Holding the stem of her glass to quiet her nervous fingers, Naomi watched him come toward her in the crowded restaurant, the same sandy-hair, the eyes bright with a watery mist that could not disguise the pain. She had tried to chase away her doubts during the fury of her investigation. It hadn't worked, not completely.
He fell awkwardly into a chair, obviously exhausted with anguish, kissing her cheek perfunctorily, as if he had expunged the real memory of their relationship. Their parting had been soft. No harsh words, like a candle being snuffed. She had packed and left while he was at work. There had been tears, of course, but finally her persona absorbed her mind's revolt. She hated the inference but accepted the reason. They were simply dissimilar. The awfulness of this conclusion plagued her to this day. But there were still embers of that old flame. She had not succeeded in exorcising him completely. Now, something deep inside of her, at the core of her feminine self, had been moved.
"You're looking good, Nay," he said, putting a spiral notebook he had been carrying on the table between them. It had a plastic cover, the kind that students used. The old fashioned notebook seemed incongruous with Barney's usual technological sophistication.
"You too, Barney."
In the awkwardness of the moment, they started to speak simultaneously. There were still preliminaries to breach.
"I appreciate your doing this." He watched her, showing a flash of the old Barney. "Bet you have a direct pipeline to the White House by now." He offered his old salesman's wink, but it had lost spontaneity. It hurt to see the mechanics of his charm show through.
"I'm a Democrat, remember?"
"I thought all you guys worked together, hand in glove."
"With them? Never."
She felt the old resentment, the black Irish cynicism. Hell, it was irrelevant. They were dancing around a cold bonfire.
"Anyway," she said hoping to put a halt to the clumsy small talk, "I'm glad to help. But don't put too much faith in what I can really do."
"When you're desperate, you reach out…," he began haltingly, forcing her eyes to turn away in embarrassment. Odd how they had returned immediately to the most corrosive issue of their relationship. She pushed it away. Nothing would come of dwelling on the past. Not now. Or ever.
"What I have is not encouraging…."
"I know. I've done a little homework on my own."
Reaching for his notebook, he opened it and flipped the pages. "I've written it all down. To whom I've spoken so far. What they've said. It's a very consistent story."
She looked at the notebook as he spoke.
"I don't want to miss a beat. Want it all down on paper. Bearing witness, so to speak. I guess it's a salesman's habit, writing down reactions, noting possibilities. I've got one helluva problem on my hands, Nay."
"I know," she replied. She had talked to lawyer friends and to a number of congressmen that she knew. She also contacted a friend at the FBI. She had personally gone through the back files of the Washington Post and the New York Times and had her assistant plug in to every data service available. She needed to know who was his enemy, the people who had taken his wife. By now, she had the facts, but no real decision as to a course of action for him.
"It boils down to this," she said. "The Glories is a religion, bona fide in the eyes of the law. Their status has been challenged by various people-mostly ex-Glories, by the way-but on the point of being a legally sanctioned religion, they emerge in the right. Apparently, they have a huge cadre of prestigious law firms on their payroll. They are very, very rich. The fact is that all you need is fifty names and an application to the Internal Revenue Service to declare yourself a religion. If the IRS says it's okay, presto, you're a religion." She suspected she was presenting what was obvious. His reaction was passionate and swift.
"Legal or not, they're a scam, a fraud. They challenge our vulnerability. They have their greedy hands in most moneymaking schemes you can think of. They are ubiquitous and powerful. They have these businesses. And their followers work for them, literally, as slaves. Oh, they're very clever. They know how to slip just under the legal radar. They'll have Charlotte doing their bidding in the name of their all-holy jackass guru. Working for nothing, selling their merchandise, whatever. They're also in real estate, media, large-scale business. It's big, big moneymaking. Tax-free. All religions are tax-free, and they're one of many. How dumb can our government be to not see through this? They've always known the score about the Glories and all these other cults. How come they're not fighting back? What the fuck are they doing about it?" He shook his head.
He shook his head in disgust. He ordered a scotch for himself while she settled for white wine. He brought the glass to his lips and sipped. His fingers shook and a few drops fell on the notebook. She stayed silent, letting him vent. There was no point in offering counterarguments just yet, raising issues like civil rights, free society, separation of church and state. He was listening only to his own inner drummer.
