Uncross My Heart (14 page)

“A threat implies that I might do something if you don’t do something. This isn’t a threat. This is a promise, Dr. Westbrooke. I promise you that you will not get away with your perversion at this seminary.”

“Freedom of expression, Roger. Where does that fit into your thinking?”

“I want you to resign from this sacred school. I know you’re on a list”—he hissed out the words—“of people who might one day be chancellor. Well, you won’t.”

“I agree with you. I won’t. But not because you don’t want me to. Because
I
don’t want to.”

He sagged back against the door frame and chortled derisively.

“Because you
can’t
. Because you won’t be working here.”

“So do you just march me in at scissor point and I resign?” I poured coffee and carried a cup over to the desk’s edge nearest him and placed it on the corner. “Cream or sugar?”

As my hand released the coffee cup, he darted at my retreating palm and stabbed it with the sharp blades. I leapt back, crying out.

Blood spurted from my wound.

“There,” he said triumphantly. “In Christ’s honor, I return a tiny bit of the pain He felt when taunted by his abusers. You are one of His abusers, Dr. Westbrooke, and that is going to stop.”

Bleeding profusely, I prayed he hadn’t damaged a ligament that would permanently harm my hand. I grabbed a wad of Kleenex off my desk and balled it up in my palm to stop the blood. Roger had accomplished his task—I was afraid of him.

“This is a very old battle.” His facial expression reflected his having been mentally transported somewhere else. “We were enemies long ago.” He had obviously lost connection with the present day and was fighting a war from ages past.

I glanced toward the windows. The shades were slanted in a way that allowed light inside but no one could see in. He blocked the locked door and was closer to the phone than I. How would I get out of here without having my throat sliced?

“Where were we enemies, Roger? I don’t remember.”

“We fought in the castle.” He spoke like a man whose body had been taken over by someone else or whose mind had merely deserted the flesh and was speaking from some faraway place.

“What castle, Roger?” I said softly.

“Shut up. I am sick and tired of your questioning. I will tell you everything you need to know. I am going to save you, Dr. Westbrooke.

Before I kill you, I am going to save you. Because I do not want your hellish soul on my conscience.”

“Would you allow someone to come and be a witness—”

“You think I’m stupid, don’t you? You don’t want a witness to being saved for Christ. You want someone to save you from me.” He laughed at my ruse. “I am going to pray for your soul. Close your eyes. Close them.”

I hesitated, then closed my eyes, the rest of my senses on alert for the sound of any movement toward me. Roger began praying with a vengeance—loudly, then louder, then nearly shouting as he said, “God, most High Master of our universe. Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord and Savior. I, your humble servant, do ask that you cleanse the soul of this defiler who stands before you…”

As Roger prayed, I prayed as well—a different, more fervent plea to God, asking to be spared. For a split second I envisioned the Most High receiving our simulcast prayers, orchestrated in contrapoint.

Roger’s voice loud and demanding, “Save this defiler.”

Mine a mental psalm of pleading,
Help me. Don’t let him kill me
.

“Cleanse her soul.”

You are my refuge and my stronghold,

“In the name of the blood of the lamb,”

my God in whom I put my trust.

“heal her wickedness.”

Deliver me from the snare of the hunter.

“I make a sacrifice unto you for the sacrifice you made for me.”

Cover me with your pinions and give me refuge under your
wings.

“Amen.”

Amen.

And now it was over. Roger obviously felt he’d performed an obligation to pray over the sheep before slaughtering it. He stepped forward and put his hand to my throat. I grabbed that same hand in mine. The scissors at my jugular, I pushed back against the wrist that held them, and blood dripped from my wound onto the cuff of his shirt.He bent his head slightly to examine the stain and frowned as if he was suddenly wondering how to explain the blood to his mother.

His momentarily inclined head revealed the bookshelf behind him and the photo taken of my father when he was a young boy and of my grandfather. The image of the gray-haired patriarch fluttered around in my head as I tried to understand why at this moment I would be thinking about my grandfather.
Maybe you think about your ancestors
as you’re about to die.

