Falling for Grace

by Robert Farrell Smith

  “Well, that wouldn’t matter in Thelma’s Way. Whoever has it will probably trade it for a couple cows, or a piece of land. Actually, they’ll be lucky to get that. People don’t have much use for old books. I’m sure whoever has it would be willing to let it go for something shiny or new-looking.”

  My father turned back to Grace and smiled.

  “Tell me more about your hometown,” he said.

  Grace knew he had ulterior motives, but she was happy to oblige. She told him about the winding path from Virgil’s Find and the chapel where the branch would meet. She told him about the debate the town had had, and how after the food fight the Book of Mormon turned up missing again. She told him how the whole town was waiting for someone to begin spending a lot of money, so as to give away the fact that they had secretly cashed it in. She told him every single thing she knew about the lost Book of Mormon, and all about Thelma’s Way.

  My father listened to Grace as if she had a doctorate in conversation from Yale (instead of a letter of recommendation from her father concerning homeschool).

  Two days later, Dad flew out of town. He wouldn’t say where he was going, only that it was very important and that he would be back in a week or so. My mother insisted it was a routine business trip, and that his leaving had nothing to do with the huge fight the two of them had had the day before over Margaret wearing makeup (Mom for, Dad against).

  “He has business trips all the time,” my mother told Abel and me defensively.

  We had no reason not to believe her. At least not yet.

  8

  Be Prescared

  November 17th

  As luck would have it, we didn’t need my father’s name to find Grace a job. Wednesday evening, Brother Victor, the Thicktwig Ward employment specialist, showed up at our house to let Grace know what jobs were available.

  Brother Victor was a tiny man. Although he was many years my senior, I always felt tempted to pick him up. He was just so compact. He looked like a miniature human, like one of God’s trial-sized samples. He was also one serious ward employment specialist. He had held the position for as many years as I could remember and apparently desired never to be released. Thanks to him, almost no one in our ward stayed out of work long. A few years back, when Brother Treat had been laid off from his job at the carpet factory, Brother Victor worked day and night to find him a job. Brother Treat was actually kind of enjoying the lazy rush of drawing unemployment, but he soon found out that it was more work avoiding Brother Victor than holding down a regular job. He took a position driving one of the city buses that went down our street.

  Brother Victor informed Grace that Brother Noah Taylor, the emergency preparation guru from Manti, was looking for someone to answer phones and do the billing for his food storage warehouse. The job would only last until the end of December. It was perfect for Grace.

  “I thought it might be,” Brother Victor smiled.

  Grace called up Brother Taylor and was offered the job on the spot. It was a nice wage with good hours. She was very relieved.

  “My work here is done,” Brother Victor whispered as he left.

  My mother was actually pretty impressed that Grace got the job. I guess she thought it was a socially enviable position—Brother Taylor was the out-of-towner to know.

  Later that evening, I walked Grace back to Wendy’s for the night. We stood on the unlit porch pretending that it wasn’t as cool as it actually was.

  “How are you doing with all this?” I asked.

  “It’s a slight adjustment,” she shivered. “But I like it here.”

  “You do?” I asked, surprised.

  “Your family’s nice . . .”

  “They are?”

  Grace slipped her arms around me and put her head on my shoulder.

  “That’s kind of nice,” I said, trying to sound calm.

  “Trust,” was all she said.

  I kissed the top of her head. She pulled back just a bit so that my lips could meet her on the forehead. Her body shifted and suddenly her soft mouth was on mine. I didn’t really know how we had gotten there, but I was not about to complain. I could feel her fingers on the back of my neck. Suddenly it was way too dark out and I couldn’t see anything except me kissing her forever. The night spun around me like cotton candy, making my senses sticky and sweet. Grace touched me on the cheek and brushed my right ear with her hand. Then she placed her head back on my shoulder and sighed.

  “What was that for?” I finally asked.

  “I want to make sure that we’re turning into more than just good friends.”

  Grace kissed me again and then slipped through Wendy’s front door. I walked home with a windy soul under a clear sky.

  My mom was in the living room pasting pictures into photo albums as I came in.

  “Trust, is that you?” she asked, too busy to look up. “You know, I think Grace is real lucky to land that job with Brother Taylor. I hope she’s grateful, but then I guess those natural people usually are.”

  “Natural people?” I asked.

  “You know, free spirited. She’ll learn a lot under the tutelage of Brother Taylor.”

  “So what’s the deal with this Taylor person?” I asked, curious to know more about this man everyone spoke so highly of, that Grace would now be spending time with on a daily basis.

  Mom smeared glue stick onto the back of a photograph and slapped it on an empty page.

  “Brother Taylor is an important person,” she raved. “He’s a direct descendent of some important Church leaders.”

  “John Taylor?” I asked, making a stab at it.

  “No, Tony Taylor,” my mother thought. “I believe he was a stake president in Manti. Anyhow, Noah Taylor is going to be the one who saves our whole town.”

  “From what?” I asked.

  “Oh, Trust,” Mom replied. “You have so much to learn.”

  “No, really,” I tried. “What is this Brother Taylor going to save us all from?”

