His Right Hand

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  I got in and continued holding Cristal’s hand. They said her blood pressure was very low, and they gave her oxygen as a standard procedure, but they didn’t seem to think her life was in danger.

  Thank God.

  I texted Kurt to tell him that Cristal was safe and that Emma was in custody with Detective Gore, who had found us on the freeway. I didn’t trust my voice on the phone, and I wasn’t eager to have Kurt yell at me and force me to admit that he had been right and I had been wrong.

  Cristal and I rode to LDS Hospital, where she was given a blood transfusion and stitches to her neck. Since I wasn’t, in fact, her mother, I had to stand outside, and I got to see Emma being led in to have her broken arm set with Detective Gore at her side.

  The troopers came and took a statement from me. They said they’d get one from Cristal when she was out of danger.

  When I saw Cristal being wheeled to another room and talking to someone on the phone, I finally called Kurt. “I’m at the hospital with Cristal, but we’re both fine,” I got out before he could start yelling.

  “My knees are not, however,” said Kurt, whose voice was surprisingly calm.

  “What?”

  “I’ve been on them since you left, praying for you to be safe. Since I couldn’t pray for you to be sane.” His voice was thin, and I honestly couldn’t tell if he was angry.

  “Well, it worked,” I said. Was that the reason I’d received the spiritual help I knew I hadn’t deserved?

  I started crying messily, mucus everywhere, which was stupid since everything was over now. I wanted to tell Kurt that I was sorry for leaving him behind on the driveway and for making him so worried about me. I wanted to tell him that I wouldn’t do this again, not ever. And that he was a good man, a good husband and father, and a good bishop. But that seemed too much like what Emma had said repeatedly about Carl, and besides, it was the kind of thing to tell someone privately, not on the phone in the hospital hallway with random strangers passing by.

  “What about William and Alice?” I asked.

  “Alice was nearly hysterical after her mother disappeared like that. William helped me calm her down. I took them home after your text message. I just got back a few minutes ago.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Emma Ashby’s presence was all over that house.

  “Linda, they need some rest. Best that it’s in their own familiar beds. In the morning, we’ll think what to do next. I’ll call a couple of foster families in the ward and see if they would be willing to take them in officially. Then I’ll ask Alice and William what they want.”

  Well, we would see, wouldn’t we? “What about Grant?” I asked.

  “He’s fine. He went home when I took the kids back to their house,” said Kurt.

  “I just wondered if he looked all right to you. Do you think he feels guilty about all of this?”

  “He should feel guilty. His affair with Carl was—” Kurt searched for the words.

  Wrong? Was that what he meant? “They loved each other. Can’t you accept that?” I asked.

  “I think I have accepted it. But they still violated marriage covenants,” said Kurt tartly. “If you think I’m going to crawl on my knees and ask Grant to come back to the ward, you’re wrong.” Then I heard a yawn through the line. Poor Kurt. He lost enough sleep as it was, just from being a bishop. Now he was losing even more because he was my husband.

  “You know I love you,” Kurt said.

  “Even still?” I asked, embarrassed at the wavering in my voice.

  “Do you remember what you used to say when the boys were naughty and you punished them? They would wait in their rooms for you to come in and say it. Until then, they wouldn’t come out.”

  “I remember,” I said, feeling relieved that he wasn’t angry, after all.

  “I love you now and always, including all the things you did wrong. But that won’t stop me from trying to help you get better. All right?”

  He even sounded like me when he said that, and it felt strange to hear the sentiment echoed back at me. It could have been patronizing, but somehow it wasn’t. It was quaint, and very honest.

  I hung up and saw a very short woman with blonde hair carefully coiffured, makeup to the nines. She was wearing jeans and high heels. After her came a man in a suit. They looked like the perfect Mormon couple. I guessed these were Cristal’s parents and I watched as they were led to her room.

  The EMTs had brought my car to the hospital, as they’d promised. I drove home and found Kurt was still waiting up for me, the light on in our room.

  I undressed in silence, and then reached for the light.

  “Would you like me to hold you?” he asked.

  Why did he think that, after all of this, he had to ask?

  Chapter 39

  That Sunday, we had our July family dinner. This time, I’d asked all five of my sons to come alone, without wives. I didn’t explain why, but I needed some privacy for what I’d planned.

