The Wedding Dress (24 page)

“Rebecca, dear, I know that was a terrible lie, but I couldn't stand for him to be upsetting your life, and he seemed so determined. Please forgive me. Now that you're married, I thought I would tell you and we would have a good laugh over it. But when I saw how upset you were about the dress, I just couldn't tell you. I'll give you the dress when you come again.”

“Dress!” Rebecca cried. “My wedding dress. Ann had my dress and didn't tell me!” Her hands trembled to her face. She was only vaguely conscious of the letter slipping from her lap.

When the fire was ash and she was trembling with cold, she realized the letter was gone. There remained only a tiny fragment of gauzy ash still supporting the shadow of Ann's writing.

As she prepared for bed, Rebecca wondered about the remainder of the letter. How did Ann get the dress? Oregon. How could she send a letter to the Smyths now?

In April, when Andrew returned, he told Rebecca there was a cabin in Pinto and he was moving her there. She nodded, still caught in the mesh of life that drew her mindlessly on.

They were packed into the wagon and well on their way before Rebecca began to comprehend all this move would mean. There would be no more living with Sarah. She took a deep breath and sighed with relief. Cora lived at Pinto. Andrew must have felt her excitement; he smiled down at her.

“It's Cora,” she explained; “it's been so long, and now we'll be neighbors again. I really love Cora. I think we must be soul sisters.”

“Well, of course you are,” Andrew said. He was using his teaching voice. “We are all soul brothers and sisters. Our god is truly our father. He birthed our spirits thousands of years ago. There are still millions of spirits waiting to be born. That is why—” he paused, and Rebecca winced.

“You forget”—her voice was low—“I'm not childless because I wish it that way.”

Awkwardly he patted her shoulder. “We'll have more time together, and that'll be remedied.” For a moment he was silent, and she waited. “You know I'm going to have to take another wife.” She bent her head, and the sunbonnet shielded her face. “It's the working out of the trinity in our lives. You know enough about the priesthood to know that. Besides, there's this need to provide more bodies.”

There was that question Rebecca dared not ask. But later, as she looked around the cabin, she decided it was answered. The cabin was much too small for another wife. But the one tiny room would be home, their home.

They had carried Rebecca's bed and bureau with them. There was the bundle of household goods she had acquired before leaving Great Salt Lake City. As Andrew carried in the bundles, Rebecca scurried about placing her belongings in order.

Now Andrew came to the door. “Close your eyes,” he commanded, “I've something in the barn.” It was a rocking chair. He placed it beside the fireplace on a scrap of rug. While she clung to his neck and kissed him, he added, “There's a cradle too.”

While he returned her kisses, he said, “I've put it in the loft for now. I understand that your friend Cora has four children. Go learn her secret.”

Rebecca busied herself setting out the pots and pans on the shelf built into the wall. Andrew returned to the cabin with a bundle of his shirts. She watched him place the bundle on the table and carefully unroll it. Rebecca caught her breath. It was a china lamp like Sarah's. “Andrew, it's beautiful!”

He placed it in the middle of the table, and she said, “All we lack is the good Book. I'll bring out my mother's Bible.”

“It looks home-like already. I hope you won't be lonesome when I'm gone.”

“I'll have Cora to fill the lonesome times.” She thumped the feather tick into shape and reached for the sheets.

Very soon Andrew was on his way again, and Rebecca was left to settle the cabin and care for the cow and chickens he had purchased. She struggled with building a fence and repairing the barn, but when she contemplated the soggy garden patch, she decided she could go visiting with an easy conscience.

Cora's cabin was across town. Rebecca walked slowly, thinking as she walked of the common thread running through the lives of these women. There were no strangers when the warp and woof of lives were the same. Through one direction ran the common cares, the poverty, work, and little children; in the other direction ran their religion, the principle, and Brother Brigham. The principle seemed to be a double thread that held more securely than any other tie. Tie, or was it a shackle? She was sensing that the answer would be in her ability to accept life as she found it now.

For the first time in months she found herself whispering, “Please, God, help me—” She groped for words. “I need to find glory in life.”

