Magdalene (61 page)

What does it mean?

It means she was a good girl who got trapped
in a corner and couldn’t fight her way out.

He’d insisted on dedicating Inez’s grave
himself.

The significance was not lost on me: Inez
was as much a part of his life as Mina, and Mitch had buried two of
the only three women he’d ever loved.

Still loved.

I didn’t recognize myself and the
green-tinted feelings flowing through me.

It is incumbent upon you to accept him the
way he is.

Whereas
I
had only loved one man in
my life, and I had to share him with two other women, women who
made up part of his heart and soul. I had to live with the fact of
their existence, whether I liked it or not.

After all, he accepts
you
and you
rebuilt your wealth on your back.

He was learning to live with that reality.
It got easier for him every time he ran into someone on my list who
respectfully acknowledged Mitch as the man who had attained the
unattainable. On
his
terms.

It had popped up a time or two early on:
someone sneered at one or both of us.

Yeah, okay, it makes me mad,
he’d
admitted.
But you know it doesn’t change how I feel about you.
As long as you don’t let your inner martyr dictate some weird
change between you and me, I’ll get over it.

My inner martyr. Good God. I’d put that down
hard and fast.

Like I have to get over your eternal
marriage to Mina and your till-death-do-us-part one to me? Think
about it from my point of view. You go where a lot of people have
gone before, but they’re history and you don’t have to share any
part of my body with anybody ever again. I’m the third woman in
your heart, and I’m always going to be number three, sharing you
with them. How do you think
I
feel?

Uh... Oh. Oops?

Yeah, oh, oops. You’ve been throwing this
tantrum for weeks. You better get over it pretty damned quick,
because your inner spoiled brat is pissing me off.

But once Mitch put the word out that he knew
everyone’s dirty little secrets and would not tolerate either of us
being mocked—on pain of ruinous consequences—suddenly none of these
people knew me at all, much less intimately.

So in the end, I couldn’t have kept Inez’s
death or note from him even if Louise hadn’t decided to preempt and
prod me.

I chose another course to fulfill what I saw
as my obligation to my husband.

It had taken my people all of a day to track
down Inez’s children. Both boys had been adopted by an upper middle
class Jewish family in Rhode Island, and had done well for
themselves.

The graveside service had lasted less than
five minutes. I’d stood between Prissy and Louise, some distance
behind Inez’s sons and their beautiful families. Mitch had said a
short ritual-sounding prayer to dedicate the grave, then continued
to pray in his normal syntax, praying for Inez to be blessed and
happy as she had never been on Earth.

“That’s it?” I’d whispered at Prissy when
we’d all said “amen” and the casket rollers began to turn, and Inez
was lowered into the ground.

“That’s it. Normally, we’d have the usual
visitation and a funeral service the next day, then this, go back
to church for a dinner the Relief Society prepared, but...” She’d
gestured to the paucity of mourners. “The only sacrament involved
is the dedication of the grave. The rest is whatever the family
wants.”

“Well, that’s efficient,” I marveled.

“We’re efficient people,” Prissy said.

“Louise,” I said, “I told you to spend
whatever you needed. That’s a shit casket.”

“It is not—
crap
. It’s just plain and
nobody’s going to see it anyway—”

“And pragmatic,” Prissy added, amused.

“—but they will see the beautiful headstone.
Crap
would’ve been a pine box, not polished maple. Trust me.
I’ve only been doing this for five years, yanno.”

Prissy snorted. “Until Sunday.”

“Hallelujah.”

“What happens Sunday?”

“My counselors and I will be released from
the Relief Society presidency when Mitch and his counselors get
released.”

“I thought he was already released?” I said,
thoroughly confused.

Louise shook her head. “Not officially.
Everything will proceed as if he’s come to the natural end of a
long second crack at bishop.”

“How many people know what happened? We
can’t be the only ones.”

Prissy looked at me with a blank expression.
“Know about
what
, Sister Hollander?”

Ah, okay. That spin machine had probably
cranked into overdrive the minute Prissy and Louise got the
news.