  “Well, for starters . . . oh, look at this picture of your father,” she said, becoming distracted. “I tell you he could turn heads. He had a real sense about him.”

  “Mom?”

  “Yes, Trust?” she asked nicely.

  “Brother Taylor, what’s he saving us all from?”

  “Well, Sister Barns felt that we sisters in the Relief Society should make sure that our food storage was up to date. Times are awful crazy. . . . Look at your father in this one.” She held up another picture. “He used to love to fish. He would take me out all the time. He could catch any fish. But he always threw them back.” Mom sighed. “That’s the kind of man he was—compassionate. He used to be so compassionate.”

  “And?” I prodded.

  “And moral. Why, your father was so considerate of my standards while we were dating.”

  “Mom,” I complained. “I meant, and what else about this Taylor person.”

  “Well, he’s really helping us out. We thought he would come and tell us what to buy and what to store. But then he told us how hard it can be to find places for all that food and water. That’s true, you know. We have one of the biggest houses in the ward, and I can’t think of an extra foot for storage.”

  “What about the garage?” I asked.

  “Brother Taylor says the temperatures are all wrong. Foods can become stale, or lose their flavor. Now that’s funny,” my mother paused. “I remember this picture, but I didn’t remember your father wearing that shirt in it. I wonder if this photo has changed colors, or maybe someone doctored it up. They can do that now, you know. So who could have slipped into my old photos and changed his shirt color?”

  “Maybe you’re remembering a different photo,” I offered.

  “No,” she insisted. “This is the one I’m remembering.”

  “Mom, no one snuck into our house to change the color of Dad’s shirt on that photo.”

  “It’s just odd, that’s all,” she observed.

  I’ll say.


  “So where does this Brother Taylor think you should store your food?” I asked, thinking that perhaps he was a temperature-controlled shed salesman with objectives of his own.

  “That’s the wonderful part. He’s taking care of all of it for us. He’s renovated that old warehouse right there on Frost Road to be a climate-controlled food storage wonderland. Oh, here’s that picture of Margaret that she hates so much. I don’t know why she fusses so. Anyone can tell that’s a skin-colored turtleneck and not her chin.”

  “Ralph couldn’t.”

  “He still would have stopped writing her if I hadn’t sent him a copy,” Mom said defensively.

  “They’d been pen pals for eight years.”

  “It wasn’t my doing.”

  “He never wrote again after that.”

  “Germans can be a little touchy.”

  “So anyhow,” I said, trying to pick up the conversation someplace near where it had dropped off. “You take your supplies to Brother Taylor’s warehouse and he keeps them there for you?”

  “Sort of. Look at your father in this shot. I can hardly remember him looking this relaxed,” she said sadly.

  “Sort of?”

  “We pay Brother Taylor and he buys everything for us,” she said, picking up a new stack of photos. “It’s really lightened my load not to have to bother with it. It’s sort of like time-share food storage. You know, like with the condo.”

  “What good is food storage if it’s down the road?” I asked, starting to feel weird about Brother Taylor. “Besides, aren’t you supposed to rotate food storage? What’s this guy going to do when his entire warehouse begins to expire?”

  “Oh, Trust,” my mother cooed. “Look at you. I remember your birth so vividly. I’m sure glad the shape of your head snapped back.”

  “Mom, I don’t know if keeping your food storage at a distant warehouse is what the prophet had in mind.”

  “Trust, don’t be so cynical,” she scolded. “Brother T’s from Manti. I’m sure he would know if the prophet disapproved. Besides, Noah Taylor has been blessed with a foreknowledge of when things will begin to fall apart.”

  “He has?” I asked.

  “I guess he had a vision or something—December seventeenth.”

  “December seventeenth? You mean of this year?”

  “Of this year,” she said, unconcerned. “That’s why everyone’s operating in such a huff. Noah’s got us all on fire. He’s a dedicated man,” my mother complimented. “He’s even rented an old farmhouse to live in out past the Dintmore Hills because he can’t stand to be away from his farming roots,” Mom paused to turn the album page. “Now just what is your father doing in this picture?” She laughed. “He had a silly streak, you know. He wasn’t always so business oriented.”

  “I remember,” I said. “He was so different when I was small.”

  “I can’t believe it’s the same man today,” my mother said, suddenly sad.

  Mom was silent for a few minutes.

  “Are you okay?” I asked finally, feeling as if I should say something.

  “I’m fine,” she replied. “I just can’t get over how much things change, that’s all.”

  “Mom, I’m in love with Grace,” I said out of the blue, unable to hold it back.

  “Things change,” she said again sadly.

  I left Mom to her memories.

  9

  Hollow

  November 18th

  Lucy couldn’t remember ever being happy. She knew that she had grown up pain-free, but that was not happiness. She knew that now. She understood that now. She looked at herself in the mirror and tried to smile.

  People were supposed to smile.

  Her blond hair looked lifeless and dull, almost as if she had been using a generic-brand shampoo. She couldn’t believe that the blue eyes staring back at her were the same ones that had once made Lance weak in the knees.

