House on Fire (ARC)

by Bonnie Kistler

  “I know, right? He’s like a total inspiration.”

  But she meant the question literally. How could anyone go on after something like that? How could he not be consumed by grief and hatred and a thirst for revenge? But Reverend Kendall not only went on, but also found a way to bring something good out of the tragedy. After he buried his son, he made a public appeal—not for information leading to the capture of the killer, as many parents would do—but rather for an all-out effort to stem the tide of gun-related deaths across the country. Donations poured in, and today the Andrew Kendall Research Center on Gun Violence was a leading sponsor of research on the epidemiology of firearm deaths and injuries.

  The doors opened and the line shuffled ahead into the building and across the lobby and into the auditorium. A single lectern stood on one side of the stage, like a pulpit in a church. The girl from Boston followed Leigh into a row and sat down with her rollaboard wedged in front of her and her knees tucked up to her chest. The auditorium buzzed with voices as people settled into their seats, but at a single chime, everyone hushed, and a moment later, Reverend Kendall took the stage to a burst of applause.

  He wore a suit and tie, not a clerical collar, and he leaned easily against the lectern in a halo of yellow light. “Good evening, everyone,” he opened. “Welcome to Lying 101.” A titter of laughter rippled through the audience. “As some of you may know, I’m an ordained minister.” Even amplified through the microphone, his voice was as quiet and soothing as it was that day in his Snuggery. “And if you’re wondering what I know about lying—am I even qualified to teach this course?—well, let me tell you a story.

  “One day I was walking down the street near my home in Maryland when I saw a circle of boys surrounding a dog. I was afraid they might be abusing it, so I burst in and demanded to know what they were up to. ‘This dog is a stray,’ one of the boys told me. ‘We all want him, but only one of us can take him home. So we decided whichever one of us can tell the biggest lie gets to keep the dog.’

  “Well, as you can imagine, I was appalled. ‘You boys shouldn’t be having a contest telling lies!’ I said. ‘Don’t you know it’s a sin to tell a lie? Why, when I was your age, I never told a lie.’

  “The boys looked at each other and scuffed their shoes in the dirt, and I thought I’d actually gotten through to them. Then one of them gave a sigh and said, ‘All right, give the old guy the dog.’ ”

  A surprised burst of laughter rolled through the auditorium, and Leigh startled herself by laughing along.

  “The moral of the story? Everyone lies. Anyone who says he doesn’t is lying, and that applies equally to members of the clergy. Let’s begin, then, shall we? With an exploration of exactly what a lie is.”

  Leigh looked around at the attentive faces throughout the audience. Some people were even taking notes, like the girl from Boston in the seat beside her, who scribbled furiously on a tiny reporter’s pad.

  He began by attempting to define what a lie was. Was an affirmative statement required or could silence alone amount to a lie? He talked about the paradox of a truthful lie—a true statement made with the intent to deceive.

  “Is lying always wrong?” he said next. “Well, it must be; the Bible says so, right?” He let a beat of silence pass as he gazed out at his audience. “Wrong.”

  Beside Leigh, the girl’s head snapped up.

  “Let’s start with the Ten Commandments. In both Christianity and Judaism, the Commandments are considered God’s universal and timeless standards of right and wrong. The Eighth Commandment—Ninth in the Talmud—says: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. That’s a blanket prohibition against lying, right? Well, let’s think about that. All you lawyers out there, parse through it with me. It doesn’t say Thou shalt not lie, or Thou shalt not deceive. No, it forbids us to bear false witness. That’s a testimonial term. And the rest of the commandment puts it in context. Against thy neighbor. This commandment is a prohibition against libel and slander. Lies intended to harm the reputation of another.”

  Leigh had never thought of this, but once he said it, it was so obvious. This was classic tort law language. Conduct causing harm to another that gave rise to a common law cause of action. Usually bodily harm, but in the case of libel and slander, harm to the reputation was the requisite.

