Lauren Grodstein - The Explanation for Everything

In all, a junior high dance, which meant that nobody was spiking the punch. Did kids still spike punch? He remembered, during Oliver McGee’s trial, someone talked about a particular high school dance, and Oliver showing up wasted, throwing up all over a popular girl’s new shoes. The popular girl’s boyfriend beat the shit out of him in the parking lot.

Was that justice?

Mister. Hey, Mister. The lyrics of a song he could not get out of his head.

At five thirty the next morning, he woke up to the cloudless sparkle of a March day.

Dear Mr. McGee:

It’s been a while since I’ve written, but I don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten you. Just the other day I received a phone call telling me that your application for parole has once again been denied, and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t feel some sort of relief, some sort of vindication—okay, some sort of joy—at knowing that you’ll be in that shithole for another two years, playing dodgeball with your white-power friends or cowering in the shower or whatever it is you do in there. I know that I can’t keep you in jail for the rest of your life, no matter how much I’d like to, but it seems a fair thing to keep you there for at least these next two years, minimum.

But at the same time—and this is what’s been bothering me lately, McGee, as much as I wish it weren’t—at the same time I’ve been trying to forge some kind of relationship with God, which is difficult, as God is a concept I’ve never had much patience for, and even now find a little peculiar. I have it on good authority that God is a figure of justice, and I have no doubt that the God of justice would smile upon someone like you being locked away for two more years. But at the same time I can’t help but feel—it’s hard for me not to feel—I worry for you, McGee. I worry for you there, and I worry for your mother, and I worry most of all for myself, and what this glee means, this glee that you have been punished and will continue to be punished, and what it means that I cannot forgive you, or that I’m so unwilling to try.

It took him forever to write these letters. It was seven, and the girls wouldn’t be up for another two hours. Head throbbing, heart sagging, Andy could think of nothing good to add and so he went back to bed.

The baptism would be on the Wednesday of spring break—this was the only free time the pastor could spare. “You’re going to come with us, right?” Belle asked.

“Should I?” asked Melissa, so willing to be part of their family yet so hesitant to intrude. She looked at Andy, a bit tremulously, and as much as he sometimes thought he loved her there were other times when he still wanted her to just stand up straight.

“Of course you should,” said Andy, who did not want to sound impatient. “We’re going up there because of you.”

So the Wednesday of spring break, just after breakfast, she met them at their house for the drive down to Hollyville. She brought coffee for him, hot chocolates for the sleepy girls. They spent what felt like an eternity on country roads toward nowhere but they lightened the mood with showtunes, Guys and Dolls and Fiddler on the Roof . Finally they pulled into the Hollyville Mission Church, the parking lot empty at ten a.m. on a Wednesday.

From the outside the church looked, as Melissa had warned, like the shell of the supermarket the place used to be, one whose reach had extended to all its neighbors in the mini-mall. To its left, the Hollyville Mission Senior Center; to its right, the Hollyville Mission Community Bookstore. And everywhere, signs of construction, Dumpsters in the parking lot, pallets of building materials left out in the damp March sun.

Andy, strangely nervous, feeling as though he were on some covert operation, and yet glad too, to do this thing for Belle—he parked in a spot near the church’s double doors and let the girls out of the car. Rachel was wearing her white outfit from the father-daughter dance; Belle, not to be outdone, was wearing the princess costume that she’d worn, after a certain amount of debate, for Halloween, a shimmering ball skirt, a cheap satin bodice. Melissa wore her fuzzy sweater. Andy wore his new tie.

“Shall we?” he asked his girls.

“We shall,” Belle said, and Rachel agreed.

The chapel they entered was enormous, flooded with multicolored light—the old Acme windows had been replaced by stained glass—with endless pews on either side of them and a navy blue runner connecting the front door to the vast altar. For a strong minute Andy wanted to hustle his daughters out of there and run, but then he remembered that he was trying to bring God into his heart and that he wanted Belle and Rachel to do so as well, and, moreover, they had schlepped all the way here. And Melissa, at his side—she seemed right at home here. If he concentrated on her, maybe she could make him feel almost at home?

They moved up the carpet toward the altar, Melissa in the lead, and a jovial man bounced through the pews toward them. Andy recognized the comb-over, the Hawaiian shirt. “Pastor Cling,” he said.

“Professor Waite, what an honor,” he said. “Melissa has told me so much about you.”

“Only good things,” Melissa said, as the pastor pulled her to his side for a half hug.

“I’ve read your book,” Andy said. “It was inspiring.”

“Ah,” said the man, bigger than Andy would have expected, almost bearlike. He waved his hand in front of his face in a modest gesture, then ruffled Melissa’s hair with one of his paws. “You’re the academic, sir. I’m just a humble servant of God. And Melissa has told me you’re quite a big deal, isn’t that right? You’re a biology professor?”

“Well,” Andy said, thinking of Rosenblum: a half-ass school you gotta admit. Belle took a step backward into his legs. Rachel lifted a book from one of the pews and wrinkled her nose at it. For a moment, there was nothing to say, and again, the instinct to run. But no. “So how does this work?”

“It’s a simple enough process,” Pastor Cling said. “Happens all around the world, thousands of times a day. That’s one of the beauties of baptism, that it’s a universal blessing. Some cultures, as you probably know, immerse the baptismal candidate, while others, like we do, just use a symbolic sprinkle of water. Point’s the same—the baptism washes away sin, allows you to become clean in front of God. Usually we have baptisms in front of a big group—you want your community to witness you—but in this case, I think we have a good group of witnesses right here. Your family, your friends, and God. We’ll all watch you become born again clean.”

“Okay,” said Andy, although Belle—hadn’t she been born clean? When had his little girl ever sinned?

“But first I want to ask a few questions of your daughter, here, if that’s okay with everyone.”

“Belle,” Andy asked, “is that okay?” She nodded that it was.

Pastor Cling bent down with his hands on his knees so that he could look Belle straight on. He was probably fifty, with a shiny reddish complexion and kind brown eyes. The accent was hard to place—not Southern, exactly, but drawling, or folksy; he sounded to Andy like a Republican candidate. Which maybe he was, or one day could be. He put his hands on Belle’s round shoulders. He said a few things to her that were hard to hear, then he spoke again more loudly.

“Belle, let me ask you—do you promise, here, in front of your friends and family, in front of God, to try to do what’s right and try not to do what’s wrong?”

Belle nodded somberly. “I do.”

“And do you promise to try to understand God’s path for you and follow that path?”