by Lela Gilbert
Maybe Episcopalians aren’t as concerned about divorce as the Baptists I grew up with. They’re too busy ordaining homosexual priests to care about such minor details. Betty smirked at her own brand of judgmentalism while dialing Erica’s number.
“Hello, Erica? This is Betty Fuller—or Elisabeth Casey if you’re watching television.”
“Betty, how are you? I’ve been so worried about you! Are you all right?”
“Oh, I don’t think I’m really all right at all. But I appreciate your concern, Erica. It was so nice of you to think of me.”
“How would you feel about coming to a dinner party?”
“I’d be honored, of course. Are you sure you want to go to that much trouble?”
“It’s not trouble at all! It’s a pleasure . . .”
The dinner was planned for the following Friday night. Betty hung up feeling both curious and apprehensive. She remembered all too well her mother Lucilla’s attitude toward those of religious denominations other than her own. Generally speaking, Lucilla felt they had all missed the narrow way into heaven by several thousand light-years.
Oh, what difference does it make? They want to pray for me and support me—there’s nothing wrong with that, is there? Besides, Jon’s Catholic, and that’s even worse than being Episcopalian, at least by Mother’s standards.
Friday night found Betty driving down the 57 Freeway toward Orange Hills. She followed Erica’s precise directions and parked in front of a large contemporary house with a broad lawn. She was just a few minutes late. When the door opened, she found herself in the company of four couples and three single women.
Erica embraced her affectionately. “Betty, you look wonderful! Your face . . . what is it that’s so different? You used to have some sort of rash, didn’t you?”
“Yes, to put it mildly. But that’s another story for another day, Erica.”
“Well, you look absolutely wonderful,” Erica repeated and introduced her to the others, who greeted her warmly. She was led into a well-appointed living room, given a glass of chilled white wine, and surrounded by the others. There was no question about who was to be the center of attention that evening. Betty, her plight, and her needs were all anyone wanted to discuss.
After a buffet dinner, while the guests were still seated around the huge glass-top table, Ken Townsend said, “Betty, before we go to the other room, I’d like for us all to join hands and pray for you. Would you be comfortable with that?”
“Of course I would. I need your prayers very much.” She looked at the kind faces of the people who sat around the table. They didn’t appear to be an overly affluent looking group, but they had obviously dressed up for the evening—for her evening.
“You know, it’s been hard for me to pray since Jon was kidnapped . . .” her voice broke unexpectedly. “I feel like there’s something wrong between God and me. Maybe He’s not there or He’s angry. I don’t know . . .”
Again the mental image of her final, intimate night with Jon came to her mind, and with it came the usual ambivalence. She sighed and looked at the table.
“Betty, I can promise you that God isn’t angry, and He’s not only with you, He’s in you.” Ken’s voice was gentle and kind.
“Well, I’ve done some things I’m not proud of . . .”
“Haven’t we all?” Everyone at the table laughed. Betty looked around at them gratefully.
A woman spoke softly, “I have a sense that you’re blaming yourself somehow for Jon’s kidnapping, Betty. I don’t know you, but I feel in my spirit that you should reject any guilt you’re feeling and believe that God has a higher purpose in this situation than anything you can possibly understand. ‘My ways are above your ways,’ the Lord says. You mustn’t feel responsible, dear.”
In a way she barely understood, Betty felt a release in her spirit. No, God wasn’t punishing her for making love to Jon. If God handled premarital sex that way, Lebanon wouldn’t have room for all the hostages! She almost laughed out loud at the thought.
“Thank you,” she said to the woman, whose name she couldn’t even recall. “I think, at least I hope, that you spoke for the Lord. I needed to hear that.”
Ken nodded. “Let’s join hands and pray together.” One by one, each of those people, strangers to her until that occasion, took Betty’s heavy burden upon himself. Each one prayed about some aspect of her separation from Jon. Not one man prayed for himself; not one woman expressed concern for her own needs. They gave of themselves wholeheartedly in prayer, and when they were finished they offered their time, their money, their homes—anything they could think of that might alleviate Betty’s suffering. She could hardly believe her ears.
