Magdalene

by Moriah Jovan

  “And you said?”

  “I told him he wasn’t welcome in my home, that I didn’t want it defiled by whatever evil he’d let deceive him.”

  “Oh, snap.”

  He chuckled. “He said he wanted to talk to me and could I meet him somewhere and, well, this was as good a place as any, I guess.”

  “Okay, so?”

  He pursed his lips.

  Took another deep breath.

  “I’ve been fully reinstated.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Just like that?”

  “Yeah, surprised me, too. What should have happened was, if we ever could’ve proven Greg set me up, then I would request another bishop’s court to revisit the new information. Obviously, that would’ve taken time.”

  “But...?”

  “Friday— The General Authorities who came out for the proceedings— I thought they were there to grill me, catch me out in a lie—they’re litigators, after all—and validate the decision ecclesiastically and legally. So did everybody else. We went through the whole thing again, but they never spoke. Just watched. The decision was made. I was out.”

  “Okay...?”

  “Apparently, after I left, they asked everyone else to stay. Asked Greg a few questions and kept asking him questions. It pretty much turned into a cross-examination.”

  “My God. They knew.”

  “Had him pegged right off the bat, the same way you did. You know he doesn’t bother to hide anything when he’s confronted with someone who understands what he is, so when he figured out he couldn’t win, he crowed about what gullible fools they all were, then left. The General Authorities nullified the decision and told Petersen to start excommunication procedures on Greg and mend fences with me as soon as possible. Then they hopped the next flight back to Salt Lake.”

  “That happened Friday?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it’s taken Petersen this long to tell you?”

  “He had to work up the nerve. He’s...ashamed. Humiliated. Grieving a long friendship.”

  “And so this all happened before Sally confessed to her false confession?”

  He looked at me sharply. “Sally? What—”

  “Uh...” I pointed helplessly toward the building. “She— When I went in Petersen’s office, she was in the process of being dragged out by her husband.”

  “Well, no,” he said, obviously confused. “If she didn’t recant until this morning, she wasn’t part of the equation.”

  “And the woman you didn’t know?”

  He snorted. “A call girl.”

  Of course. “Have you heard anything about Inez?”

  His lip curled. “I don’t want to talk about Inez until I’ve cooled off.”

  Oh. Huh. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to break the news. Maybe he just didn’t need to know for a while. Never would be good, too. I switched gears.

  “You’ll be glad to know that while you were sleeping, we figured out how to prove Greg’s a thief.”

  “Really?” he asked, a pleased grin growing on his face. God, I loved that grin.

  “Yes. Now, it’ll take a while to get him behind bars, but you know, I am not a court of law and there is no due process with me.”

  He smirked. “I really don’t condone revenge.”

  “But when I do it, it turns you on.”

  “Yes. It’s a character flaw. I’ll have to repent.”

  “Okay, so the Lord came through for you.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Are you still bishop?”

  Mitch chuckled. “In name only. You know, there are easier ways to get released from the bishopric, but at this point, I’ll take what I can get. Let’s go to the Caribbean.”

  * * * * *

  Ascension

  August 2011

  The tropical sun felt good on my skin, lying here on the beach of a private island near Antigua.

  “I like these,” Mitch muttered as he flicked the rubies that dangled from my nipples.

  “Really,” I mumbled, loath to speak. “Your depraved friend Giselle suggested them.”

  “Oh.”

  “Why so disappointed?”

  “Not disappointed. Surprised. That it wasn’t your idea.”

  I opened one eye and looked at him, sunning next to me, his eyes closed. I wondered if I had ever seen a finer specimen of male.

  He wore plain navy trunks, as I wouldn’t allow him to risk damaging such an important part of his body by getting it sunburned, depriving me while it healed. I didn’t expose the most fun part of my body to the sun, either. I wore a red bikini bottom.

  He liked me in red.

  “When I was in the business, the only genital jewelry I could find was of the piercing kind, and you may have noticed that isn’t on the list of perversions I like.”

