Mark refreshed his mother’s coffee. It poured out like melted sludge, powdery grains stuck to the side of the Styrofoam cup. Marianne gripped it without drinking. “I just can’t believe it.”
In the church’s parlor, he waited with his mother and new mother-in-law while the bridesmaids tended to Amanda in the bridal room.
Ben Thompson, after declaring a need for fresh air, had followed his old Aggie alumni buddies in a cloud of commiseration to the church back lot. Mark thought he saw the flash of a silver flask from behind a suit jacket, and wished he’d gone with them.
Better that than entertaining the ladies.
“How could you do this to me?” Legs akimbo in a mauve Queen Anne chair, Marianne looked more frazzled than Mark had ever seen her.
“Excuse me?”
“Embarrass me like this. In case you missed it, your bride vomited in the fountain. Morning sickness.” She whispered these words in the same tone one might say herpes. “What must our friends be thinking? And Pastor Fred?”
“Not much, I suppose.” Katy crossed her arms and stared out the window.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Marianne shot back.
“Only that he doesn’t strike me as overly insightful.” Not bothering to turn her head, Katy remained riveted, gazing at the gardens full of gossiping guests. “A boisterous fellow, but not too bright.”
“I’ll have you know, Fred Wilburne is one of the finest men to walk this earth. Why, when Mark was a boy, he-”
“Mom.” Mark sank into the plaid couch across from her. “Fred’s character really isn’t at issue here.”
“That’s right.” Marianne’s bright eyes locked on Mark. “Yours is. Care to explain?”
“Not particularly.” He loosened his tie and yanked it too hard, snapping the fine silk in the quiet room.
“But how could you let this happen?” His mother shrilled on. “Your career, all that you’ve wanted?”
“I still want those things.” He didn’t know if he meant it, or if by force of habit, he still played her game.
“Well, what did James Montclair have to say about this?” James held a second-place spot in Marianne’s list of all-time favorite people, second only to Jesus.
Mark wasn’t sure he’d even made the list. “He said that he wished us well.”
“And?”
“And that I need to look for work elsewhere.”
“Oh my God.” Marianne’s taking the Lord’s name in vain testified to the fullness of her devastation.
Katy finally picked up on the conversation. She turned from the window. Her eyes, a steelier variation of Amanda’s blue, nailed Mark where he sat. “You mean to say you’re without gainful employment?”
“For now. I have a severance package.”
“Severance?” Marianne’s lace handkerchief muffled her sobs.
“You’ve married my daughter”-Katy pointed her manicured finger at him-“and you don’t have a job7”
“I’m working now. They’re giving me two months to finish up. Until they find a replacement for me.” Until Amanda begins to show. “But I’ve got some feelers out.”
“Feelers? What kind of feelers?” Marianne raised her head, eyes puffy. “Where?”
“Some places here in Houston. Ad agencies. I’m thinking of getting out of the ministry.”
At this, Katy joined them in the seating area. “That’s an excellent decision, Mark.” Dragonlady, as he’d taken to calling his mother-in-law in private, actually smiled at him. She patted his knee, her bejeweled fingers like sparkly claws.
He watched the glitter, the spark of old money and ironclad rules, and felt the room get smaller.
“I’ve got some great contacts,” Katy said. “I can put in a word, get you started on a meaningful career.”
“Ad agency?” Marianne looked horrified, as if Mark announced plans to pursue a career as a male stripper. “But what about your calling, Mark?”
“To tell you the truth, Mom,” he admitted, “I’m not hearing it so loudly right now.”
Yet, he remembered when he was called, as if it were yesterday. At Calvary Baptist Church, in Lubbock, Texas. Mark sat in the deep red church pew, fourth row on the right, with his mother.
Wind whipped through the trees outside the stained-glass windows. Shadows of the slender limbs bowed and strained toward the church’s white one-story cross.
He was twelve, skinny and fatherless. Doyle Reynolds had chosen to leave his marriage of seventeen years for Mona Torkman, a junior sales associate at Southwest Pharmaceuticals. She was married to Mr. Torkman, Mark’s seventh-grade science teacher.
Doyle had loaded up his charcoal gray El Camino, shabby suitcases and cardboard file boxes stacked high under the camper, and left town with Mona. He never came back.