Just before the evening ended, a distinguished looking gentleman spoke to his wife quietly and the two took Betty aside. “I work for a news syndicate with a large bureau in Washington, D.C. I’ve seen something on the wire about a hostage family gathering in Washington in early January. Once I’ve confirmed the fact that it’s really happening, Doris and I would like to pay your way there and also take care of your hotel accommodations. From what I understand, it’s quite encouraging for the various hostage family members and friends to meet together now and then, along with some of the ex-hostages. Would you like to go?”
Betty looked at him in amazement. “I . . . I’ve never been to Washington, D.C.”
“Well, I’ll see that someone meets your plane and gets you to your hotel. Don’t worry about that. And we’ll try to make some preparations for you to meet people like Peggy Say and some of the other family members.”
“Who’s Peggy Say?”
“She’s Terry Anderson’s sister, and she’s been a spokesperson for the families since 1985.”
After a moment, Betty said, “Your offer is so generous that it’s hard for me to accept it. But yes, I think I should go. At least I won’t be sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring.”
“Betty,” the man spoke kindly, while his wife wrote down her phone number and address, “you may be waiting for the phone to ring for a long time. Some people have been waiting for more than half a decade. But you’re not waiting alone. From now on every person here will be waiting with you.”
Betty looked around the room. The dinner guests were putting on their coats and saying their last good-byes. “You know, I feel like I’ve known you for years,” she said to Erica, Ken, and all the others.
Erica smiled, “Well, there’s a Psalm that says ‘God sets the solitary in families.’ We’ll be your family if you’ll let us.”
Christmas lights sparkled along the streets and freeways, and the night wind blew cold and crisp. As she made her way home across the Orange County suburbs, Betty’s eyes swam with tears from time to time. For the moment, it was not sadness that flooded them. Something else was stirring inside her—a strange, inexpressible emotion. There were no words to explain it, no theology to define it. But unexpectedly, in the presence of those benevolent Episcopalian people, she had glimpsed the tender heart of God.
Suddenly some long-forgotten lyrics to a well-loved hymn came to her like a voice from heaven, affirming the embrace of the Father.
3
Every day the Lord Himself is near me
With a special mercy for each hour;
All my cares He fain would bear, and cheer me,
He whose name is Counselor and Power.
The protection of His child and treasure
Is a charge that on Himself He laid;
‘As thy days, thy strngth shall be in measure,’
This the pledge to me He made.
The envelope was from the Golden Bay Hotel in Larnaca, Cyprus. Betty ripped it open with shaky fingers.
Dear Betty,
I’m the writer who was assigned to the Beirut story with your fiancé Jon, and I was with him when he was kidnapped. I found your address and phone number in his diary and thought I should write you. He and I were traveling together and of course he had told me that you and he were
to be married on the following Saturday. His luggage and camera equipment were in our car, so I kept it. I’ll be shipping it to you when I get back to the States—it’s very heavy and too expensive to ship from here.
Although I am still on the road covering a couple of other aspects of the Beirut story, I will be back in the U.S. in early January. I will try to telephone you then and tell you in detail about the kidnapping.
Don’t give up on that wedding—Jon cares for you very much. Please accept my sincere sympathy about the tragedy.
All the best,
Vince Angelo
Betty’s hands were shaking even more by the time she finished reading the letter. For the first time she was confronted with a violent scene that had actually happened—an occurrence she hadn’t allowed herself to think about before. Someone had witnessed the abduction. He had seen firsthand the abuse Jon had suffered. Heard his words. Seen his fear. Vince Angelo had escaped, free and unharmed. Jon Surrey-Dixon hadn’t.
