Can I Get An Amen? Read online

  As we turned onto the main drag, Christ Church stood gracefully occupying a long, verdant stretch of the road. It was a large white building with a series of satellite structures, including the Arnolds’ enormous wing, all protecting a private and well-tended cemetery. Mercedes and BMWs flipped on their turn signals at the church’s driveway, idling to allow older couples—the women in quilted Burberry jackets and Hermès scarves, the men in sport coats—to make their way across the lot. The sanctuary was very traditional, with rows of pews and stained-glass windows, though it was light and bright and lacked the medieval feel of some churches. I took this Sunday’s program from a slim, gray-haired man who looked slightly younger than my father, and whose face might have graced corporate newsletters with titles like Q4 Earnings Exceed Analysts’ Predictions. They greeted each other by name in quiet, church voices before we proceeded down the aisle to take a seat in the front left side of the church. My mother closed her eyes and began what I can only describe as meditating, though she would bristle at that description. “I’m getting in the spirit,” she’d say. “Leaving the flesh and getting my eyes on Jesus.” Not meditating. Meditating was like a false idol, an empty, dangerous substitute for what she was doing.

  A few couples came over to offer hushed greetings to my parents before the processional started and the pastor came quickly toward the pulpit in his traditional black robe. Upon seeing who, from the church’s handful of ministers, would be giving today’s sermon, my mother elbowed me in the ribs. “It’s John Blanchard today; you’ll like him.”

  Christ Church was Presbyterian, but despite my long indoctrination, I had no idea how most of Christianity’s sects differed. The Catholics, of course, were another breed, and I always envied their approach to religion. Their faith seemed more cultural, more of a generational obligation, whereas born-again Christians didn’t have that excuse. To identify yourself as born-again seemed much more significant than identifying yourself as Catholic. To say you were Catholic was like saying you were Irish or Italian. Certain associations and assumptions were made, but they generally weren’t held against you. To say you were born-again summoned images of tent revivals and televangelists, tanned, manicured men offering salvation and grace from their large, well-lit stages. You were born Catholic, but you chose to be born-again.

  So what, then, was I?

  I always tuned out the first part of church, the rote rituals and hymns and tedious announcements. The minister then moved on to the prayer concerns, prayers requested in advance by members of the congregation. We bowed our heads and closed our eyes and collectively petitioned God to help an eight-year-old boy named Thomas find a suitable kidney donor, and to grant sixty-six-year-old Martha more time on this earth despite her battle with MS. Our lips mouthed their names, but really, we were praying for ourselves, praying for amnesty. We prayed that tragedy and trials faced by others would pass over us, that we wouldn’t get what we deserved.

  For the sermon, Pastor Blanchard was teaching on John 8, a well-known story in which a woman who had committed adultery was brought before Jesus by the Pharisees. Adultery was punishable by stoning under the law, and the Pharisees, who sought to discredit Jesus, challenged him to judge her.

  “The Pharisees thought that they had him,” said Pastor Blanchard. He was a soft-spoken man whose eyes seemed filled with awe as he spoke of Christ. “They knew that if Jesus didn’t join them in condemning this woman to death by stoning, he could be accused of disobeying Mosaic law. But Jesus”—he allowed a glowing smile to form on his lips—“Jesus just bent down and began to write with his finger in the dirt.” He paused and let the image form in our minds, then looked at his parishioners conspiratorially. “Wouldn’t you love to know what he was writing?” The congregation responded with a subdued chuckle. “Such a humble act that preceded one of the most brilliant lines in the Bible.

