Simple Simon

by William Poe

  Knowing the truth was one thing; giving up the aspects of one’s life that afford security and comfort was another. My quandary was whether to manage my precarious situation or start over and rebuild.

  When Mitsui left the room, everyone looked toward Dr. Lee. The elders had received training in how to perform the ritual, learning to apply the strike in such a way that it minimized the risk of serious damage. Mitsui had received no such training and, thus, had potentially crippled me for life. As much as anything, this seemed to be what bothered the elders. Dr. Lee left through the same door as Mitsui, presumably to confront him.

  I managed a stiff-legged hobble to the elevator. On the way, my vision became blurry, and I fell to the hardwood floor. A presence moved toward me; it seemed to be a specter of some kind. Vivian’s brother, Wesley, the youth who died after his father had beat him, stood over me.

  I know your pain, the ghost said. My father beat me because I was bad. You have sinned, Simon, and must die to be reborn.

  A group of brothers carried me to the lobby of the New Yorker and laid me on a divan. Someone placed a wet rag on my forehead.

  “Simon,” Masako said, “keep your eyes open.” She was crying.

  “Mitsui tried to kill me,” I said.

  The brothers who brought me to the couch turned away as if unwilling to hear such an accusation.

  “Commander Powell is really out of it,” a brother said.

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  Then a recognizable voice joined the comments. “Mitsui had no business taking such an action.” It was Owen.

  I propped myself up.

  “Please, Simon-san,” Masako said, pressing the cloth to my forehead.

  “Sympathy for me?” I said, looking at Owen.

  “Are you awake now?” Owen said, applying a double entendre.

  “Awake to many things” I replied.

  “If you need a doctor,” Owen offered, “we have one on call.”

  I stood up and took a few steps without assistance. “Nothing broken, it seems, but I feel like I’ve been kicked by an ass.”

  “You have,” Owen said. “Mitsui was out of line striking you. Trust me, Willard Bozeman will speak to Father about what happened.”

  “Not Abbanim?” I said sarcastically.

  The other brothers had left us. Only Masako remained at my side. Owen felt free to speak his mind.

  “Abbanim isn’t the fool you take him for,” Owen said. “He knows why Father chose this moment for the wedding, and he hasn’t tried to prevent it. Many of our San Francisco members will be in the ceremony. He’s happy about that. Abbanim wants members to experience married life.”

  “Fool or not, Owen, it’s a joke to call this the Unification Church. If Abbanim is showing support, that’s what it is—merely a show. He’s biding his time.”

  “Mitsui and Reverend Moon are going to prison, one way or another,” Owen said. “You’ll be isolated. If you come to your senses, call me. The family needs American leadership. Members trust you and will follow you. Whatever Mitsui thought he was doing by taking over the ritual and striking you, he no longer deserves your support.”

  “I’ll take your words under advisement,” I said.

  Owen went to join Carol and Willard Bozeman on the other side of the lobby. They spoke furiously, often glancing in my direction. Perhaps they differed in opinion about the prospect of gaining my support. And I sensed that Carol and Owen had an agenda that supported Abbanim over whatever Bozeman was after. The political wrangling seemed tiresome as I lay there suffering.

  “Simon-san,” Masako said, “what talking about to that brother? What going on?”

  “More than you want to know, Masako.”

  She asked several more times, but I didn’t know what to say.

  I sat up and again tried to walk. Fortunately, Mitsui had missed my tailbone. With each step, I felt better.

  Masako helped me to a chair along the wall and knelt beside me. She couldn’t stop crying.

  “Vivian and Lenny are coming to New York,” I said. “Won’t it be nice to see them?” I hoped the news would cheer her up. She had enjoyed the visit at Christmas after our civil marriage.

  “You have good parents, Simon-san. They treat me like daughter.”

  “Did you invite your family from Japan?”

  Masako’s tears deepened. “I cannot do that, Simon-san. They oppose our marriage.”

