God's Not Dead 2 (12 page)

All day long someone is judging you.

That’s one of the things I love about being a lawyer. The courtroom is such a nice metaphor for life. Someone’s always in control, whether you think they are or not. You always have people making decisions based on the things you say and do. There’s always a verdict. You come to the end of each day and find yourself innocent or guilty of something.

“Welcome to the jury, sir
 
—henceforth juror number twelve,” Judge Stennis says. “I hope you enjoy your service to the community.”

The pastor seems to force a smile and then mumbles something to himself. He’s probably thinking that he already does enough for the community.

All you need to do is show some of that wonderful love and mercy toward my client, Pastor Dave.

AMY WATCHES
the defendant and her counsel walk out of the court at half the speed of the team of lawyers that preceded them. The blonde stops in the hallway and talks to her lawyer, both of them carrying somber expressions. Amy can tell he’s giving her some kind of explanation. After she says good-bye, he just stands there looking like a child watching out the family room window as his mother goes off to work.

“Mr. Endler?”

He turns around, surprised. “Yeah.”

“I’m Amy Ryan with
The New
 
—I mean with the
Waiting for
 
—I’m sorry. I write for a blog that’s covering the case. Would you mind if I ask you some questions?”

Tom looks around her in the wide hallway. The footsteps of those passing by echo on the marble tile.

“So wait
 
—
who
are you with?” he asks.

“It’s a faith-based blog.”

“Ah. You mean you’re not from
60 Minutes
?”

She smiles. “No. Not exactly. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if this does start getting some national attention once the trial begins.”

Tom greets a couple in passing and then gives her a nod. “There’s not a lot I can tell you at this point, but if you want a couple quotes I can give you some.”

“I’d be happy to join you wherever you need to be,” Amy tells him.

“Good. ’Cause I’m starving.”

She meets him ten minutes later at Sweeney’s Grill. He’s at a small table with stools around it. Amy orders an iced tea but nothing to eat while Tom orders a burger with salsa and jalapeños on it.

“I never know how people can eat stuff like that,” she says. “My stomach can’t even handle mild salsa.”

The lawyer doesn’t say anything as he just nods and smiles. He looks tired.

“Is that a typical day for selecting jury members?” she asks.

“I don’t know if there’s any sort of typical day in a trial. But honestly
 
—it’s been a while since I’ve had to go through that.”

“Why is that?”

“Most of the things I deal with these days don’t reach this point. They get settled. Usually it’s pretty cut-and-dry.”

“So why is this case different?” Amy asks.

“Because the stakes are higher. You have a star teacher like Ms. Wesley. You have the parents of the girl who asked the question
suing her. And in the middle you have God. Or the question of God.”

“Are you a man of faith?”

“Yeah, I have faith in lots of things,” he says.

“Is God one of those things?”

He shifts on his barstool. “My faith doesn’t have any bearing on the court case.”

“I would think it has a lot of bearing on it.”

Tom loosens the tie that was already untightened in the first place. “My father had ‘faith.’”

“You say that as if he contracted Ebola.”

“That’s sometimes how he made it seem. Or how his faith made me feel.”

“So you’re openly against Christianity?” Amy asks.

“I’m openly against someone innocent being harmed. Grace Wesley didn’t do anything wrong. She should still be teaching history at Martin Luther King High School.”

“And your father’s faith
 
—did that harm you?”

Tom finishes his soda. “Are you writing my memoir?”

“No. I’m not asking for anything I’m writing. I’m just curious.”

The song belting out of the speakers makes Tom tilt his head. “Do you like ELO?”

Amy doesn’t understand the question. “What is that?”

“The band. ELO. Electric Light Orchestra.”

“Oh,” she says, shrugging.

“This song. This is where I’ll leave things. . . . Amy, right?”

He can’t be leaving this soon.
“I’d just love a few more minutes.”

“I have to make a stop before heading home.”

She finds a business card before he’s gone. “Maybe I can get those questions in some other time,” she says, giving him the card.

“Maybe.”

It’s the least promising maybe Amy has ever heard in her life.

For a moment she sits there, checking her phone and making a few notes to herself. Then she hears the chorus of the song and laughs.

“I’ll tell you once more, before I get off the floor, don’t bring me down.”

At least he’s got a sense of humor.