Mark became the man of the family before he became a teenager. He skipped adolescence and moved right on to adulthood, stepping into the role of sole emotional supporter for his devastated mother. At night, he’d lie in bed with his stomach clenched and endure the waves of her tears wafting through the duplex’s tissue-thin walls.
Until the saints at Calvary Baptist came along.
They invited Mark and Marianne to church picnics, his mother to ladies’ groups, Mark to weeklong campouts. He watched his mother’s shoulders lift after months of crying into her pillow. And the burden from his own shoulders grew lighter as potlucks filled their empty evenings.
He first heard about his need for Jesus at camp, around the crackling campfire with other sweaty twelve-year-olds. Like the rest of the kids, he held a broken tree branch and listened spellbound to his new hero: Kenny Keisling, camp counselor.
“Boys, it’s a decision only you can make. The Word says, ‘For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.’ That means you’ve missed the mark, fellas. You ain’t perfect, ain’t never gonna be. You can try all you want, but if you want forgiveness, if you want to be good, you need the Lord.” Kenny waved his well-worn Bible in the air.
If you want to be good. Mark thought of Mr. Torkman, a gangly man who wore corduroys and button-downs with wrinkled collars. How his former favorite teacher wouldn’t look at him in class, how the other kids snickered like rats all around. Then the relief when Mr. Torkman took an extended leave of absence, and eventually moved away, leaving whispers in the hallways like ghosts of shame.
“It says right here”—Kenny poked an ivory page—“that the ‘wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus, our Lord.’”
To Mark, the camp leader looked like a gladiator, some kind of warrior.
“So, what’s it going to be, guys? Will you take the gift?” Several boys were already nodding. Kenny waved a knotty branch in the air.
One by one, Mark watched his peers throw their sticks in the fire. A sign encouraged by the camp counselors to show they’d given their hearts to Jesus. The ceremony ended with a rousing rendition of “I Surrender All,” each of the four verses sung a cappella, and with much emotion.
Mark kept his stick, the rough places hurting his palm where he gripped it so tightly. He mumbled through the song and stared at his tennis shoes, clumped with mud from a week in the outdoors.
But later, just before the start of eighth grade, on a day when the wind threatened to split the trees in two, Mark heard it. The call. Not from the red face and passionate voice of a younger Pastor Fred Wilburne, but somewhere deep inside. He walked forward on heavy feet, down the plush scarlet liner, and knelt at the altar. He read the chiseled words on the light oak table—THIS DO IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME—just before he closed his eyes.
He didn’t listen to the prayers over his head or the choir singing praises. All he heard was the quiet of his own pleading voice, “Please, God, I don’t want to be like my dad. Make me good, Lord. Please make me good.”
He stood to face the congregation. They clapped and smiled at him. His mother’s tearstained face shining with pride. Mark’s heart swelled. He’d done a good thing. He was good.
He wanted to be saved from that, free from the “like father like son” curse. The one that left people wounded in its wake. He tried to walk the straight and narrow, fighting his desires. But still he fell. Fell hard, his sophomore year, with a buxom cheerleader named Macy. Found out what he’d been warned against all those years in Sunday school, and that he liked it.
He felt sure his church friends would read it on him, a scarlet A scripted on his forehead. But they didn’t, and Mark discovered an inner division to his soul. That a righteous man could sometimes dance the crooked path, teasing fate, dabbling in temptation. Let not your right hand know what your left hand is doing.
So he led a split life. Right versus left. Right against wrong. He read Paul’s lament a million times. I do that which I do not will to do. The flesh and the spirit at war. He lost more times than he wished to count.
Then the saints at Calvary Baptist hallelujah’d his decision to go to seminary on Graduation Sunday and helped raise tuition through bake sales and craft bazaars. They sacrificed, pledged and sent prayer cards. “We’re behind you!” they cheered. “Praying for you daily,” they promised. Their faith in him shamed him for his failures and thrilled him all at once.
Some of these same folks from Calvary Baptist drank punch around the fountain today when his beautiful bride announced to all, by accident, that she was with child.
His child.
Right hand met left, his divided worlds collided. Leaving broken pieces of his pride, for everyone to see. The truth he’d suspected all along.
He wasn’t good at all.