A titter from the congregation.
“Oh, come now? Is that the best you can do? I give you Shakespeare and a joke, and what I get is these doomy, gloomy faces. And y’all been coming to see me all week with these same doomy, gloomy faces. Telling me about your troubles. How you can’t pay this, and you can’t buy that, and you don’t know how you’re gonna make ends meet. Pastor Paul, you say, I just don’t know how we’re gonna make it. I ain’t been on a vacation in Lord knows how long! And hubby’s La-Z-Boy’s got holes in it! And little Billy wants some of those Michael Jordan sneakers and all we can get him is the Wal-Mart kind! And those mean little kiddies at school, how they’ll laugh at him. It ain’t fair, Pastor. It ain’t right. It ain’t even Christian.” The pastor shook his head and bulged out his eyes. “I said, it ain’t even Christian!”
Big laugh.
“Now, that’s more like it. But, some of you come to me with more serious problems. Lost jobs. Missed mortgage payments. Credit card debt. ‘Pastor,’ you say, ‘if I can just get out of this hole I’m in, if I can just find the money to dig me out of this turrrrrible deep hole.’ And what I think to myself is, money ain’t gonna save you, Brother, but I know someone who can, and He’s been there all along.
“It’s time for a brand-new bookkeeping. It’s time for a brand-new mathematics. A spiritual mathematics. The world tells you that all these secular debts matter, but my whole reason for being put here on this earth is to tell you that they do not. The only debts that matter are spiritual debts. And by spiritual debts, I mean what you owe to Him who died so that you might live ...”
In the pew, Roger took George’s hand. “Amen,” he whispered.
He looked at Patsy, so sweet and pretty with her white blonde hair pulled back in a blue gingham headband. Last Friday night, he had confronted her about the black boyfriend, and Patsy had denied it. She had admitted running into Carolyn at the pool but claimed that Carolyn must have seen her “swimming near a black guy and not with a black guy.” George hadn’t heard anything about Patsy having a black boyfriend either, and as Roger had never known Patsy to lie, he decided to let the matter drop. “I don’t see what the big deal would be if I did have a black boyfriend,” Patsy had said. Roger told her that she missed the point. “And what is the point?” Patsy wanted to know. The point was that Patsy was supposed to introduce all her boyfriends to her parents. And the second point was that Patsy was supposed to date people from the church. “So, it would be fine if I dated a black guy as long as he were Adventist?” she asked. Roger told her she was parsing his words too carefully and cursed Carolyn for having bad eyesight and for sticking her oar where it didn’t belong in the first place.
He looked past Patsy to Helen: Helen’s eyes were closed and she was nodding rather fiercely in time to the pastor’s words. “Amen,” she said.
On his way out of church, Roger was stopped by Pastor Paul. The pastor shook Roger’s hand, and Roger congratulated him on a stirring sermon. “Would you be able to stop by Wednesday afternoon around five?” Pastor Paul asked. “I need your help.”
“Nothing serious, I hope?”
“Oh no, nothing like that”—the pastor laughed—“just some regular old church business”—then stopped laughing—“Wednesday.”
“I have class on Wednesday,” Roger said.
“How about Friday, then?”
Roger arrived at the church fifteen minutes early and the pastor’s secretary directed him to a rickety wicker loveseat, which struck Roger as embarrassingly feminine. Its cushion was stingy with a thin, useless layer of floral-print-covered cotton batting, and the frame wheezed every time Roger made even the slightest move. The sofa made him feel like he was in trouble, and he wondered if he was.
For instance ... what if George had somehow figured out that he’d been sleeping with Carolyn Murray? And instead of confronting Roger directly, what if George had told Pastor Paul, and now Pastor Paul was planning to have a “talk” with Roger about his conduct? Even the thought of it was completely humiliating.
Pastor Paul came out of his office. “It’s good to see you, Roger. Come in, come in.” Roger rose and the chair gasped, as if it were relieved to be rid of his burden.
