Religious Conviction g-3

by Grif Stockley

  I awake to my doorbell ringing at four in the morning.

  Though my head is pounding and my stomach quivering with last night’s liquor, I am relieved. Knowing it is Sarah, I get up and stumble to the door in my under wear. Brave watchdog that he is, Woogie follows me, barking deliriously. Thank God I didn’t bring what’sher-face home with me. For the life of me, I can’t re member her name. I haven’t drunk that much in years.

  So what if Sarah has come home out of guilt? What’s wrong with that? How can we be moral without feeling bad when we screw up? I can feel myself smiling, understanding how the father of the prodigal son felt. I won’t say a word just tell her I’m glad she’s home. If she wants to rant and rave a little, I’ll endure it. For a while.

  I flip the porch-light switch by the door and open it to find Leigh Wallace. What the hell is going on? I jump behind the door. In these thin boxer shorts I might as well be standing in the nude. I yell, “Come on in.

  I’m going to get some clothes on.” Why in the world didn’t she at least call? Don’t people think I own a telephone?

  “I’m sorry about this,” she calls after me, “but I couldn’t stay at my parents’ home any longer.”

  It is chilly in the house. I flip on some lights and hit the thermostat. I’ll make coffee when I get some clothes on. When I reappear, dressed in jeans and a sweater, I find her in my kitchen by the pantry, presumably looking for coffee.

  “I hope I haven’t awakened your daughter,” she says, staring at me as if I were a ghost. Well, she doesn’t look so great either. Swallowed by shapeless gray sweats and tennis shoes, she seems smaller than I remembered. Her face, devoid of makeup and lipstick, is a little unnerving in its austerity. I have never seen her when she didn’t look perfect.

  “She spent the night out,” I say, unable to summon the energy to explain. My mind isn’t quite functioning yet. I find a jar of Taster’s Choice and fill a pan with water.

  “Why don’t you have a seat?”

  She goes to the kitchen table and sits, apparently convinced I can boil water without her assistance. How odd this is, I think. I wonder if her father knows she is gone.

  Our daughters are both in trouble, though Sarah obviously doesn’t think of it like that. Woogie goes to Leigh and jumps up against her legs. A substitute sister. Acceptance is his long suit. Smiling, she reaches down and pets him as if he were some magnificent breed of animal.

  “I haven’t been telling you the truth.”

  Better late than never, I think. With only five days until the trial starts, it’s nice to think I might know what the hell is going on. Aware that I stink worse than the bottom of a trash can filled with whiskey bottles and cigarette butts, I putter around the sink. If I get too close, she may pass out from the fumes. Woogie smells better than I do.

  “So what is the truth?” I ask, prompting her when she doesn’t speak. This is a strange place and time for a murder confession, but maybe not so un usual in this case. Confessing to her father may be just too difficult. I can’t imagine Sarah confessing to me.

  Tears begin to slide down her face.

  “I wasn’t up at the church in the middle of the morning like I said,” she says, sniffling, and dabs at her eyes with a wadded-up tissue she is holding in her right fist. Woogie nestles against her feet as if he can sense her distress.

  Tell me something I don’t know, I think. Still, she has got to start somewhere. My hand is trembling from too much alcohol as I measure out a teaspoon.

  “Want some Coffee-mate and/or sugar?” I ask, trying to appear relaxed Finally getting to the bottom of this case has speeded up my heart. After last night, I need all the jump-starts I can get.

  She shakes her head and again bends down to pet Woogie. What would we do without animals to comfort us? I pour boiling water from the pan and deliver her coffee to her and then cross back to the sink to pour my own. A little of me goes a long way this morning.

  When she doesn’t speak, I prompt her, “As you may realize this isn’t much of a surprise.”

  She sips at her coffee and makes a face. Probably too strong. Well, too bad. I would have met her at an I-Hop if she wanted.

  “Do you remember asking me if I had been doing something I was embarrassed about?”

  I nod, tasting my coffee. God, this stuff could power a tractor-trailer rig.