"Anguished parents, grandparents, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, friends, telling the story of their search for a loved one caught up in these cults. They've been sued by parents over and over again. Some get out. Some don't." He continued, "The Glories win most of the time. They're litigious. People are intimidated by their gaggle of lawyers."
She nodded, refusing to be baited.
"Money talks and bullshit walks," he said. "Religion!" He shook his head. "Makes them untouchable."
"Part of the price of freedom," she muttered, unable to resist.
"Yeah. Freedom to exploit others. And Charlotte is paying for it big time. And me. And our boy. And thousands of other families. You know how many cults there are in this country?"
"Many," she sighed. Her research had not provided a pretty picture. Yet she retained what she liked to think was a healthy skepticism. Where was the line between a cult and a religion? But it wasn't the moment to wax philosophical.
"And no one is doing a fucking thing about it!" he cried, slapping the table. People turned to stare. "These people are no different from those Bin Laden assholes. His followers are brainwashed into doing anything the boss orders them to do, even if it means blowing themselves up."
He threw up his hands. "Auschwitz, Jonestown, Waco, the list goes on and on. They're everywhere." He was unstoppable, fulminating. His eyes misted and he slapped the table with the flat of his hand again. "And what do they want with my Charlotte? She is an innocent. Just a wife and mother, a good, loving, ordinary wife and mother."
Naomi vowed to herself to remain rational and listened patiently, respecting his outrage. She could understand his frustration and hurt, his sense of loss. He was entitled to his grief.
"I read their so-called Bible," he continued. "Oh, they all have something like that. Call it what you want, but they're words. Words, words, words. I read it on the plane. The Glories bill theirs as the divine revelation of some mythical heavenly father. Something about Christ having failed, and Father Glory being the new Messiah. This evil man's craggy face has been posted on billboards to make you want to puke. I used to laugh at it. 'Who the hell is that dopey-looking man?' Now I know who he is, the greedy wog bastard.
'Wog?' Good God, she thought, he's now into bigotry.
"Easy, Barney," she said gently. "Not like that."
She felt the eyes of other patrons watching them. He was not the Barney she remembered, now, more an echo of his father. Barney had never been a bigot. He would never have made a public scene. At least, superficially, he always observed the proprieties. She was beginning to feel uncomfortable. She was discovering that Barney was not willing to entertain any opinions beside his own. Her counterarguments were only making him angrier. In this situation, there were only questions, no answers.
Lifting his hand, he seemed to wave away her consternation. "It's a religion of obedience, not love or peace. Do what I command. Don't question. I tell you to walk into a fire, you fucking better do it. Not like anything we were taught."
Here goes, she told herself, unable to keep her silence any longer.
"All religions are about obedience, and look stupid to people who aren't true believers." She was instantly sorry she had said it. His expression darkened.
"Look," she said, trying to prove her alliance with him. "I acknowledge the pain they have caused you. I've read the horror stories. I know they have their various agendas, but to tell you the truth, I'm not sure I completely understand them. I think what Father Glory wants is… 'power.'" She mimed quotation marks with her fingers. "But despite what I've read-don't get offended-I'm still hung up on the idea of freedom of religion. I'm speaking as an American. What they all seem to want is for everyone to accept their own version of the way they believe things are." She felt suddenly inarticulate, but she pressed on. "Believe him or not, that's your free choice. Take your pick. That's the beauty of America. Barney, you can declare yourself God or worship the stars, the sun and the moon. Or you don't have to believe in a damned thing. Is he a megalomaniac? Most likely. Nevertheless, his views are protected by our Constitution."
She silently admonished herself about forgetting his pain.
"There are also laws against coercion," he muttered, retreating. Thankfully, she had not set him off again. He had calmed.
"They've been tested," she said, with knee-jerk persistence, "The Glories win every time."
He sucked in a deep breath. "That's because the system is out of whack."
"Okay, Barney, I'm a skeptic. You know that. But I'll help, strictly for auld lang syne. Just don't force me to buy into your agenda. I've got my views. You have yours. Leave it at that. I'm here to help if I can."
