by Lisa Samson
“Sometimes it all feels a little overwhelming.”
“I know what you mean.”
He points to a small sofa across from his desk. “Have a seat. And feel free to just jump right in with whatever’s bothering you.”
Okay. “It’s about my mother. She died after she created one of the biggest scandals to ever hit presidential electoral politics.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. What was she like, Drew?”
“Nobody looked more polished and classy, more beautiful than Monica Parrish.”
“Much prettier than Daisy, I assume.”
So he read the notebook already. “Much. My mother was classically beautiful and very sophisticated. Daisy was more Star Search, if you know what I mean.”
“Got it.”
“That night she embarrassed my father for the last time. Mom looked like a Greek goddess in a white dress, and she moved with the grace of a ballerina.”
“I pretty much remember my mother stirring soup or running us around but I can’t remember what she wore. But I shouldn’t be inserting myself into this conversation. I’m sorry.”
“No, Brian. This is friend-to-friend anyway, right?”
“True. Do you have a picture of her?”
I pull out my wallet. “I’ve been carrying this around since I was ten and I got my first wallet.”
I slip the picture from the clear plastic sleeve and hand it over.
Brian takes it, examines it, and nods. “Very beautiful. Not too many women could compare to her.”
“But she was kind too. I didn’t mention that.”
“No. You didn’t.”
So I tell him the tale about the party, a schmoozing who’s-who in DC. The primaries were over and Richard Marten, the party’s candidate, was throwing the party to say thank you in a most posh manner. I watched my mother apply the final touches of makeup and finally the fur wrap my father gave her for their tenth anniversary. She kissed my cheek, walked to the car where my dad was already waiting, neither of us knowing the course of our lives would change that night. I’m sure, if she could have looked into the future, she would have stayed home. We would have played Scrabble and watched an old movie, and we would probably have continued to do so for years.
Of course I heard all about what happened because of the argument that ensued that night after they returned. My father parked the car and hurried up the steps to our small townhouse in Alexandria. He never stomped, but his anger still somehow made it into his footfalls.
Mom was about to head upstairs.
“Why did you say that to Richard, Monica?”
“It was true.” She walked up the steps.
“How could you know that?” He followed at her heels, into the bedroom.
“I just did.”
“I’m tired of your prophesying or whatever it is you call it.”
“He’s cheating on his wife with two other women, Charles.”
“He’s the presidential candidate.”
“So much the more important then.”
“Didn’t you see Bill Morris standing there?”
“No.”
Bill who? I wondered.
I found out later. Bill was a journalist for the Washington Post.
Mother went right up to Richard Marten upon hearing the voice of the Spirit (as she called it) and confronted him about his sin within earshot of a reporter.
“It’s going to take a fortune to keep this hush-hush,” my father said.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, Monica. You’re not.”
“You’re right. I’m not. Lying is a sin. Forgive me.”
I heard her clink her jewelry down on her dresser.
I sit back into the couch cushions.
“I can see where she would have aggravated your dad,” Father Brian says. “Prophets are never exactly appreciated in their hometown.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What happened after that?”
“Two weeks later my father told me she was dead.”
“Suicide, you said.”
“That’s what I was told.”
“You have reason to doubt that?”
“She called me on the phone where I’m staying.”
“Are you sure?” He leans forward.
“Positive. You don’t forget your mother’s voice. I don’t care how long it’s been.”
“No. My goodness. This is strange, Drew.”
“The question is, why would she walk away from me willingly until now? What would make her give me up so easily?”
“Maybe you need to go see your father, Drew.”
“Yeah. It’s the last thing I want to do, though.”
“Then maybe it’s why you should. I remember when Richard Marten stepped down. My mom followed politics closely. Of course none of us really knew the unseen story.”
“All because of my mother. Prophets can be such a pain, can’t they, Brian?”
“It’s their job.”
“I’d better go, then. I’ll leave for DC tomorrow.”
“Keep me posted.”
“Pray for me.”
“I will. That’s my job. Of course you know how that goes.”
“Not really.” I was too busy to do much praying.
So I shave my head again and Hermy and I jump in my car and head toward DC, a two-and-a-half hour ride from Ocean City. I tell him about my father as we sit in a truck stop off of Route 50.
“You’re gonna confront your old man? That’s cold.”
“Why? She’s my mother.”
“But shoot, it sounds like there’s a lot of cover up and craziness. I mean, you sure you want to get involved with all of that? Politics is nasty business. The true insiders eat preachers for lunch after they’ve used them up.”
Hermy’s right. I’m glad I didn’t fall completely into politics like some of those guys. It must have been God’s mercy in knowing I didn’t need all that on my account as well. Who knows who I would have used to climb that ladder?
I pay for the meal, just a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches and iced teas, and we slip back onto the highway.
“The Lord is calling you,” my mother had said.
Those words keep ringing in my head like that nagging church bell at five o’clock in the morning. But if she’s right, what kind of a calling could she mean? Then again, Dad may be right. She may be crazy. Or maybe it really wasn’t her.