“Is it like an incoming president appointing
a new cabinet?”

“Kind of. Depends on the circumstances. I’ve
seen it done other ways.”

“Who’s the new bishop, then?”

Prissy growled, and Louise didn’t bother to
hide her smirk. I would’ve laughed, but this was still a
funeral.

“Oh, ha ha ha,” Prissy grumbled.

I looked at my friend. “Guess you’ll have to
brush up on your people skills.”

“She thought if she was antisocial enough,
it would keep Steve from being called.”

“Shut up, Louise.”

But here we were, three months after Inez’s
funeral and though Mitch had been fidgety and unsettled for some
weeks, he still hadn’t said a word about how he felt about her
death, except to tell me how his church viewed suicide—which was to
say, without any real judgment on its level of sinfulness.

We don’t know those people’s states of minds
or how much pain they must have been in to take their own lives, so
we can’t judge if they’re even responsible for their actions.
That’s for the Lord to decide.

That was when it occurred to me how much
pain and suffering Mitch must have endured vicariously through the
years.

Bishops forget. When I was released the
first time, I forgot it all. Then I talked to some other former
bishops, and they’ve had the same experience. The minute I was
released this time, I forgot it all. I’m sure I could dig around in
my memory somewhere, but I don’t want to.

Really? Weird.

Mmmm, not
weird
, no.

Clearly he had an opinion or at least a
theory—one he wouldn’t share, once again keeping the deepest parts
of his spirituality away from me because he couldn’t bear my
skepticism or, worse, ridicule. I might have gotten angry all over
again, but I’d begun to notice that this was a cultural thing.
Conditioned reflex. Gunshy, the lot of them, drawing people in
superficially, but keeping people away from their most sacred
customs and rituals, away from the depths of their personal faith
and beliefs so as not to invite more scorn than they already
bore.

I’d become a little sensitive to it
myself.

I knew enough by now that I could deduce the
direction of his thoughts. I might be able to worm it out of him
eventually, but if he didn’t cough it up soon, I’d ask Giselle.
She’d answer any question I had because she didn’t consider my
opinion important enough to be offended—or she would simply sneer
at any bigotry I might display, inadvertently or otherwise.

That bad-tempered bitch was growing on
me.

It did occur to me that Mitch might not have
had time to work through it right away—we’d been busy since he’d
laid Inez to rest.

Trevor had graduated from high school and
moved into the new apartment in my townhouse to go to NYU. He’d
insisted on paying me rent, which shamed my girls enough to offer
too, albeit grudgingly. Mitch stared at me, eyebrow raised, and
Nigel glared at me until I’d thought of a compromise I could live
with. The children were to send the money to a charity of their
choice. And provide me proof.

Clarissa had graduated from college and
moved to Kansas City. We’d gone with her to make sure she was as
acclimated as she could get, her first time away from home for a
significant period. I’d left the Kenards’ cozy home depressed.

Giselle and Knox would do for her what I had
never been able—
willing
—to do. It would be brutal for her,
and I deeply regretted that, but at least it would get done if she
had the courage to stay. Bryce would likely be the only buffer she
could count on. She wouldn’t be able to run back home to Daddy or
her sisters. Nigel wouldn’t allow it. She wouldn’t be able to run
back to Mommy. Mitch wouldn’t allow it.

If she left the shelter of Mitch’s family,
she’d be completely on her own.

The separation of the old Jep Industries
from Hollander Steelworks was finished, right down to the last
paper clip in the new office complex in Allentown.
Hollander-Dunham, “a subsidiary of Hollander Steelworks,” was all
shiny and new, with clever branding and ad campaigns to make it as
memorable to the general public as BASF was to my generation and
“Intel inside” is to my kids’. Two entire floors of the largest
building in the complex were dedicated to the department that would
bring to market the products made with Mitch’s alloy (which had yet
to be named). OKH Enterprises would be fabricating some of those
products, as it was the only factory in the country with the
equipment to do what Mitch wanted done.

