American Savior (9 page)

“Fine,” Jesus said.

“They have both bases covered pretty well,” I said. “The right loves Maplewith; the left likes Alowich. What I’m wondering is, where do you fit in?”

“The middle,” Jesus said.

“Everybody wants the middle. The closer you get to the middle, the more votes you get. Poli-Sci 101.”

“I’m running on the beatitudes.”

There was a stunned silence in the front seat. After a minute, I said, “You mean blessed are the meek and so on? Those beatitudes?”

“Exactly.”

“They’ll hammer you on national defense,” Zelda said, voicing my thoughts. “They’ll say, ‘What do you propose if the U.S. is attacked again, turn the other cheek?’ People will mock you.”

“It would not be the first time.”

“But would you say that, really? Turn the other cheek, I mean?”

“I said it before, didn’t I?”

“But, if you’re head of a nation and you do that, you’ll … you’ll go the way of Tibet. The enemy, whoever it is, will come in, torture people, kill millions, take over the country in a week. You have to get fifty or sixty million votes to be elected president. Say something like that and you won’t get two million. It would be like saying, ‘I want to take from the rich and give to the poor.’ Nice idea. But a presidential candidate says that and he might as well run off to, I don’t know, Venezuela or something. You’d be finished.”

“Let me handle it,” Jesus said. “I think I can say it in a way that makes
sense to people. We’re not going to hand the country over to the bad guys. I am not naive.”

“I’m glad to hear you say there
are
bad guys.”

“Of course there are.”

“Why?” Zelda said.

“What do you mean, why?”

“Why are there bad guys? Why did you make them, or why did your mother and father make them? It’s a personal question; it has nothing to do with strategy. I’ve always wondered. Every day I deal with people who’ve been raped, or abused, or abandoned by their spouse, or something like that. And I’ve always wanted to ask you why you let that happen?”

“The laws of earth,” he answered. “It’s not that way everywhere. Once you get off this troubled blue sphere, there is not so much pain. This is the sphere of suffering. It is something you all, individually, have to figure your way out of. A life here, in the eyes of most of the rest of creation, even the great blessing of a human life here, is not considered a day at the beach. You work harder than souls in most of the incarnations. You suffer more pain, and more different types of pain. You worry much more—especially in the industrialized societies, where true peace of mind is rare. A lifetime on earth is the equivalent of a difficult childhood. Eventually you grow out of it. What scars and lessons you carry forward from this childhood, that’s completely up to you.”

“But why do you allow it to be this way?”

“It is the law.”

“But why can’t the law have no pain in it? Why can’t we all be happy to start out with? Why was there original sin or whatever it was? Adam and Eve and the apple, and so on?”

“Like this universe, you are engaged in a constant expansion of yourselves,” Jesus went on. “That expansion takes effort. Pain is involved in that effort. I could go into more detail, but now is not the time.”

“Why not? She’s asking an important question.”

“Too complicated for you.”

“Even for me?” I said.

“Especially for you.”

I looked in the mirror, and I was glad to see a smile at the corners of his mouth. So God had a sense of humor after all—all my golfing friends thought so.

“How about a hint, at least?”

“All right. When you have a dream, you feel it is absolutely real, correct?”

“Sure, sometimes.”

“And then you wake up and you realize it was not absolutely real.”

“Okay,” I said. “So this is the dream.”

“I have come, as I did last time, to show you how to awake from the dream.”

“Into paradise,” Zelda suggested.

“Yes, though even paradise is not static.”

“It’s like my work,” she said. “Not to compare your work and my work, but my job is to help people move beyond the memories and bad thoughts that haunt them.”

“A perfect analogy,” Jesus said. “You cannot snap your fingers and bring them peace. They themselves must do the work, though you and others can help them. Similarly, the saints and angels are helping you.… I shall tell you more in future conversations.”

“Why not now,” I said.

“Because at the moment I am interested in things political. The rally on Wednesday, for one thing. How are security preparations going?”

I told him things were going well, which was more or less the truth, but Zelda gave me a funny look, as if I had just lied to God, and then an awkward silence fell over us for a few miles. We pulled into a rest area because Jesus said he had to use the facilities.