No. I’m right about this. I’ve come to doubt almost everything else about my life, but this one thing I know for sure.
“So you really think that’s her? I mean what if you’re wrong?” Hermy asks an hour later at a rest stop on Kent Island—too many iced teas on both our parts back at the truck stop.
“I’m not wrong. And I’ve got to get the truth from my father.” I turn on the tap to wash my hands.
He slides some coins into the soda machine in the lobby. “Do you trust anything the man says?”
“No. I still have to try. It’s my mother we’re talking about.”
Hermy’s probably thinking how sad that is, but he doesn’t say so.
I go for a pack of gum. “It didn’t matter what I thought or said when I was growing up. It was either not quite good enough or completely wrong. Why I kept trying I don’t know.”
“Kids are crazy like that, Drew.”
But heading up to DC with Hermy feels right, like maybe this time a change is coming and I’ll stick with it. See, I’ve stood on my feet before, challenging my father’s ways, his sly barbs, his chilly, wordless dressing downs. Somehow I always backed down, ended up apologizing. This time it’s not going to happen.
“What’s he going to think of you, Drew? I mean, look at you.”
“I’m not seeking his approval anymore. Just the truth.”
Hermy heads back outside. “Hopefully the truth will set you free.”
I follow him. “That seems like a little too much to ask.”
Just shy of the car, Hermy starts flirting with
a couple of college girls.
I get in the vehicle, pull out my Jack Russell notebook and settle into my seat.
After the big announcement from the Hopewells, I started jotting down plans. The guest list would need to be as first-rate as we could make it. Daisy would also be a huge part of the draw once people heard her voice for the first time.
But I needed help and I knew who would give it to me. Who would work her fingers to nubs to see her daughter succeed?
I met Trician for lunch at Josef’s, our only gourmet restaurant.
We ordered no wine—I was on the clock. Trician dutifully pushed aside the bleu cheese on her salad. “So. The show.”
“Yes. Informal and talkative, friendly and laid back. But I believe much of what will separate us is Daisy’s voice and her natural way with the audience.”
“She’s not very photogenic, Drew.”
“I’m surprised you’d say that. She’s no beauty, but I find her face extremely accessible and friendly.”
“It’s why we’ve always chosen live venues for Daisy. Pageants, musical theater, and now what she’s doing at church. It all fits together with her ability to grab people. She’s never been great on camera—but I guess it’s worth trying, isn’t it?”
“Of course.” I wiped my mouth and set my napkin back in my lap.
“What’s so bad about her?”
Trician leaned forward, pressing her breasts atop the table, just behind her plate.
Her gesture annoyed me.
“Her nose. She had it fixed when she was seventeen, just before the state Junior Miss pageant. But it’s not quite right. It was rather large beforehand. The surgeon said it might take two surgeries. But she’s done fine enough without the second one. We could make another investment in her career, I guess.”
I smiled that smile.
She continued. “This show could go so far. It could give her the necessary platform for a recording contract, and her close proximity to Charmaine Hopewell will be such a boon. We’d need some help with the surgery, of course. We can’t afford anything like that.”
“Are you sure plastic surgery is necessary, Trician?”
“It’s one of the reasons I’m having a hard time in Nashville with her, Drew. They hear the demo and love her, but the headshot always stops them.”
She was using me. But I’d retain the upper hand.
“Well, I don’t know. It’s a lot of money to throw around.”
Trician grabbed my hand. “Drew, I need to explain something. I come from nothing. My family was trash, the laziest, meanest, worst kind of trash. I’m doing all I can to break that. Daisy deserves better.”
Oh brother. What an amateur manipulator. Charles Parrish would have eaten her cry for pity in a midmorning coffee break.
Never, never show your weakness.
Never.
What’s next? Tears?
She took out a hankie. “Daisy and I are just going to have to work a little harder, climb more obstacles than those born to privilege. You’ll never find a better sidekick. She ministers. You know it. You’d be a fool to throw that away.”
“I’ll help you with it, then.” Why, oh why, did the Daisy package include Trician?
“You won’t regret it.”
“There’s something else I’ll need from you, Trician. I’ll need you to help me schedule guests. Can you do that? Pursue the more sought-after people?”
“I’m like a bulldog when I want something.”
Aha.
“Let me break the news to Daisy,” I said, and she agreed.
I don’t know why, but as we drive down the streets of DC toward Foggy Bottom where my father lives, I feel the need to tell Hermy I used to be a minister.
“Just can’t picture it, man. Sorry. Were you at one of those big Death Star churches?”
I almost crash the car. “Death Star?”
“Sure. You see those massive things. Big windows. Big gym buildings, glass lobbies, and all. Looks like you expect to see Darth Vader walking around in there giving orders, wreaking havoc on the galaxy. Why did churches stop looking like churches anyway?”
“It’s less expensive to build simpler buildings.”
“I guess there’s that, although—well, I dunno. Whatever. Were you at a Death Star?”
“Yeah.”
“You always at a big church?”
