His Right Hand

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  In my reading, I’d learned that transgenderism and sexual orientation are not linked. Some transgender people are heterosexual, others homosexual. Some are even bisexual. Although Mormons might think that it was all the same thing, all about giving license to more and more depraved sexual urges, the studies seemed to show the opposite—that once they have transitioned, transgender people act out sexually less than the rest of the population.

  “But Carl must have felt enormously guilty about his wife and children,” I said. Did Grant feel a little guilty about that, as well?

  “You have to understand how long Carl fought against who he was,” Grant Rhodes said. “All those years. In college, he went through so many migraines, whole days he was unable to get out of bed, until he realized he had to match his body to his mind. It was only once he realized this that he was able to start living normally, facing the day.” He touched his chest, a gesture I remembered from when he had first spoken to me about Carl. “After that, all he wanted was for people to accept him as a normal man. He did everything the way he was supposed to.”

  “I understand that.” Or I was trying to. “But once he married Emma and had children, surely he had made his choice.”

  Another flash of anger in Grant’s eyes. “He never stopped loving me. Not even through that horrible pregnancy when he felt like his body had betrayed him. He insisted on giving her up for adoption. Do you have any idea how difficult that was for me? I told him I would be willing to raise the girl on my own, but he wouldn’t have it. He didn’t want any chance that she would find him, or that he would be drawn back into his old self.”

  Maybe Grant should have been emotional telling me this, but he sounded as if he was just tired of it all. He spoke almost in a monotone.

  “So after she was born and all the papers were finally signed, he started on his transition. He had surgeries, started taking hormones. I thought that maybe he would let me stay with him, that somehow we could find a way to be together. I still loved him, no matter what his body looked like. I wanted so much for him to believe that. But his parents had already rejected him. They said that he was rejecting God’s plan for him, and that he would never be able to go to the temple to be sealed forever to his own family.”

  So his parents had been Mormons, after all.

  “He hated them. They’d already tried to send him to ‘reparative therapy’ when he was in his teens. They called him a lesbian, because of the way he talked and acted and wore his hair. He’d always put on men’s clothing by choice, and they wanted him to go to church in dresses, to wear a gown to the prom.” Grant shivered a little, as if this were unfathomable to him.

  “Did he never have any contact with them after his transition?” I asked quietly.

  Grant shook his head. “Not that I know of. His parents only live about thirty miles away, in Fruit Heights. But they never contacted him again, after his transition. Carl has a younger sister and a younger brother. He never saw them again, either. It was the price for becoming his true self. His parents thought this made him a bad influence, that he would lead his siblings astray in some way. As if a change like that is catching.”

  There are very few transgender people, less than 1 percent of the population. I had never thought through how difficult it would be to make the transition, and the cost of doing so. No wonder so few people undertook the process. I didn’t know what Carl’s reasons were for not having more than top surgery, but maybe it was simply too painful and too long of a process, once he had already married Emma and began living as a man.

  “He didn’t want any ties to his old life,” Grant continued. “He even sent all the love letters I’d sent him back to me, and demanded I do the same. They were the only proof I had that he had loved me once.”

  Ah, so here was the answer to the letters. They had been Carl’s, after all. Not Emma’s invention. Not some other woman he’d had an affair with. But Emma must have known about them before the police came. She must have hidden them so they wouldn’t be found until she wanted them to be.

  “I tried to date other women, to fall in love with someone else. But it never worked.” Grant Rhodes’s fists were clenched, but that was the only emotion he showed. “They only reminded me of a shadow of Carla, and how perfect she had been. When I saw Carl for the first time after all those years, I could feel the connection between us still there. He was the same Carla I had always loved.”

  How interesting, that Grant had still loved Carl, and Carl had apparently still loved Grant, even after his transition to a new body and a new identity. Would I still love Kurt if he came to me and said that he wanted to live as a woman? I wasn’t sure that I would. Maybe Grant was right on some level, that he understood a higher love than we did. Or maybe to Carl it wasn’t eternal love, but rather a longing to be with someone who knew the full truth about him.

