Choosing to SEE - Mary Beth Chapman [15]
“Get in the car,” he said. “I’ll drive you to Ohio, if you need to go home to your parents!”
Somehow we made it back to our own little home that night.
It was at this point in our lives that we met Geoff and Jan Moore, who would become lifelong friends. Geoff had recorded one of Steven’s songs as a demo to be pitched to other artists. When I met Jan later, we became instant friends. We’d spend hours at their condo, visiting and dreaming about the future.
When I had interviewed at Westside Hospital, the last thing my future boss said before he hired me was, “Now, you’re not going to get pregnant anytime soon, are you?”
“Of course not,” I said. I had a plan. “I just turned twenty years old, and we aren’t going to start a family for a long time.”
The only baby we had was our puppy, Peso, who was officially a Pekalhasaapsopoo. We’d gotten her from a shelter, a little ball of Pekinese, Lhasa apso, and poodle fluff. She was also teething, and chewed everything.
My grandmother had given me some old, old bedroom furniture. We had painted it an ugly blue. I left my birth control pills on the little blue table next to my side of the bed. They were in a blister pack, but that didn’t stop our puppy. Peso chewed up the whole thing, cardboard, plastic, and pills, and then moved on to whatever else she could ingest.
I called the vet and explained what had happened. “It shouldn’t hurt her,” he said. “But she may be a bit moody.”
I went to the pharmacy the next day, got another pack of birth control medication, and didn’t think much about it. After all, I thought, I’d only missed one pill due to Peso’s little snack.
Did you know that missing just one itty-bitty pill can cause pregnancy?
There we were, six months into Holy Headlock. No money. A moody dog. A happy Tigger bouncing around writing great songs, not worrying about much because God was gonna work it all out. And Eeyore, the main breadwinner – that would be me – gradually growing great with child . . . and fear.
I had to tell my boss. That in itself was scary. I had promised I wasn’t going to have a baby so soon, and here I was, pregnant. He was a great boss, but he also could throw a phone across the room, and we didn’t have cell phones back then.
To my surprise, when I met with him he just said a few words under his breath and then said, “Let me guess, you’re not coming back to work when the baby is born, right?” Well, the $250 I made every week was about the only source of income that we had. I told him I didn’t want to, but that I might have to.
During all this time, Steven had signed a development deal with Benson Records. This meant that he would continue to write songs for them and they would eventually develop him as a recording artist. It looked as though there might be a beginning to his ministry/career, and just in time, as our little Chapman would be arriving soon.
Then, when I was five months pregnant, we were standing in the parking lot of the record company. We just happened to run into the executive who was working with Steven. He told us that Benson had been sold to a big company in New York. “And all of the main executives,” he continued, “including me, have been let go. Don’t worry, everything will be just fine.”
We didn’t see him again for years.
Now we were realizing that Steven’s contract could potentially keep him involved for about fifteen years . . . in a company where all the people who knew him had been fired. He was in limbo.
When Steven originally signed this contract, we didn’t have the money for an attorney. We had earnestly prayed, asking God to do what He wanted with Steven’s career, read the fine print as well as we could, and signed away. All was well until that day in the parking lot.
What we didn’t realize was that by God’s providence Steven had a “key man” clause in his contract. This essentially meant that if any of the main people who were directly responsible for signing him and working with him were let go, then his contract was considered null and void.