Leaving Fishers (13 page)

After a minute, Mrs. Garringer shrugged. “Oh, well. It’s not like we ever go anywhere anyhow.”

From the next room, Zoe shrieked, “Mom-my! Jasmine threw my duck on the table! Get it for me!”

Mrs. Garringer sighed and began shifting the baby so she could get up. He started crying.

“I’ll help her,” Dorry said quickly. “You stay there.”

Mrs. Garringer settled back with a grateful look. Nestled against his mother’s shoulder again, the baby was instantly soothed.

Dorry followed the sounds of screams and
Sesame Street.
Zoe started clapping as soon as she stepped into the family room. “It’s Dorry!” she said. “Jasmine, that’s our new baby-sitter.”

Jasmine looked to be four or five, an elfin girl with long curls.

“I was really bad,” she said gravely. “I’m not supposed to take toys away from Zoe. Are you going to tell Mommy?”

“No,” Dorry said. “But don’t do it again.”

“Okay,” Jasmine said.

Dorry retrieved the duck from the top of a ping-pong table covered with books and magazines.

“Thank you,” Zoe said. “Now I really,
really
like you.”

When Dorry got back to the living room, Angela broke off in the middle of a sentence. Both she and Mrs. Garringer looked up at Dorry in a strange way. Dorry wasn’t sure what had happened when she was out of the room, but something had changed.

“I was just saying how much you’d like to get this job,” Angela said smoothly. “Right?”

“Um, yes,” Dorry said.

“Well, everything sounds good to me,” Mrs. Garringer said. “And you already seem to have established a rapport with Zoe. I do want to check your references”—she darted a quick glance at Angela. Dorry didn’t know why—“but why don’t you just plan on starting on Monday? I’ll call you to cancel only if someone says you’re a convicted axe murderer or something.”

Behind the axe murderer joke and Mrs. Garringer’s
mischievous grin, there was a hint of uncertainty.

“That’s fine,” Dorry said, doing her best to sound trustworthy. “I’ll see you Monday, because I’m not an axe murderer.”

“You don’t even own an axe, do you, Dorry?” Angela joked.

Everybody laughed, but the laughter was a little strained. Dorry wrote out a list of people she’d baby-sat for in Bryden, with their phone numbers. They agreed on an hourly rate that sounded ridiculously high to Dorry, but she figured babysitters made more in a big city.

Getting back into Angela’s car afterward, Dorry wondered if she should say something about the way Angela had acted, answering questions for Dorry, telling Mrs. Garringer what Dorry could and couldn’t do. Angela had acted like she was Dorry’s mother, and Dorry was just a little kid who couldn’t speak for herself. Dorry shoved her schoolbooks and her Fishers Bible out of the way and sat down. The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. And she needed to be getting calmer, so she didn’t say anything she didn’t mean. Anything unchristian. “I—” she started, and stopped.

Just then Angela slid into the seat beside her and turned and hugged Dorry “I’m so proud of
you,” she said, holding Dorry by the shoulders and earnestly peering into her face.

“Why?” Dorry asked, unable to keep a certain harshness out of her voice. “For getting the job?”

“Yeah, sure, for that, but really for something more important.”

Dorry frowned. “What?”

“For submitting to authority so obediently.”

“Authority?” Dorry said in disbelief.

“Yes,” Angela said firmly. “Authority. A lot of new Fishers start viewing their disciplers as busy-bodies—or worse—whenever their disciplers bring their God-given authority into the new person’s life. It’s like the Devil is whispering in their ear, ‘This is
your
life. Nobody else has the right to make decisions for you. Tell them where to go.’ But you—what’s the word?—deferred. You didn’t argue when I made it clear to Mrs. Garringer that God comes first in your life.”

“No. I didn’t,” Dorry agreed guiltily. She didn’t admit that she’d wanted to argue.

