His Right Hand

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  Adam started clearing his side of the table, working around Kurt, Kenneth, and Samuel. I helped myself to a second serving of salad, partly just to have an excuse to stay and listen. Zachary made a snide comment about me turning into a rabbit, which I and everyone else ignored. Zachary often tried to derail fraught conversations with laughter.

  “And you’d make sure he didn’t have to work Sundays, wouldn’t you?” said Kurt.

  “Well,” Kenneth said, “a lot of people do their laundry on Sundays. I have to stay open then.”

  “But can’t you find other people to work on Sundays?” Kurt persisted.

  “Are you suggesting that I ask my employees to do something I’m not willing to do myself?” asked Kenneth.

  “Well, aren’t you hiring some non-Mormons?” Kurt said, his tone strident. “It’s not against their religion to work on the Sabbath.”

  “Isn’t it? You know nothing about any religion but your own,” said Kenneth.

  I tensed, sure a full-blown argument was imminent. Kenneth had served a mission unhappily and had already expressed grave doubts to me privately about the Mormon church. I suspected that Kenneth might be gay, that that might be the explanation behind his anger, but I hadn’t talked to either Kurt or Kenneth about it.

  Adam tried to hand Kenneth his plate to encourage him to move toward the dishwasher, but Kenneth ignored the hint.

  “And I wonder where I went wrong teaching you your own religion,” said Kurt.

  “Maybe you taught it to me just fine. I just didn’t like it,” Kenneth shot back.

  “The décor is pretty awful,” Zachary quipped, trying to break the tension. “I think we should have an official calling of Church Decorator, and it should be voted on.”

  But Kurt and Kenneth didn’t even seem to hear. They were still glowering at each other.

  Samuel put his glass down loudly, stood up between Kurt and Kenneth, and said, “I have an important announcement to make. I’d like everyone to pay attention, please.”

  Kurt looked away from Kenneth and toward Samuel. For months now, Kurt had been hoping that Samuel would announce that he planned to leave on a mission next year instead of going straight to college. He had been accepted to BYU and had a half-tuition scholarship there. But BYU, which is Mormon owned, would be understanding if Samuel wanted to defer his admission until after he served as a full-time missionary.

  Joseph drifted back from the living room, and in a moment Willow was at his side, leaning her bulk against him.

  “This is hard for me, so if you’d allow me a few minutes . . . ” Samuel said. “If I have to stop, just let there be silence for a bit. And please don’t ask me questions until I get to the end. I’ll tell you when I’m finished, and then I’ll try to answer whatever nosy questions you guys throw at me.” He sent me a faint smile, but there was a strange sadness in it.

  I knew in that moment that he was not going to announce he was ready to go on a mission. And in fact, I felt a whisper in my mind that my life was about to change, and I needed to brace myself for it.

  In the long pause, I wanted to be closer to Samuel, to put an arm around him. All my sons were all about the same height, a little over six feet, but Samuel was the thinnest and most fragile looking of them.

  “I’m not going to BYU,” Samuel said.

  “What?” said Kurt, jumping to his feet.

  Samuel put up a hand. “Give me some time,” he said. “Remember?” His voice cracked and I could see he was fighting back tears. Was he upset because he was disappointing his father? All the other boys had gone to BYU. It was a family tradition.

  Kurt sat back down, as if defeated. I wished he could just accept the wonderful sons we had, instead of trying to force them into a mold.

  “I was accepted at BYU, but I turned it down a month ago. I know I should have told you then, but I was waiting for the right time.” He shook his head, then put a hand to his heart. “Waiting to gather enough courage, really. I decided to accept the University of Utah’s offer, and I know that isn’t exactly what any of you wanted.”

  Kenneth clapped slowly several times in the silence, but he said nothing.

  Samuel didn’t look particularly pleased with the attempt at solidarity. “The U is offering me full tuition, which is nice, but that’s not the real reason I decided to go there. In the end, I feel like I don’t really belong at BYU.” Samuel was staring down at the table. “I know that it’s a great school, Dad. I know they have a great football team, though I suppose I will now be obliged to cheer for the opposing team.” He raised a fist and grinned at this, but the expression faded quickly. “The U also has a great medical school, and I think I eventually want to go to that. But all of that is only part of the reason I chose it, and none of the reason that I’ve kept this secret from all of you.”

  Samuel took a deep breath, looked straight into Kurt’s eyes, and then said, “Dad, I’m gay.”

  I felt poleaxed. Samuel was the one who was gay? How had I been confused about that? I thought we were so close. I thought I had understood him better than any of my sons.

  There was absolute silence in the kitchen, as if we were in the celestial room at the temple. But the feeling was all wrong.

  I glanced over and noticed that Kenneth was the only one in the room who didn’t seem surprised by the announcement. Samuel took a deep breath, and Kenneth put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Any time you want to talk about it more, know that I’m here for you.”

  Kurt opened his mouth once, but only a hoarse frog-like croak came out.

  “How did you—that is, when?” Joseph sputtered.

  “Dude, if I’d known, I could have embarrassed you way more the last few years. So unfair,” said Zachary.

