by Lisa Samson
my rock and my redeemer.
The words are like water washing the outside world away. When I look up, fourteen of us have gathered, including Rick, who holds a thick hardback book in his lap and has brought one of his sons with him—the younger one, I think. The guitar stops and we all keep still, waiting and praying. Rick speaks quietly into the silence, praying the Lord’s Prayer, after which Finn leads another psalm.
“I have something a little different tonight,” Rick says when we’re done singing. “I thought I’d read you a story.”
“Didn’t have time to prepare anything?” somebody jokes, and the rest of us laugh.
“It’s not that,” Rick says. “It’s not only that.” He smiles.
“This is a favorite of mine,” he says, opening the book on his lap. “The first time I read it, I went a little crazy. But I’d been holed up on my own for a while.”
That gets a smile from those of us who know his biography.
Without further preamble, he plunges right in, reading the story in a slightly higher pitch than his usual voice, and with a Southern inflection that seems to go with the material. It’s the story of a man named Parker, a navy vet covered in tattoos, who finds himself unhappily married to a fundamentalist preacher’s daughter intent on watching his every move, suspicious of sin. Parker lies to her about the old lady he works for, describing her as attractive in hope of making his wife jealous. What frustrates him most, though, is that she has no appreciation for his many tattoos, which for him are a source of wonder and always have been since he first glimpsed a tattooed man at a county fair.
So he concocts a plan to foil his wife. He’s going to go into town and get a tattoo on his back—the only space he has left—and the subject will be Jesus Christ. His wife won’t be able to hate this tattoo. It would be tantamount to hating God.
I glance over midstory to gauge Aunt Bel’s reaction. She listens intently, though with a slightly confused expression. Either she is not quite following the narrative or she can’t figure out why Rick thought a story about a foul-mouthed, tattooed sailor would make a good substitute for a sermon.
“I’ve always wanted a tattoo,” Aunt Bel whispers.
When Parker goes to the tattoo artist, he flips through a book of religious subjects that are arranged by period. Working his way from the back, he passes up the warm and fuzzy Jesus pictures, the quaint Victorian representations. The further he goes, the scarier and more awe-inducing the images of Christ become until he comes upon “the haloed head of a flat stern Byzantine Christ with all-demanding eyes.”
Rick pauses here and passes a piece of paper to Finn, who looks at it and sends it around the circle. When the paper reaches me, I find a color print-out of a “flat stern Byzantine Christ” staring down from the top of a painted dome, probably somewhere in Greece. I hand the picture to Aunt Bel, who gazes at it a long time.
I continue to stare at it. I don’t know this Christ. But my eyes won’t leave the page. The beautiful story turns into a Rick-toned thrum as Christ’s eyes bore up into mine. He’s saying something.
“It looks like the sun has set,” Rick interrupts. “Why don’t we pray?”
Yes, please. Let’s just pray.
After we finish, as people chat and catch up on each other’s lives, Aunt Bel asks me what the name of the story was.
“Let’s find out,” I say.
I introduce her to Rick, but before I can ask about the book, Finn starts telling him about Aunt Bel’s twenty years of mission work in Kazakhstan, so eager to impress his mentor that he overdoes things a bit. Conscious of Aunt Bel’s embarrassment, Rick takes her by the elbow and guides her over toward his son.
“Don’t talk her up so much,” I whisper to Finn.
He shrugs. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Grab your guitar and let’s go. I’m starving.”
On the way out, I ask Rick about the story. “I’d love for Diana to read it—my in-house tattoo geek. I wouldn’t mind having the upper hand on Huey either, since he’s always referring to books I’ve never heard of and acting like my bachelor’s degree should be revoked on account of my ignorance. No matter how many times I tell him there’s not a lot of time for reading in college, he never seems to understand: ‘What’s the point, then?’ ”
“Here, you take it,” Rick says, handing me the book. “That’s the Library of America edition, and it has everything in it—all her fiction.”
