American Savior

by Roland Merullo

  “I’m not talking about breaking up with a crazy or abusive spouse, or when a marriage is unhealthy. I’m talking about faith. Constancy. You’re worried about your reputation. Do you know what Gandhi said?”

  I shook my head.

  “He said, ‘A man of courage can do without a reputation.’”

  “That sexist bastard,” I said. “And all these years I thought he was a cool guy.”

  She almost smiled. Almost. After a second or two she said, “You asked me to marry you this morning. Are you going to waver on that, too, Russ?”

  “Never.”

  “Maybe I don’t fit the description.”

  “It’s a different situation. You’re not claiming to be God. You didn’t ask me to quit my job and help you run for president. You’ve got a nicer body than he does—”

  “Be serious, please.”

  “All right.”

  “What, exactly, would he have to do in order for you to believe he is who he says he is? Think about it, Russ, two miracles and a dream sent to me—that isn’t enough?”

  “It should be. I mean, it would be, and he seems like he knows my whole history … but, in person, I don’t know, maybe I’ve met too many con artists in this business. Maybe it’s what I said this morning: I’m too egotistical to want anybody else to have all that attention. Or maybe it’s the opposite: I mean, really, if God came to earth, would he come to me? Would he come to West Zenith, of all places?”

  “West Zenith is exactly the type of place he’d come to. And maybe you’re more special than you give yourself credit for. Maybe we all are. Maybe that’s the whole point—that we’re all, you know, we’re all worthy of something like this happening to us even though we don’t believe it. We’re caught up in our failings, our bad stuff. We walk around feeling we should be better all the time because the society is constantly sending us that message. Not thin enough, not young enough, not nice-looking or rich enough.… I see it in this room every day, every hour.”

  “That argument has a certain appeal,” I said.

  “You can’t take anything seriously, can you.”

  “Sure I can. When the kid fell off the fire escape, when I heard about that, I took it seriously.”

  “Because you were able, for those few seconds, to relate to your own damaged inner child. The only compassion you can have for yourself is via someone else’s story.”

  “Stop please.”

  “Don’t you see what’s happening?” she said. “God comes to you, in the flesh, and you reject him. And why? Because of your profound but subtle lack of esteem for yourself. You’re placing limits on yourself that aren’t there. It has to do with your childhood trauma and, before that, your parents’ childhood trauma.”

  “Zel. Stop. Please.”

  “All right. But I’ll say one more thing: You don’t have a lot of time to decide. You have a week to get ready for what’s essentially going to be a mob scene.”

  “And to go see my parents. Which is more daunting, actually.”

  “Take me with you,” she said. “They’re my future in-laws, I should meet them. Or are you wavering on that, too?”

  I was shaking my head.

  “Not wavering? Or not taking me to see them?”

  “Not wavering. I love you. You can take that to the bank and make a deposit and get the interest on it for a hundred years. I love you, I want to marry you, and have kids with you, and live with you until I die. Okay?”

  The smile had come out. The mineshaft was lit up again, and you could see your way up and out of it and into full daylight.

  “And the other part? Jesus?”

  “I need another hour or so,” I said.

  I hugged and kissed her and went out of her office and down to the street, and I walked around for a while, aimlessly, which is what I do when I’m upset, just looking at the world going by, people hurrying here and there, cars, trucks, buses, skateboards. I went into American Soldier’s Memorial Park and sat on a bench, with a handful of street people scattered around on the lawn, and the leaves on the trees shimmering in the sun. I wasn’t thinking, exactly. It was more that my mind was twirling and coasting, flitting this way and that, a tiny fish caught in a tidal pool. After a time, I don’t know how long, a guy came and sat down not far from me on the bench. Dreadlocks, rotten old sneakers, stained pants, a flannel shirt on in the June warmth. He asked for some change, and I reached into my pocket and handed him a ten-dollar bill. I could see the surprise on his face for an instant, and then he covered it over as if he didn’t want to appear too grateful, or thought he didn’t deserve anything more than a couple of quarters. And then he hurried off to buy whatever it was he was going to buy with it—a hamburger, a hit, a bottle.

