For Time and Eternity

by Allison Pittman

  “She is a good woman,” Nathan said.

  “Do you love her?” Melissa asked.

  “Yes.”

  “As much as you love Mama?”

  He put his arm around me and kissed me gently on my temple. “Nowhere near.”

  And I believed him.

  Chapter 19

  Nathan must have been confident that I would give my blessing to his proposal, because the next morning two men arrived at our home, each driving a wagon full of freshly cut lumber.

  “We’ll build a new room at the back of the house.” He took my hand and led me through the plan, making me feel like an invited guest. “We don’t have a place to cut a new door in the front room, so we’ll get to it through the girls’ room.” Then we walked outside, where stakes and ropes marked the perimeters of the walls to come. “We’ll build it all along the back. Twice the size of the other rooms. What do you think?”

  “You keep saying ‘we.’ Whose room will it be?”

  If he had an answer, he managed to hide it behind a sigh fueled with what seemed to be genuine confusion. “We’ll decide that when the time comes.”

  “It seems cold. I’m thinking that, in the winter, so far away from the fire—”

  He tapped his brow. “Already thought about that. We’ll have a little fireplace right here.” He walked away and tapped his foot on a hard clump of grass pierced by a wooden stake. “We could make part of it into a little sitting room. Like your own private parlor.”

  So it is to be mine. “It all sounds lovely, Nathan.”

  He came up behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders, gently turning me until my back was to the house and I looked out to where the sun had just fully risen over the mountains. “We’ll put in two big windows—” he reached his hand out—“one at each end. Can you imagine seeing that sunrise every morning?”

  “Certainly ensures that whoever’s in here won’t sleep past dawn.”

  Tears caught my voice, and strong arms pulled me close to the man behind me. Then breath on my neck, a soft kiss. “Promise you’ll try, Camilla. You’ll try to be happy.”

  “I am happy, Nathan.” Oh, how grateful I was to have my face turned.

  “You’ll grow to love Amanda, I know. She’ll be like a sister to you.”

  “I have your sister as my sister. And Evangeline.” I turned in his arms and reached my hands to his face. “Couldn’t you marry her? I already love her, and she so needs somebody . . .”

  He smiled, a fitting expression for my petulant outburst. “The Holy Spirit did not bring me to love her as a wife.”

  “Because she isn’t beautiful?”

  He shrugged. “I cannot dictate what the Holy Spirit tells me. I can only respond.”

  “Well,” I said with forced cheerful resolution, “if I am to share my husband, perhaps Sister Amanda will be kind enough to share her furniture. We’ll need something grand to fill this room.”

  * * *

  Plans moved quickly after that. For a solid week my ears rang with the sounds of hammers and nails and saws. I’d seen Saints work together to build entire houses in one day, but the task of extending our home fell to Nathan alone. It was he who refused to accept the help, insisting that everybody had better uses for their time with winter coming on. I have to admit part of me thrilled at the progress. Our home had always been cozy and functional, but left to his own devices, my husband graced the new room with details of design and carpentry he would never have thought to include years ago. Most obvious of the improvements was the walls themselves—smooth planks rather than chinked logs. The windows were expertly framed, with boxes built out on either side of the wall for flowers to be planted outside and treasures displayed inside. The floor was smooth too, and when the space reached its point of empty completion, the girls had a marvelous time running its length, making a clatter of echoing footsteps.

  I could tell Melissa quickly warmed to the idea of her father’s taking in a new bride. She sparked off the fire in Nathan’s eyes as he spoke of our celestial family and gazed at me with a triumph that made me ill. Regardless of my own temple worthiness, she would be baptized into the church when she turned eight, and I wanted nothing more than to grab her hand and run away.

  Up to that point, I’d never considered such a thing. But right then, at our little family table, I realized I didn’t need Nathan’s promise of a swift horse. He’d taken one away, and he’d come back. He’d never, never leave. He’d never take me away. He might not let me leave. The more he talked, though, about the prophet’s plan for our family and the rewards we would receive from Heavenly Father for our obedience, the more I realized that I could have no part of this.

