Elders

by Ryan McIlvain

  An hour later the scene still spun in McLeod’s mind in a sort of horror-movie loop: Leandro’s voice catching on the f of Are you fff-fucking my wife, McLeod literally flinching at the word, he and Passos both, the burn of cachaça in their nostrils, and again. It felt surreal at moments, or if not quite that, if not quite past reality, then past explanation, exempt from it. But no. McLeod arrived with his companion at the edge of Josefina’s street and knew that a very real reckoning must come.

  “Just …” McLeod said. “Just give me a minute.”

  In the near distance the river ran brownish pink and red. The sound of it promised calm. McLeod walked to it, his senior companion following after. They sat in silence on the corrugated guardrail that separated the road from the shallow bank beneath them, the occasional prods and nubs of drainage pipes sticking out of the dirt like uncovered limbs. The low sun making the color on the river. For the moment it looked blood-red.

  McLeod spoke first. “Now what?”

  “We baptize Josefina.”

  “You mean—”

  “We baptize Josefina without Leandro. We don’t even tell her that we’d changed our minds. She doesn’t need to know that. We pick up where we left off Tuesday night.”

  A long silence soaked into the air around them. They heard no fireworks anymore, no car horns—only the runs and riffles below, a continuous sound but somehow dislocated, fragmented, like the glow on the water. McLeod asked about the time.

  “We were supposed to be there half an hour ago,” Passos said.

  “Okay,” McLeod said. “One more minute.”

  The elders knocked at Josefina’s door and waited for what seemed to Elder McLeod like a very long time. She came to the door, smiling, still in her Sunday best. McLeod exhaled. Inside, the elders took their usual seats as Josefina started toward the kitchen. Passos called her back. “No need for snacks tonight, Josefina. But thank you. We won’t be taking that much of your time.”

  Josefina hesitated in the kitchen doorway. “It’s just water and some cookies—nothing heavy.”

  “We appreciate that,” Passos said, “but please,” and he motioned at the catty-corner love seat. At length Josefina sat down—on the side away from them, Elder McLeod noticed—smoothing her knee-length skirt, her legs tight together. Was she self-conscious in front of them? In front of me? Does she know? Did he tell her?

  McLeod thought of Leandro with hatred. He kept his head down. For long minutes he fixed his eyes on the patch of pocked cement between his shoes. If he had to look up at Josefina, if she mentioned him by name, he looked her straight in the eyes, the pupils, those mute black dots like the points on a compass. He moved between those poles: the floor between his feet, the very center of her eyes. Elder McLeod wished he had run from Leandro, sprinted, no matter how rude or cowardly it might have seemed, for now he could think of little else but what Leandro had said, and how he’d said it—that initial f, the explosion past it—and how the very word had created something in him, a rank world, the images storming his mind now, spinning past the backs of his eyes like the women from Passos’s magazine, all of it running together, and he couldn’t stop it, he couldn’t make it stop, the thought of her pregnancy couldn’t even stop it. He blamed Leandro. He blamed Leandro for all of it. Leandro Leandro Leandro. Elder McLeod glared at the floor and considered the name with such vehemence, such hate, like a sort of crazed mantra—Leandro Leandro Leandro—that he couldn’t be sure if he’d imagined the name or if he’d heard it come out of Josefina’s mouth.

  It had come out of Josefina’s mouth. It hung in the air in front of McLeod, twisting, like a strung-up thing.

  “Well?” Josefina said.

  “Look,” Passos said, “Josefina—”

  “I asked Elder McLeod,” Josefina said.

  At the sound of his own name he started even more, looked up, and his untrained eyes caught the sheen of her knees. McLeod jerked his gaze up to Josefina’s pupils and held to them like ropes over an abyss. “I’m sorry? What did you say?”

  “When did he call?” Passos interrupted.

  “Half an hour ago,” Josefina said. “He said Elder McLeod pushed him to the ground and the two of you just left him like that. Is that true? Elder McLeod? Is it?”

  Elder McLeod formed his lips around the word but no sound came. He held the O of his mouth like a suffocating fish. He, McLeod, the catch now, struggling, and Leandro streaming in the reel.

