Deceived (12 page)

The moon became a blur. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Arty,” she whispered. “I wish I could see you one more time. One more . . .”

Sunday

8:35 a.m.

Rocky woke up crying.

In the dream, she and Arty were kids again and playing at the park. The park was by their house. They used to play there all the time. Arty would push her on the swings and then twirl her on the roundabout.

When Arty was doing that, she felt safe. Happy, too, because he loved her. Even though they fought sometimes, she never doubted his love. Not because he said it, but because of what he did.

In the dream, Arty was on the slide and was about to come down to the sand, where Rocky was waiting.

But he hesitated. He was looking at her. His face was sad. He was crying. She asked him what the matter was. He didn’t answer but slid down. When he got to the end, he went into the sand and disappeared.

The Rocky in the dream cried out.

The Rocky on the sofa in Geena’s apartment felt herself shaken awake.

“Hey, hey,” Geena was saying.

Rocky put her face on Geena’s leg until the tears stopped.

Geena stroked her hair. You had to hand it to her, Rocky thought. She was a little flighty, yes. Sometimes the two sides of Geena’s brain were like a couple of hummingbirds looking for nectar. They’d pause at a thought every now and then, wings beating wildly, then be off to another flower or guru or movement or cause. Always wanting to drink in life, experience it, and most of all take flight.

But say what you would about Geena Carter, Rocky loved her like a sister because she had a heart the size of Texas. And she’d come to Rocky at just the right time.

Five years ago, Rocky was singing, as she often did, in an isolated stretch of Griffith Park. It was her favorite spot in LA, between two hillsides in a crook with trees, rock, ice plants, and grass. It took a bit of getting to, but that was the point. Not a lot of foot traffic. And you could see people coming. If she had to stop singing she could before any sound reached other ears.

It was her private lounge. There she sang show tunes and jazz favorites and big band. Those were the songs she liked. Upbeat. They were the songs that reached the deepest part of her heart.

In her spot in Griffith Park, she could let them all out in glorious solitude.

One cool fall day, Rocky had gone there straight from a scene out of a bad soap opera. Only unfortunately, it was a scene from real life,
her
real life. Jeremy was his name. Jeremy of the silver tongue, of the
I
love you for you who are.
That Jeremy. Six months they’d been together. One harried afternoon he’d made love to her, then asked her to please leave quickly, he had to get to an appointment. When she took too long he got mad, and then she found out why. There was a leggy blonde knocking on his door.

Funny thing was — if
funny
was even the right word — the blonde didn’t even seem to care. She waltzed in without so much as a second look. Jeremy gave a shrug, as if to say,
That’s life in the big city.

So Rocky, driving, then running almost blindly, went to her spot in the park and raged into the hillside, cried her tears into it, and screamed the name of Jeremy attached to all sorts of cathartic epithets and animal sounds.

When her rage was spent, she sang The Andrews Sisters. “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” to be exact. Their most famous song. If that couldn’t lift your spirits, you had none.

She practiced it once, then went for it again. She must have been really into it because when she got to the part where the voice did this bugle riff, just before “eight to the bar,” she noticed a woman just standing there, smiling.

“Keep going!” the woman said. “This is way cool.”

Rocky was too surprised to reply. Where had she come from? Was she some sort of urban wood nymph, sent to municipal parks to spy on innocent citizens? Just what did she think she was doing, invading like this?

Rocky was about to be angry when, without warning, she burst again into tears. Ashamed, all she could do was turn her back.

The woman came to her like an old friend and said, “Whoever he is, he isn’t worth it.”

Which brought Rocky up as short as a sparrow flying into a sliding glass door.

She said her name was Geena, and she loved whatever that song was. It turned out she had no idea who The Andrews Sisters were, and just talking about them took Rocky out of the dark clouds of Jeremy and into the sunshine of Geena Carter.

The sunshine that was now, once more, comforting her in her time of need.

9:58 a.m.

“Arty was so special,” Liz was saying. “So very special.”