This case has suddenly doubled in fascination. A teacher standing firm in her faith and a lawyer trying to step out of faith’s shadows. It’s an odd pairing. And it certainly makes for an interesting story.

Amy knows she’ll be talking to Tom again. One way or another, she’ll get him to share more.

THIS IS A PATHETIC PICTURE
of self-pity.

I’m trying to convince myself that I’m still awake because I’m sad about my grandmother not knowing my name. Our conversation after my visit with Amy the reporter extraordinaire wasn’t a high point in my week.

“Family only abandons you,” she told me.

Family was sitting next to her bed, and all he could do was nod.
She has no idea.

“So you make sure they don’t get anything from you.”

I nodded again even though there’s not much she has that anyone would actually get in the first place.

But there’s love and remembrance and a little something to keep when you’re gone.

That’s all I’ve hoped for and wanted, and that’s what I miss every single time I leave that living-
la-vida-loca
extended-care center.

“You want to know about faith?” I wish I could ask Miss Barbara Walters back there at the bar. “Faith is showing up to see a woman who doesn’t even know you and still thinking that one of these days she might.”

The reporter wouldn’t want to hear that sort of honesty.

The truth, the kind I’m constantly searching for in a courtroom
 
—on the rare occasions I actually find myself in one these days
 
—reveals I’m not really grieving over my grandmother or even my mother or my failed career or my impending financial disaster.

No.

I’m sitting at a computer thirty minutes after midnight thinking of sending a message to a woman who abandoned me.

These sorts of thoughts are stupid, but then again I’m not sitting here celebrating brilliance.

For a while, our relationship made sense. Even afterward, we shared this unfit but beautiful bond that showed itself in unexpected and unusual ways.

Don’t go over the map with a black Sharpie, you moron.

I remember those times. Even after we broke up, whenever I was swimming in this current of backbreaking big-time cases, I’d reach out to her. For some kind of hope. A little affirmation. A crack of sunlight in the gloom. And it usually came, because Sienna woke up with the sun on her side.

It’s not fair falling in love with the evening glow when you know all you’ll be left with is the cold moon staring back at you.

I need a shot of encouragement.

Sienna was always good at that.

I need a kick in the rear.

She was good at that, too.

I look at the computer and think about it. Maybe I can send her a message on Facebook.

You unfriended her; remember that?

Maybe I can send her a direct message on Twitter.

You blocked her; remember that?

Maybe I can try a good old-fashioned e-mail.

But last time you did that, Gmail bounced it back at you.

The interior monologue that I find so useful in my profession of good and bad and ugly doesn’t really seem so wonderful when I’m by myself.

Maybe I should be preparing my opening statement, but I’ve already got my notes down. It’s these little broken bits all around my life that need some kind of explanation.

What are you doing here anyway, Tommy Boy?

This town. This house. My out-there grandmother. My dead mother. My might-as-well-be-dead father. This rewind of a career. My redo of a résumé.

Sienna would hold my hand and allow me to sigh.

I close my eyes and think of all those paintings she’d sit in front of like a woman at a healing-yourself-get-well-feel-good conference with fellow females. Listening and loving and smiling and deciding how to move around in the current glow of light she’d found herself in.

Telling someone like this you’ve been fired . . .

Yeah.

Telling her you’re considering something else. Something very different.

“I think you just need some time to get away and find yourself.”

It’s been thirty-eight months, and I haven’t found any sort of self that I’m willing to display and celebrate.

“I can’t support something I’m not sure is there anymore.”

These were her words, and I find myself replaying them like a song you hate but still can’t help listening to whenever it comes on the radio.

I look at the clock on the wall
 
—the one my mother put up there maybe ten years ago
 
—and realize I need to get some sleep. Or at least try. But my mind races and I’m full of ripples bursting forth from someone performing the butterfly.

Tomorrow you have to defend God.

I know thinking about Sienna or my grandmother or my father won’t help me in the least with this.

I’d love just one little bit of encouragement. Just a tiny bit of
You’re a pretty awesome lawyer, Tom.
That kind of thing. Unwarranted praise feels like the waves of the Pacific coating the patches of sand your feet stomped all over. But it’s been a while.

Then again, maybe I’m being a little melodramatic after a long day.

I wonder what Sienna would say. Or do. Or think. Then I think how sad it is to wonder all of this.

She’s gone.

