Forsaken

by James David Jordan

  I didn’t fit the twelve-step mold as perfectly as I should have. For example, I couldn’t say that I’d ever hit some sort of wallow-in-your-own-excrement rock-bottom, not in the sense that I understood the group to mean it. I’d fallen to more of an isolated rocky ledge from where I could peek over into a dark pit. I constantly had the feeling that some invisible force, like a magnet, was pulling me toward the edge, trying to suck me into the pit. To me, that pit was rock bottom, and I had never quite reached it.

  At my third weekly meeting I made the mistake of describing this visualization to the group. All of them except Brandon concluded that the idea of the ledge and the pit posed a significant obstacle to my recovery, that it indicated I hadn’t fully admitted the depth of my problem. Brandon pushed his heavy glasses up on his nose. “Come on, folks. She’s not really on a ledge, and she’s not really in a pit. She’s in the basement of a church. It’s a metaphor.” The tone of his voice contained the unspoken addendum, you morons! He gave me a closed-lipped smile, which I later learned was his mechanism for hiding his crooked front teeth.

  After the meeting I caught Brandon in the church parking lot. “Thank you for sticking up for me.”

  He hitched his pants up under the overhang of his belly. “They didn’t mean anything. They just got caught up in your metaphor and couldn’t get out. After all, the last thing you want in a church basement is to get caught in a girl’s metaphors.”

  I laughed. “Good point. I’ll be sure to keep them covered from now on.”

  He took his wallet out of his pocket, pulled out a business card, and handed it to me. It was white, and the only things on it were the name Brandon and a phone number. “That’s my cell. You can call me any time you need help. I don’t sleep much, so you don’t have to worry about calling late.”

  “Did you have these printed just for these meetings?”

  “Sure. I seem to be better at supporting other people than I am at supporting myself.”

  I put the card in my purse.

  He opened his car door. “You’re the first famous person to come to our meetings. I like to rub elbows, you know?” He gave me the closed-lip smile again.

  “You know who I am?”

  “Any person with a television and a brain knows who you are. That means the others aren’t likely to identify you, so you don’t have to worry.” His eyes brightened. It was obvious he enjoyed being the cleverest person in the room.

  “They seem like nice people to me.”

  “They’re very nice people. I’m just gigging them a little. It can be a bit of a housewives’ club.”

  “I noticed you were the only guy there tonight. Is that the way it usually is?”

  “About half the time. You met Jason last week. He travels a lot, so he doesn’t make all the meetings.”

  I lowered my voice. “I really don’t want anyone to know I’m coming to these meetings. It could cause real problems for Simon.”

  “Don’t worry, I know the rules. We must protect Simon at all costs.”

  I squinted at him.

  He shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets. Before I could ask what he meant, he nodded toward my purse. “Be sure to use that number on my card if you need me.” He got into the car.

  “I will. Hey, who do you call when you need support?”

  “My mother.” He waved. “See you next time. I’m late for a Dread tournament. In my spare time, I’m a gamer.”

  Over the next couple of months I came to understand why Brandon hadn’t answered my question seriously. He was always there for me, and I understood from others in the group that they also relied on him. Not a single person could recall, though, a time when he’d ever called one of them for support.

  Eventually Brandon became my recovery partner. That meant that he was essentially my twelve-step mentor. Probably the smartest person I’d ever met, he leaned more than I did toward the classic addictive personality profile. He ate too much, drank too much coffee, and spent an alarming portion of his non-working hours playing video games. To top things off he was an accomplished and unapologetic computer hacker. Each of those compulsions seemed worthy of its own intervention, but he was content to prioritize his treatment and focus on licking his alcohol problem.

  During my first couple of months in the program, I called him quite a few times, usually after midnight. Whenever I got the urge for bourbon, I’d ring him up and he’d talk me into having a diet soda instead. We discussed all sorts of things, but one call sticks out in my mind. I was lying in bed with my head propped on a pillow and had been talking to him for twenty minutes or so. The conversation had somehow turned to Simon. I asked Brandon why he’d never gone back to work for Simon after he got help with his drinking.

  “I did go back, about six months ago.”

  “What were you doing for him?”

  “Keeping the books, just like before.”

  “What happened?”

  “I quit.”

  “When?”

  “Just after Kacey was kidnapped.”

  I sat up and switched the phone to my other ear. “Why?”

  “He was paying me too much.”

  “Would you please be serious?”

  “Boy, your sense of humor really goes in the ditch after 2:30 in the morning.”

  I looked at the clock. It was 2:45. “Why did you quit?”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “Brandon?”

  “It was nothing. Little stuff, that’s all. Listen, are you going to be all right tonight?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine now.”

  “I’m going to get some sleep then. You call me back if you need me, okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks for talking. You’re a life saver.”

  After I hung up, I took a sip of my soda. Was it my imagination, or had he rushed off the phone to avoid telling me why he quit? I closed my eyes and rehashed the last part of the conversation. Before long my leg jerked and startled me awake.

