Lake Life

by David James Poissant

  Even buzzed, Michael’s not buying his own bullshit.

  “You know,” his mother says. “You get a tax credit with every kid.”

  Hard not to laugh out loud. Where reason and shame have failed, she’s appealing to his avarice.

  “Hey,” she says, which is when he feels her hand on his cheek, her palm turning his face to hers. Then her face is so close he thinks she means to kiss his lips like when he was a boy. But she only touches her forehead to his, her scarred nose to his own.

  “I love you,” she says. “I’m your mother, and I love you. That’s all I mean to say. That most of all.”

  Moments like these, a corner of Michael’s brain lights up. It’s the corner that distrusts sentiment, that tells him not to fall for shit like this, that keeps him safe from emotional manipulation at all costs.

  But not tonight. Tonight, that corner of his brain stays dark, and he has only to look into his mother’s eyes to know that he is loved.

  And any part of him that wants to dismiss this truth as childish is dwarfed not by the love that he returns—slender in comparison to hers—nor by the guilt he feels not sharing equal love, but by the certainty that to bring a child into the world is to surrender your happiness to someone else, to trust your heart to cavalier, unsteady hands.

  To have a child is to ruin yourself, forever, in the name of love.

  PART THREE SUNDAY

  23.

  Lisa’s seen the church but never been before today.

  Lake Christopher First Baptist stands beyond the north side of the lake. The north side is the less developed side. No marina, no inn, older houses with fewer floors. The water on the northern end is shallow, the shoreline jagged, erosion beyond the reach of cost-effective land development. Poor to the north, rich to the south. This is how prestige lakes work. The rich want deep water, manicured shores, good lots. The locals are left with land the rich don’t want, land they share with the water treatment plant, the power station, the county dump.

  Beyond the lake, north on I-64 and down a dirt road, is the church, its gravel lot piled deep with cars.

  All of these people, have they come as mourners or as spectators? Lisa would like to believe that her intentions are noble, but then, who doesn’t believe the best of themselves?

  This morning, she woke no longer sad but angry, furious with no good destination for her fury, a sure sign she could use some church. Let her meditate awhile in the house of God. Let her comfort a family whose hurt is far greater than her own.

  She leaves her car and smooths her dress. Tan with a floral pattern, the outfit is among her least favorite. It blouses at the top and squeezes her waist, but it’s modest, drab, appropriate for the tenor of the day. To wear black seemed bad luck, as the body has yet to be found.

  She’s late, and she squeezes between cars to cross the parking lot.

  The church is white, two stories, with a peaked roof and a tin cross at the top. The siding is vinyl. Lisa doesn’t know how to feel about a vinyl-sided church. Then again, vinyl is practical, long-lasting, cheap. If God exists, if Jesus is God’s son and if he said all he’s meant to have said, then wouldn’t God prefer vinyl to the Vatican? Save your gold leaf. Feed the poor. Amen.

  Beyond the church, stones rise from the lawn like teeth erupting crooked from the mouths of children. The headstones are different heights and mineral shades, some tall, some small and crumbling. Toward the tree line, newer stones stand uniform in color and design.

  If asked, Lisa couldn’t say where she and Richard will be buried. She would have said the lake. Now she supposes they’ll be laid to rest in Florida. Does Florida even inter their dead? That close to sea level, won’t the buried rise and go out with the tide? There are mausoleums, of course, though Lisa hates the thought of bodies cupboarded aboveground, those card catalogs of corpses, each rotting in a box.

  Maybe she won’t be buried. Better, perhaps, to be burned. Let her ashes be scattered or kept on a mantel, she doesn’t care. Let the living sort it out. What becomes of her remains is for their benefit, not hers. The rest is in writing, the DNR indisputable, the will signed, the money set: a third to Michael, a third to Thad, a third to the National Audubon Society. Let the boys decide the rest, which heirlooms to keep or sell or give away. Let them respect her wishes, or let them lament their failure to inherit every cent.

