I learned later that it wasn’t so much that my dad would not allow me to be gay, as the guilty conscience he carried over raising his daughter without a mother. When he learned about my tendencies, as he called my attraction to other girls, he immediately blamed himself. My dad was a chiseled hunk of a man who fit all the gender stereotypes. He once told me that it was his fault I didn’t know how a woman was supposed to act. Soon a string of women appeared: wives of cops, a few daughters, ladies from a local church. These visits were staged, even the ones from Nora, a woman I could tell my dad was sweet on, who gave me a weekly cooking lesson. Nora was fun for a while, and I loved that we felt like a family, but her relationship with my dad didn’t last long.
By the time my dad heard of Jameson, he’d gained quite a reputation as a healer and my father desperately wanted me to be healed. Talking to a pastor who dealt with these issues seemed logical to my dad. With the power of God, the righteousness of God, Jameson could turn the sinner back to heterosexuality, and, therefore back to God. This was exactly what my father hoped would happen for me. In his mind, what could possibly be damaging about sending your kid to a religious counseling group?
It was in this savior, Pastor Jameson, that my father placed all his hope. My dad wanted nothing more than for his daughter to be healthy, normal, and straight. So I made the trek for support and fellowship, always under the guise of a weekly visit with a made-up cousin. Everyone, including me, believed all the prayer and education was working. We all heartily believed in my miraculous change. We all believed, until I met Marci.
*
The Jamesons’ canary-yellow ranch-style home on Acorn Lane looks smaller than I remember, the shutters now worn to a muddy brown. Everything else is the same, though: window boxes frozen but waiting to be planted in the spring, a manicured yard with a house address box that glows in the dark, and one enormous maple tree that engulfs the front yard. I’m willing to bet money that a fat welcome mat still rests outside the front door. Although the near-sheer curtains are drawn, shadows move around in the cramped but warm kitchen.
I suddenly rage with a desire to stomp up and bang the butt of my pistol on the front door. I want to show the Jamesons my new ring from Rowan with the infinity engraving. I want to tell them that despite their teachings, I have found love. I have found salvation. With another woman.
Or have I? I question how much longer Rowan will stay if I can’t break down my Berlin Wall. Am I really happy? I shift gears into park and pop each of my knuckles, like firecrackers inside the silent, cold car. My mind races with what it will be like to face the Jamesons after Marci’s death. One look in the rearview mirror reminds me that I did insist on this meeting. Captain Davis and one of the technical officers are in the unmarked van not far down the neighborhood street, gearing up the recording equipment, while Ainsley has gone to follow up on the graveyard recordings.
Mildred Jameson steps out the front door for the newspaper on the stoop. Although she looks smaller and her hair has grayed to a near white, she hasn’t lost her slim, dainty figure. Mildred, I remember, was quite a few years younger than her husband and their relationship was scandalous at one time in their religious community. I doubt many had my scandal with Marci trumped—two star-crossed lovers using the support group that was supposed to make us all straight as a way to see one another, to touch and sneak off to steal kisses and sock away moments of passion that would only fuel our desire until our next meeting. We’d made a farce of their meetings, Marci and I, and a public spectacle of One True Path after Marci’s death.
No, I figure shutting off the car, the Jamesons won’t be happy to see me. As far as they’re concerned, I’ve already pitched a tent with Marci in Lucifer’s neighborhood. If the Jamesons truly believed what they preached, however, Lucifer could always be denied with the organization’s help.
My hands tremor as I adjust the tiny camera and microphone. Everything is embedded inside a miniature Christian cross pin that’s been attached to my scarf. Somewhere on the other end Davis waits for me to do something. When I finally gather the courage to open the car door, the good Mildred Jameson looks up with the paper in hand. Her eyes squint as she strips away the years from me.
“Lucinda!” she calls out. “You’ve finally come home.”