We made a bathroom visit, then rendezvoused out in the eating area. That same awkwardness sloshed around among us, as if we’d grown close there in the car, and it had made us—Zelda and me at least—self-conscious. I bought three cups of coffee (Jesus likes it black, with two sugars), and we were standing out in the fresh air when I said to him, “You should prepare yourself for the spiritual shock of meeting the Thomas clan. We’re a bit … well, let me put it this way, I’m the most normal one of the bunch.”

“I will not be meeting them today,” Jesus said. He drank his coffee in gulps. “I am heading back to West Zenith now.”

“Now? But we’re going the other way.”

“I shall hitch a ride.”

“It’s not safe,” Zelda said.

“And I’m in charge of security. I won’t let you.”

That remark produced the first full smile I’d seen from him on that odd day. It was a phenomenal smile. His lips spread wide, revealing the perfect set of teeth. It made you happy to see that smile, made you hope for better things, and I began to think that maybe, just maybe, in spite of the beatitudes, he might do okay on the campaign trail.

“I will be fine,” he said. “Remember, I would like to start out from Zenith on the day following the kickoff rally. Ask your father to set up a schedule, Russell. He is our transportation guru, our logistics man.”

“Okay,” I said, though what I wanted to do was take him by the lapels of his sport jacket and shout, “The transportation guy? My dad? He’s lucky he can find his way home from work! Are you nuts!”

Jesus tossed his coffee cup in a trash barrel and put his hand on my right shoulder. I felt a tremor go through my body. Now, I should say that I had minimal experience with drugs, a few experimental moments in my college years, no inhaling, and so on. Lucky for me, I suppose, those experiments never resulted in any great thrill. But I had some experience with prescription painkillers, and I had used alcohol on a number of occasions to alter my mental state, so I was not unaware of the possibilities of chemical joy. His touch gave me a clearer sense of all that. It made me happy in a way I can’t describe. Happy, optimistic, confident. It lasted maybe half a minute after he took his hand away.

“Everything is fine exactly as it is,” Jesus said, before he walked away. For a few minutes after he touched me, I found that easy to believe.

We watched him cross three lanes of high-speed traffic, the median, and then three more lanes, as casually as if he were crossing a side street in a country town at six a.m. When he was safely on the other side, we got into my car and drove east.

FOURTEEN

It was only about twenty-five miles from the interstate rest area to the humble city of North Salem, where I had been born and raised and where my parents, Arnold and Maria Thomas, still lived. Given the city traffic, however, twenty-five miles translated into about forty minutes, plenty of time for Zelda and me to have one of the worst fights in our history.

Not fifteen seconds after we’d said our good-byes to Jesus and told him to be careful, she started in on me. “You are utterly, utterly disrespectful to him,” she said, pushing herself to the far side of the front seat.

“I’m respectful in my own way. You’re like a teenage girl with him. Lord this and Lord that. You’re so
wonderful-
looking, Lord.”

“Well, he is.”

“Flattery is not what he wants. He said so himself.”

“You’re jealous.”

“If so, I’m jealous of Jesus, and you’re jealous of fifty-year-old nurses. And, anyway, what’s there to be jealous about? He’s Jesus. He’s God. He’s celibate and so on. I’m not that jealous of celibate type guys.”

“He is not celibate.”

“How do you know?” I asked, and at that moment I thought she was going to tell me they had spent the night together, and if she had said that, I was going to pull the car over to the side of the highway and hand her the keys and I was going to be done with all of it—Zelda and the engagement, Jesus and the campaign. I was going to take my savings out of the bank and go to Bermuda or Belize or Saskatchewan for a long
vacation and then figure out a new existence for myself. A career as an atheist. A life on the streets. I was going to start my own hedge fund. That’s how deep the old bruises were.

“I can feel that kind of thing in a man. Celibate is the last thing he is.”

“Did he come on to you?” I asked, before I could stop myself. “Did you sleep with him or something?”

“You are disgusting. You really are.”

“I’m just asking. And you’re just not answering.”

“Some questions are not worthy of being answered.”

“And maybe some men are not worthy of being engaged to.”

“I didn’t say that. You have no faith in anybody, even yourself. It’s like you’re going through the motions with him. Did you really do the security stuff he asked you to?”

“Talk about questions that aren’t worth being answered.”

“Did you?”

