by Rob Byrnes
At 199 feet, the new cross would fall twelve inches short of the FAA’s restrictions, and so, a few years after the Virginia Cathedral of Love opened its doors, construction finally began. Even though every time Hurley now looked at the Great Cross he regretted paring 81 feet, it was still an amazing structure, visible from large swaths of Loudoun County.
Dennis Merribaugh had overseen construction of the cross. It was his first official assignment since leaving his small church in Delaware to join the staff of the Cathedral as its chief operating officer. Merribaugh had taken one look at the blueprint for the solid cement structure, grabbed a pen, and made some sound recommendations on ways the Great Cross could be constructed cheaply and efficiently and without, he said, sacrificing the overall aesthetics or quality. Plus he figured out how to make it functional. Hurley was sold on the spot and construction began as soon as Merribaugh was able to find the encampments of day laborers who serviced those good people of Loudoun County that didn’t want to get their hands dirty.
But all of that was then, and this was now.
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Now the structures and grounds of the Virginia Cathedral of Love were starting to show their age, most notably the Great Cross.
A visible crack had appeared late the previous winter, and as spring became summer it deepened. Work began, and soon scaffolding covered the lower half of the cross while day laborers were shuttled in and out—never the same ones from one day to the next—under Merribaugh’s watchful supervision.
It wasn’t the crack that bothered Hurley so much—these things happened—but the fact that it was taking so long to repair. That, and an overall shabbiness that was starting to overtake the entire complex.
Dennis Merribaugh may have been the right man for the job at one point, Hurley thought, but now perhaps he was overextended. Routine maintenance was slipping, and some bad personnel decisions—including the hiring and firing of Leonard Platt—were causing administrative confusion. None of this was good, and all of it fell under Merribaugh’s responsibility as chief operating officer.
Hurley was sure he knew what the problem was: Merribaugh’s obsession with his ex-gay ministry, Project Rectitude. As far as Hurley was concerned, the deviants should be sent to their own island. Even the ones who claimed they’d been cured of homosexuality were probably fooling themselves.
In any event, they creeped him out.
But Merribaugh was hell-bent on saving those sinners through conversion therapy. Hurley had indulged him—it made for good public relations, if nothing else—but if the price of his indulgence was a Cathedral that was literally falling apart, he would have to reconsider sooner rather than later.
He stood out in the morning sun, looking again at the scaffolding encircling the Great Cross, his face pinched with annoyance. God had created the world in six days, but Merribaugh couldn’t even get a decent concrete patch finished in six weeks.
Hurley turned and followed the tree-lined walkway leading away from the Great Cross toward Cathedral House, visually inspecting the foliage as he passed. What had been small shrubberies when first planted had grown tall and full, but also untrimmed and tangled. He would have to remind Merribaugh that they were supposed to be a tasteful landscaping touch, not a forest.
That was not supposed to be his job. Merribaugh was supposed to address problems before they came to his attention.
If the unpatched cross and the untamed shrubs hadn’t done enough damage to Dr. Oscar Hurley’s mood, he approached Cathedral House and a light breeze carried with it the sounds of music and song from the auditorium. He scowled. That was another thing he didn’t like, although this couldn’t be blamed on Dennis Merribaugh. At least there was a reason for this outrage.
The Cathedral had spent five million dollars to build the auditorium, extending out of the side of the cathedral but sharing none of the stained-glass glory. Live performances, he believed, would help keep the congregation entertained and help neutralize the revenue loss.
Under ordinary circumstances, he might be delighted to hear music coming from the new building, but the new music director—one of Merribaugh’s effeminate “ex-gays” by the name of Walter Pomeroy, who had once done something or other on Broadway and had been in decline ever since—had insisted that the inaugural performance would be The Sound of Music, a show Hurley loathed with all his heart.
He’d attempted to discourage Walter Pomeroy by insisting on rewrites—since the main characters were Roman Catholic, and Catholicism was considered a cult by the Cathedral, he’d demanded that Maria and the von Trapp family become devout Protestants—but to his dismay, the music director had happily agreed, adding his own born-again, “ex-gay” flourishes to the denominational alteration. The result was, perhaps, more in keeping with the Cathedral’s teachings, but did nothing to make the musical more palatable.
Which was why he now had “The Lonely Goatherd” stuck in his head. It didn’t make the scaffolding seem the least bit less annoying.
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“The first thing you need to know,” said Leonard, pacing the kitchen and twiddling with a shirt button, “is that these people are very sincere about their beliefs. Very prim and proper. So remember to act as if you believe everything. One true God, heaven and hell, a literal interpretation of the Bible, the whole thing. And whatever you do, don’t let any obscenities slip out. Especially blasphemy.”
Constance leaned against a granite counter and nodded with boredom. This was nothing she hadn’t heard before. “Sounds like spending Easter with my family. And stop telling me not to swear. Do you think you have to do that because I’m black?”
Leonard gulped uncomfortably. “No, of course not.”
“Then stop fuckin’ saying it.”
