CHAPTER 2
Cheri Tate’s second daughter was to be married the next day at the church. Kurt would be there to officiate, but Cheri needed support. She was Relief Society president, and very good at that job. Give her a list and she checked off every item on it. She was in charge of making sure the bishop knew about the practical needs of all the women of the ward. No one who had a baby or was in the hospital ever went without a week’s worth of hot homemade meals delivered by the Relief Society sisters, all coordinated by Cheri Tate.
Her children were younger than mine, and I had married later in life, so I suspected I was nearly fifteen years older than she was. That made me feel a little maternal toward her. I could see her flaws, but I could also see her attempts to grow. She wasn’t a listener and she had no sympathy for whining, but at least she was not a hypocrite. She wasn’t whining about her daughter’s wedding. She was just doing what had to be done.
The wedding colors were gold and silver, which I thought was a little over the top, but I had seen worse. I went early in the morning to help with the decorations. The wedding and reception would both be held in what was called the “cultural hall,” but it looked more like a gym than anything else. It had hardwood floors and was polished every year so that now the polish was as thick as the wood itself. It was also painted with basketball lines underneath all the polish, and there were hoops overhead.
The cultural hall was behind the chapel in the standardized, streamlined church design that allowed three different wards to share the same building for Sunday and weekday meetings. Around those two central large rooms were hallways that led to a ring of smaller classrooms and the offices for the bishopric, Stake Presidency, and High Council. There was also a kitchen—only to be used for warming up food, since no one in the ward had a state food preparation license—on the side of the building, so it could be ventilated easily if something burned.
I found Cheri in that kitchen, with her daughter, Perdita, who was wearing jeans and an old T-shirt. Obviously she hadn’t headed off yet to have her hair and makeup done at a salon.
“How can I help?” I asked.
“Oh, Sister Wallheim! I’m so glad you’re here. The gazebo isn’t set up yet, but the pieces are in the gym,” said Cheri. “Do you think you can manage it? I asked my husband to come, but he can’t get here until four and we’ll only have two hours until the wedding then.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
There would be no elaborate dinner, nor even a luncheon for this. The reception was after the wedding itself, starting at seven, just as it had stated on the original invitations.
Perdita, who was eighteen, and her fiancé, Jonathan, had been dating steadily since they were sixteen, despite Cheri’s lectures. The Mormon church’s rules on dating were clear. No dating at all before sixteen, and no steady dating until after a mission. But apparently Perdita always said she was going on group dates (which she was) and promised her mother that she and Jonathan weren’t going to have sex before they married. Cheri thought that meant they’d wait until after Jonathan went on a mission, but Perdita and Jonathan had declared they were too much in love to wait for two years.
They might still have been married in the temple without Jonathan going on a mission. But when it came to their premarital and temple recommend interview, it turned out that Perdita and Jonathan had come so close to having intercourse that Kurt told them they couldn’t get married in the temple unless they waited another three months. And kept their hands off each other until then. Completely off. Kurt hadn’t told me specifics about what they had and hadn’t done, but it was his right as bishop to determine who was worthy for a temple recommend and who wasn’t.
In the end, Perdita and Jonathan decided to go ahead with their original wedding date. They had already sent out the invitations. They would have had to send out a set of cancellations, and then new invitations several months later. It would have been confusing, and expensive. But most of all, it would have been embarrassing. The words “sealed in the Salt Lake Temple” were embossed in gold on the wedding invitations, but since only thirty or so people were allowed into the sealing room—the closest of family members with temple recommends themselves—few people would know about the canceled temple ceremony.
“It smells wonderful, by the way,” I told Cheri and Perdita. The kitchen was filled with cinnamon, ginger, and allspice.
“It’s a kind of post-Christmas theme,” said Perdita. “I love gingerbread.”
“Ah,” I said. That explained it. I gestured at the twenty-gallon pot on the stove. “And that is?”
“Wassail,” said Perdita. Nonalcoholic.
“It’s pretty adventurous, doing it all yourself,” I said. “You weren’t tempted to get caterers?”
Perdita shrugged.
Cheri put in, “We told them that if they did it themselves, they would get the money we saved to live on.”
“Do you know how much caterers cost, Sister Wallheim?” asked Perdita, her mouth open wide.
“Actually, I do.” I had two married sons, and even if I’d never had to do as much work as the mothers of the brides, I had paid for half the catering to be fair. I also thought it was worth every penny. A wedding was stressful enough—all the family members coming in, the emotional difficulty of letting go. I didn’t think anyone should have to put more on their plate.
