The Bishop's Wife

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  His face lit up. I had never seen anyone look at me like that before, certainly not my children, not even Kurt. “Thank you! I’ll do that. Write her letters.” He nodded to himself, as if etching these words into his head. “Anything else?”

  I felt a sense of power. I knew the downsides to being the bishop, but now I began to understand the upsides, too. Not only did people look at you like you were an angel of God, but you could actually help them to be happy. So long as you didn’t give them really stupid advice. How well did I know Gwen Ferris, anyway? How much did I know about what was really going on between her and her husband? I could give general advice, though. And I knew that when I felt overwhelmed, sometimes Kurt putting a hand on my back or shoulder did wonders.

  “Touch her,” I said. “Not just kisses, and not necessarily sexually. But just casually, remind her that you are there. Touch the back of her neck or her back. Touch her legs while she is sitting next to you. Reassure her. Remind her that you love her. Make her feel surrounded by love, protected by it.”

  “Sometimes she doesn’t like to be touched,” said Brad. “She doesn’t like to be surprised. She jumps.”

  What was this? It shouldn’t be surprising to be touched by your husband of five years. “Maybe you should just make sure she knows it’s coming,” I said. “Let her come to expect it.” As soon as I said it, I wondered if I was off the mark. Did she have personal space issues? Or was there something darker going on here?

  “Okay. I’ll do that. Thank you so much. And maybe I can talk to you again later?” he asked.

  “Sure. If you’d like to.” Although I was thinking that I would very much like to talk to Gwen Ferris again myself. I needed to know if I had given her husband the worst possible advice or not. I needed to know more about everything here.

  Brad Ferris stood up and moved to the door.

  I got out of Kurt’s chair more slowly.

  I had to wait until Kurt got home and we’d had dinner to tell him what had happened with Brad Ferris and what advice I had given him.

  “Was I completely wrong?”

  “No,” said Kurt. “But—”

  “But what?”

  He just shook his head. “I don’t know. They haven’t told me everything yet. I can see how they are with each other. I can see they are good for each other. And you know about how they’ve wanted to have children?”

  I nodded.

  “But there’s something else there that they’re not ready to talk about yet.”

  “You could send them to a therapist, you know.” Why hadn’t he already done that?

  “I know, but I don’t think that’s the right thing in this case. I’ve prayed and prayed about it, and I think that for whatever reason, they need me personally to sit and listen to them.”

  I nodded again and hoped he and I had both done the right things by the Ferrises. There were times when you hoped that God really did use you as His tool to help others, because you were pretty sure you couldn’t do it yourself.

  CHAPTER 17

  In the midst of getting ready for Tobias Torstensen’s funeral Friday morning, Kurt had a visitor. It was Jared Helm’s father, Alex, who looked as angry when I opened the door as Carrie’s parents, the Westons, had looked when they came to see Kurt.

  Kurt had hoped to spend several hours reviewing his notes on Tobias’s life. Samuel was outside dealing with a few things in the yard that needed taking care of. A fallen tree that had to be cut down. A dam of leaves that hadn’t been raked up before it started to snow. And as always, putting out salt on the ice so that it melted quickly and no one slipped.

  I knocked on Kurt’s door and told him Alex was here to see him. But he said, “Just a minute.” I showed Alex Helm into the kitchen, where he sat at a stool and looked around. His expression made me think he was making a snap judgment of me based on the dust on my cabinets and the scuff marks on the wall by the outside door. I immediately disliked the man.

  But I was struck by how much Alex looked like his son. Or rather, the reverse. It wasn’t just in his features; they had the same mannerisms, the same useless hand motions when talking. And they had the same frozen look in their eyes when they were angry. The first time I’d seen it in Jared, I’d thought it was fear. But now that I’d seen it in his father, who was more voluble, I knew it was just banked anger, simmering not far below the surface.

  Kurt came in after we’d made a few aborted attempts at small talk, and he took Alex Helm into his office.

  I sat on a chair in the kitchen, thinking about Tobias Torstensen and whatever was in his garden. Occasionally, the sound of the voices in the other room was loud enough to disturb my thoughts. I didn’t hear much, but what I did hear made it clear that Alex Helm thought that his son had been wronged, that his daughter-in-law was crazy, and that the whole ward had a debt to pay for not seeing Jared’s needs earlier and helping him. He seemed to think we all should have taken Carrie Helm out of the home and sent her to a mental institution, that we should be giving interviews to the press about how wonderful his son was.

  I guess every father has a right to defend his son, but I felt for Kurt. I would have told Alex Helm to get out and never come back. But Kurt had always been more diplomatic. I suppose that’s why he’s the bishop and I’m not, although the fact that I’m a woman doesn’t help, either.

  When Alex Helm came out of Kurt’s office at last, I looked up from my book, checked my watch and realized he had been in there almost two hours.

  Kurt gestured to me, and I came over. Alex Helm seemed to have calmed down a little. Another one of Kurt’s talents.

  “Mr. Helm will be staying with Jared and Kelly for the next few weeks,” said Kurt. “With the press camped outside his house day after day, Jared needs someone to give him a break from childcare.”

