Chapter Five
Ned felt a small chill as he reentered the room. He was wet to the
bone, and all his clothes were still soaked. The open door and the cold
wind had reached quickly into his damp clothes. He pulled his pistol from
his wet pocket and sat down hard in the chair. He tried gamely to quiet
the rage within him. He was literally shaking with anger.
The TV’s buzzing became more distinct. The familiar musical strains
of The Miracle on 34th Street played again as the TV hummed back to life.
Ned’s patience had ended, and he pointed his pistol coldly at the set,
determined to end the annoyance no matter what kind of commotion it caused.
But before he could think about pulling the trigger, the noise began to
subside and the picture to fade. The television, like himself, was slowly
dying. He felt an ironic kindred with the old piece of metal and plastic.
Relaxing his grip on the gun he issued the set a reprieve. Instead, he
allowed his anger to go in another direction.
He was angry with the stupid clerk, another do-gooder who had found a
way to feel good about himself by patronizing others during religious
holidays. He was angry with Dee, angry with life, angry that he wasn’t…
His mind hit the brakes suddenly. No, he wasn’t going there. That
was ridiculous. Life wasn’t about love. You didn’t need love to get by,
he had proven that. He had never received any love from his father or
mother, and he had become far more successful than others he had known who
had. Love was nothing more than a complicated set of neurons firing in a
certain way at a certain point of time. You could feel love, or powerful
emotions with anyone, it was certainly not on Maslow’s hierarchy of need.
Survival, that’s what was on the top. When you were on the top you
received respect, which in the long run was far more advantageous than
love.
Love was what religious people touted, love for God, love for others.
It kept their “flocks” in line. Whenever anyone got out of line, they
could be accused of not loving God or loving others. Love was a transient
emotion that couldn’t be depended upon and had no real basis in fact.
People did all kinds of irrational things for love which ended up causing
them endless pain. It was ridiculous.
So the fact that he wasn’t loved wasn’t a tragedy. Since love was
not a necessity, he could do without it, and he had. But here Ned’s wall
of denial began to develop cracks. Why was he here? Why was there a gun
in his hand? Why was he so angry? Why was he so angry…
Honesty, Ned thought. Before I die, I want honesty.
His body slowly relaxed as he consciously calmed himself down. He was
surrendering to the truth. OK, fine. He was angry. He needed to stop
lying to himself. He was angry because he hadn’t been loved. His father
hadn’t loved him, his mother hadn’t loved him, in fact she had abandoned
both his father and him when he was only 11 years old. He had never seen
or heard from her again. But his father, even though he was cold and hard,
had at least been honest with Ned. He never sugar coated life, never
talked about God or love. He had reminded Ned at every opportunity that
life was about survival, and watching out for yourself first. If it was in
your best interest to help someone, then by all means do it. It was a
means to an end, though, nothing more.
Love was one of the most dangerous ideas in the world. He had
weakened once, when he fell in love with Dee. He had to admit that Dee had
loved him, really loved him. He had been further weakened when Jes and
Beth had been born. He remembered how he had felt, the love he had only
hesitantly embraced and which he suspected might weaken him. But then he
remembered the distance that began to grow between him and Dee as the
marriage had begun to unravel, the anger and hatred that Jes had begun to
develop towards him as he tried to steer his son away from his stupid life
choices, the distance now that even Beth had begun to have because Dee had
obviously poisoned her mind against him.
And where now was Dee? She was turning to God. God and love, two of
the most dangerous ideas in the world, were combining to ruin his life,
marriage, and family. To Ned it was a complete repudiation of all he stood
for. Dee hadn’t even respected Ned enough to keep respecting his world
view, an ideology they had once shared in college. As soon as she had
children, however, she had begun to change. While he had remained
ideologically pure, rational and unemotional, she had begun to slip back
into the popular mode for modern man, and the ideological distance between
them had grown. Evolution, he thought, some weird quirk of maternal
instinct that had gone awry.
Love was a lie. God was a lie. The God of love was the biggest lie
of all and he hated it most. The reason he hated it most, now with a
greater intensity than ever before, was because these two stupid ideas had
won. He was the one with the pistol in his hand, while the do-gooders
would all celebrate Christmas Eve with candles, singing, and warm fuzzies.
He realized now that these ideas would always win because reality was just
too much for humanity to deal with.
