Pontoon (17 page)

P
astor Ingqvist had talked to Barbara on the phone and left messages for her, offering help, and she had left a message for him—“We are all doing very well, thank you, so don’t feel you need to be concerned.” On Thursday he thought he’d better walk over and knock on her door and see how she was doing. Maybe she had heard about the fiasco at the Evelyn memorial and he should assure her: it wasn’t that bad. The man was harmless and left peacefully. Mrs. Ingqvist had heard via Dorothy at the Chatterbox that Barbara was planning an outdoor memorial service on Saturday at which the ashes would be fired from a cannon, but she wasn’t sure how. So that was that. Lake Wobegon Lutheran was entertaining a group of twenty-four Lutheran pastors from Denmark on Saturday and if Barbara wanted to change her mind and hold the funeral in the sanctuary, he might have to wave off the Danes. Funerals had right-of-way. If she had something else in mind, fine. He just wanted to make sure.

The little memorial service at church had raised $225 in Evelyn’s memory to go to the flower fund and he should make sure
that was all right. So, he walked over to see if she was at home and accepting visitors.

And he wanted to explain about the Danes, if she was curious why a busload of visitors was coming on the day of Evelyn’s memorial service. The Danes were on a two-week tour of the United States. They had been sent over by the Danish Lutheran Board because they had signed a profession of doubt—there was a great stir about this in Copenhagen, big newspaper headlines (
PRIESTS DENY DIVINITY OF JESUS
)—and then the Hellerup 24, as they were known, took a more radical step and denied the Queen’s right to be head of the Danish Church, and then all hell broke loose. Agnosticism was acceptable, but not an insult to Queen Margrethe, so the Hellerup 24 had been packed off on a junket to America for a cooling-off period. The Danish Lutheran Board thought it important that the troublemakers should visit Minnesota and Wisconsin. The twenty-four, given their druthers, would’ve focused on the coasts, but the Board had reminded them that the Midwest is the Lutheran homeland. It also reminded them that their pensions were at risk and they might be forced to live in rented rooms in Ahlborg, the Danish Omaha. So the twenty-four had relented. They would land in Minneapolis on Thursday night, go to Walker Art Center for the Poul Henning exhibit and attend the Minnesota Orchestra on Friday, and board a bus Saturday morning and come up to Lake Wobegon for lunch.

The guy in Bishop Ringsak’s office called on Monday to suggest that the Danes might appreciate salmon and small red potatoes (boiled) and a light salad to start and perhaps homemade pie for dessert. And he suggested a California Chardonnay.

“I think we’ll serve a tuna noodle hot dish,” said Pastor
Ingqvist, “just as we would for anybody. I’m not going to spend church money on a California Chardonnay.”

“It’s only a suggestion,” said the Bishop’s man. “But these are Danes. Not Norwegians. And the head of the delegation called me yesterday specifically about the menu. They’re in Boston now and he was a little concerned that you might be serving lutefisk.”

“Lutefisk never crossed my mind until you just mentioned it.”

“Well, don’t, is my advice. His name is Mattias Paulsen and he’s a nice guy but he said that if it was going to be lutefisk, they’d prefer peanut butter sandwiches.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

Lutefisk is cod that has been dried in a lye solution. It looks like the dessicated cadavers of squirrels run over by trucks, but after it is soaked and reconstituted and the lye is washed out and it’s cooked, it looks more fish-related, though with lutefisk, the window of success is small. It can be tasty but the statistics aren’t on your side. It is the hereditary delicacy of Swedes and Norwegians who serve it around the holidays, in memory of the ancestors, who ate it because they were poor. Most lutefisk is not edible by normal people. It is reminiscent of the afterbirth of a dog or the world’s largest chunk of phlegm. Pastor Ingqvist wrote on his calendar for Saturday: “Lutefisk?”

