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His Right Hand

Page 22

by Mette Ivie Harrison


  “Theater. Art. Anything that has to do with playacting. I guess she would also hate it if I did commercials or modeling or something like that.”

  With her body, Alice might make it as an actress. She was thin enough, and she had a beautiful face. But would it make her happy?

  “Do you feel like your mom wouldn’t be able to support your dream, then, if your dream was to be an actress?”

  Another shrug. “She just wants to protect me, I think. She says that when I get married, what will matter are organizational skills and homemaking and money management.”

  Alice’s tone sounded as if she was talking about sewage treatment.

  I had always wanted a daughter. But what would I do if my daughter were like this, prickly and uncertain? She had described William as being in a prison, but she was in one, too. I wanted to give her wings to fly wherever she wanted to go. I wanted to give her what I would have given my own daughter.

  “Do you want to take a break from your house? Live somewhere else for a while?” I asked. “You could come here. We have space, now that Samuel has moved out.” My heart felt tight at the thought.

  “What?” Alice said. “What are you talking about?”

  “I just mean, if you need some space. I think I could help your mother understand.” I really didn’t think I could. But I thought I might make Kurt do the dirty work for me and go talk to Emma. What would Kurt say about me inviting the teen daughter of another ward member into our home, just days after our youngest son had moved out? Was I afraid of having my own life? Did I need to be a mother in order to feel like I had any value? Or had I just been doing this mothering thing so long it had become a habit I couldn’t break?

  “Move in here?” Suddenly, Alice was looking around the house as if evaluating it, and I noticed how shabby it was. We hadn’t done any major home improvements since we moved in when Joseph was a baby. “But what about William?” she asked, shaking her head. “I couldn’t leave him. Or Mom. She needs us.”

  Yes, but what did Alice and William need?

  “Well, he could come, too,” I said blithely. In for a penny, in for a pound, right? “Or you could go over every day for a few hours during the summer, or after school during the school year. Whatever you decided would work best for you.”

  Alice shook her head. “That would kill Mom. She lives for us.”

  Right. And I so much wanted to see myself as different from Emma Ashby, stronger and more independent. Was I?

  “Well, you can come talk to me whenever you want, then. I hope you know that. You and William both,” I said.

  “Thank you,” said Alice. “I’ll think about it.” She walked out of the house with her back a little straighter. I told myself that was all I wanted.

  Chapter 31

  Kurt came home very late on Thursday night. He often looked worn after his weekly interviews, but he was dragging his feet a little, as if he’d forgotten how heavy they were, and his eyes looked puffy with rubbing.

  “Bad day?” I asked.

  “Good and bad,” said Kurt.

  There had been a good part?

  “President Frost got word today that we’re not to redo any of Carl Ashby’s priesthood ordinations, after all.”

  I leapt up from my seat. I’d have danced if I knew how to dance. “That is good news,” I said. What kind of bad news had made Kurt droop in comparison to that?

  “We spent hours making that list, but Tom and I never got around to calling people to set up appointments. It’s confirmation that I can feel the Spirit sometimes, I suppose. I just felt wrong about the whole thing, from the moment President Frost insisted on it. I was trying not to show him I was dragging my feet, but I was.”

  I had never heard Kurt criticize one of his church leaders before. I wasn’t sure this was even a criticism, the way that he put it. But it was skirting close to it.

  “Tom and I had to explain Carl’s birth gender to Brad, or else he would have been completely confused about the list we were making. You know, Brad never once got upset about it. He didn’t seem to think it was anything to blink an eye at.”

  Good for Brad. And good for Kurt, too. He’d been almost respectful in mentioning Carl’s past.

  “So what’s the bad news?” I asked after a moment, stroking Kurt’s hair and wishing that we could just find a space to leave all of this behind and be a married couple again, without the whole congregation of the ward seeming to follow us around wherever we went.

  Kurt shook his head and sat down, pulling away from me slightly. “It was after President Frost called. I’m still trying to figure out how I could have let it happen. I had a great spiritual moment of feeling God’s approval, and then it was gone in an instant.”

  “I’m sure you did what you had to do,” I said, trying to be reassuring.

  Kurt snorted. “I had asked Grant Rhodes to come in at the end of all my other interviews. And after we’d been talking almost an hour, I told him what I thought of his choices, things you know about and some other things he told me.” Kurt’s voice was harsh. “I told him he was not to return to our ward. I told him to go back to his own ward or he would have to find someone else willing to take him in.”

  I was sure Grant Rhodes had done something to bring on Kurt’s outburst. “What did he say to you?”

  Kurt shook his head. “I don’t know if I can tell you or not. I can’t decide if it falls under my obligation to keep silent or not. He was so angry when I was finished, I had to get Brad Ferris to physically remove him from my office. He fought back, breaking the chair he was in and kicking in the wall. Brad ended up getting hurt as much as Grant did, I think.”

  This had certainly never happened to Kurt as bishop before. I rubbed his shoulders, feeling their tension under my hands. “Did you call the police?”

  Kurt shook his head ruefully. “No, but I probably should have. I may regret that choice for months.” His stomach grumbled and I decided maybe I should deal with that and leave the rest until he was ready to talk.

