Sacred Institutions
Late June 1999
Summer before college
“You gave me too much, dear.” Mrs. Sheehan pressed a nickel into my palm.
Before I could apologize for making wrong change she was out the propped-open front doors, nibbling her square of blueberry-lemon cake. Blue Moon Cake, my mother’s neat penmanship spelled out on the sign taped to the table edge. Everyone said how clever she was, inventing this cake, how the shiny crescent moons of blueberry pie filling in each piece of lemon sponge were so perfect, how she should open a bakery. The way people raved, you’d have thought she’d cured malaria.
I’d sold four cakes and a dozen slices, plus assorted brownies, blondies, and muffins, during the usual sugar frenzy after Reverend Talbert’s send-off from Ephesians: “Know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God!”
Filled with the fullness of God. And baked goods.
Now it was only me, a few stragglers, and Mrs. Pettit, manning her own card table—for choir sign-ups, I assumed—across the room. Any minute the deacon would unprop the front doors and I’d be free.
J.B. was home from LA for the weekend so he and Casey and I were driving to a beach we liked in Pinecrest. They were picking me up at 11:30 in his truck.
J.B. Now officially, gloriously, my boyfriend.
We’d exchanged emails all fall and spent Thanksgiving break talking and kissing in his truck cab, listening to the radio, fogging up the windows.
At Christmas I agonized over his gift and decided to sketch him instead of buying something. A small black pen-and-ink, only three by four inches, as if trying to capture his soul would seem less intimate in miniature. As if its size would make it a casual present.
Though I spent more time on those twelve square inches of Bristol board than I had on anything I’d ever drawn. I mimicked the intense gothic style of the woodcut illustrations in my 1943 edition of Jane Eyre. J.B. staring across the lake, remembering the cruel boy who’d taunted him. His hair wet, his eyes soft, lost in another world.
We sat outside my house in his truck for our gift exchange. The Pogues belting out “Fairytale of New York” on KALT-FM. He handed me a heavy rectangular package wrapped in flocked red-and-green paper and I gave him his almost weightless little present swathed in gold tissue.
His gift for me was a gorgeous color hardcover about the painter Lee Krasner.
“It’s perfect,” I said, carefully turning the pages. “I love her.”
He held my line drawing up to the truck’s overhead light for a long time before speaking, then nodded. “It’s me,” he said simply.
After that we emailed daily and talked on the phone three times a week.
I made him tell me about the four other girls he’d been with. Names, ages, the where, the how often. I told him about my unremarkable dates in town, my explorations before the good-nights.
I confessed what I hadn’t told anyone except Alex—that I wanted to draw. I told everyone else I wanted to be a graphic designer. Practical. Safe. He told me about his favorite buildings in LA, that he’d wanted to major in architecture but had switched to straight engineering for the sure money. For his mom.
The messages zipping up and down California between [email protected] and [email protected] got longer, warmer, until he sent one sweetly official, brief missive in January:
Subject: technical?
are you my girlfriend? used word today, describing you to nosy fellow TA
terminology accurate?
ps hope it is
During the academic year he had to work on campus most weekends, tutoring and in the engineering lab. But he stole away one Saturday in February. Driving six hours to meet my bus in Sacramento, where we found a quiet café. Hitting the road again three hours later in the opposite direction, a quad espresso in the cupholder.
By spring I was so jelly-kneed in love I could barely concentrate on my classes, but I’d gotten into CalArts. Casey’d been accepted at UCLA, where J.B. had one year left of grad school.
We’d all be in LA soon. Me, J.B., Casey.
* * *
I was happy, anticipating my freedom, so close now, and the afternoon ahead in Pinecrest, the swimming and sunbathing and lazy kissing on damp towels, fingers laced together. Casey would call, “Get a room, you two,” and throw a towel over us or splash us in her good-natured way, pretending to be shocked. I was in such a good mood I accidentally smiled at Mrs. Pettit.
She pinched her face up. “Wonderful sermon.”
“Wonderful.”
As if I knew. I’d been too busy reliving scenes from the night before, entangled with J.B. on Casey’s bed while the sounds of the postgame party drifted upstairs. We hadn’t slept together yet, though I wanted to.