I check the cover. Flannery O’Connor. Good Irish Catholic name, as my grandfather on my dad’s side would remark. A toothy, sideways-looking woman with cat-eye glasses and flipped hair.
“I can’t take your book.”
“It’s one of my missions in life, spreading the word about her. You take it. Believe me, I have plenty more.”
On the walk home, I hand the book to Aunt Bel, who flips through the pages absently despite the impossibility of reading by streetlight. Finn is lagging behind us now, as he tends to do after our evenings in the gallery, lost in thought. I know he’s asking himself what kind of Christ he’s always imagined. Like he thinks it should be the flat, stern Byzantine Christ, when in reality, Finn’s Jesus is truly the most loving of friends. He’s so lucky he gets to have this Christ.
“That man in the story,” Aunt Bel says. “He really suffered.”
“Parker? Well, he wasn’t very nice to begin with.”
“No,” she agrees, “he certainly wasn’t.”
“A flat stern Byzantine Christ,” I call over my shoulder, so Finn can hear. “I absolutely love that line.”
Next to me, Aunt Bel hugs the book to her chest. “I know,” she says. “It’s a good line. Is that your Jesus?” she asks me.
“I don’t know who my Jesus is, Aunt Bel.”
Let’s hope she’s not thinking she moved from one mission field to another.
“Do you know who your Jesus is?” I ask Finn as he pulls off his clothing down to his boxers.
“What do you mean?”
“Is he the flat, stern Byzantine Christ?”
“Uh … nope.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“What about you?”
I sit on my side of the bed and reach for my nail file. The scratch-scritch takes away some of the drama here.
“I don’t know. I remember one time I let a college acquaintance talk me into attending church with her, one of those crazy holy-roller places. Not my scene, I had tried to explain, which only egged her on. Afterward, she looked devastated and told me how sorry she was I had to be there for the guest preacher.”
“Were you sorry?”
“Not really. I could tell the sermon had horrified her, as it had quite a few others.”
“What was he talking about? Tithing?”
I laugh. “He talked about the violence of Jesus, how he’d made himself a whip and used it to clear out the temple. This man had a way with words, and if he had been talking about one of those other Christs from the Flannery O’Connor story—the Smiling Jesus, for example—his listeners would have left in a warm and fuzzy frame of mind. But the Christ he brought to life that night wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t gazing down coldly from on high. No, he was right behind you, breathing hard, putting all his strength into the swing of the lash, cutting your skin with his indignation.”
“Sounds a little scary, don’t you think?”
“ ‘What if that was the only Jesus you knew?’ the preacher asked. ‘What if you were living back then, and your only contact with the man was that one time, when he’d beaten you? What would you think about him then? What sympathy could you muster for that man’s suffering?’ ”
Finn slides into the sheets on his side of the bed and picks up his book. “It’s an interesting thought, though, right?”
“I have never heard another sermon on the beating Christ gave to those money changers. I’ve never heard anyone try to dramatize the scene, let alone defend Jesus from the assault charge. If it is mentioned at all, it gets glossed o
ver, as if the most natural thing in the world for a man to do, if he’s all loving and kind, is to make himself a whip and start flaying people raw in the temple, driving them out like they were subhuman swine. This is not the Jesus anyone wants, and so they don’t dwell on the incident.”
“So are you saying you want the Byzantine Indiana Jones Jesus or not?”
Oh, Finn.
“I’m saying it’s all disturbing, this kind of Jesus. And that big wonky eye in the icon … it just stares at me and all I feel is reproach.”
Finn shifts to his side to face me. “Yeah, that one eye is kinda disturbing.”
“I don’t like it, Finn. I don’t want Jesus to be that way.”
“He’s not.” Finn lays down his book.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because he’s never been that way to me. Has he been that way to you, Sara?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
He turns back on his side to face me. “What’s this about, really?”
