‘Jim. You’ve got to do something about this Lenny Lynden.’
7.
Both of Lenny’s wives are at the meeting. Both of them have had sex with Jim Jones. But only one of them comes to the floor when Jim says, ‘There’s a young woman here who begged me for sex on the children’s camping trip last month and who thinks she’s something special. You know who you are. You’re not special. Stand up and apologize to these people you’ve hurt. Yes, you. Stand up.’
And, like a scolded child in her pink minidress, Terra rises from the carpet, wringing her hands and hanging her head.
‘I’m sorry, Father,’ she says.
‘You’re disgusting!’ skinny Sister Kay, Jo’s mom, calls out. ‘Why would you do that to Father? Don’t you know, y’know, it sickens him to hafta relate to people on that level?’
‘Do you really think,’ Sister Molly starts breathlessly, ‘you’re so much more deserving of Father’s love than the rest of us?’
‘Oh, she thinks it,’ Sister Joya scoffs. ‘I lived with her. I’ve seen her walking around like she’s hot stuff! Flipping her hair, looking in the mirror … Right, Gene?’
‘Right,’ says Brother Gene. ‘Looks in the mirror all day long, that one. You notice these things, living with someone.’
Terra looks at Gene, mouth agape, pink patches on her cheeks. Her eyes start welling.
‘I’ve seen it, too,’ Brother Ike picks up the slack. ‘She thinks she’s prize pussy! Like blond-hair-blue-eyes makes her better than all the other sisters.’
‘White supremacist bitch!’ Sister Laura, herself white as curd, yells out.
Jim laughs. ‘Ain’t no wonder. You give a little girl a porcelain-face doll with gold curls, tell her that’s beautiful? She’ll believe it. Course, that ain’t my idea of beautiful, no way.’
‘Father doesn’t think you’re beautiful!’ Sister Diane cries. ‘He thinks anyone caught up in the sex plane is self-centered and ugly. Why would you ask that of him, when you know his loving energies are better focused elsewhere?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Terra sniffs. ‘I guess … I’ve always been looking for a loving father figure? I never had anything like that in my life, and Father, he’s the ideal man, he’s an amazing lover! No man ever made me feel so good, so in touch with myself and, and, meaningful—’
‘So what you’re saying is, you need to be fucked by my dad to stay loyal?’ Su-mi cuts in. ‘That’s sick, you know that? You know how sick that sounds to me?’
‘Yeah, that’s real sick, Terra,’ Brother Dwight jeers, his acne-reddened face more amused than disgusted. ‘That’s Su-mi’s dad. Don’t you know how it feels for her to hear about people like you?’
‘Not “dad”,’ Jim corrects. ‘I’m not “dad” here. I’m your leader. And, when you’re leader, people make demands, everyone wants a piece of you. I’m not saying — oh, sure, I could take care of every sister in this room tonight like that.’ He clicks his fingers. ‘And not just the sisters, mind, ’cause there’s been others. I mean … what I’m saying’s, I got the prowess. I’m the only true heterosexual man alive, Sister Terra got that right. But the sexual act don’t bring me pleasure. What’s underneath your clothes, that don’t mean nothing to me. ’Cause that’s not my highest love for you. It pains me, darlings, when you’re so weak you can’t think of anything higher.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Terra repeats. ‘You’re right, Father. I’ve been so weak, so disgustingly selfish. I know it didn’t bring you any pleasure when you fucked me, and I appreciate you doing it anyway, for so many hours. I’m so sorry—’
Lenny doesn’t feel much as he watches his new wife cry, plead. A blunt, buzzing hurt in his mind like TV static. A punctured feeling in his chest. But not a lot for Terra. She could be a doll tossed around, an actress on a flickering screen.
Someone, Sister Joya, criticizes Terra’s hair; it’s too long, she uses too much shampoo, has refused every offer to cut it free-of-charge. Someone else, Sister Laura, criticizes her for throwing herself at Jim on the camping trip, with all those children present. Lenny looks again at the children’s drawings on the wall, slogans in bright paint: Brotherhood is our Religion, Black is Beautiful, Christ the Revolution. He hears his ex-wife say his name.
‘Lenny Lynden hasn’t said how he feels about all this.’