Fragments of Reverend Talbert’s message had intruded into my daydreams, creating an unholy but undeniably sexy hodgepodge: J.B.’s hand exploring the curve of my waist (...and he spoke to the Apostle Paul...), the way I’d tunneled my hands under his shirt, turning his voice ragged (...fishers of men, he said, and it was so...). That’s how I entertained myself in church these days, crossing my legs tight in the sunny pew. Then feeling guilty.
“Where’s your mother, dear?” Mrs. Pettit asked.
“She has her committee meeting in the library.”
“And which committee is that, now? It’s so hard to keep up.”
“The one remodeling the bride’s dressing room?”
“Now, won’t that be charming. When our Emily was married it was in a pitiful state. Torn carpet, rusty faucet. I don’t know what we’d do without your mother.”
“Yes.”
“Will you give her one of these for me, dear?” Mrs. Pettit walked over with a slim red pamphlet. The tightness of her smile made it clear she hadn’t forgiven me for dropping out of choir sophomore year. Neither had my mother.
I’d assumed Mrs. Pettit was drumming up support for youth choir, or adult choir, or canticle singers or bell ringers. She was in charge of pretty much any group making noise in special robes.
But when I glanced at the pamphlet I realized this was something else. Something new.
I left the unsold goodies, the money box, the powder blue napkins with the trotting lambs on them, strewn across the table. I left without saying goodbye.
* * *
When Casey was swimming and J.B. was curled on my towel, his head in my lap, I showed him the pamphlet.
“Oh, man.” He sat up.
The pamphlet quoted a senator from Mississippi who compared homosexuality to a condition like alcohol abuse or kleptomania. A pathology in need of treatment, it said.
Mrs. Pettit’s pinchy smile took on a sinister meaning; I wondered if she knew about Casey. Dina Pettit, her daughter, went to the parties on the sly, so even though she knew Casey was gay she probably wouldn’t have said anything. But Coeur-de-Lune was small.
“You going to show her?” J.B. said.
“No.”
“Is your mother part of it?”
“I don’t think so.” I folded the pamphlet and rolled it inside my dress, wrapping the fabric tight, tucking it into my beach bag. “But either way I’m done. I should have stopped going to church years ago. You should’ve seen the way they treated Alex one Christmas.”
“Alex never struck me as the religious type.”
“She surprised me at a carol service I was playing piano in. Sophomore year. She was all dressed up, but...” I shook my head, remembering the long, sliding glances, the insincerity in the greetings that cold December night. So good to see you here finally!
“They said stuff?”
“It was the way they looked at her.”
“Why? The scavenger hunts?”
“All of it. The parties. The cutoffs, the boyfriends, her age. That’s all they see. And if they know about Casey? They’re probably thrilled. Proof they were right all along, not to be friendly to Alex. Also...never mind.”
“Also what?”
I’d never told him about Alex kissing Stewart Copley the summer before.
“What?” J.B. repeated.
“Nothing. You need lotion. You’re burning.” His skin wasn’t burning at all; he didn’t burn. I touched my favorite part of his shoulder, where various muscles joined under smooth skin.
He kissed the shoulder where my bathing suit strap was supposed to be, and for a few disloyal seconds I wished we were alone, or that Casey had brought a date.
Then I looked out at the shining water. She wasn’t at full speed, but even her laziest backstroke was a beautiful thing to watch, liquid and controlled. I wanted to run into the water and scoop her out like those parents in Jaws. She didn’t know what was going on under the surface of our placid little town.
“What’ll you tell your mom about...” J.B. pointed at my bag.
“That I’m eighteen and I’m done pretending.”
* * *
My mother stood in the entry, inhaling and exhaling in a deep, showy way. See what you do to my respiration, wicked child? “You’ve been out with that boy all day?”
That boy. She said it like she said those Collier boys or that mother, meaning Alex. No adjective necessary.
“You know his name.”
My dad crept in as she took another “Lord help me” breath.
“The state you left the bake sale table in. Marjorie Pettit said—”
“Did she tell you about her little cause?” I took the pamphlet from my bag and held it out to her, then at the last second offered it to my dad instead.
