On Tuesday, after spending his day off making plans, practicing speeches, Mark waited outside James Montclair’s office. The sun barely tipped the edges of the morning traffic, but it looked like James had been hitting it hard already.
A phone dangled from his ear and a pile of paperwork cluttered the streamlined desk. Still busy with the call, James motioned for Mark to enter. He rolled up starched white sleeves as he spoke. “Yes, Mrs. Timsley. I’ll let the committee know. Thanks for your prayers, Lord knows we need them.” He rolled his eyes at Mark and said his good-byes.
“What do you need?” James checked his Omega watch.
“To talk.”
“Sure. Just a sec.” A thought line divided his brows as he clicked more keys.
Mark took the time to admire James’s office. Leatherbound books on the shelves, ivy dangling from spare corners, a hand-painted oil of the baptism of Jesus. The painting depicted a white dove descending on the Master’s shoulders with John clad in camel hair and shadows in the background.
“Okay, I’m all yours.” James leaned back. “What’s up?”
“I don’t know how to say this.” Practicing in front of the mirror this morning only made Mark see the unnatural color of his face. He felt green even now.
“Just shoot.”
“It’s about Amanda. And me.” Mark’s legs seemed overlong for the visitor’s chair, even though he’d sat there many times.
A slow grin spread on James’s features. “Are congratulations in order? Did you finally do it? Ask her to marry you?”
“Um. Yes. In a sense.”
“That’s fantastic!” James rose from the desk and grasped Mark’s hand in a vigorous shake. “She’ll fit in perfect here. Sarah loves her to pieces. It’ll be great to have another minister’s wife. They can run the women’s retreats and the luncheons-”
“She’s pregnant.”
Confusion dulled James’s face and the handshake stopped. “No, after the last one, Sarah had her tubes-” He stopped, catching himself. “Oh,” he said stupidly. “You mean Amanda.”
Disappointment filled the room, like a silent, unwelcome guest.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Mark pulled away, rubbing his temples. Not able to look his mentor in the eye.
“How did this happen?” James’s voice echoed Mark’s earlier bewilderment.
“That’s what I said.”
“How long have you two been …” Ever the genteel ambassador, James let the question trail as he collapsed into his chair.
“Months,” Mark admitted. “It’s not like we meant to, it was just an accident.”
“It’s never an accident.” Anger tinged the declaration.
Mark snapped his head up.
“You don’t just trip and suddenly you’re having sex. There’s a progression.”
“Okay. It wasn’t an accident.” Mark couldn’t help the anger, the defensiveness. “We’re getting married.”
“Do you love her?”
“With everything I am.”
“Then why didn’t you wait?”
Regret twisted in Mark as James voiced the question he’d asked himself in the mirror. The one his conscience asked him. The one he ignored even as his flesh melted into hers. “I don’t know.” He did know, but couldn’t say. Wouldn’t say in this room where he’d prayed and planned sermons. “I should have. But we didn’t. Now what? How do we handle this?”
“We, as in you and Amanda?”
“No, we’re clear,” Mark said. “She’s excited about the baby, the wedding. We still have to tell our parents.”
“Your mother.” James sighed, familiar with Marianne Reynolds.
“I know,” Mark agreed.
They pondered that particular coming collision in silence.
“I may wait until after the wedding, just so she doesn’t make some kind of a scene.” Although Mark knew that where his mother was concerned, some kind of a scene was a guarantee. “What I mean is we, as in you and me. The church. How do we deal with this?”
“Well, to be honest, I’m a little thrown, Mark.” His voice held an instructor’s tone.
“Yeah, me too.”
“It’s not what I expected of you. At all.” The anger rose in degrees.
Mark took it like a tackle, impassive.
“I’ll have to talk to the board.” James flipped open his calendar.
“Would you?” Hope descended like the dove in the painting, breaking through the clouds of gray with specks of holy light. Mark spoke in a rush. “I’ll go before them, tell them what happened, and that we’re getting married. Before the church if I have to, like a testimony, tell them how even people in leadership, in the church, can make mistakes and that we’re not perfect, just forgiven-”
“Mark,” James said, gentle and sad. “It’s over.”
