His Right Hand

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  “That he had been born into a woman’s body, yes,” said Grant. “But even before he converted to Mormonism, before he took up his new life, he was always one of the guys. We didn’t think about things like surgery, but we called him ‘Carl’ most of the time, joked around about how male he was and how well he fit in with the rest of us.”

  This was why Grant Rhodes had called me to pick him up at the station, instead of Kurt or any of the members of the high priests quorum. He knew that they would be bothered by direct talk about Carl Ashby’s transformation. And that I wouldn’t.

  “Did it surprise you that he was married with children?” I asked, watching him closely.

  Grant shrugged. “I thought it was a good thing for him. It seemed right, you know? It fit him. Traditional. He always wanted the traditional stuff—as a husband, not a wife.”

  “Was he afraid you would expose him?” I asked. That might explain some of the underlying animosity between them in the ward. Carl had spent how many years safely in his life as a man? Then Grant shows up, coming to his home supposedly to argue gospel topics with him, every moment making it more likely that his past would be revealed.

  “Maybe. But it still hurt me, the way he kept me at a distance,” said Grant. “I called him repeatedly in the days before he died. I wanted to make things right between us. I asked—demanded really—that he meet me at a restaurant in Salt Lake City. In public, but not close to anyone here.”

  “And did he meet you?” I asked. If Carl had felt threatened by Grant’s stalkerish behavior, surely he wouldn’t have done that. Unless he felt that he couldn’t refuse. What had really been going on in Carl’s mind those last few days?

  Grant nodded. He looked up at me for the first time, and I was surprised at how beseeching his expression was. “We spent hours together. We had to leave the restaurant eventually, and we went on a long walk through Temple Square. We talked about everything that we hadn’t talked about in all the years I had been waiting for him and watching him. He told me about what had happened to him after college. Changing his name, changing his wardrobe. Cutting off his family and everyone who had known him in the past. Getting a job as Carl Ashby. Then meeting Emma and getting married. He told me about his children and how much he loved them.”

  Grant paused, then took a deep breath and spoke more rapidly, as if to get all the rest out at once. “We even talked about his worries that someone would find out about—his body. He talked about his marriage, and how it worked. The compromises he had made and that Emma had made.” He shook his head, then leapt out of his chair and began pacing energetically. “I think we could have talked forever, but Emma called and he had to go home to the family. I thought we would have lots of time after that. I thought that everything would be perfect.” Grant put his hand to his heart, and I could see him as he must have been in college, just a lost and heartbroken teenager. “And then I heard that he was dead, and it was like some part of me died too, a part of me that had just come alive again.”

  There was more emotion in Grant’s stance and more energy in his words than seemed appropriate, considering. What had really happened between the two of them that day? What else had Carl told Grant?

  But Grant stood up. “I don’t want to keep you. You should go and I’ll talk to Kurt later, if I want to.” He had become formal again, the emotion gone from his tone. “Thank you for bringing me home.”

  “Of course,” I said, trying to leave the door open if there was more. “And anytime you need someone to talk to, I’m here. I want you to know I won’t judge you.”

  I drove home, mulling over my unanswered questions from our conversation. Was Grant the murderer? Had he called Carl to meet him at the church? Had Carl told him that they couldn’t meet again? Had Grant killed him for that? After watching the manic Grant pace, I could almost see him holding a scarf around Carl’s throat. But the police had thought it was a woman from the outset. Had they simply been wrong or was there something else I was missing?

  I tried praying to ask for help to understand all of this, but I didn’t receive any inspiration. It was like there was a fog between me and God, and it made me angry that now, when I most needed guidance, I felt forsaken. What was I supposed to do? Keep this to myself? Tell Kurt? Tell Emma?

  I didn’t know.

  Chapter 23

  On Wednesday evening, Kurt came home from the church late, at nearly midnight. I was still awake, mostly because I had come down with a terrible migraine and the medication for it made it impossible for me to sleep. It was always a debate in my mind between no sleep and no migraine or fitful sleep and migraine. I’d chosen no sleep and no migraine this time and was upstairs rereading an old Agatha Christie favorite of mine, Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case.

  Kurt lay down on the bed next to me, on top of the blankets, still dressed in his full suit and tie. He closed his eyes and folded his arms across his chest as if he were a corpse in a coffin, only less peaceful.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He took several even breaths, and I wondered if he had somehow fallen asleep that quickly. It had happened on a couple of occasions since Kurt had become bishop. He got a lot less sleep, and his body had learned to simply turn off when it had to.

  “I don’t think I should tell you,” he said.

  “Which means it’s about Carl Ashby, I suppose,” I said.

  He let out another breath.

  “You know it’ll be worse if you don’t tell me; my imagination will run amok with possibilities. Did the police come to the church to talk to you?”

  “No,” said Kurt.

  “Then it has to be someone in the ward. Did the murderer come in and confess to you?”

  Kurt didn’t answer this time.

