Elders (11 page)

“You’ve got this,” Passos said to him, a low reassurance as they waited for Josefina to answer the door.

Let me leap, McLeod thought. Let me leap. But then Leandro, and not Josefina, came to the door. He wore a red tank top that made his arms look longer, more segmented than usual, like a marionette’s, and he smelled of cigarettes, a diffuse but unmistakable odor. He’d grown a dark goatee since the elders had last seen him.

Leandro gave a curt brief smile, said, “Come in, Elders,” and led them toward the house. In the front room they took their regular places and started asking Leandro about his work, about the championships, how Brazil was doing in the tournament, and so on, with Elder McLeod wondering all the while where Josefina was.

“So we’re into the quarters?” Passos was saying.

Then she emerged from the kitchen and McLeod felt a smile stretch and stretch across his face. He almost sighed with relief. Josefina carried a glass of pulpy red juice in either hand, balanced a plate of
biscoitos
in the crook of her left arm, and with her teeth she clenched the top of a bag of corn chips. She gestured at the plate with her head for him and Passos to take a cookie, which they did. Then McLeod lifted the plate from her arm as she stooped to put down the glasses on the table and release the bag, catlike, from her mouth. In the process her blouse dipped open, revealing brown, secret skin. McLeod tried, failed to angle his eyes away.

Josefina straightened up again, laughing. “Phew.”

“Quite a feast,” Passos said. “What’s the occasion?”

“What do you mean what’s the occasion?” Josefina backed into her seat next to Leandro, gesturing at the food with her hands. “Go ahead—eat!”

They all traded words between crunching bites of chips, cookies, sips of cherry juice mixed with something sour, then more chips, more cookies. She told them about a chapter in the Book of Mormon she’d particularly liked, smiling as she talked, gesticulating, filling her entryway/living room with a sort of osmosed vibrancy. And this really was her room.
Her
house. Ownership belonged to the more enthusiastic, the more zealous, and McLeod now knew that Josefina’s zeal was genuine. She ate very little herself, mostly talking, watching the elders eat, smiling. At one point her husband half stood and leaned forward for another cookie. “Uh-uh,” she said. Leandro glared at her. Passos picked up the cookie plate and held it for Leandro—“There’s too much for us. Here”—and Leandro took a handful. He sat back down, leaning away from his wife, furrowing as he took quick squirrel-like bites down the length of the white rectangular wafers.

Soon enough the eating slowed, then stopped, and the missionaries set to the business at hand. At the very first words of the lesson (“Our Father’s plan for us,” Passos said, “is an eternal plan”), Elder McLeod felt his stomach muscles tighten. He felt the definite discomfort his father had promised, and managed to find a certain reassurance in this. Less so in the feeling of nervousness like nausea, the feeling that only got stronger as the lesson progressed, drawing all clarity of thought and speech into a merciless orbit around it. The stress of caring. Elder McLeod had not anticipated it. He recited his sections of the lesson in a kind of automated haze, moving quickly through the concepts, asking closed-ended
questions of Josefina and Leandro, especially Leandro. McLeod couldn’t stop looking at him, and in the wrong way, watching his eyes, dark and expressionless as a doll’s. In the second-to-last section Elder Passos drew up to the lesson’s emotional crescendo—“It is the power to seal families for time and all eternity, steel them against the terrors of the grave, worlds without end”—but even then Leandro’s eyes remained lusterless, unmoved.

“I testify of this power,” Passos concluded. “I know it is real indeed, very real. It is the doctrinal capstone of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, the key to our salvation in the presence of God, with our families. Our
eternal
families.”

A trace of Passos’s charism heat was in the air after he finished, sliding about the room. But McLeod didn’t feel it, didn’t pay attention. He couldn’t. He felt Passos’s hand on his knee, and that barely. Then he saw the grave look on his companion’s face—his eyebrows halfway to the
V
—and his slow, deep nod.

McLeod turned to his audience. He cleared his throat and began, “Josefina and Leandro, we believe—rather, we know—that this message is true and saving. We know that all the messages we’ve shared with you are true. The restored gospel of Jesus Christ will bring us peace and security in this life and in the next, if we but follow it. But we must follow it. It is not an idle gospel. It is a gospel of action. We want to invite you, Josefina and Leandro, to take the important
action
of being baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Elder McLeod half opened his mouth to add something more, then he stopped.

Josefina raised her eyebrows. “Were you finished?”

“Yes,” he said.

Josefina nodded, made a low sublingual sound; it might have
been “Hmmm, hmmm.” She closed her eyes, nodding again, as if she’d expected everything McLeod had just said. She kept her lids shut in meditation. A long, silent minute passed. Then Josefina opened her eyes and turned to her husband, sunk down in the threadbare sofa like an emaciate. He looked limp, boneless. He didn’t return his wife’s gaze.

Josefina said, “Elders, I think we need more time. I want to be baptized in this church—it’s real for me now—but I want to take that step alongside my husband.”

McLeod reacted to the note of apology in Josefina’s voice. “Oh of course, of course. That’s only natural. We—”

“It’s more than natural,” Passos cut in. “It’s ordained of God. We
encourage
couples to wait until both parties are ready. The church believes in family unity, as I said. It is
built
on that. The very kingdom of heaven, as I just said, is
built
on that.” All hints of warmth had left Passos’s voice, and even McLeod could hear that. Now it was Passos who vibrated with a nervous, nerve-racking energy, as if each of his words had a fuse attached to it. “You say you need more time? Leandro? Is that right? If you do, that’s fine. You need more time, Leandro? Is that right?”

