“In his mind at least,” my grandmother teased.
“Do we have to call you sister all the time?” my grandfather asked.
“I’m afraid you do.”
“Well, tell me this and I promise not to tell a soul. What’s your first name?”
“I really can’t tell you,” Doneau said.
“It’s Brianna,” I said without thinking.
Doneau glared at me, then turned to my grandparents. “Please don’t call me that though.”
“We won’t,” my grandmother said, turning to my grandfather so he’d know he’d been warned. “We want you to feel comfortable while you’re in our home.”
Once again, as the four of us headed back to the train station, Doneau, with Bagley trying to keep up with her, forged on ahead of us.
We had a ten-minute wait for the train. At first Doneau ignored us, but then she marched over to me and said, “We need to talk.”
We walked a few feet away from our companions. “How do you know my first name?” she asked.
“One of the elders in your last area told me.”
“How did he know?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“You’d better tell me,” she demanded.
“Well . . . some of the elders in the mission call you ‘Brianna, Be Brief.’”
She gasped. “Why would they call me that?”
I tried to put a positive spin to it. “Because you stand up for yourself, but that’s good, you know, that you don’t let people walk all over you. I should be more like that.”
“What else do they say about me?” she demanded.
“That you have a law degree and . . . that sometimes you’re just . . . a tiny bit difficult to work with.”
“They say I’m hard to work with? Well, I think you can see that simply isn’t true.”
As a joke I faked the look of a browbeaten husband. “Yes, dear, whatever you say.”
“Don’t call me dear.”
“Relax, okay? Can’t you tell when someone is being sarcastic?”
“You are interested in me, aren’t you?”
“No, not a bit,” I said. “For your information, I have someone waiting for me. She’s very good-looking and always treats me with a great deal of respect.”
Actually, that was a lie. There was nobody waiting for me, at least not by that point in my mission. The girls I’d been friends with in high school were now all getting married. I said it just to keep Doneau from thinking I cared about her, which I truly did not.
“I have someone waiting for me too,” she said.
“Well, I hope he waits.”
“Oh, he’ll wait, don’t you worry about that,” she shot back. “He’s totally committed to our relationship.”
“I’m very happy for your relationship,” I said pleasantly.
“We will not talk about this again, will we,” she said. It was not a question.
“I certainly hope not.”
We returned to our companions.
• • •
When we arrived for our next visit, my grandfather had the electric train he had bought for me when I was a baby, set up in the living room. We watched it make its way around the circular track and then he handed me the controls. “Go ahead, give it a try.”
It was embarrassing to be doing this in front of Norton, Bagley, and Doneau, but for my grandfather’s sake, I did my best to be enthusiastic about the train.
“This is really great!”
“It’s all yours,” my grandfather said proudly. “This is the first time it’s ever been used.”
“I would’ve gotten a big kick out of this when I was a kid,” I said.
“That’s for sure,” my grandfather said. And then he got misty-eyed again, and in a lower voice, added, “There’s a lot of things we could’ve done together, just you and me. And of course other things with Claire and me and you.” He shook his head. “But that’s all water under the bridge now, right? We’ve got to move on.”
He looked so sad, I didn’t care if the others were watching. I reached over and rested my hand on his arm. “I wish we could’ve done those things . . . Grandfather.”
He swallowed hard. “That’s something I’ve always wanted to hear,” he said.
“I can call you that now . . . if you want.”
He looked at my hand on his arm and nodded. “I would appreciate that.”
I turned to my grandmother. “What would you like me to call you, Claire?”
She smiled. “I would like it if you called me Grandmother.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Group hug?” my grandfather suggested.
“That sounds like a great idea,” I said.
The three of us stood up and put our arms around each other like a small football team in a huddle.
I was very happy at that moment.
Maybe too happy. I looked at Doneau and said, “Care to join us?”
She laughed. “Well, I’m not going to hug you, that’s for sure, but I can hug your grandmother. How would that be?”
My grandmother and Doneau hugged each other, and then they invited Sister Bagley to join them.
Norton glanced at Eddie then looked over at me and just held up his hands in a defensive gesture.
Doneau taught most of the lesson and did a good job. My grandparents even agreed to go to church on Sunday.
A week later, one day before we were scheduled to teach my grandparents again, Doneau called. “Guess what? Today when we dropped by, your grandparents asked about tithing, so we taught them. It went really well.”
I was stunned.
“Are you still there?” she asked.
“I thought we’d agreed that we were all going to teach together.”
“Well, we dropped by to see them, and they started asking about it, and before we knew it, we’d taught them.”
“I see,” I said icily.
“If you want, we can go over the same material when you and your companion are with us,” Doneau said.
“No, that won’t be necessary.”
“How about if you do most of the teaching next time?” she asked.
