Introduction
Sharks! Or, You Mean You
Hold a Temple Recommend
and You Wrote That?! / ix

Section III. Hermanos y Hermanas
9. Miguel Aju / 111
10. Verdadera Hermana / 137
11. Dirge for Rosaidalva Aju / 149

Section I. Husbands and Wives
1. Zoo Sounds / 3
2. The Affair / 21
3. Hanging Out the Dirty Language / 29
4. God on Donahue / 35

Section IV. Exes
12. Hanauma Bay / 157
13. Balance Beam / 167
14. Griever / 175
15. The Go Between / 187
16. Project / 197

Section II. Brothers and Sisters
5. Brothers / 59
6. Winds / 77
7. In Search of Spilled Root Beer / 83
8. Outsiders / 97

My kids are scared to death of sharks. When we lived in Hawaii, I had to keep reminding them that sharks don't usually attack, and they don't inhabit shallow waters anyway. But my kids knew there was some reason for fear. Within our view was the place where a photographer got his feet shark-mangled. Just a few miles away was where a twelve-year-old boy had been bitten to death by a tiger shark. The truth is sharks don't usually attack, but they do sometimes. The glorious ocean is full of marvelous and terrifying surprises, just like life.

We live in a world where we see "through a glass darkly." By nature, we are in muddy waters. Though we may avoid dangers by keeping resolutely in shallow areas, the leap of faith implies risk and depth. Hence sharks. And we may not see them coming.

There are those who think good, card-carrying Mormons should not put "sharks" (sex, swearing, divorce, apostasy, difficult issues, etc.) in their fiction. Good parents fear for their children and want them to read "faith-promoting" works—which, sadly, often implies predictable, sentimental tales where conflicts are resolved in a prayer and a paragraph.

I recall when helping to promote the anthology Bright Angels and Familiars one journalist telling me pointblank that he didn't find my story "Outsiders" faith-promoting. I said, only slightly taken aback, "Didn't you?" But I am a devoted Mormon, and "Outsiders" is my story. How could my faithful heart create something unfaithful?

In truth, he had caught me in my own fears, though, for I was worried when I first published "Outsiders" in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought that it was a fifteen-foot shark story: sex, swearing, full-confrontation with the Blacks-and-the-Priesthood issue, and no apparent resolution. Would someone read it and say, "Well, I can no longer be a member of a church with such a history." Could my fiction bite so deep? I didn't want to take that kind of responsibility. My way out of it? I published it with my initials only: M. J. Young. Hey, I was the author of House Without Walls and choir director in my local LDS ward!

The day after "Outsiders" was published, Richard Cracroft, an English professor at Brigham Young University, saw me in the grocery store and congratulated me on it. Apparently, the initials hadn't hidden all that much. The next day Gene England, one of Cracroft's colleagues, congratulated me as well. I said, "So you knew it was mine, huh." With characteristic directness, Gene said I would have to quit hiding from my writing.

So I did. When we anthologized "Outsiders," I put my full name on it. I do take responsibility for the story, and think it has a fitting in place in Bright Angels precisely because of the pain it confronts. The black issue was deeply troubling to me, as it was to many of my fellow LDS; it bears remembrance in our literature and elsewhere. And "Outsiders" reminds me (and my readers, I hope) not only of the pain of all those years when blacks were denied priesthood, but of that glorious June day in 1978 when the barriers were removed. Ultimately, I consider "Outsiders" faithful, even faith promoting, because it reveals something about our true brotherhood (in fact, I have put it in the "Brothers and Sisters" section of this collection), something about innocence, something about conflicted loyalties. I believe the best—and most faithful—fiction is full of marvelous and terrifying surprises because it holds the shadowy glass up to our eyes and lets us see ourselves in ways we had not imagined, though we recognize our image.

When I was beginning my graduate studies at BYU, I wrote a shark story. Lots of sex and divorce. (I had just gone through a divorce.) It was so sharky, in fact, that I asked the teacher's and class's permission before I brought it. Since one of the students in that class was blind, his roommate read it to him. And lo, when the blind student came to class for workshop, he reported that my controversial story had actually been faith-healing for his roommate, who saw my narrator facing the ugly things he, too, was seeing; saw my protagonist admitting there were sharks even in the waters of Mormon; saw her dealing with the critters sans whitewash, gloss, or invisible ink. It made this reader feel that he wasn't alone, and that he wasn't being deceived. Only thus could he begin to look beyond the ugly or scary.

As a teacher of writing and literature, I find that my students are hungry for good writing, that they feel betrayed by easy resolutions and cheap tears. (I wonder if the authors of that brand of fiction—many of them talented—have the same fear I had when I put initials instead of my name on "Outsiders.") Our students have to deal with enormously difficult issues in real life, and the solutions are rarely easy. For fiction to have verisimilitude for them, it must let the conflicts rage on the page as they rage in the heart.