Leandro lifted his gaze without lifting his head. He took in Passos for a brief second, then McLeod for a longer one, his eyes false-sad like a basset hound’s. He nodded.

The next day
was Wednesday. Another P-Day. McLeod and Passos cleaned the apartment, did laundry, shopped for what groceries they could afford, and did all of it largely in silence. In the late morning the mail came. A letter from McLeod’s mother. They’d finished redoing the basement, she said. Were certainly open to the idea of renting it out—either that or turning it into a guest room. Dad was well. Karen too. Already dating seriously at BYU. Something in the water there. Was he eating well? And so on.

McLeod went into the entryway/living room; its corners were in shadow, darkness at midday. The clouds through the window looked low and leaden, almost purplish at patches. Passos sat at his desk. He leaned over a sheet of paper, frowning with concentration. He hadn’t received any letters that day.

“Who are you writing?” McLeod asked him.

“Brother,” Passos said.

“Oh. Cool.”

McLeod sat down at his desk and composed a brief letter to his family. Things were good. They were still teaching Josefina and Leandro. Leandro was coming along a little slower than Josefina, but then again Josefina was really coming along. And so on. McLeod thought about bearing some kind of testimony to close the letter, mostly for his father’s sake, but he couldn’t muster the energy. He still felt drained from last night. He put the finished
letter in an envelope, addressed it, took out a stamp from his desk drawer. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Passos still writing, his concentration unbroken. McLeod tidied the mugful of pens on his desk—highlighters, scripture markers, all recent additions. He pushed flush the spines of the Missionary Classics Paperback Library that he had pulled from the recesses of his suitcase. McLeod took out
Jesus the Christ
, which he’d started rereading. He made it through several pages about Christ’s pre-mortal calling.

“Who are you writing now?” he asked Passos.

“Other brother.”

“Oh.”

He wandered into the bedroom, organized his closet. He had promised Sweeney he’d make it to his apartment today for a little powwow, as in their MTC days. Kimball would be there too, at noon, and Sweeney’s and Kimball’s companions, friends by now, would probably head out to do whatever it was they did. They could take Passos along too; he might enjoy himself.

A few minutes later Elder McLeod leaned his head out of the bedroom and asked his companion, still bowed over his writing, if he thought he’d be much longer. Passos said, “Might be.” McLeod explained the situation. Did he think maybe he could finish the letters tonight?

Passos put down his pen—an audible clack on the wooden desk—and craned his neck to see the sky through the window. “It’s going to open up out there,” he said, and returned to his writing.

“It might not. We’ll take umbrellas.” McLeod repeated the word in English: “Umbrellas.”

Passos stopped writing. His shoulders softened a bit. “We’ll take the umbrellas,” he said quietly, practicing.

The elders arrived at Sweeney’s apartment, unrained-on, at a quarter to one, just as Sweeney’s and Kimball’s greenies, Nunes and Batista, made ready to leave. In shorts and T-shirts, they stuffed their shoulder bags with water, a stack of small orange cones, a soccer ball, and their ponchos, though Nunes said he doubted the sky would make good on its threat. He asked Passos if he wanted to come along. Passos begged off on account of letters he needed to write. Elder Nunes set Passos up at his desk and mumbled something in Portuguese, a quick burst of slang that McLeod didn’t catch.

Passos chuckled. “I’ll be fine.”

Nunes nodded at McLeod and at the bedroom door in turn. “They’re in there.”

“Thanks,” McLeod said.

He left his companion in the living room and let himself into the bedroom. Elders Kimball and Sweeney sat on opposite beds in jeans and T-shirts, Sweeney leaning forward in the position of holding forth, Kimball slumped back against the wall, hands joined behind his neck, elbows crooked out, smiling.

“Ask McLeod,” Kimball said in English, pointing his chin at him. “He’ll tell you the very same.”

Sweeney turned to him with urgency in his face and said, “McLeod, back me up here—” He stopped short, cocking his head.

Elder McLeod pinched his dress shirt and let it go; he palmed
his tie. “You’re wondering about the proselytizing clothes? Is that it? I’m a rule abider now. Like you guys wanted.”

“It’s P-Day,” Sweeney said.

“I had to travel to get here.”

Sweeney’s face was still a question mark.

“I can show it to you in the Missionary Handbook,” McLeod said, reaching for the thin white booklet he’d taken to carrying in his breast pocket again.

“Whatever, whatever,” Sweeney said. “Sit.”

Kimball smacked the bed beside him and McLeod plopped down, noticing Kimball’s T-shirt. It looked silk-screened, with a quote on the front of it attributed to Nietzsche (“God is dead”) and below it another quote attributed to God (“Nietzsche is dead”) and below that, inexplicably, a guitar in silhouette. Elder McLeod never quite got used to seeing his friends, or any fellow missionaries, in street clothes. Neither did he get used to the ungelled undifferentiated mass of brown hair, like one of those Russian fur hats, that Kimball wore on P-Days.

“The question is simple,” Sweeney said. He held his hands out in the air as if to bracket McLeod’s attention. “Does the church keep tabs on your sex life after you’re married? To wit: Can you go down on your wife?”

“The church stays out of the bedroom,” McLeod said.

“That’s exactly what I said! Is that not exactly what I said, Kimball, you prude?”

“I’m not the prude. They’re not my rules. I’m just saying. My brother’s bishop told him when he got married—and this was BYU, mind you, this was officialdom—he told him oral sex was a no-no. Both the his and her variety. Off-limits.”