And I’m busy.

Chipped & Faded Pieces

A POST FOR
WAITING FOR GODOT

by Amy Ryan

Are we chess pieces moved by a much bigger hand? Or are we moving ourselves but still stuck on a square board with only a limited number of spaces to choose from?

What I’m most struck by with this idea of faith is how God created us to choose. To fail and fall away if that is what we want or choose to do. Yet he loves us even when we hate or ignore him.

Does he really?
a voice inside asks.
Is that truly the case? Or is this just part of the package I’ve bought?

Being loved is a difficult concept for me to fathom. Let’s
just say I haven’t overdosed on love in my life. If love were an overflowing river, my heart would resemble a desert. A very melodramatic desert, of course.

The choices one woman has made because of her beliefs will be given a stage and a spotlight tomorrow. The opening statements for the lawsuit brought by the parents of a junior at Martin Luther King Jr. High School against her history teacher will commence. The right to talk about Jesus Christ in the classroom. The wrong of forcing a belief in a classroom. Where will this case go, and how will it end up?

I’ll be covering this case on the blog daily with a smattering of my theories and observations and questions.

I find it fascinating that a person would make a stand like this. An apology might have settled everything with the school and the union, and yet she decided to make no apologies. Will she be standing on a stack of Bibles, preparing to take it to the end? Will she insist she didn’t do anything wrong and lean on the historical-figure argument?

Will many prayers be offered up for this teacher? Surely they will. Will God hear them?

I go back to this question nagging at me.

Will all those prayers drift up and merely disintegrate like a contrail never quite catching up to its jet?

Again I wonder if we’re simply pieces, chipped and faded, stuck on a checkered board. But instead of standing up straight, we’re on our sides, rolling one way and the next whenever the ground tilts. And the ground will always tilt. Always.

Every now and then a piece will fall off the board.

Will there be an open hand waiting to catch it?

That is the ultimate question.

THE WOMAN WAITING
inside the doors of the courthouse looks distinguished in a loose, flowing chiffon dress that falls well below her knees and covers most of her shoulders. I knew I didn’t need to tell Grace how to dress for the courtroom. I seriously doubted she’d show up looking either shoddy or scantily clad. Yet I realize as she scans me over that she’s probably once again thinking I look a bit disheveled.

“Seriously,” Grace says with an amused look. “Don’t you own a suit?”

“Sure.”

“Did you consider wearing it?”

“Why?” I ask. “Are we going to a funeral?”

I know this day is a big deal for Grace, and I don’t want her to
think it’s not a big deal for me. At the same time, I want her to know that appearances are not going to win this case. If that were so, we’d most certainly lose.

As we prepare to walk through the metal detectors, I clean out my pockets and ask how she is feeling.

“Nervous but okay. I had a little too much coffee this morning. Had an argument with Gramps.”

“What kind of argument?” I have a hard time seeing them getting into some heated verbal exchange.

“Well
 
—a
disagreement
,” Grace says as she steps through the detector without setting it off and picks up her belongings. “He wanted to come today.”

“Why didn’t you let him?”

“Not today. I want to feel a little more settled and confident in the courtroom. If he were here, it would feel like those old days of student teaching when a principal would sneak into the classroom and stand in the back just to monitor me.”

“I’m sure you always did great, Teacher of the Year.”

Grace can only laugh. Her hand brushes back her hair while her eyes look away for a moment.

“Hey, so there’s a guy outside holding a sign that reads, ‘The End Is Near,’” I tell her.

“Yeah, I saw him.”

“Is he on our side?”

“I certainly hope so.”

We walk through the rotunda and I pause for a moment, taking a sip from my coffee while feeling odd carrying the leather briefcase I never use except when I’m visiting my grandmother.

“Listen, Grace. Opening statements can be a little rough to listen to, especially since you’re going to disagree with most of what
gets said by the plaintiff’s attorney. But you can’t look angry. Just remember: at every moment, at least one of those twelve pairs of eyes will be watching you.”

“Have you ever seen me look angry?” she asks.

“No. And I doubt you have the same sort of angry face someone like my father can have. But there are various ways anger or frustration can display themselves in someone’s expression.”

“I understand. But I also don’t want to look like a figure in a wax museum.”