  “You expect me to know what’s missing?”

  “Good point. I’ll write those down, too, and see if any of that appeals to you. You like your cock rings well enough.”

  “Beats Viagra.”

  “Don’t play the age card. You love it.”

  He grinned.

  We settled back into the day, our only purpose to relax together in relative silence: no family, no friends, no bosses, no jobs, no ward members, no church responsibilities.

  Two lovers on a solitary romantic getaway.

  Neither of us had had a vacation in more than twenty years—or at least not that we remembered.

  Me with Gordon, Rivington, the girls—always frantically trying to keep my life together, then setting out on my course of revenge after the courts emancipated me from my marriage.

  Mitch with college and a family and church responsibilities, then Mina’s declining health, three growing children, the bishopric, frantically trying to hold the entire manufacturing sector together by absorbing Jep Industries.

  There would have been no point to vacations. Neither of us knew how to relax enough to have left our worries behind and would’ve brought them with us wherever we went.

  It had taken a while to wrap our lives up enough to get out from under that problem. Today, on the first day of our open-ended vacation, all we wanted to do was get used to being on vacation.

  The warmth, the glare of the white sand and brilliant blue water-and-sky, the sounds of the sea and the rustling palm fronds lulled me back into a doze. I sensed Mitch adjusting the umbrella to cast us in shade.

  Smart man.

  “How are you doing?” I murmured later from my half doze, then reached for his hand, big and callused and oh so talented.

  “Couldn’t be better,” he returned as sleepily as I felt.

  He knew what I’d asked.

  Louise had let the fact of Inez’s suicide slip accidentally (on purpose), and had prodded me until I’d recited the note to him, too.

  What does it mean?

  It means she was a good girl who got trapped in a corner and couldn’t fight her way out.

  He’d insisted on dedicating Inez’s grave himself.

  The significance was not lost on me: Inez was as much a part of his life as Mina, and Mitch had buried two of the only three women he’d ever loved.

  Still loved.

  I didn’t recognize myself and the green-tinted feelings flowing through me.

  It is incumbent upon you to accept him the way he is.

  Whereas I had only loved one man in my life, and I had to share him with two other women, women who made up part of his heart and soul. I had to live with the fact of their existence, whether I liked it or not.

  After all, he accepts you and you rebuilt your wealth on your back.

  He was learning to live with that reality. It got easier for him every time he ran into someone on my list who respectfully acknowledged Mitch as the man who had attained the unattainable. On his terms.

  It had popped up a time or two early on: someone sneered at one or both of us.

  Yeah, okay, it makes me mad, he’d admitted. But you know it doesn’t change ho
w I feel about you. As long as you don’t let your inner martyr dictate some weird change between you and me, I’ll get over it.

  My inner martyr. Good God. I’d put that down hard and fast.

  Like I have to get over your eternal marriage to Mina and your till-death-do-us-part one to me? Think about it from my point of view. You go where a lot of people have gone before, but they’re history and you don’t have to share any part of my body with anybody ever again. I’m the third woman in your heart, and I’m always going to be number three, sharing you with them. How do you think I feel?

  Uh... Oh. Oops?

  Yeah, oh, oops. You’ve been throwing this tantrum for weeks. You better get over it pretty damned quick, because your inner spoiled brat is pissing me off.

  But once Mitch put the word out that he knew everyone’s dirty little secrets and would not tolerate either of us being mocked—on pain of ruinous consequences—suddenly none of these people knew me at all, much less intimately.

  So in the end, I couldn’t have kept Inez’s death or note from him even if Louise hadn’t decided to preempt and prod me.

  I chose another course to fulfill what I saw as my obligation to my husband.

  It had taken my people all of a day to track down Inez’s children. Both boys had been adopted by an upper middle class Jewish family in Rhode Island, and had done well for themselves.

