by Lisa Samson
“Well, you know what happened at Pentecost, right? The Holy Spirit descends and people speak in tongues and the world is set aflame, the gospel spreads, faith increases.”
“Sure.”
“Much like that. Only inside of you. And I felt the love of God consume me. You know what I mean?”
I shake my head. No, Father Brian. Brian. Whoever you are. I really don’t.
We eat, I ask him about his family. Six older brothers and sisters, “Rhythm method, you know,” twelve nieces and nephews, parents run a dry cleaner in Ann Arbor, angry high school sweetheart now married with two kids and uses him as an easy source of confession when he’s home, likes to watch World Cup soccer and NASCAR.
NASCAR?
He tells me to keep writing and refuses to let me help with the tab.
After the Christmas concert I scheduled Daisy for a special song every Sunday, telling my congregation, “Friends, I’m your Senior Pastor. Daisy is your Pastor of Praise.”
Pastor of Praise. What a great ring.
They didn’t balk. Something trusting mingled with Daisy’s confidence as if she said, “Just point me in the direction you want me to go and I’ll take off.”
After my intro, she stepped onto the platform and drew them in.
“Thanks, Drew. Thank you fellow Elysian Heights members. I can only pray God blesses us all.” She took hold of that microphone and something mystical happened. She truly ministered to people. Even now I don’t doubt that for a second. Daisy had a calling on her. You could see that from anywhere you stood. I don’t know if it was a personal Pentecost or just a person doing what God made them to do. Encouraging notes began to fill her box in the church mailroom. Nobody minded seeing her week after week. Attendance grew. I had been right about it all.
The board sung my praises because giving was up and people felt blessed. A part of me still felt good about that, I’d like to believe. About people being blessed, I mean.
Saying all this to a priest makes me feel a little silly. I can hear you in my head: “You protestants, always trying to reinvent the wheel.” And yet, we do have a certain freshness, an appreciation of creativity that’s undeniable. I guess it’s all in how you use it and why.
Harlan and Charmaine Hopewell pretty much held the patent for Southern gospel music in Mount Oak, so Daisy and I centered her ministry on contemporary music. Smooth, adult contemporary, classy and … smooth.
Trician grabbed me after church and asked if I agreed that Daisy just needed to lose a few pounds and become a little more sculpted-looking to fit the music itself. A willow tree. “You know as well as I do, Drew, that looks matter in the long run. If we can get her a recording contract, think about what it’ll do for the ministry. You’ll have more people than you know what to do with.”
Yes, yes. Man looks on the outward appearance and God looks on the heart. I’d read that verse. But God wasn’t just zapping money into our treasury was He? We had to work for it. And when we decided to break ground on the activities center and school building, my work was cut out for me. Father, I don’t know if you can understand that kind of pressure.
I’d heard of plenty of churches in Nashville that grew exponentially because of the famous singers and such that attended. People are attracted to fame. Trician may have been a little overconfident, but she wasn’t completely off the mark.
“See what you can do, Trician. I’m sure Daisy’ll want to succeed.”
The people adored her, loved her endearing smile, invited her to come along and sing on small group retreats. Some women’s groups even asked her to speak; though, to my way of thinking at the time, Daisy had nothing important to say. She’d never been to seminary or even Bible college.
She lost weight slowly but steadily, and Trician was trying to make some Nashville “ins,” but that was slow going as anybody can imagine. Charmaine made a few introductions but nothing was coming easily on that front. Daisy was new, untried, no sales numbers, no large platform from which to sell a lot of albums. They were after the sure thing—the bottom line being the god of their bank accounts. It had to be if the people they were giving contracts to instead of Daisy was any indication. Daisy could sing them all down the road and back without breaking a sweat.
I played a good part on The Port of Peace Hour as well. Charmaine and I bantered easily and the guests had a good time. It was fun.