  I had put a pot roast in the Crock-Pot before church started, and had the rest of dinner going within twenty minutes of church getting out.

  Kurt came home about thirty minutes later, put on one of my frilly aprons over his white shirt and tie, and asked me what he could do to help. I looked him over and gave him a little nod of approval. Our family wasn’t perfect yet, and Kurt and Samuel still had healing to do in their relationship, but we were doing some things right if Kurt could don a frilly apron without a wince.

  So I assigned him the task of peeling potatoes and chopping the other vegetables that I had set out by the cutting board. I had them in the order I needed them. The last ones were for the salad, which I insisted on making for every family meal. The boys called it rabbit food, but the salad always somehow got finished.

  “Are you unhappy about what happened with Emma?” asked Kurt.

  She’d had a court date on Friday, but it had ended with her being declared mentally incompetent to stand trial, and she was remanded to the custody of the state until such time as she was competent. At least the world was safe from her.

  “I still worry about William and Alice.” They’d been officially placed with a foster family outside of our ward, the Frenches. Kurt had been to see them a couple of times, making sure they were doing okay with the readjustments. At the moment, no one was talking about the legality of the adoption, though that might happen in the future.

  “They’d hear about her trial no matter what. It isn’t as if they can just move out of state,” said Kurt.

  “I know.”

  “But you want to fix everything.”

  “No. That’s you. You want to fix things. I want to comfort. I want to mother everyone,” I said.

  “Because you missed the chance to mother our daughter,” said Kurt.

  I looked up at him, my hands going lax, completely forgetting about the gravy I had been stirring. Was that why I had jumped into the car after Cristal? Because I was trying to save Georgia once more?

  Kurt put a hand on mine, but before we had a chance to say any more, life went on. The doorbell rang and Kurt went to answer it. I went back to stirring the gravy in a futile attempt to dissolve the lumps. I always had lumpy gravy. Cookies were a lot more forgiving when it came to a momentary lapse of attention. They were still good even if they were a bit overdone.

  Soon all five of our sons had arrived.

  Kurt sat at the head of the table and I sat at the foot. This used to have a more practical function, back when sitting together would have meant having two fewer sides from which to supervise the kids. By sitting apart, we could separate the boys more and make sure that one of us was always close enough to deal with a problem immediately.

  We’d done the same thing at church while sitting on those long, padded pews that seemed designed to encourage young boys to bounce on them like a trampoline.
We’d also done it when we took the boys out to restaurants (rare in the early days) and movies (also rare).

  I had spent years enviously watching the older couples who would sit together quietly on the shorter pews on the side of the chapel, but even now that the boys were gone, Kurt and I couldn’t do that for other reasons—he was always on the stand, conducting as bishop, and I was below him in the cheap seats.

  “Kenneth, will you pray?” asked Kurt.

  I had lowered my head, but I glanced up at that. Why would Kurt ask Kenneth, of all the boys?

  Kenneth opened his mouth and I was sure he was going to tell Kurt no. But then he simply bowed his head and said one of the simplest prayers of gratitude I had ever heard.

  “Thank you, Lord, for this food. Thank you for the hands that made it. Thank you for the love of family around us. Amen.”

  It was not at all a standard Mormon prayer, but it was a good prayer even so.

  I noticed that Kurt caught Samuel’s eye for a moment, and then Samuel’s gaze slid away. What did that mean? Were things really okay between them now?

  We passed the food around the table and heaped our plates high. I had lost a little weight over the summer with all the walking I had been doing with Anna Torstensen, so I ate without much guilt, as much as any of my boys. One of the hazards of raising sons is that no one eats delicately.

  As I digested too much food, I thought about the changing family I had to deal with now. When Adam had gone off to college for the first time, I had felt a long period of sadness. No one had warned me, while I was struggling with all my boys at home at once, that soon enough they would be leaving and I’d have to face the loneliness that came with that. It was a severing of bonds, and no matter how much Kurt reminded me that Adam was bound to me by the sealing ordinances of the temple, it didn’t lessen the sorrow of that earthly severing. And then it happened again with Joseph, Zachary, Kenneth, and Samuel.

  To have them all back like this, as if they were still mine and belonged here, was a gift. It almost tempted me to ignore the important information I needed to share with them tonight.

  But no.

