For Time and All Eternities

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  We rang the doorbell at the main white house, and a woman in a close-fitting sheath, floral on black, answered the door. I was surprised at how young she looked, though she clearly had the same facial shape and nearly the same hair as Naomi. Surely this couldn’t be her mother, and Naomi was the oldest of the children, which left . . . who?

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Kurt Wallheim,” Kurt said, from behind me. “And this is my wife, Linda.”

  There was a lot of noise behind her, children’s voices.

  “Come inside and I’ll go get Rebecca,” said the woman, waving us in without either smile or warmth.

  Ah, I thought, relieved to recognize a familiar name. Naomi had told me that her mother’s name was Rebecca.

  Kurt and I stepped into a small foyer with wood flooring.

  “I’m her aunt Sarah,” explained the woman.

  So she was Talitha’s mother, I thought. “You and Rebecca share this house?” I asked aloud.

  “Yes, because we’re sisters, but the other wives all have their own homes close by.” There was that wide smile again, and it almost seemed to have something wolfish underneath it now.

  “That makes sense,” I said, though my head felt like a butter churn, trying to imagine what it would be like to live like this, behind a padlocked gate in a location that even Google didn’t seem to know about. I was trying not to leap to conclusions, but Sarah did not strike me as a happy person, despite her nice clothing and her handsome features.

  Sarah showed us into the front room, which was filled with musical instruments, including a baby grand piano in a strange shade of pink. There were also several recliners and a white-and-green plaid couch. The wallpaper was busy and floral, peeling at the edges.

  “What a lovely room,” I said politely. I felt acutely uncomfortable and wished at the moment that Kenneth and Naomi had been here with us to ease the way, but Naomi had wanted me to have this unfiltered view of her father’s world.

  “Our sitting room, but it doubles as our music room,” Sarah said. “Carolyn comes to give lessons here when she isn’t pregnant.” She gestured to the couch, and Kurt and I sank into it. “Rebecca will be here shortly,” she said. “She’s been waiting for your arrival all day.”

  There was a long moment of silence until I said, “This seems a lovely, private piece of property.”

  “Oh, it is private, all right,” said Sarah.

  That didn’t sound very positive. I glanced at Kurt, who was studiously not looking at Sarah. He did that sometimes when he found a woman attractive. So that left polite conversation to me. I wanted to ask a thousand questions, from how long Sarah had been married to why she’d decided to join her sister in polygamy and how they dealt with things like food preparation and, well, jealousy.

  Instead, I tried something innocuous. “How many children do you have?” I asked.

  “Five,” she said. “Two boys and three girls.”

  I nodded. “I have five children, too.” We had something in common now, which should open things up. “How old are they?”

  She shrugged. “Far too young,” she said.

  I was left trying to figure out if she meant they required a lot of care or something else. “My sons are mostly grown,” I said, guessing at the former. “I have one granddaughter now, but I remember the days when they were all at home. It was very noisy, very chaotic. Sometimes I would wish for just one moment to myself.”

  Sarah stared at me. “And would that help?” she asked. “One moment to yourself, I mean. Were you able to pretend for a little while that they didn’t exist, that you were the woman you had once been?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. My suspicion about her being unhappy seemed confirmed now.

  Kurt put a hand on my shoulder. “I think Linda has always been the same person,” he said gently.

  Sarah looked sour at this, though I thought it was a nice compliment—and a surprising one considering our relationship right now. “Really? No changes? Then what did you do before you had children?” Sarah asked.

  “Do?” I echoed, trying to refocus.

  She waved a hand. “As work. Or were you one of those women who never thought she would do anything but be a mother, like my sister Rebecca?” There was clearly a nasty judgment in that phrase. All was not “well in Zion” here.

  “I studied psychology, but I never went to work in it.” Unless you counted my trying to help troubled families behind the scenes as a bishop’s wife, I suppose. It certainly wasn’t paid.

  “Then you never had grand ambitions that you gave up?” Sarah said.

  “What? I guess not.” I’d heard younger women talk about regrets about being stay-at-home mothers, but that had rarely fazed me. I was happy with my choices in the past and my prospects for a future.

  “Ah.” Sarah turned to Kurt, as if her interest in me was over. “And you? Were you always the bread and butter type?”

  He didn’t wince at this blunt assessment, though I found myself wanting to defend him. Kurt was an accountant, but that didn’t mean that he was boring. He helped people, which he did by using numbers. He wasn’t a cog in a wheel. He was an individual and she didn’t know anything about him just by looking at him for two minutes.

  “I always believed that earning a living honestly was nothing to be ashamed of,” Kurt said.

  “Honestly? That means you think other people make a living dishonestly? People who don’t follow the rules like you do?” Sarah said, one eyebrow raised.

  For a first meeting, she seemed to be making a lot of judgments about us. Maybe we were, too, but I felt like we weren’t blurting them out. I wondered if Sarah met people so rarely she didn’t have a good sense of what was socially acceptable or if it was just a mean nature that made her like this.