“I think that’s a good idea.”
The next day when we met with my grandparents, I started out doing the teaching, but my grandparents directed most of their questions to Doneau.
Afterwards we had cannoli again, but this time Doneau and Bagley had made it. They’d spent the afternoon in the kitchen with my grandmother.
I was depressed that it tasted so good.
“What do you think?” my grandmother asked.
“It’s okay, I guess,” I said with little enthusiasm.
“The best part was us being able to work with you in the kitchen,” Doneau told my grandmother.
After we finished eating, my grandfather asked the four of us what I at first thought was a strange question. “How are things in your apartments? Does everything work where you live?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Do the drains drain? Are the faucets leaking? Do the locks work? Anything needing fixing? Because if there is, I’d be happy to drop over sometime and fix whatever isn’t working. It’s what I do every day. Come on out to the garage and I’ll show you around.”
“Sisters, don’t go out there. It’s boring. Let’s stay here and talk,” my grandmother said.
Norton and I went to the garage with my grandfather. He showed us all the tools he had, and more nuts, bolts, and screws in neatly labeled bins than most hardware stores carried.
Norton wasn’t much interested, so he went just outside the garage and looked at the garden.
“I’ve changed a lot since we lived in Utah,” my grandfather said. “Back then I was a corporate star. In fact, your Grandfather Roberts was one of my coworkers. I’ll tell you sometime how, in a way, I was responsible for your dad and your mom meeting, but not now.” He sighed. “When your mom died, I felt like my whole world had been shot out from under
me. I couldn’t work with the same energy I used to have. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. So, after a while, I resigned, and we moved back here, where we had lived while Charly was growing up.”
He opened up a metal drawer and pulled out some bolts and gently tossed them in his hand while he continued. “I didn’t work for a year, and then I heard about an apart- ment building for sale. It needed a lot of work, and the owner had been trying to sell it for a while. It was in a good neighborhood, and I felt it could bring in some money if it were completely remodeled. So I took out a loan and started to fix up the place. Within a year we started to make money.”
He returned the bolts to the drawer and led me to an area where he kept his plumbing supplies. “At first none of the people who lived there trusted me because the previous owner had let the place go downhill. But after a while, they learned that I’d be there if they had a problem. Now, even with three apartment buildings, I take great pride in taking care of my tenants, fixing their toilets, their drains, their faucets, painting, planting flowers in the spring, fertilizing the lawns, keeping up the grounds. They know they can count on me when there’s a problem.”
Norton peeked into the garage. “Elder, we need to be going now.”
My grandfather offered to give us rides back to our apartments, but we told him it would be better for us if we took the train.
As the four of us walked back to the train station, I spoke to Doneau. “I want you to quit dropping by and seeing them all the time.”
“I can’t agree to that,” Doneau said.
“I knew this was a big mistake to let you two into the teaching process.”
“They live in our area. If we want to visit them every fifteen minutes, we’ll do it,” she retorted.
“I want to be there when they’re taught.”
“Why? Are you implying we don’t do a good job? How can you say that after having seen me teach?”
“It’s easy, actually.” The minute I said it, I regretted it. But I wasn’t going to back down.
“You don’t care anything about my feelings, do you?” Doneau asked.
“You don’t have feelings, Doneau. You’re a lawyer, for crying out loud.”
“I have feelings.”
“Well what about my feelings?” I blurted out. “Are they of no importance to you?”
Now I can see that what I said could be misinterpreted. What I meant, of course, was that these were my grandparents and I wanted to be there whenever they were taught.
Unfortunately, Norton and Bagley heard my outburst. They both looked at me with suspicion.
“I can’t talk to you anymore without my companion,” Doneau said, returning to Bagley.
When the train came, we again boarded different cars.
Later that night, Norton asked, “So, what’s going on between you and Doneau?”
“Nothing is going on. I’m just mad at her for taking over everything.”
Two days later I got a phone call from President McNamara. “We’re transferring you today, Elder.” He gave me the details. I was being transferred to the farthest end of the mission and was to get on the earliest bus available.
“Why am I being transferred?”
“I think you probably know the answer to that.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“We’ll talk about it next zone conference. But, for now, you’re being transferred to an area where there are no sisters.”
I phoned the sisters. Sister Doneau answered.
“You got me transferred, didn’t you?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m being transferred today. You wanted me out of the picture, didn’t you, so you’d be the one to teach and baptize my grandparents? You called President McNamara, didn’t you?”
There was a long pause. “I did call him, but I didn’t ask him to transfer you.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I’d rather not say. But let me say this, I do hope you’ll be able to be there when your grandparents are baptized.”
“Oh, I’ll be there, Sister Doneau, don’t you worry about that.”