Lenny’s first instinct is to be annoyed. By the clear, chiming sound of Evelyn’s voice. By the formality of ‘Lenny Lynden’, when she once knew him as just ‘Lenny’, and herself still goes by ‘Lynden’. By her face, attentive yet impassive; the notepad in her lap; the silver roses in her ears. Everything about her more unsettling for that former familiarity. There must be a German word for this feeling. His mom would know it.
‘It feels …’ He shrugs. ‘It feels shitty.’
‘You don’t say, son.’ Brother Ike leans forward and shakes his head.
‘I bet it made you feel like shit,’ Sister Diane commiserates. ‘To hear your wife say you never satisfied her as a man? That must’ve made you feel like shit.’
‘Yeah.’ Sister Diane is good-looking, for a lesbian: side-swept short hair, long neck, generous mouth and breasts. ‘It made me feel … like I’m not even a man. Like I’m nothing.’
‘Oh, he wants to feel like a man,’ sneers Sister Molly, a fleshy woman with Jackie Kennedy hair. Lenny knows from previous meetings that she has a husband who beats her. ‘What makes you think you’re a man? What makes you think you’re anything?’
‘He’s clearly overcompensating,’ Sister Joya proclaims. ‘Father is the only real man here! All the others are just latent homosexuals.’
‘Are you a homosexual, Lenny?’ Sister Kay asks, almost sweetly.
‘No,’ Lenny says quickly. ‘I-I like women.’
‘I’d like to see him stand up and say that.’ Brother Ike chortles. ‘Stand up and, while you’re at it, why don’t you show us all how you make love to your wife, right here.’
Jim laughs loudly at that. But Lenny doesn’t stand. He looks at his wife in her short dress and she looks back at him tearfully, like she’s just seen a dog-headed man or her whole life burning. He thinks, well … Then she opens her mouth.
‘Don’t touch me! All men but Father make me sick! It’s like insects crawling all over my body. Ohh, don’t you ever try to touch me, Lenny Lynden, or you’ll be sorry!’
The women laugh. So does Jim, then the other men. Jim says, ‘Insects?’, and laughs some more. ‘What insects? Beetle? Cock-roach?’ He laughs so much his belly shakes, and it doesn’t seem he’ll ever stop. But he does, after a while, wiping a finger under his sunglasses.
‘This sister, she cracks me up. Sisters, they get high-and-mighty, don’t they? Don’t worry, son. I wouldn’t take it personal. Stand up. Let me see you.’
The tide has changed so quickly, there’s nothing to do but let it take him out. Lenny stands. He feels Jim’s eyes laser through his clothes; wishes he had a fig-leaf to hide behind.
‘He’s a good-looking guy,’ Jim assesses, glancing around the room for confirmation. ‘I think most would agree, that’s a good-looking guy? Pretty. Gene, don’t you think he’s pretty?’
‘Y-sure,’ Brother Gene stumbles, blushing to his ears, giving a short cough. ‘He’s … pretty.’
A few women titter. Jim smiles good-naturedly. ‘Pretty guy, don’t have to work hard. Used to women coming along, waiting on him hand and foot. Easy to see how a kid like that can just passively overcompensate.’ He lets the argument sink in. ‘Plenty of sisters here, I think, can attest to that.’
‘He’s so passive,’ Evelyn chimes in. ‘He doesn’t know what to do with a woman.’
‘He just lies there expecting us to get him off. Like, he’s God’s gift?’ Terra echoes brashly. It’s hard to believe she was weeping not long ago. ‘Father knows how to please a woman selflessly, for hours at a time. But yo
u’re nothing like Father. You’re just a little boy.’
‘It seems to me more and more men act like little boys these days,’ Sister Joya gripes. ‘Overcompensating with little girls. Don’t think I don’t know about you flirting with Bobbi and Dot.’
‘You flirted with my daughters? In my house?’ Brother Gene rears up like an angry horse.
‘He told Dot she looked good in a miniskirt, and I saw him lying shirtless on the bed with Bobbi,’ Sister Joya declares. ‘It’s obvious he can’t handle a relationship with an adult woman.’
‘Is that true, Lenny? You told little Dot Luce she looks good in a miniskirt?’ Terra looks almost like a wife again.