There was an apparent weakness in the human species; it honestly
believed that it needed more than this world could provide for it. No
other species needed love, or God, only humans. Our superior minds had
been cursed with a weak constitution. Perhaps that was evolution’s way of
balancing the scales in the end. Even with the great technological
advantages they had achieved, humans were still too weak to cope with life
without appealing to some deity. Humanity had yet to create the perfect
prosthesis for the human mind, and until they did, the idea of God and the
idea of love would continue to weaken the species. The world would
continue to spit out fumbling do-gooder clerks, holier than thou Rescue
Missions, and misguided people like…like…like Dee he sighed deeply.
He looked down at the pistol in his hand. The sight of it caused him
no discomfort. It was just a tool. You used a broom to sweep your floors,
you used a car to transport you where you wanted to go, and you could use a
gun to wipe the whole slate clean. Everything would begin again. Dee
would go on with her life, Jes and Beth would go on with their lives, even
the stupid clerk would go on with his life. Maybe they would even learn
something about life’s real meaning from his final statement.
He glanced at his watch again. It was 7:03. He looked around the
room slowly. For all his intellectual rationalizations, he couldn’t help
wondering how he had ended up here. Why had his life been dealt such a bad
set of cards? He knew others who were happy, or at least they pretended to
be. Why had he been cursed with a superior intellect? Why couldn’t he
have born with less intelligence and been able to simply accept the
illogical without question, the unbelievable easily? Why did his mind have
to work more efficiently than others? He had always prided himself on his
mind, but now he saw it could be a horrible curse as well. It had deprived
him of the happiness that other weaker persons had been able to enjoy.
Life sucked.
He was feeling sorry for himself. He needed to break out of this
funk. He concentrated on the rain falling outside. It was raining
steadily, but not quite as hard as before. He noticed that the neon lights
were off again. That was a small victory. He didn’t want to think
anymore. He didn’t like where it led him. He needed to reboot somehow, to
return to his rational foundation.
The TV began to hum again. For the first time he was grateful. The
noise was welcome. Somehow the noise made him feel like he wasn’t so
alone. He heard another lively cheerful tune, it was familiar. He shook
his head slowly, a rueful frown breaking out on his face. He knew this
music, he knew it well. How could he not, after all it was Dee’s favorite
Christmas movie. He had always despised it with all its references to God,
love, and Christmas.
In the background he heard a choir singing Hark the Herald Angels
Sing as the picture zoomed slowly in on a brightly lit city on a dark
night. Now the adult choir faded out and was replaced by a scene of an old
man playing his violin on a street corner with children all around him,
dressed warmly with their scarves, mittens and beanies, singing the same
song with great gusto, if a little off key. Snow covered the ground and
was falling gently upon them.
It was pure Hollywood.
Then Cary Grant appeared in the background, smiling paternally,
framed against a large angel in a shop window behind him, a precursor to
his role in the film.
The Bishop’s Wife. Dee probably watched this movie two or three
times each Christmas season. He leaned forward to turn it off when a
thought suddenly occurred to him and he slowly leaned back again. Dee
might be watching this same movie right now. He pictured her cuddled up on
their couch, with a fire glowing softly, her legs tucked under her and a
quilt over her lap. Her eyes would be riveted on the television set. She
would have that innocent look on her face, that gullible look that said she
was buying it all, hook, line, and sinker.
She had looked at him that way once upon a time.
Normally he would have dismissed this drippy sentimentalism, but this
was a different night. It was his last. The thought of Dee was too
strong, even though he fought it. For just a moment he wanted to feel as
though he and Dee were together, doing one more thing before the end. For
once he was willing to suspend his rational side. He would steal one last
decadent bite of intellectually fattening and rationally clogging mind
candy before he left. It certainly couldn’t do any harm, and in some
strange way it made him feel closer to Dee.
He closed his eyes and listened to the children sing Hark the Herald
Angels Sing until the heavenly choir broke out again as Cary Grant helped a
blind man cross the street. He didn’t even need to see the scene, it was
graven on his memory. He knew this movie by heart. A reluctant quasi-
smile actually broke out on Ned’s face as a sense of “all is well with the
world” was allowed one last time to tickle his brain, to allow smoke,
mirrors, and all the power of Hollywood and thousands of years of religious
propaganda to create a feeling of goodness.
His smile faded a little as his favorite character, the skeptical
professor who had no religion is introduced. Ned knew full well that the
rational irreligious professor would ultimately be portrayed as weakening
and returning to church and religion, but even that couldn’t ruin this
moment. He was tired. His fingers slowly began to loosen their grip on
the gun and his breathing became deeper.
