Actress on Demand

These paragraphs comes from a character in my (unpublished) novel Standing Outside the Door that I wrote in March 2017. The events of this week (January 20, 2021) brought this poignantly to mind. Martha is the wife of a pastor whose career has collapsed in scandal. She is talking to a clergy colleague of her husband Ron.  

 “I told you I’ve been working on this plan for a long time,” Martha moved on. “My awareness of what was happening didn’t dawn on me instantly, but very slowly came into focus. I knew I could continue quite a while after intimacy ceased, and especially when I claimed my own space behind the work nook doors. When I started taking classes at the community college, I quickly realized that I needed something more substantive than office skills, but a way to present myself as a professional, even if I didn’t have a degree. I focused on accounting until I could get certified as a CPA, and some business management classes. I could handle the part-time receptionist job for the medical clinic along with taking classes. I spent the money I made on classes and put the rest in a savings account. My real livelihood was still coming from being actress on demand for the Pastor Ron Show. I still feel no regrets about doing that while I prepared to launch my plan with adequate resources to be sure it would work. What I didn’t realize was the perfection of the timing of Ron’s departure and the invitation of the medical clinic to become their full-time office manager. I suppose some pious people would say God was manipulating the timing. I can certainly acknowledge God’s role in putting my plan together, but I was the one who had to work it.”

...

Martha took a deep breath before going on. “Though it took a few weeks for this to play out, the die was cast the next day after you came to me and to the children on behalf of the Committee on Ministry. By then, not only were Ron and I not sleeping together, we were not communicating except for essential business matters required to project the model couple and family of a prestigious pastor. Ron, Jr. and Renee seemed to stay in character even in the face of their daily experiences to the contrary. I would have to say that with puberty, Rhonda recognized the charade for what it was. On Sundays she played her role perfectly: dress, vocabulary, biblical facility, demeanor. I don’t know that she ever complained about the family or exposed her father to her friends. As near as I could tell, she was building her life without us. I don’t know how she did it, but she figured out that her father had a series of other women, one after another, before I moved into the work nook."