Monday morning Elly checked her email at the library before heading to the JKHB. There was a message from her mother. It was the usual account of a week-in-the-life-of-a-mission-president’s-family her mother periodically sent to their friends and relatives. Though this message was addressed to Elly alone.
The addendum at the bottom made clear why. “Yuki mentioned the other day that you were dating Connor McKenzie. They’ve vouched for his character, so I’ll treat this as welcome news. But I want to remind you again how important it is that you finish your education. Don’t be reluctant in learning, as your great-great-grandfather wrote. Persevere at your teaching, as I believe you have both a God-given and an inherited talent for it.”
Elly smiled at her mother’s ability to assume the worst and see the best in her simultaneously. Don’t get married and get pregnant right away, she meant.
I am getting married. But I won’t get pregnant right away. She didn’t write that. Instead, she chattily outlined the history of the relationship, starting with the day they “met” on the Nakamozu Nankai. She left out anything that might possibly point to their impending marriage.
“I shall be resolute in learning,” she concluded. “I’m getting my degree in teaching Japanese, as Uncle will no doubt be overjoyed to hear.”
Uncle was in his office. His black gown hung in a dry cleaning bag on the inside door hook. She said, “I thought you’d be at graduation.”
“One of the benefits of no longer chairing the department. I’ll have enough to do at the college convocation this afternoon. Did you get your grades turned in?”
She nodded. “Uncle, I have something important to tell you.”
“It wasn’t that bad after all, was it?”
“No, not at all. In fact, I was hoping to get a 101 section Fall semester. I’ve decided to major in teaching Japanese.”
Oh Sensei’s countenance lit up like a hundred-watt bulb. He rummaged through the stack of papers spilling off the end of the bookcase. “Your mom wasn’t sure about you plunging back into academic life—she worried about you getting overwhelmed—but I knew it was just the thing. Here we are—” He pulled out a manila folder, glanced at it, and handed it to her.
Elly read the cover sheet: Teaching Japanese Course Outline for Native Speakers. “So, you think I qualify as a native speaker?”
“Once you finish the kanji courses. Was that what you wanted to tell me? It certainly is good news.”
“Yes and no. There’s something else that’s a bit more important. And you can’t tell Mom. Not right away. Not until I say so.”
“Not tell her what? About changing your major?”
“No, I already told her about that.” She took a deep breath. “You know Connor McKenzie—?”
“Yes, of course. Did you—”
“We’re getting married.”
Uncle stared at her.
“We’re getting married,” she said again.
“But—I thought you didn’t know him.”
“It turns out that I did. We met in Japan, like you said, when he was working for Uncle Nobuo.”
“You’re getting married,” Uncle said. “To Connor.”
Elly nodded.
“That’s not a bad thing.” He chose his words carefully. “I told you before I thought you’d like him. So why can’t you tell your mom?”
“We’re getting married right away. Like, at the end of the month.”
“At the end of this month?” A long minute passed. “Seriously? Why so soon?”
“It’s complicated—” she started to say. She shook her head. “No, it’s not complicated. It’s what we’ve decided to do.”
“But the end of this month?”
“Connor’s not telling his parents either. Getting too many people involved will just mess things up. You know how Mom is.”
“Yes, I know how your mom is. Your mom’s going to kill me.”
“She’s not going to kill you. Not if you don’t tell her.”
“Do you know how often Tokugawa court histories talk about disgraced officials being ordered to commit seppuku? Not so much the honorable option voluntarily taken.”
“Oh, you’re being dramatic.”
“You can be my second. Be kind to my severed head.”
Elly said, “I’m going to ask Grandpa Packard to marry us.”
Uncle sagged in his chair. “If—if—your grandfather agrees, we just might weather the storm.” He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “This situation is starting to have a very familiar ring to it—” He straightened his chair, planted his feet on the floor. “We’d better have you and Connor over for dinner.” He brightened. “Yes, June can decide what to do.”
“It the right thing to do,” Elly insisted.
“I’m sure it is.” He got to his feet and put his hands on her shoulders, a rare expression of concern on his part. “Are you sure?” he asked her, his voice quiet and serious.
“Yes, I am.”
He sighed. “Do the two of you even have a place to live?”
“With Connor’s aunt. She has a basement apartment in her house in the Tree Streets. It’s quite nice, and so is she.”
“I suppose we’ll all get to know each other eventually. Is Wednesday okay for you?”
“Wednesday’s fine.”
The next day Connor borrowed the Camry for the drive to Salt Lake City. It was a quiet drive. Elly still hadn’t decided what she was going to say. She couldn’t imagine how her grandfather would react. But she kept these thoughts to herself as well.
She scheduled the appointment with her grandfather’s secretary. “It’s been a whole year and a half,” Carol observed when Elly called. “Your grandfather says you just got off your mission. Back to school already! How are things going for you?”
When Elly mentioned making an appointment, Carol told her not to worry about it. “You can come up anytime, Elly. He’s always happy to see you.”
But Elly insisted, and they settled on Tuesday at eleven. “And don’t tell Grandpa it’s me. It’s—a surprise.”
“A surprise?” Carol echoed.
“Nothing bad,” Elly hastened to add.
“Of course not,” Carol said knowingly.
