by Laura McNeal
He said that when he was eighteen he’d been fed up because there were so few Mormons where they lived in New York, and he was tired of the rules his mother and father imposed on him—no drinking, no smoking, scripture study every single evening around the table—and their irrational disapproval of a Catholic girl who was achingly good in every way except that she was not Mormon. They wanted him to go on a mission, too, but he didn’t want to go. He was planning to leave them all—the church, his family—when one day Sarah was sick and he had to stay home with her while his parents went to a funeral. She was hungry, so he put a plate of food before her, went to get something, a magazine, and when he returned, her face was bright red. “She choked for the longest time. I didn’t know what to do. I really had no idea.” He prayed that if God would let him save her, he would do it. He would go on a mission like his parents wanted.
Leenie waited.
“I pressed on the right part of her chest somehow. It came out—it was a clump of bread.”
“Ah,” Aldine said.
“I made an effort to believe after that. And more and more I found that I did believe, that it was all true, and I could keep my promise.”
Aldine sat very stiffly in her chair, the thick Bakelite bracelets gleaming on her arm as she held the teacup unnaturally still.
“Could we—would you mind—if we come again next Saturday?” Elder Cooper asked.
“Certainly,” Leenie said, not giving Aldine a second to interject, her whole being calm and steady. “For tea,” she added, and then remembered the men didn’t drink it, and that she and Aldine would have to ask Aunt Sedge for permission to entertain two unmarried missionaries from America, and of course Aunt Sedge would say absolutely not. “We’ll have more sandwiches next time,” Leenie said hopelessly, “and cakes.”
“Could we say a prayer before we leave?” Cooper asked, a question no one had ever asked Leenie before, but the situation had no precedent from start to finish, so she just nodded.
“Our Eternal Father,” he began.
Aldine ducked her head but kept her eyes open, staring hard at Leenie. Probably she was wondering if this was how people got into cults and such.
Leenie, for her part, went on feeling a stillness inside herself as she listened to Elder Cooper’s deep, sure American voice. A change was beginning, she felt.
3
Our Aunt is not well please meet us 2 o’clock Monday, The Cream Pot, High Street.
That was the dishonest note they had to send Cooper and Lance. It gave things an illicit thrill, in Aldine’s opinion, though Aldine was more than a little alarmed to read the inscription Elder Cooper had written in the blue hardback copy of the Book of Mormon he gave them:
For Aldine and Eileen McKenna, Ayr, Scotland, April 13, 1929
We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things.
Endure? That was the new church’s promise? What more might they have to endure beyond their father’s death, their mother’s death, and the possibility of living to middle age without a single interesting thing happening to them? Had it not been for Cooper’s adorability, which seemed to have destroyed Leenie’s limited common sense, Aldine would have mislaid the Bible-ish book on a seawall.
“Why are you going on with this?” Aldine asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You loved that story about his sister and the bread lump.”
“You didn’t? You don’t like a person who prays to save his little sister?”
“I don’t dislike it. I wouldn’t join a religion for him, though.”
Leenie took to reading the Bible-ish book, which looked more like a Jane Austen novel than a holy testament, in their bedroom every night. “Try reading it aloud with me,” Leenie said. “See if you get the calm feeling.”
“I never get calm feelings,” Aldine said. Religious talk made her qualmish.
“Oh, just read a bit. How do you know?”
“I, Nephi,” Aldine said, annoyed already at the unfamiliar names. “Having been born of goodly parents. Is it ‘Nee-fie’ or ‘Neffy?’”
Leenie smoked while she listened. “‘Neffy,’ is how I say it. Go on.”
“Therefore I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father; and having seen many afflictions in the course of my days, nevertheless, having been highly favored of the Lord . . .”
After a whole page of that business, Leenie asked if she felt it. The Calm Feeling. Aldine said only if the calm feeling was a wish to off herself. Leenie was still smoking, and as usual she looked like a child playing a role, and that’s why she liked it. She thought a tarry matured her. “I’ll bet we’d feel it more,” Leenie said, sighing, “if Elder Cooper were reading it.”
“You would, anyway.”
“I love the way his voice goes all rich and chocolatey.”
Aldine eyed her. “What about George? Where’s he in all this?”
“I told you he wasn’t my Japanese man. Anyway, I told him not to come round for a while.”
Aldine knew she should feel a bit sorry for George at this moment, but she didn’t. He worked at a motor shop, played darts, and drank but wasn’t the one to lead in anything, even a lark, and he’d once said Aldine reminded him of Buster Keaton.
Leenie said there was a church meeting they could attend a week later in Glasgow, where no one would know them (the Cream Pot having proved overly public), and she wanted to be able to say they’d read the whole book by then. “Let’s keep going. It’ll get more thrilling, maybe.”
It did not, not even when they skipped. Somewhere in the second book of Neffy, Aldine said she was pretty sure it was all blether.
Leenie lay flat on her back, eyes on the sloped wallpapered ceiling that was pink rose after pink rose. “Why?”
“Well, for starters, God and Jesus appearing to a runt of a farmer boy in the woods,” Aldine said, snorting a little.