I don’t know whether I want to meet this guy or not. I wonder if he knows anything that could help Jon? Surely the Army or the Navy or somebody has talked to him by now. I wonder who’s in charge of this case, anyway? I sure hope it isn’t George O’Ryan at the State Department. If he’s running the show, I’ll never see Jon again!
The letter immobilized Betty for several hours. She reverted to her old, helpless pattern of sitting in her chair, turning on the television, turning it off again, trying to read, and finally staring straight ahead. This time, after a catatonic hour or two, she picked up the phone and dialed her father’s phone number.
“Hi, Daddy, it’s me.”
“How are you doing?”
“Oh, fine, I guess.”
“Any news about your boyfriend?”
“Not really. That’s why I called. Listen, did you ever get a hold of any of your old Marine buddies like you said you would?”
“Yeah, in fact I called up Red Jeffrey yesterday. He’s stationed up Seattle way, and he knows an officer there who was over in Beirut when the Marine barracks got blown up back in ’83. He’s gonna talk to the guy and see what he knows.”
“Daddy, who’s in charge of getting the hostages out? That’s what I want to know.”
Harold paused. “You mean which branch of government?” “I mean what person is responsible. Who’s at the top?”
“Well, the president, I guess, at least now that Ollie North’s gone. People complained about Ollie, you know, but he’s a no-nonsense Marine, and he got more hostages out than anybody ever has, before or since.”
“Right. Semper Fi.” Betty closed her eyes, awaiting a further tribute to the U.S. Marine Corps from her father.
Instead he said, “What are you doing for Christmas?”
“I can’t even think about Christmas.”
“Well you’d better think about it. It’s less than three weeks away. Why don’t you come up here?”
“I’m afraid to leave the phone, Daddy. What if Jon gets out?”
“So you’re going to sit there alone all day? Why don’t you get one of those machines . . . ?”
“You mean an answering machine? I’ve got one.”
“Well, then, use it. Come on up here and I’ll see if Red can come by and meet you. I think he’s going to be around here during the holidays. You can talk to him about who’s heading up the hostage detail.”
Betty tried to fight off a vague fear that she shouldn’t leave the house—staying home had become almost a fixation. “I’ll think about it, Daddy. And if you talk to Red again, tell him I’d appreciate anything he can find out.”
She hung up the phone trying to remember everything she’d ever heard about the Lebanese hostages. She faintly recalled the bombing of the French and American barracks in 1983. Since that time an odd assortment of hapless victims’ faces had paraded across television screens. She recalled seeing Terry Anderson, Anglican envoy Terry Waite, and a couple of others whose names eluded her.
But what she wanted to know the most she understood the least—who in the American government had the job of getting the captives out?
Preparing to go to Oregon for Christmas gave Betty something to do, but she had no enthusiasm for the trip. She picked up the phone several times to cancel, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell Harold, “Sorry, I just can’t make it.”
She was trying to establish her relationship with her father on more solid ground. Closeness with him had evaded her all her life, and it seemed that this present crisis had somehow given them common cause. And besides that, she couldn’t help but wonder what his Marine friend Red would have to say.
Betty suspected that Red Jeffrey was a right-wing know-it-all, but she still wanted to talk to him. She certainly wasn’t about to call the State Department for information.
She hadn’t yet found the courage to contact other hostage families either, although she had their phone numbers. Her plight seemed so insignificant compared to theirs. Some of them had been waiting for five or six years for a release and couldn’t even be sure their loved ones were still alive. Why on earth would they want to hear from her?
Thus far, her only background source on the subject had been the myriad journalists who contacted her when Jon was first abducted. They had given her bits and pieces of the story, and what she learned made no sense.
For example, what distinguished the little groups that took credit for kidnapping the various hostages? The Islamic Jihad. The Islamic Holy War for the Liberation of Palestine. The Revolutionary Justice Organization. Jon’s kidnappers had called themselves the Islamic Revolutionary Organization. Supposedly he was their first victim. No statement had been issued regarding demands, ransom or anything else. Who were the kidnappers? What did they want? Why did they take Jon?
