Fleeing Fundamentalism Page 18

  “I made the honor roll!” I shouted.

  David looked up from his typewriter, the one he had been spending countless hours at lately writing angst-filled poetry. Then he looked down without a word and started to type again. The weeks had grown taut with the tension between us, the destruction of our lives together spelling itself out in the silence.

  “You are amazing,” I said. “I spent five years cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the kids while you were in school—typing your papers, rooting you on like a mindless cheerleader—and now you can’t even support me one iota.”

  “So, big deal, you get a couple of As. It’s only your first quarter.”

  “You’re going to fight me every step of the way on this, aren’t you?”

  “Have you ever thought that you shouldn’t be in school? That you should be working on the problems in our marriage instead? You’re right, I don’t want you in college, and I don’t intend to make it easy for you.”

  Since I had started classes, David had refused even to acknowledge that I was in school. If I had a big test the next day, he’d demand that we spend the evening discussing the lack of communication in our marriage. If I had a paper due, he insisted that fixing dinner was my first priority.

  The next morning I walked into the Women’s Center at Shoreline. As I stood at the front desk, sunlight slanted through its tall east windows. Great rectangles of brightness warmed the cream colored carpet, a glassy light striking the tables and chairs and making the whole room seem as peaceful as a chapel.

  “I was wondering if I could make an appointment to see a counselor,” I said.

  “Wow, you are in luck,” the doe-eyed girl with a dragon tattoo on her shoulder said. “Ms. Collins just had a cancellation. I’ll ask her if you can take the slot.”

  At first glance you could tell that Lydia Collins was a liberated, highly educated woman. I took her to be in her late forties or early fifties. She wore a pin-striped suit showing off her kinky salt-and-pepper hair and black-rimmed glasses dotted with ruby jewels around the edge. I stepped into her office, and forty-five minutes later, after the story of my life with David had poured out in a torrent, she said, “This guy sounds like a charismatic, charming abuser. What makes you so compelled to stay with him?”

  “I’m holding out until I get my education. I think it would be better for the kids if I waited until after graduation before I left him.”

  “I think David will make it impossible for you to finish one year, let alone graduate. And as far as your kids go, children learn acceptable behavior by watching their parents. If you continue to raise them in this environment, abusive behavior could easily become their benchmark for normality. If you wait for four more years, your girls could end up marrying a controlling man like David, and your son might very well learn to emulate his behavior.”

  What a nightmare, I thought, staying in a bad marriage for the kids while inadvertently consigning them to the same miserable fate. I went home that night and began to imagine how I would ask David to leave his own house. It wasn’t long until he gave me a compelling reason.

  I left around ten the next Saturday morning to work a double shift at the restaurant, both lunch and dinner. “I won’t be home until late,” I told David

  “How late?”

  “Gosh, not until after eight at least.”

  It was cold in Seattle that winter, with the sky bright and fierce, the ground without snow—a kind of permanent frozen autumn, as if the calendar had stopped when the wind tore the last leaves from the maple trees. The whole city must have felt the chill and stayed home that day, snuggled up playing Yahtzee; after a pitiful lunch showing it was obvious we weren’t going to have any business for dinner. Al reduced my ten-hour shift to four. “Take the evening off, go home, and wrap Christmas presents.”

  As I turned down our street, the air was damp and still; the low, gray sky seemed to bulge with an impending blizzard, like a river about to overflow its banks. Maybe we’ll get snow for Christmas, I thought. Plastic Santas waved from their sleighs, green elves and miniature reindeer blinked up and down our street. For the first time in years, I hadn’t decorated the house with lights—only a small tree inside, and a scattering of boughs. I felt a little guilty about it, but also relieved, as if someone had lifted an unseen burden that I hadn’t really felt until it was gone. No one would be watching the house to see what kind of decorations the minister and his wife had up this year.

  Pulling into the driveway, I knew immediately that something was wrong. The front door was wide open, and I could hear playful screams coming from the house. I stepped inside and saw neighborhood children running through the stone-cold living room, playing hide and seek, crashing around the Christmas tree. Bowls of partially eaten ice cream dotted the room.

  “Where’s your father?” I asked Carise.

  “He built a fire in the fireplace this morning and then went to Costco, but he hasn’t been back,” she said.

  “It’s cold, Mama; could you make another fire?” Jason danced around me.

  I stepped out the back door to collect wood for a fire, and the cold hit my face with an intensity that felt like the grip of permanent night. How irresponsible could David get, starting a fire and then leaving the kids alone? My mind rushed through the horrifying scene: a pop from the fireplace and a spark onto the carpet, smoldering and then running along the floorboards while a roomful of kids played happily upstairs. Then, shooting up everywhere, surrounding the staircase and blocking any way out, flames working themselves up until the heat and pressure were powerful enough to explode the windows. I took the ax and chopped an armful of kindling, threw several large chunks on top, and headed inside. Even after I had a new fire going and it had filled the room with a dry, parched heat, making my face burn, I was still pushing the anger back down my throat. That son of a bitch, I thought. I looked at the clock: 4:00 p.m.

