The Bishop's Wife (20 page)

“I'm sure both little girls and little boys feel that way,” said Kurt, who seemed to have recovered more quickly than I had. Why shouldn't he? His entire sex wasn't being attacked.

“Little girls face a harsh world,” I said. Kurt must have heard the danger in my voice, though Alex Helm might not have. “They need to know that there is someone always on their side.”

“So long as they do right, there is someone always on their side,” said Alex Helm. “But if they do wrong, then they will be dragged down to hell and become servants of the devil, who will use their pretty looks and their manipulating ways for his own work.” He made a strangling motion with his hands and jerked an invisible woman to the floor. Quite the performance, I had to admit. He would be an excellent Lucifer in the temple film. Very real.

I tried for a moment to dial back my revulsion for Alex Helm, to feel sympathy for him. Maybe his childhood had been terrible. Maybe his mother had been manipulative and selfish, as he seemed to think all women were. But here he was now, a grown man, a father and a grandfather. And he was looking at me like I was dancing with seven
veils in front of him, ready to seduce him and then suffocate him while he struggled to escape from the hell of my clutches.

“With her mother gone, Kelly needs more love than ever,” I said. “Or she will grow up thinking that her mother left because she herself wasn't good enough.”

“Her mother left because she is one of the whores of the earth,” said Alex Helm bluntly. Scripture or not, his tone chilled me. I looked to Kurt. Let him be diplomatic about that.

“I'm sure all of us have an equal chance at repentance,” said Kurt, putting out an arm in an attempt to guide Alex Helm toward the front door. “God always wants us to come to Him, and the Atonement is available to any who want it.”

Alex Helm didn't budge. I saw a smile spread across his face. “Except those who are sons and daughters of perdition, who have known the full truth of the gospel, have had the Holy Ghost testify to them, and have rejected it. Those who reject Christ in His fullness have no second chance,” said Alex Helm. His voice boomed authoritatively, though his words were not precisely authoritative.

The doctrine of the sons of perdition I knew, although I had never heard of daughters of perdition. Mormon scriptures said there were those who would not end up in any of the three kingdoms of glory that were Mormon heaven, but the number was supposed to be tiny. Fewer than a dozen was what I had always thought, because there were so very few who truly had the full knowledge of Christ in their hearts and then rejected it.

All the rest ended up in one of the three degrees of glory: the telestial kingdom, where murderers went; the terrestrial kingdom, where the honest people of the world who denied Christ went; and the celestial kingdom, where only those who were righteous and had had all necessary Mormon temple ordinances could go.

But as I stared at Alex Helm, I rather hoped that if I went to a heaven, it was one of the two he wasn't in. Or maybe he would be one of the sons of perdition himself.

“We can't condemn others. Only God judges us, at the end of our lives,” said Kurt. He had stopped trying to push Alex Helm to the door and instead was blocking my path to the man. I'd always told the boys that they should avoid physical violence at all costs, but Alex Helm was the kind of man who inspired extraordinary measures.

“That doesn't mean we are absolved of the responsibility of calling evil evil.” Alex Helm shook his head. “If Kelly isn't taught her place now, before she grows too old to learn properly, there will be no hope that she will turn out differently than her mother. And I won't be the grandfather to a little whore.”

That was all I could bear to hear. I raised a hand and slapped him hard across the face.

Kurt flinched at the sound, then sighed and shook his head. “Now, Linda, I think you need to apologize for that.”

Alex Helm had a hand to his cheek, and he seemed to be gloating. “I think that you have some work to do in your own house,” he said to Kurt. “You might have your own whore of the earth, Bishop.”

Strangely, this had no effect on my anger, because I didn't care what he called me.

But Kurt did. He put a hand directly on the smaller man's shoulder and pushed him toward the door. “Please tell Jared that he is welcome to come to me for counseling whenever he feels in need of it. And that he and Kelly are both in our prayers.”

The door opened and closed, and then we were free of Alex Helm. God, what a noxious man! I hated the thought that he and I shared the same religion, at least ostensibly.