The stress and strain of his emotions had taken their toll on his
body and mind. He just wanted to veg out, to find a way to ignore all the
disturbing thoughts, to forget for a few precious moments the pain he was
enduring.
As the movie played, his eyelids began to droop. For the second time
that night an unnatural fatigue began to steal over him. He began to fall
in and out of sleep, not knowing whether he was conscious or in a dream.
Scenes of the movie flickered before him, and then faded slowly as another
emerged. Several times he awoke to witness a scene on the TV, only to fall
back asleep once again.
A snowball fight in a park with a group of children; a restaurant
scene with several old ladies; a tense dinner with the Bishop and his wife,
with each scene his breathing became slower and deeper. All other thoughts
were mercifully forgotten.
Then, there was darkness, but not a depressing darkness. Suddenly,
like an old television coming to life, a new scene emerged. But something
was different. He heard himself laughing, but the laughing sounded strange
coming out of his mouth. It sounded young, childish and joyful. But it
was his laughter. He didn’t understand, but it didn’t matter. And he
wasn’t laughing alone. He felt himself sitting on the floor with a man in
a suit and a warm smile sitting on the floor with him. The man seemed good
and kind, his smile gentle, wise, and…and what he wondered.
Though the man was much older than Ned, he was playing with him
gladly, as if there was nowhere else he would rather be than right there on
that floor with Ned.
Suddenly Ned heard himself blurt out. “Tell me a story.” He was
pleading in a little child’s voice. Why was he speaking like that?
“What? Now?” the man grinned good-naturedly.
“Don’t you know any stories?” Ned heard himself ask innocently.
“Oh, certainly,” replies the man, “I know hundreds of stories.
Then the man repositioned himself to get comfortable on the floor and
began. “Once upon a time there was a little boy and he lived in a town….and
the town where he lived was called Bethlehem.” Ned somehow knew this
story, but he was curious, innocently curious. The story seemed so easy to
believe, so likely to have really happened. He wasn’t struggling with
doubt, or critiquing the story. Something in his memory found that odd,
but he quickly dismissed the thought.
“Angels came down and put ideas into people’s heads,” the man was
saying, “and then people feel very proud of themselves because they feel it
was their own idea…” Ned’s mind stumbled only slightly over this, hanging
on every word. “…the lamb was lost, so David went out to find him. When
he did he saw a great big ferocious lion.” Ned felt the fear of a little
boy facing a giant wild animal bent on his destruction. Ned’s hands were
gripping each other tightly, the narrator now only a bit player as he
imagined the story unfolding in his mind.
“So David said, ‘You get away from that lamb!’
‘You get away from me or I’ll eat you, too,’ said the lion.”
Ned heard himself asking the question, the question that somehow he
knew he had heard before.
“Did David run away?”
“No,” assured the man, “because an angel put another idea into his
head. Then David hurled his sling at the lion and hit it right between the
eyes. And he was surprised because he didn’t know an angel had helped him.
Well, he picked up the lamb and took it back to the fold. Then he felt so
happy he made up another story…” Then the man’s eyes turned distant as he
continued in a warm gentle voice.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down
in green pastures, he leadeth me beside still waters. He restoreth my
soul…”
Then the picture gradually faded away. Ned Phillips was filled with
an innocent wonder, a pure and wholesome feeling he’d never experienced,
and a sense of security he’d never known. He was a little child, he was a
grown man. Believing in the simple story was as easy as believing that the
sky was up and the ground was down. He felt strangely warm inside. He
was…then suddenly, a sound began to disturb his mood as the feelings and
the scene began slowly to disappear.
He felt a panic rise up in him. He wasn’t ready to leave. He didn’t
want to leave this place, he wanted to stay, but the sound became louder
and louder and as it did the picture faded away. The offending sound was
not a sound of warmth or happiness, it was a sound of frustration and
anger. Ned’s head jerked up as his eyes opened suddenly.
He was sitting in the chair, the television was humming, but the TV
picture and sound had failed again. Outside, even over the rain, he heard
arguing. A man and a woman were screaming at each other in the parking
lot. A bottle shattered on the pavement. Curses were shouted back and
forth. Their words were indecipherable, but their anger was not. A car
door slammed, tires squealed, and the noise died out.
Ned’s heart was racing and for a brief second he thought he heard a
distant noise, someone talking gently to him, and he wanted to return
there. The dream, or whatever it was, was fading away from his memory and
he could not stop it. He closed his eyes hard and tried to will himself
back, but it wouldn’t work. Ned’s head fell back on to the chair in
despair, pain etched on his face.