So back to the sharks. Interestingly, it's probable that the increase of attacks in Hawaii's waters is due to past overhunting by humans. After Jaws came out, well-intentioned fishermen went after the monsters with a vengeance—never suspecting that by their "cleaning up the waters," they would interfere with the sharks' eco-system—killing off the big ones, who would have helped to control shark numbers by their own predation. The result of these hunts was exactly the opposite of the intent: an increase (albeit twenty years later) of big (unchallenged, uncontrolled) sharks and, consequently, of shark attacks. In other words, it isn't nice to fool Mother Nature; don't censor the ocean.

Of course, my introduction of that incendiary word—censorship—will bring a multitude of responses. It should be clear by now that just as I don't believe in humans presuming to re-design the ocean, I don't believe in writers re-designing life to fit their message—especially when such re-design includes elimination of real, heartfelt, bone-deep conflict. Conflict (and all the shark imagery I'm implying by that word and that analogy) is not just part of fiction's eco-system, it is its life force.

Here, though, I need to address the concerns of those good parents who want to steer their children away from dangerous places. Actually, I'm one of those parents. I'll even admit that I own a copy of Saturday's Warrior and that my children love it. I'll further admit that some fiction offends me. I don't care for gratuitous sex or violence—which, in my analogy, is more like a shark aquarium than an ocean. I don't like literature that comes packaged inside a moralistic (or amoralistic) agenda. But I believe in milk before meat, and in "a time for every purpose under Heaven," so when my children are present for one of my readings, I choose my pieces wisely. I recall once my oldest daughter heard me use the word "bastard" in a reading, and could hardly recover. She knows full well that I don't allow that word spoken in my home, so what was I—a hypocrite?

Well, what was I?

When my novels House Without Walls and Salvador came out in the same year—the first published by Deseret Book, the second by Aspen—I knew some people would think I was schizophrenic. The most common question I was asked was "Which one did you write first?" (Fill in the implicit blanks on that one.) When Elegies and Love Songs, my first short story collection, came out, I—in my fearful state—had the publishers omit my maiden name, thinking that maybe any relatives or fellow ward members would figure that Margaret Young and Margaret BLAIR Young were two different people—and OUR Margaret would never write THAT! (I should mention that such figuring goes both ways: those who loved Elegies would probably hate House.)

So what am I—a hypocrite? A schizophrenic? A Gemini?

All right, I am a Gemini. And I'm a writer. I don't mean to imply that I am therefore exempt from common mores or that I must alienate all my loved ones and fellow church members in the supernal name of art. I do mean that I know what good writing is (whether or not I am a "good writer") and can bear testimony that the best—and ultimately most faithful, most TRUTHful—fiction will go places where life is hard, where the characters must grow to face the giants around—or within—them. Good readers will grow with the characters.

This particular collection could take off from the just-mentioned question, What am I? Or, What is she? Or he? The title, Love Chains, gives an image of tender ties, and lots of little holes. Most all the characters come to realize that they don't fully know the ones they love, though they are irrevocably bound—and sometimes in ways they don't perceive.

Is this faithful fiction? Is it faith-promoting? (Is there a difference?) I'll frankly admit that some of it has been controversial. "The Affair" resulted in an editor's resignation when BYU's unofficial student newspaper Student Review published it. Some people cancelled their subscriptions when Wasatch Review International did "God on Donahue." So there are some who have already found some of these stories less than faith promoting. And I firmly believe it's a mistake to assume that people are provincial or simple-minded because they are offended by controversial art. I remember feeling very nervous about confessing in a graduate class that I found a Saul Bellow passage offensive. (What would my teacher—and my fellow students—think of me?) It may well be that those who are offended by certain things in my stories are more spiritually sensitive than I am and purer of mind. Frankly, these stories are not for them.

There are others, however, who will see themselves in my characters and feel even spiritually renewed as they accompany my characters on their various pilgrimages. I really believe that. I have seen several friends leave the church because they couldn't deal with emergent ambiguities and were strangled by either/or dilemmas. These stories could be of some help to them, I think—could let them learn, as my characters do, something about how much we don't know, but how precious we are to each other; something about the paradoxes of devotion, the uneasy ties that bind us; something about the glorious terrors of faith.

There is some swearing in these stories, some sex; one section is dedicated to divorce ("Exes")—though I am a happily married mother of four, and I don't let my children swear.

So we're back to that earlier question, I guess: What am I—a hypocrite?

I'm a devoted Mormon, loyal wife, a hymn-singing mama. I fully believe in the Mormon vision of mortality and immortality. But fiction is not where I tour the beauties of that vision as I might in a sacrament meeting talk; it's where I fill in the shadows. Any attempt to eradicate those shadows to placate fearful readers (or my own fearful self) would not only be dishonest but dangerous. So, though I believe in the Mormon vision, my fiction will always happen at the place where the vision collides with earthly, earthy reality—usually within the hearts of my characters.

