The Revelation Of Joan

Chapter 4 The First Revelation

"You want the entire story?" Joan said to her brother and friend. We were sitting in the bookstore and, as usual, there were no customers and we were free to thrash out a complicated situation.

"I think it's time we heard your side," said Luke.

"The last time I told somebody the whole story, I wound up in Crazy Camp. And if I don't tell you, you'll tell Mom and Dad that I'm a cultist and I wind up in Crazy Camp."

"Forget Crazy Camp," said Luke. "We never should have gone that route. I love you, Joan, and I'm trying to help you."

"And what about YOU?" Joan said, turning to Grace. "Last month, you said that you'd respect my privacy. And don't you have an alcoholic mother to worry about?"

Another girl might have flinched, but Grace was used to abrasive conversations. "Mom's out of immediate danger, and they've put her in rehab. It's out of my hands now. The one thing I CAN do is help another loved one early in the game, before things get too serious."

Joan decided to play one last card. "If you want me to level with you, you need to level with me. I know you weren't home last night, Luke, though I covered for you with Mom. Did you guys go to bed together?"

"Well," said Luke awkwardly, "yes and no."

"How can it be yes and no?"

Grace said, "He means, yes, we were together, and in my bed. But no, we didn't have sex."

"I'd find that hard to believe if Adam and I hadn't done the same thing."

"It's time to level," pressed Grace.

"Right." Joan drew a long breath. "It all started about two years ago, when we started going to Arcadia High for the first time. I met a real cute boy there, and he offered to walk me home. On the way, he told me that he was God in disguise."

"And you believed him?" Luke demanded.

"Not right off, of course. But he told me things nobody else could know, about how I prayed when Kevin had his accident, offering to do all these things if God spared him."

"Wait a minute," said Grace. "They say that one thing people go through in a crisis is a "bargaining" stage. This guy may have just guessed that you had done that."

"Um, I hadn't thought of that," said Joan. "But there other pieces of omniscience that convinced me. He'd give me all these weird tasks to do -- but in the end they made sense. Building the boat -- that gave Dad and Kevin something to do together. Joining the cheerleaders, at a time when everybody was horrified about the abandoned baby -- turns out that the mother was on the cheerleading team. It was God who told me to find your poem, Grace."

"And a 'cute boy' told you to do all that?" said Luke

"Oh, no. He appears in a lot of forms, and not always a guy. An old woman, a little girl, a school worker."

"Didn't you ever rebel against all the orders?" asked Grace. It was, after all, the sort of thing she would do.

"Yeah, twice. First was when he -- actually it was a girl that time -- told me to keep Adam from entering one of his sculptures in a contest. I stalled until I found out why -- Adam was planning to drop out of school if it succeeded. The only thing I could think of doing after that was smashing the sculpture."

Luke and Grace stared at each other. That sabotage incident was one of the main examples that convinced people that Joan was going out of her mind. Yet here was an explanation that seemed even crazier.

"The second rebellion was a lot more serious," said Joan. "When I got sick with Lyme Disease, I thought at first that all the encounters had been hallucinations. And when I finally realized that they weren't, I was real mad. After all I had done, why God let me get sick, and dump me in Crazy Camp all summer? So I refused to cooperate until the night Judith got stabbed. Then I told God I would go back with him if He saved her."

"But Judith died that very night," said Grace.

"Yeah -- I thought at first God had disobeyed. But then I realized that He really did SAVE her in His own way. At first she was miserable, thinking that she had thrown her life away with nothing to show for it. But when she actually died, she was at peace. She visited me a couple of weeks ago, in good spirits -- seems she thinks it's lots of fun, being a ghost."

Both Luke and Grace were shocked at this last speech. Neither of them had known or even liked Judith particularly well, but her death had hit them hard, because it reminded of them of their own mortality. That a teenager did not necessary have all her life ahead of her, that it could be snuffed out at any day before it had even really begun. The shock had driven Friedmann, who HAD loved Judith in a way, to taking drugs. The last word that would occur to either of their minds concerning Judith's fate was "fun".

But Joan went on, unaware of their response. "So I went back to running errands for God. It was God who organized that musical last winter -- I think he decided that the entire student body needed some cheering up, after the death. And He -- or it was She a lot of the time -- guided me through the breakup with Adam."

"I don't get it," said Grace. "God's supposed to be omnipotent, right? Why does he need an errand girl? And why, when you agree to be an errand girl, does he let you fall ill, and let everybody think you're crazy, and let Judith die, and let Adam screw you-- ulp, wrong word. You know what I mean."

"That's the hard thing to get used to. I think that God is trying to prepare me for something, that I have some grand destiny prepared for me. But it's not a simple quick-poke-o."

"Quid pro quo," said Luke, who had studied some Latin in relation to scientific terminology.

"No. God said that He refrains from miracles nowadays because it's important for humans to believe in a rational, ordered universe -- you in particular should understand that, Luke. So He works through people like me. And my wishes don't always match the divine plan or the way things work out." She glared at Luke. "So I've kept my promise and told you everything. So no Crazy Camp?"

"It'll take time to absorb everything," mumbled Luke. "But I promise, no Crazy Camp."

"And I can go back to talking with God?"

"Yeah."

"But--" objected the other girl.

"Let's go, Grace."

Ordinarily Grace would take offense at being ordered about by a boyfriend, particularly one younger than she. But going seemed to be the logical thing to do, so she went.

"So what do you think?" asked Luke as they walked down the pavement outside.

Grace was thinking a lot of things all at once, but she tried to focus on some part of the bizarre story that COULD be grasped. "Theologically, it makes sense, just barely. I learned some Jewish philosophy while preparing for my bat mitzvah. God is so vast that the human mind can't comprehend Him, but sometimes he chooses to reveal himself in a limited way that humans can absorb. The technical term in Hebrew is Shekinah. But why he would do the Shekinah thing with Joan of all people, I don't know."

"Interesting idea -- like quantum mechanics, when you know you'll never get the full picture. But I can't get the idea of God in human form in the first place. Einstein visualized God is the source of scientific law -- and Joan thinks he's a cute boy? It's just too unconnected."

"So what do we do now?"

"I don't know," said Luke miserably. "Joan's kept all her promises, so I can't see how we can keep her away from her cultist friends. I just hope the cultists slip up somewhere."

"Even if they do, they seem adept at covering their butts. But maybe that's because nobody has tried to argue the other side. I was blind when my mother was sliding into trouble, Luke. I'm not going to let it happen again. Besides -- I've always been VERY good at arguing."

(to be continued)