“Do you need to scream now?” asked Kurt. “Or hit someone else? You can hit me if you want.” He pointed to his cheek.

I was plenty angry, but Kurt wasn't going to get out of this with just a punch to the jaw. “How dare you?” I said to him. “How dare you agree with him like that?”

“I didn't agree with him,” said Kurt mildly.

“You told him that we all needed repentance.”

“We do,” said Kurt.

“And then you told me to apologize for hitting him.”

“Yeah, that was stupid, wasn't it?” said Kurt. He looked a bit sheepish at that. “But mostly, I was just trying to get rid of him. Aren't you glad about that part?”

Yes, I was. I took a breath and let go of the idea that Kurt had in any way agreed with Alex Helm. “Fine,” I said.

Kurt moved to the door and glanced out the peephole. I assumed he must have seen Alex Helm in the distance, retreating to his son's house. “What a horrible man. I actually feel sorry for Jared. Can you imagine having a father like that?”

“Can you imagine having a father-in-law like that?” I said. “Poor Carrie. And poor Kelly. What will she think of her possibilities in the future with a man like that whispering in her ear every moment of her life?”

Kurt turned away from the door and looked straight at me. I felt as if he could see to my soul. They say that bishops can do that. “About Kelly Helm. Linda, be careful, please. She isn't yours. If you become too attached, you will only end up hurting yourself.”

“And what about Kelly? I'm more worried about her hurts than my own. She's the child. I'm a grown woman.”

Kurt stared at me for a long moment, and then he gave up trying to talk me out of my feelings for Kelly Helm. “Well, no wonder their marriage had so many problems,” he said. “Knowing Alex Helm is here certainly won't help Carrie want to come back.”

But the real question was why Carrie had ever let herself marry into such a family in the first place. Her parents, it seemed, were right about everything.

“By blood and by right.” Those were the words that Carrie had used in her letter to her parents to describe Jared's claim to his daughter. And his promise that she would not be remembered, except as a crazy woman—I hoped desperately that wasn't true, and that it was Jared's own craziness that would eventually come out, now that his father had arrived to fan it into flames.

Still shaken by my conversation with Alex Helm, I went over to the Torstensen house at about ten to check on Anna before we were due at the mortuary for the dressing of the body. I knocked on the door and waited for an answer. It took several minutes and another knock before Anna Torstensen came to the door.

I was shocked by her appearance. To my eyes, she looked like she was the one who had died. Her skin seemed thin and papery over the bones of her skull, which stood out clearly in the yellow artificial light. Every movement seemed slow and deliberate and distant, as if she were a puppet of herself, and there was an absence in her eyes.

“I thought we could drive down to the mortuary together,” I said. She didn't look like she could drive herself.

“Thank you,” said Anna. “I just—I think I need a few more minutes to prepare myself.”

“Have you had anything to eat today?” I asked.

She shook her head again.

“Let me make you some toast and then we'll go,” I said. “All right?”

She stepped away from the door, and I led her into the kitchen. I looked through her cupboards, wishing there were some forbidden coffee to perk her up and settling for herbal tea. I warmed some bread in a pan, then spread it with butter and jam. I had to tell Anna
to sit down.

“Eat this,” I said.

She took tiny bites, showing no reaction of either distaste or enjoyment. When she was finished, she stared down at the crumbs on her hand.

I brushed them off for her and handed her the herbal tea.

She took a sip and made a face, the first reaction I'd seen.

“Too hot?” I asked, taking it back and touching the mug myself. It didn't seem too hot.

“Too sweet,” she said. That was a good sign, wasn't it? After a long moment, she got up and poured herself a glass of tap water.

“Is there anything I can do for you now? Anything you can't face doing?”

“Cheri Tate will be here tomorrow. She's going to help me go through his clothes and send them to Goodwill. Or throw them out.” She said the words calmly, but afterwards, her eyes were shiny and wet.

“Well, I'm glad to hear that she has things under control.”

“She is very organized. She's making sure the funeral luncheon will go smoothly, too.”