“Over?” The specks disappeared, the shadows covered the flight, as if it never happened. Turning what had been hope to an overwhelming gray.
“We have to let you go. Surely you can see that. Being on staff here-doing what you’ve been doing-we can’t keep you on.”
“Wait. Sure, the timing’s off-that was a mistake. But we’re in love. We’re getting married. It’s not like this is a totally awful thing.”
“All that will help you, and I’m glad for it. No, it’s not totally awful, but it doesn’t fit with your purposes, our plans for you here. I’ll call the board chairman, we’ll work something out. To help with the wedding. And the baby.” James picked up the phone, the sad smile lingering still.
“James, it’s not like I’m the only one. Half the congregation, more than half, I bet-”
“You’d have made a fine pastor, Mark. Maybe somewhere down the line, you still will. But it won’t be here.”
* * *
PROGRESSION. STOPPED IN traffic on the way home, Mark thought about progression.
He’d met Amanda at some forgettable social. A single’s mixer in downtown Houston, a friend of a friend. She teased him, called him a preacher boy. Flirting. Her head tilted up to his-her figure, full-blown curves on a petite frame. Completely unselfconscious and confident, the room dazzled where she saw fit to land, circling with this group and then that. A woman amidst silly girls. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
I’ll catch you if I can, he thought. She awakened the wolf in him, and he decided to chase.
Progression. He took her dancing on their second date. To a run-down bar on Houston’s east side, where no Pleasant Valley Baptists would ever go. Because he wanted to hold her tight, too tight for propriety. They slid across sawdust floors, denim rubbed friction as he spun her fast, then slow, feeling the heat between their bellies while Patsy Cline poured her silken croons around them.
He’d kissed her full on the mouth for the first time, tasting beer and salt and her own sweet flavor, and it tasted so good he went back again and again.
Progression. After months of the chase, she invited him to her family’s lake house for a weekend with Ben and Katy Thompson, her parents. He put on his shiny face. Ready to make the important introductions. To meet great expectations and surpass them. Except her parents didn’t show because Katy had a “thing” to go to and Ben wanted to tinker in his garage.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Amanda had asked, innocent. “Want to stay the weekend anyway?”
His conscience whispered no, but he ignored it and chose the path. Enjoyed the ramble down the highway where love and lust tangled so firmly, he couldn’t see the light of day for the fire all around.
The two of them, alone with the waves and the water. He’d kissed her, her arms around him and the crickets singing. Love and lust, ancient and stronger than his own will reared like a warrior and laid him down. Lying down with her on a blanket, the moon high and round and the crickets screaming. He dipped into her, sweet and slow, and was damned by it in his own heart. But he didn’t stop. He entered his lust and broke his trust, dying down with her. Painted himself a hypocrite while he lost himself in her. Tossing his future and his calling like a cheap brown penny. I am looped in the loops of her hair.
Then morning sunlight streamed on what he’d done. On him, sick with regret for not honoring her. For not holding the wolf in check.
But she’d smiled so sweet and hugged him tight, no furrow of fury or regret on her brow, but crazily, unexpectedly-love. She didn’t say she was sorry, and when he did, she hushed him and handed him coffee.
The words I love you, let’s get married died on his lips and he drank it, bitter, down his throat. Warming him as the sin-sickness slid from his gut.
The serpent whispered Later and Mark listened.
Progression. They’d danced again and again, not bothering with the sawdust floors, his conscience held at bay. He separated the white from the black and fed the darkness in himself with the power of their passion and dressed in glorious white each Sunday morning. The shadow eclipsed by the halo, coating his insides with shame while it tied him, tighter and tighter, until he couldn’t speak.
The wolf caught in the net of his own weaving. He’d screamed for help too late. He’d broken the silence and spoke the truth, yet there he lay. Wounded by his choices, his purpose and his plans, gone.
Progression.
Still, he wouldn’t be alone. Somehow, in spite of his stumblings and failures, he’d won the desire of his eyes and the love of his heart. He’d obtained a pearl of great price, Amanda as his bride.
Yet by heeding the wrong voice—Later, it had whispered-the cost was higher than he’d ever imagined.
You’d have made a fine pastor, James had said.
Would have.