Double Vision by Randy Ingermanson

Author:Randy Ingermanson [Ingermanson, Randy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-937031-05-3
Publisher: Ingermanson Communications, Inc.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Rachel

* * *

RACHEL TOOK A SIP OF her Indian beer, wondering how to begin. There was no way they would understand. Finally, she said, “Wow, it’s nice to hear you both had happy childhoods.”

Dillon looked confused. “We did not have happy childhoods. We just told you—”

Rachel put up her hand. “That was irony, Dillon, sorry. I’m just saying, by comparison to mine, your childhoods were idyllic.”

Dillon nodded.

Rachel stared into the depths of her beer, but there was nothing there. “Dillon, I told you I’m Jewish. That’s half true. My father is Jewish. Not religious, just Jewish. My mother wasn’t religious either when they got married. She was raised in this uptight fundamentalist church, but she rebelled and bagged religion when she went off to Princeton. She and Daddy lived together for a couple years, then they got married and started making babies.”

Rachel wasn’t sure how to explain the next part. She’d never understood it herself. “They had a little boy and named him Aaron. After Daddy. I’ve seen pictures of him. He was cute.”

Dillon appeared to be holding his breath, his face was so still. Keryn’s eyes were glistening.

Rachel put both hands flat on the table and studied them intently. “My brother, Aaron, died when he was six weeks old. SIDS. They never did know what caused it. But it freaked my mother out. She decided God was punishing her, so she ... decided to get right with God.”

Rachel looked at Dillon and took a deep breath. “Ever notice that when somebody gets right with God, they usually get wrong with everybody else?”

“I had not noticed that,” Dillon said.

“I’m sorry, Rachel,” Keryn said.

“My mother became the Church Lady from hell,” Rachel said. “It wouldn’t have been so bad if she just picked a normal church. But she only knew one kind of church. Uptight fundie. So that’s what she went back to.”

“So you were raised Christian?” Keryn said.

Rachel gave her a twisted smile. “I wish. That would have made it simple. When I was born, Mother told Daddy that she was going to raise me ‘right,’ meaning her way, and Daddy told her no, I was Jewish and he’d see me dead before he saw me growing up Christian. So they fought about that for years and finally got a divorce when I was five or six—I forget exactly. I wound up in joint custody. Mostly with Mother, but every other weekend with Daddy.”

“Rachel, I’m so sorry.” Keryn scootched her chair over and wrapped a hug around Rachel. “That must have been horrible.”

“Yeah.” Rachel’s voice felt thick and viscous in her throat. “Yeah, it was horrible.” She daubed at her eyes with her twisted napkin. “One weekend I’d be in Sunday school learning all about how Jesus ragged on the Jews for being legalists. Then the next weekend I’d be with Daddy, and I knew he was Jewish, but he wasn’t a legalist, so I got so confused. Daddy didn’t even go to synagogue, so how could he be a legalist? About the only thing he did was have a Passover Seder every year.

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