The Makeover of James Orville Wickenbee Page 17

  James stopped talking. He struggled with the words, opened his mouth, and then shut it again. Beads of perspiration were perched on his forehead like tiny birds on a power line. “You know what, I’ve gotta go,” he said. “I’m angry and I’ve said too much already. I need to leave right now.” He backed toward the French doors, turned, jerked one side open, and hurried out.

  “I won’t what?” I asked, following him out the open door. “Study your church? You’re talking about your church literature, aren’t you?” I called after him. “Is that how your church’s leaders recommend you offer it to people?”

  He peered back at me over his glasses, his face unreadable, and shaking as he headed toward our side gate. I was shaking myself.

  “Whoooeee, I’ve never seen James that upset!” said my brother.

  I flipped around. “Alex, do you think I’m a stubborn, snooty, know- it- all who’s completely lacking in humility? that I’m a headstrong brat?”

  Alex shrugged. “Why are you acting like this is new information?”

  “You agree with James’s assessment of me?”

  Alex nodded. “Oh, yeah. Absolutely.”

  “James has some nerve saying those things when there’s no way he’d be where he is right now if I hadn’t worked and sacrificed with everything I had to help him get elected last year. And then he says I don’t know the basics? He’s the one who doesn’t know the basics! He didn’t even know how to comb his hair before he met me.”

  “I imagine the basics he was talking about just might be more important basics such as where we come from and where we’re going— those kind of basics,” said Alex in what I felt was a pious manner. “And um, I’m not talking about Chicago,” he added, raising his eyebrows.

  “Right. That’s exactly what I thought,” I said, slapping hard at a pillow. “He’s upset because I haven’t read your Mormon literature. Well, you know what? If I read every church’s literature, I’d be reading from now until 5000 a.d. Am I going to investigate everything? Do I need to investigate the Amish church and the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Shakers and Quakers and hey, maybe that zealot James told you about who lived at the top of a pole for thirty- seven years even started a religion! I’ll have to investigate that!”

  I plopped down on the couch and this time I pulled the cushion up under my eyes. Then I pulled it back down and flipped it behind me. With a lunge, I popped back up and started pacing the floor. “Look, what I’ve tried and tried to tell you and James and Mom and Ruthie and Phil and even Cassie is that I’m just not religious. Why should I read your Mormon Church information when I’m just not religious?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to just look at it. That’s all anybody’s asking, Jana.”

  “I have!”

  “You have?”

  “Yes! I opened the Book of Mormon and looked at it for a few seconds once, but that was enough.”

  “Oh, so a few seconds was enough?”

  “Please leave me alone!” I headed for the stairs to my room, wishing I’d never come down. I had the feeling James and Alex were wishing the same thing.

  “Maybe reading some religious literature would help you with your attitude problem!” Alex called up after me. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: You have a major attitude problem!”

  “Unmitigated moron,” I muttered. “No— Mormon. Same thing. Imbécile!” I muttered in French.

  Chapter Twenty- Six

  •••

  It was quiet in the house. Mom had gone to bed right after she’d returned from her “nice affair,” happily exhausted. About an hour and a half before, I’d heard Alex leave to pick up Michelle from work. For the last hour or so I’d been lying on my bed staring at the ceiling. Now I got up, limped to my dresser, and looked into the alabaster- framed mirror above it. I lifted my chin and lowered it. Was it true what James had said? Was I a know- it- all brat?

  I didn’t feel that way inside. I didn’t feel I knew everything. Apparently even my own twin brother agreed with James’s assessment of me. Well good, I remember thinking. Let everybody believe I’m confident and in control. It was what I’d been trying to believe myself. Apparently the “act as if” principle was working. “If you’re not feeling confident, act as if you are!” Dr. Griffin had shared that principle with me in one of my therapy sessions. It was a bit pop- psych for a professional, but it seemed to work.