“That was quite the sermon you gave last Saturday,” Roger said.
“I’m glad you liked it,” Pastor Paul replied. “Cup of herbal tea?” Roger declined but Pastor Paul placed a teacup on the desk in front of him anyway “Have one,” he said, pouring hot water over the bag. “The sermon. Well, I don’t have to tell you it was from the heart. This time of year—tax season, you know?—people spend a lot of time thinking about finances and not too much time thinking about God. I like to do what I can to remind people that the big guy’s still around.
“It’s funny you should bring up the sermon. Because, well, one of the people I was especially speaking to was you.”
“Me?”
“In a way, yes. There’s a problem with your family’s tithe, Roger.”
Pastor Paul took a spreadsheet from his top desk drawer. The title was “Pomeroy Tithings, 1998–1999,” and it was a record of his family’s earnings and 10 percent payments to the church. “Neither you nor your wife is currently employed by the church, which means that your family is responsible for sending in the ten percent payments at the end of each month. As you can see, the last payment we received from your family was in August 1998. So, that would be eight months ago.”
Roger quickly glanced at the spreadsheet and ascertained a long row of zeroes. He pushed the document back across the table. “I wouldn’t really know about any of this, Pastor. George takes care of all the household finances. The person you should really be speaking to is her.”
Pastor Paul nodded. “We tried that, Roger. We’ve been leaving messages for her for the last six months. Several times after church, I personally appealed to her to come see me. She hasn’t, which is why I’m forced to bring this matter to your attention, Roger.”
Roger cleared his throat. He tried to speak but found that he could not.
“Have some tea, Roger.”
Roger drank, but his throat didn’t feel any less desiccated. “I’ve been so busy trying to finish school ... I know money’s been ... somewhat tight ... George would never ... but I’m sure it’s just some kind of mistake ... I can fix it ...”
“When you don’t pay your tithe, you’re robbing God.” Pastor Paul took Roger’s hands in his.
“I know,” Roger said. This was all so humiliating. It was actually worse than being confronted about the affair.
“I just thought you’d want to get all of this straightened out before Helen’s wedding.”
* * *
AFTER MEETING WITH the pastor, Roger drove back across town for his afternoon meeting with Carolyn.
En route, he calculated the amount he’d spent on gas driving to and from the school and whether his total driving expenses (gas plus car insurance) were more or less than he’d made as Carolyn’s teaching assistant.
This office should be mine.
“Roger,” she said. “How are you?” She offered him her hand. The gesture struck Roger as curiously formal considering what their relations had been like for the last two months.
Roger shook her hand. “What’s this?” he asked.
Carolyn laughed a bit too loudly, a bit too long. “Sorry. The thing is, Rog, I wanted to talk to you as a colleague today and not as that other thing. Have a seat,” she said.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, um, that way, too.”
“Please,” she said. “What’s on your mind?”
“Well, I could use a loan,” he said. He looked at Carolyn to see how this request was being received. Her face revealed nothing. “Or a raise. It could really be either one.” And then Roger explained how he had had to take a pay cut to come work for Carolyn and how his daughter was getting married and how consequently his family had fallen behind on some of their household expenses, like, for in
stance, paying their tithe.
“Tithe?”
“I pay ten percent of all my earnings to the church.”
“Oh, right, that kind of tithe. That’s”—she reminded herself that she could not afford to sound condescending—“I didn’t know people still did that. The church is like your agent.”
“Um ...”
“That was a joke,” she said. “Well, the thing is, Rog, I’ve got some news, too.” She told him about her plan to take a sabbatical next year.
“Where does that put our book?” he asked.
“On hold for a bit, I imagine,” she said. “I was thinking you could take advantage of my absence to finish your dissertation and then we’d reapproach the idea of our book when I got back.”
“Are you saying you don’t want to work on the book anymore?”
