Chapter 2

That afternoon Frank took his resignation letter to the deacon chairman. And the next morning the chairman read that letter to the church. I found out later how that meeting went, and I might as well report it now.

The deacon chairman's name was Albert Valenzuela. He sat, that morning, in the seat on the platform where Frank usually sat. After the opening hymn Albert rose and stepped to the pulpit. He said, "Yesterday Reverend Carter brought me this letter, which I now read to you.

"'Dear Brothers and Sisters:

"'Personal circumstances have arisen which make it impossible for me to continue as your pastor. I have no choice, therefore, but to resign the pulpit of Gilead Church, effective immediately. These circumstances further make it impossible for me to be with you today or in the future.

"'I wish you all well, and pray that God will shed His blessings upon you.'

"And there is the signature. I have shared this letter with the deacons, and we have with regret accepted the resignation. I have no idea what circumstances the letter refers to. I asked, and Frank flatly refused to elaborate. I have asked Brother Julian Smith to preach this morning, and I now ask him to take his place on the platform."

There was, of course, an immediate buzz in the congregation. No one had expected such a thing, and no one had any clue why Frank had resigned.

Well, almost no one. I found out later – almost a year later – that Bill Perez, as soon as Albert had finished speaking, got up from his seat and went outside. After the service one of the deacons found him sitting in his car, weeping. He wouldn't tell that deacon why, and as far as I know he never gave away the shameful secret he and I shared. I know now that I had never loved him – indeed, I had known it then – but I have a great and lasting respect for his repentance at that time, a repentance that matched the failure of morals I led him into.

Frank and I were not there, of course. We stayed in the parsonage, with the phone unplugged and the doors locked. If anyone called, we never knew it. No one knocked on the door. And we began packing.

Gilead church was a fairly large congregation, and it had paid Frank well compared to many churches. He had thus been able to accumulate a fairly large library, and he'd been able to indulge his hobby of restoring used furniture. We had a lot of packing to do.

The next day, Monday, Frank went to various stores – Wal-Mart, Smith's, others – and got as many cardboard boxes as he could. Then he went back to the parsonage and continued packing. I was going from apartment complex to apartment complex, and finding nothing that was available when we needed it, which was right away, that also had two bedrooms and was in a range we could afford.

We couldn't afford much. Frank's compensation package included a generous severance provision, and I was working part time as a secretary for a small legal firm, but that was all we had. We were better off than many pastor's families, but we were going to have to adjust to a lower standard of living.

In desperation I pulled over to the curb in front of a small house on Elizabeth Street, where it cuts the northwest corner of the intersection of Morris and Menaul. I had pulled onto that street because I needed a quiet place to cry, or else I was going to break down in traffic and have an accident. But there was a sign on the lawn: House For Rent. Someone had written in black marker, "Cheap."

I did cry, letting out sorrow and frustration and anger at myself, and the hurt that Frank had given me over the past few days. And then I wiped my eyes, and fixed my face as best as I could in the rearview mirror, and pulled out my cell phone. I called the number on the sign, and found that the owner of the house had recently been widowed, and was moving to his son's place in Colorado Springs, but didn't want to sell the house, at least not yet. He was looking for someone to live there who would take care of the house, and was just charging enough to cover taxes and upkeep and a little profit.

The rent was within our range, and though it was a one-bedroom house I took it sight unseen. It was the best thing I'd been able to find. I arranged for the owner, a Harvey Alcorn, to meet us at the parsonage later that afternoon with the lease and the keys. And when I hung up I cried again in relief. It was the first thing that had gone right since noon Friday.

Moving is always stressful. Where I grew up in eastern Washington, I'd known a couple transplanted from Oklahoma who said that Three moves are the same as a fire. I hadn't had three moves as Frank's wife – yet. This move, into our new rented house, would be the third one, and I knew it would be the most stressful move I'd ever experienced.

Packing, loading the truck, deciding where what would go in the new house, negotiating on whether we would take the bed first or the computer, all these were sources of stress and potential conflicts. I dreaded the process.

