For Time and All Eternities

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  I hadn’t yet told him about the Robert Frost poem quote or her warning to me and Kenneth. “Knowing about it is not the same as being responsible,” I said. And I wondered if Mormon women were the same as the women in FLDS, kept from leadership and thus from responsibility.

  “I did more research on the FLDS while you were sleeping,” Kurt said. “It sounds like the young men are taught from birth to evade the law as much as they can, because the government itself is supposedly in the hands of Satan. They call it ‘bleeding the beast’ and they break child labor laws, school laws, food stamp rules, anything they can. Then they give the profit to the one man in charge. I think Edward Carter just decided that it was time for him to use the same attitude for his own cause.”

  It sounded like he and his brother had a lot in common. Stephen had been the king of his castle and fiefdom. Edward had made himself prophet and president of his own church, even if that only contained five people: himself and Joanna and the three children.

  “Do you think Joanna was planted for two whole years to bring this to pass?” I asked. “Or do you think she really did get away and he found her again?” My encounter with the Perezes made me think the former, but I could be wrong.

  “I don’t know. But it might ease your mind to know that a couple of good pro bono lawyers who’ve had experience defending women in polygamous cults are volunteering to defend Joanna,” said Kurt. I couldn’t tell how he felt about this.

  I was relieved, though. At least a good defense would be some way to right the balance of the scales, though I didn’t really know what a fair result for Joanna would be in all this.

  “Are the police going to arrest anyone for obstruction? Or conspiracy to conceal a crime?” I asked, wondering if I was going to be headed to jail immediately after this, where I would find Kenneth and Rebecca had adjoining cells. I also wondered how difficult it would be to prosecute Edward and Joanna, given how contaminated much of the evidence would now be.

  “They’re disinterring the body right now, but Rebecca took the blame for everything. She said that the two young boys, Lehi and Nephi, dug the grave on her orders and that she dragged the body into it herself,” Kurt explained. But I was pretty sure he had a good idea what had really happened there.

  I was surprised for a moment that Rebecca would implicate her own children in any of this, then remembered that they were minors and were unlikely to face any charges. If it were otherwise, Kenneth or I would have had to step forward to try to shield them from prosecution.

  “It’s a mess, isn’t it?” I said. Rebecca might well end up serving time. And Dr. Benallie couldn’t be shielded, either, after all my threats to keep her from telling Carolyn the truth about her supposedly stillborn child. That was likely to break wide open, too, and there was no more I could do to help Carolyn now.

  “A mess is a nice word for it. Why in God’s name you allowed that to happen, I don’t know. Did you really think you’d do a better job of the investigation than the police?”

  Well, maybe it looked ridiculous now. At the time, it had seemed to make sense.

  “I was so sure it was one of the wives. I thought I just had to figure out which one before I left,” I tried to explain. “I thought they might have had a good reason. Those poor women.” I had been trying to help them. Or had I been trying to help myself? To make myself feel useful and righteous?

  “Yes, poor Joanna, who nearly killed everyone in that burning house, including you,” Kurt said, rubbing at his head.

  Yes, poor Joanna. “She is hardly more than a child,” I said, my voice hoarse with tears. So many children in that compound, so many victims.

  Kurt sighed. “You’re right, I suppose. But the most I can do is pray for her to get the help she needs. And pray you get well enough to never do something crazy like this all over again.”

  It was useless to promise that I would never do anything like this again, so I was silent. I listened to the sounds of the hospital. Beeping, swishing, dripping medication. Squeaky shoes and squeaky wheels outside my room. Life. My life. And Kurt was still with me, despite it all.

  “You’ve talked to Kenneth and Naomi about their plan to adopt Talitha?” I asked, aware that I was changing the subject.

  “Yes,” Kurt said.

  So that was done, and Kurt looked happy about it. Good. There would probably be a strain for a long time between father and son, because of Kenneth leaving the Mormon church, but I had hope that it would heal, in time.

  “You know, while you were gone, I spent a lot of time thinking about the policy,” said Kurt.

  I widened my eyes at this. I hadn’t thought the hospital would be the ideal place for a discussion of this depth, but on the other hand, if Kurt was willing to bring up the topic again, maybe I could at least listen.

  “I never intended to imply that I would pressure Samuel to marry a woman. I know how hard that was on you, with your—uh, Ben,” he said. Kurt still didn’t like to talk about Ben Tookey as my first husband.

  “Samuel always wants to please you. You have to be careful about what you hint at with him. He can be very sensitive,” I said gently.

  Kurt rubbed at his hair. One of these days, he was going to go completely bald and then what would he do when he was thinking? Rub his eyebrows instead?

  “I only want him to be happy. I want for him what I want for all my sons. I want for him what I have for myself.” He looked me in the eyes and I felt a warmth spread through me at what he was saying. He was happy with me. Or he had been, before the new policy had gotten in the way.

  “I know, but it’s different for Samuel.”

  “I can’t see the church suddenly changing its doctrine,” he said, his lips twisting glumly. “It’s too deep. Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother, the temple ceremonies, they’re all based on the idea of opposite sex marriage and complementarity between husband and wife. I don’t see how it can work with husband and husband.”