  The graveside service had lasted less than five minutes. I’d stood between Prissy and Louise, some distance behind Inez’s sons and their beautiful families. Mitch had said a short ritual-sounding prayer to dedicate the grave, then continued to pray in his normal syntax, praying for Inez to be blessed and happy as she had never been on Earth.

  “That’s it?” I’d whispered at Prissy when we’d all said “amen” and the casket rollers began to turn, and Inez was lowered into the ground.

  “That’s it. Normally, we’d have the usual visitation and a funeral service the next day, then this, go back to church for a dinner the Relief Society prepared, but...” She’d gestured to the paucity of mourners. “The only sacrament involved is the dedication of the grave. The rest is whatever the family wants.”

  “Well, that’s efficient,” I marveled.

  “We’re efficient people,” Prissy said.

  “Louise,” I said, “I told you to spend whatever you needed. That’s a shit casket.”

  “It is not—crap. It’s just plain and nobody’s going to see it anyway—”

  “And pragmatic,” Prissy added, amused.

  “—but they will see the beautiful headstone. Crap would’ve been a pine box, not polished maple. Trust me. I’ve only been doing this for five years, yanno.”

  Prissy snorted. “Until Sunday.”

  “Hallelujah.”

  “What happens Sunday?”

  “My counselors and I will be released from the Relief Society presidency when Mitch and his counselors get released.”

  “I thought he was already released?” I said, thoroughly confused.

  Louise shook her head. “Not officially. Everything will proceed as if he’s come to the natural end of a long second crack at bishop.”

  “How many people know what happened? We can’t be the only ones.”

  Prissy looked at me with a blank expression. “Know about what, Sister Hollander?”

  Ah, okay. That spin machine had probably cranked into overdrive the minute Prissy and Louise got the news.

  “Is it like an incoming president appointing a new cabinet?”

  “Kind of. Depends on the circumstances. I’ve seen it done other ways.”

  “Who’s the new bishop, then?”

  Prissy growled, and Louise didn’t bother to hide her smirk. I would’ve laughed, but this was still a funeral.

  “Oh, ha ha ha,” Prissy grumbled.

  I looked at my friend. “Guess you’ll have to brush up on your people skills.”

  “She thought if she was antisocial enough, it would keep Steve from being called.”

  “Shut up, Louise.”

  But here we were, three months after Inez’s funeral and though Mitch had been fidgety and unsettled for some weeks, he still hadn’t said a word about how he felt about her death, except to tell me how his church viewed suicide—which was to say, without any real judgment on its level of sinfulness.

  We don’t know those people’s states of minds or how much pain they must have been in to take their own lives, so we can’t judge if they’re even responsible for their actions. That’s for the Lord to decide.

  That was when it occurred to me how much pain and suffering Mitch must have endured vicariously through the years.

  Bishops forget. When I was released the first time, I forgot it all. Then I talked to some other former bishops, and they’ve had the same experience. The minute I was released this time, I forgot it all. I’m sure I could dig around in my memory somewhere, but I don’t want to.

  Really? Weird.

  Mmmm, not weird, no.

  Clearly he had an opinion or at least a theory—one he wouldn’t share, once again keeping the deepest parts of his spirituality away from me because he couldn’t bear my skepticism or, worse, ridicule. I might have gotten angry all over again, but I’d begun to notice that this was a cultural thing. Conditioned reflex. Gunshy, the lot of them, drawing people in superficially, but keeping people away from their most sacred customs and rituals, away from the depths of their personal faith and beliefs so as not to invite more scorn than they already bore.

  I’d become a little sensitive to it myself.

  I knew enough by now that I could deduce the direction of his thoughts. I might be able to worm it out of him eventually, but if he didn’t cough it up soon, I’d ask Giselle. She’d answer any question I had because she didn’t consider my opinion important enough to be offended—or she would simply sneer at any bigotry I might display, inadvertently or otherwise.

  That bad-tempered bitch was growing on me.

  It did occur to me that Mitch might not have had time to work through it right away—we’d been busy since he’d laid Inez to rest.

