by Carys Bray
Claire is woken, sweating and panicked, by a knock at the bedroom door. She catches her breath, hoping whoever it is will go away, but Zipporah steps in, flushed and rosy-cold from the walk back from town.
“Mum, can I talk to you?”
Claire’s throat is gluey, unaccustomed to words, and her heart is pounding. She swallows and explores the dry lining of her mouth with her tongue, which feels fat and sticky.
“I’ve done something …” Zipporah closes the door behind her and leans against it.
Claire coughs, swallows again, and her heart begins to slow.
“… something wrong. I’ve prayed, but I can’t, I can’t stop thinking about it.” Zipporah taps the door with nervous fingers.
“I know.” The words come out like a growl. She has slipped so far inside herself that it’s hard to return to the surface and speak.
“How?”
“You must think I’m stupid.” Her voice scuffs the back of her throat and she coughs again.
“Of course I don’t. I didn’t mean to, I was, I just wanted—”
“I would never have done such a thing.” She coughs again as she pictures Zipporah putting the washing away, rummaging through the drawers, finding the money, and pocketing it. She imagines her walking around town with Lauren, spending the money that has been so assiduously saved.
Zipporah tucks her hair behind her ears and bites her lip. “I wanted to ask whether you—you say never but I wondered if in the past you might have …”
“I had too much respect for my mother.”
“I didn’t mean to do it. If you’d come to the wedding activity with me, I wouldn’t have—”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve.” Sweat is cooling on her forehead; she wipes her face with the blankets and turns away.
“Mum! I’m trying to talk to you.”
The door slams and Claire stares at the wall. She wonders how much of the money is left. The initial shock of its loss is wearing off and she finds she cannot care as much as she did; there are bigger losses to bear. “Lay not up for yourselves treasure on earth”—her treasure is in heaven, she had no choice in the laying up of it, and now her heart is there also. She examines a little hole in the wallpaper where Issy must have picked the woodchip and she traces it, running her fingers over the ghost prints of Issy’s fingers.
WHEN SHE WAKES again it’s dark outside, she is bone tired and doesn’t remember dreaming. Zipporah’s voice floats up the stairs, wisping under the door, alternating with another—breathy, high, and anxious: Sister Valentine.
“… Bishop Bradley?… talk to your mum …”
Zipporah says, “No,” and then something about the Andersons; perhaps Brother Anderson is in the hospital again and Ian has gone to visit him.
“… Family Home Evening tonight … shouldn’t have come but … need to speak to your mum …”
Zipporah makes excuses. Claire can’t distinguish every word, but she can hear her voice rising as she attempts to deter Sister Valentine.
“No, I don’t think Mum would—you can’t …”
There are footsteps on the stairs and Sister Valentine clearly asks, “Have you repented?” Claire can’t make out Zipporah’s murmured reply but if she has confessed to stealing the money she must be sorry, which is something.
“Mum.” Zipporah knocks. “Mum, it’s Sister Valentine.” She opens the door and Sister Valentine squeezes past her.
“Oh, Sister Bradley, I’m so sorry to disturb you, I really am, and on a Monday night. I know you’ll be having Family Home Evening when Bishop Bradley gets back, so I won’t stay long.” She steps farther into the room. “I’m so sorry you aren’t well. You look terrible. Do you mind if I—can I just talk to you for a moment? It’s all right, Zipporah, you can leave us to chat.”
Sister Valentine sits on the floor next to the bed, so close Claire can see the jam-packed pores of her nose.
“That’s better, I can see you properly now. I’m wondering, what—what exactly is wrong? We haven’t seen you at church for weeks. Is it serious? Only, I had—I had a dream, and then I heard you were ill and I wanted to come and see you, because of the dream.”
It’s hard to keep up with Sister Valentine. There are too many words all at once and Claire can’t be bothered to make the effort to decipher their meaning.
“I dreamed I was getting married, in the Temple.”
Sister Valentine is so close that Claire can hear the assembly of her words, the way they are dipped in spit before she speaks them.
“I never imagined I’d be one of those women—nearly thirty and not married. I’ve tried. I go to the Single Adult activities but the men are old, or—I don’t mean to be rude—a little bit strange. There aren’t many single men in the Church in their thirties. I don’t want you to think I’m fussy about age—I wouldn’t mind an older man, but there aren’t many in their forties or fifties either.”
A little globe of spit flies out of Sister Valentine’s mouth and lands on Claire’s cheek. She wants to wipe it away, but that would be rude. She can feel it drying on her skin as she looks up at the bunk above her. Thirteen wooden slats alternate with exposed slices of the underside of Jacob’s mattress. She wonders what exactly Sister Valentine dreamed—she hasn’t even been to the Temple yet, she is probably imagining it all wrong, just like she did.
“… and when Bishop and Brother Stevens came Home Teaching, they agreed it was probably a sign that I’m going to get married in the Temple.”