“No, no,” I say. “They want to see your personality. They
need
to see it. I know
 
—I don’t need to say these things to you. Just like you don’t need to ask why I’m only wearing a tweed sports coat.”

“No. I do need to ask you that. I’m still questioning that.”

I laugh as we walk past a restroom. “Look, you go on ahead. I’ll catch up to you.”

She nods and heads to the staircase. I walk inside the large bathroom and find myself alone, staring in the mirror at a guy who used to be some hotshot lawyer.

I sigh. I’m not really studying my reflection but rather seeing the shadow that seems to be hovering over it. I know I look tired
 
—a bit hungover to be honest, though I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who could recognize it. But definitely tired. And when I’m not using that smirk to my advantage, I bet I look just plain scared.

The cold water feels good as I splash it over my face. I glance down and watch the drips fall. Then I get a few paper towels and dab them over my forehead and cheeks. I might as well use the arm of my sports coat. It would at least rinse away some of the dust on it.

I look up again and ask this guy a question.

So, are you going to do this?

He knows what I mean. Not getting up in front of people and doing my job. Not fighting for the rights of a good teacher and hopefully winning.

Are you going to make her proud?

I have more belief that Mom is watching over me right now than God. And perhaps more than ever before, this is the chance I seemed to be wanting and looking for.

I slowly let out a sigh, then head through the bathroom door and up the stairs to the courtroom.

Unfortunately, near the top of the grand staircase, I have the bad timing to walk past a figure resting high on a chair along the wall and getting his shoes shined. Peter Kane looks like some king from ancient times sitting on his throne, watching his minions strolling by. He folds his newspaper and gives that smile that makes me think of a delirious horse with those shiny teeth.

“You can’t win,” Kane tells me.

I glance at his black leather dress shoes that probably cost a thousand bucks. Maybe per shoe. I don’t quite know that world; I wouldn’t be able to even recognize some fancy brand if I heard it. I just know that earlier this morning I made the mistake of inspecting the soles of my own dress shoes and saw that they look like I just ran a marathon in them. They were expensive enough when I bought them five years ago.

“Thank you, Peter. I appreciate that and certainly take it under advisement.”

His skin seems to have the same texture as his shoes. He speaks as if we’re the only two in this building. Or more as if he’s the only one here.

“You know I’m right. So why do it? Why go through the exercise?”

Maybe to try to save some other poor lawyer from having to deal with someone like you.

Of course, I just remain silent and wait for him to finish.

“I looked at your history. You’re better than this. Top of your class at Stanford Law. Clerked for a judge on the Ninth Circuit. Why are you slumming like this?”

It’s an interesting question but one I know he wouldn’t want to hear the answer to. For a second I get the strange idea he’s going to make me an offer I can’t refuse to join him on the dark side.

I say, “Maybe I believe that people who don’t do anything wrong shouldn’t have to suffer at the hands of the law.”

He shrugs as if he just heard a news clip about what’s happening in an orphanage over in India, then puts down his newspaper and adjusts in his seat. The older man working on his shoes has to adjust too.

“Do you know what hate is?” Kane asks. “I’m not talking about the fairy-tale stuff. I mean real hate? I hate what people like your client stand for and what they’re doing to our society. So does Judge Stennis, even if he won’t admit it.”

“The jury doesn’t hate her.”

Kane steps up before the shoe-shine guy is finished. He drops a twenty down at him and then steps off the platform.

“Well, that’s the secret, Tom. They don’t need to hate her. They just need to see a tiny flaw in her. A half-truth. One small inconsistency. Just a little bit of doubt. And when they do, they’ll find against her.”

The horse teeth appear again. His lifeless eyes glance down for a moment.

“Nice shoes,” he says before walking away.

The shoe-shine guy looks at me and doesn’t say anything. He knows my answer without even asking.

I meet up with Grace, who’s waiting for me near the solid oak door of the courtroom.

“I thought you got the jitters and ditched me.”

“No jitters. Just a nice chat with the opposition,” I say.

“He passed without a greeting. Those shoes of his were practically glowing.”

“Yes, they were. So . . . you ready?”

Grace nods and looks away. I turn my head to catch her glance again, then make a funny face at her as if I’m studying her to be sure. I squint my eyes and finally nod. “Okay. Let’s go.”

I like the amusement that fills her face. It’s always a good place to start a day. Even if I can’t muster up the same look myself.