  “Yeah,” I say, as offhandedly as I can. This will be hard enough for her to admit without me starting to pant in front of her.

  “The morning of his death. Art had persuaded me to make a video,” she says bitterly, “without any clothes on.” She studies her mug. It is one of those mugs they send you for pledging money to Public Radio. Embarrassed for her, I look away and sip my coffee. She fills the growing silence.

  “He said he wanted me to dance for him.” With these words she begins to cry, but it is controlled, as if she has promised herself to get it over with as quickly as possible.

  I wait as long as I can to see if she will reveal more without my having to humiliate her by asking questions.

  The things women do for men! I think of the performance of those female impersonators. True, they were paid, but I had the impression they would have danced for nothing.

  “You must have loved him a lot to do that for him,” I say, coaxing her to continue.

  Fiercely, she says, “You have no idea! I can’t believe I was so stupid.”

  Woogie, now her protector, glances up from her feet at me as if to say that I should not even look as if I intend to hurt this woman. I have no desire to add to her already considerable distress, but my job is to represent her, not act as her therapist.

  “It must have taken a lot of trust,” I sympathize. Art must have been quite the salesman.

  As wretched as I feel, I notice I am becoming slightly horny. She must have looked magnificent. What was Art going to do with it? If he had no qualms about serving as a middleman, did he intend to market his own wife’s private video? Surely not. Yet people have done worse things. If Leigh killed him over this, a jury might be understanding. Talk about justifiable homicide.

  Leigh wipes her eyes.

  “When we first got married, I was so repressed that I wouldn’t let him see me naked.

  We made love in the dark for the first month.”

  God only knows the guilt she must be feeling. I sip my coffee. It doesn’t seem so strong anymore. No knowing what Shane had told his daughters about the human body. For two thousand years preachers have said that lust is evil. With my experience so far, a good case can be made in their favor. What a battle was being waged! Did Shane, I wonder, have any idea?

  “You must have had a pretty strict upbringing.”

  Leigh smiles wanly.

  “My sisters had it worse.” Her own coffee is untouched. Caffeine is probably the last thing she needs.

  “They never even saw a PG movie until they turned eighteen. By the time I was their age, I had seen a couple. But I never was allowed to watch MTV until I was married, and the first time I saw it I was terribly embarrassed.”

  I try to imagine the journey she has made since she met Art her last semester in college. Her sisters re belled, so why shouldn’t she? How difficult it must be to try to keep your child from being exposed to lust in an age when toothpaste and sex are marketed together.

  I think of that ad with the woman running her tongue back and forth over her teeth. Umnumn, good. So much for “Brusha, brusha, brusha. New Ipana toothpaste.” To make sure I understand, I ask, “Was it Art who filmed you?”

  Leigh, even now, blushes.

  “I wouldn’t have let some body else do it. What I wanted to tell you is that the film disappeared during the time I went back up to the church and then came home and discovered Art’s body.

  I looked for it, but I couldn’t find it.”

  Her voice has taken on a slightly hesitant tone as if she is doubtful I will believe her. I don’t know what to believe. The implication is that Art’s killer has th
e tape.

  But how could he or she know Leigh had performed a nude dance on tape unless he or she was there? I doubt if the windows were open while this was going on.

  “Art could have moved the tape after you left, which means it might still be in the house and the police never found it.”

  She nods.

  “It’s possible, but I was only gone forty-five minutes.”

  I am buying into this story, I realize. It may be a total crock, designed at the eleventh hour.

  “Why have you waited until now to tell this?”

  Leigh begins to cry again.

  “If this comes out, it will kill my father,” she says, her lower lip trembling.

  Trying to think, I choke down some coffee. Is it possible Art called Shane back and told him what he had done with his daughter, and Shane came to the house and killed him? Surely this has crossed her mind.

  “It could have been your father. He might have called back, and Art, in anger or hubris, might have told him.”

  Her features collapse, and it dawns on me that she believes her father murdered her husband.

  “Art treated Daddy with such contempt!”

