Keeper of Dreams (93 page)

“Every month?” said Lucille.

“Yes.”

“Like home teaching?” she asked.

It was a sly jab indeed, for she well knew how many times Helaman had come to the end of the month and then would grab one of his sons and run around the ward, trying to catch their home teaching families and teach them his famous end-of-the-month procrastination lesson. “Even when I’m late, I
do
my home teaching.”

“If you think you can find somebody every month, then that’s the covenant,” said Lucille. “But you’re the one who’ll have to take the responsibility for finding somebody every month, because I don’t get out enough.”

“That’s fine,” said Helaman.

“And if we find that we can’t do it,” said Lucille, “that it’s too hard or it’s hurting our family, what then?”

“Then we sell all we have and give the money to the poor,” said Helaman.

“In other words,” said Lucille, “if we can’t make this work, then we move.”

“Yes.”

It was agreed, and it felt right. It was a good thing to do. Hadn’t his own parents always had room on the floor for somebody to lay out a sleeping bag if they had no other place to stay? Hadn’t there always been a place at his parents’ table for the lonely, the hungry, the stranger? With this covenant that he and Lucille were making with the Lord, Helaman could truly go home.

And then, suddenly, he felt fear plunge into his heart like a cold knife.
What in the world was he promising to do? Destroy his privacy, risk his family’s safety, keep their lives in constant turmoil, and for what—because some missionary cried over the poverty in Colombia? What, would there be a single person in Colombia who’d sleep better tonight because Helaman Willkie was planning to allow squatters to use his spare bedrooms?

“What’s wrong?” asked Lucille.

“Nothing,” said Helaman. “Let’s get inside and tell the kids before we freeze.” Before my heart freezes, he said silently. Before I talk myself out of trying to become a true son of my father and mother.

They opened the door, and for the first time, as he followed Lucille onto the marble floor, he didn’t feel ashamed to enter. Because it wasn’t his own house anymore.

Joni was all for having Var stay through the whole rest of the Christmas Eve festivities, but Helaman politely told Var that this was a good time for him to go home to be with his family. It only took two repetitions of the hint to get him out the door.

They gathered in the living room and, as was their tradition on Christmas Eve, Helaman read from the scriptures about the birth of the Savior. But then he skipped ahead to the part about Even as ye have done it unto the least of these, and then he and Lucille explained the covenant to their children. None of them was overjoyed.

“Do I have to let them use my computer?” asked Steven.

“They’re
family
computers,” said Helaman. “But if it becomes a problem, maybe you can keep one computer in your room.”

“It sounds like this is going to be a motel,” said Trudy. “But I’m going to college after this year and so I don’t really care.”

“Does this mean I can’t ever have my friends over?” asked Ryan.

“Of course you can,” said Lucille.

Joni had said nothing so far, but Helaman knew from the stony look on her face that she was taking it worst of all. So he asked her what she was thinking.

“I’m thinking that somehow this is all going to work around so I have to share my bedroom again.”

“We have spare bedrooms coming out of our ears, not to mention a whole mother-in-law apartment in the basement,” said Helaman. “You will
not
have to share your room with anybody.”

“Good,” said Joni. “Because if you ever ask me to share my room, I’m moving out.”

“We don’t make threats to you,” said Lucille, “and I’d appreciate it if you’d refrain from making threats to us.”

“I mean it,” said Joni. “It’s not a threat, I’m just telling you what
will
happen. I waited a long time to have a room of my own, and I’ll never share my bedroom again.”

“We’ll be sure to warn your boyfriends that your husband is going to have to sleep in another room,” said Trudy.

“You aren’t helping, Trudy,” said Lucille.

“Joni,” said Helaman, “I promise that I’ll never ask you to share your room with anybody.”

“Then it’s OK with me if you want to turn the rest of the house into a circus.”

For a moment Helaman hesitated, wondering if this
was
, after all, such a good idea. Then he remembered that Joni had brought home tonight a boy who was attractive to her only because his father was famous and he drove a Jaguar. And he realized that if he let Joni live in this house, in this neighborhood, without doing
something
to teach her better values, he was surely going to lose her. Maybe opening up the house to strangers in need would give her a chance to learn that there was more to people than how much fame and wealth they had. Maybe that’s what this was all about in the first place. He had wanted this house to be a blessing to his family—maybe the Lord had shown him and Lucille the way to make that happen.

Or maybe this would cause so much turmoil and contention that the family would fall apart.

No, thought Helaman. Trying to live the gospel might cause some pain from time to time, but it’s a sure thing that
not
trying to live the gospel for fear that it
might
hurt my family will
certainly
hurt them, and such an injury would be deep and slow to heal.

As he hesitated, Lucille caught his eye. “The stockings seem to be hanging in front of the fireplace,” she said. “All we need to do now is have our family prayer and bring presents downstairs to put them under the tree.”

“You aren’t going to make us give away our
presents
, are you, Dad?” asked Ryan.

“In fact, that’s why we all got lousy presents for you this year, Ryan,” said Helaman. “So that when it’s time to give them away, you won’t mind.”

“Da-ad!” said Ryan impatiently. But he was smiling.

Instead of their normal Christmas family prayer, Helaman dedicated the house. In his prayer he consecrated it as the Lord’s property, equally open to anyone that the Lord might bring to take shelter there. He set out the terms of the covenant in his prayer, and when he was done, the children all said amen.

“It’s not our house anymore,” said Helaman. “It’s the Lord’s house now.”

“Yeah,” said Steven. “But I’ll bet he sticks you with the mortgage payments anyway, Dad.”

