The Things We Do for Love, page 16
I shut my eyes as I heard Pastor Norm come to a stop a few feet from me. It was hard to argue with his logic about the duty I owed the church, especially when I did believe that, at the end of the day, homosexuality was a sin. If my pastor felt that Coleman’s claim of being born gay contradicted that simple truth, maybe it did need to be knocked down.
“I took the liberty of outlining a framework for your remarks about all this,” he said. “They’re over in my office. I can grab them quickly and we can review, if you want.”
“Respectfully, Pastor,” I replied, rising and shaking his hand, “I don’t need your notes. If you don’t mind, I’ll honor your request, but I’m going to do it my way.”
“You’re going to show Coleman what you write first, aren’t you?” Pastor shrugged. “That’s your right. You probably don’t want to ambush a good friend.” He playfully bopped me on the shoulder, then grabbed for the door. “Do as God leads,” he said as he opened it and filled the doorway with his big-boned frame. “Just e-mail me a first draft by next Wednesday. I’m very curious to see what you come up with, Reverend.”
Truth be told, I was in more suspense than Pastor Norm was.
20
Jesse
Coleman insisted the meeting be at his home. A week had passed since Earl had attacked him and dragged his business into the street, and the entire group had spent the past seven days on an agreed program of individual fasting, prayer, and meditation. To his credit, that had been Micah’s suggestion. “You don’t make the best decisions while the bullets are hittin’ you,” he’d told me the night of Earl’s attack when I reached him at home. “Best to let everyone cool off and get Spirit-filled before we sort this out.”
When Micah and I pulled into the driveway, the new Ford Taurus and late-1990s Cadillac told us that Frank and Isaac had already arrived. “Hope they didn’t start without us,” Micah said, his voice an irritated growl. I had offered him a ride to Coleman’s because we only lived five minutes apart, and because I hoped to apply some Law charm, score enough points to keep him from taking over this meeting entirely. Given that he’d done nothing but mutter and nod as I stressed the need for patience and tolerance, the odds of my success weren’t looking too good.
“You-all missed out, man,” Coleman said, his voice booming with laughter as he answered the door with an apron tied around his waist. “Frank and Isaac were not good stewards of their bodies. Brothers been here ten minutes and already polished off all the griddle cakes!”
“Stop it, man, just stop!” Isaac, the pip-squeak of the group whose slight frame belied a deep, leaden belly, yelled from his perch on the family room couch. “You know good and well your greedy butt—and those chunky babies of yours—ate up most of them flapjacks!”
“Link up, brothers, link up,” Micah said, breezing past Coleman with barely a glance and moving briskly to the center of the family room. He extended both hands and shut his eyes as Coleman warily shut his door and frowned at me.
Once we had formed a circle, we each offered up sincere prayers requesting God’s providential insight and wisdom. “Let your Spirit, Father, and your Word,” I prayed finally, “guide our words and our decisions, nothing else. You brought us together nearly five years ago, God, and your Word says what you have joined together, let no man tear asunder. Keep that before us, O God. In Christ your son’s name, we pray, amen.”
Coleman remained standing as the rest of us took seats on his couch, love seat, and easy chair. “As I’ve tried to individually tell each of you over the phone this past week,” he said, his arms at his sides and his hands flexing, “I owe the entire group an apology for not sharing this unfortunate business with you sooner. I want two things clear, once and for all, and then I’ll hear you out about how we move forward. First, I’ve committed no sin of any nature with Adrian Wilkes in the time I’ve been in Men with a Message. Any meetings I’ve had with him recently were responses to his attempts to blackmail me with my past. Second, and most important, I have nothing to do with the poor brother’s disappearance. As hurtful as his attacks on me and my family were, I never meant the man any harm, and I trust he’ll turn up safe and sound. The one sin around this episode I committed is that I didn’t disclose a painful, shameful element of my past to you-all. I left you uncovered, and for that, I ask your forgiveness.”
Frank stroked his beard and looked around the room. “Okay, I’ll bite first. I forgave you the night of the concert, Cole, I told you that.”
