The Astral (25 page)

Dinner was served at seven o’clock. We all gathered around the tables. Christa invited Karina and me to sit at her table and placed us near her and the empty chair I gathered was being saved for Hector. She was distant, abstracted, and said almost nothing to us. When we had all sat down and were helping ourselves to food, Hector came out onto the front porch. He wore a different, more formal set of white cotton pants and white cotton smock-type shirt. His feet were bare. His hair was still wet looking from the oil. He walked down the steps and joined Christa, Karina, and me at our table. There was silence as soon as he appeared. He sat down. He raised his wineglass and said, “Blessings to you all.”

“Blessed be Yashua,” everyone said, and we all started to eat.

Hector smiled at Christa. “My love,” he said. “Welcome back. How was the city?”

“Intense,” she said, looking into his eyes with her own dizzyingly blue ones, not breaking their gaze even to blink. Her diction was that particularly Californian mixture of surfer girl and guru. “The people all seemed so lost! So filled with fear and emptiness. Rushing around, trying to get from A to B to C, talking on their cell phones. It is a blessing to be back here where everything we do has purpose and meaning. Like coming home to paradise.”

They were very obviously performing, probably for Karina and me and the others at the table with us, but just as likely for themselves. It was impossible to gauge the temperature or quality of their real feelings for each other. Their bond reminded me of an arranged marriage between those who used to be nobility and were now movie stars: it seemed largely overt, existing primarily to convince others of its authenticity for the purposes of what used to be power and was now publicity. In the case of Christa and Hector, it was both. Their fans were also their subjects; they were both the show and the people who ran it. Watching my son talk to this woman as if she were his equal, his consort, gave me the strong feeling that he was no longer mine in any sense of the word. However fraught and imperfect our bond had been since he was born, it had been deep, and now it was broken. I knew somehow that if he ever did decide to leave this group, his exodus wouldn’t mean a return to his family. He might reestablish a connection with his mother, but that would be different.

Even more interesting to me was the fact that my virgin son seemed to be at least half in control in this relationship, whatever it may have been privately between them, with this much-older, very experienced, undeniably powerful woman. I wondered whether he could possibly love her, or whether he was too wrapped up in himself to pay attention to another human being. To be a fanatical believer of any kind required an enormous ego, or so it had always seemed to me: God was created in the image of his believers. Maybe Hector and Christa saw in each other complementary, opposite images of their own idealized selves. That struck me as a fairly legitimate reason to fall in love with and even marry someone. Luz and I had done something similar, and it had brought out the best in both of us, at least it had for a while, until the inevitable had set in.

I felt flummoxed and impressed by Hector’s evident self-possession. Where had he learned that? Not from his father, surely. My own mother, that tall drink of correct, sharp-eyed, puritanical ice water, had led me to expect no warmth or sympathy from women even as she proclaimed me a boy wonder, her brightest light. Luz’s half-withheld ardor, her squinting askance at me with low expectations even as she married me and bore my children and called me a poetic genius, had been much more in line with my youthful experiences than the wanton, unearned adoration of my high school and college girlfriends. Luz’s bracingly skeptical attitude toward me had always made me feel safe and comfortable, knowing anciently as I did both the limitations and possibilities of this sort of love.

Maybe Luz’s blind adoration of Hector had given him this preternatural confidence in his dealings with women; I had never seen him with one before, so this was my first and perhaps only chance to find out.

Dinner ended, some sort of music began; there was a prayer circle during which everyone was vocally thankful for their brother Bard’s existence and filled with hope and trust that he would receive from his father Hashem the ability to perform the three miracles tonight. Karina and I stood on the periphery. I had to repress a strong urge to let out a mocking howl of laughter. Somehow, I kept a respectful silence.