The church continued to grow, bringing in a hundred new members a month. And the more they came, the more room we needed. The more space we had, the more members we needed to support it all. The vicious cycle became a cyclone. I could blame the board for their pressure, but at the end of the day I loved it.
A few months ago my father even noticed.
“I just saw your church listed as one of the top one hundred in America by Time magazine. Interesting. Good job, Son.”
Talk about an eye opener.
Elysian Heights is now at twelve thousand members.
I reach for my smokes. Twelve thousand members. Twelve thousand people I left behind due to a busted water pipe in my apartment building. At least it wasn’t a fire. That would have been overkill on God’s part in the metaphor department.
I realized the extent of my popularity on The Port of Peace Hour the Thursday before Easter. Harlan Hopewell called me on my cell phone as I worked out at the gym near the mall.
“Drew, Charmaine and I got the greatest idea.” He paused.
“Well, okay, Charmaine got the greatest idea, and we want to tell you about it in person. Can you come on over to the house this afternoon?
Charmaine’s making an icebox cake. She makes the best icebox cake you’ve ever tasted. And she got a pound of hazelnut coffee from Java Jane’s too.”
Elysian Heights basically shut down from the Wednesday before Easter until Easter Sunday, upon which our celebration blew the doors off of Mount Oak. Yes, I can hear you sigh, Father Brian. Well, Good Friday is such a downer, isn’t it?
For the previous two years, our sunrise service was the most well-attended service in the entire state.
“I can make it, sure, Harlan. Right now?”
“That would be great. Charmaine!” he called, right into the receiver. I held it away from my ear. “He can come right now! Okay, good, Drew.”
He clicked off.
The phone rang two seconds later. “Didn’t mean to cut you off. I mistakenly hit a wrong button with my chin. I hate these cordless phones.”
“No problem.”
That was Harlan for you.
“Well, good. See you soon then, Drew.”
I showered, changed, and hurried over in my Civic.
Pulling onto their blacktop driveway, I had to wonder about the Hopewells. Charmaine made a lot of money from her gospel music career. She toured in a big silver bus every summer, headlined at Gospelganza each July in Greenville, and was always winning Dove awards. Granted, all the money that didn’t go to pay for the show’s expenses went to counseling ministries and homes for addicts and unwed mothers and such, but certainly Harlan drew a good salary from a congregation that size. It was the largest church in Mount Oak at that time, and I knew how well Elysian Heights paid me.
Yeah, no vow of poverty for us.
And yet, their house looked like the digs of a small branch bank loan officer, or the manager of a radio station, typical middle-middle class. Nothing fancy but not a hovel either—the red brick rancher sat on a dead-end street amid other ranchers alarmingly like it. New landscaping had been planted, judging by the tender shrubs still resting arm’s length from one another. But other than fresh paint around the window frames and on the green door, maybe on the shutters, the house didn’t seem to have been added to since it was built.
I remember wondering at the time how they could be content there like that. They had to have been raking in the donations.
But they’d been caught up in those televangelist scandals back in the eighties, not so much for excess but for Harlan’s antipsychology messa
ge. They were playing it safe and who could blame them? They should have been more careful back then. Covered their backsides more thoroughly.
Seeing their home still made me feel good about my small apartment over Java Jane’s. The Hopewells had the right idea if they were as committed as I was to traveling light.
“Could it be they were just content?” you might ask. Perhaps yes, but that thought wouldn’t have crossed my mind that day.
Harlan greeted me at the door and ushered me through the living room, furnished with antiques and a couch with doilies, and into a kitchen decorated in shades of red and yellow. Two older women stood side-by-side at the kitchen counter, quite possibly explaining the antiques. Charmaine didn’t seem like an antiques kind of lady, more of a Wal-Mart gal.
I was horrible. I am horrible. I realize this, all my posturing and judging. But believe me, it’s pretty uncomfortable for a jackass like me to admit I had feet of clay clear up to my thighs. A man people looked up to, asking him to show them the way to God.
