Phony, Even Amongst Themselves.

I often wonder what makes certain people behave one way in public and quite another when they believe no one is watching.  It’s a small mystery of human nature, but every now and then, a particular encounter forces me to look at it more closely.

The Stankles were just such a family.

Individually, each member was curt at best and openly rude at worst.  When I passed them alone in the lobby, they wouldn’t greet me, wouldn’t hold a door, wouldn’t even muster the basic civility expected of neighbors.  Adonis Stankle once sneered outright at the ashes on my forehead on Ash Wednesday, as if the sign of repentance were a personal affront to him.  Which, maybe it was.  He left the Church because of some falling out with his own father and moved to a non-denominational Protestant sect.  That’s what he said.

But the moment another Stankle appeared beside them, the transformation was instantaneous.  Suddenly it was All Christian, All the Time: doors held open, cheerful greetings, syrupy small talk, and enough forced sunshine to blind a person.  As a group, they radiated a kind of performative wholesomeness.  Alone, each one reverted to something far less pleasant.

What made the contrast even stranger was that Adonis, the patriarch, fancied himself a weekend preacher.  Every Sunday he mounted his little stage of his community building of self-importance, reading from his community’s version of Scripture and occasionally dunking someone in the waters of baptism.  Meanwhile, his children vandalized parts of the building and stashed garbage in the common-area closets.  His wife, when encountered alone, was as prickly and uncommunicative as a person could be.

It was the oldest stereotype in the book: the preacher’s family who shines only when the lights are on.  The more I observed them, the more I wondered whether the righteousness they displayed in public was merely a costume; one they donned for applause and shed the moment the audience disappeared.

It sure seemed that way.