Soon After (4 page)

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Authors: Sherryle Kiser Jackson

BOOK: Soon After
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“Well, it just seems like a tragic waste of time.”
“That's 'cause it wasn't Mt. Pleasant that caught on fire,” Willie said so quickly that Vanessa almost missed it. “Look, I don't want to talk about it anymore. I've made up my mind. The woman is coming over and I'm going to talk to her.”
He was dismissive, putting his foot down right on her ego.
“Lord forbid, if I share my reservations with my husband. Reporters have been known to put a provocative spin on the most basic of stories. It's what they do,” Vanessa said, preparing to grate cheese and chop onions to top off her chili. “But I'll keep my comments to myself. Where should I serve you and your new wife? Will the dining room do, or would you prefer somewhere more intimate like the kitchen nook?”
“Now, you know I was joking. I'm not even remotely interested in this woman,” Willie said with an incredulous look.
“I'm joking also. Ha-ha,” Vanessa said in her blandest of tones.
Vanessa ignored his questioning gaze. His look was asking everything she didn't have an answer for. She bore down on the block of cheese with her right hand as she grated to take the edge off her frustration.
“If I had of known we were having company, I would have made something else. Something more complete like Giada would have made.”
“Who?”
“The Italian chef,” She looked up to see his confused expression. “Oh, never mind.”
“Is that what this is all about? Chili is fine and you will be fine too, after you freshen up. You've got a serious case of bed head.”
“Thank you for the tip, but I've got to complete the meal first.” She used her forearm to wipe away fresh tears that began to well up catching her completely off guard. He was only playing, but his criticism of her meal and now her appearance was a little too much to bear. “If you tell me your guest will be here in the next ten minutes or so, I will absolutely kill you.”
“My, aren't we violent,” Willie chided. “She'll be here at six. You have plenty of time.”
Vanessa watched him exit the kitchen, giving her enough breathing space to hatch a counter argument.
Chapter 3
Like Doubting Thomas
Vanessa wore her favorite lavender sweat suit and her hair hanging down past her shoulders, the way her husband liked it. Three helpings of chili were ready to be served in the two-handled soup bowls they received from William and Sonoma as a wedding gift. They were topped with a dollop of sour cream, cheddar cheese, chives, and onions in small ramekins.
Vanessa sized up their dinner guest as she took the woman's coat and led her into the dinning room. Alexis hugged both of them as if they were her parents and she had just come home from college. She was a slender woman of average height with a smooth youthful complexion that apparently had never been the battlefield for pimples in her youth. Her eyes told a different story. They were surprisingly mature. Vanessa wondered how old she really was and suspected she was closer to thirty than her counterparts at the TV station probably realized.
Willie blessed the food from the head of the table, leaving Vanessa across from Alexis. She seemed to prefer the corn chips Vanessa had also put out. She was moving the kidney beans around to the opposite side of the bowl before taking bites of the chili. Vanessa was almost halfway through her portion, and was wondering, like Willie, what else there was to eat.
Willie covered the pleasantries while they ate, discussing with Alexis everything from the unusually warm spring weather they were experiencing to ride in Alexis'. Apparently she had gotten lost although their house was a direct shot from the Capitol beltway. Vanessa remained silent, with ample smiles to pass around the table at the mention of their recent trip. She didn't dare breach the topic of the hour first.
She was waiting for Alexis to sprout two heads even though she found the girl charmingly clumsy, not at all like her on-air persona. Halfway through dinner, Alexis scrounged through her purse to find a ringing cell phone, dropping her keys in the process. Both she and Willie watched as Alexis absentmindedly reached for the item with an open purse, losing even more of its contents. Willie tried to get up and help, and narrowly escaped bumping heads with Alexis who wasn't so lucky with the edge of the table. She left the dining area to step into a nearby room while rubbing her head with her left hand and using the right to retrieve her phone's call back list.
Willie and Vanessa looked at one another with a mixture of amusement and amazement until his eyes warned her to contain herself before their guest came back. He took this opportunity to get more chili while Vanessa settled on more corn chips.
Maybe there wasn't a storm brewing after all, Vanessa thought. She thought about how she had jumped the gun earlier with Keisha. It was time to start taking people at face value. This girl needed more help than anything.
