She doesn’t mind spending time with the old man if he comes across with the right bribe.
After I put the groceries down on the table in the kitchen, I go to her room to tell her we’re going out, but she isn’t there.
“Sarah?” I call, knowing as I do that she isn’t in the house. Where could she have gone? She doesn’t have a car. The phone rings, and I pick up the receiver by her bed.
“Sarah?” I guess.
“It’s me. Daddy,” Sarah says in a voice so low I can barely hear her.
“Hey, babe, where are you?” I say, enormously relieved.
“Do you want to go out and get a steak tonight?
We don’t need to cook.”
“I’m not coming back home tonight. I’m staying with a friend from Christian Life.”
She is punishing me for slapping her.
“This is a school night, Sarah. You’ve been gone enough as it is.”
I try to lighten my voice. I don’t want to argue with her.
“I thought we’d go out and get a steak.”
“Listen,” she says, her voice high with emotion.
“I’m almost eighteen. I’m not a child anymore. I don’t have to do what you say.”
I nearly drop the phone. Never has she talked to me like this. No child has ever been more obedient. I have never had a moment’s trouble out of her. In fact, Rainey has remarked that Sarah has been almost too perfect.
“Legally, you’re wrong,” I tell her crossly.
“Until your birthday, you’re still a minor.” Though this is technically true, it’s meaningless.
“I’m very sorry I slapped you, but this isn’t going to help matters any if you begin acting like this.”
Sarah’s voice becomes firm.
“I’m not being kidnapped, so don’t start acting like a lawyer, please.”
What am I supposed to act like? Who does she think she is? I’ve put food on the table, bought her clothes, been a taxi service, not to mention raised her singlehandedly since her mother died. I make an enormous effort to control my voice.
“Do you think your mother would approve of how you’re acting? The least you can do is tell me who you’re staying with so I won’t worry about you.”
Sarah gives a little cry of frustration.
“Don’t try to guilt me like you usually do, all right? It won’t work.
And I’m not telling you where I am, because I don’t trust you not to come get me. I’m staying with a friend, okay?”
Guilt. I’ve always used it. For the last year she has sniffed it out every time. For God’s sake, why shouldn’t she feel guilty? This is inexcusable. It’s that damn church.
“At least let me talk to one of the parents, so I know it’s okay.”
There is silence for a moment. In the background I think I can hear a radio or maybe a tape. It sounds like that stuff they played the Sunday I went.
“It’s just a couple of friends who have an apartment. They don’t live with their parents.”
“At least one of them is a boy,” I suggest.
“That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
I can see Sarah rolling her eyes.
“I knew that’s what you’d think! You just don’t understand anything about me. That’s why I left. You don’t want to understand.
You think all these people are deluded sheep who can’t think for themselves, and that’s just not true. You think it’s just about belief. You don’t get it that faith and love are inseparable. We don’t use each other at Christian Life. That’s practically all you do. You don’t care about people; you just care about winning. That’s become your Bible. I don’t want to be like that.”
Left? Does this mean she won’t be coming back?
“What time,” I ask carefully, “will I see you tomorrow?”
She stammers, “I-I-I don’t know. I’m okay though.”
The phone clicks in my ear, and I tear back into her room to see what she has taken. I throw open her closet door and see there is nothing left except a couple of dresses she never wears. I go through her drawers and find almost nothing. Practically the only thing left in her room is a poster of Tom Cruise from the movie Top Gun and the collage of her friends, none of whom she has mentioned since she started this Christian Life business. She must have called someone immediately. My heart begins to race. I can call Shane Norman and ask him to track her down. Somebody in her so-called “family” surely can find out where she is. Yet, as I am looking up his number, I realize that Christian Life has thousands of members, and he won’t know off the top of his head who to call either. And what do I say? I slapped my daughter because she defended you and she ran off, and I want you to bring her back? Instead, I dial Rainey’s number, thinking Sarah may have mentioned somebody to her.
Rainey answers on the first ring, and I yell, “Sarah’s gone. Do you know any of her friends from that church?”
“What are you talking about?” Rainey asks, sounding alarmed.
“What do you mean she’s gone?”
I lower my voice and quickly run through the last hour and a half.
“Gideon, have you lost your mind?” Rainey says, when I am finished.
“I don’t blame her for leaving. It makes me sick to my stomach that you would even consider trying to implicate Shane without any more evidence than this. You’re slandering one of the most decent human beings I’ve ever known. And I can’t believe you slapped Sarah. What is wrong with you? Were you drunk?”
I eye the six-pack on the counter and think I’m going to be soon if I have to listen to any more of this self righteous crap.
“It didn’t leave a mark,” I defend my self; but I feel terrible.
“I guess I shouldn’t expect you to understand. You’ve been such a perfect parent. And, no, I wasn’t drunk.”
I wait in silence while Rainey takes in my snide comment Her daughter, Bern, went through a rebellious period of her own as a college student. She is now a contented first-grade teacher in Mississippi, again close to her mother, but at one time they were barely speaking I know what Rainey is thinking. She never hit her daughter in the face. I can’t believe I slapped Sarah either. She’s right. I must be losing my mind.
“I know this is killing you,” Rainey says.
“But if you try to drag Sarah back home tonight, you’ll regret it the rest of your life. I know you think she’s being brain washed, but it’s not like that at all. As sincere as I think Sarah is about Christian Life, this is directed at least as much against you as toward something else. Believe me, I know.”
I lean back against the wall in the kitchen and think what else I can say to hurt the people I care about the most. Bern, I recall, thought Christianity was a con game run by, I believe the phrase was, “mostly male prostitutes in the service of Mammon.” I rub my eyes, exhausted.
“What have I done?” I wail.
Rainey says quietly, “Right now, Sarah sees you as the antithesis of everything good. I know this will hurt your feelings, but right now she sees you as tainted, even corrupt. You personify for her the compromises human beings make with the Devil.”
My heart begins to race. I can’t stand any more of this. That’s ridiculous! Sarah wasn’t like this before she started going to that church. Granted, she didn’t think I was perfect, but I sure didn’t have horns and a tail.
What in the hell do I do that every attorney in Blackwell County doesn’t?
“This is ludicrous. I can’t begin to touch the stories about Chet Bracken. What makes him such a saint and me such a sinner?” .
Rainey’s voice grows softer as mine becomes louder.
“He’s accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior.”
I want to smash the phone against the wall. If I hear that phrase one more time, I’m going to get some dynamite and blow Christian Life to kingdom come. She is so blind! Shane Norman is probably a murderer, and the man he hired to represent his daughter is letting him get away with it. I stop myself. I don’t trust Rainey any longer. How incredible! This is a woman with whom I have entrusted every doubt I’ve had for the last two years.