  “Did you have any lunch?” I asked Carise.

  “We had lots of ice cream,” Micael said with a giggle.

  I grabbed a handful of potatoes from the refrigerator and began scrubbing them under the tap. I filled a large pot and set it down heavily on the burner, the water spilling over the sides. While the water hummed on the heat, I stood at the stove, looking out the window onto our suburban neighborhood, a world of absolute stillness mantled in lights. I imagined what I would say to David when he got home. It seemed obvious where he had spent the day: he only acted this foolish when he had naked women on his mind. I had been reworking this moment for some time now—pulling the plug on the last death rattle of our marriage. But all my plans had been reenacted for four years in the future, a time when I’d have my bachelor’s degree firmly in hand. None of them would work tonight, and now that I was about to do it—years ahead of schedule—my stomach felt as if it had been pumped full of lye. I heated a mug of water in the microwave and made myself some chamomile tea. I drank it down, letting it warm me. The house was strangely still. The kids had been warmed, given a sandwich to tide them over until dinner, and were now bundled up outside, playing. Not a sound could be heard inside; it was as if the house itself had stopped breathing.

  Suddenly David opened the back door. I felt my insides jump, but my face was stone. David’s cheeks were white, his voice wobbly. “Hey, why are you home so early?” he said. I looked at him taking in every detail: his upper lip beading with fear, his voice pitched too high, the words trapping themselves in his throat, the air around him slippery as Vaseline. He had the exact expression of Jimmy Swaggart the year before, the night he made his TV confession about picking up a prostitute.

  “So how long did it take you to go back to your strip joints?” I asked.

  “I know I haven’t been supportive of you being in school. I’ve been a real shit … I promise to change and help you out in any way I can. I’m really very proud of you, you know.” As always, his words were a maneuver, a strategy.

  “How long did it take you to go back to your girl
ie shows after you promised me you’d quit?”

  David’s shoulders slumped. “A few months after you first caught me,” he said. “You were right—I know that the only way I’m going to beat this thing is with counseling. I’m ready to go. I’ve heard about this group called Sexaholics Anonymous. Let’s go together.”

  “You have a week to get out.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “One week. I’ll give you one week.”

  David’s lip began to quiver. “You’ve got to give me another chance. You said it yourself: all I need is counseling. Come to this meeting with me, and you’ll see that I can change. Promise me you’ll do it.”

  “I’ll go to a meeting with you as soon as you’re moved out of the house,” I said, employing the only leverage I had to get him packing.

  David finally took me seriously and rented an apartment ten minutes from us. After that, I went with him to a Sexaholics Anonymous meeting held in a Seattle YMCA, with people milling around, keeping their eyes to themselves. A young male facilitator announced, “Partners meet in room 211, and recoverers stay here in the auditorium.” I joined a small throng of about twenty-five women as we made our way down the silent hallway, our shoes clicking on the hard floor, my skin flushed hot with shame. As I entered the room, I continued to avoid eye contact with anyone, pretending to study the wavy old windowpanes and then the enameled wall in front of me, grimy and in need of a new coat of paint. I sat in one of the battered chairs ringing the room and immediately looked down, first at the worn loafers of the woman sitting next to me, then at the twisted leather laces in the boots of a woman across the room. I propped my elbows onto my knees and put my head in my hands to try and cool the burning glare of my cheeks.

  Our leader, who was the female colleague of the male counselor in the auditorium, lowered herself into one of the seats as if testing the heat of a bath. When it held her satisfactorily, she leaned back and looked at us one by one, smiling, cautious. Her manner was serious and guarded, and she started the meeting by listing the simple rules of a Sexaholics gathering. Number one: each of us would tell our story; we could say anything we wanted to, whatever was burdening our hearts. Number two: no one could judge what anyone else said—not one word of condemnation or critique, only support.

  The stories started to erupt and pour around the room like a lava flow of pain. John had been so good for so long, one woman cried, and then, just like that, he slipped. She was trying to forgive again; God give her the strength to forgive again. One by one, the stories poured out: repeated betrayal, repeated heartache, repeated forgiveness. I was glad no one gave the intimate details of their partners’ lapses—the collective sadness was already too palpable. It sounded to me like most of the women had been attending this gathering for quite some time. Voices spun the room like a merry-go-round, making me sick to my stomach, until I realized the woman next to me was talking. She began by rummaging through her purse for something, her hands shaking, her voice quivering. “I found this the other day,” she said, pulling a stub from the tattered bag, “in Jake’s pocket. It’s from the OK Bar on Ninety-nine, where he goes to pick up prostitutes. He’s been good for two whole months, and now this! I confronted him last night, and he said, ‘Well, it looks like we’d better go back to my meetings.’” Shrugging her shoulders she sighed “So here we are.”

  The smile had long left the facilitator’s face. She looked at me. “Would you like to share?”

