“One-two, one-two,” blatted a voice over the sound system.
On the stage, union guys set up a forest of oversize foam-core happy people, ball-headed, arms raised in joyous Vs.
On the floor, in folding chairs, groups of singers waited to rehearse. Tibetan monks, an African American choir, Sikhs in turbans, and, loosely assembled in three or four rows at the front, Joe’s group. I shot down the steps and slid in behind him.
“Here’s the thing,” I said.
Joe turned. “What are you doing?”
“We all want to give up,” I said. “You don’t need Jesus for that. Look at me. I’ve given up all on my own.”
“Is this Eleanor?” said an Englishman one row up. He had on a white tunic and a khaki vest.
Joe introduced Simon, the Seahawks chaplain.
“You’re the one who brainwashed my husband?”
“It would seem!” he said, shaking my hand.
“Simon leads the team in prayer before and after the games,” Joe said. “In between, he hangs out in the press room.”
“It’s a good time to catch up on my New Yorkers,” Simon offered. “I have stacks.” He held one up, then turned back around.
“So you’re on some kind of church kick?” I asked Joe.
“It’s bigger than that,” he said. “It’s radical transformation.”
Those are words no wife wants to hear.
“Radical which includes me,” I stated or asked or pleaded. Whatever it was, my voice broke and my mouth filled with tears.
“Of course it does,” Joe said, taking my hand. “We can talk about it when I get home.” He looked pointedly at those within earshot and nodded at me, as if the whole conversation were over.
“But you were happy,” I said. “You are happy.”
“Eleanor, I attacked a yoga teacher.”
“I’m sure he deserved it,” I said.
“For wearing a GoDaddy bandanna.”
“Twenty years,” I said, “you’ve been telling me religion is for reality-dodgers. That no one with an education and an IQ could possibly believe in God.”
“Do you hear your arrogance?” Joe asked.
“It’s your arrogance!” I said. “You’re the big atheist.”
“Call it a loss of faith,” he said. “I lost my faith in atheism.”
“I like that,” Simon mused. “A lot.” He patted his pockets for a pen.
“Atheism, skepticism, always having to be right,” Joe continued. “It was my way of staying comfortably numb.” He pointed to Simon and proudly added, “I’m sure he knows the reference.”
“‘My hands felt just like two balloons’!” Simon said.
Commotion broke out on the stage. Crewmen shouted to clear the way for a forklift grinding up the ramp. It deposited a six-foot crate and spun around cutely before making its exit. Electric drills whined as the crate was unscrewed.
“What does radical transformation even mean?” I asked Joe.
“He’ll tell you at home,” bleated a woman, heavyset and with a flat affect. She could have worked at the DMV.
Joe smiled and raised his eyebrows, as if that settled it.
“No,” I said. “Now.”
Everyone was looking at us. Black and white, old and young. To a person they needed moisturizer.
“Okay,” Joe said. “I’m thinking of going to divinity school.”
“Boom,” said the DMV lady with a chuckle.
“Nothing has captivated me like Jesus Christ,” Joe said.
“You have no idea how hard this is for me.” I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. “It’s like you’ve just gone from the most interesting person I’ve ever met to the least interesting person I’ve ever met.”
“Jesus was the most radical thinker in world history,” Joe said. “I want to learn everything about first-century Palestine. About the Temple culture of Jerusalem. I want to study the Gnostic gospels, the Nag Hammadi texts.”
“Aren’t there podcasts?”
“I want to be taught,” Joe said. “I’ve been working like a fiend on my applications—”
“Hang on,” I said. “Is that where you’ve been the past week?”
“At Starbucks, writing my essays.”
“Which Starbucks?”
“Does it matter?” he said. “The one on Melrose and Pine.”
“That’s a good Starbucks.” One mystery solved. “What were you looking at with that spy thing on your desk?”
“The spotting scope,” Joe said. “I was looking at the stars.”
“The stars?” I said. “What stars? Oh, don’t tell me. God’s stars.”
He didn’t argue. I sighed. All I could do was marvel at how wrong I’d been.
Up onstage, the crate had been opened. In it, an object covered in bubble wrap. As a woman carefully cut away the multiple layers, a chair was revealed. A throne, in fact, with a crimson seat and high back.
“There’s a whole lot of Pope going on,” I said to Joe. “Does this mean you’re Catholic again?”
“No, no, no,” he said. “You can’t be Catholic. But it is the Pope. You gotta show up.”
Center stage, a union guy with a Ramones T-shirt sat on the Pope’s throne as the spotlight got adjusted.
“But Jesus?” I asked. “Why can’t it be something normal, like Buddhism? I already have the cushion.”
He shook his head. “It’s Jesus. Jesus is my guy.”