Two

Friday morning Mitchell stood at the window of his office, staring out at nothing in particular. Not able to go back to sleep after awaking before the sun had even come up, he’d gotten up and ultimately arrived at work two hours earlier than normal. The snapshot in his mind of seeing Virtue three weeks ago hadn’t yet faded and showed no indication that it would any time soon. Mitchell’s daytime hours had been spent wrestling with renewed guilt, and his nighttime dreams were haunted by the memories that had been responsible for riddling him with the unforgettable shame of it all. Forgiveness . . . that’s what Chris had assured Mitchell that God had granted him three years ago when he responded to the altar call at his new church home. But Chris didn’t know about Virtue, and all of a sudden, ever since Mitchell had seen her fear and panic, he didn’t feel that the sins that involved her had been included in the forgiveness package. He felt as though the monster that had taken up residence in him all those years ago had returned with the intention to own him in a whole new way.

Back then, in the days that birthed the madness, Detroit, Michigan, had been Mitchell’s home. With the blessings of his lifetime guardians, he’d relocated there permanently after acquiring his associate degree in business administration from Lewis College of Business, where he had majored in accounting. On the weekends, he had begun spending much of his time nearly two hundred miles away in Kollen Hall at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, wooing one of the school’s few black female dance majors.

Grandma Kate, the only mother Mitchell had ever known, had wanted him to pursue higher education at a school closer to their Dallas home, but she had eventually conceded. After their youngest daughter died in childbirth, Isaac and Kate Andrews had taken custody of their then-infant grandson and raised Mitchell as their own. Her oldest son, Kent, lived in Detroit. He’d promised to keep an eye on Mitchell during college and make sure that he had everything he needed.

It was in late November after Thanksgiving when Isaac Andrews made the trip to Detroit at his grandson’s request to help Mitchell and Virtue move from what had been a bachelor pad into a new two-bedroom apartment that would more easily accommodate his new bride and the family they were already making plans for. It had been a wonderful four-day bonding period that Mitchell would never forget. It was the week that the Detroit Lions played the visiting Dallas Cowboys, and Grandpa Isaac earned bragging rights when Dallas easily walked away with the win. Mitchell and his uncle Kent thought they’d never hear the last of his elation.

As Grandpa Isaac’s time in Detroit neared its end, the unexpected happened. Back in Dallas, while carrying a load of laundry from one room to another, Grandma Kate fell and broke her hip. When Mitchell and his grandfather got the call from Parkland Hospital about her accident, they immediately began searching for earlier flights. Kate had told her husband to keep his current flight schedule, which would bring him back home the following day. She told him that she would be fine until he got there, but Mitchell urged his grandfather to leave earlier anyway. Grandma Kate had always put the well-being of others before her own. She’d never wanted to feel like a burden, and Mitchell knew that she was encouraging her husband to stay only because she didn’t want to live with the thought that Isaac’s visit with his grandson had been shortened because of her fall.

Isaac had taken his grandson’s advice, but the flight he booked never made it to its destination. Mitchell still remembered his disbelief when he’d heard the Delta flight number announced on the evening news. He called the airline in hopes that an error had been made, and then for two solid hours he cried, wondering how he was going to break the news to his grandmother. It was a task that he never had the chance to carry out. Before he could call the hospital, the hospital called him. Kate’s son, Kent, had watched the news too, and he called Dallas before Mitchell could. The devastating news that her husband of fifty-two years was dead was more than Kate’s heart could take. Hospital officials said she went into cardiac arrest ten minutes after ending her call from Kent, and attempts to revive her had been unsuccessful. Five days later, Mitchell was attending a double funeral with a photo standing in for Grandpa Isaac’s charred remains. Virtue had tried to be a source of strength for him, but Mitchell proved to be inconsolable.

Life after his grandparents’ death had been brutal, causing Mitchell to go through a series of changes that ultimately destroyed his entire existence as he’d known it. First, when he needed them the most, the remaining Andrews family members alienated him, blaming Mitchell for their loved ones’ untimely demise. Isaac and Kate both had been in their early seventies, but they had been in good physical and mental condition. Kent said they would have easily lived another ten years had Mitchell not gone against his mother’s wishes and put his father on the plane. Kent took no blame for making the call that triggered his mother’s heart failure. He said she would have had to find out sooner or later, and however she learned of her husband’s fate, it would have killed her. Her death and the death of Isaac Andrews was nobody’s fault but Mitchell’s.

