The Last Sunday Read online

  It was now only three days until the first Sunday morning in the new sanctuary. All the hotels within a ten-mile radius of the church were fully booked. The opening was being covered in the media like a long-awaited movie premiere. It was a phenomenon due to the dramatic fashion in which Hezekiah had died and the theatrical way in which Samantha lived.

  Samantha stood at the window of her glass office, surveying the grounds. From there she could see people pointing up at her office on the fifth floor, above the main entrance of the sanctuary. She could see them all clearly, but fortunately, they could not see her through the heavily tinted windows. If they could, they would have been offended by the disdain in her eye and the dismissive slant of her mouth as they craned their necks to see her.

  Samantha’s world was governed by deception. As a child, she had to be perfect at all times. She was the daughter of a pastor, and her mother would accept nothing but the best from her and for her. She was a beautiful little girl. Long, naturally wavy hair, perfectly chiseled features, and eyes as black as onyx, which seemed to look straight through you. She played with the other children at church in the hallways, in Fellowship Hall, and on the lawn at the back of her father’s church, but her mother on many occasions had reminded her, “Samantha, you’re not like the other children. Always remember you’re better than they are. You’re the daughter of Pastor Herman Jedediah Armstrong. Don’t ever forget that.”

  It was a working-class congregation. The members came from the poor neighborhoods and the housing tenements that surrounded the church. The faithful would come every Sunday, and on the first Sunday of each month they would give 10 percent of their monthly earnings to Pastor Armstrong. Ten percent from one person’s salary in that neighborhood didn’t amount to much, but 10 percent from over three thousand households allowed Pastor Herman Armstrong and First Lady Adeline Armstrong to drive his and hers Mercedes-Benzs, live in the city’s upper-middle-class neighborhood, and send Samantha to the finest private schools.

  Samantha’s clothes were always a little nicer than those of all the other children at church. Her education was better, and the food on her table much finer. She soon learned the value of the masses. They were there to meet her needs. The parishioners who filled the sanctuary each Sunday were there for her. They were there to buy Samantha her first car at sixteen. They were there to purchase her mother a new fur coat each winter. They were there to wrap her father’s wrist in Rolex watches and adorn his pinkie finger with diamonds.

  Church was the family business. Pastor Armstrong christened the babies, married the young couples, and prepared the dead, in the family-owned and family-operated mortuary, for their final resting place. The church even had its own credit union. It was the first in the community, which meant the Armstrongs held the deeds and pink slips to many of the members’ homes and cars. The church was a one-stop shop, and all the proceeds kept the Armstrong family cradled comfortably in the arms of luxury.

  Samantha had always known she could never inherit the family business, because she was a girl. She did, however, inherit something much more valuable. Her mother’s ability to manipulate and control the men in her life. Pastor Armstrong was a strapping and elegant man. His pearly smile and fiery sermons would seduce the women and inspire the men each Sunday morning. But behind closed doors it was apparent who ran the business. Adeline Armstrong managed all the church and family finances, which were one and the same. She dressed her husband in the finest Brooks Brothers suits and draped him in gold-embroidered robes. Sunday morning was theater, and Adeline was the director and producer.

  Samantha Cleaveland was already a master at the game by the time Hezekiah Cleaveland entered the picture. He didn’t have a chance against her. On the first day she saw him, as a young visiting preacher in her father’s church, he wore an ill-fitting suit. But there was something about him. The women in the audience hung on his every word. The men looked on with envy, admiration, and a healthy tinge of jealousy. In an instant, she decided he would be her husband. He would be the man who would serve as pastor of her church. He would be the man who would father her children. This was the man who would keep her in the finest clothes, cars, and homes. He was raw and unrefined, but he was charismatic and beautiful. Just the right man to play the role in the production that was to be her life.

  She wasted no time in re-creating him. He was immediately integrated into the Armstrong dynasty and taken under her father’s wing. Adeline coached her on the fine art of training him to be the man who would keep her in the only life that she knew.

  But Samantha’s skills surpassed those of her mother. The difference between the two women was that Samantha was willing to do whatever it took to get what she wanted. Adeline had limits. Oral sex was not a part of the equation. “Ladies don’t do things like that,” she had once told her daughter. But Samantha mastered the toe-curling and eye-rolling skill and used it as yet another tool to control. “Don’t ever steal, honey. God hates a thief,” was another of her mother’s instructions. Samantha, however, felt that if she wanted something, she had a right to have it, no matter who it belonged to. It’s not really stealing if it was always supposed to be mine, she had often thought.

  “Marriage is a sacred bond, darling,” Adeline told Samantha on the night before her wedding. “Always be faithful to your husband, no matter how much you are tempted.” Samantha was never tempted by sex or passion. She could take it or leave it. She did, however, know that sex was one of the easiest ways to persuade men to do her bidding, whether it was Hezekiah, Reverend Willie Mitchell, David Shackelford, or any other man she needed at the time. If money wasn’t enough to convince them, then she always had her body as the ultimate bargaining tool.