  “When Jesus stood, he looked at the gathered crowd. And he said, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’ ” He scanned the pews, slowly and silently looking over the believers. “And who, among any of us, is sinless? Who among us is fit to cast stones?” Again he paused, letting his question weave its way through the pews in a moment of prompted self-reflection. “The crowd was so convicted by their own sin that, one by one, they departed. Because the only one, the only one who was fit to judge that woman was Jesus. But when he was finally alone with her he asked her, ‘Hath no man condemned thee?’ to which the woman replied, ‘No man, Lord.’ ” He quoted directly from John 8:11, and his voice took on greater resonance, drawn from someplace visceral and deep. “And Jesus said unto her, ‘Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.’ ”

  When the service was over, my mother looked soothed and calmed. “That was a wonderful message.” We stood to make our way out of the narrow pews. “I hope he delivers that same sermon to the ten o’clock service,” she said, clearly hoping the Arnolds were reminded of and inspired by Jesus’s grace. “I swear, some preachers forget that all they need to do is stick to the gospel of Christ. They come up with these convoluted messages that they think will make them relevant.” She sounded like a sixteen-year-old mocking her parents for trying to be cool. “Jesus will always be relevant.” I imagined her turning her gaze upward and giving the Lord a big high five.

  . . .

  After church, my father shut himself away in his office, his reading glasses propped on the tip of his nose and stacks of file folders splayed out in front of him. My mother slipped away to another church service, as she was often known to do. Most people put in their obligatory hour on Sunday morning and called it a day, but my mother scurried off to one of several other churches at which she would show up intermittently, looking for another fix. I had never gone with her, but from what I understood, these were the types of churches where she could cut loose, where she didn’t have to tone it down. She could close her eyes and reach her hands above her head and shout amen. These were churches that popped up in school auditoriums or town recreational centers, nomadic churches that had no brick-and-mortar home, just a flock of believers. It was exactly the type of thing that sent me running. I could imagine the bug-eyed loons who would show up there. They were the same ones who stood on street corners, shaking Bibles and speaking in tongues.

  When Luke arrived at my parents’ around lunchtime, we immediately cracked open midday beers and I began my debrief at the kitchen table. I gave him a condensed, diluted version of what had happened with my parents and Kat. When I finished, we both agreed: Kat was clearly out of line. But Luke was able to see the humor camouflaged within the disaster.

  “Oh my God,” he said, laughing. “Here Mom was majorly kissing some Arnold ass, and in comes Kat, chugging wine and talking about sucking dicks.”

  I winced. “It was pretty painful.”

  “I’ll bet Edward Arnold got a total hard-on.”

  “Gross…”

  “I’ll bet he broke out the gimp mask that night and had Lynn wear a strap-on.”

  “Stop it,” I said, biting away a laugh. “I’m serious.”

  Luke switched gears, his mind moving back toward our sister. “Have you talked to Kat?”

  I shook my head. “I left her a message yesterday but she hasn’t called me back.”

  “Maybe I’ll stop by and see her on my way back to the city.”

  Hearing the low rumble of the garage door opening, I shushed him. Mom was home.

  We heard her keys clink as she dropped them in the glass bowl on the console table in the mudroom. “Hey, y’all,” she said, sounding peacefully blissed-out. “Ellen, that was a wonderful service. You have to come with me sometime.” Luke stood to greet her and she kissed his cheek. “Luke, I wish I could get you to come, too, but I know you never would.” She always made these suggestions as if it was a foregone conclusion that Luke would refuse, like he had a handicap and Christianity didn’t have a wheelchair ramp.

  “What church was it?” I asked, more in the spirit of
small talk than out of any real interest.

  “Prince of Peace,” she replied.

  Oh, that’s just perfect, I thought, shooting Luke an amused look. All her hobby churches always had some high-flying, evangelical name. Prince of Peace, King of Kings, Lord of Lords.

  “I’m telling you,” she said, yanking open the fridge and pulling out a seltzer, “this church was really cool.”

  I shared an eye roll with Luke. “Yeah, it sounds it.” This was my mother’s common ploy, trying to convince us that Christianity was “cool.”

  “Oh stop, Ellen,” scolded my mother. “They have this dynamic young minister who is just amazing. So many preachers get it all wrong, even John Blanchard sometimes. He focuses on works, works, works, everything that we are supposed to be doing to get to heaven, instead of letting the gospel speak for itself.” This was the side effect of her church hopping: the comparing and contrasting that we all had to endure as old favorites were knocked down a peg or two by new discoveries. “But this minister was something else.” She took a long sip of her drink and let out a small, closed-mouth burp. “I’m telling you, Ellen, that’s the type of man I would like to see you end up with.”