‘I don’t know …’ But come to think of it, he probably did. Those Luce girls, they’re not as innocent as they look: Bobbi sharing joints with him out by the stables; Dot asking him to kill horseflies and stinkbugs, chattering away about murdered starlets.
‘If you think you’re gonna shrug and smile your way outta this one, you’ve got another thing coming, Mister!’ Sister Joya hollers.
Mister?
The accusations keep coming, and Lenny takes them all with hot-faced incomprehension; hands folded over his groin, eyes stung by the lights above. What’s happening? Why is everyone so mean to me? His failing seems primordial, like original sin, or at least something from way back in his childhood. When Jim speaks again, in a calm, slightly indulgent tone, it’s a relief.
‘Alright, alright,’ Jim says. ‘He’s heard enough. Let me talk.’ He shines an affectionate look at Lenny. ‘People get excited, son. Mothers especially, they get protective. Me, I know you meant no harm when you said that thing to Dot Luce. Innocent compliment. Fact is, our females shouldn’t be wearing miniskirts if they wanna be taken serious as socialist women.’
Some of the young women — Evelyn, Terra, Laura, Jo — tug at their skirts. Sister Joya starts to say something, but Jim holds up a palm.
‘That’s my belief, sisters. We can talk about it some other time. I gotta say now: Lenny, I like you very much. You’re sweet, gentle. Not hotheaded, like these others. I value your commitment. It’s not your fault you never had a loving father figure.’
Reluctant to agree or disagree, Lenny shrugs.
‘I’m so loving, Lenny. I know what you need. You don’t have to beg. Your personal relationship with the Cause is more important to me than my comfort. It’s true, the sex plane is sickening to me, but I will sacrifice my body over and over, if that’s what it takes to bring you people to enlightenment. Evelyn will make an appointment for you to see me for one-on-one counseling this week.’
‘I—’
‘Don’t need to say nothing, darlin’. I forgive you. Sit down.’
Lenny sits. He sits and avoids the glances thrown at him by his brothers and sisters: pitying glances, curious, disgusted. Discussion turns to Laura, who was seen getting into the car of some army dude Friday night, and who admits to having done mushrooms with him in the woods near Fort Bragg. ‘We’re not against relationships with outsiders if it’s for recruitment purposes,’ Jim says, ‘But, honey, this just sounds like you going back to your old ways. And that’s shameful. You remember you were a miserable drug addict before you came here?’ Lenny looks at Jim’s flashing hair, his sunglasses, his golden skin, and tries to tell himself Jim is handsome, like a cowboy, like Elvis. Evelyn gets up from her place near Jim’s feet, sits next to Lenny, scratches something out on her notepad and shows it to him.
Personal counseling at the parsonage, 10pm, Thursday.
Lenny gawks. Evelyn knits her brow, underlines the date, gazes at him in that blandly expectant way that isn’t new.
Lenny shrugs. Satisfied, Evelyn peels off the slip of paper, hands it to him, rises from the carpet, and walks back to Jim.
In past lives, she sat beside him on floors that way. In the white house on Vine Street. At the party where they met, in the house where she lived with her many girlfriends. Talking about Bert the Turtle and her thesis on Marcuse and how as soon as she graduated she’d go back to Europe, work for the UN, change the world.
He slips the paper into his breast pocket, hot as a burning draft card.
‘You’re coming back to the commune with me, right?’ Terra loops her arm with Lenny’s as they exit to the parking lot at the end of the meeting, eyes sore with fatigue.
Lenny looks at Gene and Joya, lumbering hand-in-hand toward the cop car. Depressing.
‘Yeah, sure,’ he says.
Terra beams.
Mother Rosaline answers the door. She is wearing a yellow robe and looks tired, but her smile is kind as she points Lenny upstairs: ‘Jim’s in his office. That room with the light.’
Before coming to the parsonage, Lenny showered, shaved, combed his hair, dressed with care; collared shirt, pressed trousers, fresh underwear. Somewhere in the back of his mind, like a lesson drilled into him in childhood — study hard, eat your greens — there’s an earnest belief that nothing bad can happen to him so long as he’s a clean boy in clean clothes.
But Jim’s office has a bed in it. That’s one of the first things Lenny notices. Also, although Jim is wearing a pajama shirt, he doesn’t have any pants on, only Y-fronts.
