“No,” he says, cutting me off, “it’s not fine. It’s not going to be fucking fine. I’m going to talk to her about having an abortion. I think it’s the right thing to do.”
My blood goes cold. Cold, very cold. I feel waves of shivers, currents of cold, go up and down my spine. All I can manage is,
“What?”
“I think it’s the right thing to do,” Brent repeats.
“What, what about what you said at Noxubee a couple weeks ago?” I ask.
Brent shakes his head, saying nothing. He keeps looking out the window.
“Brent?”
“Don’t talk to me about that bullshit!” he yells, now looking at me. “Don’t talk to me about stupid bullshit like that!”
“Stupid bullshit?” my voice begins to rise too. “You’re the one who said abortion is murder. No, you actually said it was ‘fucking murder.’ Fucking murder. Remember? Those were your words. Then you gave this impassioned atheist defense of life.”
“Shut the fuck up,” he says, walking past me to the door. “I don’t know why the hell I came over here anyways.”
“Why did you come here?”
“Because I thought you were my friend!”
“Friend! You’re damn right I’m your friend! You’re like a brother to me and I’m not going to let you become a child murderer.”
Brent shoves me, hard, in the chest. I’m caught off guard and knocked back a few feet, trip over something, and fall to the ground. Brent turns the handle to the door and looks at me.
“It’s not a child. Whatever that thing is in her it’s not a child. It’s nothing until I say it is, you understand? It’s bunch of tissues, bunch of who the hell knows what. And I’ll tell you this. There’s no way in hell some thing is going to ruin my life.”
He opens the door and before slamming it shut he looks at me and says, “Fuck you.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Thanksgiving Day: Act II
“I thought’ya friend Brent would be joinin’us for dinner,” Shelby says to me at the door, taking my coat. “He not feelin’ well?”
Oh, he’s not feeling well, alright. He’s very much not well. “Yes, ma’am,” I say.
“I’m sorry’ta hear that. Stomach thing?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I guess you could put it that way. Some kind of gut failure. Yes, a stomach thing, among others.
Shelby’s Thanksgiving cooking makes me forget about Brent for the moment. Shelby has made two turkeys and both glisten with a buttery glaze as if kissed by a melting sun. We eat yams, sweet potatoes, cranberry something, regular potatoes, corn, green beans, a multitude of different breads both sour and sweet and, my favorite, sausage stuffing. I eat three plates of turkey, stuffing, and sweet potatoes. My cousins are all in town and so, naturally, a lively conversation breaks out during dinner.
“Miss Shelby,” Parker says, “how would you feel if, hypothetically, an American senator, maybe even the president, decided to build a wall on the border with Mexico and then got Mexico to pay for it? Would you be in favor of that or no?”
“A wall? Why?” Shelby asks.
“You know,” Parker says, “to keep America safe. To fix the illegal immigration problem.”
Shelby shakes her head. “Build’a wall keep people out? May’Mexico pay for it?”
Parker nods.
“No,” Shelby says. “App-solutely not. Terr’ble idea. First, ain’t no way we build a wall’long the whole Mexican border. Not possible. Second, you’really think Mexico gon pay for some crackpot’righ-wing idea lie-that? Type a fascist fear-monger idea like that. Sure, sure. If’I’m Mexican, yes, sign me up for footin’ the bill for’Mericans buildin a wall for the purposes of hate’an exclusion.”
“I don’t know,” Parker says, “I think with the right planning—
“You’re serious?” I ask. “So there isn’t a hypothetical anything here? You would support something like this?”
“Why not?” Parker asks.
“Because,” Austin says, joining the conversation. “Such a plan does nothing to unite. It serves only to divide. We are one, brother. All is One and One is in all. We are stronger together forever for worse or better. The whole human family must come together in musical harmony. No borders, brother. No nukes. No nationalism.”
Parker shakes his head.
“Doan know bout all that,” Shelby says. “But it sho ain’t no good idea. Terr’ble idea. Uwe, what you think?’
