I return to the English lounge, I find Judy deep in conversation with an unusually attractive young woman with dark hair and tusk-white skin. She is sitting next to Judy on the sofa, each turned toward the other as though they are sharing secrets.
Judy spots me over the woman’s shoulder and flashes me that bright, puppy-dog look she gives when pleased. Then she launches into one of her laboriously formal introductions:
“Well, there you are, Jon. I want … I should say, I want you to meet my new friend, Miss Bri … Miss Brianna Jones.”
Miss Jones, indeed. I offer my hand as she rises from the couch.
“Brianna, this is my … my brother of mine, Mr. Jon Mote.”
We exchange greetings as Judy beams from the sofa, satisfied that she has once again successfully navigated another of life’s shoals.
“Your sister was just telling me that you used to teach here.”
“Oh no, no. I was a graduate student here once. No. I never even finished. I was a grad school dropout.”
“Well, I’m about to join those ranks myself. I was telling Judith that I’m here to close out my accounts.”
“Have you finished a degree or are you taking a break?”
She looks out the window.
“Well, I’ve finished something, but it wasn’t a degree.”
She seems sort of upset. I’ve been around upset women enough to pick up on the signs. My wife used to send out more distress signals than a sinking ship. But have you ever tried reading signal flags at a thousand yards? There was lots of waving and gesturing, but what the hell was she trying to say? “Abandon ship”? “Come on board”? “Torpedoes off the starboard bow”? Not being much good at the hermeneutics of female cues, I usually just sat there, contemplating the cold Atlantic waves.
This time, I pull anchor.
“It’s been nice meeting you, Brianna. Let’s go Judy. We’ve got to get home.”
It takes a three count for Judy to process that it’s time to go and then notify her body.
“Yes, Jon. I … I am coming. I am coming right now.”
She gets her feet on the ground, bends at almost a right angle, and pushes herself slowly away from the sofa. She carefully pulls down her sweater, straightens her shoulders, and holds out her hand to her new friend.
“It has been nice talk … talking with you, Bri … Brianna Jones. I am … I should say, I am very glad to have made your acquaintance.”
Brianna returns the formality. “And yours as well, Judith. I hope we see each other again in the future.”
This delights Judy to no end.
“Yes, perhaps on … on another occasion.”
Since this exchange has no guaranteed ending point, I take Judy by the hand and we head out the door.
FIVE
Outside the Humanities building, I’m starting to feel unwell. I have levels of unwellness, ranging from the generic to the acute. This unwellness is more specific than usual.
I reach into my jacket pocket for some of my pills, but come up empty. Something is going on in my mind, and it portends nothing good. I shouldn’t have come back here. It’s like a geriatric Napoleon signing up for a senior citizen bus tour of Waterloo. I mean, why spread out your picnic blanket on the freeway? You’re just begging the universe to notice you—never a good thing.
I don’t do too well with the past. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s that the past is never actually past. Nothing is ever over, ever finished, ever gone. It’s like with garbage. There’s really no “away” in “throw away.” Everything goes somewhere—“away” just means out of sight, not out of existence. You can stick something in a barrel, or cover it up with dirt, or drop it in an ocean canyon. But it’s still there. Even burning something up doesn’t really make it go “away”; it merely changes its configuration, rearranges atoms.
And if it’s true with candy bar wrappers and toxic waste, how much more so with toxic memories?
During the ride back to the houseboat, Judy is basking in the afterglow of her new friendship.
“Brianna reminds me of my … my Sunday school teacher of mine.”
I know Judy hasn’t been to any Sunday school since she’s been back with me, so I’m prepared for her to dredge up any of the dozen teachers she must have had as a girl. For her the saying “It’s like it was yesterday” is literally true. Her mind makes no significant distinction between earlier today and thirty-five years ago. She cannot remember that three plus four equals seven, but recalls every word our mother said to her when the ice cream fell out of her cone when she was five.
“Which Sunday school teacher was that, Jude?”
“Miss Sinclair. You remember her, Jon. She is my favorite. I … I like her very much.”
I don’t remember Miss Sinclair, of course. I do remember Sunday school. Sunday school marked one of the first encounters with the problem of evil for little fundamentalist children like me. How can a good God have created a world in which innocent kids have to go to Sunday school? Was God just not powerful enough to prevent Sunday school, or was he not totally good?
Sunday school in my day was low-tech flannel board presentations by high-anxiety teachers like Mr. Ring: “Here, children, is Joseph in his coat of many colors. You all have a picture of Joseph wearing his coat in your workbooks. I want you to take that home and color it and bring it back next Sunday and you will get twenty points. Now remember that the two students who earn the most points this quarter get to go with me to play putt-putt golf and have a hamburger at The Flame. But I don’t want to see any of you coloring that coat in the service next hour. You are old enough now to listen to Pastor Patterson’s sermon. Barry, I saw you laying your head in your mother’s lap last week. Don’t you think you’re a little too big for that? Now here is the well Joseph’s brother threw him in. Why do you think they did that, children? Why did they throw Joseph in the well? Yes, Barry… . No, Barry, it wasn’t because he didn’t believe in Jesus. Jesus comes later. Yes, Cecil… . That’s right. They were jealous of him. What does it mean to be jealous, children? Are you ever jealous? When might you be jealous? That’s right, Arnie—when your brother hits a home run in Little League and everybody thinks he’s so great. Yes, Barry? … Why yes, the Bible does say God is a jealous God. No, Barry, it doesn’t mean God has sinned. It’s different. God doesn’t sin. Yes, I understand that if something’s wrong, it’s wrong. But it isn’t the same thing. It’s … well, something you boys are too young to understand right now. We can talk about it later.”
It wasn’t Mr. Ring’s fault. All week long he sold auto parts. It was nothing but tie rods and head gaskets and spark gap setters. How was he supposed to know why God was allowed to be jealous when we shouldn’t be? And how was he supposed to teach eight kinetic third-grade boys the Bible on Sunday when he didn’t know anything about teaching and had only volunteered because the Sunday school superintendent had made him feel guilty that no one else would? And maybe because his own son had died at age four and
