Sarah sat proudly in the front row as she watched her husband walk to the altar and take the microphone. He had worked so hard for this moment, with Sarah encouraging him along the way; just like the perfect wife should. Jeremy’s first sermon in front of the 300-strong congregation of Latter-Day Saints was looking to be a success. The room was full of twenty-something couples, many married, and some soon to be, like the naïve and devoted Jessica and the strong-willed and handsome Brett. So his topic on the dedication needed for a successful and loving marriage was chosen well, and aptly executed; just as Sarah would have had it.
Sarah believed her marriage was the epitome of perfection. She gazed upon Jeremy, looking neat in his beige suit with freshly-cut hair, and listened intently to his every word, as if were spoken from the mouth of God himself. “We know Jesus didn’t marry, but if he did, we know the values that he would place in that union would be incomparable to anything on earth. As stated in the holy book, no relationship, save that of the one between a father and son, is more important than that between a man and his wife,” Jeremy said, gushing with pride as he looked down to his beaming wife. “The right man can add substance to a woman’s life; and if she’s the right woman, with a kind and open heart she may just enrich the life of that man in ways he never thought possible.”
He laughed as he spoke the words, and as he looked around the room noticed expressions of admiration from the young men and their dutiful women. None were more captivated than Sarah, who believed her marriage with Jeremy was orchestrated by God himself, and their daughter Ella, and the blessing growing inside Sarah’s stomach was a profound example of God’s love.
As Jeremy continued his message Sarah reflected in silent prayer, thanking God for such a devoted and clever husband, a healthy – and clean – sex life (thank goodness Jeremy wasn’t into anything dirty) and the blessing of his six-figure salary. “Oh Jesus, I also want to thank you in advance for what we feel will be the ultimate blessing, a healthy son,” she whispered. Her gaze rested on Ella, and her smile widened as she put her hands around her enlarged stomach.
Any day now Jeremy was going to be a father for the second time, something he told the congregation was the most important part of life, almost at the same time as the seat of Sarah’s wooden chair became a puddle of her own bodily fluid. Her gushing smile became a grimace, lines appeared in her normally wrinkle-free forehead and she let out the slightest sound of discomfort.
“Sarah, honey, I can’t prove to the honest people of this church that we have a model marriage with you disrupting the service like that,” Jeremy teased, chuckling at what he believed to be an innocent joke. Sarah’s body jolted and she groaned in pain, and panting, rushed out the words, “Sorry honey, but God is about to bless us…with a new baby…and God waits for no man!” Applause rang out in the air, right up the crisp white walls to the highest of ceilings, out the open rectangle windows and echoed in the heavens. Jeremy rushed down from his podium to his wet-bottomed wife, now crouched on all fours on the ground as women with children of their own turned to each other in excitement and broke their respectful silence they’d reserved for Jeremy’s sermon.
“Well, isn’t she lucky, not only does she have one of the holiest husbands these walls have seen, but she gets to receive the gift of life right under God’s own roof,” one woman exclaimed as Sarah let out yet another, louder moan. Within minutes an ambulance arrived and Sarah, red-faced, damp, in pain, yet still glowing with joy was wheeled down the aisle and driven to the hospital. Jeremy returned to the podium. “Now everyone, please, back to your seats I’m sure my wife will be okay in the hands of our fine paramedics,” he said. “Church isn’t over for another half hour, and then we’ve got Sunday school for the little ones, so if you could save your excitement until later I’d like to continue.”
“Congratulations and God bless you Jeremy. Three cheers everyone,” an older woman yelled from in the middle of the room. “Hip hip, Hooray! Hip hip, Hooray! Hip hip, Hooray!” cheered the group. “Oh, who am I kidding folks, with any luck I’ll have a son this very day and if you don’t mind I’d love to join my beautiful Sarah at the hospital,” Jeremy announced, waving a hand in the air and shaking his head, as if trying to shake the proud smile off his face.
It was seventeen hours and thirty-two minutes until Jeremy became a father to a healthy son; just what he and Sarah wanted most. From the moment the surgeon came out to deliver the news of a new baby, Jeremy envisaged blue all-in-ones, tiny soccer boots, and Tonka trucks in the yard. He was deep in thanks to the Lord when the doctor told him there were complications with the delivery; Sarah had lost a lot of blood and they’d have to sew up half of her vagina. He almost didn’t hear the doctor tell him she was in a coma, and was in a critical condition, and would have to be kept in hospital under observation until she’d fully recovered. “I see,” was his soft-spoken response. “Can I see my son now?”
Michael wasn’t a big baby, but he was strong and healthy. His fingernails tore at the walls of Sarah’s womb and vagina and his large head, with the help of an over-active elbow, ripped her from one hole to another, as if the selfish baby fought as much as possible to cling to the warmth and safety inside his mother’s body. He would have suffocated himself to have stayed in his personal haven.