“You’re smart. You could have been God’s great angel.” Roger’s focus changed suddenly and he seemed about to strike.

“You’re smart and could be your grandfather’s pride and joy.” I let my breath out involuntarily and felt just the slightest twitch of his wrist loosening, as if shifting the scene to his family had thrown him off guard. “He’s not going to like what you’re doing.” I prayed that his grandfather was someone he cared about and not someone he hated, or my demise was imminent.

“You’re not worthy to talk about my grandfather.”

“He cares for you. When you were unhappy about class, your grandfather called. He wanted you happy. When articles were printed about me in the paper, he called again and congratulated me and told me I had the courage of my convictions. Your grandfather and I are friends. He likes me. He will be very unhappy if you kill me.”

His breathing was full on my face—in-and-out panting like an animal that had been running for its life and had suddenly stopped and didn’t know which way to turn.

“That’s not true.” His voice revealed doubt beneath the denial.

“Call him. Or ask Chancellor Hightower. Or…”

His hands fell away from me, his body now limp. He stumbled backward, dazed. “You’re not going to tell him.”

“I need to have my hand attended to. May I do that?” I had already grasped the phone and dialed campus police. When the cheery security guard answered I said, “This is Dr. Westbrooke. Get someone to my office here on campus immediately. It’s an emergency.”

Roger slumped into a chair, the bloody scissors on the floor beside him. He looked exhausted, almost sleepy, and I stood very still, not wanting to stir him up again. After the longest five minutes I could ever remember, I heard footsteps approaching down the hall and I dashed to the door, flipped the dead bolt, and let a young officer in.

“Hey, Dr. Westbrooke, what—” He stared at Roger.

“This student attacked me. He needs to be taken into custody here on campus.”

“You all right? You’re bleeding.”

“I’ll head for the ER.”

“Who are you, kid?”

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light,” Roger said, surrounded by his own darkness.

“Roger Thurgood III,” I said. “Call Hightower and let him know. And lock my office, please, when you leave.”

I picked up the red roses and marched down the hall, dropped the entire vase of flowers into the trash outside the door, and walked slowly to my car.
The darkest moment sheds the greatest light,
I reminded myself. I needed to find light.

The ER was a purgatory of the battered, burned, and broken, the suffering punctuated by the sobs of frightened children.

My friend Dr. Montgomery was out of the country, so I was getting no special treatment. Three hours into my wait for a curtained cubicle to become vacant, I was still one of dozens of patients slouched against walls adorned with sacrificial saints. My palm throbbed and my brain was numb.

I was depressed and saddened that Roger, tortured by his inability to change my beliefs, was willing to torture me physically for having them.
He is the new humanity—unable to express his pain with pen
or paint, he inflicts it on others with bullets or blades.
A tired nurse shouted last names, and patients progressed from check-in to waiting room to curtained treatment area like worshippers making stations of the cross. Finally she shouted my name and I joined the procession.

The young ER doc said the puncture wasn’t as deep as the blood made it appear, and it didn’t cut any ligaments. He put in several stitches, gave me antibiotics and antiseptic swabs and some pain pills for later that night if I needed them, and told me I could make a baseball out of gauze and hold it in the center of my hand to ease the pain.

Dennis met me in the lobby as I was preparing to leave, worried that I was okay, asking what the hell happened and passing along Hightower’s concern and condolences.

“I told you to be careful with him, he’s nuts. We called his grandfather, who admitted the kid’s on serious meds for depression and a bipolar personality and God knows what else. No one told the school and he’s studying to be a minister, for God’s sake. Let me see your hand.” Dennis picked up my hand as one might a dog’s paw.

“This means you’ll never play the violin again,” he teased.

“I couldn’t before.” I echoed the old joke.

“I’m going to drive you home.”

“No, I have a car and a good driving arm. I just want to get some sleep. Don’t cancel my classes. I’m fine.”