The little church was packed, almost like they knew she would be there. Like they knew something important was going to be happening that morning. It was a little creepy. All those eyes on her. Those anxious, expectant eyes.

But she felt she was in total control. Like the way some comedians are when they’re clicking on a Vegas stage. Or when some really good lawyer has a jury eating out of his hand. That’s what Liz knew she had going on. It took over all the other feelings, covered them up, just the way Mama said they could be.

“You all knew him, you knew how special he was,” she said, then paused as several heads nodded. She heard sniffles and saw one older woman dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief.

These are alien beings, Liz thought, though she recognized some of the faces. Arty had brought people over to the house, and she’d gone with him to a few church things. But mostly his church life was separate, which was the way she wanted it.

“I wasn’t going to say anything today. I wasn’t going to come here. I’m still kind of in shock. But I’m here because I feel that Arty would want me to be here. That the Lord wants me to be here.”

She paused and looked to the side. Pastor Jon and Mac were sitting next to each other, nodding encouragement. This was a big deal for them. God was moving, oh yes.

Somebody said, “Amen.”

“You all know about the accident.” She paused, turning her head to each side of the church. They could see the Band-Aid on her forehead that way. “I have so much grief in my heart right now. But I know what to do about it. I know because Arty told me, and Pastor Jon and Mac. You see, I came here this morning so I could be baptized and give my life totally to God, forever and ever. And — ”

She was stopped by the applause and people shouting, “Amen!” and “Praise God!” Beatific expressions popped out all over.

Liz closed her eyes. She made it look like she might weep in a moment. The applause died down. The two hundred or so people in the little A-frame church went silent again.

“I want to give my life to the Lord Jesus,” Liz said. “I want to be made clean from the sins I’ve committed.”

More
Amens
.

“Pastor asked me if I wanted to say a few words. All I want to say is, you were Arty’s family, and I hope I can be part of that, too.”

An older woman stood up in the middle of the congregation and said, “Yes, you can, girl! God be praised!”

Several others echoed the sentiment. Liz smiled and looked to Pastor Jon. He came to her, put his arm around her shoulder, faced forward.

“You know me,” he said. “I don’t always stick to the plans. I think we ought to stop right now and just have Liz here go into the waters of baptism and everybody celebrate. That’ll be our church ser vice for today. How’s that sound to you?”

From the response, it sounded like everybody was as pleased as could be. Almost before she knew what was happening, Liz felt herself being led by a couple of the ladies toward a side door. They said something supportive, but she barely heard. She was overtaken by a sense of dread.

Waters of baptism? What happened to a person who went in without really believing? It wasn’t that she thought God would reach down with a bolt of lightning. But what if the water burned like it did when holy water hit the Devil?

She almost bolted. Thought about running, getting away. She could explain later. But then she was in a small cubicle with a robe, and they were waiting for her to put it on and go get wet.

She could hear Pastor Jon talking to the congregation as she undressed.

“. . . what we can do for her,” he was saying. “Be there, be ready with some meals, make sure she feels the support. And remember to give praise to God because we know Arty is with the Lord even now, and his wife, and all of us, will see him again.”

See him again?
Ice crystals formed on her spine. What if that was true? When she was little, she believed in ghosts for a while. It freaked her out that apparitions could be watching her in the shower. They haunted you.

Would Arty do that to her? What if she
did
see him again in some afterlife? What if he haunted her dreams? Was a disembodied head floating above her at night?

Ridiculous. You die, you become the stuff they sprinkle on gardens. You are one with the earth. Literally.

She never believed in that afterlife stuff, because she couldn’t believe that the white-haired man who shouted at her in church as a kid was going anywhere after he died, let alone heaven.

For some reason, that old pastor had singled her out. Hated her, she was sure. Mama wanted her to get some Sunday schooling and dropped her off at the nearest church. She didn’t want to go, but that was what Mama wanted for her daughter, and Mama had a way of getting people to do what she wanted.