  I thought about how the church had struggled to change doctrine when the revelation about blacks and the priesthood had come in 1978. Nearly forty years later, and God was still always depicted as white and The Book of Mormon still hinted that white skin was better than dark skin, even after some changes to the text. “I don’t know either,” I said.

  Kurt looked at me, holding my gaze with his warm eyes. “I don’t want Samuel to think he’s lesser in any way. I don’t want him to think that he has to die in order to be made into something that can be allowed in the kingdom. I can’t bear the thought of anyone believing that.”

  I let out a long, slow breath. Why couldn’t we have had this conversation months ago? I guess maybe it took this long for Kurt to see all the implications of the policy. He hadn’t been thinking about us having a gay son for nearly as long as I had. He hadn’t been thinking about LGBTQ issues since before we were married like I had, either.

  “You can start by doing something in the ward. Something better than that talk last month,” I suggested.

  “Like what?” asked Kurt. “I’m trying to be sensitive. Tell me what you think I can do that will be supportive of our son and not end up with me being released as bishop and possibly excommunicated.”

  I hadn’t ever asked him to do something that would end like that. I just wanted understanding. “You could wear a rainbow ribbon,” I said.

  He flinched. It took me a moment to figure out why. Some people might think wearing the ribbon was a protest. So I said, “Not to show you’re trying to get the apostles to change the policy, but just to show people that you’re a safe place, that they can talk to you if they have questions or just need someone to listen without judging them.”

  Kurt considered this for a long moment. “I’m not interested in protesting anything. I love the church. I love the brethren. I truly believe that they are doing the best they can for everyone. Until God gives them new revelation, they hav
e to do the best they can, and the policy was supposed—”

  I held up my hand. I couldn’t hear his defense of it again. “Please,” I said, “Can we just go back to the loving part? You love the church. You love Samuel. You love me. You’re trying to love people as Christ would, right?”

  He nodded. “But that doesn’t mean—”

  “Maybe neither of us knows what it really means to love as Christ would. But let’s both try a little harder to find out.” I certainly hadn’t shown myself to be an expert at listening to the spirit of God when it came to Stephen Carter’s family. I’d gotten so many things wrong because of my own prejudices and expectations. I was willing to accept that other people got things wrong, too.

  Kurt leaned in and held my hand in his. His touch reminded me of how he’d found me in the fire. It reminded me of his touch on my back as I labored to give birth to Georgia, a child I’d already been told was dead. It reminded me of his touch when we had knelt across the altar in the temple to be sealed together.

  Mormonism was all about binding people in love, not in coercion, and not against their own desires. At some point, we’d figure out how to work the doctrine around that one abiding principle. I hoped we would, anyway, and I fell back asleep in the sweet assurance that I could let go, for just a little while, and trust that God would be able to handle this on His own, without me.

  Chapter 34

  I got out of the hospital on Friday evening and Kurt took me home and treated me as if he were trying to keep me wrapped in my hospital bubble packaging. I slept snugged up close to him for weeks before he would let it go any farther than that. Our sex life was still not what it had once been, but it was something.

  There were no legal consequences from concealing Stephen’s death for Kenneth and me, though Rebecca was fined and asked to do a certain number of hours of community service. Because of her lawyer, the police eventually let Joanna return home to Short Creek, though there was an ongoing custody battle over her three children, who were still in the care of the state.

  Edward Carter, on the other hand, was awaiting trial for murder and arson. Dr. Benallie hadn’t been arrested, though she had lost her license, since this was not the first case of her doing something outside the bounds of the law. I wondered at Stephen’s choice of her as a potential partner. He seemed to have two models for wives, the ones he could manipulate and the ones who could benefit him in specific ways. Dr. Benallie might have been his idea of someone who could help him in shady medical plans that had only ever come to fruition with Carolyn’s lost baby. As far as the baby was concerned, I’d heard nothing of a lawsuit for custody, and I tried not to think too much about all of that, since it wasn’t my business anymore. It really never had been.

  The Monday after the fire, Kenneth enrolled Talitha in school near a condo he and Naomi were now planning to buy in Sandy. It would be a thirty-minute drive for him to work and her to medical school, but the schools were better south of the city, and they were willing to make the sacrifice for Talitha’s sake. An official adoption was months off, but they had legal custody of her now that Sarah had signed papers relinquishing her own rights as a mother.

  It seemed like everything was neatly tied up, except that the more I thought about the Carters, the less I could sleep. I was far away from the madness of the compound, but I’d lie in bed beside Kurt and start to smell the smoke from the burning house again. Even though I tried to relax, I could feel smoke around me, suffocating me. I could see the glint of kitchen knives. I could smell blood. I was barefoot and walking through blood-drenched carpet, going more and more slowly as it pulled me down.

  When I actually managed to fall asleep, it was worse. In my dreams, I was frantically searching my burning house, or another house, or a park, or a car. There were children missing, dying, and I had to rescue them. But I couldn’t find them.

