I Am The Local Atheist (41 page)

She was dead.
It couldn’t be.

I stood up expecting to find somebody to hold onto, but there
was only empty air and falling rain too insubstantial to catch. My
knees buckled but I remained standing, crooked like an invalid. I
insulted the sky, “How dare you! How dare you!” but really I was
insulting God. I yelled so loud my throat ripped the ‘you’ out as a
scream – “HOW DARE YOU!” My legs could no longer hold me up and I
fell onto my side, face buried in green grass as the rain tortured
me with every last drop that fell from its bitter
clouds.

“
Look, David, I need to go.” Lisa was avoiding eye contact with
me.

“
Why?”

“
I think you need some time alone.” She started putting her
notes and books back into her carry bag.

“
A year and a half isn’t long enough?”

That stopped
her.

“
It’s not because of anything you’ve done David, please
understand that. It’s just all quite overwhelming to find out all
of this all at once.” She stood up but paused for a moment. “It’s
also because you remind me of a past that I don’t want to be
reminded of anymore. I have to let that part of me go.”

I was shocked. “Well how the hell do you think I feel now that
you’ve brought all this shit up about
my
past?”

“
I’m sorry, but I didn’t know that you were that close to
Serene.”

“
I told you I didn’t know anything but you just kept pushing.”
I felt myself trembling. I really didn’t want to lose another
friend. “You can’t just come back into my life, stir shit up and
then disappear.”

“
It wasn’t my intention to stir shit up David. And I certainly
had no intention of hurting you. Perhaps I just need time to think
about this all. It’s quite a shock to me David. All that time I
knew you and you were with Serene.”

“
It was long after what happened with you.”

“
I know, I don’t mean that. I was over that straight after it
happened…”

That hurt, but
it was a fair comment. My intentions hadn’t exactly been honourable
and she had never felt that way about me anyway.

“
I just mean that everything you’ve told me has brought up a
lot of questions for me, and I need to think about it, that’s
all.”

She looked
confused, but it didn’t scare me. She raised a hand to the cross
around her neck, held it tight and gave me a strained smile. “I’ll
give you a call over the next two weeks. We can get together and
watch some movies.”

I didn’t care.
“Sure. That sounds great.”

She turned and
walked out.

I sat in the chair looking out the window as birds bounced
from tree to tree, branch to branch, in the unkempt backyard. The
sky was blue, not pink; the grass was green, not purple. Nothing
mattered anymore. I felt the same way I did several months ago just
before I had started working, like I didn’t care about anything. It
was like I had gone through an entire experience without changing
for the better, or for the worse. The pain that I had been hiding
from had been dredged up from its darkest hiding place and laid out
in front of me to bear witness to, but now that same pain had
turned into a memory. A memory of where it all
began.

She lay in my
arms, head against my chest, fingers doodling over my abdomen; I
knew that her parents had been pressuring her to stop seeing me, I
knew because she told me out of share defiance… but they finalised
it by threatening to never allow her inside the house again if she
didn’t come back.

“
Not a very Christian thing for them to do,” I said. It reeked
of desperation though. They were losing their grip on their
daughter and had to do something, anything to get her back, even if
it meant taking a gamble.

“
I know, but they think you’re evil.”

“
Cellphones are evil.”

She punched me
in the side.

I laughed.
“You can stay with me. It’ll be alright.”

There was a
long pause as she scratched my chest with her fingernails. “I want
to, but I can’t. They’re my parents.”

So I knew that
it was coming, I knew that without her I would be alone, but it had
to happen… she couldn’t defy her own parent’s at someone else’s
expense, it just wasn’t in her to do that.

“
I love you Serene.”

“
Don’t say that” she whispered.

“
I’ve never felt this way before.”

“
I’m sorry.”

I felt the
edges of her lips move across my skin as she spoke, “I love you too
but,” her breath sliding down my side, long black hair sliding over
my shoulder, her face full of pain, “I can’t see you anymore.”
Tears fell from her eyes, her nose snivelled. “I can’t, I just
can’t. I’m so sorry.” She seemed so hopeless, like she had given up
completely.

I held on
tight, my right arm at her waist afraid to let go. I felt my body
begin to tremble. I knew that without her I would be alone but I
couldn’t stop her. Her hand reached down to mine, gently gripped it
and moved it aside. She propped herself up on an elbow and looked
at me, but I looked away not being able to stand seeing the mess of
tears on her beautiful face. There was nothing else that could be
done or said, so she threw the duvet off her and headed for the
door. She left without looking back. Her warmth was gone and the
cold air was creeping all over my torso, but all I could do was
stare at the ceiling. Stare and stare as though there was an escape
there, as though some blinding flash of light was going to blow me
out of the oblivion I was about to go through, but there wasn’t. No
light, no escape; just darkness and the sudden realisation that
loneliness had come to stay.

Chapter 7:

An Aversion to
Light

Part I

“
It’s so cold in this house.”

Lucas wasn’t
wrong about that. It didn’t help that the wood that I had been
poking and prodding in the fire place for the last half hour hadn’t
sparked any flames. I stared at the logs blackened on top but
glowing underneath. It was useless. The wood was too wet. The owner
had stacked the wood behind the house with only one wall as
protection from the South-Westerlies that blew in across the ocean.
The side that wasn’t protected was left out in the open. It was
stupid. The weather in Invercargill came from all directions and
took pity on no one; leaving your firewood uncovered was just
asking for it.