  Okay, maybe I overdid it a little. Maybe I was the one who was the big fake. But there was no denying I was smart. I was definitely smart. You bet I was smart! I lifted my chin and this time did not lower it. I not only had a chance at winning the Ohio State Chess Champ ion ship, but I’d just been accepted to Harvard! I’d soon be attending a prestigious Ivy League school, and James had the nerve to tell me I didn’t know the basics?

  Maybe he was right and I didn’t know exactly who I was and where I came from, but who did? Who did know the basics? Who knew anything for sure? Religions claimed they had the answers, but they didn’t. If they did, why would they all differ in their beliefs and opinions on various subjects?

  The Mormons believed a baptism was null and void should your toe not be immersed with the rest of you. Faithful Catholics just sprinkled a few drops on your head and called it good. Still they both insisted they were performing this ordinance or ritual the correct way.

  And faith was nothing more than conjecture with a little emotion poured in! Not even the scientific experts knew for certain where we came from and where we are going! It was all just conjecture! But fine! If Alex and James— and Mom too, for that matter— wanted me to read the material that badly, I’d look at it. Hey, I’d taken speed- reading! I could read and refute this fluff in a matter of minutes!

  I was pretty sure that Alex still studied LDS material on a daily basis, so I took large angry steps down the hall to his room. I located some pamphlets in his bookcase along with a book James had recommended more than once: A Marvelous Work and a Wonder. I slipped the pamphlets inside the book and hurried to my bedroom where I began flipping through the pages. Finally I slowed down and read more carefully.

  The church Christ established when he lived on the earth, one particular pamphlet claimed, had disappeared from the earth. It explained that the apostles died one by one, and then gradually Christian doctrine was revamped by people who weren’t even Christians. I had to admit that the pamphlet presented a good argument for what it referred to as “the Great Apostasy.”

  But wasn’t the Mormon Church cutting off its own golden foot by claiming that Christ’s church had disappeared from the earth? Mormons did, after all, profess to be Christians, didn’t they? I read on. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints, I read, claimed that the authority to act in God’s name was restored to the earth. The priesthood, according to this pamphlet, had been reinstated by heavenly messengers. Well that was bold! But there was even more.

  The pamphlet said that the newly restored church was the same church Christ established when he was on the earth. So that explained the term “latter- day.” I raised my eyebrows. Beyond bold! But so what? Why should any of this matter to me? I didn’t even believe in a god.

  There was another pamphlet about the Book of Mormon, and I picked that up next and began to read. Apparently the Book of Mormon was not some kind of a Mormon Bible as I’d assumed. The pamphlet explained that it was actually additional scripture. This, I had to admit, was news to me.

  Curious now, I tiptoed downstairs to see if a copy of the Book of Mormon was still on the coffee table where Mom or Alex had left it. I suspected they kept a copy there for this exact purpose— so that I’d pick it up. Well, I’d thrill them for once. I took the copy up to my room and turned a few pages to a section called I Nephi.

  I hadn’t read far when I came to a dream somebody named Lehi, the narrator’s father, had had. When I reached the part about a tall building, I was again stunned. I’d dreamed this dream! Okay, maybe it hadn’t been this exact dream, but it was eerily si
milar. It was one of those dreams you don’t easily forget and I could still remember that there was a building from which Lyla Fannen and her friends were making fun of those down below. My dream hadn’t had a rod in it or a tree— but there’d been a path that had turned into a football field. And my dream had had tortillas and soda and potatoes in it, not spiritual fruit, but other than that . . .

  When I heard Alex pulling in the driveway, I slipped the Book of Mormon and the other materials under my goose- down pillow and grabbed Dickens’s Great Expectations.

  Alex unlocked the door downstairs and I heard him coming up the stairs. Would he knock? He did. “Wuzz up?”

  “Nothing much. Did you have a good time?”

