His Right Hand

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  But Carl didn’t let it go. “We may have a joint purpose, but our roles are entirely different. Women have one path to follow and men have another. We can only find true perfection in fulfilling our roles completely, and accepting that God is the one who chooses who is to have one role and who is to have the other.”

  I could see Kurt opening his mouth to say something, but it was too late. Emma Ashby was already standing up, placing the cloth napkin carefully on her empty plate.

  “Wait!” said Kurt.

  She turned to face him. “Excuse me, Bishop,” she said.

  “Emma,” said Carl. “Please sit back down.” He sounded calmer now, but he would have needed to act a lot more contrite to convince me he’d be a pleasant dinner companion for the next hour—and Emma had had to listen to him on the car ride down here.

  “I can’t stay here. I have to go home,” Emma called, already on her way to the door.

  If she took their car, that would leave Carl to ride with one of us. He had one moment to decide what to do; as far as I could tell, he seemed most likely to just watch her flee.

  Kurt finally spoke up. “Go after her, Carl! Take her home and we’ll deal with things here.”

  Carl blinked once, and then did what Kurt suggested.

  He took long strides to catch up with her. I caught a glimpse of a flush of red on his face before the door closed behind him, and thought that at last he had figured out he was in the wrong.

  “I apologize,” said Kurt. “To all of you. This was not the celebration I intended it to be.” Verity and Tom were making noises about it not being his fault, but Kurt was looking specifically at me. He knew I held him responsible for not intervening sooner.

  But was it really his fault? I was the one who had overheard their conversation on the phone earlier. I could have warned Kurt there were problems to begin with.

  Chapter 3

  The waitress brought out our food, including what the Ashbys had ordered, hesitating before putting them down at the spots that Kurt indicated.

  “We’ll box it up and take it over after,” he said. “Then we can see if there’s still something wrong.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him. Did he think an argument like that could be fixed in a matter of minutes? I had no such optimism. Carl criticizing his wife in public like that wasn’t going to be easily repaired. You couldn’t apologize enough for something that arrogant and obnoxious.

  As I thought more about it, I realized it wasn’t the first time I had heard Carl take a reactionary position on gender roles. I remembered how unhappy Carl Ashby had been when Kurt had volunteered the bishopric to cook at the Christmas breakfast last year, the first year they were all in the bishopric together. “I don’t know how to cook,” he had said. “I’ll make a mess out of it.”

  “That’s half the fun,” said Kurt, and he insisted on it. Carl had refused to wear the apron that Kurt had brought, however, and had, as promised, made a mess of the pancakes. I had wondered if anyone could really be so inept as to ruin pancakes, or if he had done it on purpose to make a point.

  Clearly, gender roles were a strict law for Carl Ashby. And something Emma had done had tweaked him about it.

  “Has he mentioned any problems in their marriage before?” I asked. This wasn’t gossip. It was an attempt to help.

  “No, nothing,” said Kurt. I could sense his reluctance to speak about a private topic here. I hoped he and Tom would have a discussion with Carl later on, when they had their next meeting.

  “I’m sure they’ll work things out,” said Tom. “Marriage is the most important thing in the world for all of us.”

  Did he mean for Mormons, who believe marriage is a necessary ordinance to get into the highest level of heaven, the celestial kingdom? Or did he mean the bishopric specifically?

  For all the problems that I have with the church as a patriarchal institution, women have power in unexpected ways, and one of them is as a wife of a member of the bishopric. Men in the Mormon church have to be married in the temple in order to serve in the highest orders of the church. It isn’t a man alone who holds the highest priesthood, it is a man-woman unit, a marriage. That is why a wife is always asked if she accepts the calling of her husband into the bishopric. It is one of the few cases in which her vote truly matters. If she is against it, or if the marriage is unsteady, most of the time the calling will be withdrawn. And a divorce for a serving member of the bishopric almost always means an immediate release from the calling.