  Passos said, “Wait. Wait, Josefina. What did he sound like on the phone? Did he sound like he’d been drinking? He was drunk, Josefina. He was angry. We tried to tell him to come home but he wouldn’t. I asked when was the last time he’d been home and he got angry with us. He tried to hit my companion. Then he fell down and we tried to help him back up but he wouldn’t accept our help. He just kept yelling at us. That’s the truth, Josefina.”

  Josefina turned back to McLeod, her eyes fathom-dark. “Is that true, Elder McLeod? Because he said you pushed him. He said you pushed him down and left him there.”

  Elder McLeod shook his head. He managed, “No. I never pushed him.”

  She studied his face. “What was he yelling at you?”

  “I don’t want to repeat it.”

  Josefina’s eyes held for a minute more, steadily, but then they cracked and broke like shells. “I am so embarrassed,” she whispered. “Oh Elders, I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Don’t be,” Elder McLeod said.

  “Don’t be,” Passos said.

  “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me, Elders. I can’t believe—” She broke off to push back sudden emotion, bracing her hand against her sternum. “Please, Elders, please let me get you some cookies, some water.” She stood up and turned toward the kitchen as McLeod snapped his head down. Josefina might have noticed; his companion must have. But he couldn’t afford to be subtle any longer. Josefina came back after several minutes bearing one tray of glasses and another of cookies, neither of which Elder McLeod actually saw until they touched down on the coffee table in front of him: an array of white wafers, three clear glasses, and Josefina’s hand placing them there, like a still life. McLeod thanked Josefina without looking up. He ate and drank in silence. All three of them did.

  After a long while Josefina said, “Really, Elders, I am sorry. Why I ever believed him over you … He’s not dependable. He’s not … I hope you can forgive me.”

  Passos put his hand up, an imperial gesture. He said, “That’s not what we’ve come to talk about, Josefina. We’ve come to talk about your baptism. Do you still have the desire to be baptized in the Lord’s church? That is to say: Will you be baptized, Josefina?”

  “Of course I do. Yes. I want that very much.”

  Elder McLeod chewed his cookies like a chastened child. He felt disconnected from the moment, irrelevant to it: his companion taking out his planner, scheduling the baptism for next Sunday (“We’ll do it right after church,” Passos said), and tentatively scheduling the baptismal interview with the president (“We’ll try for next Thursday or Friday”), at which time they’d fill out the necessary paperwork. Elder McLeod heard Josefina respond, but heard it distantly, something about how excited she felt, and how sorry for earlier, sorry for everything.

  The elders walked home in the dark, passing loud, rejuvenated bars, but Elder McLeod heard everything as if through gauze. Josefina is going to be baptized next Sunday, and what do I feel? They passed the town square where a few people in jerseys still clung to the corners, their yellow shirts brown in the darkness, and the streamers on the sidewalk like so much garbage, and the confetti and the ribbons from balloons, all garbage.

  Just before curfew that night, Elder McLeod followed Passos to the pay phone at the end of their street. Passos called each senior companion in the zone to collect the companionship’s estimated contacts for the week, number of lessons, number of baptismal challenges (if any), acceptances (if any), baptisms (if any). He then summed these numbers and called the mission office, pass
ing them along to one of the president’s two assistants. Tonight Passos spoke to Elder Tierney, the American assistant, or so Elder McLeod assumed from his companion’s formal tone, vaguely rivalrous: “Oh, yes, hello … I’m fine, thanks. You?”

  McLeod stood a few feet to the left of the pay phone, not listening to Passos’s report until he said, “But the zone did have one baptismal challenge this week … It was mine, actually. Ours. And it was an acceptance … Josefina da Silva … Yes, thank you. Well, we’re very excited. I wanted to set up an interview while I’ve got you on the phone. When is good for the president? … Oh he is? Oh, I hadn’t heard about that … In Santiago? … Well, that’ll work out fine, then. We were hoping for late week … Friday morning is great … Great. Thank you, Elder … The same to you. Good night.”

  Passos hung up the phone and wandered over to him.

  “What’s up?” McLeod said.

  “We’re on for Friday morning.”

  “Okay. Is that all? You were talking about something else, I thought.”