  “Kurt, you have to tell the police if that’s what happened. There’s no sanctity of the confessional in Mormonism. The First Presidency of the church has made the rules very clear. Bishops have an obligation to relay information about serious crimes—”

  “I know what the church instruction to bishops about criminal confessions is,” said Kurt. He pulled at his neck and loosened his tie.

  “Then what’s the problem?” I asked. Was it someone I already suspected? Or someone else entirely?

  “The problem is that I’m not sure if it has anything to do with the murder. But it might.”

  “So someone hinted at it? Or implied it? You should probably still go in and talk to the police.”

  Kurt hesitated for a long moment. He rubbed at the hair on his head, then rolled up to a sitting position. He would only tell me bits and pieces as he thought appropriate. “It was William Ashby,” he said. “He came in for his interview. His birthday is next week. He’ll be fifteen.” Bishops were supposed to conduct interviews with every member of the youth group on a yearly basis.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  Kurt shook his head. “I asked him about the crash in Grant Rhodes’s car. He was very distant about it. He spoke almost as if someone else had been doing everything. Like he’d been watching himself.”

  “It might have felt like that,” I said, thinking back to how confused he’d been as he’d hurled accusations at Grant.

  “I wanted him to say that he was sorry, but he wouldn’t. He was sorry that he hadn’t gotten away with it, I think. And that was all.”

  Kurt was holding back. I could see it in the tenseness of his shoulders.

  “That’s not what’s bothering you,” I said. “Is it?”

  Kurt sat up, took off his jacket, and threw it and his tie toward the dresser. He might have been aiming for the top, but they didn’t make it. Then he lay back down and said nothing for a while.

  “Do you think that William is the murderer, is that what you’re saying? Even if he didn’t confess to it specifically?” The pills I’d taken for my migraine were in full swing now. They tended to make m
e feel jittery at first, and then slowly just made me feel better, more energetic, more myself.

  “He’s fourteen, almost fifteen,” said Kurt. “And I don’t want to believe that a boy that age could kill his own father.”

  “I thought that Emma said that he was out with friends,” I said.

  Kurt pursed his lips as if to keep from saying anything more. Had William admitted to Kurt tonight that his alibi was a lie?

  “Do you know what bothered me most?”

  A brief pause, but I said nothing.

  Kurt went on: “It seems like a stupid thing, and really not enough to call the police about. But I asked William if he loved his father. He wouldn’t answer me.”

  “That could just be confusion about his father’s gender identity,” I said.

  “But he doesn’t know about that, does he? As far as I know, the police have kept that tightly under wraps. They haven’t leaked it to the press, and I don’t think Emma Ashby has told anyone. Have you?”

  “No,” I said, hoping that it was true. I had hinted at the truth to Anna, but she wouldn’t have told William. Could William have guessed? Perhaps even before the murder? “Grant Rhodes knew,” I said.

  “What? You told him?”

  “No. He already knew. He knew Carl in college, or that’s what he told me yesterday when I picked him up from the police station.” I explained what Grant had told me, then got up and went to my desk.

  “What are you doing?” Kurt asked.

  I opened up my computer and searched for University of Utah graduates from 1985 to 1995 and the names “Carla Thompson” and “Grant Rhodes.” It didn’t take long before I was staring at a photo of the two of them from back then. Could William Ashby have happened upon this image? It seemed unlikely he would guess his father’s old name, but maybe he had come across something else that led him in that direction?

  I could hardly turn away from the photo of Carla. It both was and wasn’t the man that I knew as Carl Ashby. The photograph was strangely androgynous. Carla wore gigantic glasses that covered almost all of her face. The hair was very short, almost as short as Carl’s, but there was a tiny curl at the top. I couldn’t tell if it was natural. The neck was strong and the collar of the shirt bore an indistinct pattern, possibly dots. If I had seen this photo without knowing it was Carl, would I have recognized him?

  “What is it?” asked Kurt, over my shoulder.

  I moved to the side so he could see the two photos.

  “Grant and Carl. Carla,” said Kurt. “They look so young.” He shook his head and made a sound deep in his throat.

  Then I clicked through to another page that showed Carla and Grant holding hands, and moving into a kiss. The photograph captured them in the moment before their lips touched, and there was an innocence in the way they looked at each other, with perfect happiness and the expectation that there would never be anything else. What if William had seen this?

  “Grant didn’t tell me about that,” I said. But clearly, my impression that he had been in love had been right.

  “Do you think that the police have already seen this?” asked Kurt.

  “Surely they’ve done an online search for Carla Thompson already,” I said distantly. I was thinking of the letters that Emma had asked me to take away. What if they were old letters Carla had written to Grant?

  I turned off the computer and tugged Kurt back toward the bed. He undressed at last, pulled back the covers and tucked himself in next to me, putting his cold feet on my legs. I didn’t mind. I’d started asking him to do that when I was going through menopause and had hot flashes on a regular basis, and it had become a habit since then.

  Old habits die hard, I thought to myself.

  Chapter 24

  It was early June, and on Friday that week, Samuel officially graduated from high school. He hadn’t wanted to make a big fuss about it. In fact, he had begged Kurt to allow him to skip the ceremony and just stay home instead, since he had a rare Friday off work.

