Matters of Faith

by Kristy Kiernan

  “Of course,” I said. “What do I do?”

  TWO hours later my son was released from jail. I held him while Mingus stood off to the side, glancing at his watch again. I pushed Marshall’s hair out of his face, checking him for wholeness, for signs of despair. If I was hoping to see an unchanged boy, I was to be disappointed.

  Any parent might think that after seeing their child in jail they would note the first signs of age on their formerly juvenile face, even if it were simply a new recognition of them as an adult, but I saw no such thing. If anything, he looked even younger to me, astonishingly so. But there was something else there, too, a wariness of me that I’d never seen before, and I cannot pretend that it didn’t hurt.

  I was the one here, I was the one helping. He remained still and stiff in my arms, and finally stepped away and turned toward Charles Mingus, turning to him to see what to do next. Mingus looked at the bag Marshall’s things had been returned to him in and said, “Got everything?”

  Marshall nodded.

  “We can go then,” Mingus said.

  The three of us walked out of the justice building and stood, uncomfortably, on the steps. Marshall and I spoke at the same time.

  “What now?” I asked Mingus.

  “Can I talk to you?” Marshall asked him, without looking at me. Mingus nodded.

  “I have to pick up my children,” he replied. “Can we talk on the way to my car?”

  Marshall glanced at me. “Mom, I think I need to talk to him alone.”

  I was taken aback. “Why?”

  “Mrs. Tobias,” Mingus said, “Marshall has the right to attorney-client privilege.”

  I glared at them both, and then walked toward my car, trying to not look back and yell at them both that I was his mother, and I had just bailed him out, and I deserved to know what was going on, and I had left my daughter for almost five hours for this—to be treated like nothing more than a necessary wallet.

  They moved in another direction, and I seethed in my car for another twenty minutes before Marshall appeared at the passenger window. I flipped the lock switch and he slid into the seat, not looking at me.

  I turned the radio off and started the car, turning toward home. He rustled through the bag for a minute and pulled his shoelaces out, then bent over and began to thread them into his shoes. I couldn’t stand it.

  “Are you okay?” I asked forcefully, nearly attacking him with concern.

  He didn’t startle, or look at me, just continued threading his shoes.

  “Yeah, I’m all right. It was okay. Nobody hurt me or anything.”

  I wanted to weep at that. At the unspoken horror, the thing we all think: Had my son been beaten and raped in jail? It didn’t matter if it was city jail, county, prison, federal penitentiary, there are no lines drawn between these institutions for most people. What most of us think we know about incarceration is that child molesters are on the bottom of the hierarchy; gangs, amateur tattoos, and illicit drugs are tolerated; and men are raped.

  He finished tying his shoes and leaned his head on his hand, braced against the window as if exhausted.

  “Are you going to ask about Meghan?” I finally asked.

  He didn’t say anything for a moment and then cleared his throat. “How is she?”

  “She’s in a coma,” I replied, my voice steady. “The doctors have no idea if she’ll come out of it, or what she might be like if she does.”

  He turned his head and stared out the window, and I could feel rage building in me. I didn’t even know what to do with it. Cal and I had been at odds over Marshall for so long that however he felt about him I almost immediately countered with the opposite. And, in my defense, Cal responded in kind. But Cal wasn’t here to rage, and I’d had no practice with it.

  “Marshall—” I started, my voice wavering deep in my throat on the second syllable. I swallowed. “What were you thinking?”

  He shook his head without turning toward me.

  “Marshall!” There was no waver in my voice now. “What the hell were you thinking? You could have killed her. She could have died!”

  My words were coming rapidly now, my voice rising. I wanted to beat him with them. I was his mother; he owed me an explanation. It felt like a right that would never go away, no matter how old my children got. If I wanted an answer I was going to get an answer, whether he was nine or nineteen or forty-nine.

  “You talk to me! She could die, Marshall. Or, she could stay like this forever. You want to see her? Do you want to see what you’ve done to your sister?”

  I slammed on the brakes, and had we not been wearing seat belts we would certainly have hit the windshield if not gone through it. Thank God there was nobody following too closely behind us, though horns began sounding immediately. I made a sharp left turn onto a side street, hauled us around, back wheels spinning, and shot back out onto the road, earning more angry horns.

  Marshall clutched his seat, looking at me in terror, but finally looking at me. It was the first time I’d felt some measure of control in days, and I was determined to hold on to that feeling. His face was streaked with tears, a surprise and a relief. But they did nothing to diminish the determined rage I felt to force him to see what he’d done, see what he’d allowed to happen.

  The closer to the hospital we got, the more hysterical he became, and by the time I turned into the parking lot, Marshall was pressed back into his seat and hyperventilating in great, heaving gasps. I pulled into an open space and put the car in park, then leaned forward and hugged the steering wheel, pressing my forehead into the top of its curve. It was perfectly comfortable, and after a moment my own breathing evened out. I thought that perhaps I could just sit here until it got dark, and then close my eyes and sleep through the night, right here on the steering wheel.

