The Bishop's Wife

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  I put the pink dress into a plastic garbage bag and tossed it into our big green garbage can. It fell short, landing on the garage floor, but I was suddenly too tired to go pick it up. I’d find it before I put the can out to be picked up on Friday.

  And then I went back inside, feeling quite a bit smaller than when I had gone out.

  Kurt was in the kitchen, drinking the last of the milk straight from the jug. He looked at me sheepishly. “It was almost gone anyway,” he said.

  “And what if Samuel had seen you?” I asked him, smiling faintly.

  “Oh, I made sure he wasn’t around,” said Kurt. “I wouldn’t want him to learn all my bad habits.” He looked at me as if he was waiting to see if I was still angry about last night.

  I sighed. “I won’t poke in this anymore. I’ll let the police do their job, and I will stick with doing mine. Making bread, going on visits with the bishop, and changing minds slowly.” As I said the words, I felt keenly how small of a job it was.

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t act if you’re inspired to act,” said Kurt.

  “But you want me to wait for clear revelation?” I asked. As if revelation was ever clear.

  “I want you to stop feeling guilty for things that aren’t your fault. I want you to stop making up for things that are for God to reconcile,” said Kurt.

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  “I guess that’s as much as I can ask for,” said Kurt, and he held me tight, his lips pressed to my forehead, until Samuel came in and left again with a disgusted sound.

  CHAPTER 12

  I went shopping that afternoon for tools to replace the ones that had rusted in Tobias Torstensen’s shed. It was unlikely he would ever use them again, but I made the effort anyway, because it seemed the right thing to do, to leave things as they should be. And also because it was the only thing I could do.

  I delivered the tools to Anna and she asked me to put them in the shed for her. I stayed for a few moments, but there was nothing new to see. No spiritual sense goaded me one way or the other. I had been an atheist for several years before Kurt and I married, and this was why. Other Mormons feel a constant sense of direction, even in the minutiae of their lives, but I never had. Often, I struggled to feel any clear spiritual feeling at all. But I came back to Mormonism—and to God—because even if what I felt was very little, it was better to search for more than give up on anything beyond the mundane. At least, it was for me.

  Even when my daughter had died and I had been angry at God, I had still wanted Him to exist. Because if He didn’t, then none of my pain mattered at all. None of it made any sense. It was just random chance that she had died, just animal reaction that I mourned her loss. I wanted my life—and hers—to mean more than that. I went inside and talked to Anna. She seemed very quiet, and I soon found out why. Tobias Torstensen was not expected to live more than a week, according to the startlingly frank reports by his hospice caregivers.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “How are you holding up?”

  Anna bit her lower lip and shook her head. Her eyes were bright with tears, but she didn’t let them fall. She was too strong for that. “I’ll survive,” she said.

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” I could see already that the Relief Society had been here. There were several casserole dishes, cleaned and waiting on the kitchen table, with names written on masking tape. I wondered if Anna had eaten all of that food. Probably not. Had she had to figure out a way to store it or had she been sensible enough to simply throw out what she couldn’t use?

  “I’m fine,” said Anna.

  “But is there anything that would help you? Anything I could get for you at the store? Maybe a treat you don’t usually buy for yourself? A special perfume, lotion, or bath salts that might lift your spirits?” I wanted to do something.

  She shook her head. “I’m not really thinking about myself right now. But thank you so much for bringing those tools for Tobias.”

  “I know they don’t matter,” I said. He certainly wouldn’t be using them.

  “Tobias still worries about the garden, even now. I can tell him you bought new tools, and he’ll be eased by the thought that everything is properly waiting in the shed for the spring.”

  “You aren’t thinking about trying to keep up his garden work, are you?” I asked.

  “I’m trying to concentrate on now,” said Anna.

  Of course she was. I patted her shoulder. “I wish I could do more,” I said. “Call me, will you? Anytime, day or night.”

  “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  I went home and tried to do what she had said, focus on now. My now was Samuel going on a big group date on Friday and Kurt needing me to fix his second-best pair of slacks, which he had split at work the day before. I asked him if we needed to buy a new suit in a new size, and he had given me such a look. He did not like to be reminded that he was losing weight as bishop.

  “It’s good for me,” he said. “They say Americans are all too fat anyway.”

  “Yes, but you weren’t. I’m afraid all you’re losing is muscle.”

  “I’m gaining spiritual muscle,” said Kurt.

  “Well, that doesn’t hold up your pants.” I’d bought him several belts over the last year, and he kept tightening them, but the pants didn’t hang quite right like that.

  “I’m going to gain all that weight back. I’m planning it. The month after I’m released, you and I will eat out every night, and I will always get dessert.”

  “Unless you get called to be stake president,” I said, teasing. It was the fate of many a competent bishop, being given a more difficult job as a reward for the years of service.

  He shook his head and looked sternly at me. “Don’t you say that. Don’t you dare.”

  KURT AND I went to visit Tobias the next night, and I made Anna some tea and talked to her about a book I had been reading as we sat at the kitchen table, but after a few minutes, it felt like I was talking into a void. “I shouldn’t be prattling on,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t say that. I like your enthusiasm. And I’d like to borrow that book sometime. Later.”