As Uwe shurgs, grunts, and knocks back a beer a powerful feeling of déjà vu comes over me. I’ve done this before. I’ve been here, at this almost exact same scene, with these same people, talking about the same things. And there’s Shannon. Hugging her knees as she sits feet up on her chair, staring out the window popping her bubble gum. Bored and far away.
“I think if y’all, if y’all just honestly considered the plan,” Parker says, his hands on the table, palms up as if pleading for understanding, “you would see how beneficial it would be to America. I’m a proud American and I don’t care who it offends. Sorry, but that’s how I feel. We need to consider the safety and wellbeing of the American people before all else and frankly that’s the last thing Double Zero has ever thought about.”
“What next?” I ask. “You get your wall on the Mexican border. Who do we go after next? When do the mass deportations start? When do we start building the camps?”
“Dammit, Rhett,” Parker says rocking back in his chair. “You’re just as left-wing as Miss Shelby. You play this ‘I’m just Catholic, not political’ thing but it’s all fake. You’re as liberal as the next crazy-ass liberal.”
Parker adjusts the Reagan-Bush ’84 pin affixed to his lapel. It got jostled around a bit as he was getting worked up.
“Brothers,” Austin says, leaning forward in his chair and scanning the table with his eyes. “The old king Hammurabi taught an eye for an eye. But the great Mahatma said an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. And Guru Duke Baron Ichpujani Wilson teaches us to see the same deep sea in every seed in every professed creed pointing to the reality that not one of us is fit to lead; one good deed, just one good deed and we would all be freed. Brothers: we must look past conservative and liberal, past Catholic and Buddhist, past the past and future and beyond even our very selves. Our ‘selves’ are not even selves at all. All is an illusion. We must look deep into the one and same oneness and nothingness of the great Yes.”
“Okay,” Parker says, getting up from the table. “If anyone needs me I’ll be out in the back getting drunk.”
Uwe laughs. What? Uwe actually laughed! Parker deserves a gold medal (not and I’m Offended one, a real one), some type of award, something. He actually got Uwe to laugh! It’s the first time in my life that I’ve heard Uwe laugh.
We all help clearing the table. It’s still early, not yet four o’clock. The Lions game might still be on. The Lions or the Cowboys. Clear the table then we’ll all watch some football together.
Shannon suggests that we play a board game as a family. Sounds kind of lame. But just as lame as it sounds it sounds just as fun. Sometimes, maybe even often, the lamest things are the most fun. A board game would actually be great. The table is nearly cleared and Shelby and I are at the sink rinsing plates and placing them into the dishwasher. The job’s near done. Shannon taps me in the arm and asks me if I would come with her to help pick out a board game. There’s a great stash of board games in Shelby and Uwe’s bedroom but they’re pretty high in the back of a closet. Could I help her get them down, she asks? Sure.
We walk down the hall, away from the kitchen. I open the door and say,
“So, build a wall on the border. Pretty craz—
Shannon shoves me against the wall inside the room. She gently closes the door behind her and clicks the lock. She presses up against me and gives me a long, passionate kiss on the lips. She pulls away. Is this really happening? I think my nervous system is going to short-circuit. Just hours ago Brent had put me into col
d chills and now I’m hot all over. I feel like someone just dropped me into a hot bath. And the pins and needles that are usually restricted to my feet or hands are firing throughout my body, everywhere.
Shannon comes back in for a second, longer kiss. She takes my right hand and places it on her left hip. Egyptian honeycomb. I don’t know why those words come into my mind but I might be going through some type of near death experience so who knows what’s going on up there? Egyptian honeycomb, that’s all I can think about.
Shannon takes off her shirt. Both my knees feel ready to take off their ACLs. She comes close again and begins to pull my shirt up. I don’t protest. My hands raise unconsciously and there we are, both shirtless, skin to skin.
“I’ve wanted you for as long as I can remember,” Shannon says. “You’re all I’ve ever wanted, Rhett.” Oh, no. Shannon never calls me Rhett. This is serious. Shannon gives me a third kiss. Oh, Egyptian honeycomb, you are so sweet.