  “And what’s your profession, if I may ask?” Kurt said, somehow managing not to sound accusing in return.

  “My purpose in life is my painting,” Sarah said.

  I’d never met a painter before and wondered if this made sense of her dislike of company. Maybe we were interrupting her painting time. But then again, if we were, having so many children couldn’t be good for her art, either.

  “That sounds fascinating,” Kurt said genuinely. “I’ve always loved the great painters.”

  She sniffed at him. “Oh, really? Who is your favorite?”

  I was sure she was waiting to hear that Kurt admired da Vinci or perhaps Rembrandt. Instead, Kurt said, “Kandinsky.”

  It stopped her for a moment, and she blinked at Kurt. Recovering, she said, “Ah, Kandinsky. You’ve seen reproductions, I suppose.”

  “I traveled to Europe in college and saw as many of his originals as I could find when I was in Berlin,” Kurt responded. I’m sure he was enjoying her surprise at this new facet to his character.

  “Excuse me. I think I hear one of the children calling for help,” Sarah said abruptly, and went out the back door.

  I could see nearly a dozen children playing in the backyard, but Sarah didn’t go to any of them. She headed past them, disappearing into the shed. Was she going to get some outdoor toy or gardening implement? I didn’t see her come out and after a minute, I gave up waiting for it. She wasn’t the one I’d come for, anyway, and even if she was a painter, I didn’t particularly want to spend more time with her.

  I watched the children outside. Which one was Talitha? They all looked alike to me, though the girls were dressed in denim or khaki skirts rather than shorts or pants as the boys were, and their long hair was braided. I was impatient to talk to the little girl I’d come to help, but I reminded myself I could do that later, once we’d met Stephen Carter. I was already steeling myself for his defense of polygamy.

  “Do you ever wonder what would happen if the Supreme Court ruled that polygamy was legal?” I whispered to Kurt. It seemed a real
possibility, now that same-sex marriage had been ruled legal throughout the country.

  He shook his head. “I really think it’s unlikely we’d suddenly hear about a revelation to return to polygamy. The church doesn’t want to be associated with Warren Jeffs or anyone like him.”

  “Sister Wives doesn’t look that bad on television,” I said, trying to joke around.

  Kurt wasn’t amused. “It doesn’t look normal, and the church needs to look normal for the missionary work to go forward,” he said practically.

  “Hmm,” I said. I suddenly wished I had done more research on fringe Mormon polygamy. I’d assumed I knew enough about it, but now that I was here, I felt like a kid caught unprepared for a test.

  Chapter 6

  There were footsteps down the stairs and the woman who appeared looked like a much older version of Sarah. Her belly sagged in the loose cotton gown she wore, and her wrinkled face was marked with age spots.

  Kurt and I both stood to greet her.

  “Oh, you’re here already. I was just doing some laundry. I thought . . .” Her gaze drifted to the backyard and I figured she knew where her sister had gone. “Well, anyway, I’m Rebecca Carter.” She offered a tired smile that seemed very familiar to me. “I’m so glad to meet you. My husband, Stephen, will be here in just a few minutes. He had some business to attend to.” She shook our hands formally, her two hands over each one of ours in turn. “Brother and Sister Wallheim, it’s so good to meet you now that our children are planning to bind our families together.”

  “Please call me Linda,” I said.

  “Call me Kurt,” Kurt said after a long moment.

  I’d never thought of his name as a description of him before. Maybe it hadn’t been before now. My curt Kurt. I’d always liked his honesty, but not everyone did.

  “Sit, sit.” Rebecca moved to sit on one of the recliners and motioned us back to the couch. Behind her was the pink piano. There was also a cello in a stand-up case, a bass, and several violins and violas, as well as some wind instruments.

  “Did anyone get you refreshments yet?” she asked. “I’m sure it was hot outside and you’ve come quite a ways. I have some lemonade freshly made.”

  “No, thank you. We’re fine,” said Kurt, though I would have liked to have tasted her lemonade, just to see how it compared to mine. Did she put lemon zest in it like I did?

  “Something to eat?”

  “We’ve eaten,” Kurt answered for both of us again.

  “All right, then. We can focus on getting to know each other,” said Rebecca. She folded her hands in her lap. “I understand you’re an accountant, Kurt. Is that as fascinating as I’ve always imagined it to be?” There was just a faint flicker of a smile in contrast to her sister’s wolfish and cold smile.

  Rebecca might have more children than I did, and her life circumstances were certainly very different, but her manner made it easy to feel at home with her. I felt an instant connection to this woman. I’d heard some Mormons say that when that happened, it was a sign that you had been friends in the premortal life, as spirits, and destined to find each other again.

  Kurt laughed gently, as easy with her as I was, it seemed. “It pays well and I’m good at it. It’s been a blessing to our family.”

  “Except perhaps around April fifteenth?” Rebecca said.

  “Well, it feels like less of a blessing then, certainly,” Kurt said. “But not all blessings feel like blessings when we’re getting through them.”

  “That’s certainly true.” Rebecca’s face tightened and I wondered what “blessings” she was thinking about right then.