In a way it wasn't as bad as it might have been. I did find myself getting irritated at times, but it's very hard to argue with someone who won't argue back. There was, for instance, my frustration at having a handful of miscellaneous kitchen items and no spare space in any of the kitchen boxes in which to put them. I barked at Frank about it, and his only response was, "Perhaps, Genesis, you could find room in another box." And he passed by me like I was one of the dining room chairs, being sure he didn't run over me but otherwise not noticing me further.

And that's what made it far worse than it could have been. I was beginning to think I'd killed Frank's heart. I'd known that my adultery would hurt him. That was one reason I'd ended the affair. I'd known that finding out about it would hurt him, and so I told him myself rather than let him learn from someone else. What I hadn't anticipated was that he would, to all appearances, become a frozen statue. Apart from his intimidating insistence that I tell him who my lover had been, he had never shown me any emotion. I'd heard him weeping behind a closed door more than once, but when he came out again his tears were ice, locked inside his glacial exterior.

And that was hard to bear. I would almost have welcomed fury, bluster, shouting, smashing things. I would have been relieved if Frank had broken down and wept in front of me. Anger and devastation I could understand. This cold, hard, unfeeling treatment I couldn't understand, and it oppressed me.

And so we packed in near silence. I tried, when we first began the process, to speak to Frank in something like a normal manner. But "hello" and "how are you" and "where do you want me to put this" all met with the barest acknowledgement. He would nod, or say "well, considering the circumstances" or "it doesn't really matter to me." He never once initiated a conversation, and never spoke to me at all unless I spoke to him first, or he needed to give me instructions regarding the packing and moving. In the space of an afternoon, we had gone from a loving and open marriage to something that I couldn't classify.

Was it a marriage still? In name it certainly was. We both still wore our rings, and neither of us had mentioned divorce. But is it a marriage when one spouse sleeps on the sofa, and when the other spouse is a graven image, silent and cold? Marriage is supposed to be about sharing, communicating, giving and receiving. All I received from Frank now was cold stares and colder words and no more compassion than he offered to the carpet.

And it hurt. I began, even as we moved the last loads to the rental house, to withdraw into myself. Frank had done it in a couple of hours. It took me longer. But I had no choice. I could either pull into a shell that I built around me, or I could fall apart into weeping hysteria. And we had no time for hysteria. The church was gracious while we moved, but Frank was no longer the pastor and we had no more right to the parsonage. I couldn't allow myself to fall apart. I had to work, I had to hold myself together, I had to pack boxes and load the rented truck, I had to unload and unpack boxes in the new house. And I was afraid that if I fell apart, Frank would merely move me out of the way, if I was in the way, and proceed with what he was doing.

By the time we were finished with the move, we had become a pair of silent people, moving about each other, staying out of each other's way, saying nothing that we didn't need to say. And I began to be afraid. It wasn't a specific fear. I was just afraid. The fear manifested itself in various ways. I became reluctant to leave the house, and had to quit my job because I just couldn't force myself to go to work. I didn't want to sleep at night, but when I began to awaken the next morning I fought it, fearing the day I would have to face.

And once we were safely in the new house, my strength departed. I had kept myself together, but now I didn't have to, and I found myself weeping uncontrollably at times. I would be washing dishes and find that my tears were mixing with the suds. I would stand at the living room window, and suddenly collapse in a heap on the floor, wailing in sorrow. Frank found me in just that position one day. I realized he was standing beside me, looking down. I looked up, and saw nothing on his face – nothing at all. I wiped my eyes and my nose with my hand and reached for him. He stepped back and said, "I fail to see what you have to weep about, Genesis. I did not betray you, after all." And he walked away.

Coldness, silence, fear, uncontrollable sorrow ... these were the components of my life. It had been three months, now, since my confession. I no longer went to church, though Frank did – where, I didn't know. I could barely do the shopping, and doing my housework required more and more of an effort, though it was the one effort I refused to let defeat me. I began to think that if this was life after doing the right thing, perhaps life wasn't worth living anymore.

I think I provoked the argument because I was afraid of what was happening to me. I wanted to get some sort of reaction out of Frank, for his coldness was driving me into despair, and I wanted to pull myself out of that despair if I could. If I could become angry, and if I could make him angry, I would know that I was still alive.