Magdalene (27 page)

“You just can’t marry a man.”

“Right. So I can’t have repentance
and
keep the relationship.”

“And so...?”

“I resent it,” he said flatly.

“Now, wait a minute. I know your politics. I
can’t imagine you approve of your church’s stance.”

“You’re right. I don’t.”

“And yet you stay. Why?”

He said nothing for a couple of seconds. “I
am...needed...here.”

I knew better than to ask him about the
extent of his unwillingness to have a relationship with a woman,
but he seemed to want to go there anyway.

“I have my pick of LDS women. Older.
Gorgeous. Educated. Even willing to marry a gay man just to
be
married. But I haven’t been able to do it. I’m just not
attracted to women. I don’t think it’s fair to any woman,
especially if, somewhere in the back of her mind, she’s thinking
she can change me. She’d end up bitter and I’d end up angry.”

“So does that happen a lot? Women willing to
marry an out gay man?”

He sighed. “Enough that people know what’s
going on if they run across a family like that. See, the goal is to
marry and have children. Some guys can do that. I don’t think I
can, and I certainly don’t want children. Never have. And for the
women I’ve known who’d be willing to marry me, no kids is the
dealbreaker. What’s upsetting is if the wife doesn’t know her
husband’s gay. He usually ends up leaving her and the kids because
he can’t maintain the act anymore.”

I let out a totally unamused laugh.

“I’m sorry, Cassie. I guess that’s not
unique to us.”

Indeed, it wasn’t. I’d met many long-married
women whose lives had been turned upside down by husbands who’d
tired of the façade—and none of them were Mormon.

We were covers for our spouses’
homosexuality, no more, no less.

“So you can’t marry a man, and you won’t
marry a woman.”

He paused. “Well...” he said as if it had
never occurred to him, but apparently he really had thought about
it. Loneliness is a powerful motivator. “She’d have to look an
awful lot like a man, and even then, the lack of the right
equipment could be the dealbreaker for me if I don’t like her
enough to overlook it.”

“That can be approximated.”

He grunted. “I know. My freak cousin Giselle
won’t stop reminding me.”

“Don’t knock it till you try it. Prosthetics
are amazing these days.”

“Cassie, you find me a single, intelligent,
androgynous Mormon woman with that level of kink, I’ll buy you a
diamond mine.”

That made me laugh. “So how do you
cope?”

“Some days I don’t very well. Mostly I pray
a lot. I do things for people. I manage my authorial brand and keep
tabs on the political intrigues going on inside the Beltway. I can
go weeks, months without thinking about it and then I’ll get
slapped with something out of the blue. Some days are a real crap
shoot. I think about leaving the Church and finding what I want,
but then—”

Abrupt silence.

“But then?”

I heard the sound of a finger tapping wood.
“But then,” he said slowly, “I’ll be at church, in my office. Some
woman comes by, wants to talk. She’s any one of half a dozen single
women who have
no hope
of getting married or having sex for
various reasons—looks, health, disability, not all that smart, some
combination, whatever—and worse, they’re competing with half a
dozen gorgeous, intelligent, educated, single women for the same
limited number of men.

“She pours out her heart to me, crying that
no one wants her and the kicker is—it’s
true
. She—all of
them—have to live with the knowledge that they will never have love
because
no one wants them
.”

Oh.

I’d very rarely not been wanted.

“I don’t know what that feels like,” he
said, echoing my thoughts. “What am I supposed to say when I play
the gay card to commiserate and she comes over the desk at me,
sticks her finger in my face, and says,

“‘Don’t you act like you know, Brother
Ashworth.
You
have a choice. You can stay or you can go, but
wherever you go, you will never
not
be wanted—by women
or
men, so your odds are automatically doubled—because
you’re handsome and rich and smart. You
choose
to be alone
and celibate.
I
don’t and you have no right to tell me you
know how I feel because you
don’t
.’”

His voice had gone hoarse, and suddenly, I
knew that while he hurt for himself, he hurt for these people
more.