Show them the way to God? As if I knew!
Oh sure, I knew about salvation and Jesus’s death on the cross, but knowing God, walking in the cool of the evening in the garden with Him? I couldn’t have gotten them closer to their Creator any more than I could have set their feet on Saturn.
I was liar and a phony. Lying about who God is and speaking of Wal-Mart. That’s what I was. A sprawling old big-box store stealing customers from the mom-and-pop shops. God have mercy. We actually ran our church on a “business model,” as if efficiency and the bottom line would usher in the Kingdom of God.
The parish system is looking better and better.
Of course the Hopewells welcomed me into their home like I was a long lost relative, their favorite nephew come home from a three-year stint around the world.
“Grandma Min, this here is Drew Parrish. Drew, Minerva Whitehead.”
“Hello, Drew. Just call me Min.” Her smile stretched to its limits beneath light blue eyes and white hair shorn close to her head.
“And this is her daughter, Charmaine’s mother, Isla Whitehead.”
Isla didn’t say anything. She turned her head, lovely eyes staring in blankness. Overweight, she must have once been a beautiful woman. It was easy to see.
Harlan offered no explanation just then.
Grandma Min tucked her arm through her daughter’s. “We’ll just take a little walk out by the daffodils, Isla.”
I looked out the sliding glass doors visible from the kitchen. Yellow blooms popped up in all the wrong places.
Harlan explained. “When we moved here, the previous owner had planted bulbs all over the yard. It’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen. But Charmaine won’t get rid of them. Her mother, Isla, well, you’ve got to have noticed she’s not quite all there. Schizophrenia.
She’s catatonic without her meds. But heaven help us, she loves the flowers.”
“You have a schizophrenic living with you?”
This was news to me.
“Oh sure. On her meds she’s a lamb. Doesn’t say much, but Min takes good care of her.”
“Both of them live here?”
“Yep. Got a regular intergenerational something going around here. Four generations of Whiteheads. Well, if you count our own children as Whiteheads, which they half are. Although our oldest, Grace, is adopted. She’s away at college. Charmaine!” he hollered.
“Be right there!” Her voice came from one of the bedrooms down the hallway. “Just mash the button on the coffeemaker, if you please, Harlan.”
“All right, shug!”
He put some reading glasses on his nose and searched for the button. Finding it, he pressed it down. “Have a seat at the table, Son.
We’re glad you could come and hated putting you out, but we wanted to strike while the iron was hot, as they say.”
Charmaine bustled into the room, a tomato pincushion fastened to her wrist. “I’ve just got to finish the kids’ Easter outfits. I’m so behind.
Make the news quick, Harlan, so I can get back to my machine.”
“You make your kids clothes?” I asked.
“Mine too.”
“She’s a whiz on that machine, Drew. I tell you what.”
“I would never have guessed.”
Charmaine laughed. “I like to sew, Drew. It relaxes me. Do you have a hobby?”
Hmm. “Does reading church growth books count?”
Harlan slapped his hand on the table. “It does to me.”
“Oh, Harlan.” Charmaine slid into the seat opposite me. “Well, get on. I want to see the look on his face.”
“All right, then. Here it is. You’ve become so popular on The Port of Peace Hour, I think we need to do something about it.”
I nodded my head. “And that would be?”
“A spin-off!” Charmaine sort of hopped in her seat.
“A spin-off?”
“Your own show!” Charmaine practically shouted it.
“From my church?”
“Well, not yet.” Harlan scratched his cheek. “We don’t have the financing to get that kind of operation going. We were thinking something more intimate, like a talk show.”
“A talk show?” I was stunned. Charmaine filled in the silence.
“Oh, not the Phil Donahue type, but the Johnny Carson type—without the audience.” Charmaine stood up and crossed to the cupboard. “Harlan wanted the Phil, but I reminded him about the cost of a studio audience, not to mention a studio.” She laughed, pulling down three mugs as the coffeemaker gargled and spat the last of the water in its pipes.
