Blue Star Rapture (14 page)

“I know you didn't. It's not a problem. I'm okay with this now. I've got the right medication, so I'm good. What I can tell you is this: I got to know a lot of people with acute depression. Some of them smiled a lot.”

“They did?”

“Some of them did. There were others who were all melancholy and miserable, including me. But some people you'd never know, not by their appearance or their behavior.”

“But why would that be?”

“I can't say for sure. Sometimes it seems like it's a mask, but other times it seems to be like a form of denial. Just make believe you're happy and sooner or later you'll have yourself convinced.”

T.J. leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head. This was food for thought. Even with all the smiles and the rose-colored lenses, LuAnn might have been in depression, even the acute kind. Rita Esposito wasn't sweet or charming, but she was a person you could believe if she told you something.

Rita was putting on her coat. “I have to get going,” she told T.J. “But before I do, there's one other thing I'm thinking of about your friend.”

“Yeah, what's that?”

“Some of those wackos in a religious cult would probably tell her she didn't need to take medication. That's even if she
was
taking any, which I'm sure we don't know; but if she was, they might've told her that people who have to take medication for emotional problems are just proving they don't have enough faith in the Lord.”

“You mean like there's no need to take medicine because the Lord will satisfy all your needs.”

“That's what I'm saying. If that's what happened, then your friend could have been not only depressed, but off her medication. It's just a thought.”

“And that could affect her behavior? If she quit taking her medication, I mean.”

“Oh, no more than a diabetic who stops taking their insulin,” was her sarcastic response.

“Why do you have to be such a smart-ass? I'm just asking you a question.”

“Sorry. But, yes. Not only her behavior, but possibly her judgment and even her decisions. That's all I'm saying.”

“And all I'm saying is, if you sanded off some of your rough edges, you might make a few more friends.”

“That's a charming thought, but rough edges is who I am.” It was Rita's last word on the subject, just before she headed out the door.

For a few moments, T.J. tried to absorb the information she'd given him. By hurrying after her, though, he caught up before she pulled her car out of the parking lot. “I was just thinkin', Rita. You really want me to write for the school paper?”

“Sure. Are you interested?”

“I'll think about it,” he answered. “Not makin' any promises, but I'll think about it.”

THIRTEEN

This time the road was beautiful. There was scarlet sumac in the ditch next to the shoulder, and the timber was transformed by an October palette of gold and orange maple leaves splashed against the brown oak. The visibility was better too. Enough leaves had fallen to provide open spaces for viewing clear to the shining reservoir.

T.J. drove slowly, relishing this same environment that had seemed such a forbidding wilderness the first time he'd traveled it. The road wasn't any wider or any straighter, but it felt opened up. A warm sun perched high in the sky of bluest blue and shimmered on the wet blacktop.

He parked on the other side of the complex this time, in the lot near the administration building next to the section where LuAnn's camp had been housed. There were puddles in the gravel lot from last night's rain.

Sister Simone began the conversation by telling him she sold Mary Kay Cosmetics. “When I'm not involved with Camp Shaddai,” she added.

T.J. could believe it. Her own makeup was expert. She was a beautiful woman for someone in her thirties or maybe as old as forty. Even her body was primo; she had clear skin and a golden brown tan.

“You caught me just in time,” she told him. “After October, we're in recess until the spring. By next week at this time, I'll be back in Chicago.”

They were sitting in an open shelter, on a wooden bench with an uncomfortable back. It was probably a place where LuAnn had gloried in one of the many praise meetings. It wasn't too different, only a little smaller, from that other tabernacle place. The one he'd stumbled into in the dark back in July, when he'd observed Sister Simone preaching to the flock.

From this position, T.J. could see the large lake and spillway out to the west, through the silvering leaves of the cottonwoods. But he couldn't see the courts where they had had their games, or the footbridge. There was still too much foliage blocking the view. Maybe in December, he thought, you'd be able to see clear across, but who'd want to sit outdoors in the winter?

“Did you know Ruth Ann well?” Sister Simone asked him.

T.J. resisted the urge to substitute her real name. Maybe, considering all the different sides she had, and her troubled past, maybe it was Ruth Ann he had known after all. “Yes and no,” he said.

“Yes and no?”

To clarify, T.J. summarized his week at Full Court and the meetings he'd had with LuAnn on the bridge. While he was doing so, it occurred to him that if that spillway overflowed, it would, in effect, have a flooding effect that would back water into the gorge. If so, jumping from the bridge might not kill you. And wasn't that an observation made by one of the sheriff's deputies in a newspaper article he'd read?

“You said LuAnn,” Simone observed, with a smile.

“I did?”

“Yes.” The counselor paused before she continued. “I feel we honor her better by calling her Ruth Ann, since it was the name she chose after she was baptized in the Spirit. It symbolized her surrender to the Lord.”

“Whatever,” said T.J. without enthusiasm. “I was just thinking that the only place I ever talked to her, the only place I even saw her, was on that footbridge.”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.”

T.J. lit a cigarette, but Simone said, “I wish you wouldn't smoke that.”

“Yeah, me too. But it's a free country, and we're outdoors.”

When she spoke next, her tone of voice was terse: “Is there something I can do for you, C.J.?”

“It's not C.J., it's T.J.”
Did this woman have a thing for changing people's names?

“Very well, then, T.J. If there's something I can do for you, please tell me what it is. I have another appointment later this afternoon and I'll need some time to get ready for it.”

“Well, it might be that I came here to confess.”

“Confess?”

“Yeah, maybe so. You're a counselor, right? Maybe the first thing is, I came so I could confess how I used Bumpy at basketball camp.”

