Pastor Chris was like a celebrity on the altar. His straight white teeth gleamed, and despite his slightly thinning, slightly graying hair, he still looked youthful and vibrant. At forty-five, a couple of years older than Abby and me, he ran obsessively, even competed in the occasional marathon, and his body was trim and sleek under his perfectly fitted suit. He believed that God rewarded those who maintained their bodies and that exercise kept the spirit sharp, so it was no surprise that the addition of the workout facility to the church complex had been his idea.
Buster and I grew up Catholic, trundled off to Mass every Sunday morning by my overbearing stepfather, who believed that to miss one Sunday was a sin of the worst kind. While I no longer practiced or believed much of anything, I found it difficult to attend a new church, especially one that seemed so different from the religion I knew. Christ’s Community Church felt too touchy-feely, too positive for me. Pastor Chris offered nothing but encouragement to his congregation, as well as the sense that heaven could be attained through the application of a series of steps found in a self-help book. I expected my spiritual leaders to be removed and slightly dogmatic, wrapped in their colorful vestments and staring down at me, and I didn’t respond well when one of them wanted to be my friend. I also couldn’t fully understand the nature of Abby’s relationship with Pastor Chris. I understood the spiritual side of it—Abby was looking for guidance and community and found it in the church. But in recent months she’d grown even closer to Pastor Chris, going out to lunch with him on weekdays and referring to him as her “best friend.” Never in the eighteen years of our marriage had I suspected Abby of infidelity, but the “friendship” with Pastor Chris—as well as the perilous state of our own marriage—made me wonder.
Abby and I continued to hold hands through the beginning of the service as Pastor Chris led the congregation through a series of prayers and readings from scripture, including the one in which Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Buster sat to my right, holding his sunglasses in his left hand and bouncing them against his thigh. He seemed older. The crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes looked more permanent, the gray in his hair more visible. But he appeared to be paying attention, his eyes focused on the altar, and my initial instinct turned out to be wrong: I was glad to have him there. My brother. My closest blood relation.
Pastor Chris started his sermon—which I still thought of as a homily—by thanking all the friends and community members in attendance. But they were Abby’s friends and people from the church. Her family was a small one. Her father had died when Caitlin was little, and her mother had retired to Florida. She and Abby had not been close over the years, and while Abby had extended an invitation to the service, her mother had apparently chosen not to come. For my part, I didn’t invite any of my colleagues from the university to attend. It was a sabbatical year for me, one I’d reluctantly decided to take in an effort to complete another book, and I knew my colleagues would not mix well with the evangelical crowd.
Pastor Chris continued, his voice a little high and reedy, almost like an adolescent’s on the brink of changing. “While we’re here as the result of a tragedy, the loss of a young life, we are also here to support one another as well as to take comfort from Christ’s eternal pledge to us. And what is that pledge? The pledge is that those who die having been redeemed by Christ’s eternal love shall not die, but rather have eternal life in Christ’s glory.”
Voices through the church muttered, “Amen,” including Abby’s. I studied her face in profile. Somewhere in there, I told myself, a vestige of the person I fell in love with nearly twenty years ago still remained. It must. But it was increasingly difficult for me to find it, to see her, and as I watched her mutter, “Amens,” under her breath and stare at Pastor Chris like he himself incarnated the Second Coming, I wondered if what I knew of her, or thought I knew of her, was gone forever, just like Caitlin.
“I was blessed to speak with Tom and Abby last night.” At the sound of my name, I turned back to Pastor Chris. It took me a moment to process his words. He said he’d spoken to us—to me the night before—but he hadn’t. I hadn’t seen the man. “And while they are understandably devastated by the loss of their dear Caitlin, they both told me, Tom as well as Abby, that they took comfort from the fact that Caitlin is now in heaven, reunited with Christ and basking in his divine love.”
I looked at Abby again, but she still stared forward, muttering her “Amens.” Buster leaned in to me on the other side. His breath smelled like cough drops.
“You were really shoveling it last night.”
“I didn’t say that,” I whispered.
I removed my hand from Abby’s. She didn’t seem to notice.
After the last prayer and the final song, we filed out. Abby, Buster, and I went first with Pastor Chris; then we stood around at the back of the church while people headed to their cars. Abby and I stood side by side, still not touching.
“I’m going to ride with Buster,” I said.
“You don’t want to ride with us?” Abby asked.
“Buster doesn’t know his way.”
“It’s a procession,” she said. “He can ride with us.”