“And don’t think that’s confined to the
women,” he said low. “Everybody has their trials in life. Staying
in the Church, being gay but celibate, serving—that’s my choice. I
know I can leave any time and have every confidence that I can find
someone to love because I’m attractive in all the ways society
values most. I know my family wouldn’t blame me, and they’d support
my decision. But those people...can’t. Whether they stay or go
makes no difference at all. They’re still not going to get what
they want.”

I gulped.

“And then...there are the kids who start to
question their sexuality. They get hazed at school. Turn into the
token gay kid at church. Maybe they’re afraid of their parents’
reaction. They need advice, help. Guidance. From someone who’s been
there and turned out to be a strong, successful—politically
powerful—adult. Puberty’s hard enough without adding
homosexuality-plus-religion to the mix, wouldn’t you say?”

“You stay for them,” I whispered. “The ones
with no choice and no voice.”

“Yes. Because I was raised this way, and I
know the culture, and I can work within its boundaries to serve
people who need it in
this
context.”

At that moment, I realized what an
extraordinary man Morgan really was. No matter how misguided—okay,
fucked up—I considered his philosophies to be, he was true to his
people, people he loved and served, for whom he sacrificed his own
desires.

Like Mitch.

“I’m done with this topic of conversation,
Cass.”

Oh, so was I.

But he cleared his throat, and, after a
tense moment, picked up as if we’d never digressed.

“When the ward members find out you’re not a
member, they won’t know how to process your relationship with him
and assumptions about your baptism and wedding dates will start
flying right and left.”

Baptism. Wedding.

My stomach started to churn in spite of my
brave words to Nigel. Just
how
badly did I want to get Mitch
naked and in bed, anyway?

“What does a bishop’s wife
do
,
then?”

“Why, Cassie,” he drawled after a slight
pause. “I’m getting the impression you might actually
want
the job.”

Ahh, hmmm
... “Absolutely not,” I
said. Then, to throw his threat back in his face, I added, “I just
want one thing from him, and I’m conceited enough to think I can
get it on my terms. And fuck you if you come after me for it,
too.”

I must have waited a fraction of a second
too long before decrying, though, because Morgan began to chuckle,
then laugh.

Bastard.

“Um, okay. Her only real job is to support
the bishop, keep the home fires burning and raise the kids while
he’s spending his evenings and weekends tending to the ward. How
active a woman is in the ward itself is probably most dependent on
her personality and how involved she’s willing to be. Sometimes,
the ward, especially the women, will presume upon her as a gateway
to the bishop.”

“How did his wife do it?”

“From what I’ve been told, it was about all
she could do to keep the house and make dinner until they could
afford a housekeeper, and then she spent all her time with the
kids. She didn’t have much energy, and she just kept sliding
downhill. Once she was in a wheelchair, that was about it. Mitch
took over from there. Tried to, anyway.”

“Why did they ask him to do almost a
full-time job for free when his wife was dying, he had children to
raise, and a stressful job?”

He said nothing for a moment, then, “The
Church can be rather self-serving at times, but Mitch doesn’t see
himself as serving the Church. He’s serving his ward members,
thereby serving God—and that’s all he cares about. Sebastian says
that’s all he’s ever cared about.”

Yesterday’s skating adventure—for a
congregation a hundred miles away from his and not even of the same
faith—flashed through my mind.
Why
did I find that sexy?

“I don’t understand you people,” I said
flatly.

“Oh, there’s a surprise.” Again he paused,
yet sounded sincere when he added, “Good luck, Cassie.”

I needed it.

“And wear a dress. You’ll fit in
better.”

I blinked at the phone after he had tossed
that last one out at me and hung up. Okay, Morgan. Thanks
bunches.

Thus I found myself in Allentown,
Pennsylvania, in front of a rather low-slung church building with
no decoration but a nondescript steeple (no cross). I was more
nervous than I had been with my first client. Then, every second
before his arrival had been spent repeating the mantra, “It’s not
too late to back out, it’s not too late to back out.” Now I was
doing the same before going into a church, for God’s sake.

