Chapter 18 - A Person of Influence
Even though there was a development team meeting a little later on that same day, Oscar showed up at the office at noon the day after the funeral to see if Lydia wanted to join him for lunch. Lydia had brought her own brown bag, but after a rough morning she was ready to get out of the office for a bit. They went to a nearby food court where Oscar picked up lunch at a deli counter.
“Are you doing alright,” Oscar asked, “after yesterday and everything?”
“Yeah, thanks,” she said, “I had no idea that funeral would impact me the way it did.”
“Well, you only found out about it that morning.”
“And how are you doing with everything?” Lydia asked. “Have you talked to Evangeline lately?”
“No. Her little sister called and is trying to set up some sort of meeting, but I’m not holding out much hope. But at the same time someone, presumably her father, has suggested to the student aid department of my school that because of my lack of moral integrity, I don’t deserve either the degree I’m studying for or the scholarship that’s helping me pay for it. So now I have an appointment with the academic dean tomorrow.”
“Wow! What are you going to say?”
“I’ll just tell an abridged version of the story. I’ll also say that while I respect Reverend Taylor’s protective instincts over his daughter’s emotional well-being, my actions were in keeping with my Christian faith and did not in any way go against the code of conduct for my school.”
“You’ve practised that explanation, haven’t you?” Lydia asked.
“Can you tell?” Oscar joked. “But seriously, if I lose this scholarship, I can’t afford to finish the program.”
“So he’d try to take your scholarship away because his daughter is mad at you?”
“Yes, but to be fair he only helped me get the scholarship in the first place because his daughter liked me,” Oscar conceded.
“I guess you live by the scholarship and you die by the scholarship.”
Oscar laughed. “I thought I was the one who quoted the Bible in this relationship.”
“That’s from the Bible?” Lydia asked.
“What are you expecting to happen at the development team meeting today?”
“Well,” she began cautiously, “I’m hoping that we’ll be able to read, analyze and discuss the next chapter and make some ground on previous edits.”
“That sounds good, but what are you really expecting?”
“What do you think of Melvin and Gus?” she asked instead of answering his question.
“I don’t know,” Oscar shrugged.
“I can’t figure out if Gus thinks he’s too good for this project and Melvin is just an idiot or if they’re working together to get the whole thing cancelled.”
At first Oscar wanted to be clever and ask why it couldn’t be both but he resisted that urge and instead asked, “Do you think they have the power to interrupt the project?”
“I didn’t before,” she answered, “but since I saw Gus and Luke cozying up to Gerald at the funeral, I’m not so sure anymore.”
“Well, I don’t want to be weird about this, but I really feel like God has a plan for this book. I think it’ll all work out in the end.”
Without even looking at him, Lydia replied, “Isn’t that what you felt about Evangeline?”
“Ouch,” he said, pretending to pull a fake knife from his chest.
Lydia rolled her eyes and said, “Either way, faith doesn’t come as easily for everyone else as it does for you.”
After lunch they headed back to the office where Lydia got back to work and Oscar hid out in the otherwise empty boardroom while he waited for the meeting to start. Zack was the next member of the team to arrive and he headed straight for the boardroom too. From a distance Lydia could see him and Oscar talking, but it didn’t look like their normal friendly banter. When she approached the door a few moments later, their tone seemed normal enough but she wondered if they were hiding a certain amount of irritation toward each other.
“Still,” she heard Zack say to Oscar when she came in the room, “you shouldn’t give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing.”
Since Oscar said nothing in response, Lydia jumped in with some revisions that she wanted Zack to look at. The rest of the committee wasn’t far behind and soon the room was full of the regular crew again.
Gus and Melvin came in together, which only added to Lydia’s suspicions of a conspiracy. Melvin sat down and started pulling papers out of a file folder he had brought while Gus already had a stack of papers in his hand and he walked up to Lydia and gave them to her.
“What’s this?” she asked, wondering what sort of scheme he was up to.
“Miss Phillips, I’ve often alluded to the grammatical errors within the chapters we’ve reviewed so far. I’ve finally looked over them all again and made the revisions I had mentioned and a few others that were also necessary.”
“You didn’t need to do that,” she said appreciatively. She immediately thought that depending on how he’d done it, this would likely only complicate the revision process further, and putting this on himself also served to undermine her ability to make these same revisions, but she decided instead to focus on the amount of work he had likely done and see that as a constructive step and a demonstration of his investment in the project. “This must have taken you quite a long time to do.”
“I’m just doing my share of the work,” he said before heading back to his seat.
Lydia had been worried about the meeting would go, but it certainly started well. Sheila brought a tray of cookies that was being passed around and enjoyed. People were chatting and getting along well. Everyone had brought a copy of Zack’s latest chapter. Things were off to a good start.
After getting a few administrative details out of the way Lydia invited everyone to take turns making comments about the latest chapter.
Sheila was the first to speak up. “I really like what you have to say about official and unofficial power families within churches. The church I grew up in had them too. I know that within my own faith it is natural to see members of these families as representatives of the church and their moral failings reflect on the whole faith. I think your distinction will be an important one for a lot of people.”
“I think this may be your best chapter yet,” Oscar added. “It’s very honest. This guy represents a pivotal moment in your parents’ career, and to see what he had become must have been a painful moment for you. I think that pain comes out in your writing, and I love how you tie it in to this universal Christian problem as well.”
Lydia wanted to wait and see what other people had to say, but since nobody spoke up she offered her opinion. “Zack, I think it would have been easy for you to have focussed on the rags to riches story and milk that for what it was worth, but your willingness to rebuke Jacques and to use him as an example of the problems of the western church make your point even stronger.”
