by J. T. Warren
“What if she slices her wrists again?”
“She won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because she thinks I believe the witchcraft stuff, too.”
“You willingly got naked and … laid before me?”
Another pause. When she spoke again she was defensive. “I’m not proud of it, Tyler, but I did what I had to, to make my mother think she was helping.”
“You tricked me into coming to your house so she could throw blood on me? Does that sound like help?”
“She got the blood from a farmer. It’s not poisonous or anything.”
“You’re just going to make excuses for her?”
“She’s my mother!”
Tyler let the vibrating cords of her shout dissipate. Though he felt more awake than he had only a few minutes ago, his eyes were beginning to cash it in for the night. Beneath him, in the garage, the faint strains of music tickled at the floor like the slight vibrations bugs make on a puddle of water. What was Dad doing?
“Look,” he said, “what do you want from me?”
“To understand, to not hate me, to not be scared.”
“Scared? Your mother throws blood in my face, raises a knife over your naked body and you don’t want me to be scared?”
“It’s all for show.”
“I don’t want to be involved in any more of this show, okay?”
“My mother is not a real witch. She thinks she is and she thinks she can help, that’s all. What’s so wrong about that?”
He laughed, unable to find the words to explain why it was so wrong.
“My mother is harmless.”
“Slicing her wrists is harmless?”
“She did that to herself. It only happened once.”
“What a relief.”
“Please don’t be like this.”
“Like what, a rational fucking person?”
“I know I should have told you this sooner but I started to, I don’t know, believe what my mother was doing might actually work.”
“You’re a witch, too?”
“No, but … She believes so strongly and it started to give me hope, you know? I went along with it and … here we are.”
“Yeah, here we are—nowhere.”
“Tyler, please.”
He saw himself throwing the cellphone across the room, saw it shatter into a million pieces. If all this witchcraft stuff was for show, like make-believe, then there never was any curse, and Delaney’s death was just some freak accident. That idea only fueled his anger.
“Don’t please me, Sasha. I’m the victim here, okay. Maybe you’re mother is crazy and she’s doing all that witchcraft shit because she’s delusional but maybe there’s something to it, too. You just said you started to believe it. My sister is dead. The day after you claimed I raped you, my sister is killed. Maybe that’s coincidence and maybe it’s not. I don’t know what to think, but I’ll tell you this: if your mother put a curse on me and my family in some pathetic attempt to punish me or help you win me back, she better take it off now or there will be some really bad shit going down. You understand?”
She said nothing.
“Go ahead, play dumb. I don’t ever want to see you again. Stop spreading lies about us at school. I don’t like you. I don’t want anything to do with you. Fuck it, I hate you. You got that? Now, go tell your psycho-bitch of a mother that if she managed, somehow managed, to actually cast a spell against me, she better reverse it now.”
He expected tears and pleading but got only silence. Until, that was, she opened her mouth and ruined everything.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
8
Anthony barely paid attention to the words the priest offered or the hymns the congregation sang or the string of sobbing teenage girls who spoke fondly of Delaney and then kissed her coffin. He wasn’t in shock the way most of the mourners believed when they saw him sitting frozen in the front pew, his unconscious wife next to him sleeping against her sister’s neck. Anthony was in the middle of a vast emptiness and a million miles before him sparkled the glimmer of a sunrise. That glimmer was hope.
The flier from the First Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered was tucked into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He had read it over more times than was probably healthy (though health issues ceased to matter much at all these days) and had even Mapquested the address. The church was right where he figured it would be on Broadway in Newburgh, though he still couldn’t believe it. He had not, up until last Saturday, heard of any Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered and he a found it difficult to accept that an organization open enough to knock on doors seeking parishioners could exist so surreptitiously. Still, there was the address, confirmed by the trustworthy people of wherever who ran MapQuest.
A rundown building, no doubt. Even so, he was still going to check it out. He had to. After the incident in his car (That was for you Dad), he needed to know if he was losing his mind, as likely a possibility as any, or had actually experienced a genuine otherworldly encounter. He could accept the former, but he wanted to believe the latter. Insanity might eventually bring comfort, yet only a true religious experience could offer succor for his ailing heart.
Throughout the service, Anthony reached inside his jacket and touched the flier as if it were a talisman that might ease his grief or even transport him far from this place where people cried over his dead daughter. This was not where he wanted to be—no parent would ever want to be in this place, either. He needed to be in a place that offered answers and hope, hope most of all. Without hope, what was the point of continuing? Not to put too fine a point on it, he could die this minute and everything would be fine. Tyler would look after Brendan; Stephanie, her sister. There was a Twilight Zone episode about a librarian who had become obsolete, and a futuristic ruling council declared it over and over again: Obsolete! Obsolete! That image had stuck with him perhaps for this very moment.
When it was time for him to speak, Anthony walked slowly to Delaney’s coffin, over which her friends had draped a make-shift mural of photos of her taped to a sheet with their yearbook style comments interspersed—We miss you! Goodbye and good luck. We love you. What the hell did she need with good-luck wishes now?
