Elders

by Ryan McIlvain

  “Elder Passos, listen to me,” McLeod said. “Passos?” He laid a hand on his companion’s shoulder, as he had last night.

  Passos looked up with last night’s eyes, except now a trace of annoyance shot through the distance. “Why are you dressed like that? It’s P-Day.”

  “I think we should pay Josefina and Leandro a visit,” he said. “I know it’s unscheduled, but I think we should.”

  “We can try tonight, I guess, after P-Day’s over.”

  “I think we should do it this morning—that’s why I’m dressed like this.”

  “What are you talking about?” Passos said. “We’re off until six. And you can see I’m busy. We can try tonight or tomorrow.”

  Elder McLeod shook his head. “You have to trust me on this, Elder. I had a feeling. During my shower. Just … Please, we’ll stay in tonight. We can make up the lost time then.”

  Passos stared at him for a long moment. “You had a feeling?”

  “Just trust me, Elder. Have I ever done this before? Have I ever once in my entire mission done something like this? I know I’m the junior companion, but I’m telling you—”

  “Okay,” Passos said, getting to his feet. “Okay, okay. We stay in tonight.”

  A short twenty minutes later the elders rounded the corner onto Josefina and Leandro’s street, having taken the bus to within a few blocks and walked the rest at pace, Passos leading, head down. When he arrived at the outer door he quickly rapped the metal.

  “Wait,” McLeod said.

  “Wait?”

  “Well, I mean—”

  The door opened on Josefina in another sleeveless blouse, a jean skirt this time, rather short, and the same worn sandals. She looked surprised. “Elders! What are you … I wasn’t expecting you this morning.”

  Elder Passos turned to McLeod, raised his eyebrows.

  “Well, we just wanted to stop by and check in on you,” McLeod said. “We just wanted to see how you were doing.”

  In truth Elder McLeod wanted to make sure Josefina really existed; he wanted her to matter, but how to say that? Some five months earlier he and a previous companion, Elder Oliveira, had baptized a ten-year-old boy who lived on the far outskirts of town. Zé. Zézinho, Oliveira nicknamed him. Zézinho who loved Oliveira so much more than the message. Zézinho who had hardly heard the message. When Oliveira learned of his imminent transfer, he and McLeod traveled to Zé’s sprawling favela of a neighborhood after dark, to break the news in person. Elder McLeod still remembered the conversation that night (“You’ll still be able to visit, right?” “I’m afraid not, Zé. I’ll write you letters, though.” “Letters?”). He remembered the sudden silent tears down Zézinho’s cheeks. But mostly he remembered the sense of foreboding he had felt as he and Oliveira made the trek to Zé’s house. They’d taken the crosstown bus to its terminus, and since the kombes had stopped running they had to walk an hour more along the grass-lined dirt road. The insects sounded menacing that night, like static on the radio, loud. The stars burned overhead, a few trash-can fires in the distance. The fires got larger and larger as the elders ascended the broad hill that marked the entrance to the neighborhood. At the top of the hill, a twine-tied banner spanned two telephone poles: WHERE’S OUR ASPHALT, TOWN HALL?

  Elder McLeod felt a similar foreboding as he followed Josefina into her living room. Leandro had already left for work (“Well, ‘work,’ ” Josefina said, making air quotes. “Argentina plays today”) and the room felt that much bigger for his absence. She sat down on one side of the love seat—the side closest to the couch, McLeod noticed, the side Leandro usually sat on. She invited the elders to sit, too.

  “Actually,” Elder Passos said, “could I use your bathroom?”

  Josefina showed Passos to the doorway of the kitchen and pointed him to the right. McLeod sat down in the middle of the couch. When Josefina came back she took the same spot on the love seat, though McLeod thought she might have hesitated a second. She adjusted her skirt, her knees together, dully shining. She noticed McLeod noticing, or he worried that she had. He studied the rug underneath his shoes.

  At length Josefina said, “Everything all right, Elder?”

  “Great, great.” He looked up into her face, laughed a little. “The better question is how are you? How are you liking the lessons?”