“So,” Angela said, releasing Dorry’s shoulders and turning to the steering wheel. “I’m going to say an extra prayer tonight thanking God for your humility of spirit. Not every discipler is so blessed.”

Dorry didn’t think that left her anything to say. She sat utterly speechless as Angela drove her to
Bible Study. Enormous houses she once would have stared at, mouth agape, flashed by, but she barely saw them. Becoming a Fisher was like learning a new language, she thought. No, it was more than that—when you learned a new language, you were allowed to keep talking the old one, too. Angela seemed to want Dorry to become a totally different person. Dorry remembered a Bible verse they’d talked about at the retreat, something about how once someone was a Christian, he was a new creation. His old self was gone. So it made sense, what Angela was doing.

And what had the old Dorry Stevens been worth, anyway?

Chapter

Thirteen

DORRY’S MOTHER CAME HOME ON SUNDAY, looking pale and thinner and declaring, “I don’t want to eat hospital food ever again the rest of my life.” And Dorry, helpfully carrying her mother’s suitcase in the door, thought grimly, I hope the rest of your life is a long time. Dorry’s father only frowned and snorted. Both of them forgot to tell Dorry’s mother about the flowers Angela had sent for her homecoming. When Dorry’s mother saw them on the kitchen counter—a grand bouquet of exotic flowers Dorry didn’t recognize but knew had to be unbelievably expensive—she flushed and practically went speechless.

“Gene, how could you—” she began. “That must have cost a week’s salary, and with me not working. . . .”

“Ain’t from me,” Dorry’s dad said tightly.

Dorry’s mom gaped at Dorry. “That babysitting job was supposed to be money for you—”

“Relax, Mom,” Dorry said. “My friend Angela sent them. From my church. Wasn’t that nice?”

Dorry saw her parents exchange a glance. “Yes. Very nice,” her mother said.

But the way she said it made Dorry feel weird about the flowers. They were all wrong in the Stevenses’ apartment, crowded on the counter by dirty pots and pans and their old black rotary phone, brought from Bryden. She tried to recapture the thrill she’d felt when the flowers had arrived—the sudden, excited disbelief, the amazement that Angela cared so much about her and her family. But it was gone, replaced by a squeamish discomfort.

“Some people from that church visited me in the hospital this morning, too,” Dorry’s mother said, sinking onto the couch.

“Really? Some of my friends?” Dorry was surprised.

“It was an older couple. They’d just been sent out to, uh, witness.” Dorry’s mother said “witness” the way she might mention unpleasant bodily functions.

“But didn’t you like them?” Dorry persisted.

“Sure,” her mother said, but Dorry could tell that she really didn’t. “Gene, can you hand me that remote?”

The TV came on. Dorry knew better than to try to carry on a religious discussion in the face of a McDonald’s commercial.

“I’ll do the dishes,” she volunteered. If nothing else, she could report it to Angela for her “Virtuous
Acts” list. It would be worth double because she had done it for unbelievers. At the sink, up to her elbows in greasy suds, Dorry reminded herself that she was supposed to be thinking of her parents as unbelievers, however strange it seemed. She shouldn’t worry about what the Fishers who’d visited her mother had thought of her, or what she thought of them. She should be glad other Fishers were trying to convert her parents, because then it wouldn’t be entirely up to her.

“If you don’t want your family to go to hell, you must convert them,” Angela had said repeatedly. “You know what happens to people who aren’t baptized as Fishers. No other church lives the Bible as God commands. Would you be happy in paradise knowing your loved ones were experiencing the worst agonies imaginable for all eternity?”

“No,” Dorry had said. Things sounded so simple the way Angela put them. But now . . . Dorry stole a glance back at her parents, still sitting on the couch staring at the TV like nothing else much mattered. Dorry’s dad was flipping through the channels, as usual. Dorry had changed and they were the same people they’d always been. Even with her mom’s heart attack. Dorry didn’t know how she would have survived the whole ordeal without Fishers. But her parents didn’t
think much of religion, didn’t think they needed it, thank you very much. Dorry couldn’t imagine anyone being harder to convert than her parents. But she had to try.