  “Wouldn’t it be good for Kelly to get out, too?” I asked. I had ached every time I’d thought of her in the week since I saw her last, and yet it seemed wrong that I felt so much for this child who wasn’t mine. “Kelly is such a wonderful little girl,” I said, the word catching in my throat.

  I caught Kurt staring at me in surprise. I guess he hadn’t realized how much I felt for Kelly. Maybe I hadn’t, either.

  “She’s a wonderful child because her father has made an effort to teach her right from wrong. Her mother never did any of that. She would let that child do whatever she wanted. Indulged her too much, like she indulged herself. And Jared put up with it because he loved her. I always warned him that nothing good would come of it, and now I’m proven right. Indulgence and evil always go hand in hand.” Alex Helm was only a couple of inches taller than I was, but he lifted his head and had taken several steps toward me before Kurt stepped forward and the older man backed off.

  “Children do need to be corrected,” said Kurt. “And in this day and age, sometimes parents forget that.” I knew what he was doing, agreeing verbally with Alex Helm to lessen the tension of the conversation, but it still frustrated me to hear him take that man’s side.

  “But not physically hurt,” I said. “Using the right tone and showing love is all that most children need.”

  “You have no right to tell my son how to raise his daughter, so long as his method of discipline is reasonable and timely,” said Alex Helm. “That’s what the state law says. So long as he doesn’t use a belt or any other weapon but his own hand and he isn’t excessive.”

  Reasonable and timely? What was this awful man’s idea of reasonable? The idea of Kelly being struck made me ill. I had to put a hand up to the wall to steady myself. She was the kind of child who spoke what she thought when she thought it, and she believed she would be listened to. If she was around this man for very long, what would happen to that open part of her?

  “Of course we don’t mean to overstep our bounds,” Kurt was saying. “And of course Jared is doing a good job as a father. We don’t question that. Only that he might be stressed.”

  I knew Kurt was trying to be conciliato
ry, but I was not in the mood for it at the moment. I burst out with, “Well, I think Christ taught clearly that children were to be lovingly corrected, gently and kindly, and that those who hurt children would regret it.” With millstones round their necks, no less.

  “It isn’t hurting a child to grab her as she runs into the street into oncoming traffic, or to slap her hand when she reaches for a hot plate on the stove,” said Alex Helm. He looked at me with barely concealed disgust.

  “As long as you give her a hug afterward so she knows that you still love her, even if she makes mistakes,” I said.

  “Giving love too soon after correction can lead children to forget the correction,” said Alex Helm. “And little girls in particular have a tendency to believe that they can avoid the consequences of anything by sweet-talking the men around them.”

  Little girls? I’d met plenty of Mormons who thought girls were less capable than boys at doing certain tasks, and that girls—and women—should be restricted to a certain sphere. But this sexism was so blatant and unapologetic that it shook me.

  “I’m sure both little girls and little boys feel that way,” said Kurt, who seemed to have recovered more quickly than I had. Why shouldn’t he? His entire sex wasn’t being attacked.

  “Little girls face a harsh world,” I said. Kurt must have heard the danger in my voice, though Alex Helm might not have. “They need to know that there is someone always on their side.”

  “So long as they do right, there is someone always on their side,” said Alex Helm. “But if they do wrong, then they will be dragged down to hell and become servants of the devil, who will use their pretty looks and their manipulating ways for his own work.” He made a strangling motion with his hands and jerked an invisible woman to the floor. Quite the performance, I had to admit. He would be an excellent Lucifer in the temple film. Very real.

  I tried for a moment to dial back my revulsion for Alex Helm, to feel sympathy for him. Maybe his childhood had been terrible. Maybe his mother had been manipulative and selfish, as he seemed to think all women were. But here he was now, a grown man, a father and a grandfather. And he was looking at me like I was dancing with seven veils in front of him, ready to seduce him and then suffocate him while he struggled to escape from the hell of my clutches.

  “With her mother gone, Kelly needs more love than ever,” I said. “Or she will grow up thinking that her mother left because she herself wasn’t good enough.”

  “Her mother left because she is one of the whores of the earth,” said Alex Helm bluntly. Scripture or not, his tone chilled me. I looked to Kurt. Let him be diplomatic about that.

  “I’m sure all of us have an equal chance at repentance,” said Kurt, putting out an arm in an attempt to guide Alex Helm toward the front door. “God always wants us to come to Him, and the Atonement is available to any who want it.”

  Alex Helm didn’t budge. I saw a smile spread across his face. “Except those who are sons and daughters of perdition, who have known the full truth of the gospel, have had the Holy Ghost testify to them, and have rejected it. Those who reject Christ in His fullness have no second chance,” said Alex Helm. His voice boomed authoritatively, though his words were not precisely authoritative.

  The doctrine of the sons of perdition I knew, although I had never heard of daughters of perdition. Mormon scriptures said there were those who would not end up in any of the three kingdoms of glory that were Mormon heaven, but the number was supposed to be tiny. Fewer than a dozen was what I had always thought, because there were so very few who truly had the full knowledge of Christ in their hearts and then rejected it.