“Even if it means breaking mission rules? That’s what got you into this problem, isn’t it?”
I hung up on her.
I turned to Norton. “Let’s go visit my grandparents.”
“That’s out of our area.”
“So what are they going to do? Transfer me? Let’s go.”
I packed and then we left.
By the time we arrived at my grandparents’ place, I’d cooled down enough to realize I should not let them know how furious I was with Doneau for getting me transferred. I didn’t want to put any barriers in the way of their continuing with the discussions.
First I explained that missionaries generally serve a few months in one area and then they’re transferred. “Well, that’s what’s happening to me. I’m being transferred. I leave today. So I won’t be around for a while.”
My grandmother looked as though she was going to cry. “You’re leaving?”
“I’m afraid so. But the sisters will continue teaching you.”
“Who do we call to complain about you leaving?” my grandfather demanded.
I talked to them about sustaining Church leaders.
“Maybe we could come to church where you are when we get baptized,” my grandfather said.
“That would be wonderful. There’s nothing I’d like better.” Then I let out a big sigh. “But . . . you need to be around the people in your ward, so they can help you.”
“You are so much like Lara,” my grandmother said.
“How’s that?”
“You’re very strict with yourself.”
“I’ll only be in my new area for a couple of months and then my mission will be over. Before I go back West, I’ll come and visit you.”
“It’s not fair,” my grandmother said. “Your family in Utah has had you for twenty years. I think we should have you for at least a little while.”
Norton tapped me on the sleeve and pointed to his watch.
I nodded and stood up. “We really need to go,” I said. “I’m sorry about this. It’s not the way I pictured this turning out. I hope this won’t discourage you from continuing to learn about the Church.” I felt as though I should bear my testimony to them.
“I want you to know that I know the things we have been teaching you are true. Joseph Smith really is a true prophet, and the Church is the kingdom of God on earth. There is nothing more important than you being baptized. Please keep studying with the sisters.”
My grandfather cleared his throat. “For the past twenty years we’ve gone over in our minds the changes we saw in your mother when she joined the Church. At first, we weren’t in favor of what she was doing, but as time went on, she became such a powerful influence on us that we began to think that maybe there is something to this, after all. What we’ve learned from what you’ve taught us has strengthened that conviction.” He paused. “So we’re going to go ahead with this.”
“That is great news,” I said softly.
“We’re glad you were the one to teach us,” my grandfather said. “You’re all we have left of our daughter now. Before you go, there’s something I want to give you. I’ll be right back.”
In spite of bad knees, he hurried up the stairs.
“Can I make you a sack lunch to take?” my grandmother asked. “I could make you some sandwiches.”
“No, that’s okay, I’ll be fine. It’s not a very long bus ride.”
My grandfather returned carrying a photograph of my real mom and my dad on the day they were married. “I found this last night. I thought you might like to have it.”
I felt myself choking up as I looked at the photo. It was taken outside the Salt Lake City Temple. What caught my attention was, first of all, how beautiful my mom was, and second, how happy they both looked. Especially my dad. I don’t think I’d ever seen him look that happy bef
ore.
Norton reminded me we had to go.
“Let us give you a ride,” my grandfather said.
“No, we’ll be fine. We’ll be on the train for just a few minutes, and then a quick walk to the bus station.”
We thanked them again, and I hugged them both before Norton and I stepped out the front door. They came out on the porch to watch us go.
“Don’t forget us, Adam,” my grandmother called out. “We have always loved you, and we will always love you.”
“I love you both. I’ll come back some day.”
“You’d better.”
We waved and hurried down the street toward the train station.
Two hours later I boarded a bus to my new area.
3
March came in like a lion, and the lion had a name. Elder Russell, a former Marine, was my new companion. He was also the district leader. He had a square jaw, a muscular frame, a military-style haircut, and a hoarse, deafening voice that he’d developed shouting commands to the troops.
Because Russell and I had come out about the same time, I thought we’d be equal partners. But those hopes were dashed shortly after Russell picked me up at the bus station. “If you’re willing to work hard and obey mission rules, then you and I shouldn’t have any problems.”
“I always obey mission rules.”
Russell shook his head. “That’s not what I’ve heard, but let me say this, you will obey the rules with me. We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way. It’s totally up to you.”
I resented being labeled a problem elder. With the exception of visiting my grandparents, I had always done my best to obey mission rules. But now, because of Doneau freaking out and complaining to the president, there wasn’t much I could do. Twenty-two months into my mission, and I had been demoted to junior companion.
In fact, Russell treated me like I’d just come out. For me this was both humiliating and depressing. The hardest thing was to come up with something positive to say in my letters home. I didn’t want to let on how miserable I was.
Russell was a take-charge kind of guy. He taught every discussion. He did every door approach. Every success we had was Russell’s.