Contrary to how I’d spun it for my parents, I’d no more than skimmed the megachurch article in the New York Times. I’d been born and raised in the South. Though I’d never agree with my father out loud, northern newspaper articles about Louisiana and the rest of the states below the Mason-Dixon line had a bit of a “zoo” observational aspect that turned my stomach queasy. As if our lives were nothing more than bonus scenes from Deliverance.
Once I’d navigated to the address I had scribbled on a Post-it affixed to the dashboard, I have to admit I was surprised. New Day was not my grandmother’s church. It had been a couple of years at least since I’d come here. Last Sunday, I’d paid no attention on the drive from home to the sanctuary’s auditorium where daddy was preaching.
I’d been too busy spending the hourlong drive trying to navigate the minefield that was conversation with my mother. Aubrey’s husband, Fabian had pulled up the tinted windowed Lincoln to a back door and Mother and I had entered and taken our seats only moments before the service began.
What daddy was creating was an entirely new breed of house of worship. I followed half a dozen signs that put me into some kind of visitor parking. I stepped out of the car into the muggy heat.
June had never been anything but hot and humid in Louisiana. Spending the last few summers up north in Boston and New York had made me soft. I sucked in as much of the humid air as I could and took in my surroundings. The place where daddy had preached was high up on a hill. I was now on flat ground.
The building in front of me was modern and huge. I spun around on my wedge-heeled sandals and took in the campus. Up until this moment, I’d only associated that word with schools, but it was exactly what this was. It had to be at least half the eight hundred acres of my college grounds in the western Massachusetts’ wilderness.
Brand-new brick buildings dotted the subtropical landscape. The signs I’d seen after I’d gotten on the campus had various ministries and arrows—children went one way, women another, and students yet another. I’d been driving too fast to read the rest.
The engraved eight-foot-wide concrete sign at this, the main office building entrance, had a painted dove next to the church’s name. I locked my car, then followed the path to the front door. The air-conditioning inside hit me like a blast from a freezer.
When I was a kid, A/C hadn’t yet been a thing and I’d sweltered through more school days and church mornings than I’d like to count. But this new temperature-controlled South required I carry a cardigan everywhere. I took a few steps back to my car and pulled the forgotten blue sweater from the passenger seat.
When I walked in the second time, sweater securely buttoned at my neck, I tried not to gawp like a tourist at the soaring ceilings and preternatural silence. Over the last couple of years, Daddy had said something about building and renovations, but I’d never paid much attention.
My experience with church was a small gothic Catholic parish with a couple of old nuns, an older priest, lots of incense, and even more Latin. This was like a Southern college campus. I craned my head wondering if there was a cafeteria. A bunch of fresh-faced students would not have been out of place.
My hip checked something hard. Snapped out of my wonder, I realized I’d literally run into the reception desk. As I massaged my sore flesh, I took in the polished woman at the desk. If there was a single thing I missed while up at school, it was a woman who pulled herself together.
Somehow being at a women’s college meant that half the students didn’t bother to wear real pants much less comb their hair. Plaid pajamas bottoms and bedhead weren’t uncommon in morning classes. The afternoon upgrade had been sweats and a ponytail.
Then at dinner, these same women would wonder why they didn’t have boyfriends. In the beginning, I’d point out it could be because of their choice of a women’s college and their slovenly appearance. Not one person had taken my comments or advice to heart.
I’d had no problem attracting the interest of men at UMass or even Amherst. Makeup and a skirt went far. When I’d given up answering that same question time and again, my housemates had blinked at my impolite silence in the face of their perplexity.
“Good morning,” the well-coiffed woman said. “Welcome to New Day. How can I help you?”
“Nicole Long. I have an eight o’clock appointment with Seth Collins.”
The woman bowed her head and scanned a large day planner, her pencil ticking through the fifteen-minute-increment boxes.
“Yes. Here you are, penciled in by Pastor Collins himself.” I could hear the reproof in her voice. Seth Collins had probably gone off script at my father’s behest. “Please have a seat, and I’ll let the pastor know you’re here.”
I was about to scope out the seating situation when a loud booming voice stopped me in my tracks.
“Nicole Long. You have your mother’s eyes.”
“My mother?” I asked.
At my question, his eyes went the tiniest bit wide for a second.
“Yes, your mother. Blue as the Texas sky.”
I let the comment slide. My mother’s eyes were hazel. I had Daddy’s eyes.
“Texas?” I asked eschewing formality.
“Houston born and raised,” Collins said while beating his left hand against his heart.
Now I knew that geography was what the associate pastor and my father had as common ground because my father was more sinner than saint, despite this reinvention of himself as pious church leader.
Eventually, I took his extended hand in mine and gave it a firm shake.
“Let’s talk in my office,” he said. Collins gestured toward a nearly invisible door, the handle the only protuberance in the blond wood expanse.
The office was nearly as big and as spacious as my daddy’s, practically shouting Pastor Collins’ importance as my dad’s right hand man. Daddy hadn’t said so, but my guess was that Collins did the day to day business of running the church while my father was gladhanding. Finding investors for his oil business had never been a problem. Probably even easier to raise money in the name of God.
I looked around Collins’ office as I waited for him to take his place in whatever he considered the seat of power.
There was a seating area on one side with a love seat and two upholstered chairs. A small conference area with a table that seated six, then a desk that was anything but modest, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves rounded out the furniture collection.
Propriety required that I wait until I was invited to sit. Since this was a favor to my father, my main goal was to do the minimum necessary to make sure I had a place to sleep while I looked for my next real move, and not piss anyone off.