And there was Cora. They held each other and then sobbed together. There was a bond. Rebecca recognized it in its completeness. It had cemented them together despite the years and miles that had passed between them.

When Cora finally released her and pulled Rebecca into the cabin, there was Jessie to meet. She seemed barely sixteen. Her face was petulant and her stomach swollen with child. While they were having a cup of Brigham tea, the children came in.

Rebecca was holding the baby, Carrie, who had been born the previous winter. Joseph, a lanky, serious boy of seven, with Todd, nearly six, and little Mattie, who was almost four, filled the little cabin. Rebecca caressed the down-headed baby and listened to Cora explain that she had lost two babies since coming south.

Looking around the poor, crowded cabin, Rebecca's forthrightness surfaced. “Cora, haven't you provided enough bodies for spirits? If this is God's will, why do so many live such a short time?” Cora winced, and Rebecca immediately regretted her hasty words. How worn the woman was. Rebecca rose to leave.

She embraced Cora, saying, “Please come. I need you so much.”

Cora followed her to the road. “I'm sorry it's so dismal. Jessie isn't well, and she never ceases to remind us of it.” Tears welled up in Cora's eyes.

“Is it as bad as it was with Bessie?”

She shook her head. “I'm being oversensitive. I still can't feel good about another wife. I was getting silly, letting my thoughts run away with the idea of being the only wife. I knew it wouldn't last.” She sighed heavily. “I spend most of my time trying to kill love. Seems to be the only way to be content in marriage.”

Walking back to the cabin, Rebecca mulled over Cora's words. She had wondered how the young, beautiful Cora had been so attracted to that scrawny, timid man she had married. Now Cora was admitting her deep love for him and at the same time trying to deny it life.

The corn was knee-deep when Andrew came. In the bliss of having him all to herself, Rebecca wondered if she were as vulnerable as Cora. She tried to tighten the reins of her emotions by reminding herself of Andrew's promise to take another wife.

When he prepared to leave he said, “I'll be making a trip to Great Salt Lake City about conference time in October. Would you like to go?”

She hesitated, and asked, “Will Sarah be going?”

“No, she's in the family way again.”

“I'd enjoy going. I'll see Ann again; her children'll be grown.” He nodded and kissed her again. She watched until he disappeared around the curve, and then walked slowly back to the house.

Filled with new loneliness, she hesitated in the doorway and finally settled on the steps. The robins were carrying worms to their nest. Did robins have only one mate or would that male robin soon be off to find worms for another family?

Rebecca reluctantly got up from the step and opened the door. She couldn't resist one last glance toward the nest.

Cora came to visit. When she walked into Rebecca's house, she dumped the sleeping baby into Rebecca's arms. The shock of the sweet warm flesh nearly reduced Rebecca to tears. Cora was saying, “All the talking you did. I never expected to see you married. Now you're a plural wife to boot.”

“How did you know Andrew was married before?”

“Everybody around here knows him, and Sarah too. They settled in Cedar that first year.”

“The folks in Cedar have known him for a long time?”

“The ones who settled there with him. I couldn't call their names.”

“They could have told me,” Rebecca said slowly. She wondered at her blindness.

Cora asked, “Would it have made a difference? If you're in love, I'd suppose it wouldn't. Everybody's got to get married.”

“Not everybody,” Rebecca said slowly. Today Cora was the plural wife, not the emotion-torn woman.

“If you're going to live your religion, you'll marry.”

“I'm still not convinced that God operates that way,” Rebecca declared.

Cora looked shocked. “I thought you'd got all the old feelings out of you.”

“Cora, I'll go crazy if I can't talk. You're the only one who'll let me say what I think.”

She looked uneasy. “Maybe I'd better not listen anymore. I've troubles enough of my own without letting you feed me something to think about.”

Rebecca touched her friend's hand. “Don't deny me that.”

Cora admitted, “You say things I don't allow myself to say. You're bringing out the doubts and scary nighttime feelings. You always have. As long as I've known you, you've dug at the things they've told us were wrong to question. Becky, don't. That's apostasy. You've got to have faith. Start this, and you'll drag us both down.”