  I was no longer sitting up. My head was on the pillow and the covers were under my chin. I opened one eye and looked at the clock: 3:45. Without opening my other eye, I reached over and flicked off the lamp.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-THREE

  THE BEST THING ABOUT Simon’s discovery of my drinking problem was that I got to spend time with him and Kacey again. At first he checked on me every day, in person or by phone. He also added an additional session at the gun range for Kacey every week. Within a week or so, he gave me an open invitation to drop by for dinner whenever I wanted.

  Since I’d never been a daily drinker, their constant presence was more important to my treatment than the twelve-step program. As long as I had somebody who cared about me, I didn’t feel the need to drink. I was beginning to understand that loneliness had always been my real problem. The equation was simple: family equals no loneliness equals no drinking. It worked like a charm.

  During that time Simon and I often sat in the family room and talked. Kacey had enrolled in summer school to make up the credits she lost during the spring semester, so most evenings she was either at the library or studying in her room. Typically, Simon would put the Rangers game on the television and pick up a book to read. When something of note happened in the game, he would look up and check the replay.

  It was not unusual for me to sit with him until the game was over. I never really asked if I could, we just sort of fell into the habit. I quickly got hooked on baseball. Often I would be the one to shake him from his reading by yelling, “Get to it, get to it—yeah!” or some other admonition to one Ranger or another.

  By this time I no longer had romantic fantasies about Simon pulling me into his arms. On several occasions I tried to re-conjure them in my mind, but they just weren’t there anymore. The daydreams stopped cold after he told me about his son. I was happy, though, with our relationship—not just with Simon, but with Kacey too. It was comfortable. It was family.

  It soon became clear that
Simon’s theme for the summer was martyrdom. He bought a dozen or so books on the topic and raised the issue from time to time as we sat in front of the television. One evening in mid-July we ordered pizza for dinner. When we finished eating, Kacey grabbed her backpack and headed for the library. Simon sat in his favorite chair, reading a book entitled Heroes of the Christian Faith. I sat on the couch with Sadie curled up next to me. I thumbed through a celebrity magazine with one eye on the Rangers game.

  I settled on a favorite player, Billy Johnston, the Rangers’ second baseman. He was fast and scrappy, and he’d established himself as the team leader in a season in which they had rallied from a poor start to challenge for the division title. Johnston was batting with two outs and runners on second and third when Simon took off his reading glasses.

  “It’s amazing what some of these people went through.”

  I didn’t take my eyes off the television. “What people?”

  “The martyrs in this book. Listen to this one.”

  I smiled politely, but the count on Johnston had gone to two-and-two. I shifted my position in my seat to make it easier to monitor the game with my peripheral vision while he spoke.

  “It’s around the year two hundred,” he said. “The Roman emperor decrees that no one can become a Christian or a Jew, period. He apparently didn’t intend to bother people who were already Christians and Jews. He just didn’t want any new ones around.”

  Johnston doubled off the wall, knocking in two runs, but I was careful to keep one eye on Simon.

  “There’s a twenty-two-year-old Roman woman named Perpetua, who has recently given birth to a baby boy. Then there’s another woman who is Perpetua’s slave. Her name is Felicity.”

  I turned both eyes toward him. “They had people named Felicity in Rome? I thought that was a Beverly Hills thing.”

  “Me too.” He held up the book. “That’s what it says, though. Anyway, to top things off, Felicity is pregnant. Perpetua and Felicity both become Christians, and the Romans find out. The officials round them up, along with a group of other converts.

  “The authorities practically beg them to renounce their faith. That’s all they have to do to go free. They’re in a horrible situation. Perpetua’s frantic about her baby. Felicity is worried about her baby-to-be. Some members of the local church bribe the jailer, and he allows them to bring Perpetua’s son to her. She keeps him in the dungeon with her and nurses him. In the meantime, Felicity is now eight months pregnant. You can imagine that a dungeon is a pretty uncomfortable place to be pregnant.”

  I pulled one leg up underneath me. By this time I had lost track of the baseball game. “I don’t think I want to hear how this turns out. It’s going to make me cry, isn’t it?”

  “What doesn’t make you cry?”

  “You’re a laugh a minute.”

  He smiled. “I think you can tough this one out. Now would you let me finish?”

  “Sorry.”

  “So they have the trial, and Perpetua’s father shows up. He holds her baby in front of her and begs her to renounce Jesus and live. The Roman officials also plead with her. Apparently, no one really wants to kill these two. But Perpetua refuses, and so does Felicity. They are sentenced to death. They’re to be taken to the amphitheater during the next gladiator games and torn apart by wild animals.”

  I groaned.

  Simon wagged his finger. “No, no, wait a minute. There’s a catch that might save Felicity. Roman law doesn’t allow the execution of a pregnant woman. Felicity is actually upset by this, though, because she doesn’t want to be spared while the rest of the Christians die. Anyway, it becomes a moot point. Felicity gives birth to a baby girl two days before the execution. Her daughter is immediately adopted by a local Christian family.”

  “You may as well give me the details. How does it end?”