In the year that followed, family situations worsened. Mitchell’s grandparents had willed their home to him, sparking more hatred from their offspring. The four biological children had equally shared the $250,000 life insurance payout, but that wasn’t enough for them. They wanted the home too, but Mitchell fought them to the bitter end. The house was all he had left of his grandparents. He wasn’t going to allow them to strip him of it. The year-long legal battle ended with the courts honoring the wording in the will. The rejection by his family gradually took its toll on Mitchell, leading to depression.

Two years after his grandparents died, his bout of depression worsened. In the end, it led to the loss of his job at a prestigious financial firm. The bottle became his best friend, and what began as a periodic means of taking the edge off of life became a daily habit that Mitchell couldn’t shake on his own. For three years, it ruled his total existence and drove him to lash out at everyone, including those who loved him and tried to help him.

Finally, after driving away everybody, including the woman he loved, and up to his knees in debt from his lack of viable income, Mitchell had sought help from Alcoholics Anonymous. The meetings proved that he couldn’t shake the habit, even with the help of professionals. He re-enrolled in the program so often that he grew tired of hearing himself admit that he had a problem. The Betty Ford Center in California was his desperate last recourse. It was there, through God’s divine grace, that Mitchell killed the habit before it killed him. But during that month he’d lived at the center, he lost almost everything he had because of the numerous months he’d avoided paying his bills to finance his habit. In the year that followed, his attempts to find gainful employment failed, and he had no choice but to move back to Dallas into the home that his grandparents had left him six years earlier. It was the best thing he could have done for himself.

The last three years had been a dramatic time of healing and rebirth. Three months after Mitchell settled in Dallas, he landed a new job with an accounting firm, now named Jackson, Jackson & Andrews, CPA. He had seen the advertisement in the newspaper and had gone to the firm, then called Jackson & Son, CPA. That’s where his life began to change on more than just a physical level.

After leaving the initial interview that had been scheduled for a Thursday morning, Mitchell felt confident that he would be called back for a follow-up. He and Christopher Jackson seemed to connect immediately upon introductions. Even though his attempts at finding employment in Detroit had produced nothing, Mitchell took on a new positive attitude as he sat in Chris’s spacious office, answering questions about his professional background. Numbers were Mitchell’s specialty, and he was born to be an accountant. In his prime, he had been the best at what he did, and there wasn’t a question that Chris asked that broke Mitchell’s skilled eye contact or made him fumble over his knowledgeable words. Mitchell’s confidence had not been misplaced. By the end of the business day on Thursday, he’d gotten the call that he was to be among a select group of three who would be interviewed for a final time before the decision was made on who would get the offered position.

But by the time the Saturday interview was over, Mitchell was just as sure that he wouldn’t be the one hired as he was sure that he would be one of those called back after the initial conference. During the final interview, questions that he was less confident about were asked, and Mitchell squirmed in his seat, searching for a roundabout way to answer them. He had prepared an answer for the question of why he’d left his former job, but Chris had already done his homework, and Mitchell hadn’t prepared for that. His less-than-honest answer that he’d left his job in Detroit to make the move to Dallas was quickly challenged.

“Is that so? Well, your employer tells me that you were fired due to substance abuse several months before the date that you gave me for your relocation. He says that you’re an alcoholic. Would you like to elaborate on that?”

No! That was the answer that Mitchell screamed in his head, but he knew he had to say something. He couldn’t let this job opportunity slip away without a fight. He’d come too far to allow everything to fall apart now. Mitchell was trapped, and there was nothing left to do other than tell the truth. It was painful and shameful, but he did it anyway. Mitchell was shocked when Chris didn’t immediately dismiss him, and he was even more surprised when Chris revealed his own personal story of pain. Having recently lost his father to a massive stroke, Chris could relate to Mitchell’s sense of loss. Chris’s father had also been his best friend, and he too had gone through a period of depression after his father’s death. The elder Mr. Jackson’s demise was the reason Chris needed help keeping the business afloat.

