Five Wives

by Joan Thomas

  He let the words hang over the audience and then he announced that his daughter, Abigail, was going to come forward and favour them with a musical number. So Abby had no choice but to get up from her seat and climb the little stairs to the platform. “I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go,” her father murmured when she got to the podium. He took his pitch pipe out of his pocket and blew her a G, and she sang a cappella, not faltering, but also not letting her eyes go to her mother’s white face below. In the last refrain he put his arm around her shoulders and joined her, harmonizing in his fine tenor, “I’ll go where you want me to go, dear Lord, over mountains or plains or sea. I’ll say what you want me to say, dear Lord, I’ll be what you want me to be.”

  Just as they got to the last line, voices were heard in the foyer of the church, and everyone craned their heads around. A very large old woman walked up the aisle, a tall, stout, white-haired woman in a white dress. Rachel Saint. Her hair was pulled back from her round face into a bun. Following her were two short guys in grey suits—her Latino drivers, Abby thought. It took her a minute to realize. Had she really expected the Waorani to arrive in Seattle naked, and painted, wearing just a bellyband made of vine? But it was their shortness that amazed her most as they stepped up onto the stage—they came up to Rachel’s shoulder. Their hair was also short, not as in the pictures taken on the Curaray River. They looked very much alike, though Abby guessed that one would be in his mid-twenties, the other maybe sixty. The older man had stretched-out earlobes, empty now of balsa plugs and dangling limply. Apparently Jesus didn’t approve of earlobe plugs. The younger man was missing teeth and had visible black cavities. They had grown up in two different eras: one before the missionaries, one after.

  It was nothing like her fantasies. Rachel made a presentation and did a Q & A, and when it was all over, they met at the front of the church and stood in a circle of nervous laughter and confusing talk in three languages. Sharon didn’t have the strength to stand, she perched on the front pew and chatted with the older man, Enkidi—a few words in the Auca language, and then they moved to Spanish. She was wearing a synthetic wig because the thought of other people’s hair freaked her out, and he stared at her in open surprise and disbelief. La niña rubia, he kept saying. But Sharon’s eyes were shining. Abby knew she was seeing the fearless boy she had known as a tiny girl in the settlement, who scaled branchless trees to collect palm fruit for her, who trapped a gecko and wove a little harness for it so she could keep it as a pet. Over and over, her thin hand reached out to touch his arm.

  On the way home in the car, Sharon slipped into a different zone. She had trouble responding to them, and at times they thought she was asleep, but her eyes were half-open. They went straight to the hospital when they got back to Portland. In the weeks that followed, she lay in a high white bed, hooked up to machines and dreaming of Ecuador. A garden that has everything, food for people and different food just for birds and monkeys. A fungus you peel into strips and press like a Band-Aid onto any cut or blister you have and are soon healed. Fruit that opens into waxy white pods you can light with a match and burn like candles. The termite nest you rub on your arms and legs to repel flies. It smelled like Oregon, her mother said. Because termites eat cedar. It seemed to Abby (shrivelled by the fluorescent lights, sick on the smell of antiseptic) that Ecuador was a place her mother could finally die from, that the very gates of heaven were visible from that lush and throbbing forest. Once, Sharon lifted her head from the pillow and saw Abby and said, “When you go, sweetheart . . .”

  Youderian and two of the other “cousins” did go a few years later. They were all in their teens, the right age to be baptized, and this beautiful idea emerged: they would go back to that playa on the Curaray River, and wade into the water, and there they would be baptized by the Auca warriors. It struck everyone as a breathtaking expression of respect to these new Christians: their murderous past was forgiven, they were elders in the church now, they could minister to the Americans. It made Abby’s heart ache—one of those expressions of faith so rich you couldn’t take it in, or take it apart, or argue against it, and yet night after night she lay in bed in the dark and resisted it. Her dad desperately wanted her to go. But she kept putting off the decision until her procrastination had to be read as a no, and that spring, after the Ecuador trip was over, after Youderian and the others were back, full of exciting stories, she was baptized by Pastor Dave himself in the cement tank of the Portland Church of God.