  If this is what happened, I have to take her down this path as far as possible, so she can’t talk herself out of it later.

  “Had they argued?” I ask, as if I were talking to her for the first time. Perhaps, in a sense, I am.

  Leigh brushes her hair from her face. She has it pulled back in a ponytail, but some of it has begun to escape. If she has gotten any sleep tonight, I can’t tell it by the way she looks. Her normally beautiful skin looks puffy and loose under her eyes. Her voice becomes anguished.

  “Art argued with Daddy in a way nobody else dared. Just the week before he died, he told Daddy that anyone who believed the earth was only six thousand years old was an utter fool. That the scientific evidence against the Bible being literal truth was overwhelming.

  He said the New Testament merely represents the efforts of some of the followers of Jesus to convince others that He was the son of God, and is no more hard evidence of the Resurrection than a man preaching on a street corner.”

  I had prepared myself for much more, but Leigh has spoken in such hushed tones I realize that even this little snit of Art’s must have seemed like someone daring to urinate on a shrine. Art had done no more, as far as I can tell, than espouse, albeit in a forceful way, the view of mainline Christianity. Yet, perhaps to Shane, and obviously to his daughter, he sounded like the antiChrist. Doubtless, Shane had heard much harsher attacks on his brand of Christianity even from within the Bible Belt itself. Still, his daughter’s soul was at stake.

  “How did you react?” I ask.

  “I take it you were there.”

  Leigh’s face flushes, the memory of it too much.

  “Daddy had stopped by the house to ask me to come to church to hear one of our missionaries. Art was so rude I thought I was going to faint” Poor Leigh. Rudeness, not false dogma, is the ultimate sin in the South.

  “Did you agree with Art?” I ask.

  Leigh betrays her feelings by stammering, “Art … knew so much. He read all the time.”

  It is Leigh who has betrayed her father. Could his murder of her husband have been directed at her rather than having been on her behalf? I have given up trying to understand my own motives and assume everything I do is selfish these days. I want Sarah back, not for her sake but for my own. The fact is, she seems happier than she has for months. Just because fundamentalism may not serve her for a lifetime doesn’t mean it isn’t meeting some need right now.

  “I can understand if Art was trying to persuade you to believe something a little different,” I say gently, “than what you were raised with. It happens to all of us.”

  Leigh’s face is full of sorrow.

  “Daddy realizes I’m losing my faith, and it is just about to kill him.”

  The irony is that my own daughter has traveled in the opposite direction. I tap my empty cup on the kitchen table I’ve loved so well since Rosa and I bought it at an antique sale in Hot Springs. It is oak, weighs a ton, and will outlast us all.

  Leigh, exhausted now or perhaps just sad, rests her head on her knuckles. Shane has her body back but not her mind. Yet, if she is acquitted, she may never leave again. After all, the maiden voyage was a disaster. This is one woman I would like to know in five years. I feel a wave of tenderness as I look down on her tousled hair.

  From this angle she reminds me so much of Sarah. But I don’t dare comfort her. Even as smelly and gross as I am now, anything I do could be misinterpreted. And as lonely as I feel, I would be quick to misinterpret a gesture from her. Once I slept with a key witness in a big case and almost screwed it up royally. This one is hard enough without doing that. I smile at my own ego. Any shudder I might produce in a woman right now would be from horror, not ecstasy.

  “You need to go home,” I say gently, “and try to get some sleep.”

  She raises her head and nods.

  “Daddy’s probably called the police.”

  The irony is too great. In a moment of anger I thought about calling the cops, too, and claiming Sarah had been kidnapped. What a disaster that would have turned out to be. Sarah never would have forgiven me.

  Briefly, I tell Leigh what has happened. She listens sympathetically. Sarah is in a place emotionally Leigh may never occupy again, and I sense in some way she envies her.

  “You’ve got to come down to Chet’s office today so we can prepare your testimony for Thursday.”

  She bites her lip.

  “Can I stay here the rest of the night?” she asks, sounding like a little girl.