  Adeline didn’t believe in divorce, and she instilled the same belief in Samantha. “Now, honey, you know we don’t believe in divorce in our family,” she told Samantha on the eve of her wedding, dispensing more motherly advice. “When you say ‘until death do us part’ tomorrow in front of God and all those witnesses, make sure you mean it. My great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my mother all buried their husbands. I plan to bury your father someday, and now you have to plan on doing the same with your husband. There’s no turning back now.”

  “I will, Mama,” Samantha replied, gently touching her mother’s hand. “I love Hezekiah. I will never divorce him.”

  At the young age of sixty-five, Reverend Herman Jedediah Armstrong died of a heart attack in his church office, on top of his forty-six-year-old secretary, with his pants around his ankles. The funeral was lovely, and Samantha noted that her mother had never looked more radiant.

  “Excuse me, Pastor Cleaveland.” The voice on the intercom startled Samantha as she looked from her office window.

  “Yes? What is it?” she asked curtly.

  “I’m very sorry to disturb you, Pastor Cleaveland,” the assistant said timidly. “Trustee Scarlett Shackelford is here to see you. She said it’s very important. I told her you were not available, but she insists.”

  Samantha looked curiously at the phone but did not respond. In all the years she had known Scarlett Shackelford, she had never been in a room alone with her. There was no need. She was the mother of Hezekiah’s bastard child, and because of that, Samantha was resigned to the fact that Scarlett would always have a piece of Hezekiah that she could never buy, steal, or control. For this reason alone she had always hated Scarlett.

  “Shall I make an appointment for her at another time?” said the intercom.

  “No. Send her in.”

  A slight gasp of surprise could be heard from the intercom. Samantha rarely saw anyone without an appointment. “Yes, Pastor Cleaveland.”

  Samantha continued to look out the window as she waited for the door to open. Pretty, delicate, meek, and mild Scarlett was, ironically, the only woman on the planet who caused Samantha to doubt her beauty. Of all the affairs Hezekiah had had, Scarlett was the one that had affected him the most. On the day Samantha found out about the
affair and the baby, she told Hezekiah to end it immediately. For the first time, he protested about ending a relationship. Not because he thought there could ever be a future for him with Scarlett, but rather because he knew that she would be devastated, and he never wanted to hurt Scarlett.

  On so many Sundays mornings after the child was born, Samantha could see Hezekiah scanning the church audience from the pulpit for the mother and child.

  Scarlett entered the room and closed the door behind her. Samantha took a seat at her desk facing the window.

  “So you finally told David about Natalie. I had assumed you and I were going to take our little secret to the grave.”

  “He had a right to know,” Scarlett said, standing in the middle of the spacious office.

  “Why? What good did it do you, Scarlett? It only hurt him and destroyed your marriage. You know he’s very angry with you now. You should have kept your mouth shut.”

  “The truth didn’t destroy my marriage. You did.”

  “You overestimate me. The moment you told David was the moment your marriage ended. I had nothing to do with that,” Samantha said and turned to face Scarlett. “You made that decision on your own, and now you have to live with the consequences.”

  “Consequences?” Scarlett scoffed. “What do you know about consequences? You’ve never had to pay for any of the damage you’ve done to anyone.”

  “Oh . . . and how do you know that much about my life?”

  “Because you splash your entire life in front of the world every opportunity you get,” Scarlett said, looking directly at her.

  “Don’t believe everything you see on television, my dear.”

  “Don’t ‘my dear’ me. You forget, I know who you are.”

  “Did you come here to insult me or to discuss this like adults?”

  “You’re sleeping with my husband, and you expect me to discuss it calmly, like an adult?”

  “Your husband would have never come to me if you hadn’t opened your mouth. You never once considered how your affair with my husband affected me, did you? It was all about you and your delicate feelings. Well, fuck you and your feelings. He was my husband, and you had no right to touch him, and now you and your daughter are paying the price for it.”

  “Is that what this is all about?” Scarlett asked, taking a step forward. “Revenge?”

  “I suppose in a way it is. You tried and failed to take my husband, and I tried and succeed in taking yours. Don’t worry, though. When I’m done with him, I’ll send him back to you, at least what’s left of him.”

  “I came here to speak with you woman to woman, Samantha. I apologize for what I did to you. I know it was wrong.”

  “Apologize?” Samantha said indignantly. “You have my husband’s child and then blame me for how your life turned out, and all you can do is apologize five years later. You’re not the victim, Scarlett. Hezekiah and David bought that whole poor Scarlett routine, but I don’t. You’re nothing more than a manipulator. I offered you money, and you turned it down. I offered to relocate you to another city, and you turned that down too, because you wanted Hezekiah. Hezekiah is dead, so now you can’t dangle that little girl in front of him anymore. Now you just have me to contend with. Take your best shot at me, and you’ll see just how little the world will care about your bastard child.”

  “I’m not here to threaten you, Samantha.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “To try to appeal to you one woman to another. You’ve made your point with my husband, and I guess on some level I deserved it. I’m asking you to not take advantage of him or our situation. David loves me, and you know that. You have everything and can have any man you want. Don’t do this, Samantha. I’m not asking for myself. I’m asking for Hezekiah’s daughter. Don’t make her suffer for our mistakes, and whether you like it or not, she’s here and she deserves a chance at happiness.”