That night, when the children were asleep and Helaman and Lucille had finished the last-minute wrapping and had laid out all the gifts for the morning, only a few hours away, they climbed into bed together and Lucille held his hand and kissed him and said, “Merry Christmas and welcome home.”

“Same to you and doubled,” he said, and she smiled at the old joke.

Then she touched his cheek and said, “All the years that I’ve been praying for another child, and all the years that the Lord has told us no, maybe it was all leading to this night. So that our lives would have room for what we’ve promised.”

“Maybe,” said Helaman. He watched as she closed her eyes and fell asleep almost at once. And in the few minutes before he, too, slept, he thought of that Colombian family he had imagined earlier. He pictured them standing at his door, all their possessions in a bag slung over the father’s shoulder, the children clinging to their mother’s skirts, the youngest sleepy and fussing in her arms. And he imagined himself holding the door wide open and saying, “Come in, come in, the table’s set and we’ve been waiting for you.” And Helaman saw his wife and children gather at the table with their visitors, and there was food enough for all, and all were satisfied.

“Oh, it’s so good to sit down and rest!”

“Tell me about it. My joints ache so much all the time that look at me, I can’t even stand up straight. But you, you’re gallivanting all over the place—”

“Just to the city, you old exaggerator. Just for the holy days.”

“The city! I haven’t been able to go in years. Not that anything ever changes.”

“This time there were changes! I can’t believe you haven’t heard already—”

“Heard? Who from, will you tell me that? Does anybody ever come to visit? Not the children, you can count on that! Right here in town, too, every one of them, but do they remember me, wasting away here?”

“It’s hard being old, I know that. But it’s a lot better than not being old, if you get my meaning!”

“I’m not sure about that anymore. I think of old Eph and what he’s probably doing right now. Forgot all about me, you can bet, after leaving me all alone here—”

“Well, I can bet you’d rather be Eph’s widow than old Joe’s!”

“Oh, don’t even make me think about that Miriam and her perfect son.”

“But that’s what the news is, from the city. He’s dead!”

“No! No, oh, I bite my tongue that I spoke of him like that—”

“Oh, you didn’t know, of course you didn’t, no harm done, you silly old dear. You never think ill of anybody, I know that, not really.”

“Well it’s true, I have only the best wishes in my heart for every living soul. How did he die?”

“Don’t make me go into that, please. He was executed. Trumped-up charges, that was obvious.”

“But I’m not surprised. He was always so controversial. The government would never let him keep on the way he was going. I said as much to Miriam, and she just smiled that superior little smile of hers and said, ‘A son has to continue his father’s business,’ as if old Joe ever went around stirring up trouble!”

“Joe was always a quiet one, that’s true. But when you think about it, so was the boy.”

“Well, he didn’t have to say much, did he? Not with his mother acting like he was God’s gift to the world! Honestly, did you ever have a conversation with her that didn’t turn to her wonderful boy and all the marvelous things he was doing?”

“A mother always wants to talk about her children.”

“Well, I know a few things she never mentions.”

“Really?”

“Now that he’s dead, I don’t see that it does much harm to talk about it. Can’t damage his reputation! Not that the shame should go on the boy himself, mind you. But you were too young when it happened.”

“What? I can’t believe there are any secrets in that family, after all these years with their son so famous!”

“Let’s just say that Joe and Miriam got married in the nick of time.”

“Oh, is that all. They were engaged, weren’t they? Happens all the time, you silly old dear.”

“It didn’t then. And besides, you didn’t know Joe. The most strait-laced, proper fellow you ever saw. I can promise you he didn’t spend so much as five minutes alone with her, even after they were engaged. And then all of a sudden, oops! She’s letting out her dresses! Her family tried to put a gloss on it. She’s going to visit her cousin Lizzy, that’s all. My husband and I escorted her, you know. A young woman can’t travel alone, and we were glad to be of help—what are neighbors for? But right there on the road, outside her cousin’s house, the girl gives this little ‘woop’ sound and when I ask her what’s wrong, she just smiles at me like it was the most wonderful thing in the world and says, ‘The baby moved!’ Well,
she was only two months married, so excuse me for thinking that if she had any sense of decency she would have kept that little piece of news to herself.”

“I’ve never yet met a woman who didn’t feel like the baby she was carrying was the center of the universe.”

“There’s such a thing as decency, though, don’t you think? At least she had the respect not to have the baby here. Or maybe it was Joe, since Miriam never had a sense of propriety—anyway, they found an excuse to go to his hometown to have the baby. Claimed he had to clear up a tax problem but we all knew the truth, they just didn’t want anybody here to know the exact birthday, as if it wasn’t already common knowledge that the baby was early and it wasn’t his.”

“It’s so hard to believe that none of this ever came out during all the controversy that boy caused. You’d think his enemies would have heard about it and—”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, the only people who knew about it were right here in this town. And we don’t go around telling tales to strangers!”

“There is such a thing as loyalty.”

“And Joe did the right thing. They went off to somewhere else, Cairo I think, until the boy was five or six and ready to start school. He wasn’t an in-your-face sort of man, that Joe.”

“I wish I’d known him well.”

“He was a saint. You never heard him brag about his son. But he was proud of him, as proud as if he really were his, if you know what I mean.”

“These things are always so confusing, but good people bear with it.”

“We all bore with it. You can’t say that a single one of us ever threw it in Miriam’s face, even when she was bragging away. And the boy—well, we never treated him differently from any other boy. But I swear, there are limits. When he came back and made some of his most outrageous claims, right here where we knew him! Well, had he no shame?”