Are these stories faith-promoting? I will, somewhat boldly, say yes—for some (but not all) of my readers. Faithful? Only when they ring true. Sharky? You betcha. As is my life and the lives of many of my readers—even "faithful" Mormons. That doesn't make us hypocrites or schizophrenic; it makes us swimmers—sometimes "driven by the winds and tossed," but other times led by the finger of God to brilliant rocks and promised lands.

I don't intend the sharks inside this book to devour anyone's testimony. I truly hope many readers will find their faith strengthened as they journey with my characters and see strange, familiar, beautiful, terrifying creatures along the way. And if my fiction works on the level I hope it does, it will suggest not only fear, but grace.

Joseph, an old Mormon on his way to a Donahue appearance, found God at a rest-stop. God was blowing dandelion seeds over Utah's red sandstone. His hair resembled the seeds he was blowing: soft, wispy, luminous. His two-inch beard was luminous too—almost radiant, in fact—but not brighter than the noon-day sun because God was obviously travelling incognito.

Joseph, having always believed in an anthropomorphic god, experienced a warm, revelatory sensation in his chest the second he laid eyes on the guy—not heartburn, but something LIKE heartburn, except peaceful. He approached God with equal parts trepidation and embarrassment, since he and his wife Utahna had just been having a fight. (This one over what to name their spirit children in the next life.)

"Hello," said Joseph shyly, stroking his own smooth chin.

God turned to him and, viola-voiced, said, "Nice to see you, son."

Evidence enough. He wanted to kneel, Joseph did, and to kiss those scruffy army boots God was wearing. But Joseph understood he wasn't supposed to have figured out who this was, and felt it incumbent on himself to let the Almighty keep his secret. So, though he knew God knew he knew, Joseph went along with the game. He tried to keep his voice from quivering when he said, "Can I give you a lift anywhere?" Blushing at his question, he realized this was the first time he had addressed his maker as "you" instead of "thou." Certainly, he thought, he should have said "Sir."

"I mean, do you need a lift? Sir? I know you don't NEED one, but . . ."

"I'd be much obliged," said God.

Joseph understood there was purpose in this. Some reason God wanted Joseph to take him to Burbank and Donahue.

The next problem was Utahna, who was sitting in the front seat reading The Joy of Sex.

Utahna was near seventy, but looked closer to forty. Though her hair was as short and white as her husband's, her figure didn't fit her age, and she was proud of that fact. Joseph was embarrassed by it, afraid people might assume he was starving her or refusing to let her grow old and fat. Afraid they might think because she looked like that, he must be some kind of sex fiend. Which he wasn't. The sex fiend in the family was Utahna, who regularly attended an aerobics class, where she wore flesh-colored tights under black-lace tights. She pranced around a gym floor while a singer named Madonna belted out "Spank me!" from a boom box.

Joseph had actually witnessed this, gone to the class at Utahna's invitation, and left in utter shock. Later he said to his brother, who was stake president, "When the world is using the word `patriarchal' like something dirty, when the world thinks Mormons are anti-women because of this not letting the sisters have the priesthood business, I ask you, could there be anything right about a bunch of our women—Mormon grandmas—dressing themselves up like strumpets, kicking up their heels, and yelling `Spank me!'? Could there be anything right about that?" His brother called Utahna's actions a "lack of propriety" (pronounced "perpietry") but seemed far more amused by her than disturbed. "She's basically a good woman," he reminded Joseph. "You know that."

Yes, Joseph did know that. But he also knew Utahna, and at this moment he was scared to death she'd say something dirty to God. (Wasn't she the woman, after all, who had once opened a Sunday school lesson with "Brothers and sisters, we live in the world of the almighty dollar and the almighty orgasm"? And this when Joseph was Sunday school president! He had had to go home from church sick that day, unable to face the curious eyes of the ward members, all silently asking just how much he knew about almighty orgasms.)

Utahna was, in fact, the reason they were going to be on Donahue.The show's title was "Guilty Women Who Can't Get Enough and Men Who Think They've Given Plenty." Basically, they were going to talk about their sex life in front of several thousand Americans, and Utahna was going to pretend she felt guilty. Joseph would never have agreed to it, but Utahna told him she'd go alone if he didn't come with. So he hoped to be able to lend some dignity to the exhibit, bear testimony, maybe win a convert or two. And the $2,000 Phil was going to pay them would come in handy. One tenth, of course, would go directly into God's pocket as tithing. Joseph liked the idea of Phil Donahue making a contribution to the Kingdom.

While God was zipping his backpack, Joseph rapped on the car window, trying to tell Utahna SOMETHING IMPORTANT with his eyes.

She rolled the window down, her mouth puckered with impatience. He flicked his head towards God, hoping she would catch on to things without his having to spell them out.

Without saying a word, Utahna asked him what on earth he wanted now.

He moved his eyes, hoping she would follow them to the vision.

"Well, Joe," she said in her Lauren Bacall voice, "what?"

