by Nancy Thayer
“ ‘And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.’ ”
“But Mr. Watson is not POOR!” Judy would want to scream through the door. “Why can’t you see that? You’re not helping a poor man, you’re helping a rich man, and you’re hurting your own family!”
But there was nothing she could do. She was only thirteen, and it was all so complicated, and it all happened so fast. In one year she witnessed a regular flowing away of all she loved, while her parents cried gently and reread the parable of the Eye of the Needle. Then, with a fluid continuity, things began to disappear from their lives: the silver, antiques, and finally the house were all sold. The vacations disappeared—and then so did the work.
Judy’s father started off optimistically enough each day of that long bruised time. As she dressed for school, she would hear him whistling, and see him, clean and shaved and dapper, going out the front door. But when she returned from school in the afternoons, she would find her father lying on the living-room sofa, dressed in old slacks and a sweater, a newspaper hiding his face; he had sagged into the sofa with all the heavy passivity of a bum on a park bench.
Judy could no longer bring friends home. And she was no longer invited to the homes of former friends. She had moved, away from the gracious section of town where her life had begun, and she was learning with cruel sharpness that life was not a stretch of prosperous pastures for everyone. Her friends were not mean to her. They did not taunt her. They just forgot her. They would swish by her in the halls at school, in their full skirts with cancan petticoats trimmed in matching material, and they would hardly take time to flash a quick smile and say hello. Judy felt stranded, estranged, diseased. She did not like the people her age in her new neighborhood; she had nothing in common with them, coming from such dissimilar backgrounds. Generally the kids in her new neighborhood were the dummies, the wise guys in her class. As the years went by, those kids grew tough and insolent and bold, fortified by their own company; they were the ones who taunted Judy. As the months passed and she showed no sign of wanting to become one of them, the taunts changed in tone. At first they only called her “snob” and “creep,” but she quickly gained the labels “bitch” and “whore.” She was smart enough to know that these taunts did not mean they thought she was actually a whore, but simply that they hated her, and were discomfited by having her intrude into their lives. Still, that her own superiority was the only refuge she had in life was a cold knowledge.
In the beginning, when the drastic changes in her family’s life had just begun, Judy had been naïve enough to assume that God would reach down an invisible remunerative hand and reward her parents for living a truly Christian life. But this did not happen. In fact, it seemed that almost the reverse happened, for at church the people who had greeted Judy’s family with such warmth now greeted them with condescension. Judy learned that even in church there was one cardinal rule: A rich man is loved more than a poor man. A church, after all, is a business, too. Not one person in the church thought that Judy’s father had been virtuous and kind; they all thought he had been a fool, or so it seemed from their treatment of him. Friends flowed away from the family’s life as if they were being carried away on the current of rapidly vanishing money.
Judy’s mother got a job as a secretary. Judy’s father spent more time each day lying on the living-room sofa. Soon the very lineaments of the furniture in that room seemed tainted and shaped by despair. Judy had to do the dishes, ironing, and cleaning. There was no longer someone to do the housecleaning, and her mother, who worked all day, could not do it herself. Her father, being a man, did not do such things. So it all fell to Judy. Her brother, who was three years older than she, was also exempt from household chores due to masculinity, so he filled his time by getting into trouble. He was finally sent away to boarding school for his last two years of high school; and though it was Judy’s mother’s engagement ring that paid for most of that particular cost, it drained their pallid financial life even more. There was nothing left for Judy at all.
Finally this dark period had ended. Judy’s father got a job with a large chain of paint companies, and although he had to travel quite often, still it was a profitable job. Judy’s mother continued to work as a secretary, and by the time Judy was eighteen, they were able to send her to a decent state university. The pleasure of knowing she could attend a university was offset by the realization that all her friends from her former neighborhood were going off to small private colleges. So she felt she had been cast out and away forever: her parents would never be able to earn enough money to buy away the misery she had learned.
Religion, Judy decided, was nonsense, and those who practiced it were fools. She realized that her parents had gained some perverse satisfaction from their struggles, but all their patient virtue could not ease the pain, or buy her a dress to wear to the Senior Prom—although she was not asked to her Senior Prom, because by her senior year, Judy lived almost in complete isolation. She felt scorned by half the school, and she scorned the other half. She spent hours in libraries, poring over ladies’ and society magazines; she was determined not to let poverty affect her taste. She worked hard in school, and although she was not innately brighter than others, her hard work paid off. Gradually, a plan for her life took shape. She knew she had to defend herself. The religious and financial crisis that had beset her family proved only one thing: money was all-important. She felt betrayed by her parents; she turned her back on them with cold finality. For the rest of her life she saw them as she felt they were: cruel fools.
This hurt. The worst thing that can happen to a person, the most scarring knowledge, Judy came to believe, is to realize that one’s parents are fools.
At first there were fights.
“Judy,” her mother would say, “it’s time for church. You aren’t even dressed.”
“I’m not going.”