  My throat tightened. “I just told my husband to get out and not to come back. I’m not giving him another chance—taking the risk he’ll bring home some disease and give it to me. I’m running for my life.”

  I guessed it was from thousands of broken hearts and an attempt to mend them that various “Anonymous” meetings have become so strong a pillar in our modern social structure. I knew that these meetings have saved lives and kept people clean, sober, and married. In many cases they make people accountable and give them the tools they need to survive, to cope with unbearable situations. But at that point in my life, I simply didn’t have any faith left in David to believe that he could change. He had lived so long in a world of make-believe, covering his obsession with religion, that I was afraid the chances were remote that he would ever come clean. I was also afraid that if I continued down the “enabler” path, I would become as addicted to being abused as David was to abusing. And what imprint would that leave on my children, what scratchy record to replay?

  That night as we drove back to the house I glanced at David, seeing the lines deep in his face, desperation in his eyes. I turned from him and looked out the window at the brittle, leafless trees, their branches like bones clicking in the wind. I closed my eyes and laid my head against the headrest. It was as though my love for him had been buried over the years in a deep thick fog—a fog that had risen out of disappointment, disillusion. It had appeared first in thin spirals like ghosts in a churchyard and thickened with the force of a genie from a lamp. At times we had tried to find each other in the haze, but now there seemed no hope. We were drowned in the soupy mist. It had encased us both and it was bitterly cold.

  He dropped me off at the house, asking quietly that I reconsider, knowing by the look on my face not to push the issue. As he drove away, I stood outside and looked up at the moon, blood red through the clouds. I put my face into my hands, as though I was praying to God. But now, for me, He did not exist. Instead I cried, remembering for the first time in years how I had once loved David so completely. Remembering there had been a time when we shared such tender moments, a mutual belief that our future was infinite, our children secure, encased together in our arms. I thought of the time when we believed that God had called us to help the world. I felt the sobs wrenching me. If I had been more diligent, less gullible, could I have stopped this heartache—if I had loved David more or myself less. For some time remorse flowed through my body, building up and dying down, building up and dying down. I felt as though I was unmoored, being sucked into a black current, only to pull myself onto a solitary continent of sadness.

  I cried for some time and then thought of my children, unaware that I had returned home; they’d be sitting upstairs in front of the television or doing their homework. I dried my tears and walked inside the house. The battle ahead would be a difficult one. I needed to think about how I was going to tell my family and friends.

  The first people who needed to hear about the separation were going to be the hardest to tell: my parents. They had absolutely no idea of the life that David and I had been living—they had supported us at every turn, taken pride in our service to God, paid for David’s seminary education, and loved him like a son. They believed in both of us completely and unquestioningly.

  The next day was a slow one waiting tables, so I left work early, taking the elevator down from the Space Needle, crossing the plaza to the Seattle Center, pausing to listen to the folksingers, stopping to browse through the gift shop, stalling for time to try and calm myself. Maybe I didn’t have enough quarters—it was going to be a long call from the pay phone in the Food Circus. I couldn’t lie, but the truth was going to be very hard to explain. My practiced explanations kept fluttering away like a great chirping flock of starlings, black against a pale blue sky, veering and swerving then spreading apart and disappearing from sight. Maybe I would wait until tomorrow to call Mom and Dad. Then I thought of the freedom I longed for, the dream of it seeded long ago, after David’s first confession, and watered over the years by David’s jealousy and demands for control. Now liberation had sprouted in my veins. I was a waitress; I had plenty of quarters.

  Mom answered the phone, and my story spilled out. After my confession, she didn’t hesitate to tell me that she loved me and that she and Dad would do whatever they could to help. I knew it would be easier to tell the next person on my list—Susan—but as I suspected, she wasn’t as agreeable to the plan.

  “I asked David to leave the house, and he’s gone,” I told her that night o
ver the phone.

  “What, are you crazy? You just started school. How are you going to pay the light bill?”

  “He’s been sneaking out to strip joints again, and I’ve had it. I can’t stand it anymore.”

  “Now, calm down and think this through,” she said. “How in God’s name are you going to survive?”

  “I’ll keep waiting tables, and things will have to work out.”

  “Your kids need the security of a nuclear family, even if it’s an unhealthy one.”

  “I saw a counselor at the community college, and she said that wasn’t necessarily so. She said if I stayed, my kids would start to think this madness is normal.”

  “This counselor is not a Christian and can’t understand the obligations we have to follow the teachings of Scripture!”

  “I’m sorry, Susan, I’ve made up my mind. I have to go. I’ll talk to you next week.” I set the phone down before Susan could say another word.

  The people of Calvary Baptist were just as stunned by the separation. Some surmised that our marital problems were the result of my newfound independence: a woman who pursued her own selfish interests and stepped out from under God’s protective umbrella of family hierarchy was simply asking for trouble. Others whispered that I was probably having an affair. That accusation made me consider revealing David’s addiction and jealous outbursts, but I decided against it because of the effect that such mudslinging would have on Carise, Micael, and Jason.