“Because of the affairs?”
“Yeah. She didn’t know about the other stuff. The same woman that went to Newland told Elaine.”
We sat with that awhile.
“Interested in a beer?” he asked.
“It’s ten in the morning. Got any coffee?”
“Sure,” he said, “but I can’t promise it’ll be as terrible as yours.”
I laughed. “I’ll manage.”
As he went to the kitchen, I checked him over. He hadn’t shaved in weeks but was otherwise groomed, his hair combed, wearing a new polo shirt and a clean pair of jeans. When he returned, I asked, “You growing a beard?”
He rubbed that distinctive jaw. “Thinking about it. Though what a pity to hide this masterpiece.”
We sat in silence then. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Like a clearness committee, only I didn’t know whether it was my committee or his. After twenty minutes, I asked, “Evangeline?”
His face remained strangely still. “No. Never with her. But I saw her once on the streets down there. I stopped, talked to her a little, but didn’t pick her up. She was clearly too young.” He said this with the same dispassion he used to relay administrative directives. He rubbed his jaw again. “See. I’m not quite the monster I’m made out to be.”
“Evangeline, she recognized you at school?”
“She did.”
“And the boys? Did you see her with them?”
“Yes.”
“And you kept that from the sheriff because she might remember you.”
He nodded.
I’d been all but certain of these things. But when he confirmed them, a sorrow hit me, as if I’d peered inside him and found lesion upon lesion consuming him. A shadow swept across the room, gave the dark carpeting a burgundy cast, and I grieved for Peter and Elaine, for Hannah and Zoe and shy little Mia. I grieved that I’d lost my friend, that I hadn’t known he was ill, that somewhere along the line I had made the decision not to know.
We sat another half hour with silence between us, ice falling in the freezer, children shouting in a nearby yard, trapped there with a stale odor of male sweat and kitchen garbage that needed to be removed. I ignored the evidence before me and held him in the Light, pictured him glowing with the Divine that still existed in him. And he changed over those minutes, a falling away of the layers of not-God, not-love, of manmade cover, of an ego’s false protections. Then he was weeping. Silently shaking as tears spilled onto his cheeks.
We sat until he was still. We sat awhile longer. I stood and waited a few minutes more. Then I opened my arms.
He hesitated but came to me, and I held the Divine that he still contained, and I held the man with all his lesions, and I held myself for being there, reaching out, even as the not-God in me roared with an ache to inflict grievous harm on this man, to make him feel all he had inflicted on others.
When I had given everything I could, I pulled away. I left him before the not-love in me reared up, before it suffocated that of the Divine.
* * *
—
DURING THE NEXT MEETING WITH GEORGE AND THE OTHERS, we sat in silence. You’d have thought with my startling insight about Daniel’s cruelty I’d have gotten to the crux of what plagued me, but if anything I’d become more brutal, inflicting pain on Lorrie at her most vulnerable. Clearly something larger remained buried in my heart.
Thirty minutes in, I said, “I have no words tonight.”
“You don’t need words,” George said gently. “You know that.”
We sat in silence another thirty minutes. I opened my mouth to call it a night but instead found myself saying, “I don’t know God. I don’t think I ever have.”
If the Friends were surprised, their faces didn’t reveal it. Silence again descended on the room as the expanse of the problem took shape. Finally Abigail spoke, her voice kind and without motive. “What do you mean by ‘know’？”
I could recite the received wisdom, that there is “that of God” in everyone, from the most depraved criminal to the saint. Yet that external knowledge is no different than saying I know whales because I understand where they could be found. I let out a sigh of frustration. “I don’t know. Maybe when my heart goes wild or my limbs tremble or I see glowing lights. How can I say how I’ll know God when God has been hiding from me all these years?”
Ralph piped up. “So you’ll know God when you experience puppy love? Or some kind of parlor trick?”
George cleared his throat. “Ralph. May I remind you of the proper form of questions.”
“Of course,” Ralph said, dropping his head as if remorseful, but the corners of his mouth twitched upward.
George seemed on the verge of further instruction, so I cut him off. “Yes! All my life, I have seen the Divine rise through Friends, speak through them. All my life, I have waited for the One to rise in me, to channel through me, to . . .”
I fell silent. Not only had I revealed my falsity all these years by professing to hold myself to a higher standard, claiming to speak only at God’s insistence, but also by the childish absurdity of my required proof. Ralph had always seen me clearly.
I was refusing to “know” God until he clarified for me my specialness and presented it publicly to the world. The miracles of the world, the flowers and beasts and skies that blazed with light and color and the depth of darkness, the beating hearts of these dear Friends—all these manifestations offered to me in every moment would not do.
After many minutes, George said gently, “To channel through you to do what, Isaac? Can you tell us more?”
I knew the answer without further reflection. “To satisfy my ego. To prove I deserve my place as an elder, as a weighty Quaker after so many years—” I stopped, believing that each of these dear Friends would soon be another loss in my life. I swallowed and said, “After so many years as a fraud.”
We spent the remaining time in silence. There was no smirking, not even from Ralph. In that plain room with its industrial extension cord and long-wasted candle, with its four hard chairs and life-worn Quakers, I felt only love.
63
Evangeline had barely arrived home from Natalia’s that Saturday morning when George appeared with another Friend whom he introduced as Ralph. Red-faced and puffing, they carried a chest of drawers to her room and, with Isaac’s help, set about stripping the closet’s shelves. By noon, the closet was cleared and the men were beginning to measure a large hole in the outside wall. “For a window,” they said. She wouldn’t have guessed it, but once empty, the closet was big enough for a crib and a chair. A trunk for blankets and toys would fit in a corner. Drawers were already built in, so she’d have everything she’d need.
That afternoon, she checked on their progress and noticed a piece of shelving sticking out of a barrel in the room. She needed a shelf for her books, so she pulled it out, and as she did, something fell back in. At the bottom, covered in plaster dust, was Jonah’s bracelet.
“You want to keep that?” George said.
Her head popped up. “I’m sorry, what?”
“It’s a decent piece of wood. Might make a good shelf for your room. Ralph, you’d help me with that, wouldn’t you? Making a shelf for Evangeline?”