“I hope you like him,” she said.
He was there when we arrived. Shorter than I expected. The hostess seated us and we ordered a plate of wings and some sides. She was right; he spoke his mind, no filter. But I enjoy people like that, somewhat brazen. A friend of theirs, a doctor, had moved to Chicago to become a plastic surgeon. He wasn’t enjoying his job and missed California. “At this point,” Gene said, “he probably just hangs the women up by their sagging parts, cuts them off and pulls over the rest.”
His speech hadn’t been churched up, that was for sure. What I noticed, though, was he was incredibly transparent, speaking honestly about his desire to be married, and also the trials of being a single man in San Francisco. But he said those things with an edge, not afraid to speak coarsely or drop an occasional curse word. In the end, I saw a man trying to live a good life and worship God in spirit and truth. And the chicken wings were everything Jessie had described and more. A sweet, smoky flavor. Gene ordered an extra plateful when he saw how much I enjoyed them. He paid the check (insisting upon it) while Jessie went to the restroom.
“It was good to finally meet you. You seem to get along really well together. You sit with your arms touching. She’s got red in her cheeks. She looks happy.”
“My friends tell me I have a glow.”
We saw her come out of the restroom and pretended to be talking about something else. When she returned to the table, she was laughing.
“The bathroom has a sign over the toilet that says, ‘Press here to blush.’”
We joked about the spelling mistake as we left the restaurant. Outside, Gene was going one way; we were going the other. “Don’t be a stranger,” he told Jessie, hugging her goodbye. I shook his hand and thanked him for lunch; Jessie and I walked to the car.
“What did he say when I was in the bathroom? What did you two talk about?”
“I can’t tell you.”
She gave me the fake, pouting look she sometimes gave. “Tell me.”
“He said you look happy and your cheeks are wonderfully red. Does that embarrass you?”
“Press here to blush,” she said.
We drove to the north end of the city. Dinner was a surprise. Our reservation wasn’t until 6:00. Until then, we found a cafe in Little Italy and drank coffee and tea while working on a crossword puzzle. On the way to the restaurant, a police car drove by, briefly flashing its light and siren. How long had it been? Four months? Seemed a long time ago, but it was still raw and something about the reminder of the night in jail and my birthday and financial unrest I was in combined to put me under a cloud. It disconcerted my spirit, though ever slightly. It was minor, just below the skin. I was 95% engaged in our conversation, ecstatic and gleeful to be spending my birthday weekend with the person I most wanted to be with, but it was the other 5% that threatened the evening. I told myself to stay in the moment, to focus all my attention on her, where it should be anyway.
We passed a homeless man on the sidewalk. He did a double take, then looked at me and said, “Damn, you’re lucky.”
I always got the greatest joy out of hearing that. I knew it was true.
She had done thorough research when choosing the restaurant. Café Jacqueline was said to be the most romantic restaurant in the city. They served only soufflés. The owner, Jacqueline, had baked every soufflé served in the restaurant for the past thirty years. She supposedly sat in the kitchen all night, stirring a huge bowl of eggs. The pathway to the restroom took customers through the kitchen and when they passed her on the way, she greeted them with a kind “Merci.”
The server placed our jackets on the coat rack and sat us at a table by the wall. A small table, intimately lit. I was at a romantic French restaurant in San Francisco on a lovely Sunday night, two days before my birthday, with my favorite girl. It was a dream moment, but I was heavy-hearted for some reason. Was it getting older? The DUI? Was I feeling unworthy of this woman and her affection? I didn’t know. I’d probably say it was four months of conflicted emotions: the anxiety and uncertainty of the future trying to wrest the joy I was receiving from both God and her. It had no place here; but in this life, doubt and fear often have no rightful place at the table, but they find a seat anyway. I couldn’t let that happen.
We ordered the crab soufflé for an entree. I began talking. I didn’t know what I was saying, simply expressing the words as they arose. From heart to lips. I needed to tell her what I was thinking and feeling, for fear of becoming withdrawn. She’d done this for me, taken me here, and I wasn’t going to mar it by being withdrawn or uncommunicative. I expressed what was on my heart, even if I didn’t know myself. Surprisingly, I went back to our first weekend together—after I’d been arrested, how I didn’t know if I’d be able to come see her.
As I spoke, I reflected on my life. The words I remember were, “It’s grace upon grace. Mercy after mercy.” I realized if I hadn’t been arrested, slept in jail, been forced to take AA meetings and the court-ordered program, I might have spent that weekend trumpeting the years I’d served in church or the Bible knowledge I’d accrued. But it would have been vain trumpeting. Doubtful I would have spoken with such honesty and rawness. Had I not been broken in such a manner, I didn’t know if I would be with her then. I didn’t want to find out, either.
For dessert, we ordered the Grand Marnier soufflé. Jessie excused herself to the restroom, primarily to see if the rumors about Jacqueline were true. She returned shortly, wearing a smile that verified them so.
“I have to see this,” I said and walked through the kitchen door. Sure enough, an older, petite woman, stirring a giant bowl of eggs, smiled at me and said, “Merci.”