  “But that night he died, Carl said it was over, didn’t he?” I asked, watching Grant closely. He hadn’t said this, but I guessed at it. Carl had wanted his life as a man too much.

  “I tried to talk him out of it,” Grant admitted. “But he was resolute. I told myself that he would be weak again, that he still loved me. I thought I just had to be patient. I didn’t know that was going to be my last chance to talk to him, to touch him, to—” He broke off, and his hands seemed to spasm before he could control them again.

  Was love really a choice, or wasn’t it?

  “Did you ever consider how selfish you were being? Did you think about the cost to Emma Ashby’s happiness when you were having this affair?” I pressed, trying to get Grant to show some anger so I could evaluate it.

  “Her happiness? What about my happiness?” He thumped his fists on the quilt. “I had Carl for one week. Four nights, that was all.” His voice broke and he had to take in several breaths before continuing. “And she’d had him for twenty years. You call that selfish? That’s barely survival. That’s taking a drink after being thirsty for twenty years. That’s one sliver of a lifetime.”

  But he’d had Carl far more fully than Emma ever had, I thought.

  “Did you have any hint that Emma knew about you and Carl? She never saw you at the church, did she? Did Carl mention if she had seen any messages? Overheard anything on the phone?” I asked.

  Grant shook his head. “Not as far as I know.”

  “I’ll go, then. Grant, please remember all the good things Kurt has done for you. All right? You really don’t want to see him in jail for this, do you?” I stood up.

  “I do remember all the good things. That’s why I can’t bear it that he won’t let me come back,” said Grant softly. “I know I was wrong, but I need a place to belong. This ward is the only place I’ve ever felt at home.”

  I could no longer feel anger toward Grant Rhodes. I hated the thought of Kurt in jail, but I could also see that Grant Rhodes needed my help.

  “What if I found another ward for you? If I talked to the other bishops in the stake and found one who would let you go to his ward? It wouldn’t be too far out of the way for you to drive to, and you could meet new people. Start everything fresh. Wouldn’t that be a good thing for you?”

  “And what would you tell them about me?” asked Grant, his eyes slits of watchfulness.

  “I promise that I will only say that you can be a pain in Sunday School because you think you know everything. And that you had personal issues with Kurt that are unlikely to ever come up again with someone else.” I hoped that was true.

  “Would you do that?” said Grant.

  “I would,” I said.

  Using Kurt’s office once I got home, I found the contact information for three bishops in our stake who lived within a mile of us.

  I called the first one, Thomas Shaw, and introduced myself. I apologized for taking up his time while he was likely at work, but then said that Kurt was my husband, that he was the bishop of our ward, and that he
had a member who needed to find a new ward. I explained about Grant’s quirks and suggested that while he was difficult, he could also add to a ward’s character.

  “Then why isn’t he staying in your ward?” asked the bishop.

  “He and Kurt have had a personality conflict,” I said. It wasn’t false, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either. I wondered how God would view this deception. I didn’t feel the “burning in the bosom” from the Doctrine and Covenants that meant it was right, but I didn’t feel the stupor that meant it was wrong, either.

  Sometimes God expects us to take chances, I guess.

  “I’ll pray about it,” said Bishop Shaw dubiously.

  That wasn’t good enough for me—or for Grant Rhodes—so I moved on to the next number. And the third. I ended up going out of our stake and into the next one, which Kurt also had a directory for, though perhaps he wasn’t supposed to. I wondered if President Frost had already warned all the bishops in our stake about Grant Rhodes. But I finally got Andrew Shiner in the next stake over, still in Draper, and not that far away. Bishop Shiner actually seemed happy at the idea of Grant Rhodes joining his ward. He said they were newly split and the adult Sunday School class was extremely thin because everyone who would have gone to it ordinarily was instead filling the other callings a ward needed to function.

