Otto patted him on the hand. “Now, Harrison. Be nice to your big sister.”
They watched each other then. Harrison watched Sister Morrisohn. Otto watched Harrison. Sister Morrisohn watched Otto watching Harrison and patting that hand. It was worse than she thought.
Harrison slept in his old room that night. Otto slept in the upstairs guest room, the tryst room. Sister Morrisohn did not sleep, and then at three minutes to 2 she heard the door to the upstairs guest room open. She was already positioned in a place where she could see Otto, who wore no shirt, skip lightly down the stairs to Harrison’s room. She told herself that she should have expected this. There had been signs.
At two minutes past 5, when a shirtless Otto left Harrison’s room, Sister Morrisohn met him at the foot of the stairs.
“Elaine!” he said, covering with his hands the red marks on his chest. He had a pink, hairless body, and was fleshy like a cherub.
“Come with me, Mr. Windmere.”
“I know what this looks like.”
“Just come.”
He followed her to the veranda outside the upstairs guest room. He sat in one of the chairs set up out there without being asked. She pulled out a cigarette and leaned against the rail with her back to him and smoked. He made delicate clearing sounds with his throat while she smoked. When she finished her cigarette, she was ready to pounce, but he held up his hands.
“You got me where you want me. I’m a married man. I’ve got two children. I’m well respected in my community. A straight community. I’m begging you not to make a big deal out of this.”
“I’m very angry with you, Mr. Windmere.”
“Oh try to be modern about this. It’s not like I pursued him.”
“Last year he was telling me about some girl he was planning to marry. Wendy Mira. There would be children and everything. Now this.”
“Wendy Mira? Or do you mean Wind-e-mere?” Otto chuckled. “That Harrison is such a kidder.”
She closed and opened her fists. “God. God. God.”
She put another cigarette in her mouth and moved to the chair across from his and sank into it.
Otto’s face was pink and cheeky. Reaching up, he brushed his flop of hair back into place over the receding area. “All I ask is that you consider all the parties that could get hurt by this.”
“I am considering them,” she said, exhaling smoke.
Otto pleaded. “Be modern about this. We all find love wherever we can regardless of what custom or the law tells us we should do.”
“Don’t lecture me.”
“All I’m saying is that homosexuality is not a crime. Statutory rape is.”
Her mouth fell open when she heard that. She shot a hateful look at the mousy Otto Windmere and he stared right back at her with his beady eyes. He looked like a rat. He was a rat. And Harrison was a rat too. She mashed out her cigarette and went inside.
Otto Windmere was right about one thing.
The case was a cinch. After the judge threw it out of court, a joyful Sister Morrisohn shook Otto Windmere’s hand. She went to hug Harrison, but he would only give her his hand. Then he went over to Beverly Morrisohn, looking ugly as ever in her old-fashioned bun, a man’s overcoat, and a pair of outdated slacks, and he separated her from her attorney. Harrison and Beverly spoke for close to five minutes, with much head nodding, and then shook hands in parting while she and Otto looked on.
Otto hummed uncomfortably. “Fraternization with the enemy.”
“Amen,” Sister Morrisohn said.
“But I guess it is to be understood. Isn’t he, like, her uncle? You’re her stepmother, and he’s your brother, so—”
“Don’t go there,” she warned. “Are you kidding me? You’re kidding me, right?”
Otto sat up front on the ride to the airport while Harrison sat in the back with his hat pressed down to his ears. She watched him in the rearview mirror. He looked just like he did when he was a kid. Otto was very chatty. He knew about art. He knew about music. He complimented her again and again about how beautifully she kept the house and implied that he would love to come back and visit sometime. When they got to the airport, she tried to hug Harrison goodbye, but again he offered his hand. She would not let go of him.
“What are you doing, Elaine? I’ll miss my plane.”
“We’re going to have this out, you and me,” she said.
“Stay out of my business.”