“I'm so sorry,” I said, feeling again how useless the words were.

“I should have been ready, you know,” she said. She was standing up, and I pulled her down to sit next to me. We were still in the kitchen, on the hard chairs, but I couldn't see how to move into the more comfortable couch in the living room now that she had started.

“I'm sure you never really can be,” I said.

“I keep feeling like there are things we didn't finish. All these things that still had to be done.” Her hands flexed, dropped. “I know that he was seventy-three. I had so many years with him, more than most people have. More than he had with his first wife, certainly. But it still feels incomplete. It feels like I've been cheated.” There were spots of red on her cheeks.

Good, I thought. Be angry. Shout at God or at me or at anyone, if
that helps you come back to life.

She began to talk in a nostalgic tone and I let her, though I was keeping an eye on the clock: 10:15. The funeral was at 2:00
P
.
M
. We still had a little time.

Anna was saying, “We had a summer vacation planned this year, do you know that? All the years we've been married, and we had never taken a vacation in the summer. He was too attached to that garden. We only went on winter vacations, and those were only for a few days because of work and school schedules. We couldn't afford to go very far away, so the weather was always an issue, as well.” She looked up at me, and I nodded encouragement. Better she talk about this than about the death.

“We were going to go to Mexico. A long drive down, so we could enjoy time together talking and listening to books on tape and music. I have lists of things that I wanted to get to. And then the hotel reservations and all the sites we were going to see. I wanted to try real Mexican food and see the ocean. I've never seen the ocean, do you know that?”

“No,” I said. Apparently, there was a lot about her life I didn't know.

Her eyes flickered as if she were about to start weeping. But I sensed a grand effort and she went back to the brittle happiness pasted on top of her pain. “Tomas's wife is expecting her first child, did you know that?”

“Really?” He had to be in his late thirties. That was late to start a family, at least in Utah. But he didn't live in Utah, and sometimes it seemed like Mormons outside of Utah were part of an entirely different church.

“Yes. In late spring. Tobias was so excited when he heard it was a boy. He didn't want them to name the child after him, but Tomas told me this morning that it's what he and his wife want. What do I say to that? Now that Tobias is gone, do I tell them it's all right? Even though I know it was what he wouldn't have wanted?”

Again, I had the sense she was on the edge of losing control.
Should I let her weep on my shoulder or should I encourage her to be strong? This was not the Anna Torstensen I had met at first. “They might have called the boy Tobias even if Tobias were still alive,” I said calmly. “He wouldn't have had control over what name they chose.” When my sons started having children, I would have to deal with the same thing. Being a grandmother would be wonderful, but letting go might take work. And the more time I spent thinking about Kelly Helm, the more I thought it was going to be a lot of work.

“Oh, you'd be surprised,” said Anna, a faint smile peeking out for the first time since she'd opened the door to me. “Tobias had control over many things. He told you how things were, and gave his reasons for why no one could disagree with him. And no one did. He never raised his voice, just spoke rationally and clearly until the rest of us gave way.”

He had always been a quiet man, but I suppose I hadn't seen what was underneath that quiet until now. “I feel lost without him,” said Anna. She met my eyes, and I saw the piercing clarity that had drawn me to her from the first. “But there is a part of me that is relieved. I hate that it's true, but I feel like a burden has lifted.”

“There's no reason to feel guilty about that,” I said, though she didn't look guilty. “I think that is very common when someone dies after a long illness.”

“Yes, but shouldn't I feel more sad about it? Shouldn't I be crying and having fits because he is gone?” If she had, it would have surprised me, considering the kind of self-contained woman I had always seen her as. But was there something else she was saying to me? I thought of Carrie Helm and wondered if she would have been happy if Jared had died.

“Anna, did Tobias ever hurt you?” I blurted out.

Anna stood up suddenly, her hands fluttering. She was framed in the morning sun coming in the kitchen window behind her, and it made her look like she had a halo all around her. “No. Whatever
makes you say that? How could you think that?”