And When She Was Good (7 page)

S
UNDAY,
O
CTOBER 9

L
ike a lot of parents of her generation, Heloise has no strong religious beliefs other than the belief that some kind of organized religion is good for kids. Pressed to define her actual convictions, she would probably use a lot of verbiage to avoid saying the word “atheist.” She would love to have faith, but she also feels that all religions are self-interested, a con game with all the subtlety of those old Ronco commercials:
Wait—there's more!
For only $19.95 in easy weekly installments, you can have eternal life just by following our contradictory laws and not asking why.
If forced to pick a label, Heloise will admit to being agnostic. But in her view an agnostic is an atheist who's covering her bets.

Yet around the time she and Scott moved to Turner's Grove, she decided to start attending a church, any church. After thinking about her own upbringing in the Lutheran Church, which she was allowed to abandon at age thirteen largely because neither parent cared to get up early on Sundays, she decided she wanted something open-minded and loose, with good music and an engaging pastor who didn't take too much of an interest in the parishioners' personal lives.

She has found all these in the Abbott Community Church, an extremely inclusive congregation led by a charismatic young minister, Frida Rosenweig, whose primary subject, week in and week out, is herself. The sermons are entertaining, more memoir than Scripture, but Heloise has to wonder if it's really godly to hold oneself in such high regard. Today, for example, Reverend Frida's sermon is ostensibly about Yom Kippur, which ended the day before, and what it means to atone. But it also is the story about how a young girl named Frida Rosenweig, growing up in an Orthodox household on the Upper West Side of New York City, decided to covert to Christianity when she realized that the Orthodox sect did not allow female rabbis.

“Why not simply embrace the Conservative sect of Judaism?” she asks from the pulpit, a lectern on a stage in a community center. The question is rhetorical, of course. Sometimes Heloise thinks all of Reverend Frida's questions—even “How are you?”—are rhetorical. At any rate, Reverend Frida inevitably ends up providing the answers to the questions she asks.

Heloise's thoughts drift. Her thoughts always drift here. She sees the mother of Scott's best friend, Lindsey, a few pews ahead of her. The Blake family joined here after Heloise did; she sometimes thinks Coranne has a nonsexual crush on her. As a stay-at-home mom, she probably romanticizes Heloise's life, which is orderly and organized compared to the ceaseless chaos in the Blake household.
Lord, does Coranne have a bald spot?
She's only a few years older than Heloise, no more than forty, yet she seems convinced that she is an “old” mother since giving birth last year to a particularly difficult baby girl, one who has suffered from reflux and colic and just about everything else that is stressful but not serious. Diaper rashes, eczema. “It could be worse,” Coranne always says. “She could have leukemia, a hole in her heart. It could be worse!”

It's a strange way, Heloise thinks, to comfort oneself. Yes, things can always be worse, but they can also be better. One of her favorite sermons this year was Reverend Frida's take on the story of Job, in which she actually called God an asshole. More precisely, what she said was “In reading Job, is it not easy to wonder if God is simply an asshole at times?” The answer, according to the Reverend Frida, was nuanced—and, of course, circled back to her. Faith must be tested, as hers had been tested when . . . well, frankly, Heloise had lost the thread at that point. Still, it was a good sermon, right up there with her deconstruction of the story of Isaac. “Is it so much to ask, one little murder? Don't you love me above all others?” Reverend Frida had said, taking on an older woman's querulous tone, then switching to her own mellifluous voice. “Really, the argument can be made that God is the first Jewish mother.” Which, she reminded her parishioners, she was allowed to say because she is Jewish, in terms of cultural identity if not faith. She scoffed at the verse “In sorrow thy shall bring forth children,” saying that it probably meant only physical pain, nothing more, that children were a blessing. Not that she had any.

Reverend Frida also insists that Moses was the son of the pharaoh's daughter, that the whole bulrushes story was “bull”—long, dramatic pause—“malarkey.” Pharaoh's daughter—“Why no name?”—got pregnant, hid the pregnancy from her father, then went through the charade of finding the baby. “Could a young woman in an ancient time have executed such a daring plan?” the Reverend Frida asked her congregation.