“Are you all right?” Willie asked when Alexis reentered the room.
“Yeah, that's the hazard in this job. You're always on the go and sometimes your body is moving before your mind has had a chance to think,” she said to a chorus of her own contagious chuckles. “I've had more spills and falls than I care to mention.”
“So you got stuck with reporting on the old church fire, huh?” Willie said.
“I chose this story actually,” Alexis said.
“Why?” Vanessa couldn't resist.
Alexis cleared her throat. “Or shall I say it chose me. I did the initial story, and I don't know really. There is something about Harvest that's familiar.”
Vanessa could detect a southern upbringing sprouting up in Alexis's speech. It was an accent that Vanessa was sure Alexis tried to smooth over with either plenty of practice or formal voice training.
“Familiar?” Vanessa questioned.
Alexis volleyed glances between the two of them before settling on Vanessa. “I grew up in a small, tight-knit church much like Harvest Baptist Church.”
“Well, Harvest is no more,” Vanessa pushed out through a yawn in an attempt to stop the train from traveling down memory lane with her husband aboard.
“Yes, ma'am, but what about the people that were going there?” Alexis asked.
They should have moved over to Pleasant Harvest with the rest of the church,
she thought.
“So, tell us more about home,” Willie jumped in, letting everyone know he was the conductor. He had pushed back his plate as if he were ready for a lengthy conversation. “And how were you drawn to this story?”
“Like I said, I grew up in a small town in Kannapolis, North Carolina. My grandfather, C. Paul Montgomery, who raised me, was and still is the bishop and pastor of Greater Hope Baptist Church. It was the only African American Baptist church in the whole area for a long while. I graduated high school early and went on to North Carolina Central University. Worked at WAKN—the local station there—could have easily been an anchor by now, but home wasn't where the big stories were,” Alexis said.
Vanessa noticed she had elected to give them the bulleted version and wondered what fell in the gaps. “And this Harvest story is a big story?” She almost laughed.
“The game is played differently here. DC is a major market. I'm not just handed air time because I am Bishop Montgomery's granddaughter. If nepotism is alive, it's apparent I don't know the right people,” Alexis said, a drawl punctuating her sentences. “You work from the bottom and move up on merit. You have to prove yourself daily. Prove that you can sense a good story. When I arrived on that fire scene and witnessed the invincible spirit of the people there, dancing and praising God in front of that edifice, I knew there was more to the story. Growing up in church I learned that great praise comes from a great testimony. You carry on like that to express gratitude to God or to taunt the devil one; get him off your track. So, Reverend, which one was it? Why did you leave, and what made you come back that Sunday morning?”
“Is this off the record?” Vanessa questioned.
“I guess this is as good a time as any to begin,” Alexis said in her on-air voice as she took out her voice recorder. “The initial interview that we do today helps me develop angles for the story or stories. Then we arrange a date for you to meet with the camera crew.”
The switch Vanessa noticed in Alexis's speech and demeanor that subtly put Vanessa on the defensive again. “Until we are sure what angle you are going to take, we will have a Public Relations-slash-Media Ministry at our church to handle our public persona with the press.”
“We have a Public Relations Ministry?” Willie asked.
“Yes, we do, honey,” Vanessa said as if to jar his memory. Her look demanded he keep up or at least pretend to. “It's headed by Brother Mike Pearson who was some sort of entertainment lawyer turned PR person.”
“As you can see, my wife's a little skeptical,” Willie announced as if it weren't apparent.
“I sure am. I saw how the news sensationalized a story just last week about Pastor Kennedy's church. Someone fell out during service, now they are calling to question the certification of the Nurses' Unit.”
“I can assure you, Pastor Vanessa, that's not my aim. It's my hope to get a substantial amount of history on the church before the fire. Many in the community say the church was like a beacon when your husband was pastor. Maybe follow-up on what Pastor Willie is doing in Ministry now, and of course, you're a big part of that too.”
“See, Vanessa, a simple history,” Willie said. “Satisfied?”
Willie's head was obviously growing. He was being pleasant and patronizing at the same time. She hoped that wasn't his signal for her to leave well enough alone because she couldn't. She remembered her mother knew that signal. She would slave in the kitchen to prepare a five course meal for her daddy and visitors he would invite over to dinner, only to abruptly uproot herself and the children into the cramped kitchen when the conversation had turned inappropriate or business needed to be conducted. She never remembered her father asking them to leave; her mom just knew. Vanessa wasn't built with that kind of navigation system.