  I looked at Kurt on the other end of the table. It was covered with half-full platters, serving bowls, dirty plates and silverware.

  I stood up. “I have something I need to say to all of you,” I announced.

  “This sounds bad,” said Zachary. “Is it about your birthday this year? Because I agree we gave you crap presents last year. We should definitely do better for Christmas.”

  He got some laughs, and then Joseph nudged Zachary. “She’s really serious, you jerk.”

  “Why am I always the jerk?”

  “I don’t know, why are you?” said Samuel. He already knew what I was about to say.

  There was silence after that.

  “I need to tell you something about my past,” I said finally. “I never meant to keep this secret, but somehow it never came up. And now it has come up, and I have to explain it all to you.”

  Samuel had done this much more gracefully, I thought. And he hadn’t waited for nearly as many years to do it.

  Zachary said, “Maybe she’s finally going to admit she’s an alien from another planet. And we’re all half-alien, too.”

  There were no laughs this time. Probably because of my steely expression. And Kurt’s.

  I didn’t want to do this, but I had to. Might as well get it over with.

  “I was married before I met your father,” I said bluntly.

  Now Zachary was speechless, which happened rarely. It was too bad I couldn’t enjoy it much with the way my stomach pressed against the waistline of my pants and my heart pressed into my throat.

  “His name was Benjamin Tookey. I married him when I was twenty and we divorced when I was twenty-one. We were only married for eighteen months,” I added breathlessly.

  “What did he do to you?” asked Joseph. Of course, Joseph was the one to assume something terrible had happened. I was conscious of the fact that I had asked him to leave his very pregnant wife at home this time. He hadn’t batted an eyelid at the request. He had become gentle of late.

  “I’ve always believed that he was gay,” I said as delicately as I could manage. “He felt obligated to marry, I suppose. The church didn’t have any tolerance for being gay back then. It was considered a choice, a lifestyle, and wrong. But in any case, it isn’t his fault that I never told you the truth about my past. I’m sorry I kept it from you for so long, but if you have any questions now, I’ll be happy to answer them.”

  More silence.

  “Why did you marry him?” asked Kenneth eventually.

  “I loved him. Maybe a part of me will always love him. He was the first man I ever loved.” I glanced at Kurt to see if he was hurt by this, but he didn’t seem to be.

  “Well, I think he was an idiot,” said Joseph. “And I’m glad that you found Dad.”

  “Because if you hadn’t, none of us would exist,” said Zachary. “And we sort of couldn’t be in favor of that.”

  I waited for more pressing questions, something painful from the boys, accusations about me lying to them. But nothing came. Maybe there was something good about having all boys, after all.

  Being a mother is a big job with a lot of power. God is the craziest of all parents. He gives us enormous power, then steps back and watches what we do with it. It is up to us to prove that we have done something good, and on a very deep level, I believe that the most important thing I’ll ever do with my life is be a mother. That is the greatest power of all.

  We had my favorite dessert, chocolate trifle, and then the boys finished up with the dishes.

  Samuel was the last one to leave. “I’d like to meet him sometime,” he said to me. “This Ben Tookey. If you don’t mind.”

  “Sure. If you want. If he agrees to it. And if he’s around.”

  “Do you have a phone number?”

  “I’ll try to find it for you,” I said.

  At that, Kurt gave Samuel a firm couple of thumps on the back as he hugged him goodbye, and I could see the love stretch between them. That was a good thing. Love was what kept families together.

  It was Carl’s love for all his children which had ultimately led to his death. He hadn’t been willing to cut himself off from love. He had done a lot of things differently than I would have done, but for that, I admired him. And hoped I was a little like him.

  Author’s Note

  This book came out of a journey that our family has followed along with our dear friends Neca Allgood and David Moore. My husband, Matt, and I met Neca and David when we were at Princeton for my graduate school from 1991–1994 and became close friends. When Neca was pregnant with her oldest child, Kale, and was two weeks overdue, we learned to play bridge every night to keep her sane. After grad school, our paths diverged and we didn’t know if we would ever end up living close to one another again. But David eventually finagled a job in Utah and then hired Matt to work for him. Our infrequent visits became weekly bridge nights. It wasn’t always easy to get our kids to play together, but we became closer than friends, family in every way but blood.