He read it and sighed. Handed it to my mother.
She barely glanced at it before handing it back to him. “Marjorie Pettit’s a fool. Always has been.”
“That’s it?” I said. “She’s a fool? She probably knows about Casey. And I know you know, too, the way those old bitches gossip.”
“Laura.” My father’s voice was sharp, but he didn’t look up from the pamphlet. I hadn’t told him about Casey, but I wondered if he’d guessed.
“Witches, then,” I said, softening my language for my father’s sake. Not for her.
“It’s that Shepherd woman,” my mother said. “That house. That’s why she’s acting like this.”
“Alex has never done anything to you. And The Shipwreck is just four walls and a roof. Just because you were too uptight to play with the kids who used to live there—”
“Laura!” my father said.
I took my own deep, showy breath, and when I finally said the words, I sounded like an actor enjoying her monologue too much. An ugly part of me was glad about Marjorie Pettit’s pamphlet. Because now I could say it at last:
“I’m never going back to that church.”
First week of July
The week after I finally told my mother I wasn’t going to church anymore, I waited for my punishment. None came. I was even allowed to take the bus to Tahoe with Casey for fireworks.
I guessed that my father had intervened, told my mother I was almost a grown-up. It’s what he’d said to me twice since my birthday, bashfully: “Eighteen. Hard to believe.”
J.B. came home almost every weekend now, and on Saturday night I went over to Casey’s as usual, and as usual J.B. and I spent most of our time on her bed half-clothed, stopping just short of sex.
I said, “I’m sure. I’m eighteen.”
“Soon,” he said.
While he was down the hall splashing water on his face, I drew the shade up halfway and spied on the remnants of the party from Casey’s window. There were still kids in the lamp-lit garden drinking beer. Alex sat on the bench, a small bowl in her lap. It was the one she’d bought during the high point of her witchy gardening phase, stone with a matching pestle. On a towel next to her were small objects I couldn’t make out.
Ginny Ambrose and Dina Pettit sat at Alex’s feet, laughing and dabbing their arms with paper towels. At first I thought perhaps they’d simply spilled beer, but I realized, from the way Casey stood slightly apart from the others, unsmiling, that this wasn’t the case.
“What’s going on out there?” J.B. settled behind me on the bed.
“I’m pretty sure it’s Alex’s version of a Wiccan blood ritual,” I said. “Seems to be a crowd-pleaser.”
“You’re kidding.” He stared over my shoulder at the scene.
“Casey’s annoyed. I should go help.”
“You’re not her mother, Laur.”
I pressed my forehead against the cool glass. “You mean Casey’s or Alex’s?”
“I meant Alex.”
A boy picked up the mortar and pestle and began drumming. Click-thrum. Click-thrum. The set cost fifty dollars from the Moonshadow occult shop in Sacramento; I’d seen the price sticker the afternoon Alex bought it.
“Want to hear something embarrassing?” I said. “Promise not to tell.”
“Promise.”
I made my confession to the window. “I used to imagine Alex was my mother.”
I waited for him to answer, or laugh, but he didn’t.
I turned to face him. I couldn’t read his expression. It was kind, inviting me to continue my explanation, but was there pity mixed in?
“Alex was so interested in me and...I had it all worked out. We don’t look anything alike, but our feet are almost identical. Narrow, and we both have super-small pinky toenails, did you ever notice? Freakishly small, like basically dots?”
I extended a leg, settling my foot in his lap so we could study my toes.
He tapped my pinky toenail. “I’ve never noticed Alex’s toes. But I like yours.”
“You know they’re weird.” My pinky toenails really were odd. They were like flattened seed pearls inserted into my flesh. The one time I had a professional pedicure, before homecoming sophomore year, the lady at the salon had bluntly asked if I wanted to “overdraw” them. She’d painted varnish straight onto my skin, a trompe l’oeil effect that made it look like I had a respectable-sized nail. I’d told Alex about this salon visit and she’d whipped off her socks to show me how her toenails were almost as tiny.
