THE COMING

Chapter 3 Pillow Talk

Getting into bed was awkward for the younger Girardi couple these days. For the first year of marriage Lily helped lift her semi-paralyzed husband into bed, something she had gotten used to doing. But now she was several months along and nobody wanted her lifting heavy objects, so Will or Helen lent a hand.

Tonight things were awkward even afterward. Lily lay beside her husband trying to think of what to say. The big problem, she could see now, was not just making the revelation, but explaining why nobody had done so for three and a half years. To be sure Lily had only been told a month ago, and Helen at the beginning of fall, but Joan and Luke were going to be put on the spot.

"Kevin? There's something I have to tell you."

He chuckled. "Oh? It isn't that you're having a baby, because I already know that." He turned somber suddenly. "Wait. Something hasn't gone wrong, has it?"

"No, no. It's not the baby. It's something you should know." Lily took a deep breath. "Joan-goes-on-missions-for-God."

"What? Has she joined some religious group at school?"

"It doesn't have to do with a group. Joan has one-on-One meetings with God, and He tells her what He wants her to do."

"Meetings – Joan told you that?"

"Yeah."

"Are you aware that Joan had hallucinations a few years ago? It worries me, if they've come back."

Lilly knew that Kevin wasn't going to accept it right away, but she did wish it was easier. "They weren't hallucinations, Kevin."

"Or – have you considered that she's been taken in by a charlatan, who can do magic tricks and claim that they are miracles?"

"He doesn't do magic tricks. And God takes different forms. Lots of times He appears as a woman."

"So you believe her?"

"Yes."

They fell silent. Lily wished it wasn't dark in the room, because she wished she could see what Kevin was thinking by his expression. Normally, after more than a year of marriage, she would have been able to guess.

"Lily, I don't know a polite way to put this. But has it occurred to you that you'd have a natural tendency to believe this stuff, as a church employee and former nun?"

"I'm not that gullible, Kevin! Yeah, I know there are idiots out there who'd believe that 2 plus 2 was 5 if you told them the Bible said so. But I can use my brains! And if you don't believe I can sort sense from nonsense, I'd think you'd believe Luke—"

"Luke? What does he have to do with it?"

Damn! I didn't intend to bring Luke in; I haven't asked him for permission to tell his part of the secret.

"Same thing as me. He's heard the story, and believes it." That's deliberately misleading, Luke is far more deeply involved than that, but I can't say that. I hope I don't get caught out over that. This is going badly.

"Why tell one brother and not the other? No, wait. Why don't you begin at the beginning?"

"The beginning? Well, we think Joan – and you – have an ancestress who was in the Bible. The prophetess Deborah."

"Yeah, I remember. Mom had a DNA test and they said it could be traced to the ancient Middle East. Did that go to Joan's head?"

"No, the association with Go started a lot earlier – when Joan was very little she had an invisible friend named Yah-yah. Everybody thought it was a game, but Yah-yah was actually baby-talk for Yahveh, God's personal name. Nobody told Joan that; God must have told Joan His name."

"I remember the 'game'. This is getting creepy."

Lily repeated the story as Joan had told it to her. She had met, or rather re-met, God shortly after arriving in Arcadia, and started going on the missions. After falling ill with Lyme Disease she thought the encounters might have been hallucinations, but eventually figured out that they were for real, and took up the missions again. Some missions were minor, some had life-changing implications for certain people. She found out that her mother had suffered a traumatizing attack in college. She kept Adam from dropping out of school after his first big art sale. She got an unstable boy arrested before he went on a rampage with a gun at the school. She forgave Adam after he slept with another girl, and later again after he panicked and stood her up at their marriage ceremony. She discovered that a crazed rich guy was responsible for vandalizing Lily's church. She talked Friedmann into marrying Glynis after he knocked her up.

"This is amazing," Kevin said. "All that weird behavior, and it turned out right so often. But not always. That little boy she babysat, he died, and so did Judith. Joan nearly got killed twice this fall. And - me."

Uh, oh. I knew this was going to come up.

"My legs are ruined, probably for life," said Kevin bitterly. "People kept saying it was an Act of God, but what they really meant was that it was a senseless accident. S*** happens. Now you're telling me that there really is a God, and He let it happen? Why? To punish me for getting drunk at a party?"

"No." Lily struggled with getting the words out. It was spiraling out of control very fast.

"Why did he let Judith die? To punish her for getting involved with drugs? Or being gay? Or maybe He thought Judith was a bad influence on Joan and decided to get rid of her?"

"No – we don't understand why -"

"But all that's OK with Joan, and she's willing to do Him favors. And apparently it's all right with you, too."

"Kevin! Please –"

"I never thought too much about God. When I was growing up, Mom was a lot more set against religion than she is now, and Dad always was, so we never talked about God. And when we married, you and I agreed to disagree. But now it seems that there's a God who could work a miracle and heal me, and He won't. I'm not asking for a freebie – I'd do anything, to walk again. But nobody else cares!"

Kevin twisted around so that his back was to his wife. It took a lot more effort than it would for a healthy person, and it demonstrated how angry he was. Lily turned away as well, on the verge of tears.

Joan was right, revealing the secret to Kevin was awful, and it'll be even worse with Will. But it has to be done.

TO BE CONTINUED