  “Being the wife of a physician must be difficult, as well,” Kurt said.

  Rebecca’s mouth twitched. “Relatively speaking, that is not the most difficult part of my life.”

  We were all dancing around the elephant in the room at this point. Where was Stephen? Where were the other three wives? Why hadn’t he made sure they were all here in a row to greet us? I answered the question myself—because he wanted us to see how normal they were. Rebecca was normal. This one main house was normal. All of this was supposed to feel normal to us.

  Except that it wasn’t.

  “And you have five boys, I understand,” Rebecca said, turning to me. “Kenneth is, what, the third?”

  “He’s the fourth,” I said, and then listed them off in order. “Adam, Joseph, Zachary, Kenneth, and Samuel. In fact, Samuel, the youngest, just left on a mission to Boston, so we’re empty nesters now.” There was pride in that, and just a tinge of sadness for me.

  “I hope to meet the others some time. They must be good men, if Kenneth is a measure of them. I’m sure you’re very proud of the kind young man he is. He’s certainly won Naomi’s heart, which is no easy thing, let me tell you,” Rebecca said warmly. “When she left the house for college and I asked her how she would manage telling men she dated about her family, she said that she didn’t plan to date. I think her exact words were, ‘No man is worth that kind of trouble.’ And for more than four years, she continued to believe that. Until Kenneth.”

  I felt oddly touched by this tribute to Kenneth, and I could see that Kurt was struck speechless.

  “Thank you,” I said. “You must know, as a mother of grown children, that it’s always nice to hear good things about them when they’re out on their own.”

  It occurred to me belatedly that I ought to say something nice about Naomi, but Kurt got there before me.

  “Naomi seems very intelligent and ambitious. But to be honest, I was most impressed with how attached she is to her younger brothers and sisters. She must have a big heart,” he said.

  I tensed, worried Kurt was going to say too much about Talitha and why we were really here, but he narrowly avoided it.

  “Well,” Rebecca said, “Naomi has always taken good care of her younger siblings. She started babysitting when she was very young and I worried she would become resentful about it. When she was a teenager that was certainly a problem between us. She hated it when I asked her to watch the other children instead of doing her schoolwork. Then she would be up till all hours of the night finishing while everyone else was asleep. I thought going to college away from the family might make her selfish, but she still comes home and brings treats for the younger ones every time.”

  Other teenagers argued with their mothers about spending too much time with friends; Naomi had apparently resented not having time to do schoolwork. That told me something about Naomi, and about how strict the rules of the family here were.

  “I suppose you have another older daughter who has taken her place now as the main babysitter at home,” I said. I was thinking about Talitha, and how maybe it was possible that it wasn’t an adult who was abusing her at all, but one of the other trapped, older children.

  “After Naomi, the next two oldest are Aaron and Joseph,” Rebecca said. “But they are both at the U of U and don’t live here, either. After that comes Ruth, who spends weekends at home, but goes up to USU during the week for school.”

  So she had four children who were out of the house, similar to my five. But she had a younger family, as well. What would my life have been like if I’d had five more children after Samuel? What if I’d had to deal with other wives and children, and a gated compound that was difficult to leave? I could hardly imagine.

  “Were they all homeschooled?” Kurt asked.

  “The younger children are, yes. But Naomi, Aaron, and Joseph had already started high school by the time our family situation had changed such that it became expedient to keep more to ourselves,” Rebecca said.

  She must have practiced many times talking about polygamy without talking about it, I thought.

  “The older three petitioned to finish public school as they had begun, and Stephen negotiated with them to make sure that they didn’t neglect their other duties for schoolwork. Ru
th moved to a hybrid model of homeschooling and public schooling.”

  I’d heard Mormons talk about children needing to continue to do chores around the house when they were in high school, or contribute financially to the family, but Stephen Carter’s “negotiations” sounded like overkill.

  “A hybrid model?” Kurt repeated. “What do you mean?”

  “Stephen has the same rules for all of the children about how many hours a week they must spend helping at home,” Rebecca explained. “It increases with each year of age, to compensate for their food, clothing, and other expenses. For Ruth, it’s been easier if she comes home on weekends to manage those hours.”

  I cringed. Counting hours of housework against family expenses? College girls who had to come home and do chores around the house? I wanted my children to have their own lives, not keep paying me back for raising them. Perhaps independence was not as valued for young women in a polygamous family, however.

  “What about the boys?” Kurt asked. “Do they also come home to help around the house?”

  “Not with housework. They have other ways of repaying Stephen. Helping tutor the younger children via Skype, for instance,” Rebecca said, smiling as if it all made perfect sense.

  I wasn’t sure if I was angrier about the whole idea of how children owed their parents or the way that the boys seemed to get off easy. I changed the subject. “Are your older sons planning to live—like you do?” I asked, not sure if Naomi was an anomaly. This compound was big enough for one polygamous group, but it could easily get very crowded in another generation. And I hated to think about how much control over his children’s lives Stephen would exert if they all married and raised children right here, under his thumb.