Sarah was awake but groggy the day after Michael ripped his way into the world, and therefore able to start breast-feeding the greedy baby. It was Jeremy’s ultimate pleasure to watch his son having a feed on his wife’s enlarged breasts, but something was missing when he looked at her. Before she’d returned to consciousness, Jeremy was informed that it could take years for his wife to comfortably go to bed with him again, and the chances of a third conception were one in a million. But in this time of heightened joy, all Jeremy could do was love his son and thank his wife for the safe delivery of what God had blessed them both with. Jeremy even caught himself thinking that Sarah’s health situation was okay, because a boy was born. A young, handsome boy that would grow up to keep the family name going for future generations. Sarah and Jeremy had done their best and besides, Sarah thought, their marriage was perfect. Who needed all of that sweaty panting and often painful mess she endured almost too often; three times a week was considered the minimum amount of times for the dutiful wife to offer herself to her husband.
Michael was one-and-a-half years old when Jeremy started to feel the sting of a sexless marriage. A few months earlier, Sarah, in an attempt to give her husband what she knew was important in a marriage, allowed Jeremy to try to make love to her, with little success. It put her back in hospital after a rather enthusiastic attempt on Jeremy’s side. “It’s okay, Sarah,” he reasoned. “If God wanted us to be one in the bedroom as we are in every other aspect of our lives, he would allow it and smile down on us. You have given me two beautiful children and that is all I could ask of you.” He was consoled by thoughts of his healthy, growing son and adorable daughter, and the way his devoted wife held the family together and continued to support her husband (even when, in his occasional counseling with young couples, did he boast about his thrice-a-week
relations with his wife). The church was a massive gossip pit and everyone knew that this was a lie, but Jeremy, as a future leader of the church, had to keep up appearances.
* * * * *
He didn’t tell me these things the first time we were together, he didn’t think about his family at all. And that’s the way I liked it. For the first time in his life, he had a dimple in his right cheek when he smiled at me. He didn’t think of Sarah when he stared at my round buttocks, wrapped firmly in a red polka-dot skirt. He didn’t think of his daughter when he stared at my cleavage that purposely showed out of a low-cut top. And he certainly didn’t think of his perfect son when he kissed me after one too many Christmas drinks. I always felt it was wrong to go after a married man, especially one of the church, but I couldn’t help but wonder what he was like outside of that light-filled room. Sarah introduced us one Sunday after I pretended to admire Michael, and said that Jeremy could help me with some things around the house as I was living alone. It was obvious she didn’t expect either us to agree, but he packed his screw driver and walked around to my house one Monday night.
At first it was just a cupboard door handle and the hinge that needed fixing, but the cup of tea and conversation was what kept him coming back, finding tiny flaws in as much as possible so he had an excuse to come back. He told Sarah he was coming to help paint my bathroom when we kissed for the first time. Kissing very quickly turned to touching, and we had sex in my bathroom that
didn’t need painting. “We can’t do this again,” he said, a few hours after he should have been home. It was my first time, and Jeremy made me feel amazing. But my post-de-flowering euphoria was stripped at his decision not to see me again. Sarah was blissfully unaware of what had happened, and not even suspicious of any foul-play. She trusted me; she thought I was a nice girl. She set me up on dates with other men from the congregation. So when she went to visit her parents for a week with the kids, she didn’t think twice when Jeremy told her he was too busy with work to take the week off.
He showed up unannounced on my front doorstep within half an hour of Sarah’s departure. He didn’t say anything. He stormed in and grabbed my waist and kissed my neck. “Let’s go,” I whispered. I lead the way out of the hallway into my messy bedroom. He told me Sarah would only let him make love to her if he was on top, and that he couldn’t remember what it felt like to be with her, but it wasn’t as good as it was with me. We laid on the bed wrapped up in each other until the sun began to peek through the blinds, as we did every night that week.
The last night he came to my house he broke it off. He said he couldn’t go to church anymore and questioned his beliefs because of the relationship that was developing with us. He said he wished his family didn’t exist so he could stay with me forever. But Sarah was back the next day and I didn’t hear from him again. He left a scrunched up note on my kitchen counter that I didn’t have the strength to read. A week later, he called me. “I can’t do this anymore, I have to tell Sarah,” he said, half in tears. “Do whatever you think is right,” I said, and just before he hung up as I heard him start, “Did you get my…” Within an hour I heard banging on the front door. I knew it wasn’t Jeremy, he always knocked so softly. I swallowed the lump in my throat and opened the door to a distraught Sarah; tissue held to her cheek, her eyes flooded with tears.
“We need to talk. Is there somewhere we can go?” she demanded between sobs. I lead her through to the kitchen and offered her a seat at the table.