Shannon takes her finger and traces a line up from my belly button up my Adam’s apple and onto my lips. She walks over to Uwe and Shelby’s bed and sits down. “I want you to come over here and get on this bed with me. And I’m telling you right now that neither of us is getting off until we’ve broken it in half. Rhett Lawson, sir, I want you to do me like there’s no tomorrow.”
Every dam of restraint in my body breaks. Every intention of waiting for marriage is shattered. I’m flooded with desire. I’m drowning in it. But, for some reason that I may never understand, at the very moment that I’m on the brink of satisfying my greatest romantic obsession, an obsession that has haunted me for as long as I can remember, I find some hidden reserve—and believe me it’s hidden, I have no idea where this strength came from—to say no.
I pick up Shannon’s shirt from the floor. What a shirt, a shirt that gets to hug that perfectly shaped figure all the day. I walk over to my cousin and hand her the shirt. “Put your clothes back on.”
I turn and walk out of Uwe and Shelby’s bedroom. I don’t bother stopping to say anything to anyone. Shannon can come up with some excuse for why I had to leave. I go straight home.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Thanksgiving Day: Act III
I drive home through a fierce internal storm of torpor and desire. I’ve never wanted to do anything as badly as I want to have sex with Shannon right now. The torpor is so strong that I crave it. I can taste it on my tongue like a AA battery. I crave meaninglessness. How I wish Brent was right about life, my concupiscent self thinks. To be Meursault in Algiers right now (before the crime) and have nothing but Marie and nothingness. How I wish God did not exist, my lustful, carnal, fleshy self thinks. Things would be so much easier; so uncomplicated. I could turn this car around right now and get down to some bed-breaking.
And yet He does.
I go inside my house. I slowly crumple to the floor and just lay there. What else is there to do? What else can I do? I am laying facedown on the floor and decide to taste the carpet. Why not? I am so enveloped in the torpor that I am coming to think that yes, certainly, nothing matters and all is absurd. What’s wrong with laying facedown on your floor and just biting the carpet? It’s as good or bad or irrelevant as the next thing. Nothing matters.
This eventually gets old. I have to get up. I do. I sit down on my couch and stare out the window for a little while.
A sound startles me. It’s an email notification. I go over to my laptop and check it. It’s from Doctor Weathers. There’s a problem, she writes. While my first three dissertation chapters were good, the fourth one is not. Substantial revisions must take place, unforeseen substantial revisions that will mess up my timeline for May graduation. I need to “reframe” certain aspects of the work. This will take time, she says. Perhaps a December graduation, a semester later, is more feasible, she writes. The other committee members agree with her, she writes. We should meet and talk this over; not now, not until January she writes—she is off somewhere at some conference or some archive doing something now—but when she gets back and after the New Year we’ll talk it over.
I guess it all hits at once, huh? Brent, Shannon, my dissertation. Oh well. At least I can go back to biting carpet. I do exactly that. I get back on the floor, facedown, and start biting the carpet again. Another email notification. I have half a mind to throw my laptop out the front door or find a hammer somewhere and do some physical stress release therapy. I don’t. I read the email.
It’s from Father Will. It’s not directed to me personally, but to the whole St. Joseph’s community. I have to get off that list, I think.
Dear Parishioners, the email begins. As many of you know, the word Eucharist literally means “Thanksgiving.” This Thanksgiving Day, in between turkey and football, come spend sometime with Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. He is the very reason for our Thanksgiving for all good gifts come from Him, none greater than His Real Presence in the Eucharist. I am hoping today will be the beginning of Perpetual Adoration at St. Joseph’s. Stop by anytime! I will be here most of the day and many of our staff and students will be stopping by too. The email closes with God Bless you and your families, yours in Christ, Fr. Will.
The last place I want to be right now is over at St. Joseph’s. For no other reason than the last thing I want to do is be around people. People might be there. I want to be left alone. Right now, I just need to be alone.
I close my laptop, grab my coat, and walk out the door for St. Joseph’s.