“Oh, Judy—”
“Why should I go to church? How can you expect me to go to church? How can you and Dad bear to go? How can you stand to go to church and see Mr. Lawton driving up in his brand-new Cadillac, when he cheated you out of so much money that we lost our nice house? How can you keep from standing up in church and screaming? Half the people in that church are hypocrites! They’re thieves! Liars! How can you go to a church that lets people like that in? How can the church let people like that enter the doors?”
Judy’s mother, shaking her head, would sink onto a chair. “Judy,” she would say, when Judy had calmed down enough to listen, “you’ve got it all wrong. Where did you ever get the idea that church was for good people? Haven’t you been paying attention? Church is for all people—and we’re all hypocrites and sinners, Judy, every one of us. No person on earth is perfect, and we all know it in our heart of hearts. Church is the place where we are forgiven, where we are reminded of what we are striving to attain. Heavens, darling, if sinners and hypocrites weren’t allowed in church, the churches all over the world would be empty!”
“But, Mother,” Judy would cry, her fists clenched in anger, “how can you stand to be in church, in that church, wearing your old shabby coat, while Mr. Lawton’s wife wears a brand-new fur coat? She’s wearing a fur coat, and Mr. Lawton said he was in debt, and we lost our house. I don’t understand how you can be in the same room with that man!”
“Judy, in the Bible, Jesus says to forgive the brother who sinned against you seventy times seven. We must forgive others just as we expect God to forgive us. We—”
“Oh, stop it!” Judy would scream, and would cover her ears and throw herself on the bed, knowing she was acting like a much younger child. “That thief Lawton first cheated you, and now he snubs you, and you quote the stupid Bible! Well, don’t talk to me about it anymore, because I don’t want to hear it. It’s all a bunch of rubbish made up to help the rich keep power over gullible people like you and Dad!”
“Judy,” her mothe
r said, “I’m worried about you. I think you are losing your religion.”
This made Judy laugh. “Oh, Mother,” she said. “No. I’m not losing religion. Religion is losing me!”
The worst fights happened at the beginning of Judy’s senior year, when she was terrified that she wouldn’t be accepted into a university. By then she had convinced her parents that she would not go to church, and they went off on Sunday mornings by themselves, after softly tapping on her bedroom door to say that they were on their way and would be home around noon. Judy would wait until their car had pulled out of the driveway and disappeared. Then she would slip out of bed and go into the kitchen and make herself breakfast. With her brother away at boarding school and her parents off at church, Judy found herself alone in the house for a definite period of time. Sunday mornings, she discovered, were luxurious. What fools people were to give up this lazy stretch of time to sit with hypocrites and thieves in buildings built to the glory of a God that didn’t exist. After eating her breakfast, Judy would go back to bed, and read romantic novels or magazines. If there was any time during her senior year when she could rely on being happy, it was on Sunday mornings when she didn’t have to go to church.
One Sunday her mother came home, came into her bedroom, and sat on the edge of her bed, as she did so often.
“I want to read you the parable that the minister talked about in church today,” she began. She had the black family Bible in her hand.
But Judy had been looking at the new spring issue of Mademoiselle, and as she studied it, she had realized that she wouldn’t be able to afford those dresses, espadrilles, clever costume jewelry, purses, lipsticks, eye shadow, and perfumes. Her spring wardrobe would come from Black’s basement, where the sale rack was. Her mother would pull out a dank ruffled shirt and suggest that she buy if for both of them to wear, herself for work and Judy for dress.
And so Judy screamed, “Goddamn you and your goddamned parables and the goddamned Bible and stupid fucking lying goddamned God!” She wrenched the Bible from her mother’s hand and threw it across the room; it smacked into the wall and thudded to the floor. “I do not believe in God!” she yelled, shaking with rage. “I do not believe in the Bible! And I do not believe in you!”
Judy’s mother had only sighed, “Oh, my poor little Judy,” and she rose, picked up the Bible, and walked out of the room. After that, there were no more invitations to church, and no more discussions about religion. Judy found a job at an ice-cream parlor and worked there all day Saturday and Sunday and evenings after school. She lived out her senior year in a rapture of frugality, saving all the money she made from her job to buy books and clothes for her new university life. What did her high school matter, she decided, or the creeps she saw there—soon it would all be behind her.
At the end of her senior year in high school, the fights with her parents stopped after one final confrontation. The minister of the church had called Judy to ask if he could meet privately with her, but she had been adamant in her refusal. That evening, both her parents had questioned her over dinner.
“There’s no reason for me to talk to Reverend Thompson,” Judy had said. “I do not believe in God or in the Church, and frankly, the whole subject bores me to tears. I’m sick of discussing it.”
“You’re getting arrogant, young lady,” her father said. “It doesn’t become you.”
“Poverty doesn’t become me, either,” Judy replied.
“Judy,” her mother intervened, “how can we explain it to you? You are such a child. When you are grown up, perhaps you’ll understand how necessary it is to live by your chosen values. Otherwise, life is meaningless.”
“Your precious values ruined my life,” Judy said.