  Trevor had graduated from high school and moved into the new apartment in my townhouse to go to NYU. He’d insisted on paying me rent, which shamed my girls enough to offer too, albeit grudgingly. Mitch stared at me, eyebrow raised, and Nigel glared at me until I’d thought of a compromise I could live with. The children were to send the money to a charity of their choice. And provide me proof.

  Clarissa had graduated from college and moved to Kansas City. We’d gone with her to make sure she was as acclimated as she could get, her first time away from home for a significant period. I’d left the Kenards’ cozy home depressed.

  Giselle and Knox would do for her what I had never been able—willing—to do. It would be brutal for her, and I deeply regretted that, but at least it would get done if she had the courage to stay. Bryce would likely be the only buffer she could count on. She wouldn’t be able to run back home to Daddy or her sisters. Nigel wouldn’t allow it. She wouldn’t be able to run back to Mommy. Mitch wouldn’t allow it.

  If she left the shelter of Mitch’s family, she’d be completely on her own.

  The separation of the old Jep Industries from Hollander Steelworks was finished, right down to the last paper clip in the new office complex in Allentown. Hollander-Dunham, “a subsidiary of Hollander Steelworks,” was all shiny and new, with clever branding and ad campaigns to make it as memorable to the general public as BASF was to my generation and “Intel inside” is to my kids’. Two entire floors of the largest building in the complex were dedicated to the department that would bring to market the products made with Mitch’s alloy (which had yet to be named). OKH Enterprises would be fabricating some of those products, as it was the only factory in the country with the equipment to do what Mitch wanted done.

  Not a month after I shut down my office at the Steelworks and sent my staff back to New York for a long paid vacation, Mitch and I rushed to New Orle
ans when Lisette went into labor and delivered Mitch’s—our—first grandchild, a boy. Then we were informed that Geneviève would produce a second grandchild in January.

  Whatever Inez’s death had unsettled within him, the one child’s birth and the news of the other child’s conception must have settled back down.

  My mother sent word that my father had died. Mitch, Nigel, Jack, and I met Sebastian and his mother, Dianne, in Beatrice, Nebraska, where my father had spent the last years of his life working for the Union Pacific Railroad. It didn’t surprise me that Sebastian wanted to pay his respects to his mentor, but what did surprise me was the hundreds of other people from the financial sector who had also turned out.

  My parents had not had a church. Mitch buried him at my request and with my mother’s blessing. I watched in shock as Sebastian participated in the ritual, he and Mitch working smoothly together as if it hadn’t been twenty-five years since they’d last shared a faith. Dianne Taight gave an extemporaneous eulogy of Theodore St. James that left no one dry-eyed—and she had never met him.

  My mother lived in a small bungalow on a large plot of land that she had turned into an ever-providing vegetable and flower garden. She refused to move back to New York, as she was settled with the group of close friends she’d had for years, and she truly enjoyed her life. She also refused my offer of providing her with a retirement income.

  Mama, don’t start being stupid now.

  When did you get so mouthy?

  Your granddaughter taught me.

  Oh, my little Cassie Junebug, you don’t really think your father and I would’ve planted ourselves in the middle of a corn field with no intention of growing, do you? After all, this is where we started.

  Ah, well. I wondered.

  I have far more than enough.

  I’m so glad.

  I love you, Junebug.

  I love you, too, Mama. Be well. I’ll come back and check on you if you’ll let me.

  I would like that.

  In October, Mitch and I would be in the Missouri Ozarks for a wedding. I don’t care one whit about Eric Cipriani’s politics, but it’ll be fun someday to be able to say I know the President of the United States. And Vanessa—well, she’ll make the finest First Lady since Jackie Kennedy, as she has class and charm down to a science. Considering Missouri’s governor had just died in an Amtrak train derailment, the kid’s campaign for Missouri’s attorney general had made a sharp right turn into a run for the governorship.