  With June, she kept a onesie in a Ziploc bag. When she missed her daughter—which was often, many times a day—she opened the bag and breathed her daughter in. She has the outfit still, though the smell went out of it long ago. Even now, she can close her eyes and summon June’s scent with a thought—the damp sweetness, like maple syrup strained through moss, or muffins lightly burnt.

  June’s body was donated to the Medical College of Georgia through the state anatomical board, so that future doctors might better understand SIDS. The right choice, though there are days Lisa wonders what became of June’s remains, days she wishes there were a gravestone to visit or an urn to hold in her hand.

  Lisa stands on the church steps. She checks her watch. She’s very late.

  She only means to crack the door, but it swings wide to let her in. A man in a gray suit shuts the door behind her. He wears thick glasses, and his head is mostly scalp, a few strands combed from one ear to the other. He smiles and offers her a bulletin from a stack beside the door. The front of the sheet is hymns, the back Bible verses, plus an outline for the service: music, prayers, offering, a sermon by Pastor Lance, prayers, communion, music, closing prayers. The order of worship is asterisked in places, and Lisa follows the asterisks to the bottom of the page where a note of explanation reads: PLEASE RISE. In Ithaca, the minister of the small interfaith church Lisa attends a couple of times a month will say, “Please stand as you’d like or as you’re able,” language Lisa always found pedantic, though now she understands. In faith, as in life, there are commands and there are invitations. She’s left the land of invitations. She’s entered a Southern Baptist church.

  The church is not ornate, no choir loft or baptismal font, no mosaics or stained glass, just a red rug and wooden pews. The pews are full, every folding chair along the back wall taken too, so Lisa makes her way past the chairs to stand beside a woman leaning on a far wall. The woman smiles. She’s young, early twenties. She wears a yellow dress, pearls around her neck.

  The man at the front has been speaking since Lisa stepped inside. He stands at an amber-colored pulpit, a table to his left, a piano to his right. The wall behind the man is windowless. Where, in a different church, a window might be, a plaster crucifix depicts Christ at the apex of his agony, head back, eyes heavenward. Below the cross, and a little to the left, hangs an American flag.

  Pastor Lance, at the pulpit, is tall and Ichabod-thin. He wears no robe or collar, no vestment or stole. He has on a black sport coat and, under this, a button-up, no tie. His shirt is white. His hair is short. He’s handsome, young, too young to preach the word of God, Lisa thinks, but she’s trying not to judge. Different region of the country, different brand of faith.

  The woman who stands beside Lisa is in love with the man behind the pulpit. There’s no mistaking it, the way she watches him, absentmindedly running a hand over her pearls.

  “Brothers and sisters,” Pastor Lance says, and his voice croons more than booms. “Death is not the end. Death is the door.”

  He smiles, and Lisa’s fingers tingle. The man’s charisma is not due to his youth, but despite it.

  “ ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock.’ Then, what does Jesus say? ‘If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.’ ”

  Regardless of whether, beyond these walls, Pastor Lance is confident, the confidence he projects feels authentic. Regardless of whether he is wise, the wisdom feels unfeigned. He speaks, and Lisa understands how one so young has his own church.

  “Let’s think about that,” Pastor Lance says. “Let’s think about what it will be lik
e to eat with Jesus. Good table manners will be important, I imagine.”

  He smiles again, and the congregation laughs. It is not a morning meant for laughter, but he’s given them permission to feel joy. Gently, he’s disarmed them with his words. He beams, and his eyes turn to the first pew. They rest there so long, Lisa has to look.

  And there they are—Wendy, Glenn, and Trish. The father sits between his wife and daughter, an arm around each.

  “Maybe you’ve met the Mallory family. They’re new to Lake Christopher, but they’ve been here every week since April. Generous givers. Faithful Sunday school attendees. You always know Glenn’s in a room by his laugh. And Wendy brought the tastiest peach pie I’ve ever had to our spring picnic on the lawn. Trish starts college at Duke this fall. Bright girl, very sharp.”

  Pastor Lance looks away. His eyes land on the woman at Lisa’s side, and the woman nods, as if to say, Go on.

  “And you might remember their son, Robbie,” he says.

  Robbie. How Wendy screamed the name, calling for her boy. It’s a name Lisa will never again hear any other way.