  In 2010, Neca and David’s son Grayson came out as transgender and we were privileged to be some of the first people he shared his new identity and name with. We transitioned along with him, to seeing the struggling LGBT community within the Mormon church very differently. Grayson wasn’t leaving Mormonism, though it would have been easy for him to do so. His father was an atheist and suggested that if Grayson didn’t feel welcome in the Mormon church, he could try other religions—or none. But Grayson and the whole family became huge advocates of embracing difference within Mormonism. They invited our family to join them on pride marches, to walk with “Mormons Building Bridges,” and to “Hug a Mormon.” Carl Ashby is not Grayson Moore, because Carl was born at an earlier time, but my unders
tanding of Carl’s situation comes from my love of Grayson and his family, and those within Mormonism who are working to show true Christian love.

  If you are interested in Grayson’s story, there are many videos of him online. Perhaps the best one is here:

  http://www.reelboyproductions.com/project/we-are-utah-

  grayson-moore/

  For those who are LDS and who are concerned about those within the church who are struggling with sexual orientation or gender identity, the Family Acceptance Project (http://familyproject.sfsu.edu/) is an excellent resource for anyone who is trying to figure out how to show love and help family members. There is a specific LDS booklet available that will answer questions and give advice (http://familyproject.sfsu.edu/LDS-booklet) and new videos on the project are frequently posted (http://familyproject.sfsu.edu/family-videos). This is for conservative and liberal Mormons alike.

  Acknowledgments

  I had no idea when I first signed with Soho in 2012 how amazing everyone at the company was, or how incredible their list of authors was. It came to me in flashes of brilliance, as I saw what could happen when everyone worked together to get my book the kind of attention I’d never experienced before. And then, as I met Soho author after Soho author, both kind and brilliant in turns, I began to be humbled. And tearful. And exhilarated. So this is what is meant when you find a “tribe,” or perhaps even better, a “family,” in the world of publishing. I have honestly spent most of my writing life a little perplexed by acknowledgments pages. I am a very solitary person by nature. I don’t have readers beyond my editors, the literarily bloodthirsty Juliet Grames, who I met years ago and was fast friends with before I ever wrote anything she might be able to publish, and then Annette Lyon, who makes sure I don’t make too many mistakes with regard to Mormon stuff. I don’t often think about people who help me in my process, except for a few close family members (thank you, Sage, who reads almost everything I write!). I research my books, but in my own way, online or poking through old musty books, or just observing those around me. I’ve always thought it odd that writers have become celebrities who speak to large groups of people, or who are expected to spend hours greeting fans and signing books. It’s not that I dislike doing this on occasion, but it’s not a skill that I expected to need to learn. Writers are people who naturally like to be by themselves, in a very quiet room, for hours on end, talking to no one other than the people in their own imaginations. We are introverts, and the idea of doing interviews, book tours, or meeting with strangers regularly once terrified me. Until Soho came along to prod me, encourage me, and show me how it’s done. It began at BEA in 2014, months before The Bishop’s Wife came out officially. I walked onto the floor, saw an enormous poster with my face and book cover on it (created by the keen-eyed Janine Agro), was half thrilled and half terrified. Then I came to the booth and was enthusiastically greeted by Dan Ehrenhaft, Meredith Barnes, Abby Koski, Paul Oliver, Amara Hoshijo, Rachel Kowal, and Rudy Martinez. I ducked my head and tried to take it in and be gracious. Then publisher Bronwen Hruska squired me around to everyone she deemed important. The fact that these smart, savvy people were interested in me was an overwhelming compliment, far beyond any accolades The Bishop’s Wife got in the press. After that came the dinners with other Soho authors: Dylan Landis and Robert Repino that first ALA. And later, Stuart Neville, Kwei Quartey, Tim Hallinan, Stephanie Barron, Cara Black, Lisa Brackmann, Ruth Galm, Matt Bell, Shannon Grogan, Martin Limón, Ed Lin, Justine Larbalestier, and Fuminori Nakamura. I read their books often after the fact, and then wished I had been able to talk to them about the books, but realized I would have been fan-girling at them more than being collegial. And there are the authors whose books I have read whom I haven’t met, but whom I am honored to share a list with: Lene Kaaberbøl, Agnete Friis, Gary Corby, Cynthia Weil, James Benn, Margaux Froley, Elizabeth Kiem, Andromeda Romano-Lax, and Colin McAdam.