Lord, I promised you I would not show out,
Vanessa thought
.
“Unless you're planning on taping and showing a service in its entirety, I don't want any cameras in
our
church,” Vanessa said to them both.
“I'm sorry to hear that, because I think it's important to show Pastor Willie in that context. In a world of sound bites, staging is just as important,” Alexis said.
“How's this for sound bites and staging? In Pastor Kennedy's church they zeroed in on the ‘Jesus Saves' sign, and then led into the story by saying something like, it was too bad there was no one to save the lady who had a medical emergency there.”
“That's awful,” was all Willie could say.
Even Alexis was speechless for a while. “That was irresponsible and unethical journalism,” she finally said.
“You bet it was,” Vanessa agreed.
“If I may, I think you're being a little hasty in your decision about the story that I am working on based on what you've seen.” Alexis leaned in toward Vanessa to make her plea.
“And, I think you're not telling us everything. I'm sorry, but I don't believe for a minute that you haven't thought about how you'd like to cover this story.”
“Vanessa,” Willie pleaded.
“It's okay. She's right. I do have an angle in mind.” Alexis paused as if she were thinking about which one to pitch. “I want to find out who has an interest in Harvest Baptist Church and who has an impact on its future.”
“You've got the wrong people.” Vanessa was quick to reply. She looked to her husband and wondered why he wasn't jumping in. “Neither of those applies to us. I believe in staying in my lane, Ms. Montgomery. Our lane exits at the Pleasant Harvest Baptist Church. Shoot, this sounds like a straight up suitcase, like Daddy used to call it—lawsuits and court cases. Are you working in conjunction with the police on this?”
“Journalistic Code of Ethics requires that we act independently to bring the truth. My only obligation is to my Channel 7 viewing audience.”
“Uh-huh,” Vanessa uttered.
They were at a stalemate. They retreated to their opposite corners to regroup. The automatic function on Alexis's voice recorder clicked off, rattling her, and causing her to knock her spoon to the floor. She immediately bent down to retrieve it. Both Willie and Vanessa jumped up as if to shield her from bumping her head yet again. They sat down gingerly when they were certain her head had cleared the edge.
“Look, I'm not trying to be difficult. I just don't want the integrity of God's church to be discussed in the court of public opinion; that's all. You can understand that,” Vanessa said.
“This case has been ruled an arson,” Alexis said as if she were running out of steam. “The news magazine I am attempting to report for is investigative in nature, so I am trying to figure out the truth about this fire, as I am sure we all are. It's the first time that I am attempting to cover something like this.”
Vanessa sat stunned.
“Wait, did you say arson? Willie asked.
“I did the initial report,” Alexis droned on. “I kept good notes. Then my sources confirmed the arson, and I have scarcely a day to break the story. The eggs sort of fell in my basket, and I am attempting to make an omelet. I need you to help me make the omelet. Please.”
“Arson?” Willie asked again with a faraway look in his eyes that told Vanessa he was off in his own thoughts. “Do you mean someone purposely burnt down the church?”
“Other reporters will run the footage of whatever is out there on this story. Both print and broadcast journalists will be calling with their own inquiries. Some with no journalistic ethics like you talked about before. Some will have no desire to tell the whole truth or paint the entire picture. I have a unique vehicle like the
Inside 7
segment to do that. Either you tell your story upfront or defend yourself later. With me, you can affect the way you are represented in the press. Pastor Vanessa, if not me, then who? Who would you prefer Pastor Willie talk to?”
She was good, Vanessa thought. Willie returned from La La Land and back to the conversation with a heavy sigh. He leaned forward, elbows up on the table to use praying hands to shield his face, and then wipe it. Vanessa looked into his eyes and read his intense expression. She felt the signal. She had said her peace. As she began to clear the table she knew her compassionate husband would share his story and trust this young lady with what he held sacred—the truth.
Vanessa cleared the table of their dishes in two trips. She didn't butt in or comment. She was busy thinking that their PR person must have a friend still practicing law that they could put on retainer.

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