“No. I’m just saying I need a break. That’s all. I’ve got my own book to promote next year. My daughter’s graduating from college. You know, I’m going to be very busy.”
Roger felt that his head could very possibly explode.
“Actually, Rog, you know what you should do? You should write the book without me. You can have all the research we’ve done. Just be sure to dedicate it to me, right?”
“Carolyn.” Roger cleared his throat. He stood up and leaned over the professor’s desk. “Carolyn, I can’t stress to you enough how much I need this book to happen. How much I was counting on this book happening. The book, it was my redemption, it was my—”
“Calm down, Roger. It was just a thought.”
“Carolyn. Carolyn.” Roger hoped he wasn’t crying. “I’m in trouble. I’m in deep trouble. I need help.”
“Money, you mean.” Carolyn’s voice was even and cool.
“Help! I mean, help. If I could just get a little help ...” Roger dropped to one knee, and for one awful moment, Carolyn worried that he was about to propose. Her first husband had not proposed in this manner. The year had been 1971, and she and Clarence had been on a bus on the way back from a protest rally. “Sister,” he’d said, “I’ve been thinking we should cohabitate.”
“I would never live with someone I wasn’t married to,” Carolyn had replied, though strictly speaking, this hadn’t been true.
He’d scratched his scalp and a few dandruff flakes floated down. Like snow, she had thought. (She had really been ridiculously in love with the man.) “Hadn’t taken you for a square,” he had said.
“Well, I’m not,” she’d said. “Except in some things.”
A month later, they had been married at city hall. They moved in together that same day.
“Carolyn,” Roger said.
While she’d been reminiscing, her soon-to-be ex-lover had wrapped his hands around her calf.
“Please, Roger. I need my leg now.” Carolyn pulled her leg out from his hand and walked to the bookshelf where her purse lay. She took out her wallet. “I want to help you with this tithe business. You made five thousand dollars last semester, which means you’d owe five hundred dollars to the church, right? I’ll write you a check for seven hundred and fifty dollars, OK? I hope this helps.” In the memo section, she wrote, “Research Reimbursement,” but that she said, was just for tax purposes.”
“I’ll pay you back,” he said. Roger took the check and put it in his pants pocket. He felt a bit calmer knowing the money was there.
“No need.”
“Is it over between us?”
Carolyn returned her wallet to her handbag and zipped it shut. “The sabbatical doesn’t have anything to do with you, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s all just lousy timing, Rog.” She didn’t think Roger would ever sue her—she’d known all along that his piousness was her protection in all of this. His interest in appearing to be a good Christian was too strong to willingly expose himself as having had an extramarital affair, and this had been one of the most compelling reasons for choosing him. But she also knew her conduct had been morally ambiguous at best. So, in order to make Roger feel better about things, she told him about the lump under her armpit and blamed everything on that.
“Let me see it,” he said.
Carolyn found this to be a remarkably strange request, but she lifted her gray cashmere sweater, unfastened her bra, and raised her arm. “You can’t really see it,” she said, “but you can feel it.”
Roger put his fingers under her arm. “Like a BB,” he said.
“It might be nothing.”
She lowered her sweater and fastened her bra. It was the first time he’d ever seen her without one, and the last time, too.
* * *
AFTER STOPPING AT the check cashing place, Roger drove home. No one was there. George was still at work; Patsy was God knows where. While he waited for George’s return, he decided to search the house for all their current financial paperwork. He found unopened bills in the bill drawer, in shopping bags in the garage, in shoeboxes in George’s closet, in a plastic bin under the guest bathroom sink, everywhere, just everywhere. He found endless and seemingly contradictory paperwork for his daughter’s wedding, which, based on the invoices, was still more unpaid than paid. How had he failed to notice that he had been living in a paper house? Light a match and the whole thing would burn to the ground in an instant.
He was just about at the end of his hunt when he came across a legal-size envelope with his son’s return address on it. Roger unhooked the brad. Inside was a Post-it note affixed to a credit card statement dated March 22, 1999. Vincent had written, “Your latest. I’ve canceled this one, too. Mother, this must stop.”