  So by 1 p.m., I was able to call Grant Rhodes and give him the name and number of his new bishop. “He’s agreed to take you into the ward, no questions asked,” I said, perhaps exaggerating the agreement slightly. “So, if you would call the police about Kurt, I would appreciate it greatly.”

  There was a long pause, and I wondered if I had made a bargain with the devil. But finally Grant said, “All right. I’ll call them.”

  About an hour later, Kurt called to tell me that he was being released, after only a couple of hours in a cell. He hadn’t even had to wait for Brother Carrington because Grant Rhodes had called and said he wasn’t filing charges.

  I called Samuel, just to hear his voice. But he sounded hurried.

  “Maybe we could do something tonight, just the three of us,” I proposed. “You and me and Dad?”

  I could hear his genuine compassion when he said, “Sorry, Mom. I’ve got plans up in Salt Lake. The roommates and I are going to play Ultimate Frisbee and have a picnic afterward. Sort of a chance to bond before we all get too busy with other stuff.”

  “Okay, well, I—we’ll miss you,” I said.

  “It’s not like I’m dying,” he said cheerfully.

  Sure, he could be cheerful about it. But it felt like I was the one dying. The old mother I’d been was gone. I didn’t know who would take her place.

  “I love you. Call us if you need anything. Call us if you don’t need anything, all right?” I said. I needed to hear from him more than from the other boys. He had always been my special one. My last one.

  “I will!” he said. “Come on, Mom. Don’t act like I’ve just cut off your arm.”

  No, it was much worse than that. But I worked up some enthusiasm in my voice. “I’m so proud of you. I love you. I want you to have a good life, all right?”

  “As long as I’m really close to home so you can pop in on it now and again,” said Samuel.

  “Not at all. I want you to go far away from here. Mostly so you can tell everyone everywhere how great a mother I am.”

  “Oh, I’ll do that,” said Samuel. “All my roommates already know. They’ve heard legends of your cooking. So you can make us some cookie care packages. Hint, hint.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said, and with great reluctance, hung up.

  Chapter 33

  Church meetings on Sunday went smoothly enough. Relief Society was all abuzz about a new president: Donna Ringel, the former chorister. She spoke about her goal for her tenure of knitting the sisterhood into love and community service. She didn’t specifically mention Carl Ashby’s murder or what had happened between Emma Ashby and Sheri Tate, but we all knew the context. I thought it was a good idea for her to address the problem, however obliquely. We had all been involved in something that had sullied us and we all needed to feel clean again.

  I wanted nothing more to do with the whole case. Detective Gore was going to have to bring her suspect to justice on her own. At least, that was what I thought, until Alice Ashby stopped by the house again on Monday just before noon.

  “I have something I want to show you,” she said.

  I invited her into the kitchen again. There were no cookies today, unfortunately. I was working on a complicated recipe for lasagna that wouldn’t be ready until dinner. But the smell of it was enough to make anyone salivate. I was pretty sure I’d eaten way too much of the cheese and sauce already, and I hadn’t even started assembling yet.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Alice poked around in her bag and brought out a flat manila envelope. She turned it upside down and a small piece of paper floated out. It landed facedown on the floor, and when I bent down to pick it up, I realized it wasn’t regular paper at all. It was photo paper, and there was a young woman’s picture printed on the back.

  I stared at the girl, who bore a startling resemblance to the young Carla Thompson in the photo I’d found online, with the same dark eyes and luminous, androgynous features. Except that this young woman was dressed in much more modern clothes than Carla had worn when she was this age: a form-fitting floral shirt with a white jacket on top. I saw no resemblance to Grant Rhodes, but surely this had to be the daughter he and Carl had conceived, before Carl’s transition.

  “Who is this, do you know?” I asked. “Where did you get it?”

  “I found it in the garage, on the shelves above the tools. I thought all that was in there were old toys that Mom wanted to keep for grandkids. But there was this.”

  Something else the police had missed, I thought.

  On the back of the photo was written the name Cristal.

  This, despite what Grant had said about Carl not wanting to have contact with his daughter after she was adopted. What a mess, I thought, feeling sick that I was being pulled into all of this again.