When the Grand Marnier soufflé arrived, we didn’t speak for several minutes. Words were replaced with “mmmms” and “ohhhhhs.” She rolled her eyes in disbelieving pleasure. “I won’t say what I was thinking. It’s scandalous.”
“I know what you were going to say.”
“It’s…orgasmic. The only word I can think of to describe it.”
She was right. It was orgasmic. The best dessert I’ve tasted, quite surely.
After dinner, we stood on the sidewalk and kissed. A man walked by and said, “Nice kiss.”
We laughed. I put my arms around her and squeezed her tightly. “Thank you for a wonderful birthday.”
“Thank you for being who you are.”
We walked to the car, several blocks. Her stomach had begun to cramp. It had been hurting sporadically throughout the weekend. We turned by the waterfront, heading to the bridge, and she asked, “Will you pray for me? I’m in a lot of pain right now.”
I did, on the spot. I put my hand over her arm and prayed. “Thank you,” she said when I’d finished.
At the hotel, she gave me a card, with instruction not to open it until my birthday. It was the first thing I did Tuesday morning. On the front, she’d written, “Things I like about my Michael Joel.” On the inside of the card, she’d listed thirty of them, the two I’m willing to share being:
Shares his bacon with me
and
His heavily-underlined Bible
It’s the small things, those we don’t anticipate. The moments we could have never planned. It’s not the grand vacations, though they are wonderful and worthy of the room in our scrapbooks and money they require. But who can understand the human heart, moved to affection by a gesture, warmed by a “thank you,” a kind salutation from a friend?
Chapter Fourteen
Walter was married for eleven years. At the time, he owned his own business and was doing well financially. He and his wife lived in London and other parts of Europe. After she died, he went to help a friend with his struggling business. The friend ran a treatment center, consistently operating in the red, and asked Walter for financial advisement. What Walter found was he enjoyed working with the patients—all creeds and races. He’d been an addict himself. He went back to school to get his masters degree in addiction therapy and changed car
eers. He’s not well-paid. He does it because he enjoys it. Some of the other 541 instructors around town have been accused of taking money under the table and signing cards for the students without them showing up for class. Walter knows many of them, but said he would never do what they were doing because he cares about his students. From what I’d seen so far, he was telling the truth.
One night he asked, “Why do we get drunk, wake up with a terrible hangover, tell ourselves we won’t ever do it again, but eventually do it again? I don’t know the answer. Is it something in our spirit? It’s like if I jumped off a cliff, fell and broke every bone in my body, then climbed back up the cliff and did it again. Why do we do it? Again, I don’t know the answer.”
Someone said, “Peer pressure.” Others agreed.
I spoke up. I was compelled to—it was too good of a question. “Take the focus away from drinking. Imagine if someone has just pissed you off, insulted you and made you furious. In that moment, you can’t calm down. Someone can tell you to relax or to think clearly, but your knuckles are turning white. You can’t think clearly. Or imagine two teenagers making out. In that moment, all the sex-ed classes in the world won’t help. They can’t stop. Everyone here has been to AA meetings. That’s the first commandment, or whatever they call it: God needs to restore us to sanity. We’re not sane in that moment. It’s the same with alcohol. We want to numb the pain of life. We say it will only be a drink or two, but we want to keep the feeling going so we drink more. Before we know it, we’re hung over again.”
I told them of a friend of mine, Doug, who left his wife and daughter a little over a year ago. Doug was a pension administrator. On the outside, very self-sufficient, very secure. According to him (and his worldview), success and happiness were determined by one’s work ethic and choices. No other factors came into play. His thinking was, “Everything I have is what I’ve earned.” It gave him the right to judge others. When he saw those living homeless on the street, he dismissed them. “They made their choices.”
After his separation, Doug became depressed. He couldn’t sleep from crying every night. His doctor put him on lithium.
“Why is this happening to me?” he asked. “I can’t get happy.”
I said, “It’s easy to be hard-boiled in the morning. At night, it’s another thing.”
I’d quoted Hemingway. Walter, to my surprise, quoted Christ. “Judge not, lest you be judged.” I wasn’t expecting that.
Angelica, a Brazilian woman who had lived in France for several years, was arrested for mixing alcohol with her cancer medication. She was working a catering job (She manages an Italian restaurant) and made the mistake of drinking half a glass of champagne after finishing. She’d completed several weeks of the 541 class but went into such a heavy depression that she left class for three months. She couldn’t deal with the strain and despondency of her life—the sickness and the arrest. This was her first night back. When I mentioned Doug, she scoffed and shook her head.
“It’s not a choice. It’s a disease.”