His fingers gripped the glass, the knuckles whitening. She wondered if it would break. "They have no right to take away her mind, to take her away from me and Kevin." He looked at her for a long moment and shook his head.
"I'm helping, aren't I?"
"Okay, Nay. I'll back off."
"Good. My mind is as open as it can be, I promise you." She paused, swallowed hard. "You think she's been drugged?"
"They don't need drugs. It's a process."
"Is she being forcibly detained?"
"Yes."
"You mean she's literally imprisoned, locked in a cell, unable to communicate with the outside world?"
"Her prison is her mind. Don't you see that, Nay? They've taken away her will. They control her."
"Just bear with me. Brainwashing is a controversial subject that has not been strictly legally defined. She hasn't been forcibly detained, and Charlotte has been proselytized. She's over twenty-one. In the law's eyes, quite in command of her will. So as far as the authorities are concerned she is a willful follower of a legitimate religion. When she says she has her rights… well, she's right. She has them."
"She's been brainwashed, Nay! I've read all kinds of studies on the whole subject of brainwashing, the methods employed by these groups, theories on how the brain works, stories by ex-Glories, ex-Moonies, ex-Hare Krishnas, ex-Scientologists, ex-anything, stories to curl your hair."
"But that doesn't impact on the bottom line. Cult or religion, it's still within the law."
"What about Jonestown and Waco?" he interrupted. "One self-appointed leader orders more than nine hundred people to take the big dive. We just ignore that, right? And this fucking Waco thing? Who do they blame on that one? Not the asshole that caused the stand-off, then ordered his disciples to resist and burn themselves up. Now he's a damned folk hero for standing up to the law. They blame the authorities. The people charged with enforcing the law. And I'm not even talking about the big enchilada, 9/11. They killed thousands of people, thousands just vanished into thin air. Why? For what purpose?"
She could tell he was fighting for control. He bit his lip and his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed deeply, working hard to calm himself. "I want her home is all."
She did not want to add to his anguish. What she really wanted now, after observing and listening to him, was for him to go, get out of her life. Quickly. He should never have called. He didn't have the right to stir up her life. She was learning the meaning of being on the horns of a dilemma. She was torn. She wanted to help. But her commitment was crumbling.
"Barney, I don't know what you can do." She said gently. "You can't take her, forcibly kidnap her. You can't break the law."
"That guy in Waco broke the law. He illegally stockpiled arms and burned up his people."
"I know you're exasperated Barney, but…." She paused and went over what she was about to say. "Legally, the concept of brainwashing is still only a theory. Persuasion is not illegal if it is carried out in a manner that is not illegal. Psychological coercion is not illegal, especially what might be thought of as religious conversion, because that falls under the protection of the First Amendment."
"Three cheers for the constitution!" he said.
She had not expected to be so adamant in challenging his position. That wasn't the role he had given her at all or the one she wanted. It wasn't fair, wasn't her battle or her choice.
"Hear, hear," she said, trying to lighten the effect of her response.
"Does that mean you really can't help?"
"All I can do Barney is point you in the right direction. Not that there seems to be a right direction. It's the best I can do."
His eyes darted away. Had he still expected a blind alliance? He sipped his drink and shrugged with resignation.
"I made appointments," she said gently. "Hal Phillips. He's with the FBI. As a general rule, they're not my favorite outfit, but he's a very good friend, a great guy."
"I also made an appointment for you with a woman who got her son out of the Glories, a Mrs. Prococino."
He nodded. "I appreciate that, Nay. That's all I could ask for." She knew he wanted more, but she couldn't provide what more was.
Obviously, he plucked at hope, like a fish jumps at bait, but she knew he was disappointed. He was trying to bring his wife home.
"You've been terrific," Barney said, as he might have said to a salesgirl showing him a collection of ties. It wasn't, she knew, what he really meant.
When they were outside, he put out his hand. She took it and their eyes met.
"I could tag along," she said, her throat constricting. She had debated that option all morning, her instincts opting for the negative. But seeing him now, forlorn, unhappy and confused, she betrayed her own caveat that she would avoid any greater involvement.
"Really, Nay… haven't I imposed enough…?"
"Barney, don't get maudlin. What are old friends for? Anyway, I might learn something."
"I won't forget this, Nay."