  So did it all boil down to what Zelda had said? Were these guys out here, and these women walking the streets at night in their short shorts and halter tops, these kids shooting each other in Fultonville and Hunter Town—was it all an elaborate dramatization of the fact that they had no “esteem” for themselves, as she put it? Did the drunks drink, and the whores go out on the sidewalk, and the high school girls smoke another chunk of crack just to prove to themselves—or to their parents—how worthless they were? And the people who understood they weren’t worthless—the Amelia Simmeltons and Alba Seuniers and Steven “Stab” Thomases of the world—how did they get that way?

  I did not know. I did not know. I did not know.

  THIRTEEN

  On days when I knew I would be driving down to North Salem to see my mom and dad, I always awoke with a mix of feelings, as if anticipation, love, and anxiety had been blended together into a lotion, overnight, and some mysterious spirit of the dream had applied it to my skin from hairline to toenails. And that was before an ordinary visit. Imagine what it felt like to add an engagement announcement to that (they had never met Zelda). And then, of course, on top of everything else, there was what I thought of as the Jesus Stuff.

  Adding to the fun was the fact that Dukey McIntyre, Ada Montpelier’s boyfriend and the reputed father of her child, had been assigned to my security crew by Jesus himself, had called to introduce himself, and was already making me crazy. Thrilled by his new responsibilities, he’d taken to phoning the condo every ninety minutes with progress reports. He had friends in the Panthers, a local motorcycle “club” (supposedly enlightened, we’d done a story on them; they had refreshing rules like Members Are Not Allowed to Punch or Kick Their Girlfriends; Members Are Not Allowed to Sell Drugs to Kids in Grade School), and they’d agreed to park their bikes in a ring around the center of Banfield Plaza, with openings for “VIPs” to come in and out. An hour and a half later he called with more news: The guys at Dermott’s, a rough bar on Versifal Street, had chipped in time and money to build a stage for Jesus to stand on when he spoke, and they would be “taking up positions” on all sides to make sure no “punks” gave our candidate any trouble. And so on.

  Though she had not yet met Jesus, Zelda told her clients she’d be taking an indefinite leave of absence. This was traumatic for her, naturally: she’d built up a successful practice over the years, and felt almost a parental responsibility to the people she counseled. Later that day, she’d met with Wales and, on his instructions, started contacting press outlets. Zel told me that the major newspapers, TV and radio stations, and national magazines were being appropriately cautious. No stories would be printed or aired for another day or so, until they’d had a chance to check out the accounts of the miracles, get corroborating witnesses. They knew that once this particular cat was let out of the bag it would instantly mutate into a thousand prowling tigers, and no one, no trainer with a whip and a piece of steak, was going to be able to get them back in. During my years in the business I’d developed a kind of sixth sense about these things, and now it was as if I could hear a million voices whispering to each other in a circle that kept expanding outward from Banfield Plaza.

  Zelda and I did not say much about it, but something was different
between us, expectation tinged with fear. I liked it, when the fear part wasn’t too strong. I think she liked it, too. We had new meaning to our lives, not to mention the engagement, of course (no ring yet, but I’d given her a pair of sapphire earrings to make her feel better about suspending her practice, and she loved them).

  But it wasn’t all joy and fun. Getting dressed on Saturday morning before heading out to see my parents, I found that my hands were shaking as I buttoned the collar of my shirt. There was a war going on inside me. By that point I had made my commitment to Jesus, really I had, and to Zelda and Wales and Ezzie, and even, in a certain way, to Dukey McIntyre, too. I felt part of a community of impossible hope. It was like being a Red Sox fan prior to 2004. But, even though I was officially out of the TV business, I was still living the story as it swelled and rolled, still doubting it, checking it, wondering what the twist might be. Because the journalist in me said there had to be a twist. If this Jesus was really perfect, that part of me reasoned, he would have stayed up in heaven and left us to our swagger and sleaze.

  Dressed and ready, wrestling with my doubts, thinking about the day ahead, I went down to my convertible with all that in my mind, and waited for the other shoe to drop, as it were.