It was, of course, a rhetorical question, but Heloise is inclined to say yes.

Later, at the fellowship meeting—Heloise would love to skip it, but the promise of cookies and punch is the only thing that gets Scott through church—she watches him take off with Lindsey. Coranne seems to assume that this means she and Heloise should pair off—her husband almost never makes it to church, a fact for which Coranne apologizes endlessly. Coranne is the type of woman who apologizes for everything, beginning with her name. It was supposed to be Cora Anne, she told Heloise the first time they met, but it was entered incorrectly on her birth certificate, and her parents seemed to think the legal document trumped their own intentions. She also apologizes for Lindsey's name, saying she knows it has become more common for girls but that it was a boy's name at one point. Luckily, Lindsey is a self-possessed little tank of a kid, bulletproof when it comes to teasing.

“So,” she begins, “school seems to be off to a good start. Except for Mr. Mathers.”

Mr. Mathers is the social-studies teacher. He's also a jerk. Or, as the Reverend Frida might ask, is it possible to know the stories about Mr. Mathers and not think he's an asshole?

“I talked to the principal about him,” Heloise says.

“You
didn't.
” Coranne is almost breathless with admiration—and shock. The principal has made it clear that he does not want parents to complain about faculty members unless a teacher's misconduct reaches the level of felony, and Mr. Mathers is simply strict and unimaginative. The principal's implicit threat is that students will suffer more if their parents complain. Heloise doesn't buy it. But then, there are different rules for her, in her well-tailored clothes, than there are for Coranne, with patches of scalp showing through her hair, poor dear. That's not right, but it's the way things are, and for Heloise
not
to use her power doesn't gain Coranne anything. Besides, Lindsey is in Scott's class. If Mr. Mathers backs off on his pedantic style and ruthless discipline, all the kids will benefit.

“I did. The principal acted as if he wouldn't do anything, but there hasn't been one of those stupid pop quizzes followed by enforced ‘quiet study' for two weeks.”

“Well—that's great.” Yet Coranne's tone implies more complicated, conflicted feelings, that Heloise's intercession with the principal is great and awful and rude and awesome. That it is another reminder that life is unfair, with different rules for different people.

The Reverend Frida joins them. She is very good about apportioning herself out equally to her congregants, and she does it with an attitude that suggests she considers this incredibly generous, because of course everyone wants her time and attention. Heloise can't help admiring the young woman's bountiful self-regard. It seems like a great way to be, even if the rest of the world considers you self-centered. But then, being as self-centered as she is, Frida has no clue that anyone experiences her as something less than wonderful.

“What did you think of the sermon today?”

“I loved it,” Heloise says. Then some imp seizes her, and she adds, “I thought it was amazing how you managed to bring it around to yourself. It's so—brave. Most clergymen—clergywomen? Clergypeople? At any rate, they don't risk that level of
exposure.
”

Frida beams at the compliment even as Coranne all but chokes on a cookie. “I do think it's important to break down that wall between the person standing at the pulpit and those in the congregation. We're not
anointed,
for goodness' sake.”

“Not even with oil on occasion?”

Coranne coughs a piece of cookie into her napkin. But the Reverend Frida whoops with laughter, too. She punches Heloise in the arm, says, “You are
so
funny.”

“But seriously, Reverend Frida?”

“Just Frida is fine.”

“I know this is going to sound odd, but I would love it if you would one day do a sermon on the role of prostitutes in the Bible. I mean—they're all over the place. For example, I don't think most people know that the two women who come before Solomon in the dispute over the baby are prostitutes.”

“Really?” Coranne says.

“See?” Heloise says.