“I should slap you right in your mouth! You had no right to tell your little friend my private business. You’re my brother. You’re the only family I got left. You’re trying to send me to jail or something? Is that what you want?”
“Ah, so now you see how it feels to be judged!”
“That was between us. You don’t see me telling everybody about your activities, though what you’re doing is shameful. It’s a sin.”
“A sin? You’re practically a child molester.
You’re a frickin pedophile.” “You’re a frickin sodomite!”
He pulled away from her hand. “Go ahead. Shout it to the world. That’s what you want. You want everyone at the airport to know. Harrison’s here and he’s queer!”
“If you would just shut your big mouth and listen to what I’m trying to tell you, Harrison—I love this boy. It’s different for me—I love this boy—”
“He’s a boy, he’s a boy, he’s a boy, you goddamned hypocrite.”
“If you would just listen—”
“Listen to yourself.” He broke from her and strode off angrily, catching up to Otto at the checkpoint.
Elaine shouted after him, “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Harrison! Please believe me. I’m trying to understand.”
But he was already gone.
“Harrison, oh Harrison. You’re all I got left,” she said to no one.
She went into the bathroom to cry and pray. When she came out she was in no condition to drive. She felt like a drink to get her head together. It was Friday night and the airport restaurants were crowded. She did not want to be seen crying into her wine. But she wanted wine, and she wanted to cry into it. She found an Italian place, took a table in a dark corner, ordered the house wine. Red or white, she didn’t care. Just bring it fast. “Harrison’s problem,” she said to no one, “is that I spoiled him. I was too easy on him. Buford and I gave him too much. If he’d had my life growing up, he would understand how special it is to have someone who will stand by you no matter what—”
She spotted a familiar face. It was Brother Parker.
She hid the bottle under the table and drank from the glass. And the boy sitting with Brother Parker, it was Elwyn.
Had they seen her? She didn’t think so. As she watched them, they continued to talk. Their laughter winged across the room. They seemed to be enjoying each other’s company. That’s what family was all about. Why couldn’t it be that way with Harrison and her? Why did they have to fight all the time? Why couldn’t he see that she only wanted to help?
Elwyn’s back was to her. That strong back, she mused. Strong enough to ride. Is my baby ready to go for a ride? That’s what she needed right now, a good strong ride from her strong young man to get Harrison off her mind. It was Friday and she’d had to cancel a piano lesson because of Harrison’s visit. She would signal her baby and set something up. She just had to wait for the right opportunity. He looked so delicious even from behind. That back, that strong back—mmmmmm.
He was wearing a shirt she was unfamiliar with, but his voice, coming from the far table, sounded deeper, more soulful. Sexier.
Perhaps it was the wine.
Certainly if Elwyn had seen her, he would have signaled. She waved the waiter over and told him to take the wine bottle away. She paid her bill and popped a few mints in her mouth to kill the smell of alcohol.
When Brother Parker got up and went to the restroom, she saw her opportunity.
She went over and kissed her sweet lover on the back of the neck, and a strange boy turned in his chai
r to face her!
The look of surprise on the boy’s face was quickly replaced by delight. Imagine that such a vision of womanly beauty would kiss him on the back of the neck in an airport restaurant.
“I am so sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
“Wow.” The boy’s face was radiant.
“From behind, you look like someone else.”
He grinned. “Would you mind turning around so I can see who you look like from behind?”
“Are you getting fresh, young man?”
“I’m trying.”
The boy, who was about the same age as Elwyn, wore a mustache and goatee that looked so handsome and mature on him that she decided right then and there she would make clean-shaven Elwyn grow a mustache and goatee. They resembled each other. The boy’s forehead was slightly pointed where Elwyn’s was broad, his cheeks less lean. Still, there was enough of a resemblance to justify an honest mistake. When he grinned, she saw that two of his teeth were gold. Yuck.
She explained, “I saw you sitting there with that man I thought I knew. I thought you were the son of this man I know.”