  “Well, I forgot to read in the Book of Mormon last night—”

  “Oh, that’s okay, that’s okay. I didn’t mean to … I just wanted to make sure everything was all right with you two? Make sure you didn’t have any questions or concerns? Missionaries just get these feelings sometimes, and we figure better safe than sorry, you know?”

  Josefina’s smile faded, slowly. Her face went flat. Her eyes widened.

  “Josefina?” McLeod said.

  “Who told you?” she said. “How did you … Our neighbor came by last night, our Pentecostal neighbor, and I guess she’d seen you guys coming here because she brought some literature about you. About the Mormons.”

  “Oh.”

  “I didn’t read the whole thing—it was mostly Leandro. But he said it said the Mormons had plural wives and that they—”

  “Had plural wives. In the past.”

  “That’s right, that’s right. I think it said that. But it said Joseph Smith had more than twenty wives. Is that true? Leandro just told me about it, I didn’t read it myself. I felt scared to, actually. For some reason I felt I shouldn’t read it.” She looked down. Elder McLeod searched for something to say. When the silence grew accusing, Josefina looked up in a sort of quiet panic that made McLeod want to reach out and touch her. “Look,” she said, “to be honest, in the beginning I wanted you guys to teach both of us, but mostly Leandro. I thought it would help him. And he has been drinking less, even with the championships. But last night when Leandro was telling me about the pamphlet, I wanted him to stop. I realized I was afraid he would ruin what you’ve taught us.” Another silence. “And I know that’s bad. Not about last night—I mean what I said about the beginning.”

  McLeod gave a series of quick shallow nods. “I understand what you’re saying. But it’s not bad. Not bad at all. I think it’s probably very normal. We’re just grateful we’ve gotten to know you.” He paused. “And you don’t have to be afraid of anything. If what we’re saying is true, it’s true, and nothing will change that. And the fact is that, yes, Joseph Smith had plural wives, many of them. The church stopped the practice in the late eighteen hundreds, but yes, what Leandro said is true.”

  Josefina held her face like a paper lantern, her eyebrows pinched, her look flickering, fragile. She started a sentence and stopped, prodding at an idea. “I guess,” she said, “I guess I do have a concern then. You’ve been teaching how Joseph Smith was a modern prophet, how he was the vessel for restoring the pure church of Christ. How could he do that if he was—and please don’t take offense at this, Elder—but how could he do that if he himself was impure?”

  Elder McLeod felt his face betray a grimace. He wished for Passos. He nodded, said, “Well, look, I think, first, that an impure vessel can still bear a pure message. I think …” He trailed off. “Or I don’t know. Maybe I should let Elder Passos answer this question.”

  “No,” Josefina said. “Please. I want to know what you think.”

  “Well,” McLeod said, “I guess I don’t know what the missionary answer would be. I can just say that, whatever Joseph Smith was or wasn’t, I can say that I was raised in the Mormon Church, and I think I had a very happy childhood … I mean, we spend a lot of time in these lessons learning the doctrine—of course—but the heart of the church, for me at least … it’s that, but it isn’t, you know? And like I said, we should get Passos’s opinion. What’s taking him so long anyway? We should ask him when he gets back.”

  “That’s okay,” Josefina said. She gave a tight, quick smile. “I think I know what you mean. And maybe Elder Passos wouldn’t be so happy to hear that Leandro and I were reading a pamphlet like that.
Maybe that could stay between us?” She looked away from McLeod in the direction of the bathroom, then down at the empty coffee table in front of her.

  “I haven’t even offered you anything!” she said suddenly, standing up. “How terrible of me! I’m afraid I don’t have any snacks, but can I get you something to drink? Juice? Water?”

  McLeod felt breathless under the weight of Josefina’s confidence. He wanted to reassure her that her secret, their secret, would be safe with him. Instead he said, “Water,” and he barely got the word out.

  Josefina smiled and turned toward the kitchen. She gave her back to McLeod. He looked down.