  “We did. You should have come.” My brother stepped into my room, pulled my vanity stool toward him, straddled it, and proceeded to relate how he and Michelle, Robbie, Butch Torkinson, Lynette Trist, Celia Pinnock, and Paul had all played Cranium and that Celia had done an amazing impression of Barbra Streisand. “Butch is better at trivia than I thought he’d be,” my brother said with respect in his voice. “He knew it was Doc Holliday who fought alongside the Earp brothers at the OK Corral.” My brother was presenting me with much greater detail concerning his evening than usual, no doubt trying to make up for shouting at me earlier about my attitude. “And Michelle’s a good artist,” he added with a lilt of pride in his voice.

  “She’s smart as well.”

  Alex nodded with enthusiasm. “That too. She’s definitely smart.”

  We’d had these joint Michelle- appreciation sessions before and it was obvious my brother was as smitten with Michelle as he’d claimed Butch was with Lynette— maybe more so. At last he stood, stretched his legs, and said good night.

  A few seconds later I heard him turn on the tap in the bathroom. I guessed he was filling the water container for the leopard geckos he’d adopted from the young son of one of my mother’s “sisters” in the ward. In a few seconds Alex would be feeding his hamsters and his tropical fish and the wounded finch he’d found outside by the forsythia. Then he’d be praying.

  I held my breath wondering if he would notice the missing literature. But soon the hall darkened and I knew that he had shut off his light. When it remained quiet, I eagerly, but quietly, pulled the Book of Mormon out from under my pillow, flipped through a few pages, and read through this Lehi’s dream one more time. Again, it seemed like such an odd coincidence that my dream had been so similar to this Book of Mormon character’s.

  After finishing the chapter, I continued thumbing through the pages, stopping here and there to read more closely. At around two a.m. I finally fell asleep.

  Chapter Twenty- Seven

  •••

  When the doorbell rang that next day, a Sunday, Mom and Alex were still at church. Grace, my mother had discovered, was between apartments and needed a place to stay the night before. She was in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on some kind of a Greek dish for dinner. That left me to check the peephole. James was standing on our front porch in his Sunday clothes, looking so forlorn and upset that I went ahead and answered the door in my bright purple bathrobe and Mickey Mouse slippers. “Hi.”

  “I just heard you got accepted to Harvard,” he said quietly.

  “I did.”

  “It was probably something you wanted to celebrate yesterday, wasn’t it?”

  I bobbled my head. “Well, yes, sort of. Come in.” I led him

  to the living room, my slippers flopping, then lowered my

  less- than- elegant self to the cream couch, highly aware that I hadn’t even run a comb through my hair.

  James didn’t seem to notice how bedraggled I looked as he sat down across from me. “Look, I came over to apologize. Getting into Harvard is an amazing accomplishment and it should have been a great day for you. But instead you had to wait for me for hours. I wish I’d had some control over that, but I honestly didn’t. What I did have control over is how I acted last night and what I said.” Genuine misery permeated his voice. “I made it sound like

  I didn’t appreciate what you did for me last year and that’s not the case at all. You . . . I . . .”

  He ran his hand through the new closer- cropped cut that was perfect for his hair’s coarse texture. “I recognize full well how much you helped me and that it was because of you I ended up having the chance to be president of Fairport this past year. There’s no way I could have pulled off what I did without you. I had no business making it sound otherwise. You’re the man, as Alex would say.” He laughed softly. “I mean the woman. And you were right that our Church leaders wouldn’t recommend we attempt to spread doctrine through shame and insult. I can’t believe I was so critical and plowed into you like that.” James flicked a glance at me and half- smiled in embarrassment.

  “I finally read some of the LDS literature you and Alex and everybody else have been wanting me to read,” I heard myself say. “In fact, I read until really late.”

  “You did?” James looked at me as though I’d turned into an alien in pink tights and a tutu.

  “Yes, and I have to say it made a lot more sense than I expected it to.”

  “I’ve tried to tell you that.” As he leaned forward anxiously, I noticed how nicely his white shirt was starched and that the stripe in his blue tie matched his eyes perfectly. “We’ve all been trying to tell you that.”