Isaac looked at me as if requesting permission, and leaned forward in the easy chair when I nodded wordlessly. “I’d be lying to say you didn’t take me by surprise with this one, though,” he said. “Coleman, I forgive you for holding this back from us, because who can blame you? I mean, not that I could ever see touching some hairy dude in the way I touch my wife, but if I did and it got caught on camera? Brother, it’s a testimony that you haven’t folded out of embarrassment by now.”
With Isaac’s backhanded support permeating the air, Micah settled back into the couch and nodded toward me coolly. “Would our star attraction like to share his views now? And maybe share exactly when he learned of Coleman’s news?”
“We all know what we know,” I said, staring back at Micah stubbornly, the scratchy sound of my voice evidence of the anxiety deep within. “Nothing’s gained by rehashing history. As we sit here, Coleman’s told all of you everything he’s told me, and the question is, how Christlike will our reaction be?”
Micah chuckled. “Interesting take.” He looked toward Coleman as if about to speak, then stopped himself suddenly and swung back my way. “Clarify your last statement, Jesse.”
“Don’t make me say it.” I sighed, stood, and crossed my arms. “What would Jesus do in a situation like this? We already know. In John 8, when he came upon the crowd preparing to stone the woman caught in adultery?”
“Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.” Micah dutifully recited the Scripture, but his lower lip was curled and his right eye twitched. “What are you alleging, brother? You think everyone in this room is harboring a secret that could bring Men with a Message down?” He crossed his legs, but his gaze hardened. “Are you harboring a secret that could get us kicked off the biggest tour we’ve ever been placed on?”
Coleman’s eyes hopped straight over to Micah’s, and though his chin dipped, he stood straighter and taller. “I am sorry about what happened,” he said, “but I can’t control what others do.” Micah had raised the first of a few elephants in the room—our painful expulsion from an all-star international gospel tour featuring just about anybody who was anybody. That had proven to be only the first of several blows—blows that seemed to be coming by the hour now. Concerts, church appearances, even guest appearances on other stars’ CDs, were being yanked from our reach at an alarming rate.
“Don’t get it twisted, Coleman,” Micah replied, standing himself and stepping past me to grab Coleman by the shoulder. “I forgive you, brother. I feel like I know your heart, and I can believe that everything you say is the truth. Unfortunately,” he said, clapping Coleman’s shoulder while looking away, “you need forgiveness from more people than us.”
“This will all settle down,” I said, praying I was right. “People always panic a little bit when they learn something unexpected about an artist they like, gospel or secular. Give them a few weeks. You’ll see.”
“I’m not the first gospel star to admit my demons,” Coleman said, his eyes landing on each of us in sequence. “The past couple of years alone, we’ve seen major vessels of God admit to pornography addiction, adultery, drug use, and homosexual pasts. Almost all of their careers survived.” Coleman’s facial expression was stoic, but his tone was urgent now, pained. “We sing for a very forgiving people, you-all. I don’t believe in exploiting that, God knows, but this storm can blow over.”
“You’ve cost us money, but that scar can quickly pass and heal,” Micah said, placing a hand on Coleman’s shoulder again. “I get you on that, man.” He looked over his shoulder, past me, to Frank and Isaac. “You make an impassioned, reasonable plea, Coleman, but you’re ignoring one thing.”
“Which is?”
Micah turned away again, but faced me this time. “Jesse Law, after all the filthy sin you engaged in when you were worldly—all the groupies, the hookers, the coke—what’s your take on how homosexuality stacks up?”
I pushed aside the arguments Dionne and I had pursued the past couple of days as she prepared her “antigay” sermon for Rising Son. I had known Micah would press this issue today, and there was no space for equivocation in this instance. “It’s sin,” I said, “and the Bible says it’s an abominable one. You don’t have any conflict here, Micah.” I pointed in Coleman’s direction. “He believes the same thing.”
Micah smiled broadly in response. “So I’ll ask him this next. First you: is God in the business of manufacturing gay folk?”
“What?”