  4

  IN HIS OFFICE, THE DESK phone is blinking. Voice mail from, of all people, Sean Youderian. David calls back and Sean’s voice says, “You have the right to remain silent. If you choose to speak, everything you say will be recorded.” Cute. David’s doubts about the guy have sharpened into distaste, thanks to Abby’s revelation. David chooses to remain silent.

  He settles at his desk. It’s his habit to make a start on his new sermon on Monday morning, and he’s coming at it blank this week, having been occupied with other things for four days. But the news this morning—it was a long bit about the Islamic caliphate. They showed a clip from a few years back, Americans in robes kneeling in the desert with swords to their throats. It struck David as Biblical, straight out of the Old Testament, the cavelike dwellings with their low doors, the occasional camel, the single-mindedness, the rage and vengeance and spilled blood. Experience tells him he’s being given the seed of a sermon. Isn’t the formation of an Islamic state one of the signs of the Second Coming?

  It’s hard to know where to start in the Scriptures with that, and he’s forced to resort to Google. Turns out a lot of people think ISIS forces are descendants of the Amalekites from Exodus 17. He follows the branching tunnels of that rabbit warren for an hour. Around eleven, Karen, the church secretary, pops her head in the door. “Just a reminder,” she says. “You were going to change the sign this morning.”

  She hands him the bucket full of letters. The big sign—it’s what you notice first when you drive past the church, it looms over the parking lot. His congregation thinks it makes them look amusing and accessible, and they live in faith that the mottoes Pastor Dave puts up are going to smite the hearts of drivers passing by on Wilmore Street and bring them to their knees, or at least into the church. So in spite of his own misgivings, he works up a list of mottoes and every Monday Karen picks out the letters. The caretaker usually installs the sign, but he’s on vacation for three weeks, and he has proven to need close supervision. It’s harder than you might think, balancing on a ladder in the rain, plucking the letters from the bucket and sliding them along their little tracks, working from either end and still getting it right. A case in point, the motto David picked last year for the anniversary of 9/11: REMEMBER THAT SATAN HAS HIS MIRACLES TOO. The misspelling of SATAN didn’t catch his eye for days. Not until someone said, “Don’t you think you’re rushing the season a little?”

  SANTA, the caretaker had posted! SANTA HAS HIS MIRACLES TOO.

  He drags the ladder out from the crawl space and trudges across the parking lot. After the motto’s up, he stands back to check it.

  DON’T CONFUSE

  GOD’S PATIENCE

  WITH HIS FINAL RESPONSE

  It’s mean-spirited and threatening when you see it up in all caps. When he picked it out, he was not thinking about his daughter. He was thinking about, well, the whole USA, which seems to have surrendered its role as beacon of light in a dark world. He never actually saw the America his mother conjured for him when he was a boy in Quito. By the time he moved here, America had inoculated itself against the gospel in ways that still baffle him.

  He takes the ladder and bucket back to the crawl space. “I have a pastoral visit scheduled this afternoon,” he says to Karen. “I’ll be back at six for the men’s fellowship.”

  “Okey-dokey,” she says, looking up with a smile.

  Abby’s bike is gone when he gets to the house. Gizmo skitters across the kitchen floor in delight to see him. “So what’s to eat?” Dav
id asks, scratching his ears. On the kitchen counter, flats of applesauce cups, cases of V8 juice, a humongous box of Cheerios, a carton of green-wrapped granola bars. It’s crazy to buy bulk when it’s just the two of them, but he’s not very adventurous. He’ll have the usual for lunch: a bowl of Heinz pork and beans heated in the microwave, with a fried egg on top. Today he cracks an egg for Gizmo too. LORD, HELP US BE THE PEOPLE OUR DOGS THINK WE ARE, he thinks as he bastes the yolks with margarine. Betty used to interrogate him about the big sign when she came to visit. She thought it was a mistake to pander to secular culture, she thought it trivialized the gospel. Even homey slogans like the dog one perplexed and displeased her. Where do you get them? she asked, and he was forced to admit, the Internet.