Grant sat at the table, taking it all in. “You sure you’re up to this? Could be pretty intense.”
“Don’t insult me, Lambert. I invented this game.”
Leonard had been summoned to brief her on pretty much everything she’d need to know before she had to improvise. His admonition not to swear or blaspheme had been his first and most repeated instruction.
“So what do you think?” Grant looked at Leonard. “Have you told her everything? Is she ready?”
He shrugged. “If you’re sure she’s one of the best…”
That annoyed her. “Listen, Cousin Leonard, I’m not one of the best. I am the best.”
“She is,” Grant agreed.
Leonard swallowed again. He’d already been nervous around Grant, and Constance was just a darker female version of the graying ringleader. When the two of them were together, he felt hopelessly overwhelmed.
“In that case, I guess she’s ready.” He thought for a second before returning his attention to Constance. “First, you’ll want to find Merribaugh. Tell him…”
She swatted his words from the air as if they were pesky insects. “That I was an office manager in New York. Yeah, you’ve already told me that four or five times. I’ve been listening, and I know what I have to do. I’d know what to do if I’d never met you, so don’t be so nervous.”
“Nervous? I’m not nervous.” He paused again, then said, “And the safe…”
“Is in the closet in the finance office. Yes, you told me.”
“Oh. Uh…okay then. I guess that’s, uh…everything…”
Grant looked him over. Leonard’s lack of confidence wasn’t especially reassuring. “Let me ask you a question. Why Merribaugh? Why not Hurley? He’s the big guy there, right?”
Leonard allowed himself an indulgent scoff, as if to indicate their education was far from complete and therefore his jitters were justified. “Dr. Hurley is far too important to worry about the bookkeeping. He doesn’t deal with day-to-day business. That’s Merribaugh’s job.”
“You think maybe Merribaugh’s a softer touch than Hurley?”
Leonard shook his head. “Hurley is more dangerous, but don’t start thinking Merribaugh is a fool or can be trusted. True, Hurley makes
him look like Mother Teresa, but Merribaugh makes almost everyone else look like Mother Teresa. Understand?”
“Gotcha.”
Constance stood. “Guess I’ll go upstairs and brush up on my Bible a bit. Unless…” She turned to face Grant. “Unless, that is, you want me to mop the floor or dust.”
“Keep it up, I will.”
She said something unpleasant they pretended not to hear and walked away.
When she was gone, Leonard asked, “What was that about?”
Grant rubbed his eyes. “My housekeeper aims to please.”
Leonard leaned anxiously against the center island. “It’s not that I don’t trust your judgment, but…”
For a moment, Grant thought maybe he should be reassuring. Leonard was new to this, after all.
Until he thought again and realized Leonard was questioning his judgment.
“We’re gonna be fine,” he said. “And you’re never gonna speak to me like that again.”
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Later that evening, after Leonard left and Constance had returned to her Bible studies, Grant went down to the finished basement where Chase and Lisa were engaged in a spirited pool match while Mary Beth sat at the far end of the room thumbing through a fashion magazine.
“You,” he said, and pointed to Chase.
“Me?”
“You. Something’s been bugging me, and I just figured it out.”
Chase looked hurt. “Something about me has been bugging you?”
Grant nodded. “It’s your hair.”
That hurt more. “My hair? I’ve got great hair!”
“He does,” Lisa agreed.
“Right.” Grant studied Chase’s highlights under the light hanging over the pool table. “But not great hair for the Virginia Cathedral of Love.” Chase started to object. “This isn’t negotiable. Cut it or dye it.”
Lisa set her stick against the table and looked at Chase’s head thoughtfully. “You know, Grant might have a point. Your hair is very…metrosexual.” Which wasn’t the first word that came to mind, but she was trying to be diplomatic.
Chase wasn’t going to accept their judgment without a fight. “I paid a lot of money for this hair! You know how much those salons on Madison Avenue charge?”
“This is why you should just go to that barber on Queens Boulevard, like I do.”
“You’re just jealous,” sniffed Chase.
“I’m just making sure everything is right for the job,” said Grant. “And that hair isn’t. So should I get my clippers?”
Chase covered his head. “God no!”
Lisa gave Chase a look of sympathy and stepped away from the pool table. “There’s a drugstore just down the road. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She took another glance at his head. “Dark brown should work for you. Or maybe chestnut.”
“Just jealous,” Chase muttered as Lisa went upstairs to get her car keys.
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Grant woke, rolled to his right, and opened his eyes. And then he almost jumped out of bed until he remembered it was Chase under the dark brown head of hair.
“What the hell, Grant,” Chase muttered, his eyes still closed. “Can’t you get out of bed quietly, like a normal person?”
Grant pulled away the sheet and slapped his partner on his naked ass, gamely pretending he hadn’t been startled when he thought he was waking up next to a stranger for the first time in close to two decades. “Time for you to get up. Remember, you’re going to church this morning.”
Chase’s eyes were still closed. “It’s only Thursday. I don’t understand why we can’t wait until Sunday…”
“We’ve been through this. On Sunday the place will be packed. On Thursday, it’ll be less packed. And if you’re gonna get face time with this Merribaugh, we want less packed.”
