by Jack Weyland
“I’m afraid not.”
Claire thoughtfully picked up a cookie, but she didn’t take a bite. “What if we came and visited you?”
“Well, that would be better, except they’d like us to be teaching about our beliefs instead of just visiting.”
“Is there any rule against us going to Morristown and having you teach us about your beliefs there?” Claire asked.
I looked at Norton who thought about it and then shrugged his shoulders.
“I guess we could do that,” I said.
“Let’s do it then!” Eddie called out. “We’ll just talk first and enjoy each others’ company, and then you can teach us, and then we’ll all go out to eat. How does that sound?”
“Where are we going to do this?” Norton asked.
“The church?” I suggested.
“No, let’s not do that,” Eddie said. “How about this? We’ll get ourselves a motel room, and then it’ll be more like you’re coming to our home, except we’ll have cable and a swimming pool. And Claire will bring cookies for you both.”
The details were worked out as Eddie and Claire drove us back to our apartment in Morristown.
• • •
Our first meeting took place a week later at an upscale motel in Morristown. When we arrived, Eddie was waiting for us in the lobby.
He couldn’t stop talking as he led us to the room. “Such a nice place. They have a pool, so you can go swimming if you want. And there’s a sauna too. Also, did you know we’re not far from where General George Washington camped during the Revolutionary War? So, it’s really quite historic here. We can go there if you want. Of course we don’t have to. Whatever you want.”
Eddie put his hand on my shoulder as we continued down the hall to the room. “We got here an hour ago. Claire wanted to make it more like a home. Oh, and she brought some scrapbooks about your mother. And some of her paintings. Charly was an artist, you know. Also, we thought we’d have dinner delivered here. I hope you both like Chinese. Anyway, if we eat here, then it’ll be more like home, you know what I’m saying?”
Eddie stopped at a door and knocked. “Claire, the boys are here.”
When she opened the door, she saw his hand on my shoulder. “You’ve been smothering the boy again, haven’t you?”
Eddie took his hand off my shoulder. “I most certainly have not been smothering the boy.”
“Please come in,” Claire said. “I’m sorry about my husband. We talked about this all the way over here, and I thought we had an agreement, but—”
“Who could blame me?” Eddie said. “I’m with my only grandson . . . after all these years.”
Norton and I stepped inside. It was an expensive suite with a small living room and a hallway leading to the bedroom and a bathroom. On a coffee table were two scrapbooks and a plate of cookies. And next to the table, propped against the wall, were some framed paintings.
“Sit down, relax, make yourself at home,” Eddie said. “Have a cookie. In fact, I think we all should have a cookie.”
I sat down on the couch between Claire and Eddie, and Norton took one of the big easy chairs.
“Would you like to look through the scrapbooks?” Claire asked.
I picked up the first scrapbook and opened it. On the first page was a photo of a newborn baby.
“That’s your mom just after she was born,” Claire said.
“I took the picture,” Eddie said.
“She doesn’t have any hair,” I said. “I didn’t either.”
“We know. We were there,” Claire said.
“Oh, right. I keep forgetting.”
“I can see her in you,” Claire said. “Same color eyes and hair.”
“You’ve got her smile too,” Eddie said.
Over the next hour I went through the two scrapbooks, watching my mother grow from a baby to where she was in high school. Norton grew restless and bored. Without the cookies, he’d have never made it.
They showed me the paintings Charly had done. They were modernistic, filled with bold strokes and lots of bright colors.
“Do you have more things of hers?” I asked, while I held up one of the paintings, which Claire explained Charly had done when she was not much older than me.
“We do,” Claire said. “We’ll bring them the next time we visit.”
“What was she like growing up?”
“Oh, she was a handful,” Eddie laughed. “Like with the harp lessons. In junior high, she insisted on taking harp lessons. So we bought her a harp. She took a few lessons and then gave it up. Do you have any idea what kind of a loss you can take trying to sell a used harp? I couldn’t bear to let it go for what people were willing to pay for it, so we still have it.”
“When she was your age, she loved life, and she loved people,” Claire said. “And, she was . . . well . . . exuberant . . . and unpredictable.”
“When your dad first met her, that was the one thing about her he couldn’t stand,” Eddie added.
“But it was exactly what your dad needed,” Claire said. “Before Charly came along, he was more driven by duty. Oh, he was polite, of course, but some people love people, and some just put up with ’em. Your dad spent more time thinking about what was the right thing to do, but very little time enjoying life.”
“That’s the way he is now,” I said.
“He was a different person when he was around your mother,” Claire said.
“Like when he got arrested in New York City,” Eddie said.
“My dad got arrested in New York City?”
“Didn’t he ever tell you about that?” Eddie asked with a big grin.
“No, but I’d love to hear the story.”
Eddie leaned closer and spoke confidentially. “Well, after your mom converted to a Mormon, she and your dad were dating quite seriously. But then your dad found out a few things about your mom that had happened before he met her and, well, the truth is, he said something to her that was very cruel.”
“It was more insensitive than cruel,” Claire corrected.
“What did my dad say?”
