The Thirteenth Wheel

Of course, although she doesn’t know it, and even though all the while she maintains that she’s on a different road entirely, Laudette Lord is the coven’s thirteenth wheel. While she doesn’t roll along with the fruits and nuts, she goes where they go, like a spare tire in the trunk.

Even though Laudette has more than an idea about what goes on in that bed, knows the Hairy Tuna is more than an extension of the women’s nutty obsessions, that he exists in fact, she refuses to admit he is a “Higher Power”; she certainly would not classify him as a god. The presence summoned to the second story bedroom strikes her as more than a little unholy. But, as she has watched Sarah suffer since the day they met, if getting an earful of that monkey’s blue stories gives Sarah’s tortured soul any sort of relief, the sitter is willing to abide in peaceful coexistence with it.

As much as I hate to admit it, she thinks, that old hoot owl Keinar was absolutely right: goodness is relative: Sugar’s gotten steadily better and has kept Sir Harry happy since those meetings started.

Not that she doesn’t scold herself … Laudette Lord! The mental pause must be getting to you at last! Winking when the means are questionable means the ends may not be as good as they look. These meetings are commerce with the devil himself. You were in there and you know what they’re all about. And you don’t do anything to stop them?

That monkey may well be the devil, his advocate argues back, but if you love Sugar and you hate to see her suffer, go along with Keinar and her crew and deal with that devil. Going to meetings helps Sugar. If the Father in Heaven loves us and forgives us, as Emanual swore in The Good Book he does, then I’m sure he doesn’t want to see one of his children wasting away from guilt and remorse. What’s done is done. I stood by Sugar when she was a lady of the hour, and, so long as Baby is not directly affected, I can look the other way now.

Whatever mild admonishments the sitter makes concerning the Purple Sage and the fruits and nuts, they are in the spirit of what she feels is her duty as a God-fearing woman.

One brisk Saturday morning, early January nineteen thirty-nine, Sarah comes down for coffee and donuts with Laudette. “While Corn Dog might not be Corn Dog anymore,” she says, “his spirit moves on, not just in Glory, but in the Light. The loss was mine, I know he’s in a happier state. He doesn’t have to live with how worthless I am, as I do. I feel he forgives me, he wouldn’t be there in the Light if he didn’t, so I can forgive myself. Yes, my account with him is clear. When my time comes I will go happily.”

“Amen, Sugar. I don’t know when I’ve ever heard you make more sense. The Prince of Peace wasn’t just whistling to keep himself from being afraid when he went to his cross. No doubt he was feeling the same easy come, easy going feeling too, forgiving us for our sins.”

“Yes, I almost feel at peace …”

“Now, Sugar, I don’t like the sound of that. You better tell me what you mean by ‘almost’.”

“Knowing your death is no death is not exactly the same as knowing your life is no life.”

“Now you’re talking nonsense again.”

“One day at a time, I’m getting over the hurt about what happened to Corn Dog, but I keep thinking that Gloria is the party I really injured.” Now the pea splits. Suddenly bursting into tears, she sobs into the sitter’s big breast, confessing. “No, Miss Lord, things are not all right at all. Sometimes I think things in my mind have never been worse. Glory wants to know the truth about what happened. Last night at the meeting I broke down and, with Sister Klare’s help, said what I haven’t been able to bring myself to say to anyone but you.”

“You told everything?”

“Yes. Finally. ‘Look what I’ve done,’ I said, ‘deprived my daughter of her father! Should I tell her or not?’ And Sister Klare told me under no circumstances should I burden Gloria with the wrong I’ve done. ‘Don’t force your sin on the little sister the way your father forced his salvation on you,’ she said. ‘You might very well pass the split along to her. What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her, but what she learns could crack her up.’ She also said I should be thankful for being split, that my low self-esteem, and the empty, hungry feeling I have inside are the sources of my power. My weakness is what keeps the positive poles stretching toward me.”

“Positive poles?”

“She means men and male spirits. Hole-fillers. Opposites attract, you know. Sister Klare said this string of strong characters are attracted to me because I am morally weak. And that is my strength. My lack of truthfulness invites the Light, she said, and keeps Lord Z coming back for more.”

“But what if you’re lying to yourself?”

“I only wish I could! Sister Klare said that the new lease on life I’ve been enjoying will continue only so long as I hide the truth from Gloria.”

The sitter makes a face. As her inner dialogue of ideal point and practical counterpoint, the pros and cons of the issue, turn slowly in her mind, she munches on a cruller. Then she sniffs, “I don’t know about any of this, Sugar! But I think I know a crock of fish when I smell one. Keinar may be on the ball about some things, but she’s not God. The way I look at it, you’ve got to have moral principles that are positive not negative.”

Sarah says, “Sister Klare says that morals are a practical necessity for those who want to control other people in families and in states, and must be instilled through fear. For those of us training for our wings, by the grace of the Lord, conventional principles can be dispensed with.”

Laudette holds this line of reasoning dubious and withholds her absolution. She judges the medium’s purpose is solely to promote contact with out-of-this-world characters for the sake of being naughty, nothing else. If anything, Sarah’s rationalizations tip the scales in Laudette’s mind away from Lord Z’s ultra-violet humanism in favor of more fundamental X-oriented family values. “Sugar, I’m the last to agree with Keinar that this doubletalk will get you true happiness. The Dipster always said that to rest in peace, clean of your sins, you need more than a good dunking. And I suppose a purple hazing won’t satisfy either. What you need is an act of contrition, that’s what. Of course you have to try to make amends with those whom you wronged. But I think you don’t need any more amends. Why, you and Sir Harry are spoiling Baby rotten, giving her things left and right to try to pay her back for the damage you did her. Yes, it’s the confession part you’re weak on. As long as you think there’s something you ought to own up to, you’re not going to sleep calm, free, and happy. Yes, yes, no doubt about it, if you can tell me, and you can tell those fruity ladies, then you can tell Baby. Next time that child asks, or Sir Harry for that matter, even though he’s just about figured the whole thing out by now, you might as well tell them. You don’t want to keep it to yourself forever and ever do you? The Dipster always said that the time to be sorry is now or never.”

“Then it’ll have to be never, Miss Lord. I can confess to heaven and hell and maybe even to Harry, but how in the world can I tell my little girl, to keep my price up for toads, I sent my prince down the road to his death?”

“Sugar, you were young and confused. It’s as good an excuse as any. Also, you’ll never be free to talk to your Heavenly Father until you can show your baby that you’re only a human being who can make mistakes, and that your mistakes are partly to blame for why she’s never going to see her daddy, just as your daddy’s mistakes are partly to blame for why he’s never going to see you. You’ve got to have integrity to break the chain and get the family intact.”

Sarah refuses to listen to what she doesn’t want to hear. She sighs and gets that faraway look in her eye, and goes back to her room to hide from the world, to comb her hair, powder her nose and chee-chee her “cheese.”