It had happened again. He had, somehow, entered a movie. He hadn’t
just been watching it, somehow he had become a part of it. The movie had
become his dream or his dream had become the movie. He had entered it. He
could still feel the hard wood floors of the house on his bare knees, the
sound of the fire crackling in the background, the thumps of his parent’s
steps as they neared the room where he was hearing the story. His parents.
Those weren’t his parents, and that wasn’t him.
Suddenly a disturbing thought occurred to him. Maybe he was losing
his mind. Maybe that’s why he was trying to end his life, he was mentally
unstable. Maybe he was in the final stages and was just now realizing it,
one clarifying moment in the midst of his madness. There seemed to be no
other explanation.
He wondered if everyone who was about to die went through these
experiences. Was it some kind of evolutionary response to help humans cope
with the pain and fear of death? He was losing himself in an imaginary
world.
But it had seemed so very real, as real as the moments he had spent
with Dee in the Christmas Story scene. He could still feel the sense of
innocent wonder as a child, in the warm and secure environment of love and
security. But that wasn’t his experience at all. Any sense of innocent
wonder he had enjoyed had been very short lived as a child. Reality was
their religion. Then he remembered how hard he had tried to make sure Jes
and Beth grew up the way he thought they should. He refused to decorate a
Christmas tree, never put lights up outside, or any decorations for that
matter. A simple wreath on the door was all he allowed Dee, and only after
much debate.
He bought presents for them, but refused to wrap them, and told them
he was giving them to them at Christmas so they wouldn’t “feel poor” but
not because he believed in Christmas. He never once said Merry Christmas
and wouldn’t allow anyone in the family to do so (although he had caught
Dee several times mouthing the words to the kids).
Dee had always wrapped presents, and left stockings on the children’s
beds on Christmas morning so they would have a sense of wonder and
excitement. It was one of the few things she wouldn’t back down on in
their marriage. He wished desperately that he could quickly shake off that
sense of innocent wonder he had experienced, knowing it was all childish
drivel, but a small part of him was reluctant to let it go. He was ashamed
that he was so attracted to a stupid feeling. This was all too confusing.
They were just stupid movies and he was emotionally distraught. It was all
creating chemical imbalances in him that were then creating dream like
visions.
He closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair just as neon lights
began blinking obnoxiously in through the window, past the thin shades, and
upon his grimacing face. He reluctantly opened his eyes.
B
E
T
H
But that was all. The word Bethlehem would not spell out. It was
still broken. The message repeated.
B
E
T
H
Then his face softened and he wearily rubbed his eyes as if he could
massage reality back. Beth. He saw her young, fresh, exuberant face. He
was suddenly so angry at the neon lights that he wanted to go blow up the
Rescue Mission, but before his anger could reach full boil he heard a
familiar voice.
“Dad, it’s me, Beth!”
He was going crazy. This proved it. But something from memory
suddenly told him that this was not a dream. Excitement coursed through
him as he listened hopefully.
“Daaad, pick up the phone!”
Ned smiled and exhaled in relief. He wasn’t losing it completely.
The voice was indeed Beth’s, but it was her pre-recorded ring tone she had
downloaded to his iPhone so he could never tell her he didn’t know she had
called. She hadn’t called in so long he had almost forgotten it was there.
He took a deep breath. He’d already had a phone call from Dee. He
didn’t think he could take another tongue lashing. But Beth wasn’t a
tongue lasher. She had a tender heart and only wanted to please people.
She seemed to work over time to please him. A sudden sense of shame came
over him at that revelation, but he put it away from him, the way he had
always kept disturbing feelings at arms length.
He picked up his phone from the floor where he had dropped it and saw
her smiling face peering back at him. She had imported her picture as
well, making sure that when she called, her smiling face popped up on his
screen. He knew that answering this phone call would only weaken his
resolve, and that rationally and emotionally it was a mistake. But since
these were his last few hours on earth, he figured he was free to make up
the rules as he saw fit. He answered the phone.
“Hey Beth,” he said flatly. He wanted to slap himself for this. He
sounded so differently from the way he felt. He was so happy to hear from
her, she had always been tonic to his soul, but somehow he could not reveal
that side of him. He knew he sounded bored and uninterested. And he knew
that she would realize he knew who was calling her. He wished he
understood this particular weakness of his. It had bitten him more than
once.
“Hi Daddy,” said Beth. She sounded tentative. “Mer—“ she began
before quickly recovering and pretending to clear her throat. She had
almost wished him a Merry Christmas. He instantly knew that she had become
used to using that phrase like a child who leaves the home and begins to
cuss freely. The external constraints had been removed, and it had become
second nature to her.