Joseph cleared his throat. "I've asked HIM" (he moved his eyes significantly towards God again) "to ride with us."

"A hitcher?" she demanded.

Joseph realized she didn't recognize her maker and was not having any revelation. And he knew it would be presumptuous of him to reveal God's identity. But it would also be presumptuous to suggest that the Almighty ride in the back seat. Utahna would have to move.

"Utahna," he said in a soft, urgent voice, "I have invited him. Now wouldn't you be more comfortable in the back seat where you could lie down?"

Her brows lifted to high suspicion. "I'm reading," she said. "I read sitting up. You want me to stop reading this, don't you. Well I'm sorry, but—" She started to hold the dirty book up. Joseph pushed it back down into her lap. "Utahna," he whispered fiercely, "get in the back, you can read later." He paused to muster his self control. "It's important, honey."

Her eyes softened at the endearment, which he hadn't used on her in several years. He wasn't sure where it had come from now, though he guessed God had inspired it.

"All right," she said softly.

Joseph turned back to God. "Why don't you—Sir—get up in front with me. My wife's tired. She'll be resting in the back so's you and I can chat." It still bothered him to call God "you," but in this informal conversation, he couldn't bring himself to use the more respectful words. ("Thou and I can chat." He mulled the sounds in his mind, and, sure enough, they sounded hokey, insincere.)

Utahna shook God's hand as she moved to the rear. "We're not in the habit of picking hitchers up, but you look honest enough. You Mormon?"

Joseph laughed and made a helpless, apologetic gesture. "Oh Utahna," he said, "of course he is!"

"Well then," she said. "Well then, okay. Good."

Laughing more fully, Joseph said, "Good is right." He almost nudged God in the ribs.

When Joseph started the engine, he realized he hadn't done what he had planned to do at the rest stop. His bladder reminded him as he turned the key. Still, he felt he couldn't go back now. The journey to his destiny had begun—and besides, he was too embarrassed to mention the problem to God. Then, not five minutes onto the highway, he found he didn't have to go anymore. He hadn't wet his pants or anything, just suddenly didn't need to go. It was a little miracle, and he knew it. He smiled thankfully at God, who smiled graciously back.

When he thought Utahna was asleep, Joseph asked God the burning question on his mind: "Sir, what do you think of the name Elroy?" This was the one he had reserved for the firstborn of his spirit children when he was a god in the next world. It had been his father's name. Joseph thought the "El" sounded like deity and the "Roy" like royalty, though Utahna (who had never liked Joseph's father) deemed it "just plain stupid." When he had first suggested it, she said, "Oh goodness, Joe, it sounds MEXICAN. Like Eldorado or El Cid. I'm not prejudiced, but it does."

God smiled beatifically. "Nice name," he said.

Joseph pressed his foot jubilantly into the gas pedal, then felt Utahna rouse herself and sit up.

"It's a damn stupid name," she said. "I heard you, Joe. Don't try pulling this on me, I know what you're doing, you men in cahoots. Now, given what we know of Heaven, a firstborn son would have some pretty special responsibilities. Good Lord, who'd want to saddle him such an asinine name as that?"

Joseph's stomach squinched in on itself and went queazy. In five sentences she had managed "Damn," "Good Lord," and "asinine." He was grateful he didn't believe in a vindictive God.

"Can you see it?" Utahna went on. "Can you imagine mortals praying to God the Father and his son Elroy? It's a damn stupid name."

"Please, Utahna," Joseph whispered, his dentures clenched.

God smiled tolerantly, and Joseph saw he was amused. So he smiled too, even chuckled at Utahna's adorable candor.

"Lord love ya," said God.

This love, Joseph knew, was directed to both Utahna and himself. "Thank you," he murmured. "I mean it. Thank you."

He found, to his amazement, that he didn't have to pee until Las Vegas—when, predictably, God slept.

They arrived at the studio with two hours to spare. By this time, Joseph had asked God if he'd like to go on Donahue with them. God had pretended to consider it, then said firmly, "Sure."

Joseph felt his heart burn within him. Well, he had prayed for wisdom and guidance insofar as this Donahue business was concerned. Seemed God was answering his prayer in person.

The stage manager, Jerri Shelley, a pretty little redhead in tight jeans, was bustling about the studio, arranging chairs and setting plants in front of light fixtures. When Joseph introduced himself, she verified his name and said, "I hope you're not feeling nervous."

"No," Joseph drawled, then took her confidentially aside and said they needed to talk.

"Cold feet?" she said.

"No, not that. It's I've brought another guest."

She raised her brows.

"I'd like him to go on with us," said Joseph, gesturing towards God, who at the moment looked like a haggard but kindly old bum.

"Him?" said Jerri Shelley.

Joseph closed his eyes serenely. "Him."