Cheri, for instance, looked like she had spent the last two weeks in a clothes dryer. Her hair was frizzled under the curlers she had in, and her skin was worse than the normal Utah winter desert crack.
“Well, we can live for three months on that, if we scrimp,” said Perdita.
I glanced at Cheri, who looked away. I was more and more impressed with Perdita and her good sense. She might be just out of high school, but she knew who she wanted and she knew how to survive. That was more than I could say of myself at that age. I had been a disaster, and had spent six years figuring out how to move on with my life.
“I’ll come back when I’m done with the gazebo,” I said with a nod toward the cultural hall.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” said Cheri.
The gazebo wasn’t heavy, but it was tricky to put together. I painstakingly put part A in slot B, then part C in slot D. And the gazebo went up. When it was taller than I was, I got some chairs to stand on. I heard a door open and saw an unfamiliar face bringing in flowers.
“The Tate wedding?” he asked.
“Yeah, that’s here.”
He nodded and carried in several boxes of flowers, then left again.
The silver and gold ribbons were wrapped around cardboard in a pile by the door. I got them out and tried twisting them together and arranging them on the gazebo. I wasn’t an interior designer by any means, and my house was proof of that. But ribbons I thought I could manage. I poked around in the flower boxes and found some garlands to put over the top of the gazebo, as well. It wasn’t going to look like a summer wedding, but it would be nice.
Just as I was finishing, Cheri came in and stared at the gazebo. “Thank you so much,” she said. “I really didn’t think that was going to get done. I was so worried.”
“Now you can go home and take a nap before the wedding,” I suggested.
She began to cry.
Cheri Tate. I had honestly never seen her cry before, not even when her older son was in the hospital with double broken arms from a skateboarding accident. She had mostly been angry then.
“It’s all right,” I said, moving closer to her. “It’s going to be fine.”
“I just—never thought that Perdita would be married like this. It feels so wrong. It should be at the temple. I talked to her all those years about being married in the temple. A white dress, a white tuxedo, and pictures at the temple to put on her walls forever. And now this.”
A church wedding also required the couple to make certain promises about their religious beliefs. But a temple wedding is the symbol of extreme righteousness. Perdita and Jonathan hadn’t had any problems with the tithing, Word of Wisdom questions, or attending church every week and supporting their leaders. But the chastity outside of marriage question had been the stopper. I tried to make Cheri see the bright side in all of this. Her daughter was getting married and this should be a happy day. “She still has a beautiful white dress. And Jonathan seems like a nice young man. He loves her deeply and they seem sensible.” Not that either of those qualities would make marriage easy. But at least they would get through the first few years, which could be the hardest.
“They won’t be sealed for time and all eternity.”
“But there’s nothing to be ashamed of. They’re marrying, not living together. They’re still going to be good members of the church.” Perdita and Jonathan’s marriage would be for “time only,” until they waited the requisite year to be sealed in the temple eternally. The year wait was supposed to make people more eager to marry in the temple in the first place, but it could feel like a punishment. I knew, because Kurt and I had been sealed a year and three days after our own church wedding. It wasn’t something that Kurt brought up a lot, but a handful of people in the ward knew about it. “But what if something happens? What if one of them dies before the year is up?” asked Cheri.
“Come now,” I said. “If one of them dies, you’re going to be worried about whether they were married in the temple or not?” Surely there were more important things to deal with in those circumstances.
“Yes. It won’t be binding in the afterlife.”
“But you can have the sealing done after death,” I said. Wasn’t that what temples were all about? Doing vital ordinance work for those who couldn’t do it themselves? “Or what if they leave the church, either of them? Then they won’t be sealed, either.”
“People leave the church who marry in the temple, too. It’s not a guarantee. And the sealing is broken as soon as they disobey their covenants anyway.”
“Maybe you’re right and I’m worried over nothing,” said Cheri. “I don’t know.” She wiped at her eyes. Then she glanced around to make sure that no one else was there.
Mothers never worry over nothing, but it is true that sometimes we worry over things we can’t control. But I knew Cheri would never have had this conversation with me if I weren’t with her here, in her time of need, and if I weren’t the bishop’s wife. “Is Perdita still in the kitchen?”
Cheri shook her head. “She went to get her hair done. Jonathan’s sister is doing it.”