No one told Claire about the Temple before she went. They told her irrelevant, subjective things—“It was so special,” “It was the best day of my life”—but they didn’t tell her anything important. No one said she would have to take all her clothes off. The old ladies who worked there seemed to float along the corridors in their floor-length white dresses and slippers, every step silenced by thick carpets. They handed her a sort of sheet to wear with a hole in the middle for her head. She sat in a small cubicle, legs crossed and shivering, while an elderly stranger lifted the sheet to dab oil onto her bare stomach and chest while muttering a series of blessings. The words were beautiful but Claire couldn’t listen with her whole self because she wanted her clothes back. Afterward, when it was time for the marriage part of the ceremony, her short-sleeved wedding dress was deemed inappropriate and she had to hold out her bare arms while the whispering old ladies covered them with temporary sleeves; they wrapped a triangle of material around her neck to conceal her collarbones and throat, and when she finally knelt across the altar with Ian she was wearing several extra layers—robes, an apron, and a special veil that tied under her chin with a length of ribbon. There was no exchange of rings, they made no promises or vows to each other, and there were different words for men and women: Ian “received” her and she agreed to “give herself to him,” which bothered her for weeks afterward. She couldn’t talk to anyone about it because what happened in the Temple was too sacred to discuss, so she wrote a polite letter to the prophet, asking if he wouldn’t mind explaining. The letter was returned opened and unanswered to Ian’s dad, who was the Bishop at the time. “The brethren are busy men,” he said. “Some things can’t be told; they have to be learned, line upon line, precept upon precept.” She apologized. It was silly to get caught up in the details; it was the promise of Eternity that was important.
“… marriage for Eternity or you can’t enter the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom and have eternal increase and I’ve always wanted children. I think I’d be a good mother …”
She wishes Sister Valentine would go away and let her sleep. There is a cobweb on the ceiling just above the wardrobe that’s blowing in an invisible breeze like a wispy pendulum, almost hypnotizing.
“The thing is, Sister Bradley, and I didn’t tell Bishop Bradley this, but the thing is, and I hope you don’t mind me telling you—I’m sure you won’t mind, I feel like we’re friends—it’s just that, in my dream, I was getting married to him, to Bishop Bradley.”
The cobweb must be lighter than air or it would surely break. Perhaps it will multiply and there will be a white, swaying meadow on the ceiling.
“And then I heard you were ill and I, well, I wondered if it’s serious. I thought if you were, if you are—seriously ill, I mean—it might be of some comfort to you to know that I’m here and in the event, in the event of any unfortunate thing, I would—I will be so happy to help.”
There is a sudden thrumming in Claire’s ears as she becomes aware of the seriousness of what’s being said.
“… been thinking about it, and I’ve realized I could love Bishop Bradley. And you too,” Sister Valentine adds hastily, “like a sister. And the children. Zipporah and I—we’ve already shared so much. And I’m sure with time the boys and I—little Jacob and Alma—I know they like my cooking and, well, I’m sure.”
Claire has no words for this. She wonders if she is supposed to die in order to make way for Sister Valentine’s revelation; has she failed the test so badly that she deserves to be bankrupted, her assets stripped and given to another woman? Is she supposed to let Sister Valentine help herself to the family, to Ian? In the event of her death, Ian would probably do it. After a suitable period of mourning he would remarry and he’d pick someone from church, a woman who otherwise didn’t have much hope of marrying in the Temple. He would decide to love this other woman in the same single-minded way he loves her. It’s a horrible thought, one she has done her best to banish since Ian’s mother revealed that eternal marriage is, at its very heart, polygamous.
“… like children—I love them. And it’s not too late for me to have some. I’ve got a good eight years at least, I think …”
The spot of spit has dried now. Claire lifts her hand and rubs at it, but she can’t erase its stamp.
“Anyway, Sister Bradley, I wanted you to know. I thought it might give you some comfort.” Sister Valentine gets to her knees and uses the bunk to heft herself up. “You look so tired and pale. And you never—you never said what’s wrong.”
Claire thinks for a moment. “I’m sad,” she croaks.
“Oh … is that—is that all?” She sounds disappointed. “Well, you look terrible. If you’re more ill, and you just don’t know it yet …”
“Thank you.”
Sister Valentine steps out of the room and closes the door behind her. Claire rolls over and stares at the picked wallpaper. It would be lovely to drift off to sleep and wake up in heaven, with Issy—“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Ian is always saying this life is short and God’s time passes differently—quicker, somehow. Would it hurt so much to leave the family behind and fly through the next forty years with Issy rather than linger through them out here? She can’t leave deliberately, of course, that would be a sin. But she might leave accidentally or fortuitously. Ian would cope, he’d give comforting Family Home Evening lessons about pioneer trials and keep everyone going. Each morning she lies in bed and hears the sounds of the gap she would leave—the voices and the breakfast noises, the carrying on. She cups a hand over her heart and collects its beats. She isn’t ill, not at the moment. That could change, though. She rubs at the spot where Sister Valentine’s spit struck her. Everything could change.
– 18 –
Gobby Little Shite
Al is a coward. He hasn’t been to the bank to swap the fifties for tens ’cause he’s dreamed about the money every night since he took it. Last night’s episode was replete with smells, sounds, and feelings so horrifyingly real that they were bonded to the inside of his head when he woke up.
