Brandon supposed that arguing would only make matters worse. He’d never seen Heather—usually cool and reasonable—so edgy before.
She really was quite tipsy, and had to lean on Brandon all the way up the hill. A few folks clapped when the couple reentered the clubhouse, and many took pictures while the cake was cut. Heather and Brandon fed each other a piece, as was tradition. After smiling for the cameras, Brandon noticed a few guests leaving early, on the far side of the room beyond the picture takers. Once the commotion died down, he made sure Heather was situated at the sweetheart table, then stole out back himself for a quick smoke.
His lighter wasn’t in the pocket where he’d left it, so he searched elsewhere in his tuxedo. He was unused to wearing something so formal. The suit might not normally have bothered him, but at this wedding, in tonight’s company, it felt much too constricting.
If I can just make it through the rest of the night, everything will be fine.
The Cessna was all ready to go in the hangar, with its big “JUST MARRIED” sign painted on the back. He and Heather could leave in the morning for their Canadian honeymoon, and what a relief that would be after all these months of stress. It pained Brandon to think that he might never see his friends from high school or church again after tonight, but he was clearly not welcome in Bristol anymore.
“Need a light?” The familiar gentle voice came from an opening door, bringing with it the din of the reception inside. Brandon glanced up to see Tim approaching, his usual smile lighting up his face.
Brandon smiled back. “Sure.”
Tim joined Brandon in the small garden outside the country club and lit a cigarette for each of them. The gray hair on his sideburns flared briefly orange, then a trail of smoke climbed from the end of his cigarette and up past his kind eyes.
“How are things at the flight school?” he asked. “Will you start teaching again when you get back?”
“That’s the plan.” Brandon inhaled, and warmth filled his lungs, counterbalancing the cold air on his skin.
“Thanks again for taking so much time off work to spend with me these past few months,” Tim said. “It’s been great to see you again.”
“Sure thing. It’s been good to see you too.” What was Tim building up to? He hadn’t spoken this congenially to Brandon in weeks.
“You’re welcome back any time you want.”
“Cool, yeah. I’ll be back to see you all the time.”
But probably not to see anyone else.
They smoked together in silence for a few moments. Brandon’s eyes wandered to the starry sky above. He missed that sky. Seattle’s city lights, mixed with its incessant clouds, made for poor stargazing, especially on campus, but here at home the stars put on a spectacular light show every single night, if one cared to look heavenward.
“Brandon, setting all our arguments aside, and setting aside any conflicts you’ve had around Bristol lately, I, uh… I’m worried about you.”
Brandon sighed. “How so?”
“Well, to put it bluntly, it’s because you’ve been so down on life ever since you told me you weren’t a Christian anymore. We live in a world that’s full of sin, and I don’t want it to cloud your future. I want you to live a full, happy life.”
“Thanks for the concern, Dad.” Brandon hoped that his tone of voice suggested how greatly he didn’t want to talk about this at his own wedding.
“I just don’t want you to fall any further into nihilism. It’s such a bleak way to view the world.”
Had Heather been present, she’d have immediately responded by telling Tim that most nonreligious people weren’t nihilists, and that confusing the two was unfair to both. But Brandon could say nothing bad about nihilists because, in truth, he was one.
He inhaled another puff from his cigarette and looked up again at the night sky. Not at the stars this time, but at the black spaces between the stars. How many trillions of planet Earths could fit in those spaces? Brandon felt truly insignificant when he compared his own tiny life to the vast scale of the universe, in terms of space, and also time. How many billions of years would pass after Brandon’s own death? How many billions of years would pass after the end of the human species? The fact that the universe was so impartial to humanity terrified him so much, he imagined it must be the central fear religion had been created to avoid.
Our own lives mean nothing in the vast scheme of things.
Brandon had first realized this a few years ago, in college. As a naïve and self-important freshman, he’d majored in biology, certain that he’d one day become
the
scientist who disproved evolution and proved that God had created all life. But then he’d met Heather, and she’d patiently walked him through his mistaken assumptions and his logical fallacies. She’d opened his eyes to the idea that no God was necessary to explain the world’s natural processes. It had taken a year of questioning and self-examination, but eventually Brandon had realized the harsh truth that there was no God.
