Belief by Stephanie Johnson

Author:Stephanie Johnson [Stephanie Johnson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781775530237
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

During their absence from Salt Lake City Brother Everett had had the house altered and the wives had claimed their respective territories immediately upon their return. But for the kitchen, William’s room and the second-floor parlour, and the room that was Everett’s own, the house may as well have been divided entirely in two. Each woman kept to her own apartment: a small third-floor bedroom and adjoining sitting room, Lydia’s on the north side and Eliza’s on the south, separated by the nursery. In a single momentous concession to his senior wife, Everett had had the door that gave from Lydia’s room into the children’s quarters locked and the key put away. His younger wife had wept at this, his first perceived unkindness to her, though Everett assured her that if they remained faithful to their covenants a time would come when it would be necessary for the key to be returned.

On the floor below the women’s apartments there was a sewing room, which was the one sphere of possible contact for the two wives, but Lydia avoided it. On her single foray Eliza had impressed upon her that Matthias’s needs came well before those of a childless sister-wife’s and that she was not welcome. She and the boy made it their daily practice to spend the afternoon there, while Eliza taught him his letters and Gospel. The mornings Eliza sat alone, at the sewing machine or reading.

In the evenings, unless there was company, Everett, Paora and William ate alone in the male province of the dining room. The women never entered that part of the house to dine, though William considered they must have done to decorate it. It was overstuffed, the curtains pink and floral, the centrepiece lilac glass, the mantelpiece laden with ornament and baubles. The high cream walls were hung with cross-stitched representations of Bible scenes and homilies gleaned from the prophets.

William hardly saw either of the sister-wives. He presumed that his friend did, that he was an active husband to them both. Occasionally Matthias would join the men at the table. He was seven years old and as solemn a child as William had ever met, though he’d not taken an interest in any before. From the little he remembered of his own childhood, he was sure children were generally more light-hearted than this one, even children whose fathers relied on the whip as his own father had done. He wondered if Everett beat the boy for misdoings. It was unlikely: not only was the child frail and myopic, he had a quiet dignity and confidence about him unknown to the beaten child. Perhaps it was because he had no siblings and no playfellows either, as far as William could make out. Eliza kept him to herself.

One Sunday evening, a week before his final disagreement with Everett, William had attempted to engage the son in conversation.

‘Will you be a missionary when you grow up?’ he asked, as one of the maids brought in the baked chicken and greens.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.