Finally it was time to traipse to the pond and watch Hector fall in and flail around trying not to drown. As we walked inland single file through grassy sand and scrub, past the gardens and orchard, to an edge of a still, midsized pond, I thought with no small measure of internal irony what a shame it was that his mother wasn’t here to witness what was surely, to Hector, the most important event of his life. It was like missing his first steps, or his graduation from high school. Despite everything, I felt irrationally lucky to be here, and I missed Luz. What she would have made of this scenario, I could well imagine. She would not have been willing to hold her tongue the way Karina and I had. By now, after saying one too many cutting things to Hector about the ridiculousness of this outfit, she would have been told by him to stop being disrespectful, then have entered into an almost loverlike spat with him about doctrine and belief and observance and the truth, then been told to wait in the car, where she would simmer, in a towering rage, before exploding back into the house to fly at Hector again with her questions and her outraged objections to what he was doing.

I was relieved, in one sense, that she wasn’t here, but picturing her engaging Hector’s fruity beliefs head-on, directly challenging his statements about Jesus, not to mention his claim that he was the Messiah, gave me a strong pang, almost painful, of longing emptiness. Luz was a hotheaded, hot-hearted force. I was made of cooler, more temperate stuff, a cool fan of skepticism that had met the volcanic gusts of her absoluteness. We had been good for each other, she and I; she had enlivened me, amused me, warmed me, and I had steadied and challenged her. Without her tremendous, energetic narrow-mindedness to come up against, my need for nuance and shades of meaning felt slack, mealymouthed. Arguing with her had given my unbelief a strong backbone. Now it felt colorless and inert, lifeless and dull.

The whole group of us stood onshore as Hector was rowed out toward us from the opposite side of the pond, tracing the moon’s rippling reflection as it rose behind him. He stood in the boat facing us like the iconic Founding Father painting while one of the bearded thankful men, as I had begun to think of them all in the aggregate, plied the oars. I could just make out the figure of Christa kneeling before him in the prow, her head tilted back and her hands clasped together, no doubt gazing at him in some kind of reverential adulation. The night was warm, humid, the only sounds the rhythmic bleat of crickets and the creak of the oars. I couldn’t hear the ocean; this far inland, the sound of the surf was muffled by the dunes. The mood among the small crowd onshore was hushed, excited, and not, as far as I could tell, in the slightest bit nervous or doubtful. I found myself being carried away by this highly aestheticized tableau vivant, as if I’d been invited to watch a scene in a film shot on location and starring my son as Jesus.

When they had gone out about fifty feet from shore, the boat stopped and the oarsman stuck one of his paddles vertically into the pond to steady the boat and perhaps to show us all that it was at least two feet and not two inches deep. Christa reached into the water, running her hand along the side, stood in the boat, and dabbed some water on Hector’s forehead. Then he turned and stepped from the boat onto the surface of the water. He did not sink. My eyes went dry from staring, unblinking, watching as his feet stayed on the surface of the pond. Karina, next to me, put her hand on my forearm and leaned against me. Some of the others nearby gasped in excited amazement. Hector put out one foot, then another, and glided over the water almost as if he were skating or dancing. He was like a balloon man, weightless and incorporeal. It might have been a hilariously magical sight, this chubby man on the moonlit pond’s surface, all dressed in white. He raised his arms to what he clearly imagined were the heavens. I pictured a temporary wooden pier below him, holding him up.

“Thanks be to Hashem!” Christa called from the boat in a raw, raucous voice.

“Praise be to Bard!” everyone responded in an overwrought chorus.

Hector walked back over the pond, back to the boat, and stepped into it. I was almost waiting for someone to yell “Cut,” but instead there was weeping in the crowd around me. The boat came toward us to land on shore. Hector stepped onto the bank and was embraced and kissed in a mood of wild hysteria. He accepted their adoration, beatific, quietly self-important.

Karina and I stood by, totally irrelevant to all of this. She was silent and consternated. I felt an odd sense of paternal pride mixed with a good dollop of disappointment; what, exactly, was I proud of my son for doing? Hoodwinking a crowd of mind-controlled cult members? There were so many other things he could have done. Again, I stifled a hyena-like laugh. Back when I was his age, kids were setting the world on fire, or so we’d thought. I watched as Hector was enfolded into his group’s ecstatic hugs. He didn’t seem even to remember that we were there.

“Come on,” I said to Karina when I realized that Hector had no intention of coming over to us. We followed the crowd back up to the house, up the porch steps, and into the dining room.