  Passos looked distracted, his face far-seeming. “Huh? Oh. President Mason left tonight for a three-day mission presidents’ conference. In Chile. All the mission presidents in the South American Area, apparently.”

  “Sounds big,” McLeod said. “Was that Elder Tierney you talked to? What did he say it was about?”

  “Something about raising retention rates among new converts.”

  “Ah, retention. I’m sure that’ll be productive.”

  Passos came back to the present—the sudden creased brows. “Is that sarcasm, Elder? What did we talk about just the other day?” Then he softened. “We’ve done good work with Josefina. Let’s not jeopardize it now.”

  The rest of the night proceeded uneventfully. The elders read at their desks—McLeod finished the second chapter in his new grammar book—and retired to bed. Just after lights-out Passos cleared his throat. “Elder McLeod, may I ask you a question?”

  “Hmm-hmm.”

  “What do the Americans think of Elder Tierney?”

  “What do they ‘think’ of him?”

  “I mean is he liked? Is he very popular?”

  “He is with the mission president, obviously,” McLeod said. “Less so with us. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” Passos said.

  McLeod shook his head in the dark. He pushed soft, inaudible air through his nose, and he closed his eyes.

  On Friday morning the elders picked up Josefina. She wore her Sunday best—that much McLeod could tell. Something white and loose on top, black on bottom. Elder McLeod didn’t allow himself more than that peripheral awareness, the same strategy he used with the newsstands. The three of them traveled by bus to the main rodoviária in Carinha, from there to the rodoviária in Belo Horizonte, and from there to the big chapel downtown, in a taxi, and all of it at reimbursable expense. The Work did feel best at a dedicated pitch—Sweeney and Kimball had been right. The thought came to McLeod as he followed Passos and Josefina out of the taxi and onto the sidewalk in front of the church. Passos was reassuring Josefina that she had nothing to worry about in the interview, nothing at all. She really did want this, McLeod realized. She would be his first convert (he didn’t count Zézinho), his first convert to justify the message.

  “You’re sure?” Josefina was saying to Passos. “What if the mission president asks me a question I don’t know the answer to?”

  “It’s not that kind of interview,” Passos said. “It’s not a test. It’s a conversation.”

  “It’s just to make sure you know how important this step is,” McLeod said. “Which you already do. You know so much already, Josefina. Trust us—you’ll do great.”

  “Okay,” she said, “okay.”

  Inside the ward building Elder Passos knocked at the bishop’s office, which President Mason often borrowed for interviews. After a moment the president opened the door and his big round face loomed up in the doorframe like a rising moon. The face smiled at Josefina, then looked beyond her to the empty foyer, then looked to McLeod and Passos. “Can I speak with you for a moment, Elders?”

  They all trailed smiles into the bishop’s office, but as soon as McLeod pulled the door shut behind him, President Mason’s smile dropped off his face, then Passos’s and McLeod’s, in quick succession, like shorting-out wires. McLeod and his companion sat on two padded chairs in front of a midsize dark-wood desk; President Mason sat behind it in a large black leather chair, a framed picture of the risen Lord glorying at his back.

  “I should have confirmed with you two, but I didn’t, and that’s my error,” the president said. “Elder Tierney had the interviewee’s name down as ‘Josef.’ ”

  “It’s Josefina,” Passos said.

  “An honest mistake,” the president said.

  The elders waited in silence for the president to make sense of his ashen look. He shifted in his chair—leather creaked and buckled. He shifted again, said, “Is your investigator married?”

  “Josefina,” McLeod said.

  “Yes, Josefina. Is she married?”

  “She is,” Passos said.

  “Well, that’s good news then. That’s good news.” The president leaned forward in his chair—more creaking—and rested his forearms on the desk. He crossed his fingers in a loose weave, somewhere between relaxation and prayer. He sighed. “I think you heard I just returned from a three-day conference in Santiago, Chile. The theme of the conference was retention, and the South American Area is now committed to improving its performance in that regard. To this end, Elders, we’ve been instructed to only baptize families from now on, self-sustaining, celestial units. That’s always been our goal, of course—our ultimate goal—to exalt families, to unite them in the eternities. But for now I’m afraid that means, in this case … well, you know what it means. I’m sorry, Elders. But tell me about Josefina’s husband. Do they have any children?”

