No, I’m not. I have a question for you. Do you think, after all those years of pursuing Francis, God just up and left him because the man messed up?”

  John thought a moment. “Maybe not. I don’t know.”

  Larry shook his head. “I believe God stayed with him, inspired him, used him even. A dozen years ago, I was a whiskey priest. I’d lost my church, lost my livelihood, very nearly lost my family. While I was in rehab, I came across this book.” He reached for a paperback book that lay on his desk, just beyond his right hand. “That was the first time I read this poem. Listen to these lines, John.”

  Larry opened the book to a page marked with a scrap of paper. He looked up at John, back at the page, and began to read.

  “And human love needs human meriting:

  How hast thou merited—

  Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?

  Alack, thou knowest not

  How little worthy of any love thou art!

  Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee Save Me, save only Me?”

  John’s jaw tightened. He didn’t speak.

  “When I read those lines, I understood two things. First, like Francis, I knew I was about the dingiest clot of clay ever to sprout legs and walk the earth.” He paused and smiled at John. “And second, I knew for the first time that God loved me.”

  John looked up sharply. “But you were a pastor, Larry.”

  “You’d be surprised what pastors don’t know.”

  “Well, if you were preaching sermons and you didn’t even know God loved you, what did you know?”

  “Apparently not much. Certainly not the one essential thing, the heart of the Gospel. It was something Francis came to know, something that he came to experience—the paradox of grace.”

  John nodded, though he wasn’t sure he fully understood.

  Larry leaned forward again, held John’s eye. “Now listen to me, John. Here’s the paradox. We can fully embrace God’s love only when we recognize how completely unworthy of it we are.”

  John sat in an uneasy silence, thinking about what Larry had just said. He wanted to take it in, but it seemed to hover on the far side of an impenetrable glass. At length he said, “You ever struggle, Larry?”

  “I’m struggling right now, friend. I’d give just about anything for a drink. It’s been twelve years since I had one, and the urge is still there.”

  John rubbed at his forehead. “With me, like I said, it’s not the drink. It’s . . . listen, Larry, you’re married, right?”

  “More than thirty years.”

  “You still love your wife?”

  “She stayed with me even when I put her through every sort of misery
imaginable. How could I not love her?”

  John nodded, took a deep breath. “This . . . this woman, I’m thinking maybe I could make a life with her someday. It could be a good life—”

  “But she’s not your wife.”

  “No, but—”

  “But she’s beautiful, and she makes you happy.”

  John looked at the floor. “Yeah.” He nodded. “She’s beautiful. And when I’m with her—yes, I’m happy.”

  Larry leaned forward, held John’s gaze. “Listen, John, let me tell you something. Not everything that’s beautiful is good. Take it from someone who knows.”

  “But—”

  “You’d be a fool to give up everything you have at home.”

  “Yeah. I know that, but . . .”

  “What is it, John?”

  “Andrea and I, we’re just sort of—” he stopped, searching for the word—“roommates, I guess.”

  “Roommates?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So whose idea was that?”

  “Well, I don’t think it was anybody’s idea. It just sort of happened.”

  “Things like that don’t just happen.”

  “No? Well, I don’t know how to explain it, then.”

  “John, do you love your wife?”

  Pause. “She’s a good woman, Larry. . . .”

  “But do you love her?”

  John didn’t answer.

  “You know, John, you don’t have to be in love with your wife to love her.”

  “I guess I’m not following.”

  “What do you share in common? What interests her? What makes her happy? Do you know?”

  John thought a moment, shrugged. “I guess I don’t know.”

  “Uh-huh. So you think she’s not worth knowing.”

  “No, I . . .” John stopped, dropped his defenses. Larry was right and John knew it.

  “There’s one thing you need to understand,” Larry said. “We love because God first loved us, even in the face of all our unloveliness.” He paused. He seemed to want to give John time to think about that. Then he said, “Go home and love your wife, John.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t find the strength in myself to do that, Larry.”

  Pastor Larry leaned forward, smiling tenderly. “That’s good, my friend,” he said. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”