“I think you should think about things more carefully,” Beatrix said. “I think you should think about the complications. Like with the school.”
“Which school?”
“All the schools. The high school. Even the elementary school. They’re moving in on them, you know.”
“The they in question being the women up at the camp?”
“That’s right. You wouldn’t believe how many of them have children. Though I don’t understand how a lesbian gets children, do you?”
“Maybe they aren’t all lesbians all of the time.”
Beatrix blushed. “But it isn’t only them,” she went on. “It’s him, too. That man with the house out on the beach.”
“Dr. David Sandler.”
“He’s not a real doctor. Not the kind that does operations. He’s just a college doctor. And he has that thing on the back of his car that, you know, says he worships Darwin.”
Naomi sighed. Her cigarette had grown a long column of ash. She tapped it carefully into the palm of her hand, winced a little at the heat, and then dumped the ashes in the empty wastepaper basket. Here was a library, full of books—and as far as she knew Beatrix hadn’t read a single one of them. Beatrix said she read the Bible, but Naomi doubted it. What Beatrix did—Naomi knew this because she had done it herself, during her holy phase, when she was married to her second husband—was to open the book at random and read stray passages from it. It was a form of divination for people who didn’t believe in divination. Open the book at random and it will speak to you. Close your eyes and put your finger on a passage and that will be the answer to your prayers.
“Look,” Naomi said. “There’s nothing wrong with David Sandler. He doesn’t worship Darwin—”
“He’s an atheist.”
“Lots of people are atheists, Beatrix, including me more than half the time. You shouldn’t go around saying things like about how people worship Darwin or the Devil or whatever. It’s dangerous.”
“You mean because I might get sued? I wouldn’t care if I got sued. I’d think of it as a trial I was undergoing on behalf of the cross of Christ.”
“I think that’s very nice, Beatrix, but it’s utterly beside the point. David Sandier isn’t going to sue you, for God’s sake—”
“—I wish you wouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain—”
“—why would he bother? Now Zhondra Meyer might sue you, just out of mean-spiritedness, because she’s a world-class bitch—”
“—Naomi—”
“—but to tell you the truth, I don’t think she’s interested, either. But it’s dangerous nonetheless, Beatrix, because talk like that gets out of hand. Talk like that can hurt people.”
Beatrix waddled over to the window, the lines set in her face, furious. She pressed her face against the glass and closed her eyes.
“Nothing can hurt them,” she said angrily. “They don’t even have to obey the law. They aren’t like the rest of us.”
“Which is supposed to mean what?”
Beatrix pulled herself away from the window. “A couple of us from church went to the child welfare people. About the children up there, you know, at the camp. With all those lesbians. It isn’t a wholesome situation. And that’s what the child welfare people are supposed to be for.”
Naomi’s cigarette had burned to the filter. She put it out against the metal side of the wastepaper basket and got another from her pack.
“I can’t believe this,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“They just said they’d already checked into the camp, and there was nothing there for them to concern themselves over, there wasn’t any abuse and neglect or anything like that—but what do you call bringing little children up around all that smuttiness? Isn’t that abuse and neglect?”
“No,” Naomi said.
Beatrix was oblivious. “Later on we found out that they had a lawyer, that Zhondra Meyer had hired a lawyer, a famous lawyer from New York. And the child welfare people were afraid of the lawyer, because everything is so clean up there and everybody is so rich. They were afraid of it getting in the papers and making them look silly.”
“Good,” Naomi said.
Beatrix was nearly in tears. “I wish you’d come to church with me, Naomi, I really do. I wish you’d accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior. Because we’re in the last days, you know. And in the end you’re going to have to choose.”