Not a month after I shut down my office at
the Steelworks and sent my staff back to New York for a long paid
vacation, Mitch and I rushed to New Orleans when Lisette went into
labor and delivered Mitch’s—
our
—first grandchild, a boy.
Then we were informed that Geneviève would produce a second
grandchild in January.

Whatever Inez’s death had unsettled within
him, the one child’s birth and the news of the other child’s
conception must have settled back down.

My mother sent word that my father had died.
Mitch, Nigel, Jack, and I met Sebastian and his mother, Dianne, in
Beatrice, Nebraska, where my father had spent the last years of his
life working for the Union Pacific Railroad. It didn’t surprise me
that Sebastian wanted to pay his respects to his mentor, but what
did surprise me was the hundreds of other people from the financial
sector who had also turned out.

My parents had not had a church. Mitch
buried him at my request and with my mother’s blessing. I watched
in shock as Sebastian participated in the ritual, he and Mitch
working smoothly together as if it hadn’t been twenty-five years
since they’d last shared a faith. Dianne Taight gave an
extemporaneous eulogy of Theodore St. James that left no one
dry-eyed—and she had never met him.

My mother lived in a small bungalow on a
large plot of land that she had turned into an ever-providing
vegetable and flower garden. She refused to move back to New York,
as she was settled with the group of close friends she’d had for
years, and she truly enjoyed her life. She also refused my offer of
providing her with a retirement income.

Mama, don’t start being stupid now.

When did you get so mouthy?

Your granddaughter taught me.

Oh, my little Cassie Junebug, you don’t
really think your father and I would’ve planted ourselves in the
middle of a corn field with no intention of growing, do you? After
all, this is where we started.

Ah, well. I wondered.

I have far more than enough.

I’m so glad.

I love you, Junebug.

I love you, too, Mama. Be well. I’ll come
back and check on you if you’ll let me.

I would like that.

In October, Mitch and I would be in the
Missouri Ozarks for a wedding. I don’t care one whit about Eric
Cipriani’s politics, but it’ll be fun someday to be able to say I
know the President of the United States. And Vanessa—well, she’ll
make the finest First Lady since Jackie Kennedy, as she has class
and charm down to a science. Considering Missouri’s governor had
just died in an Amtrak train derailment, the kid’s campaign for
Missouri’s attorney general had made a sharp right turn into a run
for the governorship.

As an independent.

After having publicly told the RNC to go
fuck itself.

He’ll be a force to be reckoned with.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

I started at Mitch’s husky voice and saw the
elongated shadows in the sand. “I’m hungry.”

“I’ll grill you a flounder.”

“Allow me to help.”

“Certainly.”

He hopped up and held his hand out to me,
drew me to my feet. He flicked the nipple jewelry again. “I
really
like these,” he said low.

“Matches what I have on my clit. Keeps me in
a permanent state of vague arousal. You know, like your cock ring.
Which I know you’re wearing right now.”

He laughed and draped his arm around me,
guiding me toward our hut.

“Do me a favor,” I said abruptly.

“What?”

“Grow a goatee. I think you’d look
dashing.”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

“To answer your question, I was thinking
about Greg Sitkaris.”

“Oh?”

“Do you really want to know?”

He said nothing for quite a distance and
then said, “No. Plausible deniability.”

“That won’t fly on Judgment Day.”

He smirked. “Probably not.”

We grilled. Ate. Went to bed and made
love.

How different it was when we were both
relaxed, nothing to worry about, no pressing issues. We talked
until dawn, then slept.

We basked in each other’s company, read
books, watched movies, swam in the ocean, drove our boat to
nowhere, and slow danced on the beach in the moonlight to music we
only heard in our heads. We spent the weekends on the neighboring
islands finding street festivals where we mingled and danced with
the locals, gorged ourselves on native delicacies, bought local
crafts, and wore casual clothes to church.

He refused to miss church, and services in
another country with a completely different racial and ethnic
makeup, a strange accent—but the same rituals—was oddly bonding. I
liked learning the culture of this ward, which was so different
from the one I knew, but the same. It was at once surreal and
comforting.