With everyone standing at one end of the emptied room, Christa stood by a small table at the other end and lifted a glass pitcher of what looked like plain tap water and said, “By his faith in Hashem, Bard shall turn this water into the finest wine.” She held it up for all of us to see, and handed it to Hector, who stood next to her. He poured some into a wineglass and stuck two babyish fingers into the water and began swirling them around slowly. Lo and behold, the liquid turned red as blood, or wine, or chemically altered tap water. There were cheers, and handmaidens began opening wine bottles and pouring wine for everyone, passing glasses around. Karina groaned audibly and held tight to me, turning away from the group and muttering into my ear, “I can’t take it anymore. This is bullshit!” We were handed glasses of wine from someone as the whole group raised their glasses in the air and drank a toast to Bard and Hashem.

I watched as Hector lifted his own wine, or whatever it was, to his lips. He appeared to take a sip, but who knew, and then he set the glass on the table. His face was clear and blank; he looked comfortable and solemn. Christa, standing next to him, said, “Now Sister Lake, approach and be healed.” Lake came forward; Hector put his hands on her head, looked into her eyes, held her head between his palms for a while, then kissed her forehead and said, “Go forth in good health, Sister Lake.”

“Thank you,” she said. She turned toward the crowd. Everyone waited. She touched her chest, her own arms, her face. “I feel wonderful,” she said. “I am well! Praise Bard! Praise Yashua!”

“How the fuck does she know?” Karina said into my ear, her frustrated voice very quiet in the hubbub of congratulations and joy.

“The power of suggestion,” I said.

“This whole thing is a pathetic trick. He knows it too. Jesus, Dad, he’s totally in charge of this place, isn’t he?”

I looked over at Hector, who looked back at me with a cold, distant, affectless expression, as if he hadn’t meant to look at me at all or meet my gaze and had done so by accident. He looked away as if he hadn’t seen me and walked arm in arm with Christa out of the room to join the celebration spilling out onto the back lawn. It might as well have been their wedding. We might as well have been crashing it.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Karina. Her head was resting on my biceps; she was too short to reach my shoulder. “I feel sick.”

“Out we go,” I said, and led her to the door.

We walked down the drive. Behind us, the huge house was lit up. On the lawn, a little band of accordion, guitar, and violin was playing. We heard shouts, laughter, singing.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. “Wait here, get in the car, I’m going to go and talk to Hector.”

Before Karina had a chance to talk me out of anything, I headed for the back of the house, where they were all gathered.

Hector and Christa stood at the farthest edge of the lawn, toward the driveway. I approached them from the back and got there before they heard me coming.

When I touched Hector’s elbow, he jumped and turned. Before he saw who was there, his expression was defensive, defenseless. Then he recognized me and relaxed. “Dad,” he said.

“We have to talk, Hector,” I said. “I need to ask you some questions.”

“We’re in the middle of a party,” he said.

“Talk to your father,” said Christa. “It’s always good to help people understand what we’re doing.”

I gazed into her eyes. They were vacant and self-righteous, without fear or mercy, the eyes of a sociopath who would do anything to anyone without a qualm.

“Come for a walk with me, Hector,” I said. “For five minutes.”

I could feel how reluctantly Hector separated himself from Christa and walked with me around the edge of the lawn. The sandy path gleamed with dull luminescence.

“What is it, Dad?”

“You didn’t perform any miracles,” I said. “I can’t believe those poor suckers fell for that. They’re under mind control, of course; otherwise they would have laughed at you.”

Hector was silent. I waited for him to respond, but he walked along behind me on the path without a word. I could hear him breathing, hear his soft footsteps, otherwise I might have thought he’d gone back to the party.

We came to the pond and stood together on the shore looking across the water.

“I want you to know something, Hector. I can understand why you’d want to live here. I understand why you’d want to live with these people, too. They all seem very idealistic and sincere, and very well intentioned. A nice bunch of kids. But Christa is not nice, and she’s not sincere, and she’s not well intentioned. She’s a crook, and she’s got you playing Bonnie to her Clyde. I can’t stand by and watch you turn into a criminal.”