The Reverend Frida furrows her brow, bringing her straight dark eyebrows together in a way that calls to mind her namesake, Frida Kahlo. “Well, prostitution is such a predictable feminist topic that I feel I'd have to do something surprising with it. There was the time I went to Barcelona—”

“I'm sure you'll find an unusual way to talk about it,” Heloise says, her face all bland innocence. Coranne is dying now, coughing and spluttering. Heloise realizes she enjoys making her laugh.

But then the Reverend Frida moves away, and Coranne asks, “Are you free this afternoon? Lindsey wants to go ice-skating at the rink. If Scott wanted to go, you and I could repair to the little café across the street. I've never understood that use of ‘repair,' actually—it's so strange. Anyway, if you don't have anything to do—”

“I'm terribly sorry,” says Heloise, who's not the least bit sorry, “but I have to spend the day catching up on paperwork.”

H
eloise was telling Coranne the truth, not that she would have had any problem lying to her. She has set aside this rainy Sunday afternoon for clerical work, annoying but essential. Even though she eschews paperwork as much as possible, there's still no shortage of it.

It is not easy to become a new client of WFEN, even in this economy. Heloise prefers referrals from trusted sources—longtime customers who have a stake in the business, as it were. Men like Paul believe they will suffer mightily if she is ever arrested—and that's a good thing. A little fear goes a long way, as her various mentors have taught her.

But her customers will never be as careful as she is. No one is as careful as she is. No one ever values another person's livelihood as much as that person does. Or another person's money or even another person's time, especially another person's time.
No one values her.
That was a painful lesson to learn at her father's knee—at the end of her father's arm, at the flat of his palm—but once she absorbed it, she flourished. It doesn't matter what others think she is worth. She sets the price.

Once a referral has been made, Heloise requests the kind of basic information that one might see on a credit-card application. Name, address, Social Security number. Almost all clients balk at providing their Social. Heloise expects them to do just that. She then agrees to waive the requirement, stressing that she never, ever does that for any client. Then she gets it anyway, through her private detective's sources, and presents it to the applicant, usually with a full credit report. This puts the men on notice. She's got their number, as the saying goes.

Despising impulse customers as she does—they carry too much risk—Heloise structures WFEN more like a country club. New customers are asked to pay an initiation fee of sorts, which is then applied to the first six dates. Once a man has enjoyed six visits, he has a habit. Once a man has a habit, she has a regular.

Sometimes, when business is particularly soft—regulars cutting back, the legislature not in session—she tells a certain kind of would-be customer that she has too many clients and he will have to wait for an opening. She based this tactic on a story she'd heard about a laundry in North Baltimore that doesn't accept new customers unless an old one dies or moves away. And sometimes not even then—customers are allowed to leave their spots to others in their wills. This makes people desperate to have their shirts laundered there. They beg, they plead, they offer to pay more. When Heloise senses that a man is very rich and very connected, she plays this game. It's usually good for several more clients. Because the new customer has to brag, of course, tell his friends about this exclusive deal he's getting, and they all want it, too.

It's not like she can use Groupon.

Heloise's customers are all men, although it's not uncommon to field requests from married couples looking for something novel. No judgment, no judgment at all, but Heloise avoids that type of trade. She never wants to be outnumbered. Besides, someone always gets jealous, the wife or the husband. Usually the husband, who had the fantasy to begin with. Heloise figures such couples are really looking for drama, even if they don't know it.

The bane of her existence is the rating services. Although she and her girls generally get top marks from the two best-known services, all it takes is one disgruntled customer to torpedo a girl's rating. Of course, everyone and everything gets rated online these days. Restaurants, professors, movies. Once Heloise spent an afternoon with a touring novelist—she takes on the occasional one-timer if he has strong references—and he became so exercised on this topic that he almost risked running out his hour without receiving any benefits. (His ex-wife had organized a group of her friends to sabotage his latest book with a bunch of one-star ratings at Amazon and Goodreads.) Strangely, some clients provide low ratings yet continue to use WFEN. When Heloise puts that together, she drops the customer. Then she contacts the service and asks to have the rating taken down, claiming that the reviewer has a grudge because he was dropped for bad behavior.