Sarah is way over the line. I don’t claim to be a saint, but I’m not much worse than most people I know. I turn on the hot water full blast and squirt some detergent into the sink. I am so mad right now that if I say any thing, I might regret it the rest of my life. I realize now I have told Sarah too much about my cases over the years. Dumb as a rock, I got involved once with a woman who later died of AIDS. Everything I could possibly do wrong during that case I did, but I didn’t expose Rainey to AIDS; and, even more than anything else, it galls me to realize Sarah assumes I would.
“What makes you think I’ve ever slept with Rainey?” I ask, my voice calm as I can make it.
Sarah, who is leaning against the refrigerator, says, “I’m not that naive!”
“Not that it’s any of your business, young lady,” I say, turning to face her, “but we haven’t, and you have said just about enough for one night.”
“I’m going up to the church!” she says, checking her watch.
I slam the sponge into the sink.
“What is so wonderful about that goddamned church? Before you fall too much in love with him, you might as well know that Shane Norman had as much reason to kill Leigh Wallace’s husband as she did.”
Sarah looks at me as if I had called her mother a whore.
“What are you saying?” she asks, her voice now shaky.
I back off, knowing I shouldn’t be discussing this subject.
“I’m not saying anything except people aren’t always what they seem, and the sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be.”
Sarah’s eyes are enormous.
“Do you have any evidence he’s involved?”
“That’s none of your business!” I say harshly, ashamed to admit I couldn’t prove right now that the man came within five miles of Art Wallace the day he was shot.
“And don’t you breathe a word of this to anybody, you hear me!”
“Yes, I hear you!” she yells and bursts into tears as she runs out of the room.
“Good!” I holler after her. My voice sends Woogie slinking away after her. What is her problem? Anger that her mother died, leaving her to be raised by a not always-model father? She has really pissed me off. The trouble is that a lot of what she says is true. Granted, very few of the women I dated after her mother’s death were candidates for a convent. Although criminal defense work doesn’t usually put one in contact with the cream of society, I doubt if most of my clients have had the energy to engage in nonstop evil. I admit I haven’t always done right by Rainey, but she has backed away a time or two herself.
Sarah wants everything to be black or white, and even though I would like fewer shades of gray myself, it doesn’t work that way. Maybe she didn’t ask to be born during the last gasp of the twentieth century, but I didn’t either. The only thing I know to do is to slog through it one crisis at a time. I shouldn’t have mentioned Shane. That was stupid. Still, she’s got to learn that the only people who don’t have feet of clay have been dead for centuries. Norman may not be a murderer, but he was an overbearing son of a bitch who tried his best to smother his daughter. Even if Leigh is guilty, as far as I’m concerned, Norman has some blood on his hands. If he had let her lead her own life, perhaps she wouldn’t be facing a murder charge.
In a few minutes Sarah returns, her dark winter coat, over her gray sweats. At least Christian Life doesn’t require designer clothes. That might be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“My ride’s outside waiting. I’ll be back by nine,” she says, her voice containing the bare minimum of civility. She is no longer crying, but her eyes are red.
“Is your homework done?” I ask, exercising my prerogative, though she is almost a straight-A student.
“Yes, sir,” she says, unsmiling.
“Would you like to check it?”
She hasn’t said “sir” to me this year.
“I doubt if that’s necessary,” I reply sarcastically. Damn. I want my daughter back. I thought Christianity was supposed to be about love and acceptance. For a moment I am tempted to tell her to go to her room, but all it will do is convince her even more that I am the Devil.
After she leaves, I call Rainey, who starts the conversation by telling me she is about to go to Christian Life, too.
“I’ve tried my best not to let this bother me,” I say, feeling I’m getting the bum’s rush, “but I confess I’m really beginning to resent your meddling with Sarah’s religious faith.” There is a long silence on the other end, and while I haven’t quite said what I intended, I’m not sorry I’ve said it. I didn’t mean to sound so pompous, but damn it, I want someone else to feel a little guilty, too.
Finally, Rainey says, more evenly than I expected, “All I did was tell her about Christian Life and invite her to attend. She wasn’t bound and gagged last Sunday.”
I squeeze the receiver in frustration.
“She’s a seventeen-year-old kid who got caught up in a wave of emotion. The Bible isn’t any more literally true in some places than a Grimm’s fairy tale. It’s not science; it’s myth, and you know it as well as I do. I’m sick and tired of pretending it doesn’t matter to me what she believes, when it’s clear she isn’t thinking rationally about this.”
Rainey remains maddeningly calm.
“Faith isn’t rational Gideon. That’s what scares you about it. The idea of Sarah having enough faith to commit her life to something other than a career or a man frightens you to death. After all, you can’t commit yourself to anything or anybody, because you can’t get over your wife dying sooner than she should have, and you’re terrified of losing someone again.
“As long as Sarah remained under your thumb, it was easy to be wise and tolerant, but the moment you can’t control her you want to blame me. If you think Sarah isn’t thinking with her head as well as her heart, you’re sadly mistaken. Of course she is. For the first time in her life she’s being offered something more than, here, take a number, buy this, buy that, and keep smiling until you find a job and a husband. Sure, we’re taking a risk. At Christian Life we know we’re ridiculed. You saw Inherit the Wind. The character based on William Jennings Bryan was made to look like a senile old fool, and people such as yourself haven’t gotten any kinder since then. Sarah’s not dumb. She knows you’re upset by this, and she knows that you’ll react by making her feel as guilty as you possibly can.”
I feel myself on the verge of throwing the phone through the kitchen window. I have never heard Rainey sound more condescending. There have been times when I thought she was going to be the answer to every problem I’ve had since Rosa died. We used to talk about everything; she was the one person who would always be there no matter how bad I showed my ass.
Once, when I was fired, she offered to dip into her savings. I’ve been there for her, too. During her breast cancer scare, I was the one waiting at the hospital for the surgeon to come out of the operating room. Granted, I nearly wimped out when she first told me and probably would have if it hadn’t been for Sarah, but I was there. I’ve listened to innumerable complaints about the state hospital and worried more than I ever admitted that she would lose her social worker job when the inpatient census was drastically reduced. Now, however, she is not the same person. Although she was never dogmatic before, these days she is almost a zealot. It seems every conversation we have revolves around Christian Life.
“Maybe you ought to let Sarah speak for herself. I haven’t made her feel guilty. As a matter of fact, she’s up at the church right now. For all I care, she can move in so she can be there twenty-four hours a day if she wants to.”
Rainey laughs, as if I can’t possibly be serious.
“You want to cut her throat for going up there at all. If you would let her go gracefully, she’ll come back. Kids her age have a hard time staying committed to anything.
There’s so much else for them to do.”
I shout into the phone, “That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. If she were our age, she would at least have tried to live a normal life. Now she won’t even be able to say she tried.”