  No one laughed.

  Samuel seemed to hold himself a little taller and said, “I always knew I was different from the rest of you. I didn’t have a name for it for a long time. And then last year, when I was supposed to be thinking about preparing for a mission, and I felt all this pressure to go on dates one last time, to make sure I had memories to carry with me—I knew. It was who I was, and always had been.

  “But I didn’t tell any of you because I was afraid of how you would react. I didn’t want to take the chance that my family would reject me, and I thought maybe I could keep it to myself. I didn’t think of it as hiding who I was or lying to you. I just thought of it as making peace.” He looked at Kurt beseechingly.

  I could hear Kurt take a deep, shuddering breath as he prepared to respond.

  Mormon doctrine on the cause of homosexuality has changed only very recently, since the website www.mormonsandgays.org had launched. But a lot of Mormons didn’t know about it, or ignored it for their own reasons. No longer were gay people told that being gay was evil and that they should go through electroshock therapy to get rid of gay thoughts—or marry and hope that heterosexual sex would change them. Instead, the new message was that people are born gay and can’t change that. They are also told that God loves them and made them the way that they are—though it is still wrong for them to act on homosexual love. They are basically asked to be celibate for the rest of their lives.

  My Samuel, as giving and loving as he was, would never be allowed to express romantic love openly, in the way that comes naturally to humans, if he wanted to stay a Mormon in good standing, able to attend the temple. How could he bear that? How could I?

  Once again, Samuel took a deep breath. “But at the end of school this year, I realized that I had to stop hiding. I had to let you show yourselves to be the awesome people that I know you can be.” Samuel smiled, but there were tears running down his face.

  “Okay, I’m done now. You can ask questions if you want,” he said, after wiping his nose in his T-shirt, which made me look around for tissues. But there weren’t any in the room and I wasn’t going to leave to get them.
<
br />   “You have to know we love you just the same,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but it needed to be said.

  Then Kurt asked, “So you’re not planning to go on a mission?”

  “I don’t see how I can,” said Samuel.

  “But you can serve and be gay. There’s no problem with that,” said Kurt.

  That was all Kurt had to say? He was pressuring Samuel to go on a mission, even now?

  “All right. I guess I’ll think about it, maybe after I’ve had a year to figure things out,” said Samuel.

  “And talk to the bishop in your college ward,” Kurt added.

  Samuel nodded.

  “Hey, more girls for the rest of us. You’re better looking than I am anyway. Yes for getting rid of the competition,” Zachary joked. “Someone will have to marry me now, right?” Everyone laughed at that, except for Kurt.

  “Time for cake!” I announced, and hurried over to finish clearing the last plates from the table.

  Kurt and I would talk about this later. If he couldn’t celebrate Samuel’s openness, at least he could pretend. Because I was not about to allow his attitude to ruin our family. We had married to create this bond of unity, and nothing was going to tear us apart. Not Georgia’s death, not Kenneth’s doubts about the church, and not Samuel’s truth.

  Chapter 13

  Kurt and I did not speak that night about Samuel’s announcement. We both went straight to bed, and we didn’t speak about it in the morning, either. I was angry at Kurt for not being more immediately understanding and loving, but I knew I should give him the time and space he needed to adjust to what was obviously a huge change in his expectations for Samuel. Kurt wasn’t perfect, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t rise to the challenge.

  But as soon as I heard the garage door close Monday morning, I did what I needed to do for myself. I went upstairs and looked through my old handwritten address book from college days. I thumbed through the pages until I stopped at Tookey, Ben.

  There were six different addresses listed. I had updated his listing until about six years ago, when I had given up trying to keep track of Ben. It wasn’t as if he wanted to keep contact with me. I had always had to get his new address or phone number from someone else—one of his old friends, or his sister, whom I kept in touch with occasionally. She told me he had gone back to college, had gotten a PhD in engineering, and was teaching at a university in Kansas, or Nebraska. Somewhere as far into the middle of nowhere as he could get.

  Kurt had suffered a lot because of Ben Tookey. It wasn’t Kurt’s fault we couldn’t initially be married in the temple, or that I was damaged in so many ways. Kurt had always been angry any time Ben came up, which hadn’t been often lately. But what Kurt didn’t know was that I had sent Ben a couple of Christmas cards. Ben had never replied. I had never received a letter from him, not even a photo.

  I took out my cell phone and punched in the most recent number I had in the book.

  It had been disconnected.

  Damn!

  I tried the number for Ben’s sister Emily. It wasn’t disconnected, but the woman who answered it was not Emily. It had been two years since she had this number, she informed me, and she had no idea who had had it before.

  I had left all of this until it was too late. I should have called Ben long before now. I should have told him I forgave him for everything that happened in our marriage, and even for the nasty letter he had written when Kurt and I wanted to marry in the temple. I should have asked if we could be friends. I should have told him about my life, asked him about his own. He might not have told me anything, but at least I would have had contact with him. I would have tried, and felt some satisfaction in that.