The front doors of the church are open. I walk inside and head for the Adoration chapel on the left side. I don’t make it there. Father Will is sitting in one of the back pews of the church. He’s the only person in the church, it’s late, past nine o’clock. I walk up to him and just spill it all. I’m in a deep crisis of faith I tell him. I don’t know what God is calling me to do with my life. I thought I was supposed to get married but now I’m thinking that I’ll never find anyone. I tell him what happened with Shannon earlier today. I tell him everything about Shannon and me, about my long-suffering obsession with her, everything.
I tell him about Brent. I feel helpless, I say. I don’t know if Brent will convince the girl he got pregnant to have an abortion or not. I don’t know her. I don’t know what he will say, how he will handle it, how she is handling it. I know nothing.
Finally I tell him that I fear that I will not complete my PhD. Everything seemed on track and then, out of the blue, not at all. What are “substantial revisions” anyways? What if I’m not up to it? What if I just can’t do it, fail, and will have wasted the past five years of my life? And for what? What’s the point of this, of anything?
Father Will is a great listener. He listens to me the whole time without saying a single word. He’s not listening passively, either. He’s actually listening to me, hearing me. Finally he speaks.
“I don’t know what God is calling you to do. I don’t know what God’s plan is for your life.”
Gee, thanks Father. Thanks for nothing, Father.
“I do know that although I don’t know what God is calling you to do,” he says, “He knows. He has a plan for your life. And that’s all that matters, Rhett. God has a plan for you, for me, and for everyone but sometimes it’s harder to see or understand exactly what that is.”
“You’re in a dark night of the soul right now,” he says, “God is testing you. I don’t know why, but he’s testing you. We all have to be tested, to be proved worthy to be His sons and daughters. I know it’s hard in this moment, when you’re going through it, but this is a blessing. When you’re being tested, when you’re in this spiritual desert, this dark night, that’s when God is drawing you near to Him. These are spiritual growing pains. No child likes growing pains. They hurt. But we all like being taller afterwards.”
Father Will closes the prayer book that he had been praying from and sets it behind him. “Listen, Rhett. I will tell you that I do know about being in a crisis of faith myself which, by the way, didn’t even escape the Son of God Himself. Look at
Christ, the perfect man, fully God and fully man, asking God the Father why He had forsaken Him on Calvary. If Jesus went through a crisis of faith how can we escape them? Wherever I am there my servant will also be, Christ says,” Father Will points to the Crucifix over the altar.
“I know about a crisis of faith. My parents were both Catholics and absolutely rotten people. The kind of people, the kind of Catholics, that should have made me an atheist. But for the grace of God, they would have. My dad cheated openly on my mom. All the time. A different ‘girlfriend’,” Father Will makes air quotes in front of him, “each week. All the time. On business trips, not on business trips. When something didn’t go right with these women he would come home and just beat the living daylights out of my brother and me. I still remember my younger brother having a black eye for a couple of weeks after my dad socked him after a night with one of his whores.”
“My mom,” he says, nodding, “my mom was, how to put this? My mom was the most doglike of female dogs. Drank all the time; smoked more. Couldn’t care less that my dad beat my brother and me. Did nothing. Sat around the house all day fashioning herself a stay at home mom. More like a stay at home drunk. Complained all the time about everything. Eventually her and dad split up, left for somewhere, somewheres more like it as each went to his own, every coward and bitch for him and herself, and my brother and I ended up with our aunt and uncle.”
“Now tell me,” Father Will says, tapping on the pew, “if these people were supposedly Catholics what would any sane person think about the Catholic faith? If God was like a father, what was I supposed to think of God? Try convincing someone like me that a person is supposed to keep the commandment to honor their father and mother. And yet here I am, a priest. I made it out of all that and kept my faith. My faith got me through and it was just my faith. I started praying the rosary daily when I went to live with my aunt and uncle—who are Nazarenes by the way, beautiful people—and I tell you that I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but within a few weeks of the daily rosary I fell in love with Our Lady. She was not just Jesus’ Mother, the Mother of God, but my mother, too. She’s my Mama.
The Holdout Page 19