  “Always a ball of energy, that child,” Pastor Lance says. “A bright spot on a dark day. Robbie was a pistol, as my father would put it. But the best kind of pistol there is. Not the kind that fires bullets. No. The kind that fires God’s love.”

  Lisa fears the direction the sermon is taking, but Pastor Lance seems in no hurry to get where he’s going.

  “Brothers. Sisters. I’m going to share a hard truth with you today, and let me be clear that it gives me no pleasure doing so. What gives me pleasure is imagining the choice I hope you’ll make. Today. A choice that, if you make it, will change the rest of your life.”

  He waits, as though the effort required to say what comes next is too great. He takes a breath, and Lisa has to look away. She hopes he will not say the thing she knows he’ll say, and then he says it.

  “The truth is this,” he says. “Brothers. Sisters. Hell is real.”

  Lisa leans, and the wall holds her up. She looks to the woman at her side, but the woman seems unflustered. The usher at the door seems unflustered. The congregation doesn’t stir or protest or speak, and, for all the bodies in the room, Lisa suddenly feels very much alone.

  “ ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father but by me.’ Do you hear that, brothers and sisters? No man. Not you. Not me. Think of the best person you know. The kindest. The gentlest. Gives all his money to feed the poor. Not him either. Not unless he’s repented of his sins and given his life to Jesus Christ.”

  Pastor Lance’s hands leave the pulpit, and he steps out from behind it. His shirt, it turns out, is tucked into jeans, the jeans cinched to his waist by a brown weave belt, the kind Thad and Michael wore long, tails swinging from their fronts, when that was the elementary school trend. The pastor’s belt does not hang. Nor does it match his shoes. He would stick out at Cornell. But she’s being a snob. She’s a Southern girl, born and raised. Here, this is how men dress.

  “Is the way narrow?” Pastor Lance continues. “It is. But is the reward great? It is indeed. Which is why it is so important that we accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior and give our lives to him. Because Jesus didn’t say, ‘No man comes to the Father except through Buddha.’ He didn’t say, ‘No man comes to the Father except through Vishnu.’ He didn’t say, ‘No man comes to the Father except through Zeus.’ ”

  The congregation chuckles, and Pastor Lance clasps his hands.

  “No, we know better. We know what Jesus said. We have the book. We’ve been given the good news. We know how the story ends, and we know there’s just one way.”

  Lisa leans and wonders, has this man read the Bible? Front to back? She has, and she has a few questions for him. She wants to ask which Genesis creation story he believes. She wants to ask about the sheep in other pens. She wants to ask what this man ate for breakfast and whether he washed his hands and whether the shirt he’s wearing is a cotton-polyester blend.

  Pastor Lance moves to the aisle, unclasps his hands, and grips the arm of the first pew. The Mallory family turns and, in profile, Lisa sees each face, the mother’s tear-lined, the father’s pained from holding back his tears, the daughter catatonic, as though she’s been drugged.

  “I don’t know about our brother, Robbie,” Pastor Lance says. “I don’t know whether he’s in heaven. I don’t know because I don’t know whether he had that personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That sounds like an awful thing to say, I know, and I was hesitant to say it. But this morning, Marcy—” He gestures, and there’s no mistaking that the woman at Lisa’s side is this man’s wife. “Marcy and I were talking, and I said, ‘Marcy, a terrible thing has happened, but darn it if we can’t use this to bring people to Jesus. If we keep even one soul out of hell, just one, then that boy’s death will not have been in vain.’ Isn’t that right, honey?”

  Marcy nods, and her smile is sympathetic, genuine.

  Lisa’s trembling. The church is warm with bodies, with air-conditioning that can’t keep up with the summer day, but Lisa’s never felt so cold.

  “I’d like to think that Robbie’s not in hell,” Pastor Lance says, “but that’s between Robbie and God. That choice is made. All I know, all any of us know, is that we still have a choice. Each of us, the living. We have the choice to side with the Prince of Darkness or the Prince of Peace. The chance to open the door or slam the door in Christ’s loving face.”

  The pastor surveys the congregation, letting his gaze drift, so that his eyes seem to land on every face, then lift.