  I had been so angry when I filed for divorce thirty years ago. It had all been his fault. He ruined my life. He was a liar. He had told me he loved me, and clearly he never had.

  But my life hadn’t been ruined, not permanently anyway. And I had always hoped that Ben had gone on to find some kind of peace, and maybe even love in his life. I never would have guessed that one day I would be calling him to ask if he could talk to my son. Was it stupid to think that one gay Mormon man would have anything to say that would help another gay Mormon man? Things were different in the church now in some ways, but the old prejudices against people who were different were still there. I thought that at this point, Ben must have come to terms with who he was, and that he would be able to offer some advice as someone who had lived with the worst possible things that Samuel could be imagining might come in the future.

  I opened my computer and went on Facebook. I searched for Ben Tookeys in Utah, Kansas, and Nebraska. Nothing. So I expanded and looked for Benjamin Tookeys in the United States. There were four of them. I squinted at grainy photographs and clipped biographies, read through recent posts, and narrowed the search to three.

  I tried to message all of them.

  One responded with a lewd comment about sex and Mormonism.

  One did not respond at all.

  The last responded a few hours later, after I’d finished my lunch.

  “It’s been a long time,” Ben—I was sure it was him—wrote. “I hope we’ve put a lot of hard and sad things behind us. Sometimes I miss you, but I’ve always been afraid to reach out. I know you have a new life now, without room for me in it.”

  That was all. No phone number. No mention of where he had been and what he had done with his life. I really had no right to ask for more from him, and I knew it. But that didn’t stop me from hoping for something.

  I read as much as I could about his life online. There were photographs of him with women and men, but never of him in a couple. He had no children that I could see. He did not list a committed relationship. He lived in Chicago and taught at a university there. I could see a few of his journal publications, all very academic.

  I wrote only, “I am sorry for all I did to you. I hope you are happy now,” and left it at that.

  I realized I needed to tell my boys about my first marriage. For years, Kurt and I had talked about the best way to tell them, the best time to tell them. We’d decided we should wait until even Samuel was old enough to understand, perhaps eleven or twelve. But by the time Samuel had hit that age, Joseph and Adam were out of the house and it was never the right time. It was ancient history. Why bring it up with them now? It had nothing to do with them, or even with me and Kurt. Not really. Not anymore.

  Now I thought about Emma Ashby. She was the woman I might have been if I had stayed with Ben. And that woman would not have been a happy one. She would have made the best of a difficult situation. She might have adopted children. And she would have told herself every day that this was what she was destined to do, that this was what God wanted of her. But inside, she would have died a little more each day.

  I didn’t regret becoming an atheist—without that, I wouldn’t be who I was today. And then Kurt had come along and I’d been given a whole new life, one I was convinced God had wanted for me all along.

  All those old scars from my past. What about Carl and Emma Ashby’s past? What secrets had they hidden, and how many of those did we not yet know?

  Chapter 14

  On Monday evening, Kurt had eaten quickly, answering questions in monosyllables with a distant look on his face, and then muttered something about needing to do church work and headed to his office. That left me and Samuel together for what was supposed to be Family Home Evening on Monday night.

  All Mormon church activities are scheduled for days other than Monday in order to allow parents to spend one evening just with their children. Some communities even try to expand the effort to get sports activities, school events, and government meetings moved to different nights of the week as well. The Mormon church has Family Home Evening resources online, but we had an old manual printed from when the boys were younger with short lessons for all ages, scripture refer
ences, and sometimes illustrations for smaller children, along with ideas for fun activities and treats. The point is to build family bonds.

  I could not remember the last time that Kurt had skipped a Family Home Evening.

  “I feel like I should say I’m sorry, but I’m not,” said Samuel, as he and I sat still at the kitchen table.

  “You’re not the one who should be sorry,” I said, glowering at the closed door of Kurt’s office.

  “I could have brought it up privately with Dad first, I guess,” said Samuel, head low. “Or maybe hinted at it somehow.”

  It made me angry that my son was hurting, and I had to defend him, even against Kurt. I was sure that Kurt had his own side to this that made sense to him, but I couldn’t imagine what it was at the moment. “We’re the ones who should be saying we’re sorry. The fact that we never noticed or asked you about the issue—that shows we were blind and probably completely wrapped up in ourselves rather than thinking about you.”

  Now that Samuel had come out, it seemed so clear to me how uncomfortable he had always been with the idea of dating women. He had never had crushes on girls. If I had been paying more attention, I would have seen the signs of the crushes he must have had on some of his guy friends.

  There were several stories on the Internet in recent years of Mormon men who openly admitted their homosexuality but committed to marriages with women so they could be considered worthy priesthood holders with temple blessings. But the church didn’t officially encourage that strategy anymore, thank goodness. With my history, I couldn’t abide the idea of Samuel trying anything like that.

  “I wondered if Dad knew,” Samuel said. “There were a couple of times when he seemed like he was about to ask me directly, and then he veered off in another direction.”

  “He never said anything to me, if he did,” I said. Would he have?

  “Is it really such a horrific thing? Why can’t he just sit and talk to me about it? If he has questions, can’t he just ask them?”