  “Can I get you something to eat?” I said.

  When Kurt didn’t say no, I went and got him food anyway. He needed to get some calories in.

  But before I got back, his cell phone was ringing.

  I came in and set the cookies down as he answered it. “Oh, that’s wonderful. Just wonderful,” he said sarcastically. “Yes. Fine. I understand.” He hung up.

  “Who was that?” I said.

  Kurt turned, smiling widely, a rictus grin.

  “The police,” he said. “Grant Rhodes went in to sign a petition against me.” He emphasized the last word with outrage.

  “But I thought you said it was Brad Ferris who made him leave.” I didn’t see any scrapes or bruises on Kurt at all.

  “It was, but I’m not going to throw my new and very young second counselor to the wolves in his first month in the bishopric. He did what I asked him to do. I’m the one Grant is angry with, and I’m the one who should face the music.” His jaw was set so tight that only a crowbar could’ve loosened it.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. I wanted him to know that I was here with him, for him. “So what’s going to happen now?”

  “The police want to come interview me. Grant went to the hospital to have his injuries documented.”

  “But surely if they see the damage to the bishop’s office, they’ll realize it was all in self-defense,” I said. “Not to mention Brad probably has injuries he could get documented, too.”

  “I suppose,” said Kurt sourly. “But how do you think it will look to the rest of the ward if that’s their introduction to the new member of the bishopric’s handling interviews with the bishop?”

  That was a good point.

  Near midnight, the police came to our home to ask Kurt questions. There was no detective among them, just uniforms. Kurt lied valiantly to shi
eld Brad Ferris, and I didn’t contradict him, though I thought the lack of injury on Kurt’s body might be brought up. Somehow, it wasn’t. They didn’t ask to see the physical evidence at the bishop’s office, either. I didn’t know what to make of that.

  Kurt and I finally climbed into bed sometime past 2 a.m.

  “Should we call President Frost?” I asked in the dark, my words like a cloud of breath between us.

  I heard a choked bit of laughter from Kurt. “You know, President Frost advised me from the beginning to encourage Grant Rhodes to return to his home ward, and to make sure that he was not allowed to participate openly here. He said he had a feeling Grant was a troublemaker. I prayed about it and felt pity for the wardless man. Pity, can you imagine?” A strange, tight smile appeared again on his face as he reached for the light switch.

  “Are you going to give me a hint about what Grant Rhodes told you?” I knew something specific had provoked Kurt to react the way he had.

  Kurt sighed, and then said, as if it were still hard for him to get the words out, “Since he’s not technically in our ward and I will probably have to tell the police anyway, I’ll tell you. He admitted that he and Carl had resumed their love affair from college days. The last week of Carl’s life, they were having sex at the church building and at Grant’s house.”

  I thought about Sheri Tate’s revelation that she had planned to meet Carl at the church that night. Apparently, Carl had made other plans. I began to see why Kurt had been driven past his normal limits. The discovery that his own counselor had been transgender and hiding the fact from his own family was shocking enough; but now Kurt had just learned that Carl Ashby had been defiling the church building with an extramarital sexual liaison, and with another man to boot. Or had it been a heterosexual affair, technically? Did it depend on what exactly they’d done? Had Grant told Kurt details like that?

  “If Carl weren’t dead, he would be facing a disciplinary council,” said Kurt. “Breaking his temple covenants and his marriage vows, unrighteous priesthood use, lies and deceit, on and on. I told him I didn’t think he should be wearing his temple garments anymore because he was unworthy and insisted that as soon as he was called up to a council, he’d be denied the privilege.”

  “And that’s when he got violent?” I asked.

  Kurt hesitated a moment, and then admitted, “I yanked the sleeve out of his shirt, to make a point, I suppose. So I touched him first. I didn’t hit him first, though.” His cheeks were now dotted with red. Who does the Mormon bishop confess to? Some people would say the stake president, but in this case, it seemed he confessed to his wife.

  Kurt went into work that morning, but I could tell he was still worried about what would happen with the police and Grant Rhodes. Then he called me and said that the police had asked him to turn himself in, because Grant was pressing charges. He asked me to call Brother Carrington, a lawyer in the ward, to come act as his counsel. I was humiliated for him, though he seemed to be pretty calm about it all.

  After I hung up with Brother Carrington, who said that he would deal with Kurt as soon as he was booked, I called Brad Ferris, who had just arrived home after working a late shift at the airbag factory he supervised. He invited me over. I got to see Gwen for a moment before she left for her job as manager of a store in the mall. She gave me a hug, and I saw the tension and worry in her eyes. She and I had both testified at the Carrie Helm murder trial just a few weeks before. We’d never spoken of it outside of the courtroom, but it haunted both of us.

  Gwen kissed Brad goodbye, and he and I were left alone.

  “She doesn’t know about last night,” he told me. He looked better than I feared, but I wondered how much I wasn’t seeing. His shirt was buttoned to the neck, but I could still see a couple of scratches on his face. How had he explained those to Gwen? “I didn’t want to worry her.”

