The Gold Coast

48

The pace never slackens for Lucy McPherson; on the contrary, it seems there’s a little more to do every day. One morning she wakes up alone. Dennis is off in Washington and Lucy’s been up later than usual the night before watching the video, and now she’s slept right through her alarm. Late from the word go. She hustles out without breakfast, down to the church, gets the office opened and starts the day’s opening round of calls. The organizational routine ticks off fairly well. The fund-raising is more problematic. Then it’s down to Leisure World for a too-brief visit with Tom. Tom looks worse than usual, complains of coming down with a cold. He listens to Lucy’s associational rattle of news with his eyes, nodding occasionally.

“How’s Jim?” he says.

“Okay, I guess. I haven’t seen him much in the last month. He and Dennis…” She sighs. “Hasn’t he been down to see you?”

“Not for a while.”

“I’ll tell him to come.”

Tom smiles, eyes closed. He looks so old today, Lucy thinks. “Don’t pester the boy, Lucy. I think he’s having a hard time.”

“Well, there’s no reason for it. And no reason he can’t come down here once in a while.”

Tom shakes his head, smiles again. “I do enjoy it.”

Then it’s back on the freeway, to an early lunch with her study group. And back to the office, back to the fund-raising. Lillian comes in at two and they work together at it. Lucy was flagging, but now she picks up; it’s more fun with Lillian there, someone to talk to.

“Well, he did it again,” Lillian says after looking around conspiratorially.

“Reverend Strong?”

“Yep. Right at the end of class.” Lillian is in the church’s little confirmation class, which the reverend teaches on Thursday evenings.

“Better the end than the beginning.”

Lillian laughs. “Less people listening, I know. But still, it isn’t fair! It isn’t the poor people’s fault if they’re poor, is it?”

“I don’t think so,” Lucy says slowly. She remembers Anastasia; got to visit her again next week. “Sometimes, though, you wonder.… Well, you can see where Reverend Strong gets his ideas.”

Lillian nods. The lesson last week was based on the parable of the prodigal son. Why, the reverend demanded, should God value the prodigal son more than the one who had been faithful all along? This was clearly unfair, and the reverend spent over half an hour discussing the problems in the Greek text and the likelihood of a mistranslation from the original Armenian dialect. “So that by the end of it,” Lillian says with a laugh, “he was basically saying that the Bible had got it backwards!”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. He said that it was the elder son who would always be God’s favorite, for never having strayed away. The ones who stray can’t be trusted, he said. You can forgive them but you can’t trust them.”

Lucy shakes her head. The parables—some of them are just too ambiguous. The prodigal son story never seemed quite fair to the elder son, it’s true, and as for the parable of the talents… well, the way the reverend can use these stories! She finds it hard to think about them. And these are New Testament stories, too, the ones she has really committed herself to. The story of Job, and God and Satan betting over him—of Abraham and Isaac, and the faked sacrifice—she doesn’t even try to understand those anymore. But Christ’s parables… she’s obliged to acknowledge the authority of them. Still, when the reverend can take the parable of the talents and use it to prove that the poor in OC are poor because it was meant to be… and imply that the church shouldn’t waste its time trying to help them! Well, that was the reverend’s fault, but the parable sure gave him room to run with it.

So Lucy and Lillian discuss strategies for getting around the reverend’s biases. The programs that are already under way are the obvious channels to work through; keep the momentum going with those, and the fact that the reverend will never start another won’t really matter. It’s a question of fund-raising, of getting volunteer help, of going out there and working. Between them they should be able to do it.

There’s only one problem; they need a new fund-raiser with all its funds tagged for the neighborhood poverty program, or it won’t survive. It’s the kind of thing Reverend Strong is sure to deny approval for. “I’ve got a plan,” Lucy says. “See, it’s me that the reverend is beginning to associate with these programs, and now it’s getting so that every time I suggest something he turns it down. So what we should do, I think, is present the mail campaign idea as yours—something that you and the other people in the confirmation class thought up.”

“Sure!” Lillian says, pleased at the subterfuge. “In fact I can suggest it to the class, and then we can tell the reverend about it together!”

Lucy nods. “That should work.”

They discuss the upcoming garage sale. “I’ll try again to get Jim to come and help,” Lucy says, mostly to herself.

Lillian cocks her head curiously. “Do Jim or Mr. McPherson ever come to church anymore?”

Lucy shakes her head, coloring a little. “I tell them they should, but they don’t listen to me. Dennis thinks he’s too busy, I guess, and Jim has all sorts of reasons why it isn’t a good idea. If he came and heard a sermon like the reverend’s last one he’d go crazy. Even though he sounds like the reverend himself sometimes. But he just doesn’t understand that the church isn’t the individual people and their weaknesses. And it isn’t the history, either. It’s faith. And I guess he doesn’t have that, at least right now.” She sighs. “I feel sorry for him. I suppose I’ll talk to him again.”

“Maybe you can talk to them both together.”

“Just getting them together would be the problem.”

“Why’s that?”

Lucy sighs. She doesn’t like to talk about it, but… she’s noticed already that what she says to Lillian stays with Lillian; even Emma doesn’t hear it. And she needs to talk with someone. “Well, they’re not getting along. Dennis is tired of Jim not working in a better job, and Jim is mad at Dennis because of it. Or something like that. Anyway, they’ve had a couple of arguments, and now Jim isn’t coming around anymore.”

“They need to talk to each other,” Lillian says.

“Exactly! That’s just what I say.”

A small smile from Lillian, but Lucy doesn’t notice it. Lillian says, “If I were you I’d try to get them together and talking again.”

“I have been, but it just isn’t working.”

“You have to keep trying, Lucy.”

Lucy nods. “You’re right. I will.”

And that night she tries, to the extent she can with Dennis back in Washington. Well, it’s simple enough; she needs to get Jim up to dinner some time when Dennis is home. She gives Jim a call. “Hi, Jim? Mom here.”

“Oh hi, Mom.”

“How was the trip to Europe?”

“It was really interesting.” He tells her briefly about it.

“It sounds like you had a good time. Listen, Jim, how about coming up for dinner next week? Dad will be back home then.”

“Oh.”

“Jim. Dad hasn’t seen you for over two months, isn’t that right? And it isn’t right. He needs you just as much as you need him.”

“Mom…”

“Don’t Mom me. All these silly arguments, you should have more faith.”

“What?”

“You’ll come next week?”

“What?”

“I said, you’ll come up next week for dinner?”

“I’ll try, Mom. I’ll think about it. But he’s just going to think I’m leeching dinner from you guys again.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jim.”

“I’m not!”

“You are. You’re both too stubborn for your own good, and you’re just hurting yourself by it. You come up here, you understand?”

“All right, Mom, don’t get upset, okay? I’ll… I’ll try.”

“Good.”

They hang up. Lucy goes out to the video room, into the chair. The cat sits on her lap while she reads from next week’s lesson. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, the verses swimming into double focus as she tries to stay awake and concentrate on them. On the screen a hot-air balloon is floating over a snowy peak, in a dark blue sky. The verses are floating about, big and black on the white page… She jerks to, finds it’s after midnight. She’s been sleeping in the chair, the Bible open on her lap. She lifts the cat off, gets up stiffly to go to bed.