She started in on a prepared speech explaining why just the scheduled guests are permitted to go on, but was only three sentences into it when Joseph cut her off. "You don't understand," he said. "This man knows EVERYTHING about Utahna and me. He HAS to be there with us, Miss Shelly. Otherwise," (he drew himself up to his full 5'5") "I won't go on myself, nor permit my wife to neither."

He had raised his voice high enough that Utahna heard. She strode over. "Joe," she said threateningly, arms akimbo. "Joe, what are you doing?"

Joseph made meaningful eye contact with God, and they both nodded. Then, in a voice rich with conviction, Joseph whispered, "Miss Shelly, Utahna, I know this will sound crazy, but this here, well this is—in a mortal disguise, you understand—it's God."

God took a sharp breath, then chuckled once, and moved his head in what looked to Joseph like a most dignified bow.

Jerri Shelley, whom Joseph was afraid was probably promiscuous, gave one double take and then seemed to relax. Joseph witnessed this. It was like she could tell God's eyes truly saw her, saw her soul. And loved it.

Not so Utahna, who only laughed. "Oh, not again," she said. "Honestly, Joe, is this like that vision you had of me in the bathroom?" She gave him no time to answer, but went on to describe his greatest fear: that she would go first and find someone else she'd rather spend eternity with. She described how one morning Joseph had thought he had a vision of her as an angel. It was way before dawn, she went on dramatically to Jerri Shelly, "and I turned on the bathroom light. Well, I was just standing there looking in the mirror when Joe startled up awake. And I was wearing, oh you know, this real sexy white negligee, and the bathroom light sort of haloed me, I guess, like I was a spirit, so Joe thought I was going to tell him I had passed on and was dating Moroni. Well, when I turned to him and said what I said, he was shocked back to earth."

What she had said was she'd never understand why, after near fifty years, he couldn't remember to put the seat down afterwards. She had also pointed out that he hadn't flushed. "I cannot see how someone who holds a temple recommend," she had said, "would not flush the toilet."

"Joseph," she said to Jerri Shelley and God, "is always having himself a revelation."

But Joseph saw how deeply Jerri had been affected by her own revelation. Utahna's speech made no difference. Jerri Shelley seemed lit up. She smiled brilliantly and gave only half-reluctant permission for God to come on the show. As Joseph looked over her shoulder, she wrote down their bios:

Joseph: Mormon farmer, age seventy-two. Wife claims he's usually impotent but still plans on fathering several thousand spirit children in next life. Embarrassed by wife's aerobic outfits.

Utahna: Wife of Joseph, age sixty-seven. Thinks the world dangerously sex-crazed, claims nonetheless her libido climbs with her age. Does aerobics daily. Feels sexually cheated and guilty.

God: ???

When Phil Donahue came onstage and she gave him the cards—only ten minutes before showtime—he looked first amused and then accusing.

"God?"

She shrugged and pointed to the hitchhiker.

Phil made a helpless gesture. "Well, THIS should be interesting."

Joseph noticed that Donahue was exactly as tall and white-haired as God. This talk show host, it seemed, was a mortal imitation of the Eternal One. Well yes, mused Joseph, in a lot of ways, Phil was like God, though more liberal, of course. He was a mediator, a confessor, a judge. Joseph had seen on television the way he worked an audience and could imagine God setting ocean waves into motion just like that. And how he moralized sometimes—like the studio was Sinai, though his words were burned into film, not stone.

But next to the real, omnipotent McCoy, Donahue looked merely slick. At the moment he was straightening his tie before the studio mirror and practicing his "I give up" gesture. The thick wire-rimmed glasses made him appear intellectual, but also puppyish, Clark Kentish.

Then Phil Donahue strolled onstage, wearing his famous, distracted smile. He cracked a couple of lame jokes ("Gotta loosen you up, folks"), and the lights dimmed. Jerri Shelley seated God first, of course, then Utahna and Joseph, and the Donahue music began. Marty, the producer, cued Phil to start talking.

"What happens," he said, reading the card, "when SHE can't get enough and HE says he's given plenty already—and I don't mean cherry chocolates. Stay tuned for Donahue."

A commercial for Metamucil came on the monitor. Joseph watched, thinking what an embarrassing job that poor actor had. How would it be to get paid for sitting in a chair and making your face look like what you really wanted to do was have a bowel movement. Joseph thought he'd die before doing a commercial like that.

The Donahue music began again.

"Let me introduce you," Phil said, when Marty pointed, "to Joseph and his wife Utahna."

Utahna took off her sweater—the blue cardigan Joseph had given her for Mother's Day. She was wearing a neon green aerobics outfit underneath. She stood and began to unzip her pants.

Shooting his eyes to God's, Joseph pushed her back to her seat. "Oh please," he moaned. "Utahna, don't let's lose all our dignity whatsoever."

Donahue approached Joseph, who still had his hand firmly on Utahna's thigh, and smiled confidentially, "Well I guess this is the core of the problem, isn't it. Did you know she was wearing that outfit, Joe?"