  We ate in silence for a while. Kurt eventually tried to talk about football, a safe topic. But when he noticed me looking at him balefully, he switched the conversation back to Fourth of July preparations, a topic more likely to involve Verity and me.

  It was all a façade, though, and we knew it. There wasn’t any real bishopric bonding going on, now that Carl and Emma had left in that state. We were just trying to make it to the end.

  Kurt asked me if I wanted dessert, but I declined and excused myself to go to the ladies’ room. Verity followed me.

  We were the only two women in the ladies’ room. I felt old looking at myself in the mirror. There were lines in my face that were recent, and my hair was going salt-and-pepper gray. I knew I shouldn’t be vain about it, but I was.

  Verity paused in front of the mirror as well. She caught my eye in the glass. “When I see women like Emma Ashby, I think it’s too bad we don’t know more about Heavenly Mother,” she said. “We need a model for how women are to be womanly and still strong, how they use power in a righteous way, even when their husbands are being unrighteous.”

  If my eyebrows could have flown off my forehead, I think they would have. I’d heard feminists within the church agitate about discussing Heavenly Mother more, even praying to her, but Verity deRyke was not the kind of Mormon I would have thought interested in the topic. “I suppose you’re right,” I said, wondering if she would say anything else. But she didn’t.

  After an awkward moment, we each used a stall, then washed our hands and went back out to sit with the men.

  As Verity and I sat down again, I was relieved to realize the men were talking about Carl and Emma, which meant they were taking the matter seriously. “Something is deeply bothering Carl,” said Tom deRyke, taking a bite of a giant brownie sundae that had arrived while we were gone. “He wouldn’t be acting like this otherwise.”

  “I’ll pray about it,” Kurt offered.

  “I will, too,” said Tom, nodding gravely. “Maybe add a fast.”

  I wasn’t happy with this. It wasn’t that I thought that fasting and praying for someone couldn’t possibly help; I just didn’t think that was a cure-all.

  When we got home that night, I checked in the living room to find that Samuel had fallen asleep studying for finals. I got him tucked into bed upstairs, then walked over to the Ashbys’ place and knocked on the door lightly. The porch light came on first, making me blink rapidly. I held out the food from the restaurant in the takeout boxes, stone cold now. I wondered who would appear on the other side of the door.

  I waited for a long minute before Emma opened the door. I looked her over quickly, searching for some sign of abuse, but the only thing I could see was puffy, reddened eyes.

  Emma took the leftovers. “I’m sorry about ruining the bishopric dinner,” she said hoarsely.

  Where was Carl? Was he going to apologize, too, or was he going to act as if it had never happened? I realized Carl reminded me a little of my father, long gone now, and long forgiven, too. But how it used to bother me that the man could never apologize for anything or admit he had done anything wrong. I remembered, when I was a child, my father knocking over a glass of milk and then blaming me for it, forcing me to clean it up. I had struggled so much in my relationship with him, love combined with resentment.

  “You don’t need to apologize,” I told Emma. “I just want to know if
I can do something to help.”

  “We’re fine. Really.” Her eyes flickered, and I realized that Carl must be standing behind her. My skin crawled. Had he been there the whole time?

  “We’ll talk later, in private,” I told Emma. “You know, everyone has problems. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that and asking for help.”

  “No, no. It was just a fuss I made over nothing. I’m embarrassed about it now.” Her cheeks flushed bright red.

  “You’re sure you’re fine? You could come over to our house for the night, if you’d like.” I really had a hard time believing she was in any danger from the stuffy, sometimes punctilious Carl, but I could be wrong. I had been wrong before. Too often, when it came to judging marriages in the ward.

  “No, that’s not necessary.” She tried to laugh. “Thank you for coming by, though. And thank you for the food. We both appreciate it so much.” Then she closed the door.

  I had the feeling she wasn’t very grateful to me at all. She thought I was being nosy, and maybe I was.