Eddie and Claire looked at each other, then Claire shook her head.
“It’s not important,” Eddie said. “Anyway, your mom flew back East to continue her studies. Eventually your dad realized what a jerk he’d been and how much he cared about your mom, so he flew back to talk to her. He tried to patch things up, but she would have none of it. So your dad barged into a place he had no business being and got himself arrested by New York’s finest. As far as I can tell, that was the only spontaneous thing that poor boy had ever done his entire life. But, what can I say? He was in love. It made no sense, it wasn’t part of his plans, it wasn’t like him to act so impulsively, but, that’s okay. What she’d done before she met your dad didn’t matter.”
“That’s a great story!” I said.
“We’ve got a lot more of ’em,” Eddie said, grinning.
Norton cleared his throat and glanced at his watch.
I nodded. “This has really been great to look at these pictures, but, right now, could we teach you about our beliefs?”
“Yes, of course. Let me get these things out of your way,” Claire said, picking up the scrapbooks and setting them on the floor next to the door.
Our first discussion went amazingly well. So well, in fact, that it seemed like they already knew the material. “Have you been taught before by the missionaries?” I asked.
“No, but, if you can believe it, Mister Information Systems, I did go to your church’s Web site and print out some information about your beliefs,” Eddie said proudly.
“It took him half the day to do it,” Claire said good-naturedly, “but to his credit, he didn’t give up. And, finally, he learned how to do it.”
“We studied all week,” Eddie said.
“Why?”
“We didn’t want you to have any reason not to keep teaching us. Did we do okay? Will you teach us again?” Claire asked.
N
orton and I were in shock. “Yes, for sure, let’s do this again in a few days,” I said.
Just then there was a knock on the door. It was a delivery guy with two big plastic bags containing several cartons of Chinese food. Norton had forgotten we were going to have dinner and just about had a fit that we had been there so long. That didn’t keep him from wolfing down his share, though. But as soon as he was finished he reminded me we needed to be on our way.
As we said our thanks and were preparing to leave, I asked Claire if she would say the closing prayer.
“If you want me to do it, I will,” Claire said.
Norton taught some basics about how to pray and then we all knelt down.
“Father in Heaven?” Claire said tentatively.
“We thank thee,” Norton said softly.
“We thank thee . . . that we can spend time . . . with our grandson. He is such a fine boy. His mother would be so proud of him . . .” She stopped.
“Claire, you okay?” Eddie asked.
“I just had a feeling, that’s all,” she said. She stood up. “Excuse me, I need to get some tissues.”
A minute later she returned with some tissues. She knelt back down. “Where were we?” she asked Norton.
“We ask thee . . .” Norton prompted.
“We ask thee to help Eddie and me understand these things . . .” She paused.
“I’m done. How do I stop my prayer?”
• • •
For the next few weeks we met every Wednesday at the same time in the same suite. They couldn’t seem to get enough of what they were learning. Norton and I were amazed at the progress they were making.
In fact, we were so excited that, at the next zone conference, the second Wednesday in February, during sharing time, Norton said, “There’s this older couple we’re teaching who actually download our beliefs from the Church’s Web site and study it so they’ll be prepared for us when we come to teach them.”
“That’s incredible!” President McNamara said. He leaned forward. “I would love to meet these people. Where do they live?”
“They live in Madison,” Norton said.
I cringed, hoping President McNamara wouldn’t connect that Madison wasn’t in our area. I also hoped that the elders who were working in Madison would just let it go and talk to me after the meeting. I was sure we could work something out. No use involving the mission president in this tiny little detail.
Sister Doneau raised her hand. “Elder Norton, how is it that you’re teaching investigators who live in our area, and yet Sister Bagley and I don’t know anything about it?”
“We don’t teach them in your area,” Norton said. “They come to Morristown once a week.”
“I see. I’m curious why you would encourage people to leave our area so they can be taught by you and your companion.”
Elder Norton looked flustered. “You’ll have to talk to Elder Roberts about that.”
“Elder Roberts?” President McNamara asked.
I turned and faced Sister Doneau’s humorless gaze. She was a legend in the mission. Everyone knew she was only twenty-three but had already completed a law degree from Columbia Law School before coming on her mission. I had once seen her demolish a zone leader when he tried to overplay his authority and impose an unfair restriction on the sisters.
“Elder Roberts,” she said, “I would be very interested in knowing how you justify teaching our people in your area.”
“I’d be happy to explain that to you, Sister, but I’m not sure this is the right time for that. We have so few opportunities to hear from President and Sister McNamara. I’m sure we don’t want to take away from their time to give us counsel and direction. Unless you don’t care about hearing from our leaders—”
“President McNamara, would it be possible for the four of us to meet with you to discuss this matter?” Doneau interrupted.
The president nodded. “Yes, of course, let’s get together after this meeting.”
“We have a teaching appointment at six-thirty,” Norton said.
“Someone from our area, Elder?” Doneau asked with a pleasant smile that wasn’t fooling me one bit.
“No.”
