The Five Lives of John and Jillian

by Greg Krehbiel

  “Champagne then,” Paul said, and came back from the kitchen a minute later with two bottles.

  “The food’s going to get cold,” Liz scolded, but nobody cared. The children thought this meant that all rules were off and they started in on the pies. In a matter of minutes Liz was crying for joy at the delightful chaos that had overtaken her dining room.

  * * *

  Late in the evening when the kids were all tucked into sleeping bags in the basement, the adults were sitting around the living room, sipping port.

  “So this is the witch that charmed you under a moonlit sky?” Paul asked.

  “Former witch,” Jillian said. “We’re both going to be confirmed in a couple months.”

  “Former witch, former skeptic, and the bambino, who will be the best of both of us,” John said, pulling Jillian a little tighter and raising his glass.

  Everyone clinked their glasses and offered their congratulations yet again, then begged for the whole story, told in order, from the beginning.

  “You’re not going to get the whole story,” John said apologetically, “but what I can tell you I will. It all started when some chump was trying to steal my radio.”

  What God Has Bent

  Chapter 1 – The Book of Shadows

  March 12, 1998

  Reaching into his trousers pocket John felt the small, smooth cardboard cover of the ever-present book of matches, and it dawned on him at once what those matches implied.

  Ever since reading The Chronicles of Narnia with Jillian on their honeymoon drive to Nags Head, the two of them played a game that involved assessing their ability to survive in Narnia with the things they had on them at the time. Since Aslan might pull them out of this world and into Narnia at any instant, and into any kind of situation – at sea, in a desert, in summer or winter – one of them would pick a time and a place where they would land, and the other would have to figure out how they would get by.

  The packet of matches held a deeper significance than simply wanting to rig the game. As his fingers brushed past the matches to take hold of his keys, John realized that he didn’t trust Aslan to make sure he had the things he needed. And realizing that, he was ashamed. After all, God had certainly been active in his life over the last few years. Couldn’t he trust Him to provide such a simple thing as fire?

  He tossed the matches into the kitchen trash can, but as soon as he did it he realized it was an empty gesture. For Jillian, it would have been a sacramental action – an affirmation of trust that would have nurtured whatever faith she had. John had simply emptied his pocket of an embarrassing encumbrance.

  He shook his head clear of the distraction and reached into the kitchen cabinet for the Pyrex measuring cup. He filled it to the one and a half pint line, and then put it in the microwave for four minutes. While the microwave heated the water, he retrieved the day’s newspapers and set a pair of cups and plates on the breakfast table. The smell of bran and raisin muffins in their last three minutes of baking set his stomach rumbling.

  The morning routine of his bachelor days – calisthenics, shower, coffee, bran muffin and news – hadn’t been lost so much as glorified by married life. There were no cold, store-bought muffins any more. Jillian dutifully mixed batter every night before bed and John faithfully spooned them into non-stick pans and loaded them into the oven before his shower. Sometimes she joined him there as well.

  The ritual before the trip to the commuter train had become the very icon of domestic tranquility as the two of them – John, in his starched shirt and tie, and Jillian, usually in her bathrobe and fuzzy slippers – sipped Jillian’s latest coffee concoction and compared headlines from the competing Washington papers.

  As John returned the Pyrex cup to the shelf above the sink, he paused and inhaled deeply, then waved the cupboard door back and forth a few times, catching the fragrance of Jillian’s collection of dried herbs. He closed his eyes and smiled.

  He remembered how much he loved her enthusiasm for herbs and gardening. It was, in fact, her variations on coffee that played an important role in bringing them together two years before. She had between 10 and 20 different additives, depending on the time of year, and she mixed them, sparingly, with the coffee she ground every Saturday morning. It made the morning cup a little more adventurous, and usually better. John never complained, but Jillian had the sense to revert to plain coffee from time to time.

  The other morning ritual was comparing two ideologically opposed papers, which provided both of them endless amusement, and things to discuss at breakfast. Although the papers claimed to report on the same town and the same issues, what they really did was prove that news is a subjective art. The exercise kept John both well-informed and terribly skeptical. Sometimes he wondered if the most reliable “news” in the paper was the commentary. At least it didn’t pretend to be anything but opinion about current events.

  As John poured the morning’s offering into their mugs – his an unadorned, cobalt-blue cup, hers an earthenware mug, hand-crafted by a Wiccan friend – Jillian shuffled into the kitchen, kissed John good morning, and irreverently dropped an old notebook on top of her newspaper.

  John recognized it at once, and the very sight of it created a ball of anxiety in his stomach.

  “I thought you’d thrown that away,” he said, gesturing toward the leather-bound, hardback book. A series of runes were etched into the cover and spine.

  “No, and it’s a good thing I didn’t,” Jillian said. “Fr. Devlin wants me to teach a class at the parish about my Wiccan ways.”

  John scowled at her, and she looked back with an innocent, “What did I say?” look.

  “I wish you wouldn’t use the present tense like that.”

  Jillian’s raised eyebrows showed either amusement or disbelief. “Don’t be silly. You know I’ve given all that up.”

  “Apparently not,” he said, looking at the book.