He extended his hand for a shake. “My name’s Benny, and you can just kiss me on the back of the neck any old time you like, ma’am. Ha-ha-ha. I love your perfume.”
She took his hand. “Elaine Morrisohn. Mind your manners. Ha-haha.”
“I apologize, Miss Morrisohn, but this is too funny. Nothing like this has ever happened to me in my whole life. Wait’ll Roscoe gets back. This’ll crack him up.”
“Roscoe? That man is Roscoe Parker?”
“You know my dad?” said the boy named Benny.
“Your dad?”
“What a lucky guy he is knowing a beautiful woman like you.” He flashed his gold teeth. “Are you like his girlfriend or something?” His eyes twinkled and he passed her a sly smile.
“Wait! Are you like Elwyn’s girlfriend? The little preacher? Ha-ha!”
The boy’s smile widened.
“Oh my God, Benny Franklin,” Sister Morrisohn said, with her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God.” She ran out of the restaurant.
Benny turned in his seat to watch the pretty lady go.
“The little preacher,” he mused, brushing his adolescent goatee with a finger. “Wait’ll Roscoe hears about this.”
But then Benny thought about it. Really thought about it.
So when Roscoe came out of the bathroom a minute later, Benny Willet did not tell him about the woman who had kissed him on the back of the neck and then run out of the restaurant. He let Roscoe eat a few more mouthfuls of his chicken cacciatore while he thought it through. As much as it pained him to ruin a good story, Benny realized he would have to give his biological father an edited version. He had never met his little brother—“the little preacher,” Roscoe had called him—but brothers had to stick together nevertheless.
“So what were you going to tell me, Roscoe?”
His father smiled nervously. “Well, I’m thinking of getting out of the busdriving thing. I’m thinking of taking classes at the community college.”
Benny, lost in his own disappointment, did not answer.
Roscoe said, “So … what do you think?”
“I don’t want to hear about your community college classes. I’m not playing anymore, Roscoe. I want to see him.”
“But—”
“It’s not fair. I want to see my brother,” said Benjamin Franklin Willet, Sister Morrisohn’s godson.
HERE ENDETH THE TESTAMENT OF INNOCENCE LOST
III. TESTAMENT OF APOSTASY
Gospel of Matthew 10:34
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth:
I came not to send peace, but a sword.
Apostate
In two weeks I would be leaving Miami for Gainesville to enroll as a freshman at the University of Florida. I was eighteen and eager to get away from the widow and end our shameful affair. I would go away and, with God’s help, come back a new man and a better Christian.
My father wanted me to study engineering because he had heard there was good money in it—even though engineers didn’t get a chance to actually drive the train. My mother, disappointed that I had chosen not to go into the ministry, wanted me to endeavor toward a degree in social work, which she felt was the next best way to use my education in the service of the Lord. My grandmother, too, was saddened when I turned down my scholarship to Bible College.
“Be a teacher, Elwyn,” my grandmother suggested. “Then when you come back, you can be superintendent of the Sunday school program. Many of our Sunday school teachers just don’t know how to reach our kids. We’re losing them to the streets.”
“I don’t want to teach,” I protested. Teachers were not my favorite people.
Just a few months earlier, I had attended the senior awards program at my high school and suffered my greatest humiliation. The principal, Mr. Byrd, in announcing the winners of the Grand Gopher Awards, deliberately stuttered: “El-El—”
I rose to my feet thinking he was about to say my name, Elwyn Parker, which was not a haughty presumption, for he was nearing the P’s and I had been, at least during my junior and senior years, an outstanding gopher. Over the final two years, no one had achieved a higher grade point average with as rigorous a courseload as I carried—all Advanced Placement classes, all A’s. No one had been better known around campus than I, by students and faculty alike, and no one more feared. For I had been exact and courageous in doing all that my Lord commanded. My confrontations with the secular school administration had become famous. I had been interviewed by the local newspaper too many times to count, so even the surrounding community was aware of me.