  “So out of all the Ten Commandments, there’s only one rather narrow prohibition against lying. Don’t go around bad-mouthing your neighbor. Unless it’s true, and he really doesn’t keep up his property.”

  Another titter of laughter from the audience.

  “This is a commandment having more to do with law and commerce than it does with truth and honesty. There’s a parallel commandment in the Qur’an: Give full measure when you measure, and weigh with a balance that is straight. In other words, be an honest merchant. Don’t cheat your customers. Islam doesn’t have a blanket prohibition against lies any more than Christianity and Judaism do. Muhammad himself took the view that deceit is permitted in three situations: to reconcile two or more quarreling parties; between husband and wife; and in war.”

  Stephen paused for effect. “Some of you may see some redundancy there.

  “So,” he continued when the laughter receded. “In the central moral code of all three major religions, there is no absolute prohibition against lying. Against defamation, yes, and against dishonest trade. But not against other kinds of lying.

  “But surely there must be some prohibition somewhere. Weren’t we all brought up with the notion that lying is wrong? So let’s look elsewhere for the source of that notion. Start with St. Augustine, whose writings shaped not only Christian theology but also much of Western philosophy. He maintained lying was always wrong. God gave us speech so that we can make our thoughts known to others. If we lie, we’re using speech to do the opposite of what God intended. But even St. Augustine allowed for some wiggle room. Some lies are okay, he said. Lies that hurt nobody and protect someone else from harm are at the top of his list, and lies that hurt nobody and benefit someone else come next. Lies that hurt nobody is the common refrain.”

  The girl from Boston tucked a turquoise strand of hair behind her ear and jotted that down—hurts nobody—benefits somebody. Leigh stared at the words on the notepad. Was that how Kip rationalized his lie? Chrissy couldn’t be hurt anymore, and he could save his own skin. His lie hurt nobody and protected himself, he must have thought. But he didn’t think of Leigh. He didn’t think about how much she’d be hurt.

  Her attention had wandered, and by the time she brought it back, Stephen was talking about Plato’s concept of the Noble Lie. Political lies supposedly told for the greater good of the populace. “The economy is fine,” for example, to avoid a run on the banks. And then there were the pious fictions—religious tales presented as true but almost certainly concocted, albeit with an altruistic motive. The Book of Daniel, for instance.

  Immanuel Kant was his next topic. Kant was an absolutist who professed that lying was always wrong. Even if it harmed no one, and no matter how noble the goal might be, lying to acquire or accomplish something was in denigration of the humanity of the person lied to and thus a violation of universal law.

  “John Stuart Mills saw it differently. He was a consequentialist. A utilitarian. If telling a lie leads to a better result than telling the truth, it’s right and good to tell the lie. Let’s take an example. You’re hiding Anne Frank and her family in your attic when the SS knocks on your door and asks if you know where the Frank family is. You say no. That’s a lie, but it’s a good lie under Mills and utilitarianism.

  “But it’s not always easy to predict the consequences of a lie, and you also have to ask for whom the expected result is better. Not for the SS officer, obviously, in my Anne Frank example. Let’s imagine you’re harboring a different fugitive in your attic, a neighbor boy who’s suspected of having set off a bomb that killed dozens of innocent pe
ople. There’s a huge manhunt under way. He swears he’s innocent, but the level of hysteria in the streets is so high you’re afraid he won’t get a fair trial if you turn him in. If he even makes it to jail alive. The police knock on your door and ask if you’ve seen him. What do you do? In Kant’s world, you say yes, here he is. In Mills’s? You have to do a lot of crystal ball gazing to guess what the consequences might be. What if you lie and he’s not innocent, and he escapes and goes on to kill again? But what if you don’t lie and he is innocent and he’s killed while allegedly trying to escape police custody? It’s a tough call, isn’t it? As between absolutism and consequentialism.