  Elder Passos stood over the sink in Josefina’s bathroom, running the water. He looked up from the envelope he held in his hand and caught a glimpse of himself in the cloudy mirror: heavy-lidded, drawn, wax-yellow, as if the last dozen hours had aged him a dozen years. The immediate thought had occurred to him just as he entered Josefina’s house: he needed to check on his little brother, needed to be sure, and sure enough: the envelope showed a Morro Verde postmark, at ten fifteen on the previous Friday. A school hour on a school day, exactly as he’d feared. He rubbed and rubbed his thumb over the pink circular time stamp, slightly raised, Braille-like. He knew Nana usually sent her letters with Tiago to mail on his way to school, in Fortuna, clear on the other side of town. Who had sent it from the closer post in Morro Verde? Had Tiago skipped school that day? Since when did Tiago skip school? First his grandmother twists her ankle, and now his star-student brother plays truant? Could his middle brother have delivered the letter? Passos doubted it. Felipe was not the errands type. He had his own day school to go to, besides, and it wasn’t in Morro Verde. Unless he’d changed schools without telling Passos or his old school had changed schedule. He knew some of the votechs taught upperclassmen in the evenings. If Felipe ever wrote him, of course, he’d have a better idea, but Felipe wasn’t the writing type either.

  When was the last time Tiago had sent him a letter? Not for a while—at least a month. Elder Passos wondered if the advent of the teenage years made everyone less mindful, or just a loud unrepresentative few. What had Passos been like at thirteen? He couldn’t access it any longer, not really. But he knew he had started at the city middle school that year, the same middle school Tiago now went to. He’d started taking his studies more seriously, excelling in his marks, making his mother proud. “My little scholar,” she used to say, smiling down at him—large brown eyes, her face framed in curls. Passos felt expansive, full of promise, in the warmth of that smile. He redoubled his efforts at school. A few years later Passos started to note something of himself in the way Tiago took time out from the store or pickup football games to do his homework or study for his tests. And now in Tiago’s letters, however brief, he found other echoes of his younger self: the small, careful penmanship, the serious tone, the adult phrasing. “In regards to your recent letter …” he’d write. “Things continue as usual here …” he’d write. The familiar motions of precocity. Passos felt certain that Tiago could go on to college, either in Brazil, or, lately he thought, in America. But why was he skipping school? And where were the precocious letters lately? Where was Tiago?

  The water still ran in the bathroom sink, a lulling sound, and Passos still circled and circled the raised postmark with his thumb, like a stuck machine. He only noticed the movement now, and stopped it, on account of a building muscular tension at the base of his palm. He tucked the envelope back into his shoulder bag, turned the water off. How long had he been in here? It must have been at least five minutes. More? He looked in the mirror to arrange his face in an expression of listlessness, or extra listlessness. He flushed the toilet again for good measure.

  Out in the living room Elder McLeod and Josefina sat quietly, not quite looking at each other, sipping from glasses of water. Passos’s glass sat on the coffee table in a hoop of settled liquid. He took a seat beside his junior companion, took a long draft of the drink. He showed a weak, apologetic smile to Josefina.

  “Are you feeling all right?” she said.

  “I’m okay,” Elder Passos said in a voice meant to suggest he really wasn’t, was merely bearing up well.

  “Well,” Josefina said, “drink up. This summer heat can test even you northeasterners, can’t it?”

  Passos smiled, put the glass of water to his lips again, finishing most of it.

  “Anyway,” McLeod came in, “as I said, we just wanted to drop by for a few minutes and make sure that you’re doing okay, Josefina. Is there anything you need? Anything we can do for you?”

  “Just keep doing what you’re doing.” She smiled. “Our next lesson is Saturday, right? Should Leandro and I read anything in specific? Which number is it?”

  “Nothing specific,” Passos said. He paused. He had the impression that Josefina wanted them to leave, though at the moment he didn’t actually mind. An unannounced visit in the middle of the morning? A P-Day morning at that? It must be as inconvenient for her as for them. What had gotten into McLeod anyway? Had Passos created a monster? Josefina looked at him, still waiting. “No, nothing specific to read. Just keep reading the Book of Mormon every night. We’ll start in on the fourth discussion this Saturday. That’s the green pamphlet we gave you, if you want to preview it.”