“To save money again?”
Cheri nodded and wiped her hands on her apron, which was on top of a skirt and nice blouse. I had worn jeans and a T-shirt, anticipating hard work, but I think Cheri felt like she had to wear Sunday clothes every time she was inside the church. “But I feel like I’m walking around naked. Everyone in the ward knows every problem in my life. Every mistake I made in raising Perdita. Every time I indulged her when I should have been more strict—every time—”
I put a hand on her arm. “Stop,” I said. “No one is looking at you like that. No one is judging you.” I knew it was a lie. I knew there were plenty of people who were doing just what she was afraid of. Those same people had made judgments about me when I lost my daughter. They told me I hadn’t chosen the right doctor, that I hadn’t gone to the hospital soon enough, that I should have taken better care of myself while pregnant. But I chose not to let them have power over me. And I didn’t think Cheri should let them have power over her, either.
“But—”
“Perdita and Jonathan may end up as one of the best, most moral couples we have ever seen, deeply in love, and devoted to the church. How do you know they won’t?”
“But this is such a bad beginning.”
“It’s not a bad beginning. It’s just not the beginning you imagined.” But of course, Mormons have to have absurdly high standards. Other people try not to drink to excess. Mormons refuse to drink at all. Other people cut back on their coffee at Lent. Mormons drink neither coffee nor tea, ever, and I know plenty of Mormons who think it is wrong to drink hot chocolate, or herbal tea, or decaffeinated coffee. Or anything that could be mistaken for tea at a casual glance. Or anything coffee-flavored. Or rum-flavored. Or even vanilla extract.
“What if they have children?” asked Cheri.
I thought of Kelly Helm. A temple marriage hadn’t saved her parents’ marriage, or her. What was sealed in heaven often didn’t make a damn bit of difference on earth. “Let’s focus on the good things right now,” I said, “not all the bad things that might go wrong in the future. Perdita and Jonathan love each other. They’re going to be happy together. They both have strong testimonies of the church. Do you believe that?”
Cheri nodded, then started to cry again.
“This is their wedding day. You’re supposed to be happy for them,” I reminded her.
She nodded again, and straightened. “You’re right. I can’t indulge myself. I have to put on the face they expect to see. All of them.”
That wasn’t precisely what I had meant, but I guess it would have the desired effect.
She started getting out the tables that were stored under the stage on the north side behind the basketball hoop. We set chairs around the tables, and I found the nice lace tablecloths in the Relief Society closet. Silver and gold horns, jewels, and links went on the center of every table, along with flowers in a silver and gold vase.
Other women came in then, and I excused myself. The plates would have to be set up, and the photographer would show up at some point. There would need to be signs on the through street outside directing people to the right building. In Draper, Utah, there were many Mormon churches, and they all were built on the same plan, so they looked nearly identical.
In the meantime, I went shopping, watched the news while I cleaned the house, and spent some time with a good book of the sort that Joseph Smith was thinking of when he said that “anything that is lovely, of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.” I attended the Relief Society monthly book club regularly, and we were frequently giving each other recommendations for books without bad language, bad moral values, or explicit sex.
I hadn’t had a job since I was pregnant with my oldest son, and I kept myself busy. But lately, I had begun to wonder if I ought to be contributing to the world as more than a wife and mother. It wasn’t that we needed the money, but with Samuel about to leave home, I would have more time on my hands.
Being a bishop’s wife wasn’t a full-time job and it certainly didn’t pay. But then again, no calling in the Mormon church does. Bishops, stake presidents, and all the other leadership positions were unpaid. That meant if you were called to go on a mission, you had to pay for it yourself. The prophet and the apostles had their travel expenses paid for and were sometimes given a stipend, but usually not.
Kurt was as an accountant, and would continue to work as one through his years as bishop and whatever came afterward. His life was particularly difficult during tax season, when he had to balance double business hours as well as his church work. We didn’t see him for much of March and April. Kurt had been bishop through one tax season already, and that meant it would likely be four more until he was released as bishop and another man from the ward would take over.
I CAME BACK to the church with Kurt that evening for Perdita and Jonathan’s ceremony. Kurt had put on a clean white shirt and tie and I was wearing one of my best dresses, a shell pink sheath that everyone said looked good on me. It made me slightly uncomfortable because pink had never been a color I liked much, but this was a wedding, and it was not about me being comfortable.
