American Savior (15 page)

But something seemed to have changed between us since Jesus appeared in our lives. We’d had a couple of fights, the fights had left a residue, and the residue was hardening like paint on a brush. I know I shouldn’t have been thinking about such things. I mean, the campaign for Jesus was so much bigger than all that, so much more important. I shouldn’t have been thinking about it. But I was.

I believe, if you look in the Bible, you’ll see that the same type of thing was going on then: the people Jesus chose for his disciples, they all had their petty sides, their fears and doubts, their competitive nature and need for approval. They denied him at times, ran away at key moments, were afraid and unsure. I’m not going to pretend I was any better.

EIGHTEEN

I walked the streets for an hour. During that walk, Randy Zillins reached me on my cell and said how shocked he was that I was “part of this Jesus scam.”

“How much are they paying you?” he wanted to know.

I said, “Man does not live by bread alone,” and told him I had a call coming in from
Good Morning America.

B
ACK IN MY CONDO
, I watched baseball for a while and sulked. Only a little while. Not very long. All it took to snap me out of it was switching channels at the top of the hour and getting a news report. The report led off with a shot from the helicopter showing the crowd filling Banfield Plaza. The camera zoomed in and there was yours truly, looking pretty decent, saying, “And the next president of the United States….”

Naturally, the national news people, being the cynics they are, had to pretend to be evenhanded and sophisticated by showing the handful of naysayers in the crowd with the
HE’S A FAKE
! signs, and then running an interview with some preacher from Oklahoma who was going on about how the man on the stage bore no resemblance to the biblical Jesus, and how the biblical Jesus would be a humble man, not one who cared about worldly approval—running for president, wearing an expensive suit. Where had this charlatan been born? Who were these other charlatans surrounding him on the stage? Why, they were nothing more than TV
people,
local
TV people at that, and Massachusetts types—known to be out of favor with the Lord. The whole thing, including the two so-called miracles, had been staged to get ratings and to take the focus off the brilliant campaign being run by Senator Marjorie Maplewith, whose husband Aldridge was a
real
preacher and a true man of God.

It got better. After a commercial for panty liners and one for the new Ford F-150, they aired Maplewith herself, giving a noncommittal statement, saying she hadn’t yet seen the video of the so-called Jesus announcing his candidacy, but it sounded to her like a desperate strategy her opponent had dreamed up because he was sinking fast in the polls and knew he couldn’t win without splitting the vote of religious Americans. The “New Christian majority,” was the way she referred to her backers. The “values voters.” As if, I thought, everybody wasn’t a values voter in some way or another.

And then the Dems had their turn, in the person of Colonel Dennis Alowich, who made the mistake—which would end up sending his campaign into a downward spiral from which it would require weeks to recover—of attempting levity. “Sounds like Ms. Maplewith should get on over to church and say a few prayers for her campaign. Ha, ha. She’s been going around for the past year claiming to have God on her side, and now God has come to earth and isn’t endorsing her. Ha, ha, ha.”

Part of the problem here was that Alowich actually laughed like that, two or three
ha-ha
s spaced about a second apart, and his lower teeth weren’t as even or as white as people would have liked them to be. American politics has descended to this, I guess: we vote for people based on what their teeth look like and how they laugh. So, courtesy of the right-wing slime machine—financed by the notorious home mortgage magnate Justin Dreaf—this clip was shown over and over for weeks in the Bible belt, with the punch line added by a deep-voiced announcer: “Do we want a president who laughs about prayer?” and the camera zooming in on the colonel’s faulty lower incisors.

I was standing there, facing the TV, considering the priorities of the American voting public and worrying about how Jesus was going to make
allowances, when I heard the key turn in the front door lock. The door swung open, Zelda walked in, hair tousled, eyes on fire. She closed the door, hard. “What’s wrong, Russ?”

“Nothing.” I gestured at the TV. “Coverage.”

“What’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong. I needed a little space.”

“You didn’t hug me when you left. Stab noticed. Your mom noticed.”

I shrugged.

“What’s going on?”

“Where are they?”