  Still, I said nothing, voicing my resolve only to the Lord in my prayers. As far as anybody—my husband, my daughters, my neighbors, and my future sister wife—knew, I joined my husband in his joy, even if my expression was more reserved. Only Kimana sensed my unsettled spirit, and anytime we were alone, I sought her comfort. Her arms became my haven, as she would wrap them around me in a loving embrace I never remember getting from my own mother.

  “It is not right,” she’d say, patting my back, “all this business with another wife.”

  “Nathan is a good man,” I reassured her. “As good as he’s ever been. I know the Lord has a plan.”

  “I pray so.”

  I knew she did. She was the only other soul on the face of the earth who knew my true heart, and she was the only person in my life who shared my faith. We hadn’t met together to study the Bible since Nathan’s return; he kept the girls enthralled with tales of his summer’s journey, and I’m sure I didn’t imagine his watchful eye whenever Kimana and I did have a chance to whisper together in a corner. But well I remembered our early days as man and wife, and though I loathed the images I conjured, I knew Sister Amanda’s arrival to the household would give him a new focus for his attentiveness.

  The wedding was scheduled for the first Saturday in October. Sister Amanda would spend the intervening time as a guest in Rachel and Tillman’s home, so as to be close to the temple to complete her Endowment. Melissa had asked once about what happened during the ceremony, but Nathan was quick to remind her—as she well knew—that the rites of the temple were secret, to be revealed only at a time ordained by Heavenly Father.

  “People talk about things when they want to remember them,” he explained gently. “But the time in the temple is sacred to the Lord, not something to be talked about like any other event. When we keep silent, we keep the sacredness of the sacrament in our hearts, and we remain holy.”

  My memories of the ceremony, however, were anything but holy. The humiliation of the ceremonial washing. I can still smell the oil touched to my head, neck, shoulders, stomach, and below. My legs. My feet.

  “To cleanse you of the sins of this generation,” the woman had said.

  The sacred garments, the pure white dress and veil. The green apron. The faces of the actors performing the dramas. Why could Nathan hold me breathless and enthralled by firelight, when these dressed in costume proved so unsettling?

  And my name. My whispered, secret, sacred name. The name that would buy my passage into heaven.

  Mara. Bitterness.

  I wondered what name Sister Amanda would be given. Would we have the same? Only Nathan would know, and he’d never tell. Moreover, I wouldn’t ask. For the time being, Amanda was as absent from our life as she had been before her arrival.

  How I cherished those final weeks. It’s a rare thing in this life to know when your world is going to change. Every night Nathan came to our bed, exhausted from the day’s construction labor, and every night I lay with him, hoping to prove myself a worthy offering. With every act of marriage, I prayed that God would give me another child, thinking that if I could bring us back to the joy we shared before our son died, I could shake him from this folly. Three days before the wedding, however, my time came and with it the end of that dream.

  “Maybe you sho
uld stay home?” Kimana said when she noted my condition. “Do you feel up to making the trip?”

  Of course I didn’t feel like making the trip, but I still had three days. In the meantime, the Dunns’ own wagon appeared in our yard, still laden with the furniture that had been precious enough to make the journey from England. Given that Sister Amanda was in Salt Lake City, I was given charge of what would come into our home and what would be left to some other fate. I’m ashamed to admit how much I relished even that little bit of power. Sister Amanda and I had spoken with each other only during the Sunday dinners she and her father shared with us, but I knew exactly what she envisioned. Somehow she thought our log walls would magically stretch to accommodate her mahogany breakfront and rolltop desk, just as our marriage would stretch to welcome her.

  In my head I heard Rachel, deftly giving her sister wives instructions. I had that same authority. I’d never had authority over anyone or anything in my life. My children, yes, but that was a responsibility I shared with Nathan, and the balance of power was hardly equal. So that afternoon, as Nathan and Brother Kenneth stood, hats in hand, ready to do my bidding, my instructions were swift and sure. My voice dropped to a lower register, mimicking Rachel’s confidence.