Come to think of it, I should’ve done that
on my wedding day when, ten minutes before I was to walk down the
aisle, my father hinted that I should not, in fact, walk down the
aisle.

I shrugged and figured that between getting
married, turning tricks, and going to a three-hour service in an
oddball church, this was probably the least traumatic of the three
and not quite as long-lasting, though church was no place for a
whore.

But I felt compelled. I wanted to understand
Mitch Hollander the way his family understood him because they
shared this culture with him. I certainly didn’t want to remain on
the outskirts of Hollander Steelworks like the rest of the
financial industry, scratching its collective head over what the
hell motivated the CEO.

I wanted to know why he was so stalwart
where most of his friends—and his son—were not.

The papers I held in my hand fluttered in
the breeze, and I looked down at three pages of instructions,
addresses, phone numbers, maps, glossary, and protocol Morgan had
sent me.

Sacrament meeting was first.

I sat in an overflow area behind the pews,
where chairs had been set up. I could sit back here and observe
without being observed in return. From my place, while the prelude
music softly streamed out from the organ, I could see Mitch sitting
in a theater-type chair behind and to the left of the pulpit, in
front of the pews where a choir would sit. He looked over his
congregation as it trickled, then streamed in; the men who sat on
either side of him occasionally whispered something to him and he
would nod or shake his head or whisper something back. The
sanctuary itself—chapel, Ashworth called it—was remarkably plain,
with no crosses or crucifixes. The only decoration I could see was
a small box of tissues on the pulpit.

Then the prelude music stopped and Mitch
arose to speak. His short wavy hair glinted dark gold in the light
and against the light olive of his impeccably tailored suit. He
rested his hand on a stack of Bibles on the pulpit, just to his
right.

I caressed my own soft palms, remembering
how his rough, heavily calloused hands felt in mine when we danced
together, how they felt against my waist and surrounding my hips,
and how they looked, the ridges of his fingertips tattooed with
faint spots of permanent grime, though his nails were as manicured
as mine.

I could feel my arousal start. This was
completely out of my realm, a man who was at once a savvy
businessman linked to some of the most influential power players in
the country, an exquisite salsa club dancer, and a man of God whose
sole experience with women had been his wife of twenty-three years.
He’d been celibate for eighteen years and spent thirty hours a week
tending to the needs of four hundred people. For free. Because he
thought he was serving God and that was what he wanted to do.

Amazing.

Once again, he looked out over the
congregation and bent his head to read, then stopped, looked up and
straight at me. My heart thundered and I couldn’t catch my breath.
I gave him a smile that felt weak, timid. Beseeching. Asking his
forgiveness for intruding upon him. I hated it, but couldn’t help
it.

His eyelids lowered and his mouth quirked.
My heart settled down, and I could breathe again.

To my surprise, Mitch didn’t give a sermon.
He read announcements, conducted administrative business for the
ward and...that was about it. Other people directed its course. A
hymn and a prayer. Another hymn. Then came the service of
communion—sacrament—by a gaggle of awkward prepubescent boys in
white button-down shirts (most of which desperately needed to see
the business side of an iron) who scattered throughout the
congregation with little trays of bread and water.

After that finished, Mitch arose to announce
the names of three people who would be speaking—“giving a talk”—for
a few minutes each, one of whom had made it clear that he had been
“assigned the topic of tithing.” No hellfire and brimstone. No
professionally written and delivered sermon by a trained pastor
(and it showed). No paid musicians (that showed, too). A hymn and a
prayer.

The lack of professionals was yet another
anomaly in Christendom, that was for sure, but since I couldn’t see
Mitch very well from where I sat, I spent most of my time simply
trying to hear what was said. The sheer number of screaming,
squalling, and crying babies and toddlers was beyond irritating.
For all their protestations of chastity before marriage, these
people sure as hell made up for it after.