“When I was a kid, the church Mom took me to had this Sunday school teacher. And I remember we talked about Jacob and Esau, and she said, with this strange sort of glee, that God hated Esau. That God hates some people. And it didn’t sound like she was talking about hating their sin but loving the person.”
Finn raises up to rest the side of his head in his hand. “Wait a sec. She said God hates people?”
“Yes.”
“Sara, that is messed up. Believe me.” And he lays flat again.
“That’s it. You just tell me it’s messed up and that’s it?”
“Some things don’t deserve any other sort of explanation, they’re that absurd.” He picks up his book again. “Sara, forget what she said. God loves everyone. Period. Because if he can hate one of us, he can hate any of us, and I can’t live that way. None of us can. Not really.”
Finn, the practical theologian.
“I love you,” I tell him, still not necessarily sure about God and Jesus, but definitely sure about Finn Drexel.
7.
Bel Canto
The week after Aunt Bel’s arrival, a new client walks into the studio just after opening. Right off the street, not even calling ahead. From my cubicle, I can hear her talking to Diana, saying all the things I like to hear. Could this finally be it? The ideal client who says things like, “Price is no object.” Or, “Please, you’re the artist. Do whatever you want.”
Uh, most likely not. But stranger things have happened.
“I’ve heard some great things about you guys, and I’m looking for the very best. I need something different, something creative and outside the box. I really want to invest in something special, you know? Make it magical. I want to grab people by the heart.”
I head over to the counter.
The woman dwarfs Diana and me, this blond, dressed in an expensive-looking short tailored jacket and dark jeans. She has an oversized leather purse over one shoulder that I’m accustomed to assuming is a knock-off, though in this case it probably isn’t. If I had to guess, I would say she’s about Aunt Bel’s age, but in terms of conscious sophistication, she’s the anti-Bel.
Her blond hair falls straight, a shining light down to the middle of her back.
She reaches over the counter to shake my hand. “You’re Sara? It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“Finally?” I say.
“I’m Holly. We have some friends in common.”
These friends, it turns out, are from The Community, where Holly works as something called Director of Aesthetics. She knows Finn, she knows St. Rick, and is apparently best friends forever with Rick’s wife, Beth. She explains all this as I lead her over to the conference table, and my heart starts to sink. Church work tends to be pro bono work. Not to mention most churches involve too many people in the decision-making process, which leads to every designer’s nightmare: design-by-committee. Every time I do a freebie for some church group, I promise myself afterward I’m going to start saying no.
“I’m not wearing my Community hat,” Holly explains, removing a file folder from her bag. “I’m helping my husband out. Eric Ringwald, the financier?”
She says his name like I ought to have heard of him, so I smile and play along. Doing work for a financier sounds a lot more promising than undertaking a job on behalf of The Community, especially given Finn’s on-again, off-again relationship to that church.
“He left all that behind a few years ago,” she says, “and now he’s a full-time fund-raiser.”
My heart can’t take this. Fund-raising sounds like nonprofit, and nonprofit groups are right behind churches in the line for free stuff. Not to sound cynical, but when you have rent and employees and your own house payments to make, you start to resent people bringing you these pro bono opportunities, encouraging you to “give back,” as if you’ve already made it and all that’s left in life is to work gratis on behalf of others.
“This,” she says, sliding the folder over, “is what he’s working with now. He spent a lot of money a couple of years ago to have the organization branded, and as you can see, ended up with something so sterile and generic that it says absolutely nothing. Safe and corporate, but it has no soul.”
Inside the folder, I find a stack of glossy four-color brochures, some invitations to events that took place last year and the year before, and a flat version of what appears to be a DVD cover, featuring some stock photo children riding bicycles through a park. I glance over the copy inside one of the brochures and come away none the wiser.
“What was all this for?”