  Marshall began to quiet, and soon we were both just sitting there, breathing together. I couldn’t pull my forehead off the steering wheel, my neck simply could not muster the strength to support my head, and so I talked through the hole above the air bag.

  “I think you should be able to see her. I think you should have to see her. I don’t understand, Marshall. You’re nineteen. You’re not a child. Your father thinks it’s my fault, or, really, our fault. He thinks I spoiled you, let you have your way with this religion thing. He thinks that maybe Ada is a devil worshipper or something, that you were trying to kill her.”

  At this Marshall made a strangled sound in his throat and my neck found the strength to snap my head upright and turn to him.

  “Is that it? Were you trying to kill her?”

  “No, oh God, no.”

  “Do not bring God into this, Marshall, not now, not ever again,” I warned him sharply. “I didn’t—Maybe this is my fault. If you think this is God’s will in some way, then I don’t know what—” I stopped and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before continuing. “Don’t blame this on God, Marshall, and don’t blame it on whatever religion Ada is. You did this.”

  “No, no, I didn’t. I didn’t mean to. Ada—”

  “Tell me the truth, Marshall. Ada might have had the idea, but you could have stopped it. And you didn’t. And that makes you just as culpable, if not more, because you’re the one who knew what could happen. Ada might not have realized the gravity of it, but you did.”

  And with this accusation I realized how Cal felt. He was right. He had warned me for years. I had been so stupid. My arrogance stunned and shamed me. My smug certainty that I was encouraging an open mind, an array of experiences, a contemporary willingness to allow him choices. I thought about the parents I grew exasperated with at restaurants and grocery stores, the ones who spent an extraordinary amount of time presenting their five-year-old with twenty different choices, despite the child’s clear bewilderment.

  How was what I’d done any different?

  And Cal. Cal had grown up seeing the dangers of unchecked beliefs, of extremism. And now, of course, he felt as culpable for this as I, and with this
realization came another: We would not get through this. Not as a family, and not as husband and wife. I stared at Marshall, who was trying to tell me something, but all I could do was search his face for signs of the little boy Cal and I had made together.

  He was stuttering his way through some sort of explanation, and I watched his mouth move, trying to match the words up with it, like a badly dubbed movie. “I didn’t think, such a small bit, Ada, she had researched exposure therapy. And we do, we really do believe in the power of prayer, and I swear, Mom, it was working, it was.”

  “When was it working, Marshall? After you gave her the EpiPen? That wasn’t prayer, that was epinephrine.” There was nothing he could say. I understood that now. There was simply nothing he could say that would explain it to me.

  I put the car in reverse and backed out of the spot carefully. I needed to get him home and needed to turn my attention back to my daughter. There was only one person I could do anything for now, and I’d been gone for too long.

  “Where are we going?” Marshall asked in a small voice.

  “I’m taking you home.”

  “I—will Dad let me stay there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  Neither of us had a solution and we drove in silence.

  “What’s the deal with Mingus?” I finally asked.

  “I have an appointment with him tomorrow to find out what the next step is. He told me to not talk about it with anyone.”

  “Really? He was able to talk about it with me enough to get bail for you. He says you’re planning on paying him. How do you think you’ll be doing that?”

  “I have money.”

  “Oh yeah? How much money do you have? And where did you get it? Your job at the frame store suddenly a real money-maker?”

  He looked out the window again, biting his lower lip. “I have money,” he repeated.

  “Well, great,” I said. I couldn’t force him to tell me, and right then I didn’t really want to know. Maybe he’d gotten a raise, maybe he’d sold a kidney. How would I know?

  I pulled beside the house and didn’t bother putting the car in park, but shifted back to reverse and waited for him to get out. He put his hand on the door and turned toward me.

  “Mom, I’m—I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh, Marshall, I can’t, I just can’t right now,” I said, my voice beginning to waver again. “We’ll talk later. I don’t know when we’ll be home. Call the hospital if you need me. I can’t have my cell phone on.”

  “Tell Meghan, will you? Tell her that I’m sorry?”

  I shook my head, my teeth clenching. He still didn’t get it. I replied softly: “She can’t hear me, Marshall. She may never know that.”

  He got out of the car and I drove away without looking in the rearview mirror, my thoughts only on Meghan now. Things would work out with Marshall, one way or another. The lawyer would get the charges dropped, someone, they, Marshall, would pay him. Marshall would find another girlfriend, would graduate from college. Marshall would move on with his life.

  I didn’t know what Meghan would move on with.

  MARSHALL

  He did have money. He had an entire bank account fat with the student loan check he hadn’t done anything with yet, not to mention his paychecks and various gift money. He hadn’t yet paid his rent, or next semester’s tuition. He was going to do it when he got back, because he had an e-mail in to his student advisor asking if he could drop a class and he hadn’t wanted to pay anything yet.

  It wasn’t like he’d be going back to college anyway. Not after this, not now. Everything had changed. God was leading him down a different path, and he needed to listen. He’d spent so long searching, when if he’d just listened he could have skipped all of it. It really was like they said: Let go and let God.