Chapter Thirteen
I hold the steaming cup of tea between my palms balanced on my knee, thawing out my winter-chapped hands. I sit across from the Jamesons. We’re hardly three feet apart, and with nothing between us but our feet, Charles and Mildred have managed to take from me all of the natural barricades. The what-ifs barrage my mind. What if they realize I’m not being truthful? What if I blow the case because I lose control of the interview? What if I get kicked off the case?
Breathe, I remind myself. Just breathe.
A tall wood-heavy grandfather clock tick-tocks so loud it’s almost deafening in our silence. The living room’s completely composed of worn tans and taupe. Years of sun and foot traffic have blanched the brown carpet a dirty khaki. From where I sit, I can see the door that leads to the basement and that locked basement door I remember so well.
My first One True Path meeting. We stood in a circle and the two guys on each side of me took my hands in theirs.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be safe tonight,” Chaz said. “This is how we begin each meeting after opening prayer.”
I’d expected the prayer, but what was going on here? What did he mean by safe? Somewhere at the top of the basement staircase the door slammed closed. Soon after, I heard the soft click and firm switch of the lock.
Pastor Jameson stood in the center of our circle. “What is said in the circle stays in the circle and with the Almighty. Agreed?”
I nodded along with everyone else, the movements short and quick. I felt anxious, on the edge of something huge, something dangerous.
“Okay, then. Simon, let’s start with you. What do you have to confess this week?”
Simon stood across the circle from me. His head dropped to his chest when his name was called. He said nothing.
“Simon? What sins are weighing on your heart?” The pastor stood directly in front of Simon.
“Nothing has happened this week, sir.”
“Simon, please. Let’s show Lucinda exactly how this is done.”
Silence filled the basement. I only heard my harsh, ragged breaths in the circle of eight people. Finally, Simon spoke. “Well, there is a guy at school.”
“Yes,” the pastor said. “Confess now.”
“I notice him a lot. He’s in my algebra class and always dresses in button-down shirts.”
“And you’ve thought of him, right? In that way?”
Simon nodded.
“Even our thoughts and desires of homosexual sex are sins. They must be confessed so God can forgive us. Simon, tell us now. What did you fantasize about with this boy?”
“Pastor!” Simon’s voice cracked as he pleaded. We all waited in silence until the quiet grew so heavy it was nearly unbearable.
Simon’s resolve broke and he choked out a painful sob. “His hair, okay? It’s his dark thick hair that I think about. I wonder what it would be like to touch it, to put my fingers in it. I wonder if another boy ever touched his hair like that.” Simon choked back a sob. “And I wonder where else on his body he has hair. Pastor Jameson,” he pleaded through his tears, “I wouldn’t do anything. I’ve changed.”
“Have you?” The pastor turned and faced all of us one at a time. Quickly I looked away, afraid for his beady stare to catch hold of mine. “What do you think, group? Has Simon changed?”
One by one, we each whispered our admittance that Simon had not changed. He watched each one of us fall from his side that day, his eyes following each of us until no one in the circle was standing up for him. Simon’s eyes shone bright with tears of utter abandonment.
“Homosexuality is a disease,” the pastor said. “Remember that you are weak against it without the Lord to take on this battle for
you. Pray to Him in these moments of weakness. Simon, be honest with us and with God. Touching this boy’s hair is not all you thought about. Speak.”
Tears ran down Simon’s cheeks now. “I swear, that’s it.”
“Simon, tell us how you imagined his penis in your hands. Tell us how you imagined that penis in your mouth!” The pastor yelled and spittle flew from his lips. “Tell us, Simon. Tell God!”
Simon choked and slobbered with sobs and snot. Beside me, Chaz silently cried. I wondered how many others in the circle were also crying. When I looked down at my own hands, I saw I was shaking and my teeth chattered despite the stuffy warmth of the pastor’s basement.
I looked around at everyone’s face in the circle. I thought about my dad and the shock victims he helped. Everyone but the pastor had that haunted, displaced look of trauma victims. I wanted out. I wanted to beat down that locked door at the top of the staircase. No matter how much my gut screamed for me to go, I stayed. I stood still.