  “Not yet,” Passos said.

  “She’s pregnant,” McLeod said. “And the husband isn’t interested in the gospel at all. He’s made that very clear. I’m confused, though. A few minutes ago you thought Josefina was ‘Josef’ and you were all ready for a baptismal interview, weren’t you?”

  President Mason pinched his eyebrows, and his companion, McLeod noticed out of the corner of his eye, did too. Another tripwire effect—a puppeteer’s trick, as if a string ran from the puppeteer’s own bushy brows to the puppet’s dark sleek V.

  “Elder McLeod,” Passos said, his voice low and chiding. He showed him his face from the day before—I’ll take care of this—but this time McLeod ignored it.

  He turned his eyes to the president. “Well? Weren’t you?”

  “Mind your tone, Elder,” the president said. He nodded at Elder Passos as if to point out for McLeod the proper attitude before the mission president, the proper tonal posture. His companion stared at him sidelong, a pleading, angry stare. Whose side was Passos on, in the end? Josefina’s? It certainly didn’t seem that way. McLeod had almost forgotten this part of Passos, but now it came rushing back at him. His companion the climber! His companion the missionary careerist! All at once McLeod felt a physical revulsion for Passos, something coursing up through him like bile. He felt it float him up free of the respectable world: he could say anything now, do anything, if only to embarrass Elder Passos.

  McLeod looked into the president’s big foreboding face. “Why are you avoiding the question? When it’s a man, you’re all for it. It’s green lights all the way.”

  “Mind your tone, Elder McLeod,” the president said.

  “Are you going to answer the question or not?”

  “Elder McLeod!” Passos grabbed him hard, strangling his wrist as if to cut off circulation to his mouth. “The kingdom can’t grow without priesthood holders. Isn’t that right?” He turned to the mission president.

  “That’s the hard truth,” the president said. “You ought to listen to your senior companion, Elder McLeod.”

  “W
e’ll work with her husband more,” Passos said. “We’ll bring him around. She’ll help us. I know she will. She really is golden, President.”

  “I’m sure she is. That’s why we want her baptism to be truly meaningful. We want it to be an important step toward the exaltation of her entire family. Our goal is to unite people in the eternities, not divide them. But that can only happen if a man and woman are sealed together in the temple. You both know this as well as I do, Elders.”

  “Where was this ‘meaningful baptism’ talk eight months ago when we called you about a ten-year-old?” McLeod said. “Do you remember that? Do you remember you okayed it? The kid went in the front door and out the back. And now when we bring you a real investigator—”

  “That’s precisely what we’re trying to have less of, Elder McLeod. In one door, out the other. We’re not asking your investigator not to be baptized—”

  “Josefina. Her name is Josefina.”

  “We are simply asking her to wait for her husband so that her baptism can be truly—”

  “Yeah,” McLeod said, standing up from his chair, “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” and he walked out of the office and slammed the door behind him.

  Out in the foyer Josefina said, “What’s wrong, Elder?” She sat straight-backed at the edge of a floral-patterned couch, her knees together beneath her black skirt, shining with the light from the window like waxed fruit. Her white blouse hung loose over her stomach, much tighter over her chest. “What’s happening, Elder? What is it?”

  He couldn’t look her in the face now, least of all now. He shook his head for her, slowly, and looked away.

  Passos made no attempt to hide his anger at McLeod, made no gesture at reconciliation the next day or the next. He and McLeod knocked doors in the afternoons and evenings, speaking in short clipped sentences when they did speak, which was rarely, and almost always about logistics. Where to? What next? Which bus? Little more than this.

  When Josefina failed to show up at church on Sunday, the elders took Rose with them for a drop-in visit that night. They needed Josefina’s closest friend in the ward to help cheer her, help her put things in perspective, but they also needed Rose in order to comply with the mission’s newest rule: missionaries must bring a third party when visiting a woman alone in her home. Elder Passos didn’t like the rule any more than McLeod did, but he didn’t intend to copy McLeod’s idiotic strategy of shouting into the wind, spitting into it, then hanging his head when he got all hoarse and wet.