Fleeing Fundamentalism Page 12
During the final afternoon, fifty women entered the conference chapel and mingled with poker-faced politeness. After three years in the ministry, I had learned that for gamblers and preachers’ wives, bluffing is not only a fine art but also a necessary survival technique. Everyone chatted courteously, keeping their cards close to their chests, until, unexpectedly, someone tipped her hand.
An even-toned, silver-haired woman who had been a minister’s wife for thirty years was delivering the last lecture. After her cheerful introduction and a few words on ministerial etiquette, she said, “It’s essential that you keep a professional distance from the other women of the congregation. I know it sounds tough, but if you have a close friend in the church, other women will get jealous, and your husband’s ministry could be affected.” Her voice rose in pitch. “And most importantly,” she leaned forward for emphasis, “if you have a confidante in the church, you might tell her things about your husband that could ruin his ministry.”
It was then that I noticed a ruddy-faced young woman in the second row starting to weep. Her quiet sobbing did not interrupt the lecture, but her thin shoulders shook with the conviction of someone who had fallen into a deep crevasse and entertained no hope of being rescued. Finally the speaker paused and looked at her. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m sorry—I’ll be fine,” the pretty redhead replied, then started crying all over again. A woman beside her quietly slipped her arm around the girl, and the meeting soon ended.
Afterward a small group gathered around to offer comfort. As I approached, another minister’s wife, whose rigid face had softened since the beginning of the lecture, looked at me and said, “She’s having a hard time with the pressures of the ministry.”
“God will give you the strength to withstand,” someone told the girl.
“Satan assaults only those doing the Father’s work,” added another.
“The Lord will never give us more to endure than He knows we can handle …”
Advice came at her from every direction. I stepped back, and suddenly the crowd looked like a herd of sheep, like those my uncle Bud raised on his ranch back in Montana. “Blah, blah, baaaaah,” they bleated. “Sheep,” I remembered my uncle saying, “are the damnedest critters. Cattle will spook and stampede, squeeze past a broken fence, or push through a pole gate to freedom—but not sheep. They’ll stay happily corralled and easily made into mutton without one single protestation.” I turned and fled the room, closing the gate behind me.
I walked down to the lake. Pale mist lay over its deep, black stillness. I wondered, what kind of system would demand control over a woman’s friendships, isolating her until she went mad with loneliness? What kind of woman would put up with such oppression? I looked into the patchy vapors drifting on the smooth surface, and without warning an answer rose up from the dark depths. You. You have come to accept your own subjugation.
For years now I had kept silent about David’s increasing demand for control: monitoring my weight and the clothes I wore, scrutinizing every household purchase. Instead of demanding more freedom, I made justifications: the stresses of seminary, children, shepherding a growing congregation. Now my only measure of freedom came during those stolen hours when I sneaked away to Susan’s house. And if it hadn’t been for her friendship—a confidence that I’d been warned repeatedly against—David’s behavior would still be a guarded secret. I knew he expected his actions to remain that way—counted on it, in fact. I told myself that I was about to surprise him. On the long ride back home from this conference, I would inform him that I was no longer going to put up with his tantrums and unreasonable manipulation and suggest that we discuss our problems with a marriage counselor.
But later that day, as we wound down Interstate 5, the conversation did not go the way I had planned. “I guess the elders are unhappy that so many new people are still joining the church,” David said. “‘We just don’t have any more room,’ Don told me the other day. Can you believe that?” he almost shouted.
“Isn’t that what we’re here for?” I asked.
“Everything was fine as long as the new people just filled the offering plate. But now that they want to fill board positions, the old guard is freaking out. Don told me that the board is afraid the new members will try to seize power.”
“Seize power? Sounds like a corporate takeover rather than a church election.”
“Don actually said, ‘You have to understand, we’ve been operating this church since the 1950s. We bought the building, landscaped the grounds, and raised our children right here.’ He said, ‘We feel like we’re giving up a house we’ve paid off the mortgage on.’ Can you believe that?”
“But they can’t just freeze the elections, can they? It’s a congregationalist church government; everyone has a vote—and the new members make up well over half the church,” I added.
“When I mentioned that small fact, Don said, ‘Well, they haven’t paid half the bills for thirty years.’ Then he suggested that we compromise—make fewer positions available, so that even though there’s some new blood, the old board will remain in charge.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him it sounded fine. We’d just open up two new positions rather than the five that should be rotating. Anyway, we came to an agreement. But then you’ll never guess what else he said.”
“What?”
“There are rumblings that I’m not preaching enough out of the Bible. ‘More doctrine and less philosophy,’ Don said. ‘Give us more of that old-time religion.’”
“More hellfire and brimstone, that sort of thing?” I said.
“Yes, yes.” David laughed. “So I’ve decided to preach through Paul’s Epistles. That should give them some real condemnation to chew on. Then, once we’ve foiled the power grab and put an end to my secular preaching, Don tells me I’m going to get a raise.”