“Where are you?” she recovered quickly. Ned paused a moment before
replying.
“On the road, Hon.”
“Oh,” she said quietly. There was another long pause.
“When do you think you’re going to be back in town? I miss you.”
Suddenly large tears welled up in Ned’s eyes and he felt a thickness
in his throat. What could he tell her? She couldn’t understand. He
realized that Beth would learn early next morning or later in the afternoon
tomorrow that she had spoken to her father just before he ended his life.
Would that scar her for life? Would she feel she was responsible? Was he
destroying her life along with his? The situation seemed surreal.
Somehow he had not thought about this. He had never expected a call
from Beth. It hadn’t entered his thought processes of his last night on
earth. He just figured that he was out of her sight and out of her mind
and out of her life and she would just move on. He realized only now that
he had been mistaken.
He tried opening his mouth, but nothing came out. He didn’t have a
clue what to say. He cleared his throat.
“Not for awhile Beth,” he croaked hoarsely.
“Dad,” Beth pleaded over the phone, “just apologize to mom, and come
back and everything can be better. I know it can. It’s Christmas Eve, a
time to make things right, a time of peace and love. Just because--”
“Christmas, Beth,” Ned interrupted forcibly, his voice coming back to
him, “is a creation of religious fanaticism and Madison Avenue
hucksterism—nothing more! Besides that, your mother kicked me out. Why
doesn’t she call and ask my forgiveness?” Beth sighed audibly over the
phone. He thought he also heard her sniffing. He instantly regretted the
tone he’d taken with her. Was this the way he wanted to be remembered?
“Daddy,” he heard her say, her voice choked with emotion. “What if
you’re wrong? I know you don’t think you ever are, but, well…what if
you’re wrong Daddy?”
“Wrong about what?” Ned asked defensively. Beth didn’t immediately
answer and he could sense she was weighing her response carefully.
“Everything important, Daddy,” Beth finally said slowly. “I love you,
Daddy. And I miss you. But…but…I’ve got to go…” she said as her voice
began to quiver. Beth hated losing her composure. The line suddenly went
dead. He looked at his phone, but the picture of Beth was gone.
“Oh God I hate my life,” Ned whispered, reaching for his pistol.
Through eyes bleary with tears the red neon sign began blinking into
his face.
B
E
T
H
Obviously the neon light wasn’t fixed yet. And it was cruel fate that
taunted him with his greatest pain as his weakest moment. Then suddenly
the words changed.
L
O
V
E
S
Y
O
U
Ned’s eyebrows furrowed. BETH LOVES YOU. His mind raced madly. What
kind of sign was this? Then the wording of that question angered Ned. It
was a stupid, defective neon sign, nothing more. He tried to remember the
sequence of the words. The message that read BETHELEHEM RESCUE MISSION was
the last message in the sequence of messages, and part of it hadn’t
appeared. That was normal, the machine wasn’t working properly. The
messages would then continue in their loop beginning with the first message
GOD LOVES YOU. So part of the Bethlehem Rescue Mission message had not
appeared, and when the first message looped again, GOD didn’t show up.
That was it. God didn’t show up. He liked the way that sounded. That was
the problem with the world, everyone believed in a God who never showed up.
All he was looking at was a sign. A simple sign. It definitely
wasn’t a…a…oh this sounded ridiculous…a sign. Thoughts of a divine sign
were quickly shoved out of his mind. The neon sign had been broken, it was
nothing more than that. Besides, what kind of a deity would send a sign to
a father, “Beth Loves You.” The only one who could possibly understand
this sign would be…Ned immediately stopped the thought process.
In his entire life, Ned had never been this confused. All he wanted
to do was to end his life, to make a statement, to exit with dignity and
deliberation. It had all been carefully planned and executed. Poor choice
of words, he thought. He might have been careful in his planning, but
there had not yet been an execution. But there wasn’t going to be an
execution anyway, an execution was a punishment. Ned Phillips wasn’t
punishing himself. He was closing a book he didn’t want to read anymore,
leaving a theater in the middle of a stupid movie, walking away from an
unappetizing meal, nothing more dramatic than that. Life had no ultimate
meaning, so ending it was about as meaningful as a wave moving a pebble an
inch or two further out to sea.
The neon light stopped blinking. He looked at his watch. It was
8:32. He had never known that time could pass so very slowly.
Suddenly, the television hummed back to life.
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