That means we both have Greek ancestry, she’d said. She’d read a book on this. Casey had held her foot up and it was nothing like ours; her toenails were standard discs and her toes swerved into each other like puzzle pieces.
I withdrew my leg, settling cross-legged on the sagging mattress.
“So, the feet thing,” I said, staring out the window again. “I thought maybe my parents hadn’t told me my real birthday. Because otherwise it wouldn’t be possible. Casey’s is more than two months later. Dumb, huh? Like that kids’ book with the bird. Are You My Mother?”
“It’s not dumb. I’m sure every adopted kid does that.”
We watched Alex quietly through the window, leaning close to catch puffs of breeze from off the lake, welcome after our sweaty tangling on the bed.
“You wouldn’t still want it to be true, would you?” he said, scratching the window screen to indicate the scene outside. “About Alex?”
I looked down at her, holding court with teenagers, oblivious to Casey’s fury. Or, worse, not so oblivious, but unable to resist the attention. She was selfish, foolish, infuriating. But brimming with life.
I shook my head no. But I knew the answer was yes.
* * *
J.B. left at midnight and I curled up in Casey’s bed to wait for her.
When she collapsed next to me, she sighed.
“That bad?” I said.
“If you’d been down there she would’ve poked a needle in you, too. Your church people are going to burn her at the stake.”
“Tell.”
“Love spells for some lifeguards Ginny and Dina worship. The crowd ate it up.”
“No. God, Alex.” I laughed, but stopped abruptly when I saw Casey’s expression. She was right, of course. Certain parents would go ballistic if they found out Alex had tapped their daughters’ tender arms like sugar maples.
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. What would your congregation think?” Her voice was bitter.
“Stop with the church stuff,” I said to Casey. “I’m not going back.”
“You’re pretty girl-who-cried-wolf on the subject.”
“I know, but I mean it this time. And I know I said I’d keep an eye on Alex and I haven’t done that, either. But I’ll help you with her next weekend.”
“You don’t have to babysit her on your Saturdays with J.B.”
“He won’t have sex with me anyway. It’s totally frustrating.”
“Poor Laura.” She smiled.
I was so relieved to see her smile. “Help me. Should I take him to a hotel?”
“With a heart-shaped bed.”
“They have those in Reno,” I said.
“You could ask my mom to do one of her spells.”
“How would we get his blood?”
“You could bite his tongue while you’re kissing and secretly save the blood and spit it into the magic stone bowl.”
“He might notice.”
“It’s not a perfect plan.”
For the first time in the hundreds of Saturdays I’d slept over, Casey didn’t set her alarm.
“You’re sure?” she said, her hand hovering over her plastic Eiffel Tower clock.
I said the same thing I’d told J.B. “I’m sure. I’m eighteen.”
* * *
When I came home the next morning I expected to find the house empty.
But my dad was out back, sanding the teak side tables from the den. They nested together in a way that had fascinated me when I was little. My mother said they were a royal pain because they showed every drop of water.
“You’re here,” I said.
“That I am.” He didn’t look up, maintaining a steady scritch-scratch with his sandpaper. Finally, he blew at the fine powder and said, “I always thought Minister Talbert was a decent character. Bit of a windbag, but not one to allow an ugly business like that under his roof. Can’t abide it.”
“Thanks, Daddy. Was she really mad?”
“It’ll blow over.” He nodded across the water at The Shipwreck. “Casey’s a good kid. Nobody’s business, the other stuff. Anyone giving her a hard time?”
“Nothing too bad.”
He smoothed a small section of wood, blew again, and inspected it. “Give your old man a hand. See if you can find the teak oil. Blue can, top shelf.”
I watched him from inside the shed as he bent over the lowest table in the set, his jeans loose on his skinny form, his stooped posture making him look frail. He had such a quick mind that I forgot sometimes, he was nearly sixty-seven.
* * *
My father never went back to church after that. I don’t know what my mother told people. I imagine it hurt her deeply, him siding with me that last summer. We never discussed it again, and although I listened at the heat vent for weeks, I never heard my parents fight about it.
Quiet as it was, the schism in our little family, it turned out, was deep and irreparable.