  “I don’t owe you or your love child anything,” Samantha sneered. “You should have thought about all this before you slept with my husband. Now I want you out of my office. As a matter of fact, I want you off the board of trustees and out of this church. Consider yourself excommunicated.”

  “You can’t remove me from the board without a unanimous vote of the members, and you know that.”

  “And just how difficult do you think that will be for me to get?’ Samantha replied coldly. “They’ll vote exactly how I tell them to vote.”

  “You know you can’t control Hattie Williams.”

  “When she finds out about your little secret, she may be more easily persuaded.”

  “I can’t believe you would use this against me. Haven’t we all suffered enough?”

  “As a matter of fact, no, I don’t think you’ve suffered enough. I went easy on you when this all happened, because at the time I had other things that needed my attention. But since you’ve decided to reopen this whole sordid mess, I have no choice but to deal with it and with you.”

  “Deal with me?” Scarlett said with a hiss. “You arrogant . . . I tried to do the right thing and speak to you like a reasonable human being, but I see that was a mistake. So now I’m giving you fair warning. If you don’t keep your hands off my husband, you will regret it.”

  “Is that a threat?” Samantha asked with one eyebrow raised. “If it is, you better be ready to back it up, because I don’t take threats lightly.”

  “Yes, it is a threat, Samantha, and yes, I am fully prepared to back it up.”

  As time passed, Cynthia Pryce’s obsession with Samantha only increased. There was not a day when she was not consumed with thoughts of removing her as pastor. One scheme after another was dissected, dismissed, and resurrected when no other viable plan could be devised.

  Percy and Cynthia had come to New Testament Cathedral from a neighboring church. They were a young and optimistic couple who wanted nothing more than to serve God and Hezekiah Cleaveland. In the early days the relationship was ideal. Percy fit in nicely as Hezekiah’s right-hand man. He performed weddings, funerals, and christenings when Hezekiah was not available. The church in those days was smaller and had a more intimate feel. Everyone knew everyone’s name or, at the very least, recognized their face.

  Cynthia initially loved the role of wife of the second in command. The position came with more power and prestige than she had ever experienced in her life. When she was a college student from the wrong side of the tracks in South-Central L.A., the extent of her exposure to wealth and fame was watching soap operas and people like Hezekiah and Samantha on her parent’s television in the city’s projects.

  But she was beautiful and cunning. There wasn’t a loss she couldn’t transform into a win for herself, and there was no man she couldn’t have if she chose him. She met Percy in her sophomore year at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. He was the young graduate student in the theological seminary. She was the popular undergrad whose primary purpose for being on the campus was to find a husband. When she first laid eyes on Percy as he walked across a bustling cafeteria, he catapulted to the top of her list of eligible candidates. Tall, chocolate, holding an armful of books, and the eyes of every girl in the room watching him as he walked by.

  No formal introductions had been necessary. One day she boldly sat next to him on the quad and simply asked him, “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

  Percy’s stammering response was, “Yes, I s-suppose do.”

  From nearly that moment on they were inseparable. He worshiped her from day one and continued to do so in spite of all they had been through together. She was woven into his DNA. Percy couldn’t face a day without first looking into her eyes and feeling the warmth of her body. He couldn’t sleep at night if she was not near. She was his touchstone. The reason he woke and the reason he lived. God was good, but for Percy, Cynthia was essential.

  As the church grew, Cynthia began to resent the subservient role her husband’s position had transformed into. He was the backup plan. The second best. The one
to call “only if Pastor Cleaveland isn’t available.”

  “Why do you let them treat you like that?” soon became the precursor to many of their conversations. “They don’t appreciate you,” was another, and as was, “You’re nothing more than his lackey.”

  Cynthia also took note of the increasing wealth accumulating just beyond her reach. One day the chauffeur-driven Escalades showed up in the church parking lot and the Cleavelands stepped out, as if they had had uniformed drivers their entire lives. Then increasingly expensive pieces of art began appearing on walls and tables in Hezekiah’s and Samantha’s offices. Then came the chartered jets for overnight trips for Samantha. But the final straw was the Cleaveland estate.

  Hezekiah and Samantha had hosted an open house for the members of the board of trustees and seven-figure supporters of the ministry. The display of wealth was shameless. The mammoth size of the house was bad enough, but on top of that Cynthia was stunned by the army of servants and the priceless works of art scattered around the house. Peacocks, fountains, tennis courts, and swimming pools—they were all too much for her to take.

  It was on that day that it became Cynthia’s life mission to replace Samantha as the first lady of New Testament Cathedral.

  “Are you okay, Cynthia?” Percy had asked her in the car on their way home from the open house that evening. “You haven’t said a word since we left the party.”

  Cynthia had sat silently, looking out the passenger window, as the car took them away from the rarefied heights of Bel Air.

  “I’m disgusted, just sick, and I don’t understand why you aren’t too,” was her icy reply when she finally spoke.