Thinking Straight

by Robin Reardon

  Back inside, thinking of the task before me that I’ll have to do once I’m in my room, I’m anxious for Contemplation time to arrive and yet wishing I could delay it indefinitely. Of course, this means time passes quickly and seems to take forever. But when Sean calls to the SafeZone kids that it’s time to leave, I want to hold on to something and not let them drag me away. I’m the last to leave, and Sean seems like he’s not sure whether he’s allowed to look at me or not. I look at him, though. And I actually feel sorry for him.

  So, no MI today. Just this other thing. This thing that doesn’t have to be long. But—Christ. Where to start?

  “Well, Ty,” I can almost hear Will say, “start by sitting at your desk.” So I do. The only things on it are a box of tissues, a lamp, a pad of paper, a couple of pens, and my Bible. I turn on the lamp. I don’t need to blow my nose, and I’m not planning to think of Will in a way that’ll cause me to need tissues, not at this moment. I’m not ready to pick up the pen or write on the paper. So I pick up the Bible.

  At first I play drop the finger, which is just opening the Book at random, closing your eyes, and reading from wherever your finger lands. I do one or two of these, knowing I’m wasting time. But I do one more anyway. I land on the word forgive, in the middle of a verse that seems to have no relevance to me at the moment. But then, on impulse—or maybe just to waste more time—I look the word up in the concordance, along with other forms of it, like forgiveness. One reference reads, “For if indeed I have f—anything.” After recovering from what else f—might have stood for (the concordance uses only the first letter of the word you’re looking up, for some reason), I open up to the reference in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians and read.

  Ha! Jackpot. It’s perfect.

  I can do this. I’ll use the concordance to help me find verses that fit my need. People do this all the time. As long as I don’t try to twist the meaning of the scripture, there’s nothing wrong with it.

  By the time I’m done, I have quite the little speech ready. I almost can’t wait to read it.

  Almost.

  It’s time for dinner already, and I haven’t spent my half hour thinking of Will. But he’s been with me the whole time, and I promise him I’ll think of him tonight, in bed. Okay, that might be a little dangerous, but I’ll risk it.

  Charles shows up just as I’m tucking my speech into the front of my Bible. He looks like shit, and I wish I could ask him what’s wrong. He grabs his own Bible, and we go in to dinner together. I’m dying to ask where he’s been, to tell him how Marie had been so concerned about him, but—maybe tomorrow, when I’m out of SafeZone.

  Yes!

  My mood is so good, relatively speaking anyway—and for the first time since I got here—that on the way to the dining hall I have to keep stopping myself from turning to Charles to talk to him, to tell him something funny, to get him to laugh or at least chuckle. To get him to respond to me, really. It’s frustrating. But probably since it’s the first time I’ve wanted to talk to him, it’s the first time it hits me how quiet he is. How little he says. Now, I suppose this could be a kind of consideration; I can’t reply, so he won’t tempt me. But today I think there’s more to it than that. It’s like he’s holding his breath. Holding something vital in. Maybe something he’s afraid of, or ashamed of, or can’t control. Or all of the above. And if he says something real, something that’s got too much of himself in it, the dam will break.

  All of a sudden I feel sorry for Charles.

  It gets more intense during dinner. He sits with me, and I’m not sure why, because he doesn’t eat anything. Okay, he has a glass of water. But that’s it. It makes me feel weird, eating while he sips at his water, looking like death warmed over. I keep hoping someone will sit with us, someone like Dawn, who might make him account for himself. I mean, I can’t very well ask him what he thinks he’s doing.

  But it’s Hank who sits with us, with Sheldon in tow again. After a couple of ritualized greetings, Hank seems to take in that Charles isn’t eating, but all he says is, “No dinner, Charles?”

  “No.”

  “Stomach upset?”

  “Just don’t feel like it, that’s all.”