Now, Mildred smiles at me. “You’ve let your hair grow.”
“Yeah,” I say, my hand immediately shooting up to finger-brush its length out below my shoulders.
“I like it so much better than the buzz cut you always had.” Is her smile strained or am I imagining it? “The longer hair is so much more feminine on you.”
My swallow of tea nearly chokes me. There are those pesky conservative gender roles again that these two can’t seem to get past. Some things never change. My own smile is forced, nothing more than my lips pulled back to show my teeth. “How’s Chaz?”
The pastor’s clothing has the same worn look as the living room: a collared button-down shirt now yellowish rather than the original white, polyester gray pants that ride up his calf, and leather loafers so worn the creases across the top have cracked. He clears his throat. “He’s doing well. He’s now part of our One True Path outreach that goes into high schools all over Ohio and provides help for teens suffering from homosexuality. We need to get them while they’re young.”
“You haven’t seen our newest little angel.” Mildred walks across the room to get the framed photographs beside a well-worn Bible that’s been in that exact location since I’d been coming to meetings at this house. “We just don’t know what we’d do without our Sophie and our latest addition, Lauren.”
The photographs depict what appears to be the all-American family: a handsome, athletic father (with a little less hair than I remember), a subdued mother, and two smiling, happy-looking little girls. It’s the mother I focus on. I know this woman. It takes me a few seconds to place her. She’d been an active member of the One True Path meetings when I was there. Maureen! If Chaz had to marry a woman, why not a lesbian? At least they could reach an understanding that they would be roommates and not lovers.
“Beautiful girls. How old?”
Mildred beams. “Sophie is almost ten and Lauren is…how old?”
“Five, I think.” The pastor notices my questioning look. “Both girls were adopted. They just got Lauren a few months ago.”
Adoption. The family makes perfect sense to me now.
In the pastor’s arsenal of proof that his ministry is the real deal, Chaz became their shining star. Like some sort of circus sideshow, he was touted as evidence that homosexuals can become straight. Through Jameson’s prayers, the One True Path meetings, and interventions with conversion therapists and other men of the cloth, Chaz was supposedly healed. He became the ultimate image of the organization: heterosexuality through the worship of God.
Chaz and I had a special connection, a link neither of us could put into words. It wasn’t only that we were a week apart in age, but something stronger, something that allowed us to sit in silence together and not be uncomfortable. He suffered tremendously, like the rest of us. Chaz had always been anxiously quiet and the pressure-filled interventions and weeks away from home at heterosexual boot camps terrified him. He wanted nothing more than to please his parents. I remember once, maybe at my third or fourth meeting, Chaz told me that as only children we had the weight of our families placed on our shoulders. My weight, though, wasn’t nearly as heavy as Chaz’s.
Once, at a retreat when Chaz and I found ourselves alone for a few minutes, I asked him what the conversion sessions were like.
“You really want to know?” He stared down at his hands, the nails bitten to the quick. “You asked for it.” In the next few minutes of Chaz’s narrative, I’m certain my jaw hit the table multiple times. First, the doctor would talk with Chaz to assess how many homosexual urges he’d had over the past week. Chaz was expected to keep a journal and write down every possible thought that could be linked to same-sex attraction. Then they would move on to the aversion portion of the therapy. Chaz was hooked up to a small apparatus that produced a strong electrical shock. In the beginning, it was only placed on his hands, but when it seemed this method wasn’t working, the doctors hooked the machine up to Chaz’s penis. Chaz would look at gay porn and with each sexy picture a shock would be delivered to his hand and penis. Sometimes, Chaz told me, the machine would leave burns on his skin that later scarred. Then heterosexual porn was shown to Chaz and no shocks were delivered. The machine was removed and he was given a cooling ointment to heal the wounds. Other times, Chaz was given a drug that made him vomit while he looked at gay porn.