  “It’s not like it matters if I go. They’ll just send me my diploma in the mail. And then I’ll throw it away,” said Samuel that morning.

  “Why would you do that? It’s taken you twelve years to finish this. Why don’t you want to celebrate it?” asked Kurt.

  I muted the television so I could listen to the conversation. I wondered how much of this was really about Samuel’s coming out, rather than the graduation.

  “Because it’s high school. It’s like graduating from preschool. Anyone can do it.”

  “Well, we celebrated you graduating from preschool, too,” I put in. “You were adorable in that tiny black cap and gown.” I might even still have the cap somewhere in a filing cabinet in the basement. I felt a little teary thinking about it. It was so long ago, but in many ways, Samuel was the same person he had been then. Intelligent, thoughtful, kind, easily hurt.

  “Well, that’s because I was too stupid to object. And besides, I bet preschool graduation took a lot less time and was a lot less boring.”

  There had definitely been more singing. But little Samuel had fidgeted through the whole thing. It had taken every ounce of his patience and mine to make it through. And I was still glad that we had gone. If nothing else, I had great photos of the moment that I could one day show to his—partner, I suppose, if he ended up marrying outside the temple someday.

  “You really don’t think that getting through high school in one piece is a significant hurdle?” said Kurt.

  Samuel’s motions were all angles that morning, even his shrugs. “What does a high school diploma get me? I’m going to college because that’s going to actually be about my future. I’ll finally get to choose what I study and the classes will be really hard,” he said.

  “What if they’re not? What if you get to the end of college and think that’s not a big deal, either? Because it’s never hard once you’ve reached the end of the road, is it?”

  Samuel stared at his father, and I wanted to shout at both of them to stop pretending. Samuel didn’t want to go to graduation because he wasn’t sure Kurt had accepted him yet. And Kurt was trying to tell him that appearances mattered, that traditions mattered. As if Samuel didn’t already know that.

  Samuel sighed and rubbed at his hair, a heartbreaking echo of one of Kurt’s own habits—and something neither of them recognized. How alike they were, in prickly pride and goodness. But they were hurting each other even so.

  “How about we make a deal?” Samuel proposed. “I promise to go to college graduation and you let me off of high school graduation as a reward?”

  Please, Kurt, listen to what he means, and not what he says. Tell him that you love him. Tell him that you are proud of him, no matter what. Tell him that there will be a place for him in the church, that you’ll make sure of that.

  But Kurt was taking this all literally. “I don’t think so.”

  “Seriously, Dad. I’m going to be spending plenty of my life in boring meetings. Why do I have to start now?”

  Please listen to me. I’m hurting. Why couldn’t Kurt hear that?

  “Practice?” said Kurt. “And you may be surprised at how many of those meetings are a lot less boring when you’re in charge of them, and when you believe what happens in them matters.”

  You don’t respect me or the choices I’ve made, Kurt was saying. But Samuel did. He just wasn’t the same man as his father, however many similarities they shared.

  “But this doesn’t matter. I don’t have to go to graduation. That’s what I’m saying. It’s just a boring bunch of name reading, self-congratulation, and stupid pranks.” Samuel sounded bitter now, though he never had seemed bitter about high school before. He’d always had a lot of friends. But if he had come out to us, he had probably come out to them. And maybe it hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped.

  I wanted to sit down and talk him through it
all, but I didn’t want to be a hovering mother. I didn’t want him to think he couldn’t handle his own life.

  “What if I tell you that you’re doing it for me and Mom?” Kurt said, gesturing to include me.

  Samuel looked at me. I put up my hands. “Leave me out of this,” I said.

  “You don’t care if he goes to graduation or not?” said Kurt.

  “I care about what Samuel wants. If he wants a different kind of celebration, what’s wrong with that? We can take him out to lunch someplace special.”

  “He’d be the only one of our five sons who didn’t go.”

  “He’s different from our other four,” I said, as naturally as I could without embarrassing either one of them. They both stiffened in response.

  “He’s the same in every way that matters,” said Kurt in a low tone. He looked away, as if he were speaking to the window to the backyard instead of to us.

  I was pretty sure that Kurt was trying to show Samuel unconditional love, but he also seemed to be asking him to get back in line. Was it possible that Kurt thought Samuel was mistaken in some way, that he only thought he was gay? I thought of Ben Tookey again, and how impossible it had been for him to talk about his sexuality.

  I spoke cautiously. “Kurt, haven’t you always said that, as parents, we learn as much from our children as they learn from us?”

  I prayed in that moment that God would soften Kurt’s heart, that he would relent and let Samuel talk to us—really talk. Kurt could tell him that there was no pressure on him to go on a mission as the other boys had done, if he didn’t feel called to it. He could let us have the conversation that was going on unheard and unspoken in our hearts.

  “If you refuse to participate, then I suppose that’s ultimately your choice. Even Satan and his followers ultimately had their own choice. No one is forced into heaven,” said Kurt instead, and with that, he turned and stomped to his office, slamming the door behind him.