  I raised my hand, spreading my fingers. “Yes, well, don’t get excited. I’m not saying that I believe it, but . . . well, I’ll admit this: I can see now how a normal and intelligent person could believe it— if that person bought into the concept of angelic messengers and the supernatural, of course. That’s a nice suit, by the way. It has a nice clean cut to it.” It was a good- looking suit— kind of a deep gray, and it fit James beautifully.

  “Thanks. I found it where you and Alex suggested— The Gentlemen’s Closet. You were right. They really helped me with the fit, and the price wasn’t bad either.” He paused. “You know why I need this suit, right?”

  “Your mission.” I said it with a sigh in my voice. James would turn nineteen at the end of the summer. I’d been aware for some time that a mission for a practicing nineteen- year- old male in the LDS Church is almost as much a rite of passage as bar mitzvah is for a Jewish thirteen- year- old male.

  “I’m working on my papers and plan to turn them in as soon as it’s allowed—sometime around the end of May.”

  “Papers?”

  “They’re kind of an application.”

  “Ah.” I nodded my head. It wasn’t unusual for James to be ahead of schedule and have everything carefully planned out. It was one of the reasons he’d made such an excellent school president. “You know, you’ve kept up your appearance really well, James. In fact, you’re looking better than ever.”

  “Compliments of Jana Bennings,” he said.

  “Okay, I will take some of the credit there. But the character part? Compliments of your Church, right? And your parents, and your training, and maybe even good genes.” James’s integrity intrigued me even more than his intellect, and this rare commodity had become the thing I admired most about him.

  “It sounds trite to say this because you hear it a lot from members, especially in the fast and testimony meeting our church holds at the beginning of each month, but I honestly don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t had this church and this gospel in my life. Maybe I’d have twenty- three piercings like Garlia,” he said.

  “Twenty. She’s cut back.”

  “Okay, twenty. And maybe I’d smoke and drink. Or maybe I’d be addicted to drugs and have to get help in some rehab program in Florida.” Like Lyla Fannen, we both thought, but didn’t say.

  “Or wear your hair like Garlia’s friend.” I snorted a little as I pictured James in an overgrown multi- colored Mohawk.

  James remained serious. “Seriously, Jana, I honestly don’t know who or where I’d be without the gospel of Jesus Christ in my life.”

&n
bsp; “Sorry, James, but I can’t even imagine you with piercings. Okay, possibly a tattoo— one that reads ‘Choose the Right.’”

  “In the middle of my forehead, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  James smiled a little now and shook his head at the rug.

  I tapped my foot, wrinkled my nose, and took a deep breath. “I do have a few questions I thought maybe you could answer for me.”

  He looked up. “About our church?”

  “Yes, about the Mormon faith. Let me get them.” I stood up self- consciously and flapped my slippers into the study where I’d left the legal pad on the armrest of the leather chair. I definitely had a few questions— about three sheets full. Some were questions that were probably fairly common but that I’d never heard properly answered.

  How much of the Old Testament did the Church of Jesus Christ believe should be taken literally and how much symbolically? What about polygamy? Then there were questions about specifics I’d just barely read: If this God of the Book of Mormon was the same God as the New Testament, why would he have had this character named Nephi kill a man and break a commandment He’d set up himself? I’d also included some of the same old science versus religion concerns: Where did the Mormons theorize dinosaurs fit into the picture? Yes, James had said the days spoken of in the Bible could have been six long periods of time, but exactly how long were these periods of time?

  And I had some specific questions about the pamphlet called The Plan of Salvation. I was anxious to find out what made a person eligible to be in the Mormon version of heaven and more about this spirit world where those who had passed on were apparently to go—yes, I wanted to know where the Mormons felt Uncle Bartho was.

  “You really do have a few questions,” James said as he surveyed the list.

  “You know me— always thirsting for answers.” I pressed my fingers hard against my cheekbone, then flipped my index finger forward. “Just please keep in mind that I’m only curious and this doesn’t mean that much. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention any of this to Alex or my mother. They’d just get excited and there’s nothing whatsoever to get excited about.”