Roger looked through the charges on the statement. He’d once heard someone say on television (Frontline? Maury Povich?) that a family’s secret history was written on their credit card statements. Because, honestly, where had all their money gone? It was not as if they had been living high on the hog. And the money hadn’t been going to the church. And his wife had apparently been stealing from their only son. So, where had it gone? Where the H-E-double-hockey-sticks had it gone?
$300.00 to the Paper Trail Highland Mall.
$72.89 to Time Warner Cable.
$249.14 to Central Energy.
$275.00 to Planned Parenthood of Central Texas.
$35.17 to Fuddruckers.
He stopped.
And then, he read it again:
$275.00 to Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood.
Planned Fucking Parenthood.
Patsy with a black guy at the pool.
Patsy fucking a black guy at the pool.
Patsy fucking some, excuse my French because I’m really not that kind of person, nigger at a pool.
Patsy fucking some nigger at a pool.
We’re all good Christians here.
Patsy at Planned Parenthood.
George putting it on a secret credit card to hide it from ME.
At Vinnie’s graduation, I lifted my little girl in the air so that she could better see the show.
Patsy at Planned Parenthood having an abortion.
My little girl is lost to me.
My little girl is dead.
My little girl is going to hell.
My little girl is lost.
He hoped his wife got home first, because he worried he might kill his daughter.
We’re good Christian people here.
He sat in the kitchen. He didn’t turn on a light even after it was dark. In the blackness, he came to see how he had brought all this on himself. Patsy’s sin and George’s sin—their sins were really his. His selfishness and vanity in trying to get his PhD and in taking his family away from Tennessee and his daughter from her good Christian school. And his poor wife, whom he had betrayed and abandoned. The financial weight he’d forced her to carry alone. His inattention, distraction. The adulterous affair with Carolyn Murray—the snake, how she flattered! What a fool he’d been. He saw now. Oh, how he saw! God was punishing him, and he deserved it. “Oh!” His groan was bestial, toneless. “Oh! I am a sinner!
God forgive me!” He got down on his knees and prayed and wept and then he prayed some more. “Tell me what to do, sweet Lord! Give me a sign! Help me out of this hole!” He repeated this and variants for the next eleven minutes. In the twelfth minute, he heard the voice of Jesus Christ and saw a halo of light around the stainless steel refrigerator door.
REPENT
CAST OUT YOUR DAUGHTER
DEVOTE YOUR LIFE TO ME AND MY WORD
“I will, Lord. Thank you, thank you.”
The light went out as quickly as it had come on.
ALMOST AS IF there had been a switch.
IT MIGHT HAVE been, for instance, the Gita family who lived next door. The prior summer, Mr. Gita had installed a floodlight over the side garage entrance. It worked on a movement sensor so that he could move the trash cans inside and back without having to set them down and fumble about for a light switch in the dark. The impetus had been an incident with rotten ground lamb.
OR NOT.
WHEN GEORGE GOT home, she turned on the kitchen light and found Roger on his knees with his lips pressed up against the refrigerator door. He had scratches on his hands and his eyes were red and awful.
“What’s happened?” George asked.
“Where’s Patsy?” His voice was gone, just squeaks and whispers.
“She’s sleeping over at a friend’s house. She’ll meet us at church tomorrow morning.”
“Where were you?”
“I’ve been working nights in the plus-size section at Dillard’s since November. I told you.” George noticed the financial ephemera that was scattered everywhere. From this evidence, she could instantly concoct several possible narratives. None was appealing, and she decided she didn’t care to know what Roger knew.
She helped her husband to his feet and led him up the stairs to their bedroom and put him to bed. She dabbed a cotton ball in hydrogen peroxide and cleaned his hands.
“I’m sorry,” George said. “Whatever it is, I’m sorry.”