“Well that’s nice,” I said.
“Being in the ministry is kind of like having lunch with a patron grandfather who’s paying your college tuition but also likes to lean across the table at unpredictable intervals and punch you in the mouth. Is it stimulating? Quite. Pleasant? No.”
David’s voice was full of irritation, and I knew he was in no mood to discuss the topic of marriage counseling, so I decided to wait for a more opportune moment—which actually presented itself a short time afterward. One Saturday night, David brought home the movie Out of Africa. As we sat on the couch watching the three-hour saga unfold, he fidgeted back and forth, squirming worse than a five-year-old. This kind of feverish energy usually signaled an eruption on the horizon: an untidy drawer, a wrong look at another man, too much money spent on Tuna Helper. That evening he paced around the kitchen, shutting drawers with too much force and flipping light switches on and off. Suddenly, listening to him crash through the house, a painful realization hit me: He’s frustrated … He wants me to go to bed so he can sneak out. I froze for a moment, then said as casually as I could, “Well, I’m going to hit the hay.”
“I’m staying up to watch Saturday Night Live,” he said with a sigh of relief.
I crawled into bed and pretended to fall asleep. Some time later I heard the bedroom door open. David peeked in to see if I was sleeping, closed the door, and left the house. I got up: 1:00 a.m. I took a quilt from the closet and sat on the couch, running my fingers down the soft cotton fabric of the sofa. I thought about what it had once meant to me: a fresh beginning, a new life, with vacation pay and extra money so we could get away to the ocean. None of that had ever materialized; I had a terrible feeling that before the night was out, I was going to find out why.
Two o’clock—the house was silent except for the tick … tick … tick from the living room clock, growing louder with every passing second. A deaf person could hear it, the constant, unrelenting sound ratcheting my nerves tighter. I could feel the noise seeping down into my bones, right into the marrow where fear is lodged—compressing it until it exploded up
into my chest, making me want to cry out.
Three o’clock—I threw off the quilt, got up, and walked over to the window. The empty street below was drenched in amber light. In the silent, dark room, patterns from the streetlight played across the ceiling as I stared at the signpost—CONWAY AVENUE—until it went blurry and my body swayed as if from motion sickness. “Calm yourself down,” I said aloud. Maybe David was just in need of some solitude, what with the criticism that the elders had leveled at him and the board elections coming up next month. He could be drinking coffee at a local all-night restaurant or walking around the park practicing his next sermon (as he often claimed when he’d been away for hours). But the image of David trudging through Cowen Park practicing his Sunday sermon or sipping a 3:00 a.m. latte at Denny’s seemed as ludicrous as the idea of my making excuses for him.
Four o’clock—I was not going to give in to hysteria even though it was really the logical thing to do: scream and weep until he told me her name. Then car lights appeared in the driveway, and I heard footsteps on the basement stairs, creaking up toward the door. The knob turned. David stuck his head through the partly open door and slipped in like a professional thief. He jumped when he saw me, his face startled into the blank, open-eyed look of a screech owl. Even from across the room his breath smelled like floor cleaner. He straightened up and hesitated for a moment, centering and allowing the charming minister to emerge for the battle ahead.
“Come on, relax, honey. I’m not having an affair,” he said almost in a whisper.
“So what the hell are you doing?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed, and he looked flatly at my face, deciding rightly that I wasn’t going to put up with any of his bullshit stories.
“Just watching women dance,” he said, shutting the basement door quietly behind him.
“Watching women dance?” I said. “What’s that supposed to mean? Naked women?”
“Yes.” He looked down. “I give so much to so many people—I need something that makes me feel good too.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “It just calms me down, takes the anxiety away.”
In place of the fear that had gripped me for hours, I suddenly felt cold inside. Then from out of the chill erupted a fury that rose in my throat. “You son of a bitch.”
My anger rattled him; it threw him to hear such language coming out of my mouth. Obviously his heartfelt confession wasn’t going to soften me up, and this too seemed to amaze him: that a circumstance had finally arisen that he couldn’t talk his way out of. The Reverend David Brant, the great orator who always got an amen, a hallelujah, a “Right on, Pastor,” was stuck. A look of bewilderment crossed his face, and his story, which began slowly, quickly picked up speed, plowing ahead like a runaway locomotive.
“Listen, you have to understand: I’ve been addicted to strip joints and pornography for years now. When I was in high school, pornography helped me find comfort from the violence of growing up in that abusive home. It gave me a warm feeling that I could never get from my mother. You know what she’s like—cold, obsessed with her own martyrdom. When I looked at Hustler, it soothed me; I felt nurtured. Then the addiction just gradually grew into strip clubs as well.”
“So how long have you been going to those places?” I asked, numb with shock.
“From the beginning of our marriage. The only time I’ve been free from my compulsion was during Bible college. After our wedding I felt overwhelmed with the responsibility thrust on me, so I started to sneak out again.”