He dreamed he was pulling the handcart across America—the burned money was worthless, leaving them with no access to other forms of transportation. Brother Rimmer lay in the back of the cart, half dead with exhaustion. Having finally crossed the Rocky Mountains, they reached a gate manned by Brigham Young. Al tried to speak, but each time he opened his mouth Brigham Young shouted, “This is my place!” Al begged and pleaded but Brigham Young wouldn’t open the gate and that’s when the flesh-eating Armageddon zombies teemed down the nearest mountain: Brother Rimmer’s screams have been ricocheting around his head all morning.
Al zips up his hoodie and strokes the pocket. It’s been only five minutes since Dad left. “Look after your brother,” he said as he split for the hospital to see Brother Anderson. He’s spent hours there this week, even though he promised to take Jacob to the beach and the penny arcade at the end of the pier.
When Dad’s been gone for ten minutes, Al sneaks out the back way. He’s got no intention of looking after Jacob, he’s far too busy. He gets his bike out of the shed and wheels it round to the front of the house. As he lifts his leg over the bike frame, Sister Anderson pulls up in her car and rolls down the window.
“Alma, dear! I hate to be a nuisance, but is your dad home?” she calls.
“He’s gone to see Brother Anderson.”
“Oh, I hoped I might catch him first. I’m going shopping.” Someone beeps their horn at her, but she isn’t at all bothered. “Your dad said he’d sit with Brother Anderson while I catch up with a few things. I’ve been meaning to tell him something, but with Brother Anderson being so ill, I keep forgetting. And as I was passing …”
“Well, he’s not here.”
“Can you give him a message, Alma, dear? In case he’s gone when I get to the hospital?”
“All right.”
“I’m a bit concerned about Jacob. Something happened in our Primary lesson on Sunday. He said—this sounds silly, but he definitely said it—he said his goldfish was resurrected.”
Al stares at Sister Anderson’s puffy pink cheeks and her fluffy hair, at her bright red lips and the way she’s somehow managed to smear a bloody, Halloween line of lipstick across her top teeth. He hates her for telling tales on Jacob, for blocking the road as if she owns it, and for coming to the house to speak to Dad when he is already at the hospital.
“I’m sure Jacob wasn’t telling lies,” she continues. “He’s a good boy. I’m sure he wishes it happened, but he needs to learn the difference between make-believe and real life.”
Beep-beep. Al watches as the cars that have formed a line behind Sister Anderson take advantage of a break in the traffic to get round her by driving on the wrong side of the road. She doesn’t give a shit, she’s perfectly happy to block the way.
So what if Jacob lied about the fish? What does it matter? Why shouldn’t he get in on the miraculous-story gig? Everyone else is bullshitting about spectacular visitations and answers to prayer.
“So you’ll remember to tell your dad?”
He nods, and then he can’t help himself. “Sister Anderson?”
“Yes, dear.”
“You reckon you saw Issy in the Temple.”
“Yes, I did,” she says.
“I’m sure you weren’t telling lies.”
“Sorry?”
“But you need to learn the difference between make-believe and real life.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He puts both hands on the handlebars and pedals away. He totally owned Sister Anderson, he rained on her parade and shat on her stupid story; there’s no way she saw Issy, no way. He lifts his butt off the seat to gather speed and then he races all the way to Brother Rimmer’s house, laughing into the wind.
AL SITS ON the edge of the pink velvet sofa, grateful to see Brother Rimmer alive and intact, despite the annoying racket.
Clackety-clackety. Clink-clink-clink.
“It’s a dying art, spoon playing. Andrea used to love this, she used to beg me to do it.”
Clackety-clackety. Clink-clink-clink.
Brother Rimmer slaps the spoons against his hand and thigh and grins as if he’s on one of those dancing programs on TV, trying to make the audience like him. “Give us a tune on the spoons, Dad—that’s what Andrea used to say.”
Clackety-clackety. Clink-clink-clink.
Al doesn’t want to know about poor, dead Andrea. Just
hearing her name makes him wonder whether she drowned on the beach in the olden days before the marsh took over and the sand was golden, or somewhere else: one of the sluices out on Churchtown Moss or the lake in the park across the road from home.
“I can teach you, if you like.”
Clackety-clackety. Clink-clink-clink.
“Nah, it’s all right, thanks,” he says.
Clackety-clackety. Clink-clink-clink.
“It’d be no trouble. I don’t charge for lessons!”
“No thanks.”
“Good opportunity for you to develop a talent.”
Playing the spoons is beyond pointless; Brother Rimmer would have been better off learning to swim, Al thinks. Brother Rimmer smacks the spoons along his belly and across his chest in a rousing finale and Al claps a couple of times, eliciting a gratified bob of the head.
“Shall we go out to the garage now?”
“Not yet, I’m puffed.” Brother Rimmer lowers himself onto the cushioned swivel chair. “Anyway, I’ve got something to show you first.” He turns on the computer and types something into the Internet search bar. “Wait ’til you see this,” he says. “Just you wait! Wait … wait … wait … There. Look!”
Al stands so he can see over Brother Rimmer’s shoulder. “It’s a picture of a tree,” he says.