  The shoe dropped as I drove up to Zelda’s apartment building. She was standing on the sidewalk in her best dress, and Jesus was standing close beside her. It was 7:45 in the morning, and so, naturally, my first thought was that they had spent the night together. I understand that this might seem like a weird first thought to have. We were, after all, dealing with Jesus and not some local Romeo; with my engaged and faithful girlfriend, not some cheap, to use my father’s word, slattern. But the unfortunate truth is that Esther Gilbanda, my ex, had engaged in some extracurricular activity after we’d been married for three or four months. Not surprisingly, that activity had led to our divorce. And not surprisingly either, it had left a deep bruise on my psyche. I had been so sure of Esther’s faithfulness, so sure she was happy in the marriage, so stunned when I found out she was cheating, that I wondered sometimes if I would ever really get over it. I mean, how did you trust your judgment after that? How did you know it wouldn’t happen again? You had to go on faith, and do the best you could. In that way, I guess, getting married was like believing in God, or in some Great Spirit, or even just believing the world ultimately revolved around goodness. Unless you came upon your spouse in flagrante delicto, as they say, it was hard to be a hundred percent sure one way or the other. And unless God gave you absolutely undeniable proof of His existence, well, you were always left with a nagging doubt.

  Anyway, I’m making excuses for being jealous, but I think they’re good excuses. So when I came driving up West Broadway toward Zel’s condo and saw her standing out on the curb with a handsome miracle worker right next to her, at quarter to eight in the morning, when he hadn’t been part of our day’s plan … it wasn’t a stretch for me to wonder if maybe something not that beautiful was going on.

  But I didn’t say anything, naturally. Accusing Jesus of sleeping with your fiancée is not the suavest thing you can do, especially not in front of said fiancée. So I kissed Zelda when she got into the car, and I reached back between the seats to shake Jesus’s hand as if I’d been expecting all along that he would introduce himself to Zelda early in the morning and then join us for our trip to North Salem.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to sit in front, Lord?” Zelda asked, turning around to look at him and moving a lock of hair off her face in a way that I—and I think many other men—found particularly sexy. “Your legs are so much longer than mine.”

  I felt a twinge of something bad.

  “Enough with the ‘Lord’ stuff,” Jesus said. “And I am fine right here.”

  “What should we call you then?” I asked. “You have a nickname or anything? How about Jeez? Or Jeepers Cripes?”

  Unfortunately, that is what happens to me when I get upset about something—jealous, nervous, anxious about seeing my family. I get “wise,” as we used to say where I grew up, though unwise would probably be a better word. I get fresh-mouthed, as Zelda calls it.

  Zelda reached across and punched me on the shoulder. It did not escape my notice that, until Jesus had come into the picture, she had not been the hitting type, and now twice in the last few days I’d gotten a whack.

  “What? It’s a reasonable question.”

  “It’s disrespectful.”

  I noticed, in the rearview, that Jesus was looking out the window as if he was studying the sorry spectacle of West Broadway—its chain doughnut shops and pawn shops and signs saying you could sell your gold and jewelry there, or cash your checks there; its boarded-up storefronts and litter and men wrapped in blankets sitting with their backs against a building in the sun.

  “Just Jesus is fine,” he said.

  “I thought it was Hay-Zeus.”

  “For Spanish speakers, it is.”

  I stole another glance, thinking he might be making some kind of joke, but it was hard to tell. His handsome face gave away nothing.

  “What about the Italian-American vote?” I asked, since my mother was of that blood. “Shouldn’t we say Gesu Christo when we’re in certain neighborhoods?”

  There was a patch of uncomfortable silence.

  “Is he always so much trouble?” Jesus asked Zelda, after a minute.

  By that point, she had turned away from me in disgust. But to her credit she said, “No, not always.” And then, “Only when he’s going to see his family.”

  “Some residue of stress there, I take it,” Jesus said. “I will help you with that if you want.”

  “Okay. Thanks. And sorry about the wiseass stuff. It’s a little hard for me that you don’t want to be called Lord or God or anything. I don’t think it’s going to help the campaign, either, to tell you the truth. I mean, if you perform miracles and call yourself Jesus, people are going to expect you to be a cut above the ordinary Bob Dole or Mike Dukakis.”