“If you want people’s money,” she says, “you have to ask for it. These are some of the ways you ask. We mail the brochures, invite people to parties, show them videos of all the good work the organizations are doing—whoever Eric’s raising money for at the moment—and then, once the groundwork is laid, Eric asks if they’ll write him the check.”
Unlike most clients, Holly knows exactly what she wants. Her husband is hosting a fund-raising event twelve weeks from now. She wants us to start with the invitations to the event, then redesign her husband’s logo and website, along with all the collateral printed pieces, from stationery to the brochures. And she wants all of it designed, printed, and ready to go by the evening of the fund-raiser.
“We’re picking up the tab on this, not the charities,” she explains, “and I don’t want to cut any corners. I want everything to be beautiful, and it should capture what his work is all about. The organizations Eric raises money for are really making a difference in the world, and people should know about it. That’s what I mean when I say it has to grab them by the heart. They’re not giving money to Eric, or to the charities even, they’re giving it to people.” She pauses, then smiles. “Okay, that’s the end of my sermon. This is my budget.” She hands me a piece of paper. “Now, is twelve weeks enough time?”
“We’ll make it enough,” I say. “We’re gonna show you what we can do.”
Oh yeah, we are.
It’s the chance of a decade, the one I’ve been looking for.
I round everybody up immediately and explain the project, the reactions ranging from Huey’s sigh at the deadline to Finn’s boyish enthusiasm. “These are the kind of clients we’ve been dreaming of,” he says. “The Ringwalds are loaded, and they know a lot of people who are even more loaded. If we pull this off, it could lead to big things.”
“Sure,” Huey says. “If we can pull it off.”
“What do you mean if, Huey?” I ask. “I’m usually with you on the practical side of things, but look at who’s sitting in this room? If we can’t do … well, I just don’t know. Can you let go of the curmudgeon act for just an hour and let me relish a little?”
Finn stifles a laugh with his fist.
Huey apparently didn’t hear me. “We’ve already got more on our plates than we can handle, and that hunk of junk in the middle of the studio isn’t going to fix itself. We need working presses here, not res
toration projects.”
“Whatever we can’t do in-house, we can outsource,” I say.
Huey glares at me like I’ve just suggested opening a sweatshop powered by orphan labor. “The whole point of being a printer is not having to send things out.”
“Which is why you need to be on board one hundred percent.” Looking for some way to motivate him, I say, “With the money from this project, we can buy a Heidelberg.”
Finn sits up straight. “What do we need a Heidelberg for when we’ve got that? Am I right or am I right?”
We all turn to look at the rusted Iron Maiden dominating the center of the studio.
Huey stands. “Anybody want a cup of coffee or tea? This is going to be a long afternoon.”
All three of us raise our hands.
He heads back to the small kitchen at the back of the shop. Finn, Diana, and I look at each other, the excitement foaming and frothing between us.
“This is gonna be good,” I say.
“Oh yeah, you guys.” Finn smiles. “Nothing Byzantine about this situation here, Sara.”
Nope. Just a pie-in-the-sky, all-is-right-with-the-world thing going on right now and I’m not going to complain.
By the end of the meeting, I’ve worked out a plan. Diana and I will divide design duties down the middle. While I focus on Holly’s job, she will handle the log of wedding invitations and walk-in design projects on her own, with help from Finn as needed. Once I have the invites for the fund-raising event done, Huey will print them, and then in the space, as I work on the brochure and other promotional pieces, Finn will build the website. Together, Huey and Finn will see what can be done with the Chandler & Price.
But right now, I have to do an immediate turnaround for the invitation to the fund-raising event. I told Holly I’d have a few design options tomorrow. Thank goodness she just wants something simple. Thank goodness we’ve designed more wedding invitations than I ever thought we would. I haven’t pulled an all-nighter in a long time. Hopefully it won’t come to that.
Taking me aside for a private consult, Finn makes a suggestion. “You know something, we could use an extra set of hands down here. For the time being, anyway. What about your aunt? You think she’d be interested?”