  Lucy hadn’t been out of the house in days. She had passed the hours cutting up everything that belonged to or reminded her of Lance. Her home looked like the scratching post of a cat with powerful paws. Lucy knew she needed to begin again, but she just couldn’t find a way to let go of the hurt. She sat on the couch and thought about all the horrible things people would soon be saying about her:

  “She must have driven him away.”

  “I guess he had to find companionship elsewhere.”

  “What kind of failure loses her husband to a waitress?”

  She went to the window and adjusted the blinds. Light slipped through, striping her bare arms with contrasts. She thought about summer, and how much easier all this would be if it had happened during a greener month. Even nature seemed against her.

  Lance had stopped by the day before to pick up a few more of his things. He seemed so unbothered by everything that was happening. Lucy had locked herself in the bathroom until he left.

  “I hate him,” she said as she raised the blind to peer out the window.

  A white car drove by on the street below. Lucy wasn’t sure, but she thought it might have been Trust’s. She had bumped into him a few weeks back at the grocery store while shopping with Lance. She remembered now how good he had looked.

  What had she ever seen in Lance? Lucy’s mind drifted back to life before they had ever met.

  A vague memory settled over her, and she smiled.

  She could remember being happy.

  10

  Spinning Cookies

  November 20th

  Saturday morning my father called to inform us that he’d run into some trouble with his business negotiations. He wouldn’t be back for at least another week. He still didn’t say where he was. Mother didn’t push it.

  Grace had begun her job the day before, and was enjoying it. She, like the rest of them, seemed to think that Noah Taylor was an outstanding guy. I had yet to meet him and form a favorable opinion. The two times I dropped her off he had not been around. All I knew was that he was a widower from Manti who wanted to prepare the world for its end.

  Southdale was growing even more hectic than usual. The fact that Thanksgiving was less than a week away made everyone feel as if they needed to act a little busier. Stores were hanging Christmas decorations and promoting Christmas items in their usual gloss-over-Thanksgiving fashion. Southdale never did get very cold, but it wasn’t usually this dry. The November ground was dry and porous, giving Southdale a ruddy complexion and making us all pray for rain.

  I was sort of just kicking around, waiting for this week to end and the next week to begin, when a surprise visitor showed up. I was outside fixing the garage door for my mother when I heard a loud vehicle turn onto our street and tear toward our house. I looked up to see a truck that looked vaguely familiar turn into our driveway.

  It stopped a couple feet away from me. The driver turned the engine off, opened his door, and climbed out. As he pulled in, I didn’t recognize who it was, due to the sunglasses, but the moment he was standing on the ground there was no mistaking Elder Jorgensen for anybody other than himself.

  Elder Jorgensen was a former missionary companion of mine. Out of all the people I had served with, he had been the most dedicated, hardworking, and likable. He was almost seven feet tall, and the oldest in a family of fourteen children from Blackfoot, Idaho. He had abrasive-looking blond hair that was short and spiky. It had also thinned a bit since I had last seen him. He had two big front teeth and a smile that, when activated, hid his ears. I knew now why the truck looked familiar to me. Elder Jorgensen had shown me more than a few photos of it when we had served together. His parents had taken care of it for him while he was on his mission, washing it every week and keeping all the other siblings away.

  The last time I had seen Elder Jorgensen was right after he had broken his leg. We had been tracting out in the Thelma’s Way woods when he had fallen and snapped his lower leg. It was his accident that provided Grace and me our first chance to be alone when she helped me go for help. There was no doubt in my mi
nd as to why he was my favorite companion.

  “Elder,” I said, excited to see him.

  “Not Elder anymore,” he exclaimed. “Just plain Doran. Doran Jorgensen. Of course there’s a P there in the middle. P for Peter. But I don’t mention that much, seeing how I was named after my uncle Peter who was a good guy before he left his wife and kids for a girl half his age. I usually just go by Doran Jorgensen.”

  I stared at him until he felt further explanation was necessary.

  “Doran was the name of my great-grandmother’s business.”

  “Wow,” was all I could say.

  “She made brooms,” he further explained.

  I almost said “Wow” again, but I had used that up already.

  “I remember your first name,” he bragged. “Honor.”

  “Actually it’s Trust,” I laughed.

  “Those virtues confuse me.”

  I hugged Doran and then stood back an appropriate distance.

  “So what are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Just got done with the mission,” he said proudly. “Finished honorably, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “My folks were kind of smothering me so I thought I’d take a road trip and visit some of the ex-companions. Wanted to show you guys my truck.”

  I walked slowly around his vehicle, pretending to admire it and know exactly what I was looking at.

  “It’s just like the pictures,” I observed.

  “Yeah,” he sighed proudly, following me around. “So, you want to go for a spin?”

  Not really, but I said, “Sure.”

  Doran looked at the dirty work clothes I was wearing. “Maybe you should change.”

  “Really?” I asked, thinking that he had to be joking.

  “I just steam cleaned the upholstery.”

  I changed clothes and we drove through Southdale acting like we owned the place. Doran took a corner quickly, throwing me up against the passenger-side door. I looked for a seat belt and was informed that he had just removed them.

  “Why?”