  “Masako,” I said, taking her face in my hands and wiping the tears from her eyes, “the Unification Church is going to fall apart. I am sure about that. I don’t want to be a member anymore. But no matter how Father defines marriage, American law binds us. I need you to understand. My faith was weak from the start, but it vanished completely when Mitsui struck me. I don’t even believe in God.”

  “That why you not see me?”

  I brushed the tears from her cheeks. “What do you mean?”

  “You were at the telephone,” Masako said, gulping for air. “You lie to me, Simon. I see you across street.”

  “I wasn’t sure what to say to you if we met. So much has happened.”

  Masako looked directly into my eyes. “We together. I care for Simon, not the church. God takes care of God. I take care of Simon.”

  If only I could have been honest in that moment. But her love overwhelmed me with emotions that were as close to desire as I could possibly hope to feel for a woman.

  “I love you, Simon Powell,” Masako said.

  “Maybe, someday, I can say that to you, Masako, but not today. If you want, I will let you go.”

  “You mean divorce? But we not even sex. Let’s sex, then divorce mean something.”

  “How can you say that, Masako?”

  “Because, Simon-san, this like old Japanese movie.” She smiled so sweetly that it infected me, too. We both laughed.

  “Masako, this is not a movie. This is life.” I tried to compose myself, but broke out laughing again.

  “I join family long time ago, much longer than you,” Masako said. “This is pretend life, anyway. I pretend you love me—until really you do love me.”

  “You’re a very special woman, Masako. What if I leave the church tomorrow?”

  Masako took both my hands and said, “Then I follow.”

  I had no idea what to say to that.

  CHAPTER 38

  “There he is,” I heard Vivian say to Lenny as I approached baggage claim at LaGuardia Airport. The bus from the port authority had gotten stuck in traffic, and I was running late. Lenny sat in a wheelchair provided by the airline. He straightened up when he spotted me, trying to appear strong, but a gaunt face and labored breathing betrayed his fragile health.

  The taxi to Manhattan took a potholed road through Queens, heading to the Triborough Bridge. When Vivian noticed me wincing with each bump, I explained that I had fallen and bruised my hip while trying to dodge a crowd in Times Square when someone spotted a rock star inside the Virgin record store.

  Vivian made a face of disapproval, saying sternly, “People shouldn’t act like that.”

  “I’d forgotten how loud it is in Manhattan,” Lenny said to a background of honking horns and sirens.

  “None of it registers with me anymore,” I said. “I just tune it out.”

  Vivian craned her neck to gaze out the rear window. “I never imagined a building that high,” she said. And then, stupefied by the number of people walking down Fifth Avenue, she added, “How do they keep from bumping into each other?”

  “You can see how easy it was to fall down and bruise my hip,” I said, reinforcing my story. “And it’s not even rush hour.”

  Vivian continued to gawk out the window.

  “Guess what, Vivian?” I said. She and Lenny had just settled into their room at the Sheraton Hotel. “I have a surprise for you.”

  “Everything you do surprises me,” Vivian said, then softened her statement. “You always have something going on.”

  Lenny sat on the si
de of the bed, winded by the walk to the room.

  “What’s the surprise?” Vivian asked. She had begun fishing for Lenny’s pills in her cosmetic case.

  “Would you like to see Annie The Musical tonight? Little Orphan Annie was your favorite comic strip.”

  “I’d love to see it.” Vivian’s face lit up with anticipation, but just as quickly darkened when she looked at Lenny and realized he was having a hard time catching his breath.

  “It’s okay, Mother,” Lenny said. “I need to rest. You go with Bubby.”

  “You can call room service if you need anything,” I said, addressing Lenny.

  “I know that,” he said defensively. “Ain’t like I lived all my life in the sticks.”

  Vivian tucked Lenny into bed, and almost immediately, he fell asleep. After freshening up in the bathroom, she asked if we might go downstairs. “I saw a restaurant when we came in,” she said.