  Chapter 4

  On Saturday, when I finally had a chance, I talked to Kurt about the conversation I’d overheard on the phone. “Carl sounded so controlling and critical. Do you think there’s any possibility he’s abusing Emma?”

  Kurt seemed thoughtful. “I don’t know if abuse is the problem. Last night was the first time I’d seen Carl try to exercise any authority. You don’t know how many times Emma has called him during a meeting at church and demanded that he come home for some trivial thing.”

  Kurt thought it was trivial, but clearly Emma did not. I was certainly not going to condemn another woman for being jealous of the time her husband spent in church service. It left a heavy burden for the wife, and Emma’s children were younger than mine were. I sympathized with a woman who felt she needed the father of her children at home rather than serving the children of other people in the ward.

  “Do you think you should release him?” I asked.

  “I can’t release a member of the bishopric. The stake president would have to do that. But ask to have him released? I suppose, if he came to me and explained why he needed that. But he isn’t asking, Linda. And Emma hasn’t asked, either. We really don’t know what is going on between them. And unless they tell us, we shouldn’t leap to conclusions. That phone conversation could have been about almost anything.”

  I figured I would wait and see, and church on Sunday went without a hitch. Carl Ashby was on the stand for sacrament meeting, sitting to Kurt’s right. Emma was in Relief Society. I meant to go talk to her afterward, but she hurried out early and must have taken her children with her, because I didn’t see them when I walked by the youth rooms.

  I thought about Alice and William, who were both in high school. They had been adopted as infants. Emma and Carl both seemed rather strict as parents, filling the children’s lives with long lists of rules.

  Would either Alice or William know what was going on with their parents? They were in high school, certainly old enough to have observed the tension. Of course, it would be completely inappropriate for me to go to them for information just to satisfy my own curiosity.

  Late on Thursday night, Emma called Kurt’s cell phone and asked to speak to me.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Linda? Is that you?” she asked, her voice tired.

  “It’s me. What’s wrong?” I was suddenly afraid that Carl had escalated from demeaning her in public to hitting her. I suppose I had become ready to expect the worst of men.

  “Kurt answered the phone,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said, confused as to why that mattered. I glanced up and saw Kurt in the doorway of our bedroom, unsure if he should stay or go.

  “I thought there was a meeting at the church until late tonight,” said Emma. “For the whole bishopric.”

  “Not that I know of,” I said. I held my hand over the receiver and asked Kurt, “Was there a bishopric meeting at the church tonight?”

  “No,” he said.

  I let my hand fall from the phone. “Kurt says no meeting,” I told Emma.

  “But Carl said he had to go to the church. He said the meeting would run late and that I shouldn’t wait up for him.”

  What kind of a meeting could Carl have been talking about? “Kurt could call the stake president and ask if it was something on that end,” I offered.

  Emma hesitated a long moment. “Carl left just after six and he isn’t answering his cell phone. He’s never this late getting home.” There was a banked panic in her voice.

  “We can go over and check on him.” I looked at Kurt, and he nodded. He was still dressed, but I would have to change.

  “Thank you,” said Emma. This time it sounded like she meant it.

  I hung up the phone.

  “He really shouldn’t be at the church this late,” said Kurt as we got into the truck. “I can’t imagine what he’s doing. If this had been something to do with the stake, I would have known about it.”

  What I couldn’t imagine was what we would tell Emma if he wasn’t there. Where would we look next? What if Carl was involved in an affair, or some other lifestyle secret he was hiding from his wife, drinking or gambling or drugs?

  In the church parking lot, Kurt pointed at a brand-new silver Lexus. “There’s his car.” I had to admit whenever I saw Mormons, especially ones as sanctimonious as Carl Ashby, driving cars like that, it bothered me. The money spent on that car could have paid for ten missionaries. Or a whole lot of food in a shelter. We talk so much about modesty in terms of clothing in the church, less about modesty when it comes to giant houses, cars, or television sets.