Finally, no one had presided over a school club with as many members, or as much influence, as the one I founded and headed, the Jesus Club. At our largest, we numbered 150; and it was through our efforts that the administration was forced to change the school’s nickname, which had been around since the school opened thirty years before, from Red Devils to Golden Gophers.
Thus, I stood when Mr. Byrd said “El-El” because I deserved a Grand Gopher, deserved to have my senior picture hang permanently in the Gopher Hall of Fame.
“El-El-Eldridge Pomerantz,” Mr. Byrd said.
I sat down quickly, but the damage was done. All around me, people were chuckling.
As Eldridge Pomerantz, a second-string football player who had been a regular at our prayer meetings until he made first string, took his place on the stage next to the other Grand Gophers, Mr. Byrd’s eyes met mine, and I recall that he smiled. Another battle won by Satan.
But he was wrong. While the administration did not bestow upon me one single popularity prize that gloomy awards night, I did march to the stage four times to collect awards that had stipends attached to them: the National Merit Award, $2,000; the Young Musicians Award, $800; the National Christian Scholarship, $500; and from the Jesus Club, the Blessed Gopher Award, of which I was the first recipient, $298.
In truth, I didn’t know what I wanted to study in college—music, medicine, anthropology all interested me—but if Mr. Byrd were an example of what a teacher is, petty, mean, vengeful, then no, I didn’t want to be a teacher.
There was one more thing I didn’t want to be, an attorney. Sister Morrisohn’s late husband, Buford, had been an attorney, so she pushed for me to study law.
“Then when we marry,” she explained, “it’ll be like it used to be.”
Sister Morrisohn had to be kidding, of course. I was eighteen. She was forty-four. Marriage was ludicrous. But as the time of my departure for college grew nearer, she had been kidding in that manner much too frequently to suit me. Her strange taste in humor gave me headaches.
Was it but a week ago that we visited the mall where she bought my going away gift, the expensive leather briefcase with dual combination locks and a hidden compartment for toothbrush and floss?
As always, Sister Morrisohn and I behaved in public as mother and s
on. While “mother” paid for the briefcase, “son” witnessed to a sixteen-year-old girl who had wandered into the store.
Yes, the girl attended church. A Methodist.
Yes, she knew about Jesus. Who didn’t?
No, she hadn’t accepted Him as personal savior, but she would when she was older, she said. Too much living to do now.
Take a look at this, I said to the girl, and I made to reach into my jacket pocket for a tract (“We Know Not the Hour When Death Shall Appear”) but found my hand detained by Sister Morrisohn.
She kissed me on the mouth. “Let’s go, hubby.”
I jerked my hand out of her grasp but followed her out of the store, forgetting to give the confused sixteen-year-old the tract which might have led to her salvation.
I was so shaken, I didn’t say a word until we reached her house.
“Why would you do a thing like that?”
“I was just kidding,” she said.
“Someone from the church could’ve been passing by.”
“No one saw. I checked first.”
“It’s dangerous. Crazy.”
“You liked it though, didn’t you?”
“No. It made me very nervous.”
“You liked that girl, didn’t you?” she said.
“I was just doing the Lord’s work.”
She grew silent. My devotion to the Lord always seemed to surprise her. It was true I had sinned—and would perhaps continue sinning until I put some distance between us—but I was not the great hypocrite Sister Morrisohn was. I had not hardened my heart against God.
While I prayed every night for forgiveness, she had gradually, if however discreetly, become a backslider. Once again she took pleasure in the things of the world—cigarettes, which she admitted she had never truly given up; wine, which she insisted helped her forget that she was a poor widow spending all too much time with a lover a third her age; and those melancholy Chester Harbaugh and His Old-Time Fiddle Band records. Not his hymns, mind you! But those monotonous two-step odes to heartbreak and unrequited love. How I grew to dread that brooding baritone. Those screaming fiddles. She often played her favorite, “Going Away Soon, Love,” as a prelude to our sordid communion:
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