  All the rest ended up in one of the three degrees of glory: the telestial kingdom, where murderers went; the terrestrial kingdom, where the honest people of the world who denied Christ went; and the celestial kingdom, where only those who were righteous and had had all necessary Mormon temple ordinances could go.

  But as I stared at Alex Helm, I rather hoped that if I went to a heaven, it was one of the two he wasn’t in. Or maybe he would be one of the sons of perdition himself.

  “We can’t condemn others. Only God judges us, at the end of our lives,” said Kurt. He had stopped trying to push Alex Helm to the door and instead was blocking my path to the man. I’d always told the boys that they should avoid physical violence at all costs, but Alex Helm was the kind of man who inspired extraordinary measures.

  “That doesn’t mean we are absolved of the responsibility of calling evil evil.” Alex Helm shook his head. “If Kelly isn’t taught her place now, before she grows too old to learn properly, there will be no hope that she will turn out differently than her mother. And I won’t be the grandfather to a little whore.”

  That was all I could bear to hear. I raised a hand and slapped him hard across the face.

  Kurt flinched at the sound, then sighed and shook his head. “Now, Linda, I think you need to apologize for that.”

  Alex Helm had a hand to his cheek, and he seemed to be gloating. “I think that you have some work to do in your own house,” he said to Kurt. “You might have your own whore of the earth, Bishop.”

  Strangely, this had no effect on my anger, because I didn’t care what he called me.

  But Kurt did. He put a hand directly on the smaller man’s shoulder and pushed him toward the door. “Please tell Jared that he is welcome to come to me for counseling whenever he feels in need of it. And that he and Kelly are both in our prayers.”

  The door opened and closed, and then we were free of Alex Helm. God, what a noxious man! I hated the thought that he and I shared the same religion, at least ostensibly.

  “Do you need to scream now?” asked Kurt. “Or hit someone else? You can hit me if you want.” He pointed to his cheek.

  I was plenty angry, but Kurt wasn’t going to get out of this with just a punch to the jaw. “How dare you?” I said to him. “How dare you agree with him like that?”

  “I didn’t agree with him,” said Kurt mildly.

  “You told him that we all needed repentance.”

  “We do,” said Kurt.

  “And then you told me to apologize for hitting him.”

  “Yeah, that was stupid, wasn’t it?” said Kurt. He looked a bit sheepish at that. “But mostly, I was just trying to get rid of him. Aren’t you glad about that part?”

  Yes, I was. I took a breath and let go of the idea that Kurt had in any way agreed with Alex Helm. “Fine,” I said.

  Kurt moved to the door and glanced out the peephole. I assumed he must have seen Alex Helm in the distance, retreating to his son’s house. “What a horrible man. I actually feel sorry for Jared. Can you imagine having a father like that?”

  “Can you imagine having a father-in-law like that?” I said. “Poor Carrie. And poor Kelly. What will she think of her possibilities in the future with a man like that whispering in her ear every moment of her life?”

  Kurt turned away from the door and looked straight at me. I felt as if he could see to my soul. They say that bishops can do that. “About Kelly Helm. Linda, be careful, please. She isn’t yours. If you become too attached, you will only end up hurting yourself.”

  “And what about Kelly? I’m more worried about her hurts than my own. She’s the child. I’m a grown woman.”

  Kurt stared at me for a long moment, and then he gave up trying to talk me out of my feelings for Kelly Helm. “Well, no wonder their marriage had so many problems,” he said. “Knowing Alex Helm is here certainly won’t help Carrie want to come back.”

  But the real question was why Carrie had ever let herself marry into such a family in the first place. Her parents, it seemed, were right about everything.

  “By blood and by right.” Those were the words that Carrie had used in her letter to her parents to describe Jared’s claim to his daughter. And his promise that she would not be remembered, except as a crazy woman—I hoped desperately that wasn’t true, and that it was Jared’s own craziness that would eventually come out,
now that his father had arrived to fan it into flames.

  CHAPTER 18

  Still shaken by my conversation with Alex Helm, I went over to the Torstensen house at about ten to check on Anna before we were due at the mortuary for the dressing of the body. I knocked on the door and waited for an answer. It took several minutes and another knock before Anna Torstensen came to the door.

  I was shocked by her appearance. To my eyes, she looked like she was the one who had died. Her skin seemed thin and papery over the bones of her skull, which stood out clearly in the yellow artificial light. Every movement seemed slow and deliberate and distant, as if she were a puppet of herself, and there was an absence in her eyes.

  “I thought we could drive down to the mortuary together,” I said. She didn’t look like she could drive herself.

  “Thank you,” said Anna. “I just—I think I need a few more minutes to prepare myself.”

  “Have you had anything to eat today?” I asked.

  She shook her head again.

  “Let me make you some toast and then we’ll go,” I said. “All right?”

  She stepped away from the door, and I led her into the kitchen. I looked through her cupboards, wishing there were some forbidden coffee to perk her up and settling for herbal tea. I warmed some bread in a pan, then spread it with butter and jam. I had to tell Anna to sit down.

  “Eat this,” I said.

  She took tiny bites, showing no reaction of either distaste or enjoyment. When she was finished, she stared down at the crumbs on her hand.