  We ordered coffee and pie in the lobby café. I could see that Vivian wanted to say something, but that she didn’t know how to go about it.

  “Son,” she began, starting her second cup of coffee, “I know you wouldn’t do something you didn’t think was right.” She began to fiddle with a sugar packet. Finally, she looked up and asked, “Do you love this girl?”

  I looked away without answering.

  Vivian reached across the table to touch my hand, but I withdrew.

  “Will you excuse me?” I said. Needing to escape the question, I went to buy a package of gum from a vending machine in the lobby.

  Vivian wanted to pay the bill, but she struggled with the amount of the tip she ought to leave. Returning with the gum, I suggested she leave a dollar.

  “You should have let me pay, though,” I said, glad our discussion had returned to the mundane.

  “I better check on Lenny.” Vivian swung the purse strap over her shoulder. “And I best be getting ready for tonight.”

  “I’ll come for you at seven, all right?”

  Vivian nodded. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  A marriage without love was something about which Vivian knew a thing or two. She must have sensed that whatever love I felt for Masako wasn’t enough to sustain a relationship.

  Vivian understood that I believed members of the church were sacrificing for the betterment of the world. The appeal of such a noble ideal made sense to her, and she understood my willingness to sacrifice at the altar of marriage. I was Bart’s grandson, after all. Sacrifice was the Powell badge of honor.

  Lenny snored loudly as Vivian shut the door and joined me in the hallway after I arrived to take her to the show.

  “You look nice,” I said. “Is that a new dress?”

  Vivian smiled broadly. “Not new, but I haven’t had a chance to wear it.”

  “Well, you do now,” I said, taking her arm.

  Vivian became so absorbed watching the Broadway show that she never thought about Lenny. She held my hand during the first act and cried unabashedly during the somber moments.

  After a late dinner following the musical, I went with her to the room and wrote down everything she needed to know in order to get from the hotel to the blessing ceremony. Lenny coughed up phlegm, and she realized that he had not taken his last set of pills for the day. Vivian sighed deeply as she struggled to sit Lenny up so he could swallow the medicine. I quietly slipped out the door.

  The next morning, the Unification Church members met in the Grand Ballroom of the New Yorker for speeches by blessed couples. Each one spoke in dire tones about how this was our one chance for adoption into the family of God. If we violated God’s laws after this, our position would fall well below Satan’s in the order of restoration. In other words, Satan would reclaim his position as the Angel of Light before we entered the Kingdom of God.

  I kept thinking about something Darsey had once said when I told him about Tony condemning me to Hell: At least you’ll be among friends. The warnings of the blessed couples meant nothing to me. My concern, to the extent I considered it at the time, was the ongoing disgust with myself for contemplating the double life of a hypocrite.

  By late afternoon, Masako and I stood side by side in a line that wound through the New Yorker lobby. The brothers wore black suits with white shirts and burgundy ties. Masako and the other sisters dressed in plain white dresses with high collars and long sleeves. Cheap berets held the lace veils covering their faces in place.

  When the order came, the couples marched from the New Yorker to Madison Square Garden. Curious onlookers lined the streets to watch the procession. Many jeered. A few rancid tomatoes splattered us, but no one flinched. The persecution served to confirm the righteousness of our marriage and heightened everyone’s sense of purpose.

  What were we doing to these people to make them so upset? It seemed that Christians saw us as threatening followers of the anti-Christ, and others viewed Reverend Moon as a “brainwasher” out to destroy personal freedom. I wondered about the lack of sympathy, especially from those in the crowd professing religious objections. They didn’t so much want to convert us as to destroy us.

  Evening found two thousand couples assembled on the central floor of the Garden. The men chaffed against the uncomfortable black coats, and the sisters looked as though they were about to suffocate behind their veils in the stifling heat generated by so many bodies.

