A Little Too Much Jesus

by John Picard

“Please order a drink everyone,” Kate said. “I mean it, Chuck. I know how you like your vodka martinis.”

“Are you sure?” Laura said.

“Positive. We talked a lot about social drinking at the Center. A big part of recovery is abstaining around other drinkers. This’ll be good practice.”

“I’ll feel awfully funny if I do,” Laura said.

“I’ll feel awfully funny if you don’t. I’m serious. The house chardonnay is excellent here.”

“Let me just say, Katie,” Chuck said, “that you’re one of the strongest, bravest women I know.”

I could feel some pressure on my right temple. I couldn’t be around Chuck, a car salesman with the personality to match, without a getting a headache.

“Anyway,” Laura said, “you look fantastic. You really do.”

“I lost sixteen pounds. That’s what cutting a thousand liquid calories out of your daily diet will do.”

*

Before she left for the Center, Kate was pale with shadows under her eyes and a defeated look around her mouth. After only a month of treatment the color was back in her pretty face and her gray-green eyes were shining.

Our food arrived. I was reaching for my fork, anticipating the pleasure of choosing which of the pan-seared sea scallops to spear first, when I observed Kate’s sudden stillness, her head slightly lowered, her shoulders hunched. It was over in seconds (I doubted Kate and Chuck even noticed) and I didn’t think much about it until later, on the drive home.

“You looked beautiful tonight,” I said.

Kate touched my arm. “You’re sweet.”

After a silence, I asked, “Did you pray at dinner?”

“I said the blessing if that’s what you mean.”

“Is that something they did at the Center?”

“It’s just something I picked up from a few of the people there. Does it bother you?”

“Not at all.” What was a short prayer, I thought, if it helped Kate to not drink?

Later, in bed with our books, I asked her, “Is it just before meals you pray or is it other times as well?”

“Other times as well.”

“Like when?”

“Bedtime.”

“I’ve never heard you.”

“I don’t pray out loud, silly.”

“What do you say when you pray? What kinds of things?”

“I thank God for the blessings of the day. I ask Him for strength and guidance in the days to come.”

“So you actually believe someone’s listening to what you’re saying?”

“I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t.”

“Is that a new book?”

She showed me the cover.

“Lynn Austin. I’m not familiar with that author.”

“She’s good. Very inspirational.”

*

For twelve years I’d worked second shift—one to ten—at Belmeade University Library. Rather than having dinner in my cubicle, as I usually did—a sandwich and a piece of fruit—I started coming home at five to eat with Kate. Along with some family issues, her promotion to Sales Manager at Cooper Realty had sent her stress levels soaring, bringing on her alcoholic excess. I wanted to be there for Kate as much as possible now in her struggle with sobriety, and I suppose I was also trying to assuage a guilty conscience for leaving her by herself all those evenings when she’d been doing most of her drinking. Before every meal now, Kate paused to say a silent blessing. I paused too as it seemed rude to start without her.

*

She began going to meetings, those public gatherings of acknowledged alcoholics who share their stories of abuse and redemption. It gave her something to do in the evenings when she might have been tempted to drink. However, she wasn’t always home when I returned from the library a little after ten. Either the meeting went over, or she’d joined a few of the stalwarts afterwards for decaffeinated drinks at Starbucks.

“How was your meeting tonight?” I asked.

“Good.”

“Is it like in the movies where someone stands up and says ‘Hi. My name is so and so. I’m an alcoholic?’”

“Exactly like that.”

“And they tell all the bad things they did when they were drinking?”

“That’s it,” she said.

“Have you done it?”

“I have.”

I was abashed, or perhaps just saddened that it was only now I was hearing about this important step in her recovery.

“Was that hard?”

“Very hard. I cried.”

“What kind of stuff did you talk about?”

“Stuff you already know. I don’t have to go into it, do I?”

“Of course not. This thing you do after the meeting? How did that come about?”

“What thing?”

“At Starbucks.”

“You mean our prayer group?”

“You’re in a prayer group?”

“It just kind of happened. Some of us felt the need.”