  “Who do you think she is?” Alice asked me.

  “I think you can guess, Alice,” I said. If she hadn’t had some inkling, she wouldn’t have brought it to me. And I didn’t like her playing stupid.

  “I think she’s Dad’s daughter. From before he married Mom,” she said.

  I let out a breath. She had hit on a way of putting it that didn’t bring out the complexities of her father’s gender identity. Did this mean she still didn’t know that part?

  “But why would he hide her from us?” asked Alice. Her eyes were intense and fixed on the photo.

  The young woman in the photograph wasn’t a teenager anymore. She looked to me like she was in her early twenties, which fit with the time frame I’d assumed, considering Carl’s age and the dates he was in college.

  “You and William were adopted,” I said. “And I think she was, too.” Possibly by the same old LDS Family Services organization.

  “But why wouldn’t he tell us about her?” asked Alice.

  “Maybe he was ashamed,” I said. “You don’t know how bad it used to be in the church. Having a baby without being married was seen as a terribly shameful thing.”

  Alice thought about this for only a moment. “I want to meet her,” she said, her voice sounding less confident than her words. “Do you think I could find out more about her somehow? Her address? Her phone number? Maybe I could find her on Facebook or something, even if I only have her first name. Do you think she’s in Utah?”

  “I don’t know, Alice. I don’t know anything about her.”

  I felt heavy and slow. Did Detective Gore know about this child? Did Emma? Even Alice might be feigning surprise about this. It seemed I was fated to be involved in this case no matter how much I wanted to g
et out of it.

  “Are you all right?” asked Alice.

  I came back to myself enough to notice that I was staring at Alice, and turned away. “Fine,” I said.

  Alice chewed at her lower lip and twisted her hands together. “It’s just—you looked kind of freaked out. Like you were going to faint or something. I’ve seen my mom faint before and that’s how she looked.”

  “No, I’m fine. Really,” I said, and tried to put on a blank face.

  “Well, this girl,” Alice continued, nodding at the photograph in my hand, “what if she was the one who met my dad at the church that night?”

  I had never considered this possibility. Could a young woman like this be a murderer?

  “I mean, if she’s eighteen, can’t she contact her birth parents and ask to meet with them?” asked Alice.

  “I don’t know the law. I think it depends on whether your father put himself on a list LDS Family Services kept. And if he decided he wanted to meet with her.” Would Carl Ashby have said yes to a request from a daughter whose very existence would threaten his place in the world—and in the church?

  I couldn’t see it, but then again, I hadn’t understood Carl well at all. Had he had feelings for this child who had come from his body, albeit a body whose female parts he had disassociated himself from? And of course, I’d never met this Cristal. Had she grown up in a good home? Or was she angry that she’d been put up for adoption and left to make her own way in the world?

  I handed the photo back to Alice and wished that I felt some impression of the Spirit. But all I felt was confusion and a sense of sorrow that seemed to pervade everything about this story. Carl and Grant’s lost love. The difficult marriage that Carl and Emma Ashby had lived in for twenty years. The loss of a father for William and Alice, and a mother for Cristal.

  “Do you think my mom knew about her, too?” asked Alice.

  And that was the most interesting question. If Emma Ashby had found out about this adopted child, what might her reaction have been? After what I had seen her do to Sheri Tate, I could imagine almost anything. She could have threatened the girl not to contact her husband again. She could have threatened the girl not to contact her husband again. If she had begun to worry about the legality of her marriage and her children’s adoptions, she might have been afraid that any mention of her might upend the other arrangements. I had thought before that if they were named in the will, Alice and William and Emma’s right to Carl’s assets couldn’t be challenged. But I hadn’t thought about a biological daughter coming out of nowhere to dispute the other claims. It might have made sense for Emma to demand Carl keep the girl’s name out of the will. Or even send intimidating emails to Cristal’s friends and adopted family. The more I found out about Emma Ashby, the more she frightened me.