  He slides Gizmo’s egg into his rubber bowl. “Say grace,” he says, and Gizmo crouches with his muzzle on his paws and his little tail whipping. Amen, you lucky little beggar.

  He sinks onto a stool at the island and pulls a fork out of the drawer. He’s not really hungry. His deficiencies are obvious in this lunch. People expect so much of him because of his physical resemblance to his father. You can have an athletic build and be lousy at sports. Betty saw him for who he was, she never thought he was a fitting mate for Sharon. Oh, she never said anything of the kind. But her constant pushing and interrogation wore him down.

  He finishes his beans and moves to the recliner in the living room for his lunchtime lie-down. Their last visit to Massachusetts, Betty hadn’t spoken a word in several years. But from the minute they arrived, she was entirely focused on her granddaughter. When Abby walked into the room, she would swim back up to life and fix her milky-blue eyes on her. The day they said goodbye, she clutched Abby’s hand and lifted a desperate face, shaping her mouth into an urgent thought that refused to come. They mused for months about what she might have wanted to say.

  He reaches for a cushion and shoves it under the bend of his neck. And now he needs to find the words to help his daughter, who is so confused. He tries to empty his mind so the Lord can fill it. The window in the hall is open and he hears his neighbour’s Vespa start, the sewing-machine whine of its engine sharpening as it moves up the street and then narrowing to nothing. He feels the firm, sustaining leather of the chair. He begins to drift, he’s sinking fast, and then he hears the door, and the click of Gizmo’s nails, and he opens his eyes to see Abby step into the living room. She’s wearing her cycling shorts and she looks warmed from her ride. “Hey,” he says, surprised into breaking his silence. He sits up, pushing down the footrest of the recliner. Sticks his middle fingers under his glasses and massages his eyeballs awake.

  “I brought you an iced coffee.”

  He’s not a fan of iced coffee, but he says, “That’s my girl,” and sets it on the end table at his elbow. “Have you had lunch?”

  “I had a late breakfast.”

  She wanders over to the couch and sits down. He was counting on an hour to pray and think before they met, but you have to trust God’s leading in the moment.

  “So what have you got planned for the week, honey?”

  “I thought I’d go up to Seattle and see Olive.”

  “That’s a great idea. She’ll want to hear all about the funeral.”

  “Yeah. She’s going to find this hard. Being the last one left.”

  Her hair is damp and flattened from her bike helmet, and she sits running her fingers through it. He’s struck by her face: it’s deliberately emptied of expression. She’s trying to place herself outside his reach. She’s waiting for this to be over, so she can go back to feeling what she feels. “It’s hard to think of this world without your grandma Betty in it,” he says gently.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Betty’s been in my thoughts a lot too. It’s not that we saw her that often, but she had such a huge presence in our lives.” An idea has been flitting through his mind since yesterday and at this moment it takes up residence, a fully formed revelation. Excitement starts to percolate, but he keeps his tone casual and picks his words carefully. “As we were flying home, I was thinking about the incredible care God took when He set the stage for Operation Auca. Not just raising up the five men with their special gifts, but also preparing a brilliantly talented young woman because He wanted to make sure the story went out to all the nations. When you think about it, He had to start thirty years before the event. He created Betty, He gave her the intelligence and the skill with words that made her a linguist and a writer. He guided her education, He kept her close to Himself.”

  He reaches for his iced coffee. “It strikes me that we’re moving into a new phase of the ministry. Every stage has its own mandate and its own challenges, and at every stage, God has provided.” He lifts the coffee in a little toast. “You know, Abby, I suspect God is preparing another gifted young woman to carry our story to a new generation. Someone to take up Betty’s online ministry, her blog. Stan was talking about it when we were in Wheaton. He’s upset about all that’s been neglected since she got sick. The books—he’s serving as executor for now, but he’d love to pass that job on.”

  He doesn’t take it further, just watches her. She raises her eyes and gives a startled laugh. “Me?”