“I would have no idea what you're talking about,” said Sister Simone. Her facial expression was benign, but her eyes were impatient.

“Yeah, well, I used him. Just trust me on it. I pretended like I was helping him, but I was really trying to goose up my own status.”

“Whatever this means, it's apparently something you've reconciled in your own heart. I'm sure the Lord will bless you for it.”

“Please don't say that,” T.J. objected.

“What would you like me to say,” asked Sister Simone, “with so little information?” This was just a rhetorical question, obviously, because she moved quickly to the next one: “You said that was the first thing. Is there a second thing?”

“Yeah, there is.” T.J. was surprised how he didn't feel nervous, even though he expected he would be. “I thought maybe you might like a chance to confess.”

“What did you say?”

“Confessing is good for us, right? I thought maybe you might have something you'd like to 'fess up about LuAnn's suicide.”

“This is astonishing. Who do you think you're speaking to?”

“There's a chance this is nutso,” T.J. was willing to admit. He stepped on his cigarette to put it out.

“What on earth do you think you know about Ruth Ann's death?” the counselor demanded. “Or her life, for that matter?”

“I know it probably sounds weird, but the more I think about it, the more I
do
know. I know she was pregnant, and I know who Brother Jackson was. Is. It wouldn't surprise me if he was the father.”

“Do you have any information to that effect?”

“No.”

“I thought not. The other information you mention was in the newspapers. Even a casual reader would know it.”

“I did keep all the newspaper articles I could find, but I know a lot of other stuff too. I know about her dreams, especially the one about the pale horse running on the footbridge. I know the Bible passage it comes from. I even know she was going to ask you to interpret the dream.”

“I thought you said you didn't know her very well.” Sister Simone's discomfort wasn't revealed by her face, but for the first time she was engaging in some restless body language.

“Actually, I said yes and no, remember? Looking back, I'd say the two of us did a lot of communicating in a short time. She even told me a lot about you.”

“You are the most astonishing person.” She was picking at lint on her navy blue slacks. If there was any there, though, T.J. couldn't see it.

“I'm not usually this way, because I'm too careful,” T.J. said. “But I think you could have prevented her death if you'd had the guts.”

“What did you say to me?”

“I think when she came to you with the dream about the pale horse, you didn't have the guts to tell her to forget about it. You could have told her to kiss it off and go to sleep. Instead, she probably asked you something funky like wasn't the devil's child inside of her or something. So wasn't the dream of death a sign from God?”

“How dare you presume about the nature of our conversations?!”

“How do I, that's a good question. Anyway, you could have told her to go to bed, or go home and work things out with her parents, but what's the kick in that? It's like there wouldn't be any
Rapture
. I think you people play the God game, where the things people do have to fit in with your rules, or else they don't count.”

Sister Simone was on her feet. “You are the most presumptuous, impertinent person. I can only think that for some reason the Lord must want you to say these things.”

“All I know is,
I
want to say them. If I'm wrong, you can tell me, but I think she asked you if the dream was a sign of death that came from God. You probably didn't tell her yes or no. You probably gave her something real lame, like, ‘Who can say, Ruth Ann? The Lord speaks to every one of us in a different way.'”

“I don't have to listen to this,” declared Simone. It was evident she would have left immediately, but there were manila folders she had to stuff carefully into an overburdened shoulder bag. If she did it recklessly, the papers would fall out.

“Even if the Lord wants me to say it?” asked T.J. “I could be wrong, but I guess the Rapture kick was more important than LuAnn was. That's how you used her.”

“If you haven't noticed, I'm not listening anymore. I have to go.”

“That way you could do what you wanted for the purpose of the God game, but still pretend like LuAnn did everything on her own. You don't have to take responsibility, you're off the hook. If you think about it, it's a little bit like me and the basketball camp.”

She was shouldering the bag. “If your impertinence wasn't bad enough, now you want to draw some parallel between some common basketball camp and service to the Lord God and His kingdom.”

“Like I said, you can tell me if I'm wrong.”

Her back was turned. “I don't intend to tell you anything,” she announced. Then she left, without looking back.

T.J. watched Sister Simone for the length of time it took her to disappear. It was surprising how little emotion he felt in the aftermath of this encounter. He had brought her face-to-face with a serious charge, yet he felt almost none of the stress associated with a confrontation.

He knew he was right, that his reconstruction of the God game scenario featuring LuAnn and Sister Simone was accurate. There was no way of proving it, of course, but some things you just knew. So where, then, was the thrill of victory? What about the rush of vindication?

He walked slowly to the bridge, clear to the center, where he rested his forearms on the rough railing. It was a splinter that had brought them together in the first place. He was sorry he hadn't known LuAnn Flessner better, sorry she was dead, and sorry he hadn't been able to attend her private funeral.

For all the sorrow, though, the mystery was what she meant to him in fact, or he to her. He couldn't really say that he enjoyed her. The truth was, he probably would have
enjoyed
the “old” LuAnn more, the girl who hadn't been saved and sanctified.

T.J. looked down at the spot where she probably died, where the dry gorge reached its deepest point. All he could see were the rocks themselves, groups of sticks caught in the crevices between, and a few dirty, mangled soft drink cans. He hoped she died right away, without having to lie there suffering.

He thought he ought to be able to say what it was that linked their two lives however briefly. There had to be words for it.
Down was death, up was Heaven
, he thought to himself.
South was Shaddai, north was Full Court, east was the way back home, and west, if he stood here long enough, would be the setting sun
.

EPILOGUE

It took him two hours to put on the new alternator, or about twice as long as it should have. The bolts were rusty and the new alternator, which wasn't new at all but a rebuilt one, had irregular brackets. Even so, he was finished before his mother got home from work.