He then headed to Barbara’s, four blocks from church, her little bungalow with dead flowers in the flower beds and the grass long, thistles and crabgrass rampant. A bad lawn: a warning sign of personal distress. She had long been a sort of recluse in the congregation. Came to church less and less often and exited out a side
door to avoid shaking hands with him. Sometimes he’d glance up from a sermon and catch her scowling at him. He counselled her when she divorced Lloyd—his standard talk: marriage is a story and it gains richness with time—“Not this one,” she said. A lifelong Lutheran and a complete mystery, not so unusual, come to think of it. Lots of sphinxes in the ranks. According to the church secretary LaVonne, Barbara was a heavy drinker from time to time and was dating a cashier at a convenience store, an obese man named Oliver. LaVonne liked to pass these things along.

He knocked on Barbara’s front door and a young man opened the door, shirtless, his hair wet, a towel around his neck. “Hi. I’m Kyle,” he said, forgetting that Pastor Ingquist knew him, had baptized him, had confirmed him in the faith. “Come in. Excuse the mess. I’ll get my mom.” He remembered Kyle from confirmation class. Very bright, asked if God caused war and famine and if so, why, got confirmed, and never showed his face in church again.

A big painting hung over the couch, swatches of orange and purple like tropical leaves, and he could see another in the dining room, similar but brighter, almost neon. Newspapers spread on the dining room table, and a wooden tray full of little jars of paint, and a stack of white dinner plates, unglazed.

“Pastor.”

He jumped. She had come up behind him. She was wearing baggy old jeans and a sweatshirt flecked with paint and she looked as if she hadn’t slept in days.

“I came to see how you’re doing, Barbara, and see if we can offer any assistance with your memorial service—I hear it’s on Saturday—” She nodded. “I thought a lot of your mother. We all did. It’s been a big shock to everyone. Evelyn was the genuine
article. She had a big influence on the lives of a lot of people. We’re going to miss her.”

Barbara said, “Did you get my letter?”

He shook his head.

“Probably because I didn’t send it. I wasn’t sure if I had or not. Anyway …” and she waved for him to sit down at the table. “Mother left me a letter that leads me to believe that none of us knew her, Pastor—”

“Call me David.”

“David—my mother lived a charade, if the truth be told. She was faithful to a loveless marriage and a loveless town and she went to church every Sunday like an old firehorse but she didn’t discover her true self until she was almost seventy. When Daddy keeled over who had been her ball and chain, she was able to fly, and that’s the woman I want to celebrate. Not the Sunday school teacher and Girl Scout leader, but Evelyn herself. The old broad who said what the hell and took a lover who took her dancing and traveling and they went to shows and played roulette and God knows what. She had pieced together enough damn quilts and she wanted to live before she died and by george she did. That’s her, by the way, over there.”

A green bowling ball sat on the desk, on a folded yellow bath towel. A big plaster patch covered the top and on the patch was written “
MOM
.”

He said that he didn’t agree about the “loveless town” part but he wasn’t here to argue, only to offer whatever help she needed—what about lunch? Would they like a funeral lunch? She shook her head. He was relieved—he didn’t know how he’d merge the Danish pastors and the grieving Peterson family—and right away he felt bad about feeling relieved. “What about lodging for
family members coming from far away?” She shook her head. “Got them all taken care of,” she said, “except for Roger and he’s strictly a hotel type of guy.”

He wanted to say more.
Life is complicated. We’re all leading
double and triple lives. Everyone has secrets. We’d be happy
to celebrate Evelyn’s life in all its complexity
. But it seemed trite, unnecessary, so he said his good-byes and wished her well and Kyle walked him out on the porch and shook his hand again. He was turning to go when Kyle said, “I have to ask you about something—it’s not about my grandma, it’s about something going on with me.” The boy glanced left and right in a confidential way. “It’s about sexuality,” he said. “I’ve been living with this girl for almost a year.”

Pastor Ingqvist nodded.

“It wasn’t anything I planned exactly—things just sort of went in that direction.” Kyle was looking him straight in the forehead, as people in confession so often do. “Anyway, she’s sort of thinking about marriage, and I just don’t feel that excited by her—I mean, we have sex and everything, but she just really doesn’t turn me on that much—I’m sorry—” He turned away. “I shouldn’t even be saying this. And taking up your time …”

“It’s fine,” said Pastor Ingqvist. “This is what I do. I listen to people—I do it all the time.”