  And that ends it. The talk from there goes into what job assignment Charles has this week, which is Library. Hank’s doing Yard and Garden Detail, which he likes ’cause it’s outside, but he’s wondering if he might like Library. I’m trying to take in things that might be useful for my own future assignments, and Sheldon looks like he’s not taking in anything but food. That, and whatever he sees with the furtive looks he keeps shooting around the room. Ye gods; how would the guy survive if he had to do what I have to do tonight? But I guess Leland survived it. At least, I haven’t heard anything about him following Ray.

  During Fellowship I decide to make Leland my mission. I want to see how he is in this environment. I leave Charles listening patiently to someone yammering on about some difference between one Gospel and another, and wander around the room a little. I see Monica—she’s hard to miss—looking her usual surly self over in one corner. The other corners also hold kids looking like they want to avoid discussion, though only one other is wearing a yellow sticker. But no Leland.

  I’d have expected him to seek the shelter of a corner, but since he isn’t in one, I follow the walls instead; next best thing. Working my way around one clump of Fellowshippers I see a three-quarter shot of Marie from the back, and I nearly duck in my effort to avoid having her see me. I have to go further into the crowd to get around her and whoever she’s talking to, and once I’ve done that I steal a glance back.

  Christ. It’s Leland. She’s got him trapped. And he looks awful. And why not? She’s the one who spied on him and Ray, who ratted on them. She, not Leland, is the one who killed Ray. Almost instinctively I look around for Nate; where is he when Leland needs him? Barring that, is there anyone else who could swoop in there and rescue him? Anyone who would even know to do that? Dawn! Whether she knows what’s going on or not, she’d be a perfect buffer. Where is she?

  I stand on tiptoes and scour the crowd, but to no avail. Turning back toward Leland I see he’s turned his face away from Marie, and he’s pressed against the wall. Walk away, man! I want to shout at him. And he sort of tries. He moves a few feet along the wall, hanging on to it for support, but she follows with him. He’s out of SafeZone, so he could reply to her, but if he feels as bad as he looks, he probably doesn’t have the emotional strength to keep up with her passive-aggressive banter. Or leave her in the dust, which is what I would do.

  What I would do…. And what I have done, in fact, on one or two occasions.

  Well, I guess it’s up to me, then. I’ll rescue him.

  I ease my way through the crowd until I’m right behind her. Leland sees me, and it’s like he’s seen a life raft from his precarious hold on a piece of rough timber. Marie, seeing his attention focus elsewhere, turns. I smile at her. So sweetly. So charmingly. So falsely.

  She blinks a few times before she says, “If it isn’t brother Taylor. Where’s your friend Nate? I thought you two traveled together.”

  Now, this is the sort of thing I can imagine hearing from someone like her in a typical high school setting. Maybe middle school. But my point is, it isn’t exactly Program dialogue. Everything we say to each other in here is supposed to be supportive, or constructive. Spiritually uplifting or spiritually coaching. But the sarcasm is still dripping from her comment. And she knows it.

  I’m standing so close to her that I can see her eyes cloud with the realization that she’s let one of her true colors show. And I see the nanosecond of panic as she does a mental grasp at something—anything—to recover from it.

  “You seem like such good friends.” It’s lame, and she knows it, but it’s probably the best she can do. She’s just lucky I can’t speak.

  I move over next to Leland and put my hand on his shoulder. We’re allowed to do that, as long as others are around; it says so in
the Booklet. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Marie is looking at me like she expects me to say something, but I just smile.

  Finally Leland says, “Taylor, is it? I’m sorry, I’ve been a little out of it. Wait—you’re Charles’s roommate, aren’t you?”

  Unfortunately, Marie’s found her voice again. “Yes. Now that poor Ray is gone. Taylor’s the one who forgave Charles for interrupting his first Contemplation.”

  Now, that’s not exactly what I was forgiving him for. It went much deeper than that. She may or may not understand that, but if she does, then she’s tempting me to retort. If not, her comment was shallow. And in either case, she’s just twisted the knife she’d already planted in Leland’s heart. So I throw her this look that I hope registers as “You are so pathetic.” I turn back to Leland, squeeze his shoulder once, and jerk my head in the direction of the exit door.