“No,” Leenie said decisively. “That I believe dead certain, like Elder Cooper does. Think on it, Deenie. It’s no more peculiar than Jesus rolling back the stone of his tomb after he died, and look how many loads of people believe that.”
“No,” Aldine said. “It’s not the same at all.”
“It’s less peculiar, the fact is. Haven’t you ever been somewhere alone,” Leenie said, “like the hill above the Doon when there’s a low fog, and you see sun poke through in a column, like? I think that’s what it was for Joseph, only he saw God.” Leenie stopped to pick something off the tip of her tongue; then she inhaled again.
“You mean he saw the sun and it was like God or it was God?”
“Oh, was. Why not?”
Leenie always did fancy herself a mystic. “Why doesn’t God step through the sun for everybody then?” she asked. “And save all the babies that choke on lumps of bread.”
“I don’t know about the babies. Nobody does. But most people don’t pray for wisdom,” she said. “And they don’t listen, either.”
“Did you?”
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of?”
Leenie shook her head and stubbed out her cigarette in the ceramic dish that had been painted, inexpertly, with a picture of Castle Culzean. “I prayed to ask if it was true.”
“And what?”
“The answer was yes.”
Aldine was astounded. “I think the answer was that you love Elder William Cooper’s forehead and you want to lie with him in the biblical manner.”
Leenie took the book back from Aldine and said, “You’ve never believed in God. That’s why you can’t stop thinking everything’s lust.”
“Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t dream of him ravishing you nightly.”
“He’s a missionary. It’s like asking if I’m gone on the reverend.”
“I can’t believe it. Sedge is going to die ten thousand deaths when you tell her,” Aldine said. “He’s your Japanese man.”
“Maybe
he is and maybe he isn’t. In any case, I’m not going to stop believing something that makes me feel right inside.”
“Are you going to marry him and leave me here on Bellevue Crescent with Aunt Sedge?”
“Don’t be silly. Missionaries can’t go around with girls or talk about love with their converts.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. He’s never said an improper word and neither have I.”
“Don’t move to America.”
“All right,” Leenie said. “I’m going to sleep now.” As usual, Leenie was asleep in two seconds, and Aldine lay awake wondering what would happen when Elder Cooper took his soul-winning forehead home.
4
Three Saturdays later, the four of them knelt down in an empty park, grass soaking their knees, and prayed for the Spirit to tell them the church was true. What Aldine saw while her knees were soaking was Elder Cooper’s focused eyes, the concentrated force of his passion—it looked like faith but it could have been love—every time he looked at Leenie.
“Are you ready to be baptized?” Elder Cooper asked.
“Yes,” Leenie said.
“But the tea,” Aldine said to Leenie. “She can’t live without it,” she said to Cooper.
“I’m not worried,” Leenie said.
Aldine wanted to ask was she worried about giving up tarries, but she didn’t.
“How about you,” Cooper asked Aldine. He did the thing with his eyes.
“I’ll think on it,” Aldine said.
The Saturday after that, Leenie told Aunt Sedge she was going to the Cream Pot, but where she really meant to go was the mouth of the Doon for baptism, which it turned out was not a sprinkling on the forehead but a full dunking. She would need to wear all white (“Like a bride?” Aldine said) and go all the way underwater.
“No,” Aldine said. “You’re not doing that.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“I could tell Sedge.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I might.”
“I don’t care. She can’t stop me, either. People have always done what their faith told them to do.”
“You’re not Joan of Arc.”
“I didn’t say I was.”
“You’re going to become a Mormon and then you’re going to go to America and marry him.”
“I told you he hasn’t said a word about love.”
Leenie started to put on her graduation dress: white pongee in a sailor style.
“That’s what you’re wearing to meet John the Baptist?”
Leenie pressed on the pleats of the skirt. “Don’t worry,” she said. “If I go to America, I’ll go to the temple place for you and Mum and Dad someday.”
Cooper had shown them a picture of a cathedral-type building in Salt Lake City. He said you could go there and do a thing (Aldine couldn’t recall what), say some words, and it was a spell, kind of, and you’d be joined to your family even if they were dead already.
Leenie kissed her and covered her white graduation getup with a coat, and she must have gotten by Aunt Sedge all right because Aldine saw her walking swiftly down the sidewalk to High Street. She found her again on the bank where the Doon met the Irish Sea, a beautiful spot for anything but going swimming in your clothes. Elder Cooper and Elder Lance were standing there looking a little ridiculous because they, too, were wearing white. As Aldine stood behind a tree, Leenie scuffled down the steep, muddy bank into the cold, brown water. She felt dishonest hiding from them all, so she stepped out, called hello, and waved.
Leenie waved back.
“How’s the water?” Aldine called to her. She had that curious detachment that comes of not taking a thing seriously that she did not feel deeply herself. It was like when a boy said he was mad for you and you just felt impatient. His love could not be deep or real if you felt nothing at all.