“I’ve been thinking,” I said. “I’m going to change to first shift at the library. Diane’s husband works second shift at Lowe’s and I’m sure she’d be more than happy to switch.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Kate said. “I know how you prefer working nights.”

“I want to. I’ll be home every day by 5:15.”

*

We’d always had somewhat different tastes in music, movies, book, etc. Kate wasn’t as intellectually turned as I was. Not that she wasn’t extremely bright. She just didn’t have much patience with what she called over analyzing. I’d learned early on in the relationship not to “beat a subject to death.” So I was careful not to push her too hard on certain topics. Kate was a passionate person. It was one of the reasons I fell in love with her. She had strong opinions about many things. Nowadays, though, all she wanted to talk about were her meetings. This one said this, this one did that. If not her meetings then her new prayer partners. “They’re so loving, so caring.” Also, I’d discovered that Lynn Austin was a writer of religiously-themed novels. And three times now Kate had said “Thank the Lord,” when, in the past, she would have said, “Thank God,” two very different expressions. It made me reconsider Kate’s bottom-hitting moment, the evening I came home and found her unconscious on the kitchen floor, bleeding from a gash to her head. I learned that while I was at work she’d been drinking two bottles of wine after a day of stressing over sales quotas and underperforming agents, on top of worrying about her mother’s latest cancer scare and her brother’s addiction to prescription drugs. I’d assumed Kate liked to go to bed early, but it turned out she’d been passing out before I got home. This last time she didn’t make it to the bedroom, falling and hitting her head on the edge of the kitchen counter. Had Kate possessed the God gene all along without knowing it? Had it been knocked loose from its hiding place when her head struck the counter?

*

“The latest Scorsese is playing at The Grande,” I said. It was after eleven when Kate pulled into the driveway. I’d poured out my vodka and orange juice in the sink before she opened the door. Now that I was working eight to five and Kate, often as not, was attending a meeting, getting through an evening alone was a challenge. “We could go this Saturday,” I said.

No one watched a movie like Kate. She sat on the edge of her seat from beginning to end, eating her popcorn a few kernels at a time while never taking her eyes off the screen. I envied her concentration, her focus. I’d always had trouble following the plots of movies and even television dramas. I depended on Kate to tell me why the undercover detective betrayed his best friend or the defeated superhero regained his superpowers.

“I don’t think so,” Kate said.

“It’s based on Shusaku Endo’s novel, Silence. A great book. A classic.”

“His movies are so violent.”

“Not this one. It’s about these Christian missionaries who go to Japan to find their mentor when Christianity was banned. You might like it. It’s got religion in it. You like religion now.”

“I don’t like religion. You go if you want to. I’ll be taking clients around to properties all day Saturday.” Kate was working full time again as an agent.

“What about Sunday?”

“One of my prayer partners invited me to church on Sunday.”

“You’re joining a church?”

“I didn’t say I was joining a church. I said I was invited to one.”

“Which one?”

“Crossroads Baptist.”

“Isn’t that the mega church out on Muir’s Chapel Road? It’s as big as the damn Colosseum.”

“There’s no need to curse.”

It registered then that Kate, whose language could turn dark blue when she was angry or upset, had stopped using profanity. This concerned me. Without realizing it, I’d been hoping that Kate was going through a phase, that she would seamlessly incorporate her new beliefs into her life and our marriage would go on as before. But that wasn’t happening. Kate even looked different: no more dyeing the streaks of gray in her hair, no more form-fitting dresses, little make-up. When I brought this to her attention she said,

“‘Behold, I make all things new.’”

“Is that from the Bible?”

“Isaiah 43:18.”

Kate had recently bought a Bible with a white, faux-leather cover, “Holy Bible” in gold lettering and Jesus’s spoken words in scarlet. She read several chapters every night, which made it difficult to initiate sex, and when I did, I usually wished I hadn’t. It wasn’t the same either.

*

“I think you need to know what’s going on.”

I had just finished my morning shift on the library’s Circulation Desk when my cell went off. It was Laura.

“You know that Kate invited me to that church, right?”

“Yes.” When I declined to go to Crossroads Kate had asked Laura to accompany her.