Inside the cultural hall, under the gazebo, Kurt waited for people to arrive (Mormon-standard time meant ten minutes after the wedding was supposed to begin). I sat quietly in the front row, listening to heels tapping and squeaking on hardwood. Tom deRyke and Karl Ashby, the first and second counselors in the bishopric, arrived next with their wives, Verity and Emma. I greeted them with a nod. More people arrived by the ten minute after mark, which was pretty typical of Mormon standard time.
Then Kurt brought the couple up to the front and gave them advice. This was the longest part of any Mormon wedding ceremony, in a church or in the temple.
“Jonathan, you need to think of Perdita as the most important person in your life now. You give her one hundred percent because no marriage works unless both people are giving all they can. And if it feels like Perdita isn’t giving as much as you are, get on your knees right at that moment. Ask God to show you what you aren’t seeing. Because we are all blind. We see what we sacrifice, but we take for granted what other people give up. And that is true nowhere more than in a marriage,” said Kurt.
He turned to Perdita. “Perdita, Jonathan is your top priority now. I don’t mean making him happy or pretending to agree with him.” Kurt’s eyes slid toward mine and I couldn’t repress a slight smile. “I mean, his real well-being. If he is wrong, I don’t want you to think that being a good wife means ignoring that. Being a good wife means telling him the truth as best you can. It means dealing with the hard stuff together. It means having courage to face the world, and having even more courage to face God together.”
I knew very well what Kurt was doing here. He hadn’t said a word about the temple marriage ceremony or the secret endowment ceremony that these two would have gone to if they’d ended up marrying there. But his advice was filled with allusions to temple doctrine. The Adam and Eve story might be about women making the wrong choice in other religions, but in Mormonism, it is all about Eve making the right choice, even if it meant facing difficult consequences. She was the one who reminded Adam that they couldn’t obey the commandment to multiply and replenish the earth unless they ate of the fruit, and Joseph Smith argued that she spent a thousand years thinking over the decision before she finally had the courage to face the consequences of being sent out of the Garden.
When Kurt was finished with his advice, the simple wedding ceremony was merely a question, at which Perdita and Jonathan agreed to marry each other with a single-word answer: “Yes.”
They exchanged rings after the words were said, but it wasn’t a necessary part of the ceremony.
The couple turned around to the family members watching from their chairs. There was some light applause as people tried to decide if it was appropriate or not. The couple kissed a second time, this time a lot longer. The photographer zoomed closer, but I had the sense that this was a real kiss, not one extended for show. It gave me a good feeling. I was glad to see that what I had told Cheri earlier wasn’t a pleasant lie. These two had a better chance than most couples.
Cheri came forward and hugged her daughter and her new son-in-law. No tears in her eyes now.
More photographs of the extended family were taken. I watched with some satisfaction as they posed under the gazebo I had put together. It didn’t fall on anyone.
Kurt came up behind me and put his arms around me. He leaned close and I could feel his breath in my ear.
“Happy memories?” he asked.
I was a little choked up. I nodded rather than trying to speak.
“I was a lucky man then. I am an even luckier man now.”
“I frustrate you to no end sometimes,” I said. “And I have as loud a mouth as ever I did.”
“I frustrate you, too,” said Kurt. “And as for your mouth.” He slid his arms around me, then kissed me gently. “I have always loved your mouth, open or closed, full of words, full of love, or full of sharp barbs. I love it all. I love all of you.” We held hands for a little while, until he was called away.
I stayed through the end of the reception, and after the couple had gone, I helped Cheri clean up in the cultural hall, the halls around the church, and finally in the kitchen.
“Their car was kept safe?” I asked. That was one tradition I had never approved of.
“My husband had it in the garage. He came and brought it to them, so no one could cover it in slime.”
“Good for him,” I said. He was helping sweep the polished wooden floors of the gym.
I stared at the place and thought how strange it was that we could repurpose the same room for so many different things. This cultural hall would see everything in the course of its life. Funeral luncheons, weddings, basketball games, monthly Relief Society meetings, a Road Show or Stake Pageant, music practices, Sunday School, Young Men’s and Young Women’s activities, Boy Scout meetings, and the overflow from sacrament meetings and stake conferences.
In many ways, this hall was the most Mormon place of them all. Didn’t that make it holy in its own way? Maybe more holy than the quiet, white temple that was not part of our weekly worship?
This hall was where God came, if you believed in God.
And I did. After all this time and all my doubts, I did.