  “So he’s here,” I said, and got out my phone.

  Kurt put a hand on my arm. “Wait until we’ve seen him,” he said.

  He parked and we got out. It was one of those late summer nights when the weather was perfect, warm with hardly even a breeze. I noticed there wasn’t another car in the church parking lot, so he wasn’t here with anyone else. I felt relief briefly as I dismissed the idea of him being involved in anything sexually illicit. I should have known better when it came to staid Carl Ashby.

  So what was he doing here? Praying in a quiet space away from home? Playing basketball all by himself in the gym? Doing genealogy on the computer in the library? Or just avoiding his wife?

  Kurt pulled on one of the main glass doors. “It’s unlocked,” he said. I followed him in. He checked the bishop’s office first. It was locked and dark. We went through the rest of the chapel, room by room, until we found him. He was in one of the small classrooms on the east side, in his usual suit and tie.

  He was dead.

  It was obvious as soon as we saw him. His face was a mottled reddish gray and he was completely motionless. I gasped at the sight and put a hand to my chest. My heart seemed to have dropped into my stomach.

  Carl was sitting on a chair alone in the center of the room with a woman’s pink silk scarf on the floor underneath his feet. His hands were at his sides, and he looked almost as if he were waiting for someone to arrive. My nose wrinkled as I recognized the smell in the room. Feces. His clothes were stained with it, but I couldn’t tell without getting closer if the carpet was covered as well. The advantage of multicolored, low-pile church carpeting was that it hid so many problems.

  I let out a sound. At least, I think it came from me and not from Kurt. I’d never seen an actual dead body up close like this, not before it was cleaned up by a mortuary, anyway. Kurt reached for me and pulled me to his chest.

  I could hear the beat of his heart against my ear. It was thundering.

  I felt a wave of guilt. I had been so angry with Carl the last time I saw him, it felt like I’d had something to do with his death. Did God want me to do something here? If so, what? I tried to pray, but felt a heaviness that made it impossible to reach for the heavens.


  Kurt released me and took a step forward to lean over the body, putting his hand to the neck to check for a pulse. Why hadn’t I thought to do that immediately? But Kurt looked up at me and shook his head.

  “How? Why?” I asked, the words bubbling up without conscious effort.

  “Choked to death, it looks like,” said Kurt, his voice hoarse. He motioned to the line of red around Carl’s throat, right above his white shirt collar.

  Right. And the scarf on the floor—was that the murder weapon? If Carl had been murdered, then who had done it? How long ago? Were we in danger? The church doors had been open when we walked in. Had the murderer escaped already or was he still here? I wished Kurt and I could hurry out and pretend we hadn’t seen any of this. But of course, we couldn’t.

  I said, “We should call the police.”

  “Yes,” said Kurt. As bishop, he had perfected the gift of sounding normal no matter what the circumstances. “Maybe it was a break-in. Someone trying to steal something and Carl caught them.”

  I held tight to Kurt again, then let go as I realized that the other possibility was that the murderer was someone we knew, someone from our ward. Again.

  I cleared my throat to make my voice sound more normal. “But why was Carl here in the first place?” The more I thought about this, the less sense it made. I stared at the room, the table and chairs all in place. Surely there would have been some kind of struggle. And why leave the scarf? Was that really what he had been killed with?

  Kurt stepped into the hallway to make the call, out of respect for the dead, I suppose. I heard his steady voice through the open door, explaining to an emergency dispatcher what we had found. He had to repeat himself several times.

  I wanted desperately to step out with him, but I found myself staring at Carl’s body. He did not deserve to be left alone here. I felt like the last thing I could do for him now was to stay with him for a few moments. Kurt came back in. “One of us needs to call Emma,” he said. “She needs to know about this. She can’t just sit and wait all night.” Kurt’s voice sounded just slightly different to me, as if he had a cold. Or was it just that my ears weren’t hearing normally?