And with no God… what was left? Brandon was still trying to figure that out. Was there any good or evil, any right or wrong, any purpose in life at all? Heather had tried to imbue him with the idea that “we all create our own purposes,” but living life exclusively for his own happiness felt profoundly empty to Brandon. True, in a world with no meaning, living life exclusively to please oneself seemed reasonable on the surface.
But really, what makes me so special, so different and exceptional, that my own pleasure is the most important thing in life?
He’d stumped Heather with this, and she’d told him she’d get back to him with a reply. So Brandon had concluded that nothing had a purpose, not even his own desires and his own life.
“It is bleak,” Brandon admitted.
As you and everyone else from Bristol are so eager to remind me.
“But I can’t think of any reason why it’s not true.”
“God’s just waiting for you to turn to Him for answers, but if you don’t want to do that, at least think about Heather, and how much you love her. That love gives your life meaning and purpose. Focus on that, especially during this early stage of your marriage.”
Interesting point.
Brandon had wondered about this very thing before. Could he really write off his own deep connection with Heather as meaningless? Ultimately, he supposed, love was just an evolutionary urge existing for the sake of procreation, and for the bonding of social groups. Rationally, love was reducible to chemicals in his brain, making him feel happy that he was “fit” in an evolutionary sense. Wasn’t love just another of the body’s feedback mechanisms? Wasn’t every emotion? Brandon would love to believe that his emotions were more than mere predispositions and biases, and he found it intensely troubling that that was all they seemed to be.
Of course, he couldn’t tell any of this to Tim without Tim invoking God as the ultimate answer. “I do love Heather,” was all he said in response.
Tim shook his head at Brandon’s half-hearted reply. “You’re always saying how the universe doesn’t care about us, and maybe that’s true. But you know what? We’re part of the universe. And you’re not some piece of inert matter in a faraway asteroid, either. You’re a human being. You matter.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“Then why not believe it?”
“We’ve been over this, Dad. You think you matter because God thinks you matter. We all want to believe we have a destiny, a divine purpose for being here. I want that as much as anyone. But God isn’t real. Religion is just a story we tell ourselves, not based on evidence, to make us feel like we have all the answers.”
“And nihilism isn’t?”
Brandon opened his mouth to retort, but no words came out.
Oh, come on, that was a cheap shot. There’s gotta be an easy comeback for that.
But he could think of none, and that made him angry. Why did he have to deal with this on his wedding day, anyway?
Tim of all people should know better. Does he really care so little that he’d bring this up on today of all days?
“Let me ask you,” Brandon said. “Would you have paid for my biology degree if you’d known it would lead me to become nonreligious? And to marry a nonreligious woman? Would you still have adopted me even?”
Tim made direct eye contact then, and Brandon realized that this was the first time he’d done so since they’d started smoking. Tim’s usually cheery eyes now winced with heartache. “Of course I would have. You’re my son. I love you.”
Aw, damn it. Now I feel guilty.
Brandon used puffing on his cigarette as an excuse to look away. Inside, the band had started to take a break, and someone had just turned on the “Cha Cha Slide” in their absence. Many of the reception guests rose to join others on the dance floor, which encouraged Brandon. The wedding’s detractors were indulging in the celebration after all.
“Do you remember my wife?” Tim asked.
“A little,” Brandon said. “I only met her once or twice.” Pamela. Brandon had actually resented her a little, since her death in a traffic accident had caused his first year in Tim’s house to be filled with grief, at a time when he’d much rather have been back on the streets with his old friends. In time, though, Brandon had come to admire her a great deal. Everyone in church treated her like a saint, often telling Brandon what a caring, selfless woman she’d been. Tim often asserted that Pamela’s death had been a test for him, sent from God. But looking back, Brandon could see that the event had planted the first seeds of doubt in his own mind. How could a loving God allow so much pain, even for a test?
Brandon was surprised how much weight these distressing memories still placed on him. But Tim’s next words lifted much of it.