  “They go to the amphitheater. The soldiers flog them in front of the crowd. Then they let the wild animals loose. The women are mauled and half-eaten. At the end, the soldiers stab them just to make sure they’re dead.”

  “What happened to Perpetua’s baby?”

  “It doesn’t say. I assume she had a husband. He probably took care of it.”

  “Thank you so much. My evening wouldn’t have been complete if I hadn’t heard that story.”

  He laughed. “You’re welcome. Seriously, though, it’s inspiring what they did.”

  I clicked off the television. Sadie raised her head, but when she saw we weren’t getting up, she rested her chin on my leg and closed her eyes. I scratched her behind the ears. “You’ve been reading about martyrs for weeks. I have to believe there’s a reason, and I’m worried that I know what it is. You’re really going to do this missionary thing, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am. I’m going public with it in a week or so.”

  I scratched Sadie faster—so fast that she opened one eye and peered up at me.

  “And why do you care?” he said.

  I took a deep breath and let it out. “Because you and Kacey are the closest thing I’ve had to a family for a long time. I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want it to end. There, I said it. Does that satisfy you?”

  His voice softened. “I’m glad you feel that way. I want you to feel that way. You’ll always be welcome here, Taylor.”

  That’s when the question entered my mind again, the same question that Meg had raised: Why was Simon so willing to welcome me into his life? He had only known me for a brief time. I was a proven lush, and I hadn’t demonstrated any strong religious beliefs. Why had he allowed me in so quickly and willingly?

  “Thank you,” I said. “That means a lot to me.”

  He smiled and nodded at the dog. She’d fallen asleep with her chin on my leg. “And Sadie welcomes you too.”

  The conversation died a natural death, but the question lingered. I assumed there was no single answer—and that whatever answers did exist would be complex and obscure. As it turned out, I was wrong. The answer was simple. I just didn’t know it yet.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-FOUR

  ONCE SIMON MADE UP his mind to promote the idea of a televised debate between Christianity and Islam, publicizing the idea was no challenge. He had been a huge international personality before the kidnapping. His additional notoriety since had ensured nearly immediate access to any talk show in America. The big issue was which show to choose for the initial announcement.

  After much discussion, Elise and Simon decided on the Lawrence Sylvan show. Sylvan had been the leading political talk show host for more than ten years. No friend to evangelicals, he had roasted religious leaders many times, always probing for controversy. Elise and Simon felt that of all the major talk show hosts, Sylvan would be the most likely to seize on the debate issue and keep it—and the controversy—alive as a tool to drive his ratings.

  The evening that Simon was to announce his debate challenge, Elise commented that he was the calmest she’d ever seen him before a public appearance. After the makeup people finished with him, the three of us sat in the green room of the television studio. He munched cashews and read a Sports Illustrated.

  Elise pushed a handwritten page of notes in front of him. “I’ve written down some talking points that you can refer to when the camera’s not on you.”

  Simon flipped a page of his magazine. “Thanks, but there’s no need.”

  She frowned. “You know you have a tendency to forget things when the lights come on.”

  He looked up and smiled. “I’m fine, really.” He bent over and tightened his shoelaces. Just as he finished, a slender blonde in a tight skirt walked into the green room.

  “Reverend Mason, Lawrence is ready for you.”

  Simon brushed a cashew off his corduroy sport coat. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Elise stepped in front of him. “One last hair check.” She brushed at the close-cropped hair above his ears.

  He swatted her hand. “Good grief, Elise, I don’t have any hair!” He stepped
around her and followed Miss Tight Skirt out of the room.

  Elise clutched her notebook to her chest and glanced at me. I pretended to be looking at a magazine. She brushed at a wrinkle in her dress and sat down.

  As Elise and I waited for Simon to go on the air, we both gave an inordinate amount of attention to the commercial running on the flat-screen television on the wall. A talking dog was selling air freshener. When the commercial ended, the intro to the Sylvan show played. The camera cut to a close-up of Lawrence Sylvan smiling out from behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He sat behind a black marble-topped table, directly across from Simon. Each had a light-blue coffee mug in front of him with the network logo facing the camera.

  “We’re pleased to have with us tonight, The Reverend Simon Mason, in his first television appearance since his press conference shortly after his daughter, Kacey, was released by her kidnappers a few months ago. Welcome, Reverend Mason.”

  Simon smiled. “Thank you. I’m glad to be here, Lawrence. Please call me Simon.”

  “Okay, Simon. So how is Kacey?”

  “She’s doing fine. She’s really something. Much tougher than I am, that’s for sure.”

  “She really is remarkable. I wish you’d brought her tonight. We would have been happy to have her.”

  “You’ve got kids, I know, Lawrence. You can understand why my sister and I do our best to keep Kacey out of the spotlight.”

  “Of course. Has she had any lingering problems, either physical or emotional? It was a harrowing experience.”

  “She’s getting along very well. As I said, she’s pretty tough.”

  “That’s great to hear. I know you’re not here to talk about Kacey, but if I hadn’t asked about her my viewers would have rioted. She must be the most popular young lady in America right now.”