“Of course I did. It’s all set. Chief Bastatutta himself told me everything is in place. Did you do the press stuff?”

She nodded, arms crossed, eyebrows and mouth squeezed into unhappy lines. “I wish you’d let go and trust for once in your life,” she said, in a less belligerent tone. “I’ve never given you one reason to doubt my faithfulness, not one, and you know it. He’s performed miracles, and chosen you for the most important work of your life. And you’re wavering inside.”

“I quit my job, Zelda. That’s not exactly a sign of wavering.”

“You quit your job for me. You were afraid you’d lose me if you didn’t believe in him.”

“Would I have?”

“I don’t know.”

“Honest, at least.”

“And I quit my
practice.
Do you have any idea what it feels like to leave forty-three people hanging, people who depended on you? Some of whom can barely get through a day without thinking of ending their lives?”

She started to cry. We went along for a few miles that way. The tall buildings at the center of the city came into view. The traffic thickened. I paid the toll and, after worming my way through the cars and trucks for another few miles, took the ramp that led to the bridge that crossed the river that separated North Salem from the sophisticated world, the world of atheists and journalists, the world of doubt, complications, moral relativity.

“Do you believe I love you?” Zelda asked, as we were in the middle of the span.

“Most of the time, yes.”

“Do you believe it’s possible for me to love you and worship him at the same time?”

“Sure, in principle. In reality, he’s so damn human-seeming that it’s hard for me. He’s handsome. Dresses well. The guy would make a great anchorman.”

“Can you let go of that anchorman obsession? Please! Do you think my dream in life is to be married to an anchorman?”

“No. It’s my dream in life. Some of them are pretty cute. Nice bodies. Plus—”

“Stop it.”

“I’m nervous. The family, you know.”

“
I’m
the one who should be nervous, Russell. And you’re changing the subject.”

“I need a drink,” I said.

“Changing the subject again.”

“My dad makes a decent martini.”

“And again. You can’t give yourself totally to him. God comes to earth, you hold back. Is that what it’s going to be like to be married to you? Are you going to be one of these husbands who lives behind his armor? Out with the guys all the time? Talking sports all the time? Sex at night and silence in the morning?”

“Am I like that now?”

“No, but the way you are with Jesus worries me.”

“The way
you
are with Jesus worries
me.
And here we are at the street where my parents live, and we’re right back to square one again. Perfect.”

“Your fault,” she said.

“And you’re the one who knows. The therapist. The one who sits in judgment as people parade their troubles before you. As if you don’t have any of your own.”

Which was a terrible thing to say, a stupid thing. But I am not the finest human being in the world, and I’m not going to make myself out to be for the convenience of this story. In fact, after worrying over it, I have decided to include this personal material precisely because it demonstrates my, our, humanity. For me, for all of us, being around Jesus didn’t suddenly turn us into perfect lovers and perfectly happy saints-on-earth. He came down into the grit and dust and nastiness of ordinary life, and, while it hardly seemed to touch him, the reverse was true also: his divinity did not wash off on us. We still had our own expanding to take care of, our own bad dreams to wake up from.

I found a parking space a block from my parents’ house, locked the car, and we walked toward the front steps with a good three feet of air between us, Zelda smoothing out the front of her dress and me chewing the inside of my cheek and remembering I hadn’t brought anything for a here-we-are gift. Which, in my family, was a kind of sin.

FIFTEEN

My parents live in a triple-decker. For those who don’t know, a triple-decker is three boxy, one-story apartments stacked on top of each other, usually with three porches front or back and a flat roof. In the old days in North Salem, it was mostly recent immigrants who lived in triple-deckers: the Irish and Italians and Jews, the big families from Nova Scotia or Russia who didn’t have much money and weren’t quiet. My parents belonged to that basic demographic—Mom from a clan of dark-headed Neapolitans, and Dad’s people from the no-man’s-land that has been Poland and Ukraine at various times in history. He was a typical Jew: big, athletic, terrible with money. And she was a typical Italian Catholic: blue-eyed, and a lousy cook. Despite their own weirdnesses, they had been good parents to me, and excellent parents to my brother Steven Anthony Bernie Thomas, or Stab for short. Stab had been born with particular challenges and still lived with our parents in the triple-decker, which they now owned. They occupied the top floor and rented out the two lower apartments.