“You mean all those times you said were studying in the library or at seminary?” I asked, my heart slamming against my chest like a dog at a fence.
“Yes, honey … it’s bad. Even when you were in labor with Jason, I left the hospital and went to a club. So don’t you see? I simply don’t have any control over it.”
The memory of frantically sucking Lamaze breaths in and out, desperate for David to return to the hospital from his jaunt to retrieve a forgotten textbook, flashed through my mind. I refused to cry—I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“But please know that after acting out I’m always devastated. That’s why I’ve fought with depression for so many years. It’s not about you; it’s about my dysfunctional childhood. I’ve struggled with this so long, but I just can’t seem to resist. I’m afraid at this point it should probably be called an obsession.”
“You sack of shit,” I said.
“Oh, come on, Carlene, can’t you find any sympathy for me?” David said.
“No, I don’t feel an ounce of sympathy for you. You’ve been lying to me for eight years, demanding my biblical submission, censoring every move I’ve made, while you’re running off to girlie shows, insisting that I pinch pennies while you spent what little money we did have on naked women!”
Realizing that the empathy angle wasn’t working, he easily swung over to the meanness approach. “Well, you know, the ten pounds you’ve gained since our wedding day aren’t very flattering,” he shot back. “You just don’t look the way you used to from the waist down.”
“Go to hell,” I said and got up and walked out of the room.
For three nights I lay on the couch, staring at the ceiling. The hours seemed endless; they were not a measure of time but also of space, like a vast ocean spreading out between me and the rest of the world. I lay numb, caught between consciousness and sleep, drifting off astride the cold, pale horse that gallops across the Book of Revelation, whose name is Death, then awaking with a start to a high, heavy pain in my chest, and tears streaming down my face. What a fool I had been—like a child, utterly confident and utterly ignorant. For years I had seen only what I wanted to see, believed only what I had been told to believe. If David had suggested I leap from a bridge, I might have considered it my obligation as a Christian wife. Now I felt broken into pieces, hit by a bus I hadn’t seen coming, lying paralyzed and trying to understand what had happened.
During the day I fed the kids and then collapsed back onto the couch, listening to the noises outside—garbage trucks in the alley, rain rapping against the living room window, the phone ringing in the distance. The once mysterious puzzle was now revealing its secrets, its pieces snapping into place: our honeymoon on Flathead Lake when David had disappeared unexpectedly; his irritability until he was able to find an excuse to break free; his staring into space as if his mind had flown off to another planet. It all made sense now—the depression, the jealousy. Then through the haze came the memory of the brief time we had in college, without his addiction: the sweetness and calm we felt together, the thrill of watching him run down the basketball court, our first kiss in the academic center. Our young bodies leaning into each other for support, the smell of his skin, the feel of his warmth fluttered through my mind like a bird caught in a room.
The phone rang and rang into the answering machine.
Beep … “Hello, Carlene, this is Lucille Jones. I have a prayer request for you and Pastor Dave. It’s about my niece, Amy…”
Beep …“Hi, there, it’s Janet. Please give me a call about that children’s church curriculum.”
Beep …“Hey, girl, what’s up? It’s Susan—haven’t heard from you for days. Give me a call.”
I couldn’t make myself talk to anyone. I turned off the machine and slept on, enduring an endless treadmill of nightmares, my feverish, racing brain blurring the days into one, time stalling into meaninglessness, past hunger, past vanity. David would slide through the room like an eel on a rock and appear at the foot of the couch. He looked smaller now that the flawless invincibility he always projected onto the big screen, like the great and magnificent David of Oz, had unraveled at the seams.
“You’re making far too much of this,” he would say, irritated, anxious. “Don’t you think you should get up and return some of those phone calls?”
“Leave me alone,” I said, looking at him as though he were a stranger, not allowing the tears to sting in my eyes until after he walked out.
“I’m not feeling well, honey,” I said. “I think I have the flu.”
I looked down at my daughter’s silky skin, maturing into that of a young woman—a young woman who needed her mother. It was then that I decided to get help. I remembered hearing that James Dobson’s talk show, Focus on the Family, provided an hour of free counseling for pastors and their wives. The next morning, after David took the kids out to the backyard to put up a new swing set, I dialed the show’s number. While Carise, Micael, and Jason bounced around their father with anticipation, I prayed that David wouldn’t make an unexpected trip inside. He would be furious if he found out that I was on the phone with one of Dobson’s counselors. After an eternity, the operator connected me with a Dr. Jones. I said that my husband was a successful evangelical minister in Washington State, and then I told him about David’s addiction and obsessive jealousy and my growing desperation.
“Believe it or not, this is not that unusual,” he said. “And it is treatable. But David must get into extensive therapy, now.”
“I think it’ll be hard to get him to see a counselor,” I said. “I’m afraid he’ll be frightened that people in the church might find out.”