“Adopting you was the last and best thing Pam and I ever did together.”
Brandon nodded his appreciation. “You gave me a life.”
“And you helped me get mine back. Brandon, you know I don’t approve of a secular wedding, but I will support you and Heather. She’s a nice girl, and I welcome her to the family. And I hope that in time, you’ll both reconsider looking to God for your answers.”
He reached out his hand, and Brandon readily shook it. The men nodded to each other, then Tim pressed his cigarette butt into an ashtray and headed back indoors.
Brandon took one last pull. Of all those people inside, he was glad that Tim was the one who’d adopted him. Brandon wished he knew how to better express his appreciation to the man. They disagreed often, even when Brandon had been a Christian, but Tim had always consoled Brandon when kids picked on him at school, disciplined him when he’d needed it, spent every Saturday afternoon with his adopted son until he’d left for college. Tim had always been a good dad. And he still was.
This brief exchange over cigarettes made Brandon long to return to years past. Simpler years, full of joy.
Is it abandoning my faith that’s made me so miserable lately, or is this just part of growing up?
The far-off clouds were getting closer, blotting out the starry heavens as they neared. Brandon exhaled sooty breath, dropped his cigarette on the ground, and stamped the light out of it. He’d been spending much of tonight avoiding the party, but now he realized how much he wanted to take part in it, if only to forget the bitter emptiness that plagued him whenever he looked up into the night sky.
How many wars have you fought for that speck of dust you call a planet?
the sky asked him as he left.
How much misery has been wrought in the name of blind tribalism, of tradition? In your own life and in the lives of others? How much pain have you petty ants caused each other because you’re so convinced you’re at the center of everything?
“We live in a world full of sin,” Tim had said.
Indeed we do, Dad. Indeed we do.
“God damn it!” said God. “Thorn’s
gone
? All the millions of you, and he somehow snuck through to a transit door?”
Every angel in God’s House stood still, looking down at their feet. Thilial wasn’t sure if she should offer suggestions to God, flee to join the army mobilizing to track down the renegade demon, or just stand here and take the verbal lashing that God had been dealing out for the last five minutes. He’d asked her here today due to her unique history with Thorn, and she had objected. She hadn’t wanted to see such a vile creature accepted back into God’s good graces, and had even pleaded with God to cast the demon into the fiery pit in spite of Thorn’s benevolent and rational actions of late. Now, fortunately, she’d never have to worry about it again.
“I want him found!” God continued, His awkward voice booming, echoing off of every corner of Heaven, for every angel to hear. “I want that Sanctuary locked down, and I want—I want him killed! Send the traitor back to Me and I’ll send him straight back to Hell! Whoever captures him can expect a promotion. Now go! What are you doing standing here?
Go!
”
The angels fled back to their consoles. Thilial glanced out the window—the same window through which Thorn had jumped minutes ago—to see cloudy wisps rising from across the city, as if a desert wind battered at dunes, sending sand flying high. Each particle of sand was, of course, an angel, on its way to earn glory and prestige by killing a demon for the Lord.
But Thilial would get to Thorn before any of them. She had more reason than anyone to want him dead. If he’d turned a moral corner in the recent Sanctuary, so what? His crimes deserved punishment. Forgiveness was not an option for someone like him. And Thilial’s knowledge of the twisting maze that was the Corridors reached deeper than most angels’. She was confident that she could get to him first, if she started out soon.
“Tamior, you ignoramus!” God said, approaching the unassuming angel trying to blend in with the others. “Think before you speak! Think! Thinking is important.”
“I’m sorry, Lord. I’m so sorry.”
“Get your butt back down to the city. I don’t want to see you in My House again for another hundred years!”
“Yes, Lord. As You will it.” Tamior departed through the window.
“Thilial!” God’s attention turned to her. “I have a special assignment for you.”
The plants growing out of His robes rustled against the marble floor as His bare feet carried Him toward her. No matter how accustomed Thilial became to His presence, the sight of Him approaching still filled her with awe. She felt now, as she always did around Him, like she was about to be punished.