  “I am aware of that.”

  “All right. Just advising. If you want me to stick to security issues, I will.”

  By this point we had gotten our toll ticket and were climbing the ramp that led to the interstate. I knew from hundreds of other trips along this road that there would be a stretch of sorrow before we got out into the countryside: abandoned factories ringed West Zenith like the ruins of old fortifications, their brick walls alive with a garish graffiti of red and blue paint, gang tags, comic book faces, political slogans, or phrases expressing a kind of modern American angst. BRING MY JOB BACK HOME! was a typical one. The rooftop water tanks were rusty; the windows had more broken panes than whole ones; the parking lots had become vast tar plains littered with shards of glass and old tires. Once, something good and solid had been made inside; now it was all broken bricks and scraps of crap. I wondered what he thought of it. The Big Man, I mean.

  “No,” Jesus said. “I don’t want you to stick to security. And, Zelda, I don’t want you to stick to press relations. You are two of my chief advisors. As a matter of fact, I decided to travel with you today in order to talk strategy. I value your opinions.”

  We were silent, both of us warmed by the remark. Jesus could do that, I was starting to see, could shed his all-business personality in an instant and make you feel like he’d known you all your life. I stole another glance in the mirror, and it seemed to me that his features had softened. The high cheekbones and slightly bent nose, the high forehead beneath the shock of black, swept-back hair, the large crooked mouth—they had taken on, by some otherworldly magic, a glint of mellowness. In full realization that I am driving onto thin ice with a forty-ton tank here, risking the perpetual ire of the appropriatists, as Wales calls them, I will suggest that Jesus was able to move from a traditionally masculine roughness to a traditionally feminine kindness, though, of course, those terms are outdated, offensive, and possibly useless. Still, that’s what I thought. He seemed like a man’s man sometimes, the way he talked
, carried himself, the things he said. He might have had a hockey helmet on and been sitting in the penalty box, spitting between the gap where his front teeth used to be. And then, in the course of a single sentence, all that changed and he was, well, almost motherly … in the best sense.

  “If you like advice, you’ve come to the right couple,” I said, and I could feel Zelda look at me when I used that word. “Because we’re two of the most opinionated people we know.”

  “And two of the smartest,” Jesus added.

  “Not exactly. Zel here is no bright bulb, as you’ve probably already realized. Yours truly, on the other hand—” I got that far before she whacked me again, harder this time, though in a loving way.

  “I want your take on where the campaign stands,” Jesus said.

  “But you know all that already, Lor—” Zelda caught herself before pronouncing the whole title. She had swung around in her seat again so she could look at him. “You know everything, don’t you?”

  “I let there be gaps,” Jesus said, still gazing out the window, where the scenery had changed now to thick hardwood forest and hills. It’s a beautiful part of the world, western Massachusetts, very different from the eastern part of the state, geologically and politically. Driving from the woodsy west to the energetic east, where I’d been raised, always made me slightly anxious, as if the world around me was moving faster and faster and I had to work harder just to keep up.

  “We don’t understand that part,” I said. “The gaps, I mean.”

  “On one level, I know everything, yes, of course. On another, while I am here, I limit myself. Purposely. I have detached myself from the Great Spirit, the Father and Mother Spirit, and taken this form, which, I have to tell you, is not my favorite of the physical shapes—”

  “But you’re wonderful-looking,” Zelda broke in.

  Another bad twinge. I tried to tell myself it was because she’d never known her real father.

  Jesus went on as if he hadn’t heard. “What you might not understand is that the rules of this planet are fixed. Just as water freezes at thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, for example, or earth makes its rotation in approximately twenty-four hours, there are certain spiritual laws here, set in place even before the physical creation of the sphere that houses and nourishes you. To a certain extent, I can bend those laws whenever I want to—perform a miracle, for example. But if I eliminate them altogether for my own purposes, then everything is upended and my taking human form is purposeless. I have to operate within the confines of your understanding, your thought system, even, for the most part, your physical limitations.”