“I went, you know,” Laura said, “and I took Chuck with me. Guess what? He’s into it.”

“Into what?”

“Church. He loves it. We’ve been going every Sunday. Chuck’s parents made him go when he was growing up and he hated it. But this church is different, he says. If he’d known about it before he would have gone years ago. We’ve had some horrible fights about it. If I say anything critical he gets furious.”

“Has he been praying?”

“Yes!”

“Did he buy a Bible?”

“He already had one. His mother gave it to him when he was a boy. That tells you something, doesn’t it? Keeping it all these years? We’ve always been in agreement about most things, but not this. It’s a little too much Jesus for me. I only go to church because Chuck does. I’m trying to understand what he gets out of it. I don’t want to be left out, you know.”

*

Kate started trying to get me to go to church with her.

“I really think you’d like it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The people are warm and welcoming. The music’s great. And Pastor Dave always has a message that leaves you inspired. There’s no feeling like the one you get after an hour of worship. “

I caved. It turned out that Crossroads Baptist wasn’t what I expected, which was some version of the televangelists I caught while flipping the channels, red-faced men in bespoke suits condemning sinners to hell when they weren’t begging for money. Pastor Dave wore khakis and a collarless shirt, paced the stage instead of standing behind a podium, sipped from a water bottle, railed against religion which he called “sin management.” There was Christian rock music played on electric guitars. There was turning to your neighbors before the sermon and telling them how much you cared about them, loved them.

On the ride home, Kate said, “What did you think of Pastor Dave?”

“He’s an effective speaker.”

“Pastor Steve is good too. But Pastor Dave is a better story teller. I like how he works the personal into his sermons. That was so interesting about his daughter.”

“His daughter?”

“You know, how he got her to stop drinking sodas.”

“Well, Jesus, she would have probably been fine if he’d left her alone.”

Kate turned in her seat. “I won’t have it,” she said sharply. “I won’t have you taking His name in vain.” She sighed. “I was afraid to tell you before because you’re so anti-faith.”

“I’m not anti-faith. Tell me what?”

“Last Sunday I invited Christ into my heart and made him my personal Lord and Savior.”

I wasn’t sure what the proper response should be to such a declaration.

“Congratulations?” I said.

“‘Be not deceived. God is not mocked.’”

“Who’s mocking? I wasn’t mocking.”

*

Another call from Laura.

“Chuck keeps trying to explain things to me. Like original sin. Do you know about that?”

“Adam and Eve?”

“Because of what they did in the Garden of Eden—ate of the tree of good and evil—God sent His son to earth to save humanity. He required a sacrifice for some reason. Chuck says God gave Adam and Eve free will. But He knew what they’d do all along. He’s God. He knows everything. It was a setup. But I don’t dare tell Chuck that. Or Kate.”

“I know,” I said. “I avoid those kinds of discussions ever since we got into it about The Trinity. Are you familiar with The Trinity?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Three Gods in one: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. ‘Damnedest thing I ever heard,’ I told Kate and things went from bad to worse.”

“Courtney called me the other day. ‘What’s with Dad? What’s with all the God talk?’ I told her: ‘Your father got saved.’ I spent an hour explaining what that means. What are we going to do, Richard?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t imagine my life without Chuck. I don’t want a life without Chuck.”

*

As we’d done for several years running, we celebrated our wedding anniversary at The Undercurrent, a highly-rated restaurant in the shopping district downtown. Kate was dressed in a modest skirt and blouse. The gray in her hair, the lack of make-up, took nothing away from her attractiveness. On the contrary, it allowed her natural beauty to come through. We’d enjoyed many a romantic dinner at The Undercurrent, with a cocktail to start and a bottle of wine with the meal. It was typical of the state of things that I was sorely tempted to order a Grey Goose Martini, come what may.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about,” Kate said. She reached across the table and placed her hand on mine. A warmth travelled up my arm and spread over my body.

“This is hard,” she said. “But Pastor Dave said I should do it if I feel led.”

“Okay.”

“I’m worried about you, Richard.”

“Are you?”

