Later, ’gator.
“He played guitar for me,” said Penelope. “He has a beautiful voice. And he gave me the line about ghosts flying through each other, too. I thought it was haunting when I was twelve — these two beautiful wispy spirits moving through each other but not able to stay and unite. I asked Daley if he had ever said that to her. She denied it.”
“Did he have other favorites?”
“In Jesus. Everything was in Jesus.”
“Something concrete,” I said.
“Concrete?”
“I’m fishing here, Penelope. Something physical. Something I can see. That helps me understand what he’s doing.”
“Well, there was our mansion on the sand. That was physical.”
“Tell me about that mansion.”
“I don’t remember the first time he talked about it. I must have been very young. Eight or nine. I just kind of grew up hearing about it. At first it was a magnificent house he was going to build. On a beach. Maybe in California. Maybe in Mexico. Later, he told me he was going to build a holy mansion on the sand. Over the years, it became a place for him to live in, with all his friends and dogs and cats and whatever other animals he wanted. It would be huge, with a domed roof made of blue lapis, like temples in Jerusalem. White walls, with windows trimmed in shiny red paint. And it would sit on sand the color of gold in the sunlight, next to an ocean that would be always changing, from blue to green to silver to black to blue again. There would be tall palm trees all around. There would be flowers in planters beneath every window. And balconies where he could sit and watch the sun go down. Miles of beach. Whale spouts and seabirds in formation. And horses. Of course he would have pretty horses.”
“You were impressed.”
“I was awed. Over the years, the mansion on the sand became a place for me to live, also. My beautiful home. We would live there, together. A place of peace and beautiful things and love. Love everywhere. In every room. Morning and night and all the hours in between.”
A bemused look fell over Penelope’s face, then a bitter smile. She shook her head as if to clear a thought she didn’t want.
“He said we would come together in Jesus with all of our hearts. As husband and wife. Twelve beautiful children would appear, children in His — Jesus’s — image. And our family would become the foundation of the lost tribe of Israel, the true Israel — not the Israel of the Hebrews, who are only half human — but the Israel of Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten son.”
And so I glimpsed the depth of madness inside Reggie Atlas — if this was all true. Even mostly true. If Penelope was not spinning another convincing, self-justifying fiction.
“What did you make of all that, Penelope?”
She considered, a parade of emotions playing across her face. “I was still young enough to fall for it. He was such an impressive man to a little girl. To a little girl whose parents thought the world of him, who took her to hear him preach every time he was near us. Somehow, Reggie Atlas always found ways for us to be private. Just for a minute or two. In a chapel, while the choir rehearsed. In a church office, with the door open to the hallway. In a Sunday-school classroom, on the break between services. Walking in the woods around the tent. Even with other people around, he created this privacy for two. We talked and prayed. We had special sayings. We had looks and expressions. We never touched. Until. And Reggie would always bring up what was becoming our beautiful home. Like a parent telling a child a story. I know now that he was trying to shape my thoughts and dreams. My expectations and limits. He was measuring my portions and tenderizing me. Like a butcher.”
In the wake of Penelope’s painful memories, the ceiling fan whirred and the boom box sat silent and two boys with surfboards under their arms hustled down the sidewalk outside, voices raised. In that moment, their innocence seemed the most valuable thing on earth. I thought about how the world was made up of things that are here and seen, like the surfers, and also made up of things that are here but not seen, like a man walking in the woods on a warm spring morning with a girl too young to sense his menace, while the congregation gathered in the shade of the tent, awaiting the Word. I felt some of the weight of Penelope Rideout’s past bearing down across the years, and her growing torment as she saw it gathering over her daughter. Her sister.
“What did you think when you first saw the Cathedral by the Sea?” I asked.
“Thought it was plug ugly. It’s certainly no mansion on the sand. Why?”
“I just had the thought that Reggie built that mansion. Somewhere. I can find it, but it might take time. It would depend how good he is at secrecy. How many layers between his name and the bricks and mortar.”
Another long stare from her. “For him and Daley?”
“For himself and his fantasies.”
“Why not just rent a damned mansion? See, that’s what I do.” She gestured to the little beach rental, her hands open.
That was a very practical idea, and I said so.
A blink and a stare from her. The ever-judging, ever-assessing, ever-appraising eyes of Penelope Rideout.
“Let’s hear Daley’s second CD,” she said.
30
I’m back!
Turns out Pastor Atlas’s Cathedral by the Sea isn’t much more than a cut-off hilltop and some cement with those spirally metal rods sticking out. You can see all the way to the ocean, though. It’s out between Encinitas and Rancho Santa Fe, I think they call it, lots of twisty roads. Anyway, Pastor Atlas didn’t send a car and driver to get me at the corner of Myers and Seagaze at EXACTLY five fifteen. No, he came himself, driving this crazy motor home, all red and silver and shiny. And down the road we went. Just us. I sat up front and it was like being a copilot in a jet. Pastor Reggie started talking about Jesus like he always does, but He’s not really my thing, Jesus isn’t, though I don’t have any problem with Him. That I know of! I tuned Sirius to this oldhead band I totally love, Huey Lewis, rather than the Four Wheels for Jesus channel, which seemed to annoy Pastor Atlas. By the way, I got the Martin Backpacker guitar from Penny for my birthday, EARLY! and I took it with me to see Reggie’s church because my story to Pen was I went with Carrie to play guitars in the music room at school with our music teacher at Monarch, Mr. Bob Dillon, that’s his real name! And so Carrie’s mom would drop me off at home and don’t worry. So I had the Backpacker in the motor home and this big window right in front of me and I was playing along with Huey Lewis and the News. Watching the world out the window was more like the world was watching me! I don’t really want to be famous, but for a minute it felt great. Everybody looking at me. Reggie trying to tell me how to play the music. Says he’s good on guitar, but I’ve never heard him play a single note.