“Pretty much,” I tell him. “I started out as a youth pastor at a megachurch my father had connections to in Dallas. Loved the kids, but got a little scared they’d hold me back from my goals, not to mention I got into a little trouble with one of the kids’ moms. Divorced from her husband for several years, lonely, and ripe for the picking. She came after me and I told her no thanks.”
“You don’t like sex?” Hermy asks.
“It wasn’t that, Hermy, sheesh. Can’t a guy have morals every once in a while? She was persistent and I’ll be honest, we made out a few times, got pretty hot and heavy, but I always cut it off just before we had sex.”
“Aw man. You have no idea what you’re missing. You ever try it?”
“We were talking about how I became a pastor.”
“Oh yeah, right.”
“So I rebuffed her for good one night when she started pressur-ing me to bring us public. I said no. She got mad and said she’d tell the board I’d made ‘untoward passes’ at her—”
“She said that? ‘Untoward passes’?”
“Yeah. Direct quote. So unless I resigned, she’d lie to the board. I was getting tired of it there anyway. The pastor wasn’t going anywhere, the people loved him as well they should have, and I’d learned a lot. I didn’t want to call in any favors from my father. I applied for a position at Elysian and moved up from there.”
“You know that woman could’ve been a little more original. Plagiarizing Genesis. That’s lame.”
“Anyway, it put me on my guard. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.”
I pull up in front of my father’s brick townhouse.
Hermy whistles. “Nice.”
“He got this from, well, you’ve heard of riverboat gambling, haven’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Do the math.”
Hermy whistles, louder and longer this time. “So he gets it any way he can.”
“Preachers on the one hand, casinos on the other. Don’t even try to figure that out.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“No kidding. Let’s get a room. I can’t do this yet.”
“No prob.”
I drove Daisy out to Lake Coventry, to the Cunninghams’ pier. The Cunninghams owned a vacation rental home out there and they let me use it when I needed to get away to write my sermon in the quiet. When I told her about the show, to be called Faith Street, and asked her to be the permanent musical guest as well as a cohost, you know, be the interviewer on “sensitive women’s issues,” she wound her arms around my neck and squealed. Her breasts flattened against my chest and I couldn’t gauge whether she was being forward or oblivious. I chose oblivious because it suited me. But she felt good against me. I couldn’t deny that.
I pulled myself away and we walked around the lake, laying down big, big plans.
EIGHT
VALENTINE: 2008–2009
I look up from my work. During the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, I made thirty bracelets, ten necklaces, and twenty pairs of earrings. I hear fireworks popping somewhere across town.
“New Year’s Eve depresses me more than any other holiday,” I say to Lella who’s lying on my bed. We just finished watching An Affair to Remember.
“I surely know what you mean. Thanksgiving and Christmas we can somewhat recreate that family feeling with the group here at Blaze’s. But New Year’s Eve is for people who can dance and go out in public.”
“And next year is just going to be the same as last anyway.”
“Oh, but surely not! We’ll save up more money and look at more house plans. And I wa
s thinking, Valentine, maybe we could travel a little bit, just you and I, next fall after the season closes down and pick out a spot we’d like to live. Maybe even start paying on a lot somewhere.”
“Great idea. I can start researching on that now.”
She sighs. “Valentine, long ago you surely had dreams other than settling down with a legless-armless woman. Before you were burned?”
“A century ago I wanted the typical life. A good man who loved me for me. Actually, I was quite pretty pre-Drano, Lell. I wanted kids to love and care for, to help with their homework, and bake cookies for school parties. I wanted to just be there for them.”
“I’m truly sorry your mother wasn’t like mine.”
“My mother had a lot of issues. Why did your parents put you on display, Lell?”
“They were poor, uneducated, and hopeless.”
“But surely—”
“No, Valentine. There was no way out for them but me. Please trust me on this.”
“Sorry.”
She softens. “As am I. Some things are too painful to talk about.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” I reach for the Martinelli’s and pour us each a cup. “Did you ever have a dollhouse, Lell? I always wanted one.”
She nods, comets of delight speeding across the surface of her eyes. “Mother would bring it down off the shelf of our trailer and set it in front of me. She’d place everything just so, exactly as I’d ask her to. After we’d arranged the house she’d tell me the most delightful stories of the imaginary inhabitants.”
“My camper’s kind of like a dollhouse you live in.”
“It surely is.”
“I’m ready to get back on the road, I think.”
“You always say that on New Year’s Eve, but you never mean it on New Year’s Day.”
Charlie Parker’s version of “Embraceable You,” live at Carnegie Hall in 1949, mellows me with its sugar-crystal trumpet as the clock continues to tick toward a new year. Only four more hours left until I can kiss this one good-bye. “This rendition is a little cheesy.”
“Sometimes we all need a bit of cheese, Valentine.”
A light tapping rattles the door. “Valentine?”
“It’s Augustine,” Lella whispers, eyes shooting off those comets again.
Oh, Lella! You like him?
“Come on in!” I adjust Lella’s collar just so and grab my scarf.