Micah sucked his teeth with annoyance and swung toward his true audience. “Coleman, this stuff about you being born that way is nonsense. I’ll say it flat out: I can’t share a stage with a man pushing that line of homosexual, gay-marriage-supporting propaganda.”
Coleman’s lips parted. “You can’t . . .” His response caught in his throat. He locked his knees and put his hands on his hips. “Micah, you know I’m not one of them,” he finally said. “I don’t believe in gay rights, or marriage, or whatever—”
“You may as well.” Micah looked toward what I realized was his peanut gallery, and Frank piped up for the first time in a while. “Isaac and I discussed this with Micah,” he said, remaining seated and smiling anxiously. “Cole, you gonna have to take back what you said about being born gay. You can’t risk sounding like you support sin, man. And the group sure can’t risk it. Please, Cole, just clean that up.”
“We, uh, already talked with Joe,” Isaac said. Joe, our manager, had weighed in with all of us individually, but agreed to let us hash things out as a group before he got involved. “He says there’s all sorts of ways you can publicly clean things up, clarify that you weren’t born like that and that you’re living proof that people who first choose to be gay can be healed of that addiction and build a normal family life.” Isaac began ticking off possibilities on his hands. “Tom Joyner, Russ Parr, Steve Harvey, probably even NPR, will all take you on radio. And you may not believe it, but he thinks we could get on Oprah behind this! You know she loves these down-low stories about brothers. You could snare her interest based on all the rumors and talk, then knock her over the head with a Christlike message on air, you know?”
Coleman, who had paced his family room’s floor during Isaac’s well-intentioned explanation, crossed his arms and looked up. “Jess, are you on the same page?”
“This,” I replied, pacing the floor behind the couch myself, “is my first time hearing any of this game plan, Coleman. Apparently, the agreement to process things individually was followed more by some folk than by others.”
“Your loyalties,” Micah replied without rising to match my combative tone, “were clear from the start, Jesse. You had every opportunity to share all this with us before it exploded in our faces.” He turned back toward me now. “You may as well know,” he said, “that if Coleman can’t see clear to respect our wishes, we want the both of you out.”
Any instinctive response of mine was stifled, for it was at that exact minute that my cell phone sprang to life with my most recently purchased ring tone, Marvin Sapp’s “Do You Know Him?” The number: Vanessa’s.
I was still fiddling with the phone, sending her call through to voice mail, when Coleman erupted in belligerent laughter. “Trashing the group,” he said between breaths, and I caught his meaning right away. “You’re trashing the group, getting rid of your two main draws, all to prove some point?”
Micah stared first at Coleman, then at me again. “I’m the main producer,” he said defiantly. “You two are vocalists more than anything else, and there’s always more where you came from.”
“Get out of my house.” Coleman waved a hand through the air, his tone burdened with finality.
“Coleman, everyone just needs more time to cool out,” I said, sliding my phone back onto my belt. “Let’s all connect again tomorrow, maybe get Pastor Willis to come in and mediate.” Willis, the leader of the church that Coleman and Frank shared, had served as our spiritual adviser since the group’s founding.
“Let’s take some time to pray on things,” Coleman said, his tone cold.
Distracted now with my own problems, I grabbed my phone again and started for the door. “Later, then.”
Coleman didn’t stop me as I hustled past him, but did lay a quick hand on my shoulder. His eyes, however, were on the others. “You-all can follow him, please.”
I continued on my way through Coleman’s foyer, tuning out Micah’s insistence that Coleman only had a few days to consider their offer. When I reached my car, I hopped in and began dialing Vanessa’s number while putting in my phone’s earpiece. Micah got the point; he trailed Frank to his Cadillac, clearly understanding he’d talked his way out of a ride home from me.
Backing out of the Hills’ driveway, waiting for my chilled leather seat to warm, I felt the world shifting beneath my feet. Worse yet was the shame about who it was I was calling at the moment my professional world was crumbling around me: Vanessa, not Dionne.
“Took you long enough.”
“I was in a meeting. What did you want?”