“How’d you get through it, man?” Mitchell asked him after Chris shared the story of Willie James Jackson Jr.

“Sometimes I’m tempted to ask myself the same question,” Chris responded. He let out a small chuckle, but his face showed no amusement. “Dad’s been gone now for eighteen months,” he continued. “At first I told myself that I wasn’t going to replace him. It seemed almost disrespectful to his memory. But the workload is way too heavy for one person to try to handle, and the way I see it, if I lose the business that my father struggled to make successful, that would be an even bigger disrespect.

“How’d I get through it?” he reverted back to the question that Mitchell had asked earlier. “I had to stop trying to do it by myself. I had shut everybody out of my life, basically. I was being selfish and not even considering the fact that my mother and my baby sister needed me to help them get through it too. I wasn’t the only one who Dad’s death affected, but it felt like it.

“I’ll never forget the Sunday morning my mother and Ursula came to my house and just about physically pulled me out of my pool of sorrow. I was wallowing hard, man,” Chris continued with another laugh. “I didn’t know how pitiful I’d become until I took a real good look in the mirror that day. I was a mess on the inside, and it was beginning to show real hard on the outside.

“Ursula kept saying, ‘Are you missing Daddy so much that you want to die and go and be with him? ’Cause that’s what you’re doing, Christopher James Jackson. You’re killing yourself. Then what are me and Mama gonna do? You’ve got to be a man here. If Daddy didn’t teach you but one thing, it was how to be a man. He’s turning over in his grave right now if he can see the poor example of a man that I’m looking at right now!’” He mimicked her voice as he recalled her words.

“That was kind of harsh,” Mitchell observed.

“It was a harsh reality,” Chris admitted, “but I think she saved my life. It was tough love, but she was right. I learned a lesson from her that day. I’m eleven years her senior. Ursula was barely more than a teenager, but she gave me a reality check that day. I was the only man left in the immediate family. We had a brother between the two of us who had died two years earlier fighting the war in Iraq, so our family was just getting through the healing process from that tragedy. Since I’m the oldest, my father had always told me that if anything happened to him, it was my responsibility to step up and be the man of the house, so to speak.

“I didn’t live in the same town with Mama and Ursula anymore. Immediately after Dad died, they moved to Los Angeles to be closer to my mom’s family, but they were still my responsibility. Daddy owned apartments that he leased and actually willed to me with my mom’s approval. In the months after his death, several tenants dishonored their contracts and moved out because I wasn’t honoring my obligations to the buildings. I had really failed Daddy at that point.”

“But that kind of hurt and loss takes time to heal,” Mitchell defended with his own situation in mind. “It doesn’t go away overnight.”

“True.” Chris nodded in agreement. “But Dad had been dead for about nine months at that time.”

“Nine months?” Mitchell grimaced as an oath escaped his lips. “Nine months ain’t nothing. I grieved way longer than that after my grandparents’ death. Sometimes I still do.”

Chris nodded as if he understood, and Mitchell was unprepared for Chris’s next words and the conversation that followed. “But from what you’ve told me, you didn’t—and still don’t—have any family support. More importantly, and I’m taking a guess here, but I also assume that you didn’t have spiritual support.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you didn’t have a church or a pastor that you could turn to for strength and guidance on how to handle what you were feeling on the inside.”

“I didn’t need that. I had dealt with death before,” Mitchell rationalized. “My mother died while giving birth to me, and I never even knew my father, so he’s as good as dead as far as I’m concerned.”

“But your grandparents were the first people that you loved and lost tragically,” Chris pointed out. “In reality, you never knew either of your parents, so you didn’t get to love them as your parents. The people that you loved as your parents were your first tragic losses, and the way your family crucified you added to the fuel that drove you over the edge.”

“I suppose.”

“Having my pastor to pray with me and my church family as well as my natural family to support me really helped out,” Chris continued. “They were there all along, but I just had to open myself to accept the hands that were reaching for my rescue. Once I stopped trying to do it by myself, it was just a matter of days before my life was back on a positive track.”

“Well, I guess God picks and chooses those who He’ll help like that,” Mitchell mumbled. “He didn’t seem to be anywhere around when I was in the dumps.”