  “The modern philosopher Sissela Bok suggests a third alternative. She rejects the Kantian absolute prohibition, but she also rejects Mills’s utilitarianism. It’s not enough for the liar himself to balance the benefits and harms that might follow from the lie, because he can’t account for the damage that might be done to the overall level of trust in our society. Not to mention the damage to his own credibility. A liar’s house is on fire but no one believes him, goes the old proverb. No, Bok says, the better test is the court of public opinion, or at least a panel convened for that purpose. The would-be liar should consult with friends and colleagues and particularly with people of allegiances different from his own to see if they concur that the lie is justified under the circumstances presented.”

  Leigh tried to imagine such an exercise. Convening a panel to test the ethics of Kip’s lie. They could assemble a jury made up of Peter and Leigh and the twins, and all right, even Karen and Gary, and let Kip put the question to all of them. Should he lie and say Chrissy was driving? It would save him from a trial and allow him to go on to college and pursue his career and live the rest of his life without the taint of a criminal conviction. It would save Peter money that he could use in his business or to pay tuition or to care for Mia. It would save Karen immeasurable heartache. But it would cause—was causing, this minute, every minute since he first spoke the words—immeasurable heartache for Leigh. How would the majority of the panel vote?

  The answer hit her like a punch. She’d lose.

  At the end of the hour, Reverend Kendall took some questions from the audience. A student volunteer moved through the aisles with a microphone and reached over rows to hold it to the faces of those who stood up. A series of so-called hypotheticals followed. The doctor tells you your elderly mother has a terminal disease. Should you tell her and probably accelerate her death and increase her suffering and despair? Or keep her in blissful, medicated ignorance, but with no opportunity to make her peace with the world before she leaves it? The next question was political: you believe the enemy possesses weapons of mass destruction but you are unable to confirm it; should you lie about it as a means to justify an invasion? And finally a question designed only to get a laugh: my wife asks if these pants make her look fat, and in fact they do. Should I lie?

  That last question was the only one Reverend Kendall answered definitively. “God help you if you don’t!”

  Leigh didn’t join in the laughter that time. She was still thinking about the truth panel and how the votes would come in. Even if the panel were expanded to include strangers with no stake in the outcome, she knew she’d lose. Even if she put it out to the whole world. A mother’s grief wouldn’t count for anything in their deliberations. Not when weighed against the future of a bright young man.

  Cookies and coffee were available in the lobby afterward, but Leigh didn’t want to linger. The girl from Boston was rooting through her suitcase in search of some books she hoped to get signed, so Leigh said good night and skirted the other way to the aisle, then outside into the summer night. Some smokers were out there already, sucking up a quick hit of nicotine before they rejoined the crowd inside, and she hurried past them and down a shrub-lined path to the parking lot. She turned on her phone as she reached her car. A text lit up the screen in the dark. From Peter.

  “Leigh! Leigh, wait!”

  She spun around. Stephen Kendall was loping down the path after her.

  “Oh! Hello.”

  “I thought I spotted you in the audience, but the lights were dim and I was afraid I’d imagined it.” He smiled. “I’ve been hoping to see you again.”

  “I was hoping to see you, too,” she said. “Then I saw a poster about your lecture tonight.”

  “You’re not leaving already?”

  “I’m sorry. It was very interesting. But I really have to go.”

  “Have you had dinner?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Dine with me, won’t you?”

  “Oh,” she said, startled. “No, I don’t think—”

  “Please. You’d be doing me a big favor.” His eyes twinkled imploringly in the streetlight. “Because otherwise I’m about to get roped into some stuffy trustee meal.”

  “Well.” She smiled a little. “I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that.”

  He beamed. “Wonderful. I’m promised to sign a few books, but I won’t be ten minutes. If you’d like to wait for me here? Or at the restaurant.”

  “Why don’t I go on ahead?” That would give her time to reconsider. She could send him a text in ten minutes—Something came up. Sorry.