“Are you taking me to my appointment tomorrow?” Things had gotten so tense between us since I’d delayed confessing the truth to Dionne, I had missed three weeks of taking Vanessa to the doctor, sometimes by her choice and sometimes by mine.
“I’ll take you,” I said, “if you promise not to make any more surprise visits to my wife’s office. For someone interested in her well-being, Vanessa, you caused her nothing but pain and uncertainty with that little move.”
Her response was laced with acid. “When are you going to tell her?”
“I understand,” I said as I screeched to a halt at a red light, “that you got a nice-sized check the other day.”
“Yeah, fancy that,” she replied. “A fat check arrived from some accounting firm, asking me to apply it to pay off my med school bills. Why am I not surprised you know about it?”
I swallowed the lump trying to rise in my throat. The money, funneled through several sources, had initially been the funds my boy Max Soul contributed to help Coleman buy Adrian’s silence. With that situation having gone off the rails, and Vanessa itching to take ours off the same cliff, I’d decided not to let my friend’s dollars go to waste. “Three months, Vanessa,” I said. “That’s all I need before I can tell Dionne. Time for you and the baby to have a safe delivery, time for Men with a Message to get our drama straightened out, time for Dionne to bond with Samuel before she knows the humiliating truth. Can you honor that?” The sudden silence on the other end of the line emboldened me. I could nearly feel Vanessa’s breath on my cheek as she calculated life without a slew of loans hanging overhead. Flesh emboldened, I repeated myself: “Can you honor that?”
21
Dionne
Earl sat nursing a deep mug of hot tea, the knees of his long legs nearly lifting his table at the back of Therapy Café. Recognizing me as I approached, he smiled with bold amusement. “Well, well, the lovely reverend walking into the lion’s den.” He slid out from behind the table as I took a seat. “Didn’t think you’d actually show.”
“I’m only here because you agreed to it,” I replied. After giving Jesse and Coleman a heads-up, I had called Earl the day before. My spirit was convinced that it wasn’t good for anyone—Earl, Coleman, Suzette, or, bless his heart, Adrian—to leave the emotions swirling among them in their current raw state. Now that Earl and Coleman’s confrontation was over two weeks in the past, I hoped Earl might be ready to hear me out.
“I’ll shut up with the smart remarks,” Earl replied after he’d slid back into his seat. “After the grace your boy showed, if this is the price, I’ll pay it.” After delivering his stunning confession following Earl’s attack, Coleman had put his faith on display by marching backstage and insisting that security release Earl without contacting the police or bringing charges. His only requirement had been that Earl hear him out. According to Jesse, Coleman had spent fifteen minutes insisting that he and Suzette had nothing to do with Adrian’s continuing disappearance.
“I see a glimmer of God at work in you, Earl,” I finally said after some small talk and an update on his search for his brother. “To be honest, as a ‘fisher of men’ called by God, I’d be irresponsible not to press you on it. Do you think God is using this turmoil in your life to bring you into a relationship with Him?”
Earl shook his head. “God’s not gotten very good representation in my life, sister.” He turned his tea mug up, swallowed what sounded like the last few drops. “If you preachers keep batting averages on possible converts, you might want to keep steppin’. I’ll bring your stats way down.”
“All messengers are flawed,” I replied. “But don’t fault God for that. You do understand that He gives us all free will in how we live our lives, right? That He doesn’t want robots, and that’s why the salvation process, and our walk with Him, gets messy sometimes?”
“Oh yeah,” Earl said, “I’ve heard that line of reasoning from some of my boys who do church on Sunday, clubs on Saturday. Real convenient logic for them, you know?”
“Earl,” I said, my voice dropping in volume, “why don’t you stop with the flippant act.” The more I talked to this man, the more I felt I knew him, without a lot of detailed conversation even. He emitted a vibe, a mixture of calm recklessness and patient playfulness familiar not only from kids I had counseled in recent years, but in the couple of “bad boys” I had dated back in the day. Jesse was the only one I had ever tamed, but there were some before him who, if they’d just respected my need to keep my legs closed, could have been my first loves. Earl just felt real familiar to me.