Chase groaned and rolled away from him.
“If you’re not downstairs in five minutes,” said Grant, as he stood and started to pull on a pair of pants, “I’m sending Mary Beth up to get you.”
In the kitchen, Farraday was about to serve eggs Benedict.
“Where’s Chase?” he asked as Grant walked into the room. “He’s gonna miss breakfast.”
Grant sat at the table across from Lisa and Mary Beth. “He’ll be here.”
“I just don’t want him to miss breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day, you know.”
“He’s used to coffee and maybe a Pop-Tart. I don’t think breakfast is as important to him as it is to you.”
Farraday set breakfast in front of Lisa and Mary Beth and returned to the stove as Chase stumbled into the kitchen.
“I made breakfast for you,” said Farraday.
“Just coffee,” said Chase. “And maybe a Pop-Tart, if we have ’em.”
“Toldja,” said Grant.
Farraday ignored them both, but their plates of eggs Benedict were plunked a bit too heavily in front of them.
Grant picked up his fork and turned to Mary Beth. “Ready to hit the cathedral?”
She looked at him through heavy lids. “Fuck off, Lambert.”
“Not a lot of morning people,” he said, taking in a mouthful of Farraday’s eggs Benedict.
“And here’s another one who’s not a morning person,” said Constance as she shuffled in and took the last chair at the table. “The things I’ll do to my body for a lot of money.”
At last someone had said something they could all agree on.
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Tish Fielding wasn’t snooping, really. She just happened to be staring out the window at the house across the street when Mr. Williams’s chauffeur led three people who were neither he nor his sister-in-law out the front door and to the car: a dark-haired man, a compact woman who projected attitude even at a distance, and a black woman.
That was strange.
She made a mental note to check the HOA rules about unrelated people sharing a home. And if those guidelines didn’t meet her standards, she’d issue her own.
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There had been no question Mary Beth would ride in the front seat—she hadn’t even bothered to ask—so Chase and Constance sat in the back of the rental car as Farraday wheeled it through the winding residential streets toward the Virginia Cathedral of Love.
Chase said, “So we’re agreed we go our own way when we get to the church, right? Me and Mary Beth will pretend we don’t know Constance, and Constance will pretend she doesn’t know us.”
Mary Beth nodded. So did Constance, but she couldn’t resist tweaking Chase.
“You don’t want people to think you’re helping your maid find the Lord?” she asked.
“You’re never gonna let this drop, are you?”
“Should I? I mean, you get a two-fer with me. You can be saving a domestic worker and a Negro at the very same time. That’s very 1950s. If I know my Bible-bangers, they’ll love it.”
Chase slumped back and tried to ignore her. Fortunately it was a short ride—even without a direct route, as Farraday noted more than a few times—and soon they were deposited in front of the cathedral, immediately walking a short distance in opposite directions when they were out of the car.
It was the first time they’d seen it up close. From a distance, everything looked huge; up close, it was mammoth. They turned, looked at each other, and nodded.
It was show time.
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As they would later tell the story, things went predictably at the cathedral.
Chase and Mary Beth, posing as Charlie and Mary Beth Hudson, went off in one direction. The people they tended to encounter were parishioners, although they stumbled across an associate pastor or two. Charlie Hudson discussed his deep faith; his wife tended to stand unapproachably to the side with her arms folded across her chest.
The problem was, Mary Beth Reuss was used to getting her own way. She didn’t understand Mary Beth Hudson.
She was also, pretty much everyone they encountered would agree, opinionated. There was a place for that, but
that place wasn’t in the middle of a discussion about abortion.
“Honey,” said Chase, gently trying to pull her away before the heated words combusted. “Maybe we should save it for another day.”
“I’m not gonna let some man tell me what I can do with my body!”
Chase smiled apologetically at the associate pastor and circle of very nice, very conservative women surrounding him. “She’s been a little tired lately.”
“Bless you, Mr. and Mrs. Hudson,” said the associate pastor, who genuinely felt sorry for that poor husband. It had to be difficult to be married to a communist.
Constance fared better…
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It was a point of pride in the administrative offices of the Virginia Cathedral of Love that they had never been late on a payment. Not sixty days, not thirty days, not even fifteen days. Invoices were promptly processed and payment was made.
But since Leonard Platt had been fired, even that simple task had fallen apart. How Dr. Hurley had found out, Merribaugh didn’t know. But he had.
The bookkeeping situation was going to have to be resolved sooner rather than later. If Merribaugh hadn’t already known that, Hurley’s tongue-lashing reprioritized it.
He stood in the cavernous sanctuary, trying to gather his wits, when he heard a woman ask, “Excuse me, but are you the Rev. Mr. Merribaugh?”
“I am,” he said with a sigh, and turned to face a fortyish black woman in a modest dark blue dress with a bit of white lace at the collar.
She extended her hand. “It’s so nice to meet you. I’m Constance Brown, a new member of the Cathedral.”