  “Of course. I’ll bring it by.” Later, I thought.

  We sat in silence for a while, listening to the susurrating sounds of Kurt and Tobias upstairs.

  “Thank you again for coming,” said Anna, when Kurt came out of the bedroom. “You made me forget myself for a little while and I appreciate that enormously.”

  WEDNESDAY EVENING AFTER his church meetings, Kurt suggested we go to visit the Torstensens. He had called earlier in the day to ask Anna if we could come by late. Tobias wasn’t sleeping well, snatches here and there when the pain medication was working, but when it wasn’t, there was nothing that could be done.

  After one look at Tobias in his room, I reconsidered my position on euthanasia. He was skin and bones, a scrap of humanity that breathed in and out with great pain. He moaned with every breath, and the sound rattled out of him as if he were already a corpse. I had to bite my lower lip hard to keep myself from weeping aloud. Luckily, I didn’t have to stay long with him. Kurt motioned me to take Anna out while he talked to Tobias.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked, as we walked back down the stairs.

  “We’re fine. I’m just—waiting. It’s a difficult time,” said Anna. Her eyes were bright with tears and her words were a whisper.

  I put a hand on her arm. “Please. Tell me something I can do to help.” Maybe I needed it more than she did, but I asked anyway.

  “Well,” said Anna at last. “Tobias keeps talking about his first wife. He wants to see her grave, he says. But I don’t know where it is. I could call the boys myself, but I just don’t have the energy. Why aren’t they here yet? What are they waiting for? He is dying, and he wants his sons here with him to find a little peace. I have the feeling he could talk to them about his first wife when he won’t talk to me.” She waved a hand impatiently.

  I remembered the i
mportant “work projects” that both Liam and Tomas claimed they had to finish before they flew to see their father on his deathbed. Anna had told them Tobias was dying almost a week ago.

  “I’ll call your sons,” I said, glad to do something with my angry energy. I’d either get them out here tomorrow or get information out of them about their mother’s grave that would help ease Tobias’s mind. “Do you have their phone numbers?” She wrote them out for me on a scrap of paper. “Thank you,” she said, and held my hands inside of hers. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”

  “I’ll take care of it. You don’t need to worry,” I said to her.

  She nodded, then went to bring Tobias a glass of water. “I forgot this before. He needs to drink. He needs to keep his lips wet,” she told me as I followed her back up to his room.

  I stood in the doorway and heard only the last bit of conversation between Kurt and Tobias. “But—” Tobias was saying, then he looked up and saw us. He was startled into silence.

  Kurt patted Tobias on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it now. You enjoy a bit of time with your wife. I’ll come back to see you again tomorrow.”

  Kurt and I walked outside together.

  “He has something weighing on his mind,” said Kurt.

  “Did he say anything to you about his first wife?”

  “Not directly.”

  “Maybe he was trying not to be a bother,” I said and explained to Kurt what Anna had told me about his desire to see his wife’s grave. “Do you have any idea where she would be buried?”

  Kurt rubbed at his face. “No, I don’t. She died long before we were in the ward, and the records just list her death place as Draper, but she’s not in the city cemetery.”

  How strange that the death place wasn’t always recorded in Mormon genealogical records, I thought. Shouldn’t death be holy? Shouldn’t we see it as the moment when the soul is invited back into the presence of God?

  “Do you think he is worried about whether he will be with Anna or with the other wife in the afterlife?” I asked. We were getting closer to home and walking more and more slowly.

  “Surely God will make the choice, if one has to be made, that will bring the most happiness to all involved.” Kurt was staring past me, and I realized he was looking at the temple set on the mountain so recently.

  “He seemed upset when we came in. Did he tell you anything?”

  Kurt hesitated, then shook his head. “Something about a sin, but he wouldn’t say what. And I couldn’t tell you about it even if he did.”

  The temple was supposed to be our most holy place, where no one was allowed to go if they were touched by sin. But of course, that was impossible. The final question of the temple recommend interview—and in some ways, the most difficult—was, “Do you consider yourself worthy in every way to enter the House of the Lord?”

  How could anyone be worthy in every way?

  But I didn’t know if Tobias’s sin was big or small. Was he overly worried about a peccadillo, or might I be right about his first wife’s death?

  THURSDAY MORNING, I woke late, after Samuel and Kurt had both already left the house. I got dressed, ate breakfast, and then took a few quiet moments to prepare myself. Then I called the first number on the scrap of paper Anna had given me the night before. The elder son’s name was Liam. The younger son was Tomas, without the h, some tip of the hat to the Scandinavian heritage, I supposed.

  Tomas answered immediately. I explained who I was, and then he told me he had just arrived at the airport in Washington, and would be staying at a nearby Salt Lake City hotel that night rather than bother Anna to try to prepare a room for him. So he would be here soon enough to see Tobias still alive, I hoped. Some of my anger dissipated, but I still wanted to ask about his mother.