Judy’s mother stared at her for a while, then lifted both hands gently, palms open to Judy, as if holding out an invisible gift. “I think when you have children of your own, you’ll discover that life doesn’t always turn out the way you intend for it to. You can’t control everything, and so you do your best to control your own actions. Even your own children don’t turn out as you intend them to.” She smiled at Judy, her gentle Christian smile that both moved and infuriated her daughter. It was the closest she would come to stating that she was just as dissatisfied with her daughter as her daughter was with her.
The fights ended. A cold peace reigned. There began to be more money in the family. For her graduation present, and as a sort of unadmitted apology, her parents gave Judy a car. It was a used, dented, clunker of a car, but it was a car, and it made Judy’s life much easier. Still, her harsh judgment on her parents remained, and her second thought after seeing the car was: I bet they really got taken on this, the fools. They probably paid twice what anyone else would have.
When she got to college, her life was a mixture of pleasure and pain. Pleasure because she was finally away from her parents, controlling her own life, purchases, and activities, working as hard as she could to get ahead. Pain, because no matter how fiercely she controlled and worked, there were others so far ahead of her. It took all her energy not to collapse in despair, because she had fallen into the seductive habit of selective envy. She envied this person her brilliant mind, that person her wealth, another person her social skills, and another her figure. Rarely did she stop to consider the entire person, or when she did, it was only to consider someone who possessed all the enviable qualities. Judy became adept at envy. Still, she did not quite let it rule her life; she kept her life charted toward goals.
First, she decided to major in education. Really, what else was there for her to do? She had to be prepared to support herself, and she wasn’t interested in abstract ideas. By her junior year, she discovered one definite talent: she was an excellent committee member. She liked committees. She enjoyed the structure, hierarchy, the sense of assembly, the shared achievement. She was either secretary or treasurer of several clubs. When she was sitting at an oval table, taking down the minutes of a meeting with earnest scrupulousness, the touch of the pen to paper provided her with a physical pleasure. There was more reality and worth to her in the details of a projected car wash for the French Club than in the academic substance of many of her courses. However, one could not get a university degree in committees, so she plodded through her education courses dutifully.
Her junior year she met a girl named Sharon Lake in an education course, and they quickly became close friends. They double-dated, studied together, did favors for each other, and soon Judy came to wonder how she had ever enjoyed life without Sharon’s friendship. But one night, as they sat in the student union drinking coffee and quizzing each other on a test for the next day, Sharon said to Judy, “You really don’t remember me, do you?”
“What?” Judy said. “Remember you? What are you talking about? I just met you.”
“No, you didn’t,” Sharon said. “You’ve seen me lots of times. I used to go to the same high school you did. I used to pass you all the time in the hall. And I lived two blocks away from you—well, my family still lives two blocks away from your family.”
“On Whitton Drive or Green Street?”
“Green Street. Well, I mean your family lives on Green Street, of course. My family lives on Drake. You had to pass it on the way to school. The white house with thirty-seven bikes in the front yard.”
“How strange,” Judy said. “I can’t believe we lived so close and never got to know each other.”
“Well, you always sort of kept to yourself, you know. In fact—to be honest, I always thought you were stuck-up.”
“Oh, no!” Judy protested. “I was shy. Well, thank heavens we finally met.”
How cruel Fate was, Judy thought, to have let her live so close to such a perfect friend for so long without somehow causing them to meet. It drove yet another peg into her scoreboard against God.
Her friendship with Sharon continued through their senior year. Judy was devastated when Sharon accepted a graduate fellowship at a university in Oregon. At the end of her seni
or year, Judy’s determination almost foundered; she could not think how she would live without the gratifying structure of Sharon’s friendship and college life. She was offered a teaching position in a high school near Boston, and although she spent the summer nearly sick with fear, in the end it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to her. It was there that she met Ron.
The years of the past have a way of melding together, memories flow past the mind’s eye in a great flood. Judy felt she had little control over which events and people tumbled to the surface of her memory; and even so, the ones that did emerge floated on past too rapidly, visions beckoning from boats or the tops of unanchored garages, visions seen at best briefly and indistinctly before they were swept from sight. Judy married Ron, moved to Londonton with him, had two children, decorated their home, but these happy events did not stand out with the precise integrity of the scenes of her adolescence. Perhaps contentment is not as easily remembered as misery.
And now, after so many years of being safe, Judy shied away from remembering the pain of her childhood. She kept far away from all that, as if it existed on the other side of a chasm. And she looked back only now and then in order to remind herself that she must protect her own children and herself. She did not like memories; she liked the present, and planning for the future.
She and Ron were in this regard well matched. They were hard workers; they were both embarrassed by their families. Ron’s parents came from wealthy, establishment Bostonian stock, and they were handsome people. But Ron’s father was an alcoholic, and gradually he declined in life, taking the family pride and possessions with him. If Ron’s maternal grandmother had not had the foresight to establish a trust for her grandson, Ron would have been penniless. But the trust saw him through college and helped him set up his business. After that, it was just a matter of work—and Ron and Judy were both glad to work. Their pleasure, even, was their work, because they shared a common goal; they measured their progression up the social scale of Londonton with the same sort of pride with which they marked the ascending heights of their children on the kitchen doorjamb.
