Jodi Picoult - Sing You Home

“Mr. Baxter,” the judge asks, “is there anything else you want to tell the court?”

I shake my head. “Not the court, Your Honor. But I’d like to say something to Zoe.” I wait until she looks at me. Her eyes are blank, like she’s looking at a stranger on the subway. Like she never knew me at all.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Because we live in Rhode Island, which is a predominantly Catholic state, it takes a while to really get divorced. After the seventy-seven days we waited to go to court, it’s about ninety-one days before the final judgment, as if the judge is giving a couple just one more chance to reconsider.

I admit, I’ve spent most of that time shitfaced.

Bad habits are like purple loosestrife. When that plant pops up in your garden, you think you can deal with it-a few pretty purple stalks. But it spreads like wildfire, and before you know it, it’s choked everything else around it, until all you can see is that bright carpet of color, and you’re wondering how it got so out of control.

I swore I’d never be one of the eighty percent of recovering alcoholics who wind up making the same mistakes all over again. And yet, here I am, stashing bottles up in the ceiling tiles of Reid’s bathrooms, behind books on his shelves, inside a corner I’ve carefully slit open in the guestroom mattress. I’ll spill full cartons of milk down the sink when Liddy’s not home, then gallantly volunteer to run out at night to get more so we have it for breakfast-but I’ll stop at a bar on the way home from the convenience store for a quick drink. If I know I have to be around people, I’ll drink vodka, which leaves less of an odor on the breath. I keep Gatorade under my bed, to ward off hangovers. I am careful to go out to bars in different towns, so that I look like someone who drops in every now and then for a drink, and so that I don’t get recognized in my own backyard by someone who’d narc to Reid. One night, I went to Wilmington. I drank enough to get the courage to drive by our old place. Well, Zoe’s current place. The lights were on in the bedroom, and I wondered what she was doing up there. Reading, maybe. Doing her nails.

Then I wondered if there was anyone else there with her, and I peeled away with my tires screaming on the pavement.

Of course, I tell myself that since no one seems to notice my drinking, I don’t have a problem.

I am still living at Reid’s, mostly because he hasn’t kicked me out. I don’t think this is because he enjoys having me living in his basement, really-it’s basically Christian charity. Before marrying Liddy, my brother got “born again” (Wasn’t the first time good enough? Zoe had asked) and started attending an evangelical church that met on Sundays in the cafeteria of the local middle school; eventually, he became their finance guy. I’m not a religious person-to each his own, I figure-but it got to the point where we saw less and less of my brother and his wife, simply because we couldn’t get through a simple family dinner without Zoe and Reid arguing-about Roe v. Wade, or politicians caught in adultery scandals, or prayer in public schools. The last time we went to their house, Zoe had actually left after the salad course when Reid had criticized her for singing a Green Day song to one of her burn victims. “Anarchists,” Reid had said-Reid, who listened to Led Zeppelin in his room when we were kids. I figured it was something about the lyrics his church objected to, but as it turned out, it was the character of the songs that was evil. “Really?” Zoe had asked, incredulous. “Which notes, exactly? Which chord? And where is that written in the Bible?” I don’t remember how the argument had escalated, but it had ended with Zoe standing up so quickly she overturned a pitcher of water. “This may be news to you, Reid,” she had said, “but God doesn’t vote Republican.”

I know Reid wants me to join their church. Liddy’s left pamphlets about being saved on my bed when she changes the sheets. Reid had his men’s Bible group over (“We put the ‘stud’ back in Bible study”) and invited me to join them in the living room.

I made up some excuse and went out drinking.

Tonight, though, I realize that Liddy and Reid have pulled out the big guns. When I hear Liddy ring the little antique bell she keeps on the mantel to announce dinnertime, I walk up from my guest-room cave in the basement to find Clive Lincoln sitting on the couch with Reid.

“Max,” he says. “You know Pastor Clive?”

Who doesn’t?

He’s in the paper all the time, thanks to protests he’s staged near the capital building against gay marriage. When a local high school told a gay teen he could take his boyfriend to the prom, Clive showed up with a hundred congregants to stand on the steps of the high school loudly praying for Jesus to help him find his way back to a Christian lifestyle. He made the Fox News Channel in Boston this fall when he publicly requested donations of porn movies for day care centers, saying that was no different from the president’s plan to teach sex ed in kindergarten.

Clive is tall, with a smooth mane of white hair and very expensive clothing. I have to admit, he’s larger than life. When you see him in a room, you can’t help but keep looking at him.

“Ah! The brother I’ve heard all about.”

I’m not anti-church. I grew up going on Sundays with my mom, who was the head of the ladies’ auxiliary. After she died, though, I stopped going regularly. And when I married Zoe, I stopped going at all. She wasn’t-as she put it-a Jesus person. She said religion preached unconditional love by God, but there were always conditions: you had to believe what you were told, in order to get everything you ever wanted. She didn’t like it when religious folks looked down on her for being an atheist; but to be honest, I didn’t see how this was any different from the way she looked down on people for being Christians.

When Clive shakes my hand, a shock of electricity jumps between us. “I didn’t know we were having guests for dinner,” I say, looking at Reid.

“The pastor’s not a guest,” Reid replies. “He’s family.”

“A brother in Christ,” Clive says, smiling.

I shift from one foot to the other. “Well. I’ll see if Liddy needs some help in the kitchen-”

“I’ll do that,” Reid interrupts. “Why don’t you stay here with Pastor Clive?”

That’s when I realize that my drinking-which I thought I’d been so secret and clever about-has not been secret and clever at all. That this dinner is not some friendly meal with a clergyman but a setup.

Uncomfortable, I sit down where Reid was a moment before. “I don’t know what my brother’s told you,” I begin.

“Just that he’s been praying for you,” Pastor Clive says. “He asked me to pray for you, too, to find your way.”

“I think my sense of direction’s pretty good,” I mutter.

Clive sits forward. “Max,” he asks, “do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?”

“We’re… more like acquaintances.”

He doesn’t smile. “You know, Max, I never expected to become a pastor.”

“No?” I say politely.

“I came from a family that didn’t have two nickels to rub together, and I had five younger brothers and sisters. My dad got laid off when I was twelve, and my mom got sick and was in the hospital. It fell to me to feed the household, and we didn’t have any money in the bank. One day, I went to the local food store and told the cashier that I would pay her back as soon as I could, but the cashier said she couldn’t give me the food in my basket unless I paid. Well, a man behind me-all dressed up in a suit and tie-said he’d take care of my expenses. ‘You need a shopping list, boy,’ he said, and he scribbled something on his business card and set it on one side of the cashier’s scale. Even though it was only a piece of paper, the scale started to sink. Then he took the milk, bread, eggs, cheese, and hamburger out of my cart and stacked them on the other side of the scale. The scale didn’t budge-even though, clearly, all those items should have tipped the balance. With a weight of zero pounds, the cashier had no choice but to give me the food for free-but the man handed her over a twenty-dollar bill, just the same. When I got home, I found the business card in my grocery bag, along with all the food. I took it out to read the list the man had written, but there was no list. On the back of the card it just said, Dear God, please help this boy. On the front was his name: Reverend Billy Graham.”