  “This life is an election, and your soul’s your vote. Now tell me, brothers and sisters, would you rather vote for heaven or for hell?”

  Robbie’s father’s face contorts. His head drops, and Pastor Lance reaches past Wendy to put a hand on the man’s shoulder. The shoulder shakes. Glenn’s arms untwine from his wife and daughter, and he slides, knees-first, to the floor, head bowed in prayer.

  Lisa can’t take any more. She follows the wall the way she came, past folding chairs and the people who fill them. The man who let her in blocks the door. He doesn’t mean to block it. He’s rapt. Like the rest of them, he stares, hypnotized, ahead, whether from fear of hell or hope for heaven, Lisa can’t say.

  “Excuse me,” she whispers.

  “Now, some of you may be wondering what hell is like,” Pastor Lance says. “Whether there’s actually a lake of fire. Whether the darkness is eternal or just until the sin is burned away.”

  Lisa taps the man’s shoulder.

  “ ‘How,’ you might ask, ‘can hell be on fire and still be dark? And just what is a gnashing of teeth?’ ”

  Pastor Lance bares his teeth—pristine, orthodontist-straight—and grinds them side to side, his face a mask of puzzled wonderment.

  Another chuckle from the congregants.

  “You laugh,” he says. “But hell is no joke. Hell is real, and it is forever.”

  “Please,” Lisa says.

  “Picture the thing you’re most afraid of,” Pastor Lance says. He leaves the family’s side, leaves Glenn praying on the floor, and returns to his place behind the pulpit. “Maybe it’s needles or spiders. Maybe it’s snakes. Maybe what you’re most afraid of is waking up one day to find that everyone you love is gone. I want you to think about that for a second. Let that fear sink in. Now imagine that fear multiplied by—”

  “Excuse me!” She screams it. There’s a hush, and the pastor’s words fall off a cliff. Then everyone is watching her: the congregation, Pastor Lance, the man at the door, the family of the boy.

  Wendy, I’m so sorry.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Lisa says, then she’s out the door and down the stairs. Her flats touch the gravel lot, and she sits on the bottom step to catch her breath. Then stands. Let her catch her breath in the car. Let her get away from here as quickly as she can.

  But there is a voice at her back. “Wait,” the vo
ice calls, “please,” and Lisa turns.

  It’s the wife of Pastor Lance. She’s shorter than Lisa, but she stands on the bottom step so that they are eye-to-eye. The hem of her dress sways at her ankles, and her face is pinched in unashamed concern.

  “I’m Marcy,” she says. “I’m Pastor Lance’s wife.”

  It’s not too late to turn and walk away, but Lisa feels compelled to give her name.

  “Lisa.”

  Marcy smiles. “It’s nice to meet you, Lisa. I haven’t seen you here before. You heard about the drowning?”

  Lisa nods. She won’t say she was there. She won’t give Marcy a reason to give her a hug. Let Marcy’s sympathy extend to those who need it, those heaped on the front pew hearing how hell is fire and spiders, how their only son might be there even now.

  “I know it’s hard to hear,” Marcy says. “Which part upset you?”

  “All of it. All of it upsets me. Watching a church exploit a tragedy. Watching a family in need of compassion get threats of hell.”

  Marcy looks past Lisa to the graveyard. She looks so long, Lisa’s tempted to walk away.

  “You don’t believe in hell, do you?” Marcy says.

  “I don’t. I never have.”

  For Lisa, hell is an appendix. Perhaps, long ago, it was essential to the evolution of some religions. But hell has long outlived its usefulness. When it comes to faith, hell is a rotting organ waiting to be excised.

  “I’m sorry,” Marcy says, “but hell is in the Bible.”

  “As are rape, incest, genocide ordained by God.”

  Marcy nods. “It’s a difficult book. But without the Bible, what’s your source of authority? How do you know good from evil? How do you communicate with God?”

  “Reason,” Lisa says. “Faith and prayer too, but let’s not forget God gave humans brains. Why have logic at our disposal if not to figure things out on our own? As for good and evil, you don’t need a book to tell you which is which.”