Like a scared squirrel, Joseph looked up into Phil's magnified eyes and moaned again. Utahna tried to rise. Joseph pushed her back. His strength was not his own.

"I take it you don't approve of modern aerobics outfits," said Phil.

Joseph grunted.

"But you've got to admit, she looks mighty attractive for someone her age—for someone ANY age, am I right, audience?"

Predictable applause. Utahna bowed from the waist up, loving it.

Donahue made a beautifully perfected gesture of ironic ambivalence, and said, "Well-ll, I dunno." He turned to Utahna. "My goodness," he said. "Here you are a GRANDmother of eight, and you're dressed like that. Now Utahna, you know what your fellow Mormons back in Utah are going to say, don't you?"

She gave a throaty giggle. Joseph noticed someone had painted her lips whore red.

"`Well there's Sister Utahna,'" Phil mocked in his brassy voice, "`doing a strip-tease on the T.V. show!' Aren't you liable to get excommunicated, if I may ask?"

She giggled again. Joseph put his head in his free hand. "Oh please, act your age," he murmured.

"I'll tell you what," said Phil. "Why don't we have a compromise here. Joseph, I have the distinct impression you don't want your WIFE of—how many years?"

"Forty-seven," Joseph mumbled through his emerging headache.

"Forty-seven years, you are to be congratulated. I take it you don't want your wife of forty-seven years to show her aerobics clothes on national television, am I correct?"

He nodded, still with head in hand.

"Well folks," Phil said, turning full front to audience and camera, "you are just going to have to imagine it. After forty-seven years, we don't want to put any rift in THIS marriage, let me tell YOU! But I will tell you what Utahna is wearing" (he shuffled his cue cards and read) "flesh-colored tights under black lace tights. Did I get that right?"

Some blank-faced blond guy on row three whistled. Utahna put her fingers in her mouth and whistled back, then waved.

"I take it that means yes," said Phil, smiling that disarming smile that made him seem like such a nice guy—on T.V. "Tell you what, folks, we'll work on Joseph for the next hour. Meanwhile, why don't we just talk about the problem in this marriage. Joseph—Sir—can you put your finger on just when this problem of unequal sexuality manifested itself?" Phil chuckled. "You can relax, Joe. Your wife's not going to escape."

Joseph's arm was still across Utahna's thigh. After a moment's consideration, he put both hands in his lap.

"Go ahead, sir," Phil urged.

"I would say it started," Joseph began slowly, scratching his sweaty chin and looking to God for strength, "back one Halloween seven years back, when one of the grandkids come to our house for some idea of a Halloween costume, and Utahna done what she done."

"Which was?"

"Obscene, Mr. Donahue."

"Now, Joe," Utahna broke in, "you always did take that too serious. It was entirely a joke. Trenton looked cute as a bug's ear, and several people have told me so." She sounded like a gravel-voiced teenager.

"Trenton, who was no more than ten at the time, was dressed," hissed Joseph, "as an exhibitionist. At his grandmother's suggestion."

"Now, Joe," she scolded, "don't you go and make it sound like I had our grandson going naked to church."

"Not naked," he admitted. "He wore an overcoat."

"And jeans and a lumberjack shirt," Utahna added.

Phil made a perfect "I'm confused" look.

"And pinned to his crotch," Joseph explained loudly, blurting the words past his shame, "was a damned Ziggy doll! Sorry, Sir." He glanced meekly towards God. "He'd say `Trick or Treat' and open the overcoat, and there that Ziggy doll would be, hanging out like something else."

"I see." Phil wiped his smile briskly away. Then to the audience, "I'm telling YOU, this is one interesting FAMily! Now Utahna," he teased, "is that true? Did you suggest that costume to your grandson? Shame on you!"

The audience howled. Phil chided them approvingly: "Oh you liberal Californians! You're as bad as the New Yorkers!"

"It was a joke!" Utahna yelled, laughing with them. Some of her lipstick had gotten on her teeth—which, Joseph figured, served her right. "A joke!" she repeated like it might get her a standing ovation.

Joseph was shaking his head in disgust, until he saw the smile on God's face. Then he let himself smile too, though sheepishly. Suddenly, the Halloween episode didn't feel all that significant. It WAS a joke. Utahna had been just fooling, meant no harm.

"Well," said Phil, "one of our sponsors wants a word in here. But when we come back, I'll introduce you to a special guest Joseph has brought along. Believe me, you won't want to miss this. An-nnd we'll be back."

Zip, the make-up man, dashed on stage, murmuring that Phil was sweating more than usual, then powdering everyone's faces, including God's. When Zip did God's face, Joseph noticed how the powder dust seemed to glow and circle his head like sunbeams. Zip clearly sensed it too: there was something different, special about this guest. He backed awkwardly away.

Marty gave the cue. Phil faced the camera and said, "Joseph, do you want to introduce your friend?"

Wiping his palms on his trousers, Joseph stood. "I'll merely say this is someone who knows me and knows you and whose words we should heed and follow." He sat.

