The porchlight flicked on—someone had seen her drive in—and as she trotted up the steps, the door opened. Dorothy stood looking out at her. “Hi, Jen! It’s so good to see you! You took me by surprise.”
Jenny closed her umbrella and stepped inside, putting it in the umbrella rack as she answered. “I know. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but . . .” They hugged, then Jenny went on. “It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about on the Web. Even if I could see and hear you.” She looked around. “Where’s Steve?”
“Upstairs changing into lay-abouts.” She gestured toward the church next door. “He just got in from a meeting. Find yourself a chair in the living room. I’ll tell him you’re here. I’d call up the stairs to him, but the children are in bed. Sleeping I think.”
While Dorothy hurried upstairs, Jenny went into the living room and sat down on the sofa. The coffee table held several issues of a Baptist magazine, and a theological journal featuring something new on the Essenes. Normally Jenny would have begun browsing the latter, but just now her mind was on hold. A minute later Steven and Dorothy come in.
“Hi, Jen,” Steven said. “It’s been a while.”
Jenny got to her feet, and they hugged.
“What brought you here?”
“I’m leaving school.”
Steven’s eyebrows rose. “Anything wrong?”
“Nothing in particular. My scholarship seemed safe, and my job in the dining room, as long as I kept my grades up. But I didn’t have enough money to pay for spring quarter, let alone next year.” She shrugged. “So I lined up a job in Atlanta.”
“Umm! That far away. Doing what?”
Jenny looked long at her brother before answering. “The training is in Atlanta, but the job itself will be in North Carolina.” She paused before continuing. “It’s with the Millennium Foundation. They plan to open a center in Raleigh or Durham.”
Steven’s expression could be described as stricken. It was Dorothy who spoke. “What will you be doing?”
“Public relations.”
“How well does it pay? Can you make a living?”
“The pay,” Jenny recited, “will be not less than one hundred and fifty percent of the federal minimum wage.”
“They must have had a lot of applicants.”
“You’d think so, in times like these. But they didn’t advertize their jobs. They’re interviewing people who’ve been recommended to them. I’d told my journalism adviser I was going to leave for money reasons, and he told me about this opening. And provided Millennium with my transcript and a recommendation.”
Steven still looked worried. “It could work out all right, as a job,” he said. “But, Jen, I feel very uncomfortable about it. I’m afraid of Millennium. It’s a cult. And their theology’s at odds with Christianity.”
Dorothy intervened. “Make me a promise, okay?” she said. “If it turns out to be—unsavory in any way, promise me you’ll quit.”
Jenny nodded solemnly. “That’s a promise.”
Dorothy changed the subject then, and Jenny agreed to stay over Christmas day. There’d be enough turkey and with-its, and they’d bought no Christmas gifts this year except for the children. Jenny already had presents for them, in the car. They got through the rest of the evening without anything more being said about Millennium, beyond Steven’s agreement that their father shouldn’t hear of it.
Jenny was especially glad there were no more questions. Strictly speaking, she hadn’t lied, but she hadn’t come close to the real truth.
32
A Brian Boulet Closing Commentary, on
The News Hour, with Margaret Warner
Lately I’ve noticed a media trend toward publicizing “good acts.” As if good could possibly be worth our attention.
Even in the best of times, acts of goodness tend to be lost, ignored in the journalistic eagerness to display and describe—often in infinite and intimate detail—the shocking, the threatening, the disillusioning, and the merely disgusting. And certainly it would be dishonest not to show the blemishes and flaws, the cruelties and insanities. Especially in times like these, such things need to be exposed, for like it or not, they mirror the worst impulses in all of us.
But acts of human compassion are also important. They also mirror humankind. And recently, in both print journalism—my primary venue—and on television, acts of compassion are moving toward . . . not equal attention, but substantial attention. One can think of several instances that received major nationwide media attention in the last month. . . .