  Father stood on a specially erected stage and led the assembly in a series of vows. Then we exchanged eighteen-carat gold bands embossed with the church emblem. Father and Mother took positions on an arch-shaped scaffold. The brides and grooms passed underneath their upraised arms. As each couple approached this “Gate of Heaven,” elder members sprinkled holy salt on our heads.

  God’s blessing of marriage was complete.

  I’d never seen such joy on people’s faces. Masako, too, radiated happiness. I don’t know how people interpreted my expression, but I tried to look as happy as everyone around me. When Masako and I passed beneath Father and Mother’s upraised arms, I expected accusing demons to rise from the floor to drag me into the bottomless pit of Hell as music from Mozart’s Don Giovanni played in the background. But, of course, all I actually heard was the shuffle of thousands of shoes against the temporarily carpeted floor, and all I experienced was the sting of salt in my eyes.

  During the speeches earlier in the day, one of the Korean elders had informed us that, at a minimum, forty days must pass before we began living as husband and wife. Everyone was supposed to continue their lives just as they had before the blessing. We must understand that, due to the Jacob-at-Jabbok ceremony, our bond with Satan had been broken, and through the blessing, even the original sin of Adam and Eve that had been coursing through our blood was now purified.

  There would be no second chance outside an eternal wait for Satan’s surrender.

  Masako and I found Vivian and Lenny in the crowd milling around the entrance. Lenny needed to get back to the hotel. He looked pale and exhausted. I hailed a taxi and gave the driver the address of the Sheraton and enough money to cover the expense.

  “It was a lovely ceremony,” Vivian said. “I spotted you right away.”

  Lenny had a deep frown on his face. “Damn it, boy,” he said, as I helped him into the taxi. “I’m glad you got married, but that ceremony was downright Communist.”

  “You’re sure you can make it to the airport tomorrow morning?” I asked Vivian, ignoring Lenny’s comment.

  “We’ll be fine. That nice lady at the front desk will make sure we get the shuttle. She’s sweet, but she sure has a funny accent.”

  “Hell, boy,” Lenny fired off again. “What kind of people you take us for? Can’t find our own way to the airport.”

  “Right,” I said. “Don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “Get your butt on back to Arkansas one of these days,” Lenny said, hollering out the window as the taxi took off for the hotel.

  “I think your father not live much longer,” Masako said as we watched the cab
disappear into traffic.

  “He’s too ornery to die.”

  Masako took a small pad from her pocketbook and scribbled, Arn-ree, thinking that, later, she could look up the meaning. I didn’t bother to correct her spelling.

  The next morning, Masako went back to work at the restaurant in Greenwich Village. I had suggested we meet for breakfast, but she said, “You take care of Father’s court case. Plenty time talk later.”

  I went to Mitsui’s office, wondering how I would manage to control my anger when I saw him, but Keiko said he was with Father at Belvedere. I hoped Mitsui received chastisement for beating me. The Korean elders, if not Bozeman, surely told Father what had happened.

  Keiko went to a desk and brought back a laconic note from Mitsui. It stated that I should return to Los Angeles and help Maury with whatever he needed. It also formalized what was already a fact—that Maury should report directly to him.

  That suited me fine. The less contact I had with Mitsui, the better.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “I remember reading about that mass wedding,” Harris recalled. “I never considered the real lives of the people who participated. The images on television were like watching aliens in a science fiction movie.”

  “Maybe that’s it. You should treat me as one of those people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. But in all seriousness, that was a moment of decision for a lot of members. Faced with the proposition of married life, people took stock, and many left the church, feeling that they had forfeited the better part of their youth. I was only eighteen when I joined and twenty-eight when I left. Those aren’t years a person can afford to squander. That’s when connections are made that will last a lifetime, when a person integrates into society.”

  I’d never before put those feelings into words, never admitted how deeply I resented the loss of my young adulthood. Dealing with repressed emotions always made me feel like running away. I wanted to escape Harris’s office.