CHAPTER 26
In late March, the renters of Anna and Tobias Torstensen’s house had a pipe burst. As usual in Utah, it wasn’t spring so much as alternating summer and winter. A dangerous time of year for pipes.
A crew came out to fix the pipes and they ended up having to dig up a considerable section of Tobias’s garden. And that was when they found the body of Tobias’s first wife. At least, they found a human skeleton deep under the dirt and called the police. They weren’t sure yet who it was.
As soon as the renters called Kurt, he called me.
“I think all they know at this point is that the body is between twenty and forty years dead, and that it’s a woman who was in her twenties.”
“Has anyone called Tomas and Liam?” I asked. I wasn’t so sure about Anna. She had begun her cruise and this would only ruin it. And why should she have to come home to deal with this?
“Could you do that?” asked Kurt.
I still had their numbers from before. I had an emergency number for the cruise, too, but I didn’t want to use that and interrupt Anna’s first chance to get away from problems with Tobias and his first wife. If the police decided to call her to come home, they could do it themselves. Her sons could deal with the rest of the issues here, including the renters’ rights.
I tried to call Liam, but he didn’t pick up. Then I tried Tomas, and when he answered, I recited the facts as I knew them: the skeleton of a woman had been found in the garden of his father’s house.
Tomas was understandably upset. “Well, someone else must have put it there. Though I don’t know how Dad never found it, considering the time he spent in that dirt.”
I let him think that through himself. “I just wanted you to know what had happened. Do you want me to call Liam, as well?”
Tomas assured me that he would call Liam.
I felt rather morbid walking over to the house, but I did just that. There were nearly a dozen people in protective suits in the backyard, and yellow police tape had been wrapped around the perimeter. I craned my neck and caught a glimpse of soil samples being taken. The skeleton was already gone, and I was glad about that.
The new renter, Sister Brenda Geary, came out and hurried over to me. She was in her late thirties and her bleached blonde hair stood out all over her head. She looked a little lost.
“They’ve said we’re going to have to find a hotel for the next several nights while they work here. Until they’ve identified her and what happened, we can’t be here. But we spent all our money getting into this place. We thought it would be such a great change for the kids to come to a nice neighborhood.” She and her husband had moved from downtown Salt Lake City, trying to get their teenage son away from a gang. “Don’t worry about that,” I assured her. “The ward will pay for a condo for a few nights.” In fact, Kurt was likely to pay for it out of his own pocket, which meant out of my own pocket. When Kurt could not justify using church funds to help people, this was what we did.
I spent some time helping Brenda go through the house and pack a few days’ worth of clothes for each child and herself and her husband. Then the police asked her for the key and locked up the place.
I called Kurt and he asked me to arrange things, so I drove her to a condo complex where Kurt sometimes sent women who needed to be away from their husbands for a while before they decided on what their next step would be. It wasn’t far from the neighborhood, just down off the highest ridge of the mountain, and I spent most of the afternoon ferrying each child separately, since all three were at different schools and got out at different times.
Finally, I got home myself and found Samuel there, waiting for me in that quiet way of his.
“Mom, can I ask you some questions?”
I sat down next to him at the kitchen counter, staring at the bag of potato chips that he had nearly finished off. “Is this about the body in the Torstensen’s yard? I don’t think they have an identification on it yet.”
“It’s about Kenneth. And the church.”
“Oh,” I said. “When did you two talk?” I felt a pang that I hadn’t followed up with Kenneth since Carrie Helm’s funeral.
“A little bit last weekend, on the phone,” Samuel said. “But it’s not just that one phone call. It’s a lot of little comments he’s made.”
“Apparently Kenneth is struggling with the church,” I said. I didn’t want Samuel to think I was endorsing Kenneth’s complaints about the church, but I didn’t want to ignore them, either.
“Yeah, I got that already,” said Samuel. “But last week, Dad pulled me aside and told me to be careful not to get too wrapped up with Kenneth’s ideas, that it could be dangerous for me. He wants me to focus on preparing for a mission in August.”
Samuel would turn eighteen then, and while he didn’t have to go right away, the church encouraged young people to go as early as possible, and not to put off a mission for college or work. The church had even begun to encourage those who hadn’t saved enough for their own missions to go anyway, because there were always wealthy donors who would reimburse the church for the monthly $400 bill. Not that Kurt would let that happen with our son.
“Is there anything in particular that Kenneth said that’s bothering you?”
Samuel hesitated. “It was about temple marriage. He said that he wasn’t sure he wanted to marry someone for eternity. He made a joke about it, but he said that it was hard enough to commit to ‘till death do you part.’ ”
“He isn’t dating anyone seriously, is he?” I knew that sometimes the parents were the last to know, but I’d always hoped my sons would communicate better with me.
Samuel shrugged. “He dated a few girls a couple of years ago, but I think he’s serious about not wanting to get married. He says that there are almost no girls who are interested in dating someone who doesn’t want to get married. At least in Utah.”
Suddenly, I worried that Kenneth had other reasons for not dating. I’d always assumed he was just busy. But what if he had concerns about his sexuality? Kurt would be devastated by that, regardless of the new church policy that God ordained some of his children to be born homosexual. The idea that one of his sons might never be allowed to marry in the temple and never have children to be sealed to him eternally would be very hard for him. And no wonder it was confusing to Samuel. “Are you worried about something specific with Kenneth and marriage?” I asked.
“I guess I’m more wondering about people who don’t get married and what their place is in the church. I mean, it’s all about happy families and families are forever. The singles wards that Kenneth is assigned to right now is all about activities to get people dating, so they can get married, so they can leave the singles ward. But that’s not how it works for everyone, is it?”