  Jillian smiled, but looked at the book significantly, and then up at John, and said in an odd tone, “You act as if you’re scared of it, John. It’s just a book. Don’t get all superstitious on me.”

  John looked away and pressed his lips thoughtfully. A thousand thoughts ran through his head in a moment, but as he looked back at Jillian, his head cleared, he reached across the table and took her hand. “I almost lost you over that Wiccan stuff. I don’t like it.”

  With an impish smile, she said, “You forget that I found you because of this ‘Wiccan stuff.’”

  John snorted and let go of her hand. Her mood confused him and he didn’t want to start an argument, so he reached for his muffin. “So why does the good reverend want you to tell people about Wicca?” he asked as he turned to the inside pages of The Washington Times.

  “He said they’re doing some sort of study on comparative religion, and someone was kind enough to mention that I used to dabble in witchcraft.”

  “Should be interesting,” John said in the half-distant voice of a man who’s beginning to read his newspaper.

  “Before I lose you to ... whoever, there, all my appointments are late in the day today, so would you fix dinner? About seven?”

  “Uh-huh,” John grunted, digging into an essay by Thomas Sowell, his favorite columnist.

  Jillian continued to look at John – or rather, at the top of his head over the paper – and then she smiled. It had taken her a few months to realize that he wasn’t intentionally slighting her when the newspaper drowned out her voice. But it had been necessary, for her sanity’s sake, to break him of the habit of penciling notes in the margins.

  With a sidelong glance at John, she pushed aside The Washington Post and flipped through the pages of her old Book of Shadows, a relic from her days as a wannabe witch. It was more of a journal than anything else, but it was the closest thing she had to a genuine spell book. She laughed inwardly at her early attempts to discover her “witch name” through scrying, tarot cards and lots. But it was hard not to look back on those days with fond feelings.
She had been sincere, and she had felt that her searching had a purpose, or at least an object – an end – which was more than she had now in her middle-class, married, Episcopal existence.

  Not that she was unhappy. John turned out to be a better husband than she had hoped, despite a few quirks. Her business was in the black, barely, and she enjoyed the work. She and John continued to meet weekly with the literary group that had been instrumental in bringing them together. Life was good.

  And yet there was something missing, and somehow the look and feel – the very smell – of her Book of Shadows took that small, open place in her heart and made it swell and gape at her. When she had been a pagan, she was investigating spiritual mysteries. She had been a detective on the trail of ancient spirits and long-lost truths, buried under ecclesiastical censure and modern prejudices like some ancient and magical amulet under thousands of years of dust and debris.

  That was gone now, and she wondered what she had traded for it. Was Truth just a big bore, after all? Fr. Devlin seemed to think so. His sermons focused more on what he didn’t know and couldn’t believe about God than the reverse.

  Jillian tried to think about this class she was supposed to teach and realized she had a sneaking suspicion that Fr. Devlin wanted to study other religions because he found his own so unsatisfying. She pictured his ever-present, smug smile, which seemed to say that it was all a bit of a joke to him, and he knew that everyone else was merely playing along, just for fun. After all, no thinking person would take any particular religion that seriously.

  She looked up from her book and studied John for a moment. He had no such complaints. He didn’t seem as drawn to the experience of mystery as Jillian had been. It was enough for John to know and believe and act, she thought. That wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted to feel as well.

  Jillian sighed and turned back to her book. It didn’t take long to page to the end of the notes in her handwritten tome, which stirred an old regret. Kathy, who had been Jillian’s tutor in Wicca, didn’t think Jillian’s fascination with her Book of Shadows was healthy and encouraged her to leave the journal alone for a while and get used to living the life – taking part in the rituals and developing the mindset of a Wiccan. Maybe after she was comfortable with that she could go back to her Book of Shadows, if she wanted. But now Jillian wanted more – a way to draw her mind back into those heady days and feel what she felt then.

  She almost wished she could go back, even now, although she knew that was out of the question. She had rediscovered the faith of her youth and rededicated herself to her baptismal vows. Objectively, she believed in the risen Savior, not the corn god. But in her heart, she wondered.

  In any event, she thought, it would drive John completely crazy.

  John set down his paper three minutes before it was time to leave for the train and gave Jillian his full attention – or whatever he could spare from the last sip of his coffee. She reiterated the dinner schedule and reviewed the week’s plans (more for her benefit than his). He kissed her goodbye and left, on time to the minute.

  Jillian sat and stared into nothingness for a moment. The sound of the motor in John’s car brought her back to reality. She dropped her dishes in the sink, went back to her sewing room and removed a stack of material from the top of a stained, foot-locker sized wooden box with a padded seat on the hinged lid. As always, her stomach clenched slightly as she opened the lid, and she wondered how long the deception could continue. As a general rule, John left her work room alone. It was safe enough, and while she feared he might discover the stack of letters and photographs in the shoe box at the bottom, part of her wished he had already found it.

  She shook her head and reached for a different box. A hand-carved cedar box with brass hinges. She emptied its contents on the padded seat: the two knives – her black-handled, double-edged athame and a smaller, white-handled knife – a pewter cup, a flat, brass pentacle, a few candles of various sizes and colors, a flint and some tinder, an amulet or two, and several other things Jillian had forgotten about and wasn’t quite sure what they were for.