I wanted Pastor Collins to tell my father I’d made a lovely impression but wasn’t experienced enough to get a pass on the obvious nepotism play. No harm, no foul. I inched toward the chairs opposite the desk ready to lay my portfolio on one seat and my bum on another for the brief, obligatory interview.
“Let’s not be formal,” Collins boomed into the silence. Now that my father wasn’t taking up all the air in the room, I could see one reason why daddy had chosen Collins.
He had one of those Southern preacher voices. “For some reason, churches make people whisper. Fifteen years ago, when I wasn’t much older than you, my uncle founded New Day because he wanted worship to be something real. Something that wasn’t all rarified air. If we want to bring people to God, we shouldn’t make it so damned hard.”
I was trying to take in all the information. Daddy had mentioned taking over a church. It had been so out of character in some ways, that I hadn’t asked who’d been running it before. My excuse that nepotism would be the cause of impropriety was starting to look like it might not fly.
During his little speech, Collins was walking and gesturing toward the small seating area. This time I did lay down my portfolio on an upholstered chair before I smoothed my skirt and took a spot on the narrow leather couch. Collins took the other chair but not before scooting it closer to me.
I unbuttoned the sweater at my neck. It was warmer in here than in the lobby.
“I forget how hot it can be in Louisiana.”
“I’m surprised it bothered you,” he said.
I was about to interject about how the air conditioning made it hard to calibrate temperature when he spoke.
“It’s hot in Africa.”
For a moment, I was quiet. Did he have me confused with someone else? A girl with a blue-eyed mom who’d volunteered for the Peace Corps? Had my dad mentioned our relationship on Sunday? I thought it was obvious from his admonition that I get a job, but maybe not. Maybe my mother’s coldness had called any family relationship into question. Wouldn’t be the first time.
I decided to go with quiet rather than call Collins out on the possibly embarrassing mistake. He’d figure it out soon enough all on his own.
“So, what are you looking for?” His guileless open face was oddly welcoming. I wanted to lean closer. Give him a good answer. I didn’t have one, though, because I was a bit taken aback by the question. I was mostly expecting something more perfunctory like asking me about my college experience or major or where I saw myself in five years. Or even about my dad’s golf game, my mother’s volunteer activities. Those questions I’d asked and answered myself on the long drive over.
“I…uh…I just graduated and am looking to find my footing in the working world,” came out of my mouth haltingly. It wasn’t actually saying anything at all, but it was me speaking and not looking as clueless as I felt.
Collins placed a hand on mine, which had been holding my knee down to stop it from bobbing nervously. A shiver went through me. I didn’t think it was attraction, but I couldn’t place the feeling. Before I had any time to parse it, he was speaking. He’d lowered booming to amiable.
“Your diction is perfect, by the way. You’ll be fine.”
“Um, thank you,” I said with hesitation in my voice. He had to know that I’d only gone to top schools. Did he think that there was something wrong with me that I was unemployed after graduation? Maybe there was something to what momma and daddy were saying. If I hadn’t gotten my MRS degree, then I needed to kickstart my career. The work world was ruthless.
Collins didn’t move his hand. Just squeezed as if he’d made a decision, then he spoke again.
“Let me tell you what I have available, then you can tell me what you think. Your father did say that you were a bit at loose ends, but that you’d been thinking about something on the softer side of things—journalism, public relations, or the like.”
I found my head nodding. That sounded like the kind of picture Daddy would have painted before he’d ambushed me. No matter that it wasn’t dead-on accurate. My options, though, were looking like they weren’t many. So much for the 1990s rallying cry of women being able to do anything they wanted.
“I thought a girl like you with a fine education would be a great fit for New Day,” Collins continued. “We’re looking for a new public relations assistant to join our director. Things are changing. This isn’t your grandmother’s church outreach. No typed bulletins with cake recipes are enough to keep them engaged. Nor is the word of the Lord sufficient anymore. These days people want to know what a church can do for them.”
“Are you saying you want me to sell the people…God?” I could feel my hair swish around my face as my head shook. What he was saying didn’t jibe at all with my experience. The Catholic church I’d grown up in was a take it or leave it kind of institution. These non-denominational mega churches were a different breed, I guessed
“Sell them God. Sell them church. Sell them redemption. Sell them salvation. Take your pick.”
“That feels cynical.” The words were out before I could help myself.
“The Bible says in the gospel according to Mark, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.’ I know that the Pope and your faith have a lot of rules. At the same time, they’re hemorrhaging the faithful like blood from a gunshot wound.”
I couldn’t help but nod in agreement. Even in Ireland the church was losing parishioners.
“New Day wants to save souls, not lose them,” Collins continued. His voice was warm and syrupy sweet like honey. “I may not be a cynic, but you’ll find out that I’m a realist. We’re competing with five hundred television channels, movies, video games, alcohol, sex, and sin. It takes savvy public relations to push back against that.”
I may not agree with everything he’d said, but he had a point. Catholics in both Louisiana and Texas were still reeling from the Gilbert Gauthe sex abuse scandal. And the Gauthe crimes felt like the tip of the iceberg.
I was more interested in the job now than I’d been in the twelve hours before. The other reason my father had probably recommended me for this job was that my major had been in religion.
I’d never had any particular interest in the subject when I was younger. In fact, I’d stopped going to church after my confirmation, and my father’s latest venture surely wasn’t the reason. But one good professor had piqued my interest during a sophomore year survey class and I was hooked. Religion, more than almost anything else, was the driving force behind much of human behavior.