I could tell that Samuel was genuinely upset about this. His face was flushed and his voice was squeaking like it hadn’t since he was fifteen. “I guess we have to figure that everyone has a family of one kind or another.”
Samuel blew out a disgusted breath. “But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the fact that you have to be married to be a bishop. Or to have any role of leadership in the church. If you’re not, you’re always a kind of second-class citizen.”
He was only seventeen, but he saw this so clearly. “I need to talk to Kenneth,” I said. I really did need to. I didn’t want to give Samuel the wrong kind of comfort. If Kenneth didn’t want to get married right now, that was one thing. If he was gay, that was something else again. I had no trouble with a gay son, but it wasn’t an easy situation in the church right now. Proposition 8 in California and the specter of same-sex marriage laws here in Utah had made for some militant anti-gay sentiments even among people who claimed to love everyone.
There was a long silence. Then Samuel said, “I hate the way that people are so judgmental in the church. Do you know that there are some people saying that Carrie Helm was punished for leaving her family?”
I was relieved that we were changing the topic, even though the Helms weren’t easy to talk about, either. “I think we might be less judgmental if we understand what Carrie Helm’s life was like, how difficult it was for her. She left her daughter, yes.” I still struggled with this myself. “But we don’t know all the reasons for that. We don’t know what she thought she was doing, in her heart. Maybe she thought she was saving her daughter somehow.”
“Have you ever thought about leaving us?” asked Samuel.
He was on a roll with the hard questions today. “A long time ago,” I said honestly. “When you were all little and I was still inexperienced with the mothering thing.” I watched Samuel to see what his reaction would be, but he seemed only thoughtful.
“So you don’t think about it now?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Being a mother is the most important thing in my life,” I said. I was good at what I did as a mother. It was what I had spent my whole life doing. I suppose that was the real reason that I hadn’t gone back to school or found a job yet. It felt like it would be saying that being a mother wasn’t enough.
“That’s why you’re so bothered about the Carrie Helm disappearance, right? You’re worried about her little girl,” said Samuel.
“It’s definitely part of it.”
“She’s cute. I’ve seen her at church,” said Samuel. Then, after a moment, he added, “It seems like it’s hard being a mom. Harder than being a dad. You have to be perfect all the time. You’re always supposed to be looking out for your kids. You never get a break.”
“Ha!” There was truth in it, especially in Mormon culture. On Mother’s Day, the entire sacrament meeting in most wards is devoted to talking about how perfect someone’s mother is. It was almost always sickly sweet, with tears but rarely laughter. I had once been in a ward where the bishop bought orchid corsages for the oldest mother, newest mother, and mother with the most children (the winning mother had fourteen children). I wondered sometimes if we would expand the categories to the longest delivery, the worst episiotomy, or the ugliest baby, just for fun.
“Even moms have their own lives. We have to try to juggle things. We just do the best we can. We’re not perfect. We’re not angels,” I said softly. “No matter what some people say.”
A WEEK LATER, I was outside, bringing groceries in from the car when I heard a scream from down the street. I let go of the bag I was carrying and turned instinctively. I was running before I thought about where I was going, and then I saw Kelly Helm trying to pull away from Alex Helm, who was dragging her off of the front lawn of their house and back inside. I could have stopped right then and gone back to my groceries. I could have reminded myself of Kurt’s advice about people needing space to figure things out on their own. But this was a little girl who was being manhandled by someone who ought to have been protecting her.
And it was Kelly. My Kelly.
I caught up to Alex Helm just as he reached the door. “Who do you think you are?” I demanded, breathless. I really was going to have to do more exercise if I got this angry this often.
“I’m sorry to have disturbed your day,” Alex Helm said, his eyes glinting, “but I am simply disciplining a disobedient child. I am sure you have done the same in your day, Sister Wallheim.”
God, I wished that I wasn’t just “Sister Wallheim.” I wished that being the bishop’s wife granted me some title of authority.
“Disobedient child? What in the world was she doing that was so terrible?”
“I told her not to go outside. It was a simple rule, designed to keep her safe,” he said. He was holding her, and she was struggling.
How I wanted to yank her away from him and call the police. But I knew very well that it would only end with her being sent back home. What I had seen did not constitute child abuse. It probably wouldn’t even warrant a follow-up call with DCFS.
“There aren’t any news vans out here. What is the danger you are trying to protect her from, then?” I asked.
“That is none of your concern. I told her to follow a rule, and she refused to do it. She needs to learn that she can’t do that.”
Was this just about power? “It’s a nice day. The sun is out. It’s not even that cold,” I said. It was April at last. “The snow is gone. She must be itching for a chance to feel the grass under her feet.” As I looked over at her, I could see that Kelly had bare feet. The ground was still wet, and there were brown splotches from mud that had gotten between her toes, but it made me feel even more sorry for her. What was wrong with a little girl getting mud between her toes?
“Thank you for your opinion, but Kelly is my granddaughter and I am the one who will face the bar of God for her one day for how she is raised,” said Alex Helm.
“Yes, you definitely will,” I muttered. The heat I had felt when I came running over was gone now. I just wanted to hold Kelly’s hand in mine, and tell her that everything was going to be all right, but that would be a lie, wouldn’t it?
“Now, please get off my porch, Sister Wallheim, and let me get back to teaching my granddaughter the way that a proper young woman acts.” He swept past me and slammed the door.
I was left with the realization that I had gained nothing, and might possibly have lost all the good will I had so carefully built up. False good will, but even so. And now? Alex Helm wasn’t going to be asking me to come over and babysit Kelly for him, that was for sure.