"Am I to understand," Phil asked, "and you'll excuse me if I read my cue card here, that you're claiming this man is God?"

"I'm not going beyond the bounds of my permission, Mr. Donahue. I'm not going to make any blanket statements that are not mine to make."

Phil turned to God. "Are you? God?" he said.

His face utterly serene, God said, "If you think I am, I am."

"Hear that?" Joseph demanded, leaning earnestly forward, almost standing again. "You know the Old Testament? You hear that? Is that enough answer for you?"

"Well-ll," Phil said, rubbing his chin, "I'm not quite sure what to say. But if you're God, I'll bet some audience members have a few questions for YOU. Am I right?"

Predictable—though hesitant—applause.

"First off, God, what is your opinion of Utahna's aerobic outfits?"

God smiled and shrugged.

The blond whistler in the third row raised his hand. When Donahue extended the microphone, the blond said caustically, "I have a question for God. This 'one in three and three in one' stuff—isn't that sort of like a multiple personality disorder?"

God looked at himself on the monitor. Then cameraman number two did a trick. He multiplied God's image so there were three of him.

"Pretty good," said God. "That's pretty good."

"Boy," said Phil, "the trinity business is the least of our worries, I'd say. Isn't it, audience? What about child abuse and wars and the Burbank traffic jams? Huh? What about those?"

Predictable laughter. Donahue was doing it, working this audience like a puppeteer. You had to admire a fellow like that, Joseph thought, one who just did his job no matter who was looking on.

A hip-looking middle-aged woman with short black hair and painted brows stood up. "I want to ask Utahna why she feels guilty about her libido. Does the fact that Joseph claims God is his constant companion make you feel somehow less a woman? Maybe competitive? Disempowered? Don't you, for example, feel entitled to an orgasm?"

Joseph's jaw dropped. Utahna said, "What?"

Phil interceded. "Utahna, if your husband brings God along with him everywhere he goes, doesn't it make you feel inhibited and guilty for your own sexual desires? I mean, let's face it, what couple wants to sleep with a superego between them?" He went to his mocking voice again. "'Come on, Honey, just crawl on over him and we'll have us some marital relations!'"

Utahna tried to smile. "I don't know exactly what you're insinuating, Mr. Donahue, but we only just met this man. And—regardless of what I wear to aerobics—we are church going folks. This man certainly don't sleep with us and neither does his ego."

Phil grinned demonically. "Are you sure, Utahna?"

No longer flippant, Utahna pulled herself up with queenly grace. "Of course I'm sure!"

"You drove here from Utah, I understand. Well who rode in the front seat, may I ask: you or God?"

"First off," she defended, "I want to say something. To me, this man is not God. To me, he's not. To me, he's a manifestation of my husband's fantasies. Joe has them all the time. Now I'm not saying he's unreal, this man here. Of course he's real. But Joe has gone and made him into something above and beyond that."

"But Utahna," Phil said, still smiling, "who rode in front beside your husband?"

She flicked her head towards God and admitted, "He did."

Phil nodded thoughtfully.

Another question from the audience, this one from a fat teenaged girl. "I have a question for God? I just want to say that I'm from Oregon and I really like palm trees and I wish they could survive in colder weather so more people could enjoy them. That's all. Thank you."

"Uhmm yes," said Phil. "Well, we were talking about Utahna's rising libido and guilt and Joseph's—how shall I say it—embarrassment? How'm I doing?"

Joseph nodded miserably.

"God," said Donahue, "and let me clarify I'm not being profane here. God, whose side are you on anyway? Joseph's or Utahna's?"

God looked over at Utahna and then at Joseph. "I'm just right here," He said.

"Between them," Phil clarified.

"Yes."

The calls were coming in now. Phil took the first one. "Thank you for waiting, caller. Go ahead."

A pause.

"Caller? Go ahead."

The man's voice was tremulous and old. "I just wanted to say I'm a believer. That's all. I had to say that."

"Believer in what?" Phil said.

"I believe."

"You believe this man is God."

"I believe in God. If that man says he's God, I believe either he is or he isn't, but I still believe there's a God."

"And if he isn't?"

"Well, then maybe he's crazy, I don't know. But some of my best friends are crazy. I'm not so sure it's bad to be crazy in a world like ours. And how about this idea, Phil? Maybe the crazy people have a different God from the rest of us, and maybe this is their God. How about that for a possibility?"

Phil shrugged. "Welll, could be, who am I to say? Or maybe he's the Mormon God. Don't you, as a Mormon, Joe, don't you believe in a corporeal God?"

Joseph leaned forward. "I do," he said. "Yes."