  “You can stop right there, Mom,” I said as I conjured an image of this “dynamic young minister”—a description lifted straight from one of her Christian magazines. He probably had nineties alt-rocker chin-length hair and belted out Creed songs on his acoustic guitar. Or better yet, he was some frosted-tipped, spiky-haired Ken doll in a black blazer over a fitted printed T-shirt who stared at his reflection in the stained glass as he sipped a Starbucks chai latte from the pulpit. “I’m not going to play Tammy Faye to anyone’s Jim Bakker.”

  “Come on,” joked Luke, “you could be like Rick Warren’s wife. I hear she has a Birkin.”

  While I imagined myself doomed to organizing spaghetti suppers and church bake sales, my mother went on. “Ellen, you need to start looking for a man of God. I’m not saying that it has to be a minister, just someone who walks with Christ. They’ll understand about your… situation.”

  “My situation?” I asked assertively, unclear as to which, of my several situations, she might be referring.

  “Honey, you know what I’m talking about,” she muttered as she nervously eyed Luke. She hated talking about female issues in front of her son, thinking that the mention of anything anatomical would plunge him further into the depths of gayness. So clearly, it wasn’t my looming divorce that she thought only a God-fearing man would accept; it was my infertility.

  “Listen, Mom, I’m not looking for another husband.”

  “Well, of course not right now, but…” I gave her a look that warned her to go no further. “All right, fine. I’m just saying.”

  . . .

  My father emerged from his lair for dinner, looking harried and stressed. Church hadn’t had the same effect on him as it had had on my mother. For most of the meal he was silent, staring straight ahead and chewing determinedly, making only the most perfunctory conversation.

  “Luke,” he said, addressing his only son as if he were a soldier under his command, “how’s work going?”

  Luke shrugged and reached for another piece of garlic bread. “All right, I guess.”

  There wasn’t much else to say. Luke ran the production department of a well-known men’s magazine. It paid relatively well for publishing and had some nice perks but wasn’t a particularly challenging job and had next to no room for growth.

  My father took another bite and set his jaw to work. He longed to have the type of son who followed the market and had a five-year plan, but though Luke had many strengths, ambition was not among them. He did volunteer work with the homeless, he brought his elderly neighbor soup, and he rooted for the underdogs on American Idol, but he just didn’t care about success, at least as it was traditionally defined.

  “What about you, Ellen?” my father asked. “How is your job search going?”

  Being as my job search had just started, it really hadn’t gone anywhere. “Uh, well…” I smoothed the napkin in my lap. “I have been looking online, but there isn’t much out there in my field right now.” Seeing the look on his face, I quickly added, “But I am going to a temp agency tomorrow.” And I immediately decided that I would. My father looked slightly appeased, though I was sure that later on, when Luke had gone and I was out of sight, he would tally his children’s professional lives. A production director with no plans for advancement, an unemployed ex–account manager, and a hairdresser. He shouldn’t have bothered to send us to private school.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The building that housed McPharrell Staffing was intended to be generic, with shiny reflective windows that looked out onto the several other identical structures that shared its industrial park address. In the cheerless lobby, I studied a wall-mounted directory to find the appropriate floor, skipping over the accountants and optometrists and insurance agencies before making my way down a bland hallway and into the low-budget-looking office with faded back issues of Good Housekeeping and National Geographic.

  Though the waiting area was empty, the woman at the front desk seemed put out that I didn’t have an appointment. “I’m not sure anyone will be able to see you,” she said as she tapped an extension into the phone with her long, fake, French-manicured nails. “Hi, Dana. Can you see an applicant?… No, no appointment… I know, I know… Fine.” She hung up and looked at me, flicking at her dark, wispy bangs. “Dana can see you, but it’s going to be about five minutes since you weren’t on the schedule.”