Kyle stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at the ground. “So I slept with this other girl who I met in a chat room. She was really hot. I met her in a coffee shop and we talked and then we went for a walk and we had sex. On a nature trail. In broad daylight. And what I wanted to ask is: when the Bible says to confess your sins, does it mean you have to do it out loud to everybody? Or can you do it privately?”

“Well—I guess it says somewhere—”

“Confess your sins, one to the other. James 5:16,” said Kyle. “I read that.”

“Yes, but I think the manner of confession isn’t as important as having a genuine contrite heart.”

“But if you can’t confess out loud, doesn’t that mean you’re too proud to admit to it? And so you’re not contrite. Right?”

“Well, what are we talking about? Having sex with that girl?”

“Unnatural sex, to be specific.”

Pastor Ingqvist nodded. He had counseled erectile dysfunction and bitter anger and sheer disinterest but never unnatural sex. He imagined an orgy, naked people glistening with oil, torches stuck in the ground, dogs barking.

Kyle pulled out a pen and a slip of paper from his billfold and he wrote on it. He handed it to Pastor Ingqvist. It said,
I had oral
sex with that girl. I went down on her
.

The pastor put a hand on Kyle’s shoulder. “Do you know what I mean by that?” Kyle said.

“I do and it’s not unnatural. A lot of people do it.”

“It felt unnatural to me. And I don’t do it.” He looked Pastor Ingqvist in the eye. “I don’t think I’m saved,” he said. “If I had to say, I’d guess that I’m not. I don’t think that was a Christian thing to do.”

“We’ve all sinned,” Pastor Ingqvist pointed out.

“I know but I need to figure this out, if I’m supposed to tell everybody what I did with that girl. I wrote Sarah a note.”

“You wrote her a note?”

“I can’t talk to her. I never could. I moved out and left her a note and now this other girl’s boyfriend, actually her fiancé, who
she told, is looking for me except he doesn’t exactly know who I am. She says she thinks she may be pregnant.”

“So you didn’t use condoms?”

“She didn’t have any.”

“When did you have sex with her?”

“A week ago.”

“I don’t think she can know this soon.”

“We were kissing and I didn’t think we were going to do it because it was broad daylight and we were on a nature trail—”

“A nature trail.”

“A nature trail in the Cities. Near the airport. Airliners flying over at low altitude. And we sat down in the grass and nobody was around and we were kissing and necking and she undid her jeans and she wanted to so I did what she wanted me to do and she was moaning and twisting around and then we heard voices and we stopped.”

Pastor Ingqvist tried to look impassive, attentive, professional. “Did you ejaculate?”

“Not quite,” said Kyle.

He looked up at Pastor Ingqvist. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but—I read an article that said that compulsive sex is a way for a guy to evade the fact that he is gay.”

“I don’t think that having sex with that girl means you’re gay if that’s what you’re asking,” said Pastor Ingqvist. He put a hand on Kyle’s shoulder and then thought better of it and took it away. But not too suddenly. Eased it away.

“I don’t know,” said Kyle. “I’m also sort of particular about my hair and I hate football. What if I were? Everybody I know would turn against me. It just scares me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Pastor Ingqvist. “These things
have a way of sorting themselves out. The girl on the nature trail isn’t pregnant by you so don’t get fussed up over that. What you did was perfectly normal. Did you send Sarah the note?” Kyle shook his head. “Don’t. Burn it.”

“You don’t believe in confession of sin?”

“In principle, yes. In practice—I don’t know. I don’t think people need to go through each other’s garbage.”

“I just wish I felt like a Christian.” Kyle turned to go inside. “Anyway—thanks.”

“I wish I could help you,” said Pastor Ingqvist, who also wished he could come up with a better line.
I wish I could help you
. Pitiful. But he did wish he could.
Come to church
, he thought.
You
want to find out about sin—hey, we talk about it all the time
.