  “Well, what do you think? You might not be ready just yet, but it’s something to shoot for.”

  “I don’t think so, Dad.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we should just let things go.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just—maybe it’s time to move on.”

  Then he’s the one who’s stunned into silence. Finally he says, “I thought you might be excited at the idea. You’ve always been so proud of your family and how God has used us.”

  “No,” she cries. “No, I’m not proud.”

  He looks at her perplexed.

  “What should I be proud of? That we went to someone else’s country and said to people, your ways are wicked, our ways are good? It’s horrible! It’s racist!”

  “It’s not us saying that, Abby.”

  “No?”

  “No. It’s God. It’s God’s word.”

  She sits motionless, not taking her eyes off his face.

  “What, darling?”

  Still she doesn’t speak.

  “Tell me where all this is coming from.”

  She makes a helpless gesture. “Are you sure you want me to talk about it?”

  “Of course,” he says with all the warmth he feels. “You can talk to me about anything.”

  They sit on their separate sides of the living room for a long minute without moving. In that pause he sees that she’s terrified, and he understands heavily the enormity of having put this question out. He has given her her moment, and they’ll be on different terms when it’s over.

  “Okay,” she says. “It’s just that I don’t have God to blame my attitudes on anymore.” Her voice is flat, but she doesn’t falter. “About a year ago I tried an experiment. I stopped talking to God, or thinking about Him, because I had to figure out if it was just me. And turns out it was. God was my imaginary friend, like people say. As soon as I stopped making Him up, He was gone.”

  Fury hits him hard. “Oh, Abigail, such a wilful boast. It’s blasphemy. You don’t toy with God. You don’t do experiments.” He manages to lower his voice. “Abby, when you hit a dry spell, it’s not God who’s checked out, it’s you. Remember when Peter went walking out across the water to meet Jesus? He was okay if he kept his eyes on the Lord. But the minute he took his eyes off Jesus, he started to sink.”

  “Dad . . .” She looks at him with anguish. “Dad, I don’t know if walking on water is what I aspire to.”

  What do you aspire to, Abby? That would have been the thing to ask.

  STILL SELF-INCARCERATED, ABBY moves around her bedroom, sorting out her laundry from Illinois and trying not to start crying again. Her dad’s in his room too, no doubt kneeling by his bed. It was as if they had a pact, that at least she wouldn’t say
it. He loves her, she knows it. She’s spent her whole life standing straight, so as not to spill the overflowing bowl of her parents’ love.

  She moves to the closet to pick out a few things to pack for Seattle. “Your room,” Olive calls the upstairs bedroom in her condo. It has a bed with a railing along three sides (a daybed, Olive calls it), a quilt with red-breasted birds, a chiming clock, and house plants that are versions of wild plants Olive remembers from Ecuador. And curled up on that daybed is Shadow, the grey cat named after the cat Olive had as a girl.

  Olive has always been Abby’s favourite of the Operation Auca grandmas. After Sharon died, Abby spent a lot of weekends in Seattle, cutting her last class on Friday to catch the early bus. Olive isn’t the force of nature that Betty was, but she is thoughtful and surprisingly honest. Although she rarely talks about herself. Mostly they talk about Abby. Well, Abby was a motherless teenager, wasn’t she. It was sort of a project for her, to gradually confide everything important in Olive.

  She’ll take her library backpack. She’s been working through a list she found online: “Reading for Aliens: The Twentieth Century on Planet Earth.” Will doesn’t know about the list, and he’s intrigued by the books he sees on her carrel; he thinks she’s some kind of savant, or at least an autodidact. She shakes the backpack open. 1984 by George Orwell and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, both unread. And below them, the red spine of a book she found in the social sciences section. She searched “Amazon Indigenous peoples” just for the heck of it, and felt a pulse of recognition when she went to the shelves and slid out this book with its cover photo of two children scaling a smooth palm trunk. It’s a study of the Waorani by an anthropologist who lived in a rainforest longhouse with them for many years. Maybe she’ll show it to Olive and maybe they’ll talk and she’ll learn something.