  “That’s fine,” I said cheerily, taking a seat. I watched the receptionist stare at her computer screen, clicking her mouse at regular intervals, her keyboard clattering. Whether or not her task was work related, she was performing it quite diligently.

  Ten minutes later Dana came out, a small woman with masses of black curls and a thick application of makeup.

  “Dana Sacco,” she said, extending her hand. She had a thick Jersey accent and a voice that combined a whine and a growl. “Come on back.” She walked briskly, her black suit making the telltale swish sound of synthetic fabric as she moved. She swung open the door to her office, which was small and littered with personal effects, pictures of sunbaked friends, a sorority paddle, and a Yankees mouse pad. “Have a seat,” she said, pointing to a blue office chair with itchy-looking, pilled fabric. That this was supposed to be the best temp agency in the area was forcing me to recalibrate my expectations.

  “So,” she said, leaning back and appraising me carefully. “Do you have a résumé?”

  I handed her a freshly printed copy and in my most chipper interview voice launched into the audio version, reciting my work experience and indicating that I had recently been laid off. “I would love to find another agency position,” I said, “but I’m open to anything.”

  She laughed with a snort. “Well, that’s good. Because there definitely aren’t any agency jobs around right now.” She leaned forward and inspected my résumé. “There aren’t any jobs around right now period.”

  “Really?” I asked nervously, picturing myself in a fast-food uniform. I’d always told myself that I wasn’t above any work, but I didn’t think my ego could take wearing a visor right now.

  She looked at me in a way that made me think she almost relished knocking me down a peg or two. “Honey, you know how many people are coming in here after getting laid off from good jobs? I’ve got vice presidents working as admins.”

  I uncrossed and recrossed my legs, my foot bouncing spastically, without rhythm. “So there is nothing for me?”

  She pursed her lips in thought, then drummed her nails loudly on the desk. “There might be one option.” Turning to her computer, she pulled up a listing for the position she had in mind. “Yeah, see,” she said, pointing at her screen. “We’ve got a picky one here. A lawyer. His assistant left a few weeks ago and we’ve sent over four girls for trial periods, but none of them has worked out.”

 
“A lawyer?” I asked, suddenly hit by a painful pang. I apparently sounded less than enthused, because Dana gave me a look. I was clearly in no position to be choosy.

  She gave me another appraising inspection. “He might like you, though.”

  “Why is he rejecting all the other candidates?”

  “You know,” she said dismissively, “he wants the right fit for his office.” She reached for my résumé. “I’ll fax this over to him. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

  “And if this doesn’t work out, are there any other options that I might be able to pursue?”

  She shook her head as if to say sorry, sister. “I’ll keep your name on file.”

  . . .

  Four hours later, my cell phone rang. It was Dana. “Good news,” she said in a flat tone that didn’t seem to register any news, good or bad. “Mr. Kent would like to meet you tomorrow morning.”

  Dana gave me his address and instructed me not to be late. “Nine a.m. sharp,” she said. “Wear a suit and bring a clean copy of your résumé.” Her phone gave a telltale dead silence of a call waiting. “Oh, I gotta take this. Let me know how it goes.” Then she hung up.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Pleased to meet you,” said the smooth, well-groomed man standing behind the enormous wood desk. “I’m Philip Kent.” He gave my hand a shake that I imagined would be much more robust if I were a man. Philip Kent. It was a name that I could see on campaign lawn signs: classic, powerful, easy to pronounce.

  “Ellen Carlisle,” I said. “Thank you for taking the time to meet me.”

  “So,” he said. “Why don’t I start by telling you a bit about this position?”

  Philip Kent was an attractive man in his late thirties with an appealing smile and a tall, thin frame. He had thick, floppy, Hugh Grant hair, though his features were less quirky than Hugh’s and more traditionally handsome. I could tell from his desk, which was scattered with sterling silver picture frames, that he was a family man. They were all turned away from me, but I imagined the posed Christmas portraits next to the candid beach shots, where sandy, smiling children peered around the legs of a beautiful wife.