So off Liz went to the Sunday school in the hot, white building that had one window air conditioner. It didn’t much work, and everybody sweated. Even the teacher, a plump old woman whose name Liz couldn’t remember. The teacher whose face always looked like it carried three days of rain.

Liz went twice to that Sunday school. The second time, the plump lady wasn’t there. A tall, skinny man in a suit stood in for her. Liz thought later he looked like Abraham Lincoln, if the president had a sour stomach and lived till he was seventy.

He came to give the kiddies a lesson about being good. He said you had to be, because when you died all your sins were going to be announced all over the sky for everyone who ever lived to hear about them.

She thought she heard him say it this way: “You’re gonna all have to give a count of yourself to God.”

Liz wondered how a person could count herself.

As he droned on about good and bad and sin, he kept looking at
her.
Making eye contact with
her
, even though there were fifteen, twenty kids in the room.

It made her a little mad. Because she was bored and didn’t want to be there in the first place. She didn’t want to be sitting there in the heat getting the beady eye from a scarecrow with white straw for hair.

When Sunday school was over, she was going to be the first out the door, but he stood there and told her to wait.

She didn’t want to wait. She tried to get out the door, but he grabbed her by the front of her dress. The other kids laughed. The scarecrow shooed them out and slammed the door.

It sounded like a gunshot.

Liz writhed in his grip.

“Stop it!” Scarecrow shouted.

His voice went through her like a cold spear. It froze her in place, her heart beating hard to keep her breathing.

Scarecrow’s grip was strong and he pulled her, then pushed her down onto a chair. He bent over her and said, “Now you listen to me, young lady. In this room and this church you will not bring your willful defiance.”

She had no idea what that meant, only that it was bad. She remembered what her friend Emily said once, that dogs can’t understand your words but they sure can understand your tone. Emily looked at her own dog, Ruffles, and started saying, “Bad dog, yes, you’re a bad dog, yes, you are,” in a high, friendly voice, and the dog wagged its tail.

Well, Scarecrow’s tone was the exact opposite, and Liz wasn’t wagging anything.

“You need to get some things straight,” he went on. His voice wheezed a little when he spoke, like there was a little pipe organ in his throat, and his words were the wind blowing across the pipes. “It does not matter how young you are or how old you are. By your fruit you will be known.”

What was he talking about? She didn’t have any fruit. She and Mama didn’t have an orchard or even a berry plant.

“I will tell you this,” Scarecrow said. “They that are not the elect will produce nothing but wickedness, but that is God’s decree for his glory. So, you see, you cannot fool God. And you cannot fool me.”

He bent over her even further, looking now less like a Scarecrow and more like a fire-breathing snake. With fangs.

Which is why she kicked him.

It was fear, pure fear, she would tell Mama later. But she knew then that wasn’t the whole truth. She knew she kicked him because she hated him and wanted to hurt him.

She ran all the way home. When Mama found out what happened, she told Liz to say put and got in their old Ford Escort and took off.

When she came back, she told Liz she’d never have to go back to Sunday school again. Later, when Liz was walking in town with Mama, they saw the scarecrow coming out of Franklin’s Hardware. He turned his back at once and walked fast away from them.

Much later, Liz learned that his name was Mr. Zeleny and that he had a daughter who had “fallen into sin” and had never come back.

As Liz finished putting on the baptismal robe now, she wondered if people really could fall so far they never came back. She wondered if that was about to happen to her. She was going to be dunked in a big box of water. Maybe she’d just sink in and not come out.

No. You can get through this. And quit thinking Arty can see you from
beyond the grave. Don’t get all creeped out now.

Just then she thought she really
did
have a choice. Right this second. She could come clean or go through with the phony baptism. Tell the truth about what happened or go down the line with the lie.

Whatever she chose, though, there was one thing certain: There’d be no turning back.

10:02 a.m.

Here is a Geena bonus, Rocky thought. Geena made the finest cup of coffee in the city. You can have your Starbucks and your Coffee Bean, your store-bought Seattle’s Best or any brand of your choosing. Geena had a way of grinding organic beans just right and making her own blends that beat them all.