  She spread a linen table cloth on the floor and placed the objects in order. They would provide an appropriate display for her Sunday School class.

  With that thought she laughed out loud. The idea of arranging these things on a table in the front of the sanctuary at St. Anne’s .... But then she choked off the laugh and fell silent. It wasn’t really a joke. At least John wouldn’t think it was.

  “It’s just a book,” she had said when John saw her Book of Shadows. But now she wasn’t so sure.

  These Wiccan things represented her apostasy – her rejection of Christianity. Some Wiccans acted as if they embraced the craft on its own merits, but Jillian always sensed an undertone of rebellion against some other faith, usually Christianity. It was frequently more a matter of what they did not want to believe, or be associated with, than a genuine, heartfelt faith in the tenets of Wicca.

  Was it appropriate to bring these Wiccan objects into God’s house? Again, she almost laughed at herself. Two years ago she would have brought them with a carefree ease, but John was rubbing off on her. What she liked to think of as her emotional spontaneity was frequently just an excuse for moral or intellectual laziness. Bringing pagan religious symbols into a church wasn’t something she should do lightly.

  When she and John were dating, she’d insisted on an integrity that matched beliefs and values with actions. She had insisted on no sex until they were married. Not because of moral principles, but because sex implied the union and intimacy of marriage. Sex outside of marriage seemed like a lie to her. An act of intimacy without the promise of intimacy.

  How did that idea of integrity justify this? What kind of integrity allowed her to bring her Wiccan wares into the church?

  She decided she’d better talk it all over with Fr. Devlin. Her first business appointment for the day was lunch with a client in Bethesda, so she had plenty of time to shower and visit the priest. She folded the linen cloth around the collection of oddments and headed for the bathroom.

  “You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.”

  St. Paul’s words came to her mind unbidden, and it surprised her. She couldn’t even remember where that passage was, or when she had read it.

  She turned and looked back at the linen cloth. “Just a glance and I’m getting spooky again,” she murmured, and then headed for the shower.

  Chapter 2 – St. Anne’s

  “Father will be along in a minute,” the church secretary said. “You can wait for him in his office.”

  This was her first visit to Fr. Devlin’s office, and she almost gasped when she looked inside. The nice wallpaper, the leather chairs, the large oak desk and the Tiffany lamp made her feel like she needed to check her stockings for a run.

  A brand new Macintosh computer and printer sat on a shelf behind the desk, but the floor-to-ceiling oak bookcases that lined the walls had more photos and knick-knacks than books. She glanced at the titles on a center shelf, between two silver bookends.

  Essential Buddhism. Who Wrote the Bible? Why I am Still a Christian. Living in Sin? A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality.

  Jillian shook her head and turned away.

  The dark-stained desk had a phone and a small reading lamp, but she couldn’t see a Bible or a prayer book. She eventually found them on a side table. They didn’t look particularly handy, or worn.

  There were a few lavish paintings on the front wall. David and Bathsheba. Lot and his daughters in the cave. Judah and Tamar. And there was a sculpture on a stand in the corner. An angel with an arrow and a woman in some sort of rapture. She thought it might be St. Theresa.

  A moment later there was a gentle knock and Fr. Devlin entered.

  “Jillian. It’s so good to see you,” the young priest said as he poked his head into his office. “My! What a dress? I wish everyone dressed like that when they came for a visit.”

  “I’ll
be heading straight to an important lunch,” she explained. “One of my clients is going to introduce me to her friends. Networking. You know.”

  Fr. Devlin glanced at his clock – it was only 10:30 – and the beginning of a smile touched the corners of his mouth, but he turned his head as if to keep Jillian from seeing.

  “So what can I do for you?,” the priest asked, taking one of the chairs in front of his desk and gesturing for Jillian to sit in the other.

  “It’s about this class you want me to teach,” she said. “On Wicca. I was looking through some of my things this morning, and something doesn’t seem right about it. The adult education classes are usually in the sanctuary, aren’t they?”

  Fr. Devlin nodded.

  “Well .... I was thinking about bringing some of the things we used to use in Wiccan rituals.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” Fr. Devlin interrupted.

  “It would be easier to explain some of the practices that way – but ... I’m uncomfortable with the idea of bringing them into the sanctuary. It seems inappropriate.”

  The priest raised his eyebrows and made a clucking sound with his tongue. “Ah,” he said. “And you’re concerned that these things are ...?”

  Jillian blushed slightly. “Um ... Wicked. At least not Christian. It’s what they represent that bothers me.”

  “What kinds of things are we talking about?” Fr. Devlin asked. His face was the picture of friendliness, but there was a touch of disdain in his tone.

  “I brought them, actually.” Jillian opened a large paper bag and unfolded the linen cloth. She set the contents on a corner of the priest’s desk.

  “They don’t look evil to me,” Fr. Devlin said.

  “Do you know what they’re used for?” Jillian asked, taking the athame by the handle.

  Fr. Devlin smiled. “There’s something seductive about a woman with a ritual knife,” he said quietly, and in a curious tone.