The day before she left for Oregon, a Christmas card arrived from Kentucky. Inside it was a note,
Dear Elisabeth,
I just wanted you to know that you are in my thoughts and prayers this holiday season. I know how painful this time of year can be for you, and I hope you’ll keep yourself surrounded by friends and family. Please feel free to call me if you ever need to talk.
God bless,
Peggy Say
Betty knew that Peggy was Terry Anderson’s sister. Why would she take the time to write to me? Her brother’s been in there for years! Betty was deeply moved by the note and tried to recollect whether she’d seen Peggy on television and what she looked like. She must be a very kindhearted woman. I’ll call her before Christmas. Or maybe I’ll just write to her.
Instead of putting the note in the pile of unanswered mail that was gathering dust on the left side of her desk, Betty impulsively folded it and slipped it into her wallet. It gave her hope, somehow, and reminded her that her situation could be worse.
She woke up early the next morning and methodically put her luggage in the car. She found herself moving in slow motion. Silently she prayed, Lord, if there’s a call I’m supposed to get, let it come now, before I leave the house.
What if Jon got out? What if they allowed him to telephone her on Christmas day and she didn’t answer? Fear clashed with reason. She’d put her father’s phone number on the outgoing recording “in case of emergency,” and she had tested and retested the code for retrieving her messages. Jim and Joyce at OMI had agreed to check her mail every few days, in case some sort of communiqué came through from Lebanon. In short, there was no way Jon couldn’t reach her.
I’m homesick and I haven’t even left the driveway! She fought back tears, double-checked the front door lock and drove away.
The eighteen-hour drive to Medford, Oregon, was more enjoyable than she’d hoped. There was a certain peacefulness in the solitude. By the time she pulled up to Harold’s mobile home, she was too tired to be concerned about anything but sleep.
Next morning she woke up in a small, tidy room. She knew Harold was up. He was sneezing, and every time he sneezed the whole structure shuddered slightly. Talk about clo
se quarters . . . She got up, brushed her hair, and quietly dialed her home telephone number. “You have no messages,” the mechanical voice reported.
As she entered the living room she was greeted by a blast of hot air. Geez, it’s like walking into a nuclear reactor. An enormous wood stove glowed red, heating the room to an ungodly temperature. Beads of sweat broke out on her face as she sipped at the strong, scalding coffee her father poured for her.
“Daddy, it’s got to be ninety degrees in here!” Harold Fuller had always been partial to warm indoor environments.
“It’s cold outside! I’m heading out for more wood.” Harold shuffled off in his bedroom slippers toward some unseen woodpile, and as the front door opened a welcome Arctic blast swept across the living room. He quickly returned, laden with firewood.
“Why don’t you have a Christmas tree?”
“Trees are a waste of time and money,” he grumbled, stacking the wood against the stove. There was an awkward pause. “Why, did you want a Christmas tree or something?”
“I thought I came up here for Christmas, Daddy.” Betty looked at her father affectionately. He was a character, to be sure. “Of course I want a Christmas tree.”
“What about that plastic one we used to . . .”
“Forget it!” she interrupted him without apology. “I’ll get us a real tree. Where are we going to put our presents if we don’t have a tree?”
“What presents?”
Betty sighed and shook her head. She looked around the room. It was cluttered with familiar objects that she remembered from childhood. But not a single Christmas decoration could be seen. He probably misses Mother too much to celebrate Christmas.
“Look, Daddy, if I get us a tree, do you think you can find our old boxes of ornaments?”
“Oh, they’re probably out in the shed. Yeah, I’ll find them but you’d better be careful—they’re probably full of black widow spiders. Go ahead and get dressed. I’ll take you into town and we’ll look for a tree.”
Harold was whistling an unidentifiable tune and stoking the fire yet again when Betty went into the little bathroom to take a shower. She located a thin, tattered bath towel and looked inside the shower stall. “Daddy, do you have anything besides Lava soap?” she shouted.