Downtown Salt Lake City was crowded with tourists. The annual BYU Education Week (Bible camp for adults) had become a kind of Mormon pilgrimage, the wagon trains having been supplanted by caravans of RVs. Elder Packard would be coming down to Provo to conduct CES and Education Week workshops. Elly didn’t think squeezing in a marriage among his other duties would inconvenience him too much.
Connor didn’t come with her to Elder Packard’s office. “I need to do this myself,” she said.
He understood, and remained behind in the cavernous lobby. Before he let her go, he held his hand against her cheek and kissed her gently. That alone gave her more courage than all her strategizing.
The express elevators were thronged with tourists heading up to the observation deck on the twenty-sixth floor. Elly rode slowly and alone to the offices of the Church Education System. Carol greeted her with much maternal warmth.
“Now, what’s this all about?” She grasped Elly’s hands and pointedly inspected her ring finger. “I guess it’s not what I thought.”
Elly couldn’t resist confirming her suspicions. “But I think it is.”
Carol clapped her hands together. “You’re getting married! I knew it!”
Elly put her finger to her lips. Carol picked up the phone and in a sober voice informed Elder Packard that his granddaughter was here to see him. “You can go in,” she said, the smile still on her face.
The bright sunlight spilling through the window cast a halo around her grandfather’s silhouette. “Elly!” he exclaimed. He got up from behind his desk and embraced her. “You should have told me you were coming.” He checked the time. “I’ve got an appointment at eleven.”
“I am your eleven o’clock.”
“Oh, you don’t need an appointment to see me, Elly.”
“My request involves your official duties. So I thought it best if I made it official.” She took a step back, looked her grandfather in the eyes. Her father was a tall man, and his father an inch taller. It was hard not to feel intimidated just standing there. She took a deep breath. “I’d like you to perform my marriage.”
“Your marriage—” Then he laughed and hugged her again, practically crushing the breath out of her. “I’d be honored to!”
“I wasn’t sure—”
“Not sure about what? It does seem rather sudden,” he mused.
“We’re getting married on the thirtieth of August.”
“This year, you mean?” Elder Packard frowned as he walked back to his desk to check the date on his calendar. “How long have you known the boy? Do I know him?”
“We met when I was on my mission. He was working for my uncle.”
“So you’ve been dating only a month or so?”
Well, dating. “His name is Connor McKenzie. He’s a graduate student at BYU. He went on a mission to Japan too.”
“Perhaps it’d be a good idea if you got to know each other better?”
“We know each other quite well,” she said.
Her grandfather sat down on the corner of his desk. “Now, Elly, I know coming back from a mission is a considerable transition—”
Elly groaned to herself. Now with the counseling. Once a seminary teacher, always a seminary teacher.
Her grandfather said, “And the Church places a lot of expectations on young people to get married and start a family. But you also need to think about the practical implications.”
“I fully intend to complete my education.”
“That’s good, that’s good.” He asked, “Have you prayed about it?”
The first of two questions she knew were coming. Not the question she dreaded—Do you love him?—which she could not answer.
“Yes,” she said.
He waited with patience, kindness, and fatherly concern. In his lifetime, he’d been a bishop, a stake president, a regional director of the Church Education System. He’d conducted hundreds of such interviews, all with the best of intentions. She attempted a stony resolve, but felt the warmth rising in her cheeks.
“It’s personal,” she said, and had to look away for a moment.
He folded his arms and bowed his head for a moment in contemplation. When Elly spoke again she tried not to sound argumentative. What she was asking of him—what she was telling him—was unreasonable, was preposterous.
“I have a hard time believing it myself, Grandpa. But this is the least impetuous thing I’ve ever done. Yes, I am very much in love with him, but that’s not why. We’re getting married because it’s the right thing to do—right that he should be my husband and I should be his wife. Waiting won’t make it any less or more right.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “I’ve had this conversation before.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sayaka. Your mother.” He looked away. “To be charitable to myself, I don’t believe it was ever because she was Japanese. Only because I was too proud.”
Elly felt herself recoil. She’d heard that some General Authorities had looked askance at interracial marriages in the past. But she knew this only in the abstract, like a question on a history exam. If something similar had ever involved her parents, they’d never told her.
“We’re a conservative people. Which means we conserve the ways and beliefs of the past—well, after 1890.” He smiled thinly. “Too often I fear what we wish to conserve is the way we imagine things used to be, but never were. When change becomes inevitable, caution becomes the refuge of unimaginative men.”
It was, Elly realized, a confession of sorts, an attempt to reconcile the person he was now with the person he had once been. Her mind raced, with little success, trying to put all this information into context.
He returned to the subject he began with. “Sayaka, though, couldn’t have cared less about my reservations. How did Shakespeare put it?” he asked, and said:
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
He added, “That last line perfectly describes your mother.” He took her hands in his. “That you are your mother’s daughter is reason enough not to question the soundness of your judgment. However, if I’m going to perform your marriage, I must insist on first meeting the groom. He did accompany you here today, I hope?”
Elly nodded. Tears filled her eyes. His love for her, as always, was like a warm hearth on a cold night. Whatever had occurred between him and her mother a quarter century ago was not for her to judge. A grievance ought to die with the man who brung it upon himself. She wrapped her arms around him.
He hadn’t asked for forgiveness, and she had not offered it—she could not—but in her embrace a small portion was granted.