They’d been to this spot with their father loads of times before he died. Wild swans floated out to sea and collected in a white wedge on what was, in summer, a beautiful cream-blue stretch of tide. On sunny days, the river glittered and the willow trees trailed their leaves in the shallows, all of it sparkling and benign. Today the clouds were particulate and unyielding, the air dreary white, and not even the ducks seemed to enjoy the water.
Lance waded in after Cooper and Leenie.
“It’s positively Baltic!” Leenie squealed, lagging behind Cooper now, hanging back as the current soaked her thighs.
“Remember those hounds?” Aldine called.
Leenie barely nodded, but Aldine knew she did. It was something they’d recalled for each other every time their father brought them here, which was more often after their mother died. They used to eat vanilla tablet with him on the ruined stone wall, where you could see both the start of the ocean and the end of the river. He would sit without talking, which meant he was thinking about their mother, so they would go off and try to find fairy circles, a ring of wild mushrooms you could stand within to make a wish. They were still searching the time the red-eared man had come to the riverbank with a pair of big-eyed, long-nosed, jittery dogs. Knotted ropes noosed the dogs’ necks, and the man held tightly to the dogs when he plunged into the water. The dogs reared like horses, but the man kept plunging, walking in circles waist-deep. The dogs kept their heads above the surface, twisting and lurching, always trying to find a means of escape from the cold and the rope, but this only forced them to swim like helpless motors beside the man, and this came to seem like the point.
“That’s horrid!” Aldine said, not even bothering to lower her voice, and Leenie asked (more quietly) their father to save the dogs, but he just stayed on the rock wall and said, “They’re racing hounds. He’s training them up.”
Aldine hoped one of the wild swans would fly up and beat the man on his big red ears, but nothing happened. After the dogs did their exercising, they were led, sopping and cold, to the riverbank, and the man walked them out of sight.
Aldine wished it were sunny, or at least one of those tormented afternoons when silvery clouds broke apart for dazzling sunshine in between the bursts of rain, but no. Aldine felt—she couldn’t help it—that Leenie was letting herself be one of those trained dogs because she was in love with Elder Cooper. To the north, the beach curved like a shorn hoof for two or three miles, not a soul out for a walk or a swim. Leenie stood up to her waist in the river, and she waved nervously to Aldine, who waved back, and Aldine wondered if it was true that the dead hovered nearby, watching. Maybe their father was watching the missionaries from the stone wall, and watching Aldine, too. “Stay by her,” he’d said. “You’re the youngest but you have the older nature.”
In the river, Elder Cooper lifted his right arm. He was wearing a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and underneath the dress shirt was a white undershirt, soaked through, and underneath that, a not unaffecting physique. He held his arm stiffly up and bent at the elbow, like someone about to say, I do solemnly swear. “Eileen Rose McKenna,” he said. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
Leenie willingly buckled, as though to drown. For a second, she was a pale riven shape under the water. Then he rescued her and she stood again, the River Doon running off her face and hair. She sputtered and smiled at Elder Cooper, and then at Aldine.
“You now, Deenie?” Leenie said, wading out, already close enough to tug on Aldine’s wrist.
“Can’t,” Aldine said. “I’m wearing black.”
“It’s not that important what you wear,” Elder Cooper said.
“Maybe another day,” Aldine said. “When it’s hot out.”
After Leenie left to marry Will, Aldine sometimes dreamed that she was in the river, slipping on the stones that lay on the bottom as she trudged out to be baptized. In the dream, it was Elder Lance who held Aldine and raised his right arm, and the cold sank into her bones as though the water were running through and not around her body. Elder Lance held out his wet, freckled arm to steady h
er, but when he ducked her under, he held her there and she struggled like the greyhounds until she thought she would drown, her eyes open the whole time and searching everywhere for Leenie and Will but not finding them, or her father, either, and then she was awake, and she was alone in the rose-papered room at the top of Aunt Sedgewick’s silent house.
5
Come live with us, Leenie wrote. There’s a box factory that’s owned by a member and you could get a better job than working for Old Malleyman, who can’t be long for this world anyway to hear Aunt Sedge go on about him. I feel sure that your Japanese man is around here somewhere!
Dr. O’Malley was housebound now. Aunt Sedge said he should have a proper nurse, not a young unmarried secretary who’d already stirred up talk.
“I counted up my savings,” Aldine finally told her aunt. “With what Leenie says she’ll send I have just enough for a third-class ticket.”
It was not true. Leenie had no money to send. But Aldine had obtained the money another way.
“Oh, Aldine,” Aunt Sedgewick said. She smoothed the cushion beside her with a small wrinkled hand. It was a sunny day, perfect for going out, but there they sat. “Living with a married couple so far from home,” Sedgewick added. “It won’t suit you.”
“I want to go,” Aldine said.
“There’s someone here for you, dear. He’ll come along.”
Aldine had never asked Aunt Sedgewick about the Japanese man. “It isn’t that,” she said. After a long time she added, “I’ll miss you mind and body.”
Aunt Sedgewick nodded once and seemed about to speak, but her eyes were full of tears, and she stayed on the sofa in the sunny room until Aldine kissed her on the cheek and went out, trying very hard to keep her shoes from making any noise as she opened the front door and closed it behind her.