  I said, “Your father has been asking to see your mother’s grave. Anna wanted to know if you could go visit it for him, perhaps take a photo or a video, just to put his mind at rest. I know it seems silly, and you must have plenty to do already, but I thought I would ask, since you are in the area.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know where she is buried,” said Tomas. “Dad would never talk about her death or her gravesite.”

  I said carefully, “So you don’t know how she died?”

  “He told us she died suddenly of a heart condition, but we never saw her body at a funeral that I recall.” Tomas spoke evenly, no hint of fear or nervousness in his voice. “And when I had my own heart trouble, and wanted to see if there was a genetic link, Dad said there weren’t any records for her.”

  “I didn’t know you had heart problems. I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Oh, I’ve had surgery for it since to correct it. Just a little hole in the heart. But why there were no records of her heart condition, I never knew. It made me wonder if—” He cut himself off.

  “If what?” I asked.

  “If she hadn’t died of a heart condition, after all.” His tone was musing, not suspicious.

  “You think he lied to you? But why?” I asked. I should have dropped this, but no one could blame me when Tomas Torstensen brought it up himself, could they?

  “I don’t know. Maybe she had a drunken accident. Something he was embarrassed about,” said Tomas. “But to answer your question, I don’t know where the grave is. We never visited it as children and as far as I know, Dad never went to visit it on his own, either.”

  “Then you don’t think Liam might know anything more?” I asked.

  “No. He and I have talked about it. Numerous times.” He sounded annoyed now, and why shouldn’t he? I was asking him irrelevant details about the past when his father was dying. Finally, he added, “Liam says he thinks she was cremated. But I don’t know where her ashes would be.”

  Cremation wasn’t forbidden by the church, but it seemed—odd. Especially for a young wife. “But then, why would your father be asking to see her grave if she wasn’t buried?” I asked. I wasn’t just being nosy. Anna had asked me to help her with this so Tobias could die in peace, knowing how his wife’s grave would be cared for when he was gone.

  “Maybe his mind is going. Maybe he can’t remember what he did with her remains,” said Tomas. “I can ask him about it when I get there tomorrow afternoon, if you’d like.” Now he was ready to go. I had kept him too long.

  “I wouldn’t want to upset him,” I said. But wasn’t it Tobias who said he wanted to see his wife’s grave? Why was he talking about it now after so many years of staying silent on the subject? It wasn’t until after we’d hung up that I thought to tell Tomas about the pink dress I still had in the garage, rescued that morning from the plastic garbage bag and placed neatly folded on a shelf with our garden gloves, which were woefully unused of late.

  I tried to call Liam multiple times that day, and only got his answering machine. I left two urgent messages on it for him to return my call, and hoped that he was on an airplane even then. I wished I had thought to ask Tomas about his brother’s plans. It sounded as if the two of them talked to each other a great deal more than either of them talked to their parents.

  CHAPTER 13

  Breaking news Friday at noon on KSL was once more about Carrie Helm. A convenience store camera had footage of Jared Helm and Kelly stopping to get gas at 3:00 A.M., just hours before he had come to my house to tell Kurt that Carrie was missing. What was he doing outside at that time with his young daughter in the car? And why had he not told the police or me and Kurt anything about it?

  I had told Kurt I wasn’t going to involve myself with the Helms anymore. But as soon as the news was over, I turned off the television and began to work on another pan of brownies. Kelly hadn’t gotten to eat the ones she had made before.

  While I was waiting impatiently for the brownies to cook, Adam called me. “I heard about the new information in that case in your neighborhood,” he said. “Is Dad going to have to talk to the news people, too?”

  “So far, he hasn’t had to,” I said.

>   “He sounds … different when I talk to him. I’m worried. Somehow it sounds like he thinks it’s all his fault.”

  Did he? And here Kurt had been telling me to stop thinking that everything was my fault. “We should have seen more,” I said simply.

  “Mom, you can’t do everything, you know. You’re trying to make sure Samuel gets through school and you’ve got other people in the ward to worry about.”

  “Being busy is never an excuse for not helping,” I said. It was an old mantra of mine, whenever the boys complained about a service project while they had homework to do.

  “Our grades suffered because of that rule sometimes, you know,” said Adam. He was the oldest, and we had made him do countless service projects for the youth organizations, Eagle Scout projects, not to mention the canning, apple picking at the church farm, visiting the nearby retirement home to do sacrament meetings and weekday services, shoveling snow during the winter and weekly church cleanup. He had been a good sport about it. He never complained, just did the work. A good example to the younger boys, for whom he always tried to make it fun.

  Adam was the kind of kid you never worried about when he was older, but it had been a wrench when he left home. I’d felt keenly the loss of his help in mobilizing the troops. Even simple things like dinnertime conversation had seemed more chaotic and less kind when he was gone. But of course, he needed to make the leap and start his own family.

  Marie was good for him, energetic and intelligent. I didn’t know why they hadn’t started a family yet. It was likely something they felt pressure about from within the church. They’d been married for four years now, and I knew it was none of my business to ask about grandchildren. But after listening to Gwen Ferris, I wondered if there was more going on than just the two of them trying to finish school before they took on another financial responsibility like kids.