Chaz and I both cried as he detailed these hellish weekly sessions until he could say no more and wound up sobbing in my arms.
Mildred clears her throat to get my attention. “You might not have heard. Chaz married Maureen almost ten years ago.” She can’t help but grin from ear to ear.
“She’s a good girl,” the pastor says. “We’re lucky to have her as part of the family.”
I think about the way both Chaz and I became so deft at sneaking past our parents to visit our lovers. Certainly his marriage is nothing more than a façade with a man or two waiting in the shadows. He can’t have changed that much since we last saw each other.
“I hope you’ll get the chance to say hello to them yourself before you leave Willow’s Ridge,” Pastor Jameson says. “I’m happy to see you’ve finally made it back to us. I’ve been praying for you, Lucinda. All of us have. It’s taken some time, but somehow, some way, we all make our journey back to the arms of God.”
“Yes, Pastor, I suppose that’s true.”
“Confess to us, Luce. Have you engaged in homosexual activity since we last met?”
My left hip feels the persistent pressure of Rowan’s ring, lodged within my pants pocket. The hard silver is a comfort. In her own way, Rowan is with me and gives me strength. “I have, sir. I’ve also realized the error of my ways.”
“That’s good,” Jameson says. “I want to remind you of Proverbs 3:5. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart.” He leaned forward, pointing his finger at me. “Let’s not misread this second part, Lucinda. And lean not unto thine own understanding.” Over the years, deep lines have sunk around Pastor Jameson’s mouth and a fold of skin hangs under his chin. It looks as though Jameson’s face has fallen, that the skin has merely given out. “You hear me, Luce? Don’t trust your stinkin’ thinkin’ on this one! Only trust Him.” Jameson points toward the ceiling.
He still has the piercing dark eyes that I remember, a look that can drill out a confession from the hardest of criminals. His eyeglass lenses have become thicker, only magnifying those daunting eyes, but the frames are large and rimless now. He still has a short spread of gray hair, maybe a bit thinner than I remember, but not much, and fuller cheeks that are always flushed. Age has a way of always shocking me; it sneaks up when I’m not looking, as though we all stay the same, our looks frozen in time. While I hope that has been the case for me, it hasn’t for the man before me.
“Just when it seems despair will swallow us whole, Lucinda, God provides. He gives us a solution. Let’s not forget the next verse: In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.”
Although Jameson’s face has aged s
ignificantly, his body certainly hasn’t. He’s always been tall, over six foot, and he’s lost none of his muscle mass. He may be in his late sixties, but the pastor’s been lifting and working out. From the looks of him, every day.
“Amen,” I say. “Like you always said, Pastor, there aren’t any mistakes with God at your side.”
“He’s brought you here for a reason.”
“Hallelujah!” In her joy, Mildred reaches for my hand. “We no longer meet in our basement. We have a space out on Simmons Road.”
“If you remember,” Jameson says, “I’m an accountant by trade. Chaz and I went into business together once he graduated. We are a growing business and growing ministry. So many calls and visitors. We needed a bigger meeting area.” He pauses to give me a smile. “God sure has blessed us.”
Or Satan has. I almost laugh out loud at my own knee-jerk reaction. I chew the inside of my lip to stop the grin. I’ve always hated how he can give any response with that canned smile. When I was younger, I imagined him sending people to hell with that same blank smile.
“We have about thirty members now,” Mildred continues. “Since you left us, we’ve added a licensed therapist who donates his time.”
“Wow, thirty members,” I say, shifting in my seat. There had only been about nine or ten of us when I attended.
“You’re one who could benefit from therapy with Dr. Goldson.”
“Conversion therapy, I assume?” I set my cup on the floor. “Certainly you must be aware that there’s been a lot of controversy over those practices.”
“I hope that I am correct, Lucinda, in my assumption that you are now ready to receive the Lord’s help in changing your ways.” Jameson glowers at me over his lenses, the same aggressive look he uses to scare all newcomers into admissions of guilt.
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