‘Good evening, son,’ Jim says, taking in Lenny’s cleanliness like it’s a bouquet, something just for him. ‘Lock that door? Thank you. C’mere, now. Take your clothes off.’
Like jumping off a skyscraper in a dream and waking to floorboards, bruises. Like drinking something sweet then going into convulsions five minutes later. Like being dropped in the middle of a jungle with a gun and orders to kill. Some things are real before they happen.
With trembling hands, Lenny starts to undress.
He undresses and thinks: this is what it means to be a man. Having soft things taken away from you. Disappointments like tracks in the dirt. Things you can’t undo or reclaim. It means always accepting, never fighting fate. And if the same rules don’t apply to Jim Jones, it isn’t because he’s not a man, but because he’s God.
Nobody will ever mistake Lenny Lynden for God.
8.
Rosaline is already waiting on the porch, a mug of ginger tea in her hands, when Eve arrives in her red Volvo. She watches Eve slam the car door, sling her smart leather tote. She says, ‘Hi there,’ and Eve’s lowered eyes snap open like a doll’s.
Eve murmurs, ‘Hello, Rosaline.’
‘The boys’ll be home from school any minute,’ Rosaline says. ‘Shall we talk upstairs?’
Eve nods, edges up the porch steps. She is wearing square-toed pumps with shiny square accents, squarish heels. She reaches Rosaline’s level, but is not as tall as Rosaline.
She smiles. Lips whitish. Follows Rosaline into the parsonage as though she would never dream of crossing that threshold uninvited.
‘Would you like some tea? Coffee?’
‘No, thank you.’
They mount the staircase to Jim’s office. Rosaline goes straight to his oak desk, puts down her tea, opens a manila envelope. Eve hovers in the doorway, casting a furtive glance at the bed. When Rosaline looks up, Eve swishes over, places her bag on the floor, folds her arms over her chest.
Her collarbones make gullies. Her posture is not good.
‘I’m getting Frank Mueller to witness this, but thought you should see it first,’ Rosaline says, sliding the paper across the oak surface. Her daughter Su-mi is a Mueller now, lives in a big modern house with the pimply Mueller boy. Safe. Rosaline tries to read Eve’s reading face, yet all that comes to mind is the coolness of blank paper, her own carefully picked and pecked words:
To whom it may concern:
In the event of my death, I, Rosaline M. Jones, would like for Evelyn Lynden to take over the mothering responsibilities of my children. I would, in fact, hope that she would move into the house and fill any void my absence might leave.
> Signed: Rosaline M. Jones
October 16, 1969
Then Eve looks up and there’s something. A brief, ugly something, as though she has just been spat on, or is about to spit. Or maybe weep. For an attractive young woman, she sure has a lot of ugly looks. Rosaline wonders if this is one of the things Jim likes about her.
Eve makes a quick gesture, a flick of the arm from which Rosaline instinctively recoils. Only after the fact does it occur to Rosaline that, perhaps, Eve was moving to hug her.
But the moment passes. Eve smooths her knitted blouse, tan slacks; no minidress today, schoolteacher clothes. With impersonal curiosity, Eve asks, ‘Is this Jim’s request?’
‘No,’ Rosaline says. ‘He doesn’t know yet.’ She folds her brow, crumples her hands. ‘Doesn’t need to, necessarily.’
‘I think Jim would approve.’
‘Well, you’d hope so, wouldn’t you,’ Rosaline lets slip, instantly regretting what to her seem like harsh words. Eve, however, doesn’t seem affected, and this is what unsettles most. ‘Anyways, if you approve, I’ll get it witnessed, and that’s that.’
‘I approve, of course,’ Eve purrs. ‘They’re … beautiful children.’
‘I know it,’ Rosaline says.
‘So bright and sensitive. I’ve never seen children so advanced for their age.’
‘They’ve had an unconventional childhood, that’s for sure.’ Before her mind can stray to the underside of this truth — the death threats, the wet beds, the night a couple of months back when she tearfully locked herself away from Jim’s fury, came out to find him benevolently telling the boys, Mother is suicidal, she likes to play the martyr, but we’d rather die than not be a family, right darlings? — Rosaline continues proudly. ‘Not many little boys can say they’ve gone from Indianapolis winter to the beaches of Rio and back again before kindergarten.’
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