  He watched his mother drive out of sight. He understood more than she thought he did. He understood that a line had been crossed for her. In fact, he thought that perhaps he understood more than she did. Because he knew that he’d been slowly crossing a line with his father for most of his life. The line with his father was miles thick, and it was possible that he’d never step all the way over to the other side but would remain in a sort of limbo.

  But the line with his mother had appeared suddenly, and it was hard, straight, and thin, and there was no going back. He’d always thought she was the flexible one, the open-minded one. But when it came down to it, she was just as narrow as the rest of the world.

  As soon as the taillights disappeared, Marshall raced inside. He had his car. He had money. And he had a little time. He wasn’t going to waste it, and he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. God was leading him now; he saw it all mapped out ahead of him.

  He found the phone book and called the jail, then made a series of calls to bondsmen, figuring out the process as he went, and finally found one who was willing to do the work for him. He threw everything he could think of into his suitcase, stuffed bags and backpacks. He grabbed Ada’s suitcase and rummaged through his mother’s things in search of anything else she might need.

  He packed everything in the trunk, then grabbed a wheeled cooler from his father’s workroom and filled it with food. He walked through the house, glancing around, looking for anything they might need, grabbed some magazines, the blankets off his bed, a fishing rod from the workroom.

  The car was stuffed, and he stood staring at it for a moment before mixing a little mud from the dirt beneath his mother’s gardenia and splattering it across the license plate. He didn’t know what else to do.

  The bank in the mall was open until eight and it was his last stop, before the bail bond place, and then, at last, the jail. When they finally released Ada, limping heavily on her crutches, her face pale and frightened, he knew he’d made the right decision. He shook his head at her while the paperwork was completed so she wouldn’t talk, and it wasn’t until they were outside and had concluded their business with the bail bondsman that he allowed her one brief embrace.

  “We have to get out of here,” he whispered in her ear. She hesitated for a moment, but then pulled back and looked into his eyes. When she nodded he felt anointed, when she pressed her lips to his he felt as if a minister had just declared them man and wife, and when she placed her hand in his he became responsible for them both.

  As they drove out of town, she asked, hesitantly, if they should pray. He reached across the front seat and grasped her hand, and they prayed. It cleared the frantic silence, and though he didn’t slow their speed, it did seem as if things were back on an even keel between them.

  Ada put her window down, and as the stars came out she turned the radio on low, and finally they were able to speak.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” she asked.

  He nodded. “My grandmother’s place is about five hours away. I figured we could stay there for a few days, figure out what we’re going to do, maybe she’d give us some more money, and then we’ll leave the state.”

  “Won’t they think to look there?”

  “No way. That’s exactly why we’re going. They don’t even know I know about her, and any hotel these days is going to want a credit card. They’d be able to track us that way.”

  “Well, how do you know about her?”

  “She writes to me sometimes. I found out about her when I was, like, sixteen. My dad threw out a letter from her, and she sounded, I don’t know, sort of cool. I kept the envelope so I had her address, and wrote to her when I got to college. We’ve been writing back and forth, I don’t know, maybe every few months, ever since. My parents don’t know. My grandfather was a minister, you know?”

  She shook her head, wide-eyed. He’d been afraid to tell her before, afraid of what she’d think about their backwoods ways, afraid she would think him more of a dilettante than she already did. But everything about their relationship had changed, and now he was the one in control, and she watched him, waiting for him to continue.

&
nbsp; “It was real old-fashioned stuff, I think they even used to handle snakes, stuff like that. But he died a long time ago, before I was born. My dad never got into any of it, and I guess there was some kind of fight. She writes to them, but they never write back that I know of. Anyway, we never go to see her. She told me I could come anytime.”

  “You’ve never met her?”

  “I guess we went there when I was a baby. I don’t remember it.”

  “Does she know we’re coming?”

  “No.”

  “Marshall, what are we doing?”

  “I—I’m not sure. But, I felt like we had to leave. Did you?”

  She nodded solemnly, her eyes wide, and again he felt that wide open space in his chest, the feeling he recognized now, and though he’d already felt it on the steps of the jail he thought he should make it formal.

  “Ada, I love you. Maybe this happened for a reason. Maybe we’re meant to do something with our lives that this is leading us to. Whatever it is, I feel like we’re supposed to be together. Do you?”

  She nodded again, rapidly, clutching his hand.

  “Marshall, we could go to Nebraska. We could go back to my family.”

  He shook his head. “We can’t go there. They’ll definitely look for us there.”

  “They won’t let them find us,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’ve done it before. They’d take care of us.”

  “They’ve done what before? What are you saying?”

  “A couple of years ago there was . . . a problem. One of the families in North Carolina, this girl, she led one of the ministers on, and then she said he raped her. She just said it because she got pregnant and had to say something. Then she got her friend to say he raped her too. It was totally bogus, like The Crucible or something, but they arrested him, so they sent him to us and we got him out of the country. He’s doing God’s work in Brazil, helping build houses.”