  I explained about Kurt turning himself in as I glanced around the front room, which had a futon instead of a couch. College student furniture mostly, cheap and easy to replace. Now that the church had closed the adoption arm of LDS Family Services, it was harder and much more expensive to adopt a baby, which I knew they were working toward, after years of infertility treatment. “There won’t be any need for her to worry,” I assured Brad. “Kurt will make sure of that.”

  I wondered if it was appropriate for me to be alone with him, though I hadn’t worried about the same thing with Grant Rhodes.

  “Let’s step outside, shall we?” I said.

  We stepped out onto the front porch, which was enclosed in scrub oak and almost as private as indoors. But this was all about technicalities, so I didn’t care.

  I leaned against the railing and said, “I just wanted to hear your side of what happened last night.”

  Brad wiped his forehead. It was already in the nineties, and though I’d heard many people say that dry heat wasn’t as bad as humid heat, Utah summers were still pretty bad. “I wasn’t trying to hurt him, you know. I was just trying to make him leave,” Brad explained. “He kept struggling and then he threw himself at me. I just used my hands to defend myself, and then to grab him again.”

  “Can you tell me about what Grant Rhodes did?” I asked. Brother Carrington might need this information.

  Brad gazed out from his porch toward the mountain that filled the horizon. Kennecott, the world’s biggest copper mining operation, had been hollowing it out for years, but despite the destruction the mountain had a strange, striped beauty.

  “Brother Rhodes was shouting that the bishop didn’t know what love was. He said it over and over again. That the bishop didn’t understand what it was like, that it was the most important thing, that the bishop was trying to stop love.” Brad played with his gold wedding band. “Of course, I know that’s not true. The bishop is one of the most loving people I know. He loves you and his sons. He knows love.” But Brad looked up at me, as if for confirmation.

  “Yes, Kurt is a very loving man,” I said. But maybe not the kind of love Grant Rhodes was talking about.

  I had a sudden inspiration. “Listen, Brad, could you go over to the church this morning, before anything is moved or cleaned? Take a camera and make sure you take pictures of everything you can, so we can use them in court if we need to. I want to be able to prove that Grant Rhodes was the dangerous one. And take a couple of photos of your face, too? For Kurt’s sake.”

  Brad agreed, and I felt a little relieved.

  Chapter 32

  But I went over to Grant Rhodes’s house anyway. I knocked on the front door, and when there was no answer, I stepped inside. The door was unlocked.

  I called out, “Grant? It’s me, Linda Wallheim! I’m just here to talk to you.”

  I made my way through the rooms of his house until I found him upstairs in his bedroom. If I shouldn’t have been in the living room with Brad, what was I doing here alone with Grant?

  “What do you want?” Grant asked. There was no disguising the damage he had sustained in the fight with Brad Ferris the night before. His face was badly bruised, a bright reddish purple, his jawline obscured by swelling. One eye was nearly swollen shut. He was wearing only a garment top, so I could see that his arms had livid marks on them as well, from someone holding him with a great deal of strength.

  “You think I haven’t been through enough pain?” he murmured.

  I held out my hands in a gesture of submission. “I promise I just want to talk.”

  “I got home at two a.m. last night from the hospital. I haven’t had enough sleep yet. I don’t know that I can talk very cogently.”

  The fact that he could still use words like “cogently” indicated otherwise. And at this point, I needed the truth from him. All of it at once. If he didn’t give it to me, I was going to call up Detective Gore and have a very frank talk with her. But first, I put on my solicitous nursemaid hat. “I’m sorry. Do you need any help with me
dications? With some food?”

  Grant seemed to forget that I was Kurt’s wife as I helped him into the bathroom, got him water, and looked through his medications to see which he needed to take now. Then I went downstairs and got some toast and “Postum” for him to dunk it in to make it soft enough for a sore jaw.

  He nibbled at the toast and sipped at the coffee.

  “Now, how are you feeling?” I asked, fluffing a pillow up behind him. I was a little jealous of the caffeine, and trying not to think about it, despite the glorious smell. At least it wasn’t fresh roasted.

  “A little better,” he said, nodding warily at me.

  “Good.” I leaned in close. “I just want to make sure you know that it wasn’t Kurt’s fault, what happened to you last night.”

  Grant’s eyes flashed and he put a hand up to ward me off. “I was the one who ended up in the hospital,” he said.

  I moved back, feeling defensive. “You threw things in his office. You damaged the walls. I think that whatever was done to you was only what you deserved.”

  Grant Rhodes flinched at that, and I immediately felt horrible for badgering him in his weak and vulnerable state. But what better time to get him to tell the truth—the whole truth?

  “I know this is all because you are grieving about Carl, and you can’t even tell anyone how you really feel.” Because most Mormons would be offended at the very thought of his pain from a long-finished love affair with someone who was now a transgender male.

  After a long moment, Grant said, “You don’t know anything about Carl. Not really. You only knew the parts he was willing to show people.”

  “Tell me about the real Carl,” I said. I prayed silently that whatever Grant told me, I would hear the truth in his meaning and his bearing. I needed to know if he was a killer or not.

  Grant looked down at his hands, held firmly at his sides. “We loved each other,” he said. “And there is nothing wrong with that.”

 

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