He caressed the only part of the wood top still showing as he might the head of a kitten. Scattered sniffles echoed in the church. Someone in the back coughed. Programs (The Final Rites of One of God’s Children) crumpled. Someone else dropped a hymnal; the vibrating thwap was like a shouted curse, and someone else, probably an old lady, gasped.
No one would care if he didn’t say anything; he knew that. This was a tender, private moment between father and dead daughter that hundreds of people could witness. They might understand his complete silence, but people always wanted a show. Some words, any words, would do. They just wanted an excuse to open another tissue.
He wouldn’t say goodbye, no; that was too much. He had read a poem in college that was, according to his professor, very popular at funerals, in which the speaker espoused that the newly departed is not gone, no, he or she is merely away. He wished he had found that poem; that would have assured not a dry eye in the house. People would have remarked about the beautiful poem afterward, even asked for copies.
He could scream Obsolete! at the top of his lungs—that would throw the crowd for a loop. This was all bullshit, just a way to distract from the horrible fact that his hand was on his daughter’s coffin. It didn’t matter what anyone crammed in the pews in their dress clothes thought. Delaney was his daughter goddammit. Fuck them if they thought he wasn’t giving the proper showmanship required for a funeral. Fuck them for even being here. Delaney wasn’t their daughter; she was his, mine, you stupid sons of bitches and if I want to stand silent like this for hours I’ll do it because this is my loss and the rest of you can shove it up your asses for all I care.
He reached into his pocket, withdrew the flier, and pressed it against the top of the coffin. Jesus’ mournful face wi
dened as he flattened the paper with both hands. Jesus’ eyes seemed to spill out of the paper. He must have been in such pain while he dangled on that cross waiting to die. Endured so much misery. And he did it all for us, if the Bible, and all the preachers out there, are to be believed. Why, though? To show how such misery can be endured? That was pathetic. People have suffered far worse fates than the Savior. He got to die and go back to His father, and where was Delaney? Was she headed up to Him as well? He wasn’t her father—that was Anthony, so fuck God, too, for taking his darling baby girl—damn God to hell.
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. The chuckle just came out and echoed through the church like the last cry of a dying animal. The old woman didn’t gasp; perhaps she had fainted. That thought almost brought out another chuckle, almost ushered out a complete slew of cackles, in fact, but he held it in check, squeezing his open hands on the coffin.
Jesus hadn’t suffered his fate as proof of misery; he had endured as evidence of hope. Of empowerment. Without turning the pamphlet over, Anthony recalled the writing on the back: “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Listen to Jesus and let Him empower you.
I have a burden. Boy, do I. And if you can’t help me, fuck, I might just take some pills and join my wife in her perpetual coma.
He didn’t say that, of course. A laugh was one thing, an actual expletive and a surrender to pain on top of that would be equivalent to burning the place down. Instead, he folded the flier, tucked it back into his jacket pocket, and appreciated the audience for a moment. For that is what they were: spectators to grief.
“I loved her so much,” he said and sat down.
The priest waited almost five minutes for the multitude of sobbing to ebb before continuing. Anthony had given them what they wanted. Now, he had to get what he wanted.
* * *
The church hosted a luncheon following the burial, but Anthony slipped out a back exit near the restrooms where a giant sign proclaimed: God heals the sick, but you should still wash your hands. He got in Tyler’s car and headed to Newburgh. His kids would take care of each other. His wife was a lost cause, anyway—Obsolete! He had to find a reason to keep going or he had to accept that there was no reason and jump off the cliff into the abyss.
He found the church between a pawn shop and a beauty salon. Some church. It was a glass-front store like the other buildings around it. Only the two giant images of Jesus plastered in the windows marked it as some kind of religious place. Otherwise, it might have been a closed-down pizza joint or a Checks Cashed Here liquor store.
Anthony parked between an aging Oldsmobile with flecks of rust like freckles across its hood and a shiny SUV with rims so large the tire was only an inch or so thick. On Broadway in Newburgh, it took all kinds. He left Tyler’s car unlocked, keys in the ignition. He wasn’t trying to be stupid; he was, rather, testing a very loose philosophy he had constructed on the drive over here.
The philosophy went something like this: If God wanted Anthony here, wanted actually to impart to him some mystical truth that he had begun to glimpse last night sitting in his mangled car, then it wouldn’t matter what Anthony did with Tyler’s car. He could double park it or even stop it in the middle of an intersection and it would still be there when Anthony got out. He almost tested this completely but decided that leaving the car in the middle of the road wouldn’t be a test of philosophy but a sign of insanity. So, he left the keys in the car; someone merely had to hop in and give the key a turn and they’d be the proud owner of a car a seventeen-year-old boy probably got to second or third base in a few times. If that happened, then fuck God. Simple as that.
Not exactly something for the Sunday sermon.
He knocked on the glass door.
A guy in a tattered sports coat with a scraggly beard shuffled past him mumbling about those damn Jesus freaks eating all his ketchup. Anthony was trying to read something more into that when the door propped open and a woman with short, brown hair and large breasts that a low-cropped shirt barely controlled answered the door. She smiled but said nothing.