  “Sure,” he says. “Let’s get there a little early. See you later, Marie.”

  And we’re off. We don’t even look back. In my head I hear Will say, “Good move, Ty.”

  Once we’re in the hall, Leland half-collapses again, but he manages to say, “Thank you, Taylor. Thank you so much. Was it that obvious that I was, you know, desperate?”

  I grin at him and nod. And I really would like to get to the meeting room a little early to go over my minispeech one more time, so I keep walking, and he stays with me. He’s quiet, but that’s okay with me.

  By the time the others start to arrive, I’ve gone through my motions a few times. Leland is puzzled, but he knows I can’t tell him what I’m doing. I figure at least I’m giving him something to think about other than what’s going to haunt him the rest of his life.

  I choose a seat with easy access to the front of the room, wondering if I shouldn’t be taking one near the exit instead, and then wait patiently while the girls stand around chattering. Charles stands next to me, as usual. I turn to him and smile. He looks kind of out of it. And suddenly I wonder if he’s gone all day without eating. Wasn’t at breakfast; wasn’t at lunch; didn’t eat dinner. What’s he doing, going on some spiritually inspired fast? Does Harnett know? Is this condoned? Should I be worried about him? Well, starting as soon as I’ve delivered my little speech, I’ll be out of SafeZone; Harnett said that would be my release from it. So I can grill him afterward.

  After her prepared/ad-lib prayer for the group, Harnett reads a few verses that are apropos of my transgression by way of intro, like she did for Leland last night. Then she closes her Bible and, again like another edition of last night, she says, “Brother Taylor, please come to the front.”

  Unlike Leland, I don’t sit there glued to my chair. I stand, even though my stomach is shaking itself and me into a frenzy, my breathing is shallow and useless, and my pulse is making crashing noises in my brain. Harnett is waiting for me, and she reaches out and pulls the yellow sticker from my shirt. Then she chooses a chair for herself where she can watch the show. With my hands shaking just a little, I raise my Bible.

  I close my eyes, take one very deep breath, and then look around the room. There are confused expressions everywhere. They may have recognized the signs of someone being called front and center for a Public Apology, but most likely those are carried out much as Leland had done last night. Which is to say, somebody just carries a piece of paper and reads from it and then cries. But I raise my Bible. And I read.

  “Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter two, verse ten: ‘Now I also forgive whomever you forgive anything. For if indeed I have forgiven anything, I have forgiven that one for your sakes in the presence of Christ, that no advantage may be gained over us by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his schemes.’”

  I take my paper out of the Bible cover, lower the Book, and—shaking just a little—I read, “Brothers and sisters, I have transgressed. Yesterday in the laundry room a brother chastised me for something I believed wasn’t my fault. And I spoke.” I pause a minute to let this sink in. “That was wrong of me. I understand that SafeZone means I may not speak, and yet I spoke. I broke a Program Rule. I could say I was provoked, but I could also say I allowed Satan to outwit me, for I spoke. I could say there is nothing for which I need forgiveness, but I see Satan’s schemes called to life all around me every day, and I see others fall prey to them. I don’t want to be one of those victims.” I’m dying to look right at victim Marie here, but—no.

  Bible up. No more shaking. “Psalm fifteen, verse two: ‘He who walks blamelessly does what is right, and speaks truth in his heart; he who doesn’t slander with his tongue, nor does evil to his friend, nor casts slurs against his fellow man…He who keeps an oath even when it hurts, and doesn’t change…He who does these things shall never be shaken.’ Psalm eighteen, verse twenty-five: ‘With the merciful you will show yourself merciful. With the perfect man, you will show yourself perfect. With the pure, you will show yourself pure. With the crooked you will show yourself shrewd. For you will save the afflicted people, but the haughty eyes you will bring down. For you will light my lamp, Yahweh. My God will light up my darkness. For by you, I advance through a troop. By my God, I leap over a wall.’”