“Where would we tape it?”
“We’ll take the Sunday school room closest to the sanctuary and make a set.”
“It sounds like it could work,” I said.
“Now, it’ll be up to you to find guests, incorporate regular features,” Harlan said. “We’d like this to not just be about spiritual matters but current events, human interest, subjects across-the-board.”
“How about Daisy?” Charmaine lifted the coffeepot. “Wouldn’t it be great to have her sing each week?”
“Oh, shug, that’s a fine idea! I tell you, Drew, the woman’s a whiz.”
“Sounds good to me.”
And I began to dream, picturing myself sitting on the couch with famous people. Oh, my father would be a great resource. We’d have Christian ministry leaders due to his connections, politicians too.
Charmaine could help us with the celebrities. I’d be more popular than The Port of Peace Hour—you could bank on that. Harlan was a good preacher, but that kind of show was on its last legs.
I called my father on the way home and told him the news.
“Your own show from right there in little Mount Oak,” he said.
“It’ll go all across the country.”
“On cable I presume?”
That day I drove fifteen miles from town to a small gas station and bought a pack of Marlboro Lights. I pressed the burning tip of the cigarette into my flesh right there in the car. And I felt such release. I’d been cutting myself for years before that. Not much. Just every once in a while to relieve the pressure. I was sixteen when it started. The same year my father told me my mother committed suicide. A friend in school did it and said it helped him cope. He was right.
Another sin, surely. But then again, Father, your people mortified the flesh. Is that what I’m doing now?
I haven’t burned myself for three days. The first notebook is full and I’ve given it to Father Brian. This one’s cover sports an extreme, bulbous close-up of a Jack Russell terrier. I write as Hermy sits at the end of the bed reading Animal Farm, with 1984 lying next to him.
The phone rings.
“Drew Parrish?”
“Yes.”
“The truth will set you free. Thus saith the Lord.”
“Who are you?”
“I can’t say.”
“Why?”
“Because … I love you, Drew.”
And she hangs up after gulping down a sob.
My face burns as realization fills me, bringing with it more questions than I knew could be asked.
“Who was it?” Hermy asks.
“It was my mother.”
“Isn’t she … ?” He draws an index finger across his neck.
“I guess not.” My veins catch fire.
“Crazy.”
“Tell me about it. Hey, I gotta go.” I grab my beach chair and head out to the sand. I smoke every last cigarette in a brand new pack, a new theory erupting with each one, none making any sense whatsoever.
I place a phone call to my father before he leaves for work the next day. “So where’s Mom these days?”
He huffs his condescending laugh, but I hear the fear around the edges. “Have you gone a little crazy, son? You know as well as I do that your mother is dead.”
As well-versed as he is in political maneuverings, I hear all the earmarks of keeping something under wraps: accuse the accuser, and employ the “everybody knows that” defense.
“Then dead people make phone calls.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific.”
I tell him about the series of calls.
“Oh, Drew. It’s just some crazy. You’re on the air now. It could have been anybody.”
So he hasn’t noticed they’ve only been showing reruns since I disappeared.
“It was her voice.”
“You were twelve when she died. How can you be so sure? Look, I’ll meet you in Chapel Hill. I’ll take you to her grave.”
“I know where her grave is, Dad!” Anger elevates my voice. “I went there every day for three years.”
“Don’t raise your voice. I brought you up to be more self-controlled.”
“Okay. Right.”
I hang up the phone remembering how it went down. I pick up the phone again.
Father Brian answers on the first ring.
“Can I come over? There’s been a bit of a monkey wrench in my life.”
“I’ll meet you at the church in an hour.”
True to his promise, he is waiting in his office, his dark hair an unruly mess. “I just made some coffee. I was up all night. Couldn’t sleep.”
“Thanks.”