  “Great. Do you the know the Acropolis?”

  Leigh nodded in surprise. She was expecting him to name some sedate café, the kind of place where intellectuals went to pick at salads and have cultured conversations. Not a noisy Greek diner where the menu was twenty pages long and you could get breakfast all day.

  “Wonderful.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “I’ll get away as soon as I can.”

  He ran back up the path as she got in the car. This was a bad idea, she decided as she exited the lot. She didn’t even need ten minutes to think better of it. She was in mourning. She didn’t do casual social affairs, and certainly not with a man she barely knew, no matter how kind he was. She pulled over in the next campus parking lot and took out her phone, but even before the screen lit up, she realized she didn’t have his number. She couldn’t call it off.

  The text from Peter glowed on the screen. Shep’s in the kitchen. He didn’t want to leave home.

  If only Peter felt the same way, she thought. But he’d rather sleep on a cot in a half-built house than come home to her.

  She put the phone away and drove on to the diner.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Hey there, Padre,” the elderly proprietor called out when Stephen came through the diner door. “The usual?”

  “Not tonight, Nick.” He spotted Leigh in a booth and gave her a wave. “I’m trying to impress my lady friend here, and it won’t do to dribble a gyro all over my tie.”

  The proprietor laughed, but he gave Leigh a careful once-over, and so did the waitresses behind the counter. She could see that Stephen was not only known here, but he was also liked, and they were protective of him. They knew his history, too, she suspected. His terrible personal tragedy.

  He slid into the vinyl bench across from her. “Are you hungry?” he asked as he opened the laminated menu. “Public speaking always makes me hungry. Which is a real occupational hazard when you’re both a preacher and a teacher.” He gave a rueful pat to his stomach.

  They were both overdressed for the diner, Stephen in his suit and Leigh in her silk dress. The young people crowding into the booths around them probably thought they’d met on SeniorMatch.com and were trying to impress each other on their first in-person date.

  “I enjoyed your talk tonight,” she said. “Though the topic was a surprise. I thought you were going to talk about the one-percenters.”

  He gave a shrug as his eyes skimmed the menu. “Lecturer’s prerogative. I tend to talk about whatever’s most on my mind at the moment.”

  “Lying’s been on my mind a good bit, too.”

  His gaze rose to her face. “Did I say somet
hing to upset you? I was afraid— I thought you looked troubled when I saw you in the audience.”

  She was spared a response when the waitress presented herself for their orders. A spinach pie for Stephen, an egg white omelet for Leigh. She changed the subject as the waitress bustled back to the kitchen. “I have a confession to make. I didn’t actually see a poster for your lecture. The truth is, I googled you.”

  “Oh?” He shook out his paper napkin like it was cloth and placed it on his lap. “What’s the internet saying about me these days?”

  “Nothing bad, I can tell you that. You have quite a loyal following. In fact, I sat next to one of your groupies tonight.”

  “Oh, the girl with the, uh—?” With a grin he drew an imaginary streak through his hair.

  “I can only imagine how devoted your parishioners must be.”

  “They’re a little impatient with me, to tell the truth. My sabbatical’s already lasted longer than any of us contemplated.”

  “You don’t want to return to your church?”

  “Someday, of course. But for now, my extracurricular work seems more important than preaching to two thousand comfortable souls in Chevy Chase.”

  “Two thousand!”

  “Don’t be impressed. They’re not all regulars. Many of them we see only twice a year, at Christmas and Easter. And quite a few we see only three times in their lives.” His mouth twitched. “You know the saying? We hatch ’em, match ’em, then dispatch ’em.”

  Leigh gave a guilty laugh. That expression more or less described her own church attendance record over the last many years. Baptisms, weddings, funerals. “I meant to ask you,” she said. “The day we met, when I followed you home?” She flushed at the memory of her madness that day, but pushed through to the question that had been on her mind since then. “Could I ask what you were doing out there?”