After another brief silence Larry raised his hand before speaking. “I hate to be the lone dissenting voice here, and I know that as the finance rep I am not here to offer my literary critique, but I worry about the financial impact of criticizing rich people. I can’t talk about the social dynamics within a church, but if the people with influence are also the people with money, saying that they interfere with the mission of the church will not make this a best seller in those very important circles.”
“I’m glad you brought that up,” said Melvin, “and as the marketing rep I would have to say that I agree with you. I’d also like to point out that I don’t like the tone of this chapter. I guess deconstructionism is all the rage these days, but this book is supposed to be encouraging, and even if this point were correct, we’re not offering any encouragement by saying how bad things are now.”
Gus’ opinions were no more supportive. “This time I’m not confused about what you’re trying to say,” he finally added, “bu
t I am quite confused about why you chose to make your point the way you did. You thought you could play a trick on your readers by using the term ‘power family’ derisively, and while others may have been fooled by it, not everyone will be so easily deceived. Naturally, in any community there will be some people with more influence than others, and if in a church that influence gets passed down to future generations who continue to be involved in and loyal to that church, that is a good thing, not a bad thing.”
Melvin nodded while the rest of the room was silent for a moment.
“Zack?” Lydia asked, as she did at every meeting, “what do you think about the various comments we’ve all made?”
“I appreciate all of the notes you’ve given me. I’m glad that I was able to connect with some of you who enjoyed reading it, but I would also like to try to respond to some of the criticisms. First, I would like to say that I’ve spent most of my life outside of North America and I’m largely unfamiliar with the self-help book genre, but it seems to me that if we want to help people, we need to be willing to point out the potential negative things in their lives.”
Melvin interrupted. “Let me point out an important distinction for you Zack - we’re trying to sell books, not help people.”
“Melvin!” objected Lydia.
“It’s true,” he insisted.
“I wonder if we could print some Westminster brochures with that motto on them?” asked Oscar who gestured as though he was reading from a slogan on a fake brochure in front of him. “We’re trying to sell books, not help people.”
“It sounds heartless, but if we don’t sell books, this company folds up and dies. So if some of our advice makes a small group of people feel better, but it scares off a whole big group of potential customers, we need to change our advice. We rely on a steady stream of people who need help and who think that they can get that help by spending twenty bucks on a book.”
“I guess it’s not the healthy who need a doctor, right Melvin?” Oscar asked.
“I’ll take your considerations about marketability to heart,” Zack said, “but about the other concerns, I never spelled out that there was anything wrong with people being rich or having influence in the church. I also never spoke against that wealth or influence being handed down along family lines. The greater problem is the feeling of self-righteousness that comes with it. The role of the church is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
“Thank you for the cliché,” Gus responded, “but if that’s your point, then why do you spend almost the whole time talking about his wealth and influence and spent almost no time talking about his actual flaws?”
“Let’s try to maintain a constructive and respectful tone, please Gus,” urged Lydia, “and in Zack’s defence, it seems clear to me that Jacques’ character flaws are his misuse of wealth and influence and we wouldn’t understand that if we didn’t know about his wealth and influence to begin with.”
This discussion continued, often degrading to an exchange of thinly veiled accusations and insults. Zack insinuated that Melvin and Gus weren’t spiritual enough to understand his point; Sheila voiced her suspicion that Gus was part of a church power family, and Gus and Melvin insisted that this chapter and others like it were not fit for distribution. The meeting eventually ended, but only because of time constraints, not because anything worthwhile had been accomplished. So much had been said during the meeting that nobody stayed afterwards for chitchat and they all quietly left in their various directions.
While others were frustrated and fatigued, Zack was facing the reality that this book may not happen, while Lydia, who had accepted that possibility, started to wonder if her job might be on the line as well.
From: Oscar Brandt
To: Lydia Phillips
Subject: I gotta get outta here
Evangeline’s sister called tonight. She’s been trying to get Evangeline and me to sit down and talk together for a little while. Apparently Evangeline almost agreed to meet with me, and then their dad talked her out of it. Everywhere I go too I keep bumping into her friends who either ignore me or find subtle ways to tell me I should just apologize for whatever I’ve done. I think I could use some time away from everything, but I guess that’s not really an option for me.
From the way you looked at the end of the meeting today, I guess you could use some time away too. Anyway, I just thought I’d drop you a line to say I thought you did pretty well at the meeting today. Just hang in there.
OB
From: Lydia Phillips
To: Oscar Brandt
Subject: Re: I gotta get outta here
Hey Oscar,
Can you believe this? Before the meeting, Gus gave me a stack of papers and said it was grammatical revisions. I just read through it when I got home and realized he had made major changes, rewording significant chunks, often fundamentally altering the meaning. What am I supposed to do with that? I’d really like to know what’s going on inside that guy’s head.
Also, what were you and Zack talking about before the meeting?
Tell me more about your whole getaway idea. If you can think of a place to go for the weekend, I may be persuaded to come along.
- Lydia
From: Oscar Brandt
To: Lydia Phillips
Subject: Re: I gotta get outta here
Don’t let Gus get to you; he’s from a power family. What do you expect?
And don’t worry about Zack and me. He just thinks I’ve been skipping too much church since the break-up. It’s no big deal.
If you’re serious about coming along, I think I’ve got a good place in mind for an escape. Can I just meet you in the parking lot of your office after work tomorrow and then we can head out together from there?
OB
From: Lydia Phillips
To: Oscar Brandt
Subject: Re: I gotta get outta here
This sounds good Oscar. Actually, I was being serious. I’ll see you in the parking lot tomorrow at 5pm sharp.
- Lydia