As the meeting continued, Norton and I watched as Sister Doneau bent over a notebook, furiously writing out her thoughts.
“She’s going to demolish us,” Norton quietly moaned.
“I’m not afraid of her.”
“You should be. Everyone else is.”
“We haven’t done anything wrong,” I said. “We’re teaching them in our area.”
“The first time we visited them we were out of our area.”
“Well, that’s true, but that was only the one time.”
“Right, only one time.”
Norton glanced over at Sister Doneau. “Look at her,” he whispered, “preparing to argue her case before the Supreme Court, and here we are, cowering in our seats.”
“We’re not cowering in our seats.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off her for the rest of the meeting. To me Sister Doneau looked like someone you’d get to play the lead in an action-adventure movie. She might have been pretty, if she had taken any interest in her appearance. But she wore no makeup, and her shoulder-length brown hair hung straight down without so much as a hint of curl to it. With her high cheekbones, at a glance you might imagine she was part Indian. She didn’t smile a lot, and as one of the elders said of her, “She takes no prisoners.”
The small, wire-rim glasses she wore made her look much more intelligent than she could possibly be. Also, her eyebrows. My gosh, it was like a forest in there.
Instead of military fatigues, which is what the rest of her appearance cried out for, she wore a plain white blouse, buttoned high on her neck, and a long, straight gray skirt.
She must have been aware of my gaze, because near the end of the meeting, she gave me a condescending smile and held up her notebook for me to see. Then she slowly tapped it on her hand like it was a loaded weapon.
“You’re right,” I whispered to Norton. “We’re in big trouble.”
2
After zone conference ended, President McNamara told us he had a few more interviews before he could meet with us. Within minutes, the meetinghouse halls were deserted except for Doneau and her companion, Sister Bagley, a dewy-eyed, soft-spoken new missionary who was both shy and yet strangely intense in her religious fervor, and Norton and me, cocky on the outside but very much worried about tangling with Brianna Doneau.
Ordinarily I wouldn’t have known a sister missionary’s first name, but throughout the mission she was called “Brianna, Be Brief!” by the elders unfortunate enough to have ever served in the same district with her. She had the nickname because once she had her mind set on something, she’d press her arguments until she wore everybody down.
While Doneau sat and studied the notes she’d prepared for our meeting with the president, I paced the floor. “This is taking too long. Norton and I have work to do.”
Doneau looked up. “Let me see if I understand—what you and Elder Norton have to do is very important, but what Sister Bagley and I have planned for tonight is of no value. Is that how you see it, Elder?”
Our companions were staring at us. I so much wanted to say something mean, but for Sister Bagley’s sake, I held back. “Not at all, Sister. We’re all in this work together.”
She smiled politely. I suspected she might have wanted to unleash some law school rhetoric on me, but to her credit, she didn’t do it, maybe for the same reason I hadn’t said anything. “I appreciate that, Elder.”
I sat down next to her. “I’m curious about something. Since you already have a law degree, why did you even come on a mission? You could be making a pile of money right now.”
“I wanted my life to count for something.”
“Oh, sure, and also because you weren’t married, right?”
I meant it as a harmless joke, so I wasn’t prepared for how she took it. For so
me reason I’d hit a nerve.
“Sorry. I was just joking around,” I said.
She recovered quickly enough to come back at me. “Is that your opinion of all sister missionaries, Elder Roberts?”
“Well, no, not really. I was just—”
“Just me then, right? Look, I don’t need to justify to you, or to anyone else, why I came on a mission. And another thing—I don’t see that my personal life is any of your concern.”
“Sorry. I was just trying to start a conversation, but I can see you’d rather be left alone.” I stood up and walked away.
For the next few minutes, I pretended to ignore her, but I kept stealing glances at her. I felt sorry for her. Nobody in the mission liked her. At least none of the elders in any area she’d ever been in.
She’s so in-your-face about everything, I thought. Everyone just puts up with her. I bet that’s the way it’s always been.
Although she irked me, I felt guilty for what I’d said. She probably came on a mission for the same reason most people come, the same reason I came.
I’d grown up with my mom encouraging me to be nice. I knew she would not approve of the way I’d treated Sister Doneau, so, after a few minutes, I walked over to her again. “You know what? I need to apologize for what I said.”
At first she gave me an icy stare, but then, as she decided my apology was sincere, her expression softened. “Thank you for saying that.”
We made eye contact. She had an ivory complexion and an interesting combination of dark brown hair and blue eyes. In high school I’d once told a friend I wanted to find a girl with brown hair and blue eyes. He’d told me nobody had brown hair and blue eyes. And now, standing in front of her, I was surprised there was anything to like about her. I kept staring at her. And then, after a few seconds, we both panicked. I turned away, and she escaped down the hall.
I felt like an idiot. I worried she’d think I liked her. I thought of going after her and telling her I didn’t, but somehow that didn’t seem like the polite thing to do. So I let it go.
A few minutes later President McNamara opened the door and two elders left. He called out to me. “Elder Roberts, what time did you say your appointment is?” He motioned the four of us to come into the stake president’s office he was using for interviews.