I was still thinking about these things when I got home. Is it a choice or a disease? Obviously, it’s both. But that’s the point: The answer’s not black and white. We have to explore those moments when it stops being a choice. The assumption that we’re all playing on a level field. That was Doug’s thinking. But when his life went to hell and back, all the beliefs he held about control and IRAs flew out the window. It was just him, an empty studio, an 18-inch television with fuzzy reception and nowhere to go, no one to hold. It’s in that moment that grace either steps up and saves us, or disappears into the cracks of the studio wall. It’s in that moment, when we’re white-knuckled and about to have the third drink that pushes us over the edge, or when our spouse has insulted us and we’re furious, that we don’t hearken back to the sex-ed classes or the pre-marriage counseling. It’s in that moment we need grace. It either steps up or shrinks back, leaving us to folly, to respond to our spouse with hateful words or to take out the last $7 in our pocket to give to the bartender. These are the moments they don’t teach us about in Sunday School, the ones they don’t warn us of in youth group. But they’re the moments that define our lives.
What was wrong with me to make me behave as I did? Later, when I traced back the cycle of events, I remembered something that happened the week before my arrest. I’d recently met Jessie and was excited at the thought of getting to know her. The book I’d been working on for a year was taking shape, enough so that I could realistically be finished in the upcoming weeks. After a great night of writing, I was struck with the thought, “My ship is coming in.” I walked outside, praying, “Lord, thank you. Would you give me grace and direct my steps?”
Sometimes, however, it takes a crushing blow to get our attention, especially for us stubborn types.
I thought I was in a good place—mentally, spiritually and emotionally. But we have our blind spots and that’s what we fail to recognize. We see the folly of others and are quick to find fault. My grandmother (God rest her soul; I love her and still remember lying in her bed the week before she died, weeping as she told me those things) was one of the prudish, most judgmental women I’ve known. Once, my sister’s baby was running through the house naked after a bath and Granny yelled, in a crackled voice, “Beverly, I can’t believe you let her do that.”
With a downturned mouth, we mature in our spirituality.
When I was first getting to know Jessie, the way we communicated was over the phone. There’s no substitute for the real thing—holding a woman, cuddling with her—but words were the instrument I had so I riddled her with questions. One of the best answers she gave was when I asked her the one quality she hopes to still possess when she’s an old woman. I thought maybe she’d want a youthful appearance or to be able to climb stairs without her knees creaking. I didn’t expect the answer she gave, though now, having known her, it’s the only one I would expect.
“I hope I’m still laughing,” she said.
Her answer struck me. She asked me the same thing.
“I don’t want to be one of those old men with a downturned mouth.”
What smiles, to laugh as children, unencumbered by fear and regret? What would it be like to run free in the wind?
Somewhere my grandmother is in heaven, enjoying a world without the curse of sin, loving the Lord Jesus, worshipping and singing songs of wonderful praise…and I hope I’m not discrediting her legacy on this earth. But she was wrong. There is nothing wrong with a child running naked through a house. Anyone can see that, but we have blind spots. After years of bubbling ourselves in the safety of the church and casting judgment on those outside, we stop smiling and our expressions take the shape of scorn. We lose our joy. Perhaps it’s because (or at least partly because) we’ve stopped embracing mercy. And grace. And it seems almost impossible to avoid.
I don’t know the answer to Walter’s question. I don’t know why some of us jump off the cliff again and again. I don’t know why we become hardened and jaded and disappointed. I could point to sin and the curse of Adam. I could stress the materialism of America and attribute it to a sense of entitlement. But I don’t have an easy answer. Walter mentioned the “creep” during my first class. I decided to explore the Christian creep, at least that’s what I named it. The same way a drunk creeps back into old habits, a Christian creeps back into legalism and self-righteousness, with maybe a sprinkling of bitterness, as well.
When I was working in the coffee shop, I knew every customer’s name, birthday, dog’s name, favorite ice cream…whatever detail I could learn. That period of my life was marked by joy and passion. I couldn’t believe the grace I had found. It overwhelmed me and flooded my soul. I wanted to talk to everyone I could. Why did I quit doing that? Why did I stop writing in the notepad? Did I grow sour? Was it disappointment because I hadn’t become a rock star? Had God deprived me what I was due?
It’s worth mentioning my grandmother’s mother. Mamaw, we called her. She lived in a nu
rsing home in town and my mother took my sister and me to visit every week or two. Cathy and I hated going—it scared the daylights out of us. Mamaw was old and cranky and the nursing home reeked of urine. Mamaw claimed she hadn’t sinned in fifty years, not since becoming a Christian.
It’s an absurd claim, but that’s what Granny grew up with. The more years we spend in the church, the more insulated we become with fellow believers who look and talk and dress the same as us. We rarely see the big-ticket sins being committed, the ones making the Top 10 lists. Over time, the prayer requests in our small groups strike more disingenuous and hollow.
When PCC was small, still meeting in the Seventh Day Adventist church, we went once a month to serve ice cream at a homeless shelter in Santa Monica. One night, we met a man there: Stefan, a transvestite. He started coming to church on Sunday. Every week, he sat in the front row. He attended our Bible study. It was great. We enjoyed having him.
We have an image of how a Christian is supposed to look, and we try to model the church and its people accordingly. But we forget one essential truth: grace. That Jesus received the tears of the harlot rather than the praise of the Pharisees, the moralists of his day, should leave us floored. It begs the question: What if a harlot walked through the door of one of our churches?
Arresting Grace Page 15