  “Take the rolltop into the new room,” I directed. “And both the upholstered chairs.”

  Nathan gave me one look askance. If he didn’t approve my choices, he said nothing. Neither, surprisingly, did Brother Kenneth, even though these were every bit as much his worldly goods as they were Sister Amanda’s.

  “Never cared about a bit o’ this when her mother bought it,” he said, hoisting the small table over his shoulder. “Nothin’ but a load o’ trouble since the day we landed. And a good bit before that, if you ask me.”

  “What about the breakfront?” Nathan asked, wiping his brow.

  “They can bury it.” I’d heard of such stories, emigrants burying pianos wrapped in canvas along the trail, marking the place so they could return later for it. “There’s no room for it here.”

  Without any further discussion, Nathan and Brother Kenneth resumed their task. I watched, numb, as bits of Sister Amanda made their way into our home. Harmless pieces of furniture, yes, but also trunks that I knew held her dresses, her nightclothes, all the things that a woman hides away for the day she becomes a bride. I had none of those things. I became a bride with nothing but the dress on my back and a now-tattered journal.

  The word bed jolted me from my reverie. I looked back to see the two men bringing an intricately carved headboard from the wagon. No need for discussion here. The bed Nathan and I had shared for all these years would be moved into the new room, while this one, infinitely more ornate, would preside in much humbler surroundings, accompanied by a six-drawer bureau and matching washstand.

  That night, by the light of my blue glass lamp, I finished moving my things into the new room, hanging dresses on beautiful brass hooks attached to the wall and storing my other clothing in the trunk at the foot of the bed. A beautiful braided rug—woven by Kimana and presented to me as a gift after supper—warmed the exposed floor and softened my steps. On the other side of the wall, Melissa and Lottie were already in bed, early, due to the journey we would take the next day. The door between my room and the girls’ was open, and I stepped as close as I dared, trying to listen to the prayers they said with their father, but I heard only soft, girlish, lilting voices, chorusing with Nathan in the final amen.

  The next thing I knew he was in the doorway, then in my room, bathed in soft blue light. “It looks nice in here.”

  “Sister Amanda has some lovely things.” I smoothed the doily on the small round table. “I crocheted this last winter and never had any place to display it properly.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “What do you know of doilies?” I cocked my head in near flirtation.

  “I know they look good on tables.”

  Our warm, nervous laughter joined the shadows, and I felt more nervous than I had on our own wedding night. In fact, I could think of nothing else, given how closely my lamp produced a glow akin to that of the moon. Then he said it, my name, the way he had before our first kiss. Not my full name, just that first hard syllable dissolving into a sigh, and he stepped toward me, arms outstretched.

  “No.” Such a small sound, and I covered my mouth to hold back my sobs and to block his kiss.

  Still he advanced, and I backed away until I felt the edge of my bed behind my knees. I sat upon it, burying my face in my hands and finally breaking down into body-wracking tears. A click of the closing door, and the room went dark. I felt his weight beside me. Not touching at all, we sat, side by side until, zapped of my own strength, I sought his. Just an inch or two and my cheek found his strong shoulder, then his chest. My breath still ragged, I allowed him to maneuver my body until we were lying next to each other, my head cradled in the crook of his arm.

  On the other side of the door, my daughters shuffled in their beds, and the sound of their little-girl voices echoed in my mind. I wanted to say my own prayer, but at that moment, my head was filled with such skull-splitting pain, trying to form words to lift up to God seemed too daunting a task. Instead, my spirit turned to the prayer I’d said as a little girl, and my lips moved against the warm cotton of my husband’s shirt.

  “Now I lay me down to sleep;

  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

  If I should die before I wake,

  I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

  For the first time since I had first uttered the verse under my mother’s watchful eye, I felt no fear in the thought of the Lord claiming my soul that night. I could have died right there, warm in Nathan’s embrace, and happily gone straight into the arms of my Savior. But then, just as I was drifting off to sleep, I heard a giggle on the other side of the door, and a rumbling beneath my ear as Nathan raised his voice.

  “Girls. Settle down in there. We have a big day tomorrow.”