What is she doing here? I thought.
He can’t have told her already. “Can I get you a tea or coffee?” I asked. She shook her head and stared at me with wet, black eyes. “No. I don’t want anything from you,” she answered. “You know why I’m here. I just heard from Jeremy. Who in God’s good name do you think you are?” I apologised. All of a sudden I felt the guilt that was absent since I started wanting to be with this woman’s husband. “You know he doesn’t love you,” she barked. The beautiful, perfect, holy wife was reduced to a blotchy, snotty mess. She suddenly spoke with a snarl, and constantly clenched and unclenched her fists around a ratty tissue on the table in front of her. “I don’t deserve this, I’ve been a
perfect wife and I love my husband as much as any child of the lord could,” she said more to herself than to me. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t want this to happen,” I lied. I wanted to tell her that it was her fault. She was the one who wouldn’t have sex with her husband. “He doesn’t love you!” she declared in a self-convincing tone.
“I thought you were a smart, decent girl. I would have never expected something like this from you,” she said. “You don’t know how much damage this could have done if you had let this continue. I thank God that Jeremy has seen the light and wanted to be honest with me. You’re lucky I’m a God-loving woman, anyone else would have struck you down in this situation!” Sarah gasped at her own spitefulness and broke her piercing glare for a few seconds. “I know, I’d deserve it,” I stuttered, despite feeling like what happened between Jeremy and I was natural. “You’re damn right you would!” she squeaked. “There is only room for five people in my family. My husband, our children, myself, and Jesus! And I think I speak for everyone in that family when I say we don’t want you. Jeremy could never love someone like you!”
I avoided looking at her face. Sarah was right. Maybe Jeremy didn’t love me but I felt like he did, and I knew I loved him. I know he was only the first man I’d ever been intimate with, but he was everything I wanted. She started babbling about “health issues” and about the “love a married couple share”, but my attention had turned to the note; I looked at the scrunched piece of paper on the kitchen counter and excused myself from the table. “Where are you going? We’re not finished!” Sarah screamed from only a metre away, banging her fists on the table.
I love you were the only words written on the paper. While Sarah was ranting about the morals of a decent woman, I turned to her and said, “he does love me”. I didn’t care about her feelings any more, and I smiled. “He loves me!” I said again. I took my car keys off the counter and ran out the door, leaving a bewildered Sarah behind in awe of this new revelation. I walked down the driveway and noticed
the perfect woman had left her children in the car. But I kept going; I drove straight to his office, he wasn’t there. I went past his house, and he wasn’t there either. I drove to the church and his Land Rover was parked outside. The church was nowhere near as amazing when it was completely empty. The giant cross on the altar didn’t have the weight it held on a Sunday morning. I looked at it and knew I didn’t belong there, but would do
almost anything to be with Jeremy.
He sat in the first row, where Sarah had sat the day she went into labour with Michael. “You shouldn’t be here, this is a holy place,” he said without turning around. He knew that I wasn’t serious about religion. When he told me he questioned his beliefs I was glad, despite his confusion. “It’s only been a few weeks,” he said. “I don’t know why I feel this way about you.” “Jeremy,” I said, before the door swung open again. Sarah burst through the doorway and stormed into the middle of the aisle. Dropping to her knees and throwing her hands in the air, she let out a load moan before collapsing completely into a blubbering mess.
Jeremy stood staring at his perfect wife, witnessing her fall from grace, but still didn’t move. He didn’t look at me either. His left eyebrow was raised in confusion and he gritted his teeth.
I should have known this would happen, I thought. “I love you, too,” I said over the howling of the banshee on the floor behind me. “I love you Katherine, but I must stand by my wife,” he said, still not meeting my gaze. He walked past me and crouched down next to Sarah and helped her stand up. “You love her?” she sobbed. “Yes. But I love you too, Sarah. I wish there was a way that I could love both of you, without hurting anyone. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do but I can’t choose. Only God can help me now.” At that moment, light filled the room until we were squinting at each other, before it settled like a spotlight on each of us. Sarah was the first to notice the anomaly.
“
It’s God! He’s chosen for us!” She wiped tears from her cheeks and snot from her nose, adjusted her jacket and beamed. She stepped in between Jeremy and I and took our hands with hers. “We’re meant to be together,” she said. “Yes! The answer to our question! It’s obviously what God wants for all of us,” he said joyously as he turned to me. “Please join our family and become my second wife,” Jeremy said, smiling as bright as the light that surrounded us. They were both suddenly standing bolt upright, as if the tragedy that had struck their marriage less than an hour ago had been wiped from their memories. Maybe Jeremy did love me, and maybe Sarah was so righteous in her perfection, she’d believe any coincidental sun movement was a sign from God.
“Wow. You two are
nutjobs,” I said, moving towards the door. “I am outta here.”