“Exhausted. I got them takeout from Siam Temple. They’re at my apartment, eating, watching TV. They both want to take a nap. What’s going on?” She went over to the television. “Can I?”

“Sure.”

She snapped it off. “Talk to me, Russ.”

“Same old stuff,” I said.

“You’re jealous of Jesus.”

“Not the right way to put it.”

“I thought your introduction was brilliant. Just as he said, you can do that stand-up stuff like no one I know. I couldn’t have done that in a million years.”

“Thanks. It was exciting.”

“You sound about as excited as a turtle.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you want to call off the engagement or something? You seem so,
distant.
I feel like I forced you into it against your will. You weren’t fully awake, I was weepy—”

“I don’t want to call it off. Do you want to call it off?”

“Of course not! Why would you even say something like that?”

“Because we haven’t made love in a week. Because you barely look at me. Because all I’ve seen from you these past few days has been this kind of mocking smirk, or frown, or I don’t know what it is, as if everything I do is stupid, or not reverent enough. The rest of the time you basically
ignore me. Which is fine. Okay. It’s a busy time, I know that. But I’m as busy as you are and every once in a while I at least make eye contact with you, and I don’t try to make you feel dumb for falling all over the guy like you were in ninth grade and he’s the senior quarterback or something. Sorry. I’m just me. This is the best I can do.”

She just stood still and looked. I looked back. And then she said, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Okay.”

“We always said we wouldn’t let work be first and us be second, and I have been doing that.”

“Well, unusual circumstances,” I said.

“You were great out there today. Really.”

“Thanks. You were right about the crowds. Bastatutta thinks sixty thousand. The TV said seventy-five. It’s all over the news.”

“And you’re right with the ninth-grader remark. I am feeling that way, I admit it.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m in the eighth grade most of the time.”

“I think what it is is that, after all these years of having leaders I couldn’t feel good about, having a country that was going the wrong way, to think maybe that could change, maybe we could be, I don’t know, a shining moral beacon in an awful world. It almost seems like a fantasy or something.”

“I know. I feel the same way.”

“And to be part of making that happen, I mean, my last set of foster parents used to talk about the feeling they had in the sixties, like they could actually remake the world for the better. To feel that now, and to feel like the power of God is behind it … It’s almost too much to absorb.”

“Not to mention you get to order Poop Safes and ride in Hummers.”

She smiled. It was a magical smile. With the possible exception of turning away from a life of sin, there is no feeling in the world like making up with somebody you love after a fight in which you thought everything was going to fall apart. Especially after you’ve seen everything
fall apart for real with somebody else. We stood like that for a minute, enjoying it, and then Zelda flipped the hair out of her face in a certain way, and said in a certain tone, “Actually, Captain, the reason I stopped by was to get my driver’s license renewed. I know it’s after hours, and I know I’ve had some speeding issues in the past, but I was hoping there might be some way, well, I’m embarrassed to ask for help, but do you think… ?”

“Let me see the license,” I said. “Maybe there’s something I can do.”

She hiked up her dress a few inches, as if there were a pocket under there and she was looking for her wallet. I could see the smooth skin of her thigh. “I can’t seem to find it,” she said.

“Here, let me help,” I said, and soon we were resolving the licensing issue, as it were, wrestling around on the couch like two youngsters, clothing being unbuttoned, unzipped, cast aside, sections of tender skin being given careful attention.

“Isn’t there some test I’m supposed to retake,” she whispered in my ear.

And the rest of what happened is private.

But the license had not quite been approved when I heard a knock on the door. We kept doing what we were doing, though more quietly, hoping it was just my next-door neighbor, the retired hydraulics engineer Emmanuel Vespa, who liked to stop by with a six-pack in the late innings of Sox games and talk about the coefficient of restitution while I pretended to listen. But we had no such luck on that day.

There was a pause, and then more insistent knocking, and then, “Russ? Hey, Russ?”

It was my dad’s voice. It turned out that he’d hung up the phone and driven as fast as he could all the way from North Salem.

“Russ? Russ? You in there or what?”