  And I knew I could not die. Not tonight. My soul might be kept by the Lord, but the souls of my daughters were at stake.

  Chapter 20

  “Are you happier today?” Lottie touched one little finger to the soft skin just below my eye.

  Yesterday, when we’d piled into the wagon to make the drive into Salt Lake City, my eyes had been swollen nearly shut from sleep and tears. This morning, following a surprisingly long, deep sleep, I awoke feeling rested and at peace.

  I hugged the girl tightly to me. She was snuggled between a still-sleeping Nathan and me in what I knew to be Rachel’s bed; I looked across her head to where Melissa was sitting up in the pallet of blankets on the floor. “Every day is a reason to be happier than the day before. For we know the Lord has brought us through the night, and he has a plan for us to follow.”

  I cocked my ear and listened to the early morning sounds in the house. Just who had slept where, I could only imagine. Rachel and Tillman’s home seemed ever-expanding. Amanda had been staying here for the past two weeks and had made herself quite at home in its luxury, as evidenced in her nearly possessive behavior the previous evening when we arrived just in time for supper.

  “I’m glad she’s marrying Nathan tomorrow,” Rachel had whispered into my ear, pulling me aside from the livelier conversation. “Otherwise Tillman would snatch her up, and I’d be bunking with the children in the nursery.”

  In the gray light of morning, I stretched under the sheets, wondering if that wasn’t where she’d slept last night.

  A soft knock on the door, and Rachel’s head appeared. “We’re all due at the Endowment House at ten. Sister Amanda’s already gone.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Just after eight. You can imagine, she was quite excited.”

  “Oh, I can well imagine.”

  Rachel ducked out of the room and closed the door, leaving our little family alone together for the last time. I didn’t see it as such at the moment, but looking back, it’s clear. We fell immediately int
o the order Rachel established. The next hour we were out of bed and running to and fro, washing up, dressing. In the confusion of it all, I lost track of Nathan’s whereabouts. I don’t know what I expected—one last chance to plead with him, perhaps. Or even something as simple as a final moment together. Instead, I found myself securing a bow in Lottie’s hair when I looked up and, out of the corner of my eye, saw him donning his hat, preparing to go. For the first time ever, I had no desire to follow.

  * * *

  The room was small and hot and dark. Windowless, lest any of the secrets leak through the glass to unworthy eyes. I could not but remember the day Nathan and I married. It was hot that day, too, but the heat came from the summer sun. The light bounced off the river, and I felt like our vows carried on the breeze, straight up to God. We had the entire wagon party as our witnesses, besides, but all I saw was Nathan, his face framed by cloudless blue sky, and I couldn’t wait to start my life.

  The marriage of Nathan and Sister Amanda held none of that magic, though the ceremony proceeded like the passage of some mystical rite. Bishop Johansson stood at the front of the room, looking as dour as he had the day he so gruffly dismissed Nathan’s work last spring in the shadow of the new temple. Rachel and Tillman stood with me—all of us dressed in pure white. None of the sister wives had been invited. Sister Amanda would have no one. Without a recommend, her father could not witness the ceremony, and I admit to feeling a pang of companionship when I realized that this was something we would share, being married alone.

  Then again, whom did we need but Nathan?

  Bishop Johansson held his hands high, saying, “Let them enter!” and two doors on either side of the front of the room opened. So seamlessly did the doors blend into the wall, I hardly noticed they were there until that moment. Nathan and Amanda’s entrance took my breath away.

  Amanda’s skin, pale and translucent, took on an iridescent glow, almost reflecting the white silk of the sacred dress. She’d been chewing on her lip—a nervous habit, I would soon learn—and her mouth stood out bold and nearly red in contrast, the crimson visible through the veil. Even though she knew her father would not be in attendance, she still took in the room, and I imagined a hopeful look in her blue eyes. For just that second, my feeling of companionship became one of temporary compassion. Her hair was left long and straight, simply parted down the middle and swept behind her shoulders to encase that perfect, porcelain face within wide, dark wings beneath the white veil.