All the smoke
in the room that Lucas had been blowing out of his mouth was mixing
uncompromisingly with the smoke from the fire place every time I
jabbed it. I was adamant it was going to start swallowing us if
Lucas didn’t put his cigarette out, but he just shrugged his
shoulders whenever I mentioned it.

I poked and
prodded a couple more times before giving up. It was easier to just
sit in front of the fireplace and stare at it rather than make any
real effort to fix it. Lucas was perched on the cushioned sill of
the bay window staring up at the clouds outside as they pelted rain
down on the streets beyond.

It was past
three o’clock and I expected the kids that lived here to be
returning soon. I had never been a fan of kids – teenagers I could
understand, kids were just plain sly (though I admired them for
that) – and I wanted to be out of the house by the time they got
back. “When do the children get sent home from school?”

“
About three-thirty. I think it’s a bit later today. Lucy picks
them up after their dance classes.”

“
What’s it like living with kids?”

“
It’s alright. Some nights Stacey will not stop crying, and
that kinda pisses me off. But I like it here. When I’m not working
I get the place all to myself; I hardly see the lodger in the loft,
Lucy works fulltime and the kids are always at school.”

I picked up
the poker again and jabbed at the dying embers. “How’s
Christie?”

“
Not sure. She hasn’t been returning my calls. At least, not
after the last phone conversation we had.”

“
What happened?”

“
I said to her: ‘I know that you’re busy.’ And she said
‘
Do you?’ as if just talking to her was
taking up her time. So I said ‘I know that you care about this
shit.’ But that didn’t go down too well, and it wasn’t really what
I meant, but I think she thought that I was saying that it was all
shit. But she should know that that’s not what I mean.”

I shrugged my
shoulders. “Just say what you mean then. You got to.”

“
Right. She just made excuses about all the stuff that she’s
planning for Invercargill to set up and get going to help the youth
and so forth.”

“
What was your reply?”

“
I made a smart comment about her having her finger on the
pulse of Invercargill.”

“
How’d she take that?”

“
With silence. I said ‘it’s alright – you got your eyes
everywhere, but…’ I trailed off. I wasn’t sure where I was going
with that, but you can guess. And then she gave me the answer that
I expected: ‘I can’t be distracted from the work that the Lord has
sent me to do’. So I said ‘I’m just saying that it hurts all the
time when you don’t return my calls.”

“
Well if she’s busy she’s busy and I guess there’s not much you
can do about it.”

“
I said to her: ‘So you haven’t got the time to even have lunch
with me?’” He opened the window slightly and threw the last of his
cigarette into the bushes, closed the window again and sat in
silence for a moment. “Yeah, I know. I just remember how it was
with us, that’s all. She’s so much fun.” He pulled his legs up and
lit another cigarette. “It’s so cold in this house.”

“
Say it again. It might make you feel better.”

“
It’s so cold in this house.”

“
She won’t change for you y’ know?”

“
And I ain’t changing for her. I know how she feels but I can’t
be what she wants me to be.”

“
All you have to do is show her that you care.”

“
Easy for you to say – you haven’t got anyone pining all over
you.”

Thanks for reminding me.
“Do you
think about her much?”

“
I haven’t been able to sleep.”

“
Really?”

“
Well, that’s more because I’m not eating; and if I can’t eat I
can’t sleep; and if I can’t sleep I can’t… well.”

“
Dream.”

“
Yeah, but I do enough of that while I’m awake now that she’s
always on my mind. I feel like I’m going crazy.”

“
People go crazy when they don’t pass through that dreaming
stage of sleep.”

“
Well, it’d be just as crazy to get messed up with her if her
religious views were always coming between us.”

“
It’s not like she’s going to be trying to poison
you.”

“
Yeah, well I’m not the one drinking the poison,
am
I?”

“
What’s that supposed to mean?”

“
Callasandra told me that you’re a Christian.”

I wasn’t sure
what to say to that. It concerned me how this conversation might
pan out. “So?”

“
It must have been weird hiding that for all this time you’ve
known me.”

“
No weirder than you never saying that you’re an
atheist.”

“
I’ve never stated that I’m an ‘atheist’ only that I was no
Christian and had issues with Christianity. I made you aware right
from the start where I stood with these issues, but you kept
quiet.”

“
I guess I didn’t want to be judged for what I believe
in.”

“
I judge all my friends regardless of what they believe in, but
I don’t hold those judgements against them. They’re my friends
because I accept them despite what they believe, or what my
opinions are with regards to what they believe, and they accept me
likewise.”

“
Well, now that you know I’m a Christian, should it make any
difference?”

“
No, but I guess I’m just annoyed because I felt like I was
talking to someone who was sympathetic to how I felt, not someone
who couldn’t speak up for what they truly felt.”

“
I spoke up once and it didn’t do me any good.”

“
Speaking up always does good, even if you don’t get to say
everything about how you feel; at least your opinion is heard and
later conversations can hopefully build on that.”

Nothing he
said gave me any sense of vindication. “Yeah, whatever. Speaking up
only works if people are willing to hear you out and I wasn’t in
any position to be listened to. Anyone faced with that is going to
find it hard to swallow.”

Lucas
shrugged. “One poison is as good as the other.”

“
You really think Christianity is a poison?”

“
Honestly?”

“
Please!”

“
I think that any idea is a poison to an individual if it
subjugates them. Any such idea is a poison because it allows others
to find loopholes in that idea and take advantage of those
loopholes, thus allowing domination over the individual spirit. I
don’t have a problem with Christianity per se, but I do have a
problem with any individual who claims to be the speaker for a
higher power – these are the individuals who ultimately will abuse
and take advantage.”