  “I don’t want to go home. I feel too weird now being under the same roof with him.”

  I look at my watch. It is close to four-thirty.

  “You have to promise to call first thing in the morning and tell your parents where you are.”

  For the first time she yawns, her chest swelling under the gray sweatshirt.

  “I promise I won’t be any trouble.”

  I stand and lead her to Sarah’s room.

  “My daughter’s room is going to be a mess,” I apologize, forgetting how bare she has left it. When I hit the light switch, my emotions almost get the better of me and I say in a soft voice, “Or used to be.”

  I go find her a clean towel and washcloth and inspect the bathroom. It is passable. It was Sarah’s turn to clean it this weekend. Fortunately, she usually does a little better job than I do, and if Leigh doesn’t inspect it too closely, it will do. Standing in front of my mirror, I am repulsed by what I see. If my eyes had any more red in them, I could donate them to the blood bank. As I pick up the only hair I see on the sink, I can imagine Pearl Norman on her hands and knees scrubbing out the commode in her own home until it gleamed with an alabaster sheen. Her house was spotless, and I realize that Pearl reminds me of my mother, who lived in an age when it was okay if all a woman knew how to do was cook and clean house and take care of her husband and children. At least it was permissible until her husband died. I go to say goodnight, and Leigh thanks me for letting her stay.

  “We have to talk to Chet today,” I re mind her.

  She ducks her head.

  “I can’t tell people,” she wails, “that I let myself be filmed dancing without any clothes on. I just can’t do that to my father.”

  I try to contain my frustration by glancing around my daughter’s bare room. It is as if I were trying to rent it out. How strange! Leigh is facing life in prison for a crime her father may have committed, and once again she is worried about his reaction. My daughter runs away, and I haven’t done anything.

  “We’ll make the jury understand,” I tell her gently, “the kind of influence Art had over you. By the time Chet is through with his opening statement they’ll hate Art as much as your father did.”

  Leigh sits down on Sarah’s bed, twisting her hands in her lap.

  “I can’t implicate my fathe
r!” She begins to cry.

  “It’s my fault all this happened!”

  I lean against the doorjamb of Sarah’s room and marvel at the guilt on this girl’s shoulders. Our battle isn’t going to be with the jury; it will be with her.

  “You won’t be implicating your father,” I say, disingenuously.

  “Only he can do that. You’ll just be telling the truth.”

  For the first time the words come tumbling out: “I think Daddy killed Art!” she cries, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “I don’t think he meant to, but I think he did it!”

  Despite the stench coming from me, I go sit down by her on the bed and put my arm around her shoulders as she sobs against me in gasps that rack her whole body.

  How can I not believe her? If this were Sarah, I wouldn’t have a choice, and I have not smothered her nearly as much as this girl has been. Would Sarah risk her life and lie to protect me? I’d be lucky to escape being burned at the stake.

  “You know your father wouldn’t want you,” I say, patting her shoulder, “to run any risk of being convicted.” I say it, but not convincingly at all. Despite all the alleged emphasis on the re deeming power of love emanating from within the walls of Christian Life, I am no longer certain that punishment isn’t Shane’s agenda. In his heart perhaps he knew even before she did that Leigh was past the point of no return, and this was his way of keeping her. What did Chet say that Christian Life would have ten people there on visiting day for her?

  Leigh wipes her nose on the sleeve of her warm-up but doesn’t speak. I would feel better if she got angry.

  I get up and say, “We’ll talk about it later. You need to try to get some rest.”

  “Thank you,” she answers, and I leave her sitting in Sarah’s room.

  I slip off my pants and get into bed, trying not to think about what she is sleeping in. How can I think of sex at a time like this? I ought to be put to sleep. I lie awake wondering if I am being conned. What happened to the video? Was there one? Maybe we shouldn’t allow her on the witness stand. Up to now, I thought we ought to pick the most conservative jury possible, but how is a Bible thumper going to relate to a woman who dances nude an hour or so before her husband is murdered?