Dennis was still protesting when I pulled out of the parking lot and waved to him with my bandaged hand. I had the top down on the convertible and let the evening wind blow in my hair. The pain in my hand couldn’t compare to the pain in my heart. My world seemed to be falling apart. So I wasn’t a warm, fuzzy priest who held your hand after mass and thanked you for coming. But I was a priest who brought something to the table.
But is it something anyone needs or wants, or
does it merely confuse them to the point they want to alter me like a
suit?
The drive to the farm seemed to take only minutes, demonstrating how lost I was in my own thoughts. Ketch was pacing around in the living room wondering, no doubt, if he’d have to befriend a neighbor to ever see another morsel of food. I poured dry dog chow into a bowl and apologized for less-than-fancy fare. He ignored the doggie buffet, sniffed my hand, put his head on my knee, and followed me out to throw hay to the horses, which I told him was extremely kind, since I knew a good meal was the most important thing in his life.

I came back inside and opened the fridge to try to find something that wasn’t too hard to fix one-handed and finally gave up and slumped into a chair.

Through the front window, headlights flashed up the driveway and a car slowly pulled in. A BMW slowed to a stop and someone in the driver’s seat fumbled with items beside them, and then the car door opened. My heart jumped around like a Ping-Pong ball as Vivienne Wilde got out, carrying a white cardboard box with a fancy ribbon around it. Her pale, neatly pressed green slacks and a matching pale green V-neck sweater reminded me that she was beautiful and I must look like the ghost of Christmas past. A quick glance at the oxen-yoke mirror, which revealed my disheveled hair and day-old shirt, confirmed my fear. Too late, she was on the porch. I opened the door before she could knock.

“Dennis called and told me what happened. Are you all right?”

She was almost whispering.

I wasted no time wondering how Dennis knew where to reach her.

Instead, I thought only of how I wanted to kiss her. I stood there like an idiot saying nothing and trying to fight the feeling.

“May I come in?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I brought you something to eat. You may have already eaten but I didn’t know.”

“No, I couldn’t…I didn’t have…”

She set the box on a table and put her arms around me, her cheek to my shoulder, and suddenly I didn’t hurt anymore. Everything in me was healed. She embodied the bliss I had preached and envisioned but never lived. Her presence was uniquely heaven. She didn’t attempt to be anything but close. I don’t know how long we stood there in silence—a coming home, a physical acknowledgment of pieces long separate that had finally found where they belonged. The cracks between the breaks now glued together with heartbeats and warm breaths and sweet secrets as yet unshared.

She led me to the couch and pulled me into her like a long-lost love, and the warmth of our snuggled bodies created indescribable bliss—babies in the womb, puppies intertwined in a basket, lovers who have found their soul mate—a wondrous feeling that made me know without doubt that God loved the world to have given us the ability to experience this sensation and that God must care about me.

“Tell me everything,” she said softly, and I began with the events that led up to Roger’s threat to kill me and then, with her coaxing, moved into a hypnotic regression of my past, filling in the details of my life with my father and my days in seminary and of the woman I had known, as the televangelists would say, in the Biblical sense.

“I was enrolled in religious studies, planning to teach. She was a political activist. My father figured out that she was behind my interest in the protest marches. He forbade me to ever see her again.”

“What happened to her?” Something in her voice made me believe she already suspected.

“My father called her husband and then we all met on a street corner.” I smiled at the way the pain could still be summoned after all these years. “Such a cataclysmic event in my life and it took place on a street corner.”

“What did your lover say?”

“She told everyone that the relationship was one-sided and I had forced myself on her when she was drunk.” It was the first time I’d said those words out loud, and tears gathered at the corner of my eye.

“And after that—”

“I called her a fucking liar. I called her husband a born-again-idiot who couldn’t satisfy his wife on any level, and I called my father a peeping Tom whose pathetically boring life had led him to peer into mine like some sexual Nazi. And then I went home and fell into a deep depression and didn’t answer my phone or go outside for weeks. I thought I would die.”

“I’m sorry.” Vivienne looked genuinely sad.

“But finally I became bored with my own self-pity and took a long walk by the bay, where I happened to sit down on a bench next to, of all things, an Episcopal priest. He wasn’t wearing a collar so I didn’t know.