  Sometimes the children were my own, younger versions of Adam and Joseph and Zachary and Kenneth and Samuel. Sometimes the children were left in my care by another mother, and I had somehow forgotten about them, and suddenly their mother reappeared with an expression of fury and horror. I had forgotten her children! I had left them in danger! How dared I be safe myself?

  I wanted to call Anna up and talk all this through with her on one of our walks. But every time I tried to do that, I found myself paralyzed and speechless, unable to figure out a way to explain to her why what she’d said to me at church had hurt me so deeply. Going back to church also seemed a monumental task. I had skipped church the first week under Kurt’s insistence that I needed rest, and the weeks went on after that, each one making it easier than the last to stay at home.

  When Kurt was at work, I spent time playing the piano and found some solace in that. It had been years since I had practiced seriously. And maybe this didn’t count as serious practice, either. It was pure therapy. I was pounding the keys, playing old familiar songs again and again. I wasn’t worried about technique or scales. I didn’t even care how the music sounded. I just needed it to be louder and more intense than my own thoughts. I was trying to stop thinking, to simply be.

  Naomi came over for lunch in August to discuss final arrangements for the wedding. I was thrilled to see her, but I had to stifle the impulse to dump on her all my fears. She wanted a sane mother-in-law and I had to at least try to pretend to be one. Besides, though she hadn’t talked about it with me, I was sure she must be struggling to deal with everything that had happened to her and Kenneth, and to her family.

  We talked about the wedding for a few minutes. Details, lists, names. I could manage that. Then I asked her about Kenneth, having worried over the secret I’d kept from him all these weeks. “Does he know about the money you were taking?”

  “The money I took from my father to get through school?” asked Naomi, her face bright with surprise.

  I nodded. I’d even kept this truth from Kurt, for fear that he would somehow try to use it to sabotage the wedding.

  “He knows. I told him after we started the adoption papers. I wish I’d told him before. I was supposed to pay the family back later by helping him with some of the home births he thought would come up. I just kept thinking that it wouldn’t happen, that the wives would get too old. I didn’t want to think about how much longer he could keep having more children if he married younger and younger women.” She played with her engagement ring, twisting it in that way only a woman who is still getting used to it will do.

  “Did Kenneth get mad that you’d hidden that from him?” I asked.

  She let out a breath, nodding. “It was pretty bad. But he did say that he remembered you telling him that all normal couples have disagreements. It’s the ones who learn how to deal with the conflict who survive and thrive, not the ones who avoid it.” She looked at me, clearly hoping I would say something comforting.

  “It’s certainly true of my marriage. We’ve fought plenty and we still love each other.” As I said it, I realized that this was partly true because the more we felt free to fight, the more we trusted each other. Or I hoped that we did.

  “Well, thank you for the advice,” she said, her eyes shining. “I think you may have saved my marriage in advance.”

  After that, we veered into a discussion about Talitha, who was “frighteningly quiet and good,” according to Naomi. She always did her homework. She helped around the house. She never watched television, played on the Internet, or asked to go out, and she seemed to have no interest in making friends at school.

  “I wonder if she is just too used to being hurt by the people who are supposed to love her to make any new connections,” Naomi said. “I want to make everything better, but it’s going to take a long time.”

  Yes, it would, and the worst part was that she might have to accept that there were some things she could never fix. But I didn’t say that.

  “I think she’s a very lucky girl, with you and Kenneth as her paren
ts.” I patted Naomi’s hand.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You always know the right thing to say.”

  I wasn’t sure that was true.

  Then with a sigh, Naomi admitted, “Sarah has disappeared. Not a word from her to anyone. I don’t even know if she’s still in Utah.”

  Poor Sarah. She had been through too much. But maybe it was best for her to be on her own for a while. And that could be a good thing for Talitha, too. I didn’t know if Naomi had guessed at the truth about Sarah and Rebecca’s biological relationship, and I didn’t want to talk about it in any case, so I left it alone.

  “Rebecca has come to visit Talitha once, but she’s so busy with the other children that she doesn’t have time for more than that. I wonder sometimes if she can possibly have enough time to give to that many children,” Naomi said.

  It was a good question, though in some sense I thought that children would take up as much time as you could give them. There was never a point where they thought you’d given them too much attention.

  We were quiet for a long moment.

  “Sometimes I wonder if I should just give up school. At least for a few years, until Talitha is settled,” she said at last, her head low and her eyes not meeting mine.

  I hadn’t expected this. Naomi had seemed like such a modern woman to me, throwing off the ideals of my generation. It was something I had noticed more and more in the church, and outside of it. Younger women seemed to have no understanding of why a woman would choose only to stay at home, giving up all ambitions outside of motherhood.

  Sometimes I was jealous of them, because they seemed to be able to become mothers without giving up what I had. At other times, I felt sorry for them because they had so much to do, so many responsibilities. I had loved being a stay-at-home mother. I had found deep meaning and spiritual purpose in it at the time. But looking back, I also wondered if I had ignored too many other things going on around me. Politics, inside and outside the church, bigger issues that had been brewing for a long time and now had gaped open a maw large enough to threaten everything. If I’d faced those issues earlier, maybe I wouldn’t be in the position I was in now. But on the other hand, I had five wonderful grown sons, and I couldn’t regret that.