“Did you ever look for Him?” Chris asked.

“Look for Him?”

“Through prayer, I mean. Did you ever ask Him for help? Did you seek His guidance?”

“I can’t say that I did,” Mitchell confessed. “Not that He would have helped me out anyway. I can’t remember the last time I did anything for Him. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah, man.” Chris nodded. “Believe it or not, I know exactly what you mean. But you can’t look at God as you look at mortal man. With us, it’s all about you scratching my back and me scratching yours. With God, it’s not a matter of what you’ve done for Him lately. He’ll still help you if you ask Him to.

“I’d gone to church my whole life. My dad was the head deacon there, and from the time we were babies, he kept us in church. Still, with all that religion and sound teaching in my background, I’d never been faced with nothing this hard, man. Even my little brother’s death wasn’t this hard. We’d prepared ourselves for his death, to a certain degree. I mean, when you go to war, there’s a chance that you won’t return. We’d hoped that he would and we’d prayed that he would, but we prepared ourselves for the worst. Jonah’s death was hard, but at least he died for something he believed in. This . . . my father’s death . . . was the toughest thing I’d ever experienced. I had to put all those years of spiritual teachings to work. In the Bible, Philippians chapter three, verses thirteen and fourteen became my favorite Scripture. It helped me to move on.”

“So you don’t miss your dad anymore?” Mitchell asked.

“Every day of my life.” Chris pointed at his father’s picture on the wall. Aside from an oil painting of a fisherman at sea, it was the only wall decoration in his sizeable office. “I still love that man. But now, a year and a half later, I don’t get depressed when I think about his death. I know Dad is in a much better place. The joke in all of this is that he used to tell me all the time, as a kid, that I couldn’t fool him with any of my childhood shenanigans. He said nothing I did was new. Whatever I could think of doing, he had already done before, and there was no place that I could go that he hadn’t been first. I laugh about that now because even when I get to heaven, he would have been there before me.”

“Chris.” His secretary interrupted their chat when she slightly opened the office door. “Your next appointment is here.”

“Thanks, Barbara,” Chris said. “Give me five minutes, and then send him in.”

Mitchell looked down at the watch on his wrist. “I suppose we got a little off track and didn’t cover all of the interview questions.”

“I guess.” Chris smiled. “But we covered enough for me to work with. I have two other appointments this afternoon,” he continued as he stood and extended his hand toward Mitchell. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Thank you.” On his way to the exit, Mitchell passed the applicant who had arrived on time, thus interrupting the talk that had made him feel more like a patient than a prospect. The man wore a pin-striped black suit and sported a leather portfolio that hung from his shoulder. Glancing at his own face in a mirror on the foyer wall, Mitchell realized that the only thing hanging from his shoulders was the emotional baggage he’d been carrying around for more years than he cared to count.

He remembered not having much hope for the position when he left Chris’s office. He was sure that the lie he’d told to cover his undisciplined recent past didn’t do much to increase his chances. But Mitchell was wrong. By Saturday night, Chris had made his decision, and miraculously, he’d rejected the well-dressed gentleman who Mitchell was sure would get the position and had somehow decided that the still-broken man with the sordid past was the best one for the job.

Two weeks after Mitchell began working with Chris, he accepted an invitation to join him for worship services at the local church he attended. That Sunday, the preacher spoke on David and how he, though thought of as the least in his father’s household, was chosen to be king. In some strange way, Mitchell felt as though he could relate to David. When he went home that day, he read the entire Scripture on David and realized that, like David, he too had been chosen over those who looked the part. Somehow, through Chris, God had chosen him. It would be another month before Mitchell would make the walk from his place on the fifth-row pew to the altar. He could still remember Chris waiting for him with open arms as he made his way back to his seat after he surrendered his life to Christ.

That day—the day he invited Christ into his life—all of the guilt and shame of Mitchell’s past existence were erased. He’d been able to move forward with renewed spirit and a determination to make the next segment of his life better than the previous. Mitchell’s hard work had truly paid off with great rewards. Living a life free of alcoholism and having a steady, well-paying job for the past three years had afforded him the clear head and the resources to get everything back that he’d loved and lost during his years of living in the cloud of a drunken stupor. Everything, that is, except Virtue.