“Before I was saved I felt an emptiness. There was a hole in the middle of my life. I tried to fill it with work, friends, food, books, everything I could think of—mostly alcohol. But that hole was so deep nothing could fill it. Only God. Only Jesus. Don’t you feel it yourself if you’re honest? Don’t you feel an emptiness deep inside?”

“I can’t say that I do.”

“You should know that I’ve been praying for you.”

“Have you?”

“I’m worried about where you’re going to spend eternity.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“I hate your anger.”

“I’m not angry. Who’s angry?”

“I understand that things are changing. It’s scary. But it doesn’t have to be. I’ve been praying that God will convict you of your sins and reveal to you the saving grace of His Son, Jesus Christ, that you will join me on my faith journey, that God will heal our marriage and bring us together to glorify His name. Will you bow your head and ask Jesus to come into your heart? Will you pray the sinner’s prayer?”
So many words and phrases I’d never heard before; overnight Kate had learned a whole new language.

“I don’t think I will, actually.”

“You could die tomorrow, you could die today, your sins unforgiven and your soul in mortal danger.”

“I’ll take that risk, I guess. Kate?”

“Yes?”

“Where did you go?”

“What?”

“The woman I married. What happened to her? Where is she?”

“She’s right here. She’s right here asking you to make a decision that will change your life.”

“I don’t want to change my life.”

We looked at each other a moment.

“Do you love me?” I asked.

“Of course. That’s what this is all about. But I love the Lord more.”

“Your lamb is getting cold,” I said.

She withdrew her hand.

*

It was five-twenty on a Friday and I was having a problem finding a place to park. There were cars up and down both sides of the street. When I let myself into the house I was confronted by a roomful of mostly strangers.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt anything,” I said.

After Kate introduced me to everyone she explained that the prayer group had grown so large they were taking turns hosting it in their homes and it was her turn today.

Different ones began waving and smiling at me, including Laura and Chuck, sitting on the sofa with Bibles open on their laps. Laura cast a sheepish look my way.

“Have a seat,” someone called out. I was being invited to have a seat in my own home.

“Please,” another said.

“The more the merrier.”

“Ya’ll come.”

The room erupted in strident laugher.

“No,” I said, “You go on.” I retreated to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water when what I wanted were three fingers of whisky. From the living room there was more chatter than prayer. But it was not idle chatter. A sibilant softness, a low hiss, ran through all the talk: “Jessussssss.” When I stepped to the door Chuck was addressing the group.

“I was miserable. My wife’ll tell you. I was the most miserablest SOB you’ve ever seen—pardon my french. There was a reason I worked sixty hours a week. There was a reason I sold more cars than anyone else on the lot. If I kept busy I’d never have to face the fact that I was living a life without meaning or direction. That all changed when I met Jesus.”

“Amen.”

“Praise Him.”

Chuck added, “But it never would have happened if it hadn’t been for this lady over here,” gesturing toward Kate. “I have her to thank for my new life in Christ.”

“I was only the vessel,” Kate said, humbly.

More prayer partners gave their testimony as this process was called—reciting the saga of their particular road to salvation. Each spoke with genuine emotion and undeniable sincerity. They were heady and happy. And why shouldn’t they be? They had discovered the secret of creation. They knew why there was something instead of nothing. They were part of the Almighty’s grand plan. At some point I turned and stepped into the kitchen, but then I heard Kate’s voice and peered back around. She was sitting on the edge of her seat with her legs crossed and her arms wrapped around her stomach. She was describing the heavy drinking that failed to fill the void in her life. She went on about the help she sought for her addiction at a place where special people led by God convinced her of her sinful nature and her need of a savior. Climatically, she recounted the day she asked Jesus to come into her heart and surrendered to God’s will and His purpose for her life. As she spoke, her cheeks colored, her eyes glazed over, her words ran together—high on the Lord, buzzed on the Spirit.

 

John Picard is a native of Washington D.C. currently living in Greensboro North Carolina. He has published fiction and nonfiction in New England Review, Narrative Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, Mid-American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere. A collection of his stories, Little Lives, was published by Main Street Rag.