NINETEEN

I am not sure whether it is more difficult for a man or a woman to pretend that they have not just been having sex when, in fact, they were just having sex. Zelda grabbed her clothes, hurried into the bathroom, and turned on the shower. I straightened myself out as best I could and called, “Coming, Pa!”

He’s not a stupid man, my father. Odd and quirky at times, stubborn as the day is long, but not stupid. When I opened the door he took a look at me and said, “What’s goin’ on, did I wake you up?”

“Nah, watching the Sox. Come on in.”

He came in, stood in the middle of the living room, and looked around. The TV wasn’t on. We could hear the shower going.

“Zel’s here,” I said. “She’ll be glad to see you.”

“Oh.” He looked at me, then away, then back. “Good timing, I guess.”

“Don’t worry about it, Pa.”

“Where’s your mother and Stab?”

“At Zel’s place. Wiped out. They wanted a nap.”

“And you guys wanted some time alone.”

“Forget it, Pa. Turn on the set, I’m getting you a beer.”

“No, listen. I didn’t drive all the way up here at ninety miles an hour to watch the Red Sox.”

“Sorry about the phone connection. It was so loud I couldn’t hear what you were saying.”

“I watched it on TV.” He paused. He made a three-step half circle, which was a habit of his—he’d lived most of his life in small rooms. “First off, I was proud of you. You did good up there in front of all those people. You looked relaxed. In charge. I was proud.”

“Thanks, Pa.”

“And second of all.” Another pause, more glancing around. It was almost as if he had a toothache and was looking for the cabinet where I kept the Ambusol. “Second of all, I want to say … well, he seems like a good egg.”

“He is.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t changed my mind about it. I’ve had it up to here with the Jesus worship, believe me. Between your mother, customers trying to convert me over the years, the stupid things people say to us—‘I
love
lox and bagels, Arnie, really I do’—it was not that easy being a Jew in this country, you know. It still isn’t, on certain days. And I am who I am. I’m not about to abandon my religion at my age.”

“Nobody’s asking you to,” I said.

“I know, I know. You wouldn’t. I know that. What I’m saying is, you know how I am. I’m a family guy. I fight like hell with your mother, but I couldn’t live without her for a week. Not to mention Stab. What I’m saying, I guess, is that I have nothing else to do these days. What do I do all day? I listen to Mrs. Wu, I play a little golf, do stuff around the house, play cards with my pals. So … I came to see if I could help you out with the campaign without, you know—”

“Without converting.”

“Yeah.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I don’t get the feeling he’s into converting people. I don’t think that’s what his campaign is about.”

“I didn’t either,” my father said, and I could hear the relief in his voice. It was true what he’d said about not being able to live without my mother. That had always been a mystery to me, the way they could fight about every little thing and then kiss and make out in the kitchen the next day. Having Stab had brought them closer, I know that was part of it; both of them had told me so in different words. But there was something else. “A
good physical relationship,” my mother had said once, in an unguarded moment. “An attraction.”

Just then, Zelda came out of the bathroom looking radiant and wet. She had a big smile for my father and went up and hugged him, and I could see that he was on the verge of apologizing, when he decided he didn’t know her well enough yet. After a few awkward seconds he said, “I saw you all on the TV. I had to come up. That was something.”

“I’m still in a state of excitement,” Zelda said innocently.

And that made my father look out the window.

I was on my way to get all of us a much-needed drink when there was another knock on the door. Long before Jesus came into my life, I’d gone to great pains to be as anonymous as possible. This was one of the things they advised you to do when you got a one like the job I’d had at ZIZ: try to keep a private life for yourself. So I’d actually rented the apartment under another name, and put another name on the mailbox downstairs. My phone number was unlisted. I’d bought this condo, in part, because it had an underground garage, and you could go from the garage into the elevator or vice versa without anybody seeing you on the street. So it was surprising to have two knocks on the door in one afternoon. I hoped against hope it wasn’t Manny Vespa, and when I opened the door it wasn’t. There stood a man in a UPS delivery uniform with a small cardboard box under one arm. Until he took off his hat, the man looked remarkably like Jesus. After he took off his hat, he looked exactly like him.