Later Rebecca walked down the street with Cora, still carrying the baby and loath to surrender her at the end of the street.

When Cora reached for the child, Rebecca noticed the lines on her face, the unhappy shadows in her eyes. “Much as you pretend, Cora, you're no more content with life than I. Do you suppose it would harm us if we were to lay our questions out in the open and try to find answers?”

“I don't know. Becky, I'm scared to own up to my questions. That means weakness.”

“Maybe it means we're searching for a stronger faith. Right now I feel a good wind would blow my faith all over town.”

Cora turned away, and her voice was muffled, “I'd be willing to talk. Sometimes I think if I don't start having a good hard case for my faith, I'll blow away too.”

Rebecca said, “It sticks in me to find out what ‘holy' is.”

“It can't be much to worry about. Adam is our God and look how he was taken to task just for eating a little fruit. We all end up getting death as a reward.”

“And sweat and hard times.”

“And terrible childbirth.” Cora shrugged hopelessly. “We'll talk again.”

Rebecca watched her go. Using pines as patterns, the sun was laying long thick shadows. The cows were lowing as they moved toward the barns. But the evening clatter of milk pails and shouting children failed to draw the familiar picture of contentment for Rebecca.

With a sigh she turned. How defenseless and lonely the cluster of little log houses seemed, how fragile the stick figures of men and women. “We could disappear tomorrow, and life would go on without a hitch. It is only by the grace of God that we even survive,” she muttered. “Must we forever be beat down before we are fit to be called the children of God?”

As summer expanded, Cora and Rebecca wore paths to each other's homes. Through the sage, down the dry wash and up the hill the path went. If the early years had made a friendship, these months served to reveal a deeper bond.

It was to Rebecca that Joseph ran with the news that Jessica was about to birth, and her time was hard. While Joseph ran on for the midwife, Rebecca flew to Cora. But already the child had burst from Jessie and was dead.

As Rebecca entered the cabin, Cora turned with an anguished cry, “And the Saints and Prophet say this is God's way! This spirit didn't have a chance.”

“Cora, save your energies for Jessie,” Rebecca said sharply. Already the girl's face was blue. Rebecca bent over her, trying desperately to guess what must be done. But now Cora was herself, and she pushed Rebecca away.

Jessie did recover, but there was a scene etched on Rebecca's mind and with it the thoughts that would not leave her. When next Cora and Rebecca were together, she said them.

“Cora, I think sin is much worse than we've been led to believe, than we'd ever guess. I think it is something we can't recover from.”

“That's the first childbirth you've seen?”

Cora settled her baby on the floor, and Rebecca took the black Bible from beside the china lamp and opened it to Genesis. Her fingers traced the words, “It says that God cursed the serpent, and told Eve that He would multiply her sorrow in bringing forth children. To Adam He said the ground was cursed because of sin.”

“I wonder if we're to take that or if we should just go by Joseph Smith's translation,” Cora said slowly. “It gives a different slant. In the first place God tells them not to eat the fruit, and then says that they can choose for themselves.”

Rebecca frowned, “He's saying no, but do what you want? I wonder why?”

“Ah, the answers are found later!” Cora exclaimed. “It goes like this; Adam was filled with the Holy Ghost and prophesied, saying because of his transgression he got his eyes opened, and that meant in this life he would have joy. Then Eve said that if it weren't for eating the fruit, they would never have known good and evil and would never have children. She also said they wouldn't know about the joy of redemption and eternal life.”

“Then that makes eating the fruit a good idea, not a sin of disobeying God.” Rebecca thought about it all and then said, “I had such a horrible picture when I saw Jessie; now I don't know.”

Cora gathered up her baby. “Well, I find the Prophet's words much easier to live with. How else do we progress except by working at it?”

“Cora, do you suppose we have this all wrong? Is it possible that the Garden of Eden was supposed to be our home, and that we weren't meant to struggle and sweat and hurt? Right now I don't see all this as better. I can't see progress in the lives around us. I think things are getting worse.”