Anthony fumbled with words. He sounded less intelligible than the guy mumbling about ketchup. If God really wanted him here, He wasn’t helping Anthony figure out what to do. Anthony removed the flier from his pocket and held it up.
“Our public service isn’t until Sunday.”
Anthony fumbled with words again (ketchup, ketchup, Obsolete!) until he finally squeezed out a one-syllable response: “No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, there was a man and he told me …”
“Told you what, sir?”
What had that guy said before his stocky partner walked in with his arm draped over Brendan’s shoulders and all shit broke loose? “Supper,” Anthony blurted. “Last Supper.”
The woman’s forehead furrowed. A man from deeper inside the place asked if she was alright, who was there.
“Sir, you’ll have to come back Sunday, please.” The man inside said something about the damn gate’s supposed to be down.
The fumbling, stammering thoughts congealed and the one-time English scholarship winner regained his functionality with language. “No, you have to let me in now. Something very significant happened to me last night and I need to know if it was God’s doing or if I’m losing my mind.”
“Uh …”
“Please, lady, just let me in. The guy came to my daughter’s wake yesterday and invited me here. I even … beat up his partner a little.”
“Oh.”
“Shelly, what is the issue?” The door swung wider and the short, stocky guy who had taken a hell of a beating from an skinny book editor peered out from behind a face swollen in red patches. A band-aid was stuck to his cheek, some dried blood gathered just beneath it like a zit.
* * *
Anthony expected a revenge punch, even an all-out got-you-back pummeling, and he was willing to take that beating if it eventually led to some form of deeper understanding about what was going on in his life, but the guy introduced himself as Dwayne and invited Anthony inside.
Instead of resembling a church, the room opened up to a large hall in which rows of folding tables with folding chairs pushed in neatly around them made the place look like the setting for a spaghetti dinner benefit. Maybe that’s just what they use it for. That’s how they lure in the masses.
No free dinners were needed to get Anthony here. But this was not what he had anticipated and he couldn’t hide his disappointment.
“Not what you expected, huh?” Dwayne said with a smile. When he grinned, the places where Anthony had really done some damage on his face stood out as white spots on sunburned skin. Anthony had to look away. Shelly, the woman who had answered the door, stood beside Dwayne, arm looped inside of his.
“I’m … sorry for what I did. I freaked out and acted like some crazed maniac. I’m sorry.”
Dwayne was already shaking his head before Anthony finished apologizing. “It’s fine. I understand. You’ve had a rough go of it.”
“Still …”
“No worries. God puts each us through trials. Taking your beating was one of mine, that’s all.”
Anthony marveled at the simplicity of his response. “You believe that?”
“Of course.”
Anthony waited for more, but Dwayne apparently had nothing else to add. He stood before him, face swollen in patches, waiting for Anthony to make the next move. For a moment, Anthony thought of punching him again, another test of philosophy. If God really, really wanted Anthony to be here right now, this broad-shouldered guy would drop to the ground and suffer another barrage of hits.
Instead of testing his theory, Anthony smiled, nodded, and asked where the other guy was, the one Dwayne had been traveling Anthony’s neighborhood with.
“We weren’t just walking around your development.”
“What do you mean?”
“We went right for your house.”
> “Why?”
Dwayne shrugged. “You’ll have to ask Ellis.”
“Ellis? He’s the other guy? Where is he?”
“Praying,” Dwayne said and pointed toward the back. “Go ahead. God’s back there, too.”
Anthony wasn’t sure if that was an attempt at humor or not and when neither Dwayne nor Shelly laughed, Anthony thanked them and headed to the back toward a pair of nondescript doors. No one stood watch outside the doors, but a pair of men in matching grey suits sitting at one of the folding tables watched him walk past without saying anything. Their silent stare unnerved him enough to slow his step. What was behind those doors? He might open the doors and find an empty room or an exit but he might also find people chained to the walls and severed body parts rotting before them on dinner plates. Jesus, where had that come from? He massaged his head as though that would ease away the dark thoughts.
A small plaque at eye-level on the doors labeled it The Empowerment Temple. No points for title, there. The editor in him wanted to find the clever guy who thought up that name and ask him if he wanted people to actually believe in his religion or if the whole place was really some New Age massage parlor.
He assumed he should knock—it was only polite—but he elected to put his God wants me here philosophy to work. He pushed open both doors with enough force to knock over anyone who might be standing on the other side.
An enormous Jesus Christ glared back from the far wall of a candlelit room and Anthony almost screamed.
* * *
Anthony walked several feet into this dim room as if in a trance. Like he’s drawing me in. The Jesus was only a statue, a large statue, and incredibly life-like, but not some real guy in a terry cloth acting out some empowerment ritual. The large, sorrowful eyes were the exact ones from the flier. This was their mascot Jesus and it was obvious why it should be kept back here: the thing was so absorbing that were it in the other room nothing would ever get accomplished. People would stare at it, at HIM, all day. This wasn’t just a statue; this was something profound, a gateway, perhaps, to God’s listening room. This is God’s listening room, he told himself and then someone touched his shoulder.