“Mom, do you think you and Dad could go to a Fishers service with me some Sunday?” she asked, interrupting yet another commercial.

“Maybe when I’m feeling a little better,” her mother said, without looking up.

Dorry sighed. When her mother was feeling better, she’d be back at work, and always too tired or too busy on Sunday mornings. That was how it’d been back in Bryden. Dorry hadn’t cared then. But now—why couldn’t her parents see the glory she carried around with her all the time now? Why didn’t they want that, too? Dorry resolved to act as holy as possible, to let them see what they were missing.

The next few weeks passed quickly. Dorry settled into a routine of baby-sitting three afternoons a week for the Garringers—her references had checked out, as she knew they would. She couldn’t imagine a better job. Dorry had always liked little kids in a vague way—little kids didn’t care what you looked like, as long as you played with them. But Dorry quickly decided that the Garringer kids were her all-time favorites.

And as much as Dorry loved them, they
seemed to adore her, too. When Jasmine and Zoe started jumping on the couch or throwing crackers on the floor, all Dorry had to say was, “Should I get your mom?” and they’d settle down. Then they’d hug and kiss her and moan, “No, Dorry. We’ll be good. We want yo-oou.”

As soon as he saw his sisters piling onto Dorry, Seth usually climbed on, too, making kissing motions with his lips. Otherwise, he mainly crawled around the house happily oblivious to his sisters’ mania. He never seemed to mind barely missing getting jumped on while he ate the crackers they’d thrown on the floor. At first, Dorry tried to stop him from popping dropped crackers and stray Cheerios and lost Goldfish into his mouth. But Mrs. Garringer, coming into the kitchen for another cup of coffee, had laughed, “Oh, don’t worry about that. If he can’t eat off the floor, he’ll miss out on half his daily diet. A little dirt never hurt anybody. Builds immunities.”

“Okay,” Dorry had said uneasily. It did simplify her job.

She still wasn’t quite comfortable with Mrs. Garringer. Maybe it was because they’d gotten off on the wrong foot, with Angela doing all the talking for Dorry that first day. Dorry could be playing with the kids, having a great time jumping
up and down in an out-of-control game of Simon Says, when Mrs. Garringer would walk in and announce, “Okay, I’ve made enough of a mess for the day. Want to relax and have a Coke with me until it’s time for you to go?” And suddenly Dorry would feel totally foolish and self-conscious. At first, Mrs. Garringer asked her about school and her friends and her life, because, Mrs. Garringer said, “I’m in a mommy ghetto where most of the people I know have diapers and formula on the brain. I can’t remember—what’s life like without kids?”

Dorry was sure Mrs. Garringer’s life had been glamorous and exciting before her kids were born. Dorry stammered and blushed trying to explain what she did—Fishers parties and Fishers services and Fishers studies.

“Sounds like you’re very involved in your church,” Mrs. Garringer had said. “Don’t you miss being around people with more diverse views?”

Dorry didn’t know how to answer that. She was glad she didn’t have to because Zoe interrupted just then, scrambling into her lap and insisting, “Read to me, read to me, READ TO ME!”

When Dorry described her discomfort later to Angela, Angela shook her head in disbelief. “Dorry, don’t you see what an opportunity you
missed? She was practically begging for you to witness to her. If that family ends up in hell, it will be your fault.”

Dorry had apologized and watched Angela total up an all-time high number for her sin category—missing an opportunity to witness was counted as one of the worst possible disobediences to God’s will. But she didn’t feel as guilty as she knew she ought to. The Garringers didn’t seem to need religion. They were perfect the way they were. Even though Dorry had already sat through plenty of sermons on the text, “AU have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”—and nodded solemnly with everyone else, and said, “Amen” with everyone else, and believed fervently, with everyone else—she still couldn’t make herself worry about the Garringers going to hell.