“I’ve never been to The Melting Pot before, but I’ve always wanted to. What a good idea to meet here,” I said.
“Kenneth picked it,” said Naomi, looking at him briefly with that intimacy that comes with long months spent together. “He thought it would be good to have, well, neutral ground, I guess.”
I stole a glance at Kenneth. On neutral ground? I wasn’t that scary of a mother-in-law, was I?
“Any night I don’t have to cook is a good night for me,” I said.
“You love cooking, Mom, and you know it,” said Kurt.
“Well, for family, that’s true,” I admitted.
There was another awkward pause. Kurt still didn’t seem to have anything to say.
“So, I understand you and Kenneth have been dating for about six months?” I said.
“More or less.” Naomi turned to Kenneth and put her hand over his. That was when I saw the ring, which was rather untraditional. Instead of a diamond solitaire it was a band of twisted gold with a leaf pattern.
I didn’t have a diamond solitaire either. I thought fondly back to that time, nearly thirty years ago, when Kurt had given me the simple gold band I still wore. He kept insisting he would buy me a more expensive ring after we were married and settled, but it had never happened. I was pregnant with Adam within months of the wedding, and all our money went toward saving for his birth.
Later, when Kurt could have afforded another ring, I didn’t want one. I was used to the ring I had. To me, it signified all the years we had suffered in poverty together and still been madly in love and committed to raising our kids. I looked at it now and reminded myself that whatever hard times we were going through, we’d had wonderful times before and might well have wonderful times again. I let out a long breath and felt the first sense of oneness with Kurt since November.
“Kenneth tells us you’re in medical school,” Kurt said to Naomi.
Well, this seemed to be moving in the right direction now. I kept quiet and let Kurt do his thing. After more than a year of bishoping, he was good at introductions and small talk.
“Just finished my first year. The easy year,” she added with a smile.
“There aren’t any easy years, and you know it,” Kenneth said. He lifted her hand and kissed it across the knuckles, then remembered we were watching and blushed slightly.
“So, tell us more about yourself, Naomi,” Kurt said.
“Well, uh—I think Kenneth has told you about my unconventional upbringing?”
I supposed that was one way to put it. “But we’d like to hear your own version,” I said.
She looked at Kenneth, then took a deep breath. “My mother was the first wife of my father, Stephen Carter. I’m the oldest of all his children. But neither of my parents was raised polygamous. They were both born mainstream LDS. When they married, my mother never thought she would be anything other than my father’s only wife.”
“What happened, then?” Kurt asked.
“Well, it was about ten years later that my father felt . . . called by God to become polygamous.” She hesitated over the word “called.” “He told my mother about it and she was the one who ultimately chose the second wife for him. He’s never married another wife without her consent.” She sounded like she didn’t understand it, and I didn’t either.
Kurt’s lips twisted, but he didn’t comment, no matter how tempted he might have been.
“Our family was already living on the big tract of property on the hills that his parents had left him when they died. It was easy for him to build another house there. And then another after that, as he added wives.”
“There are five wives in all, right, Naomi?” Kenneth prompted.
Naomi nodded. “And twenty-one children as of now. Carolyn is expecting in a few months, so that will be twenty-two.”
That seemed far too many children for any one man, but many of our polygamous ancestors had managed larger families than that.
“And I understand that you were never excommunicated?” said Kurt. “Despite the polygamy in your home.”
“Well, our ward bishops so far have kind of looked the other way when it came to the wives and children,” Naomi said.
“But you left the church anyway?”
She shook her head sadly. “There are so many things I love about the Mormon church. Or there were, I should say. I loved The Book of Mormon and the hymns. I loved the Young Womanhood Recognition program, with all the values. And I loved the sense of shared community.”
I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of regret at Naomi’s mention of the Young Womanhood Recognition Program, the equivalent of the Eagle Scout program for boys. Until Georgia’s death, I’d always imagined I’d have a daughter who’d complete the program.