  Bible down, paper up. “I am not blameless. I don’t know anyone who is. But I believe that blaming others for my own sins will heap more blame upon me and make darkness return. I have enough blame of my own and don’t need to go looking for more by throwing it around. With the help of God, I want to leap over walls. I cast no blame for my transgression on anyone else, or in the darkness I won’t even be able to see that wall.” I like that one a lot.

  I really want to know what Harnett’s face looks like. Is she impressed? Furious? Struggling to hold herself back from shouting me down? But no one says anything, so I go on.

  “The Letter from James, chapter one, verse thirteen: ‘Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God, for God can’t be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each one is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. Then the lust, when it has conceived, bears sin; and the sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death.’”

  I take a chance here and glance up. All eyes are on me, that’s for sure.

  “God does not tempt. If Jesus is God made into man, Jesus does not tempt. Our task on earth is to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Therefore, I must not tempt. And if by my transgression yesterday I tempted other brothers and sisters to break their SafeZone, or to break any rule, then I am deeply sorry. For I will not be the cause of anyone’s spiritual death. I pray I do not even cause another to stumble. I must not tempt.”

  Paper folded back into Bible. Head bowed. “I ask forgiveness.”

  This was the point last night when Marie stood and pointed her condemning finger at Leland and shouted scripture at him. Tonight, though, from the corner of my eye, I can see she’s as still as glass. As well she might be; half of this was for her.

  Nothing happens for long enough that I finally raise my head again. Harnett is standing, looking around the room. But all is quiet. So Harnett turns toward me and says, “Brother Taylor, do you repent?”

  Now, I’ve carefully avoided using that word, even though I had a feeling she’d say this. But she didn’t say repent what. Repent means choose a different path, vow not to repeat something. And I’d mentioned quite a few things in my monologue. So, really, the way she said it, I can select for myself. I select tempt; I really don’t want to do that. In as humble a voice as I can manage, I say, “I repent.”

  “Brothers and sisters?” she says to the room. “Do we forgive brother Taylor?”

  Leland stands. “I forgive you.”

  Charles stands. “I forgive you.”

  One by one, and sometimes two by three, they all stand and say the same thing. Or almost all. By the time the room is quiet, the only person sitting is Nate. At first Harnett doesn’t seem to notice, but as she’s flashing a beaming smile around the room, her eyes land on him at last.

  “Brother Nate? You withhold fo
rgiveness?”

  Now he stands, and he weaves through the chairs and people until he’s right in front of me. And then he kneels. “I’m not worthy of forgiving brother Taylor for this transgression. Not as long as the sin of temptation is on me. For whether I meant to or not, I tempted him, and he fell. Brother Taylor, will you forgive me?”

  I’m standing there struggling not to let this go to my head. This was supposed to be my little theatrical demonstration, my part in a play. One I could in good conscience portray, to be sure. But if I forgive him now, there’s a very weird juxtaposition going on. On the one hand, it will be even more like theater. But on the other, it will be even more real for me. And I don’t want to get sucked into it. I don’t want to lose control. I don’t want to take this too seriously.

  Not that I have much choice about what to do here. So I nod. And then I remember I’m allowed to speak again, so I say, “Yes.”

  Two things happen at once. Nate gets me in this bear hug, and Harnett starts shouting, “Satan loses again! Rejoice, children of God, rejoice!”

  Then, as everyone is shouting the usual Halleluiahs and Praise the Lords, a third thing happens, and I feel Nate’s hand behind me digging into my hip pocket. WTF? I didn’t think he was gay, but—in this place, who knows? His fingers move like they’re jamming something between the fabric layers, and then in my ear I barely hear him say, “Don’t read this until you’re sure you’re alone.” Then he presses his hand against my ass, takes my shoulders in his hands, and beams at me before he walks away.

  Anxious for this whole weirdness to end, I go back to my chair and stand there, head down and hands crossed over my groin (which has swollen a little, I confess, from brother Nate’s ministrations), and wait. At least, my body waits. My brain waits for nothing; it’s racing like a panicked rabbit, bolting and dodging in no particular pattern to try and confuse whatever is chasing it. Whatever that is. And I haven’t a clue.