  “We already have,” Josefina said. “We read all the preview pamphlets together. The green pamphlet is all about how alcohol and drugs defile the body, right? How the body is a temple? Leandro and I read that again just recently.”

  “That’s excellent,” Elder McLeod said. “We love to hear about that kind of initiative.”

  “Yes,” Passos said, “yes, we do.”

  The elders finished their waters and thanked Josefina for her time, leaving her with a prayer. On the way back to the bus stop McLeod thanked Passos for indulging him. “I just wanted to make sure things were going all right for them, you know? Josefina said everything was fine, and that was all I needed to hear. I just got nervous, I guess.”

  “You had a ‘feeling,’ you said. In the shower.”

  “It came to me there. I guess it was a prompting.”

  “A prompting? That doesn’t sound like you, Elder. No offense.”

  “Well what about you?” McLeod said. “What’s gotten into you in the last, I don’t know, the last fourteen hours? What was in that letter last night?”

  “Complications.”

  “You can tell me, Passos. I’m your friend, right?”

  “Maybe later.”

  “How about now, Elder? Before I lose you to your letters again.”

  He did need to get back to them, Elder Passos thought. Nana. Tiago. Felipe. Dos Santos. They hummed in his head like heated molecules. The elders took a left onto the main street just as the six bus pulled away ahead of them. “Hey!” Passos ran after it, waving his arms, but it didn’t slow down. A few seconds later his companion caught up to him at the bus stop. McLeod sat down on the bench, patted the spot beside him. “It’s okay, right? We’re staying in tonight. You can write letters to your heart’s content, but while you’re here why don’t you explain to me all the radio silence. I know something’s worrying you, and I think that’s why you should tell me. At the very least I’m your companion, and we’re supposed to support each other, right? ‘Succor’ each other? Doesn’t it say that somewhere?”

  Passos dropped down beside McLeod, still breathing hard. He wasn’t exactly stalling, but after a moment McLeod added, “I can offer some collateral vulnerability, if that sweetens the deal.”

  Passos laughed. “Where did you learn a phrase like ‘collateral vulnerability’?”

  “You’re not the only one who studies another language, you know.”

  “Ah, yes, very good,” Passos said in English. “Very good.”

  Just then another six bus turned onto the main street and Passos stood up and started waving it down like a taxi, to make sure.

  He realized he didn’t even know which ankle Nana had sprained, and he�
��d neglected to ask in his letter, now sealed. It lay on the desk in front of him in a fanned-out pile: long letters to Tiago and Felipe, his letter to Nana, and a brief update to Elder Dos Santos, whom he’d meant to call João. He’d been meaning to for months. Passos didn’t think Nana had mentioned which ankle. Had she? For the fourth time he took up the letter, the sheet sharp-creased at three places, unevenly spaced apart. The overhead bulb behind him could only hold back the darkness so much. The letter’s creases caught shadows, cradled them, like little dark pools that Passos had to tip this way and that to empty out so he could see to the words underneath.

  Cristiano, meu filhinho, Nana’s letter began, though Passos was not her little son and not Cristiano, either, at least not for these two years. He considered his title of “Elder” a privilege, and a temporary one at that; he wished his grandmother would use it, referring to him the way he referred to himself: Love, Elder Passos. But of course he couldn’t out-and-out tell Nana, make more demands on a woman whose whole life was demands. He also feared she might take it the wrong way. She wasn’t a member of the church, after all. So much of the life of a missionary, of any Mormon, must have seemed strange to her, cultish even, as he knew her parish friends used to whisper.

  I pray every day and night that you are well and with God. I believe He strengthens the poor and the downhearted and we are all that but this week especially. Things are a struggle for us this week especially. I am sorry to tell you that I have sprained my ankle. This was Tuesday. I did it on a rutted part in the street out front of the store.

  Passos paused, reread the first lines, for the fifth time now, as if he hadn’t already memorized them. The standard salutation, the talk of a “struggle,” Nana’s inevitable word. Then the news of the ankle. No mention of which one. She moved straight to the politicians, another inevitability.