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I figured he was grounded. Our mother practices a 13th-century Catholicism. Luke is a 20th-century teenager. He just turned 16 and is learning things they don’t teach in mass. Like that man, by his nature, requires a healthy diet of girls and beer. Plus, he wouldn’t part his hair to the side or tuck in his shirt.
If he weren’t already on the road to hell, he was definitely on the feeder.
“By the way, Mom,” I asked at the end of a phone conversation, “whatever happened to that one kid who used to live there? What’s his name? Luke?”
“Oh, he’s in Kansas.”
“Kansas?”
“Mmm Hmmn.”
“What’s he doing in Kansas?”
“He’s going to school.”
“Wait, wait. What do you mean he’s going to school in Kansas?”
“Now just hold on, hold on. Don’t get worked up. I’ve enrolled him in a very good Catholic program….”
“What!?”
“He needs to be in a Christian environment, Mark. All he does is watch television. I had to take him.”
“Waitwaitwait, wait. You just threw him in the car and dropped him off at a monastery in Kansas?”
“It’s a private academy, Mark.”
“Jesus, Mom.”
“Look, I want him to have a faith. I want him to know his Heavenly Father. I don’t want him to turn out like you. And dammit, don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”
I should have known. Luke had been “disappeared” by Mom! He hadn’t done anything wrong, particularly. She just doesn’t want him to grow up. God forbid he learn how to swear, smoke, and see some T&A at an R-rated movie!
My mother’s life goal is to get the family into heaven and she would mislead God to do it. She misled everyone except her church friends about the kidnapping. She had proposed the idea to my stepfather, but he stamped insufficent funds on it and thought that the end. The only notification he had of the secret crusade was her strange behavior days before.
“That dinner with your boss, uh… we better not do it this weekend.”
“Why?”
“Uh… uh, I can’t tell you right now.”
And then one Friday, after he left the house, and after protests from Luke ended by threat of groundation, she put him on the path towards righteousness. My step-father came home to a note. When she returned home Sunday night he told her to turn right back around. She refused.
“So God’s going to pay for it?” he asked.
“He’ll find a way,” she said.
It’s now been three months, and the amount due is worth a good used car. Meanwhile, Luke’s grades have plummeted. He wants out. There’s no television. No radio. No leaving the premises. The only female contact is a bunch of nuns.
We probably wouldn’t have heard from him ever again if they didn’t force him to write a letter home:
Dear people,
Since today is another Sunday we had to go to mass then write this letter. I can’t wait until I can come home and stay at Christmas. I know you aren’t going to pick me up for Thanksgiving so I won’t worry about it.
Sorry I can’t tell you about all the cruel things they do to us, but they read our letters along with searching our rooms and stealing our things. Send me lots of “good” food because all we get for breakfast is cereal and then dog food for the rest of the meals. You are waisting [sic] your money. I’ll write you next Sunday if I’m still here.
Signed,
Master Luke
Suffering is the gateway to the soul, so Mom is convinced Luke will return to Houston spiritually enlightened, parted hair and all, perhaps even on a donkey – the entire city of Houston throwing palm fronds before him. I think she’ll be lucky if he returns, ever. Mom got her religious gene from Grandpa. Grandpa is a devout Mormon, a Dickies man, a man of the Missouri earth who judges you on nothing but your commitment to God and your ability to toil. Grandpa is known throughout Missouri for his immortally long prayers. He believes the longer the blessing, the greater the chance it has of reaching heaven. If you put all his prayers back to back, they would reach the hereafter three times over.
Somewhere along the way, Mom caught this fever from Grandpa. With each passing day she’s more devout. When I was 10, we were strapped for our daily bread, so God told her to remarry an agnostic with an inheritance. Apparently, God thought it would be a wonderful project for her. So she married my stepfather and promised his conversion by year’s end. By year’s end they had only pushed each other apart. She grew more religious than ever. He now believes with even more conviction in nothing. It is a miracle that two decades later they’re still married.
Well, they’re really not married. They live in the same house and sleep in the same bed but they haven’t been married in the Catholic Church, so every time she sees him she thinks of the devil. They would separate, but the inheritance was squandered on an oil field gamble and now they can’t afford to live apart. She avoids him at every turn. I think he likes it that way. At least he doesn’t have to go to church.
Her children don’t have that option. I went three times a week. I read the Bible, Genesis to Revelations. But though I tried and tried, I couldn’t feel the presence of God. Well, maybe a little around the free doughnuts. As soon as I moved out, I stopped wasting my time. I had enough problems figuring out what to do tomorrow, let alone after I was dead.
Mom says I’m lost. Hedonistic. That all I care about is my own pleasure. That’s not true and I bristle at the suggestion. In fact, I am deeply concerned about young, attractive women everywhere. But my mother just doesn’t understand.
“Honey, you don’t know how much I pray for you.”
“Okay-okay-okay. I need to go to the restroom.”
“Jesus is real, Mark. He’s realer than you and me. All you have to do is open the Bible. The answers are there.”
That was easy to believe when I was young and imaginative. But not anymore. If my eternal life is on the line I want tangible proof that God exists. Not no King James poetry. And certainly not no Sunday morning UHF miracles. I want Jesus to sit down at the dinner table and let me poke the stigmata. I want a notary as a witness. And most of all, I want to see it reported in The Austin Chronicle. For then, we know it is the truth.
And if I go to hell, I go to hell. It doesn’t sound like such a bad place anyway. It might be hot but at least you can do what you want. I keep telling Mom that the harder she tries to force religion into Luke, the greater the probability he’ll turn out like me. But it is impossible to reason with a mother, especially one owned and operated by the Spirit.
“Marky de Marban” is the psuedonym of a former Austin political writer and free-food magnet whose mother might not be pleased that he wrote this piece.
This article appears in March 27 • 1998 and March 27 • 1998 (Cover).