Those words spoken, Joseph saw himself—almost in vision—as a groom, Utahna shy and veiled across from him, holding hands across the temple altar, and God—yes indeed—right there between them. They were telling God they'd stick together, get to know each other, get over their petty fights, sleep together, eat together, make love and babies, and become old people together. ("Will you, Joseph?" "Yes, God.") He thought of how naive and beautiful they were as bride and groom. It almost made him laugh to think they presumed themselves in love back then. When he pictured himself on their wedding night saying, "I love you," to her, the first woman he had seen naked, he just had to smile. The "love" part was only beginning. Why, that was preschool back then!

But now, with God visibly between them, and them all on the Donahue show, he felt he could make a long speech about love and what it meant to have and raise children and to stick together from breakfast through nighttime prayers every day. He thought, too, how maybe that first year of their marriage he wore Utahna out with his needs. And now, when she was the one wanting . . . "Oh boy," Joseph murmured to himself. "I've really been a louse." And he knew with his whole soul that God had met him at the rest stop with at least this purpose in mind: to remind him—and the whole viewing audience—of what it meant to be man and wife with God between. Of course God had to be with them when they went on Donahue to tell the world about their sex life! Of course he did!

"Joe," Phil was saying, "was there something you wanted to say?"

Joseph looked right into the camera, knowing his ruddy face was full front on thousands of television screens across the country. Fervently he whispered, "I love my wife."

Instant applause. Utahna put her sweater back on.

"And I think," he went on, "with the two of us as old as we are, she's entitled to as much pleasure as she wants. She certainly has brought me pleasure. And I think maybe this is God's way of preparing us for the next life and whatever is in store." He turned to God. "Is that right?" he said.

God considered it, mulled it over like he was chewing, and answered, "Sounds good."

They went to a commercial, and Zip powdered everyone's faces. Jerri Shelley was watching and seemed, to Joseph, to be near tears. And while the stage was specked with little swirls of powder, one young father wheeled his daughter to the first row.

The child's name was Jill. She had acute aplastic anemia. She was dying.

Phil saw Jill and her father two seconds before Marty's cue. "Hey now," he said, "this isn't any televangelist show. No faith healings." He said it in the half-joking, ingratiating way he has, but there was something fully serious underneath. God was making Phil Donahue nervous.

Marty signalled. Phil said, "And we're back, talking to Joseph and Utahna and the Mormon God."

The camera panned them all. God smiled and waved slightly.

"So, God," said Phil, "what do you think of Joseph and Utahna's sex life?"

God considered it, puckering his lips so his beard shimmered like there were stars caught in the hairs. "Well," God said, "I can't rightly judge."

Phil put down his microphone and looked over the audience, obviously expecting a disgusted "Ooooooh"—inviting it, in fact, with ironic, taunting eyes. The audience, though, was silent.

"You can't JUDGE?" Phil said, more to the viewers than God. "YOU can't JUDGE!!??"

"Well a person's sex life is mighty private."

"I am so thrilled to hear you say it. Wonder if we could get that in writing, whaddya say, God? What do YOU think, audience?"

There was no response, and Joseph saw the color drain from Phil's cheeks. Donahue was losing his crowd. Some of them seemed mesmerized. A few appeared to be praying.

And then there was that father with his dying daughter.

Joseph gazed at the girl, her fawn eyes, the blue scarf around her hairless head. A preschooler, no more than four years old. And suddenly Joseph understood the next part of God's purpose in coming with them on Donahue. Here Joseph was, age seventy-two. He had done his life's work and here he was condemning his wife on national television for daring to say the "O" word in church. Now who was acting more like a child—Joseph or that sick little girl who deserved all the years he had already spent?

What Joseph said was, "We're all preschoolers, aren't we, Mr. Donahue. All of us, no matter religion or gender or education or nothing at all. We're all preschoolers in this life. We just hope to learn enough to start first grade beyond this sphere, wouldn't you say so?" What he was thinking was, "This here is ordained. I'm to trade places with that little girl. I'm to give her my years and fully accept how immature I am in spirit. This here is ordained by God!"

Though Phil tried to intervene, Joseph beckoned Jill. "See this little girl here?" he said as the father wheeled her onstage. "See what I mean?" Joseph put both his hands on her head. "Come on over here, God," he said.

And God did. God moved over and put his hands on top of Joseph's, then glanced back at Utahna.

"Oh. Oh, okay," said Joseph a little hesitantly. "Utahna? I think he—that is—why don't you join us too?" This was a new thing for him to invite his wife's participation in a priesthood matter. But what was it the Relief Society president was always saying to those women who thought they ought to be blessing the emblems? "You hold the priesthood jointly with your husband," she said—and with God there, Joseph figured it was all right and he had the go-ahead and even a holy nudge. Utahna was a little tentative, but then she placed her hand on top of God's, and looked at Joseph and smiled like she was finally having herself that revelation.

Jerri Shelley approached, stopping just before the camera. It looked like there were tears shining on her cheeks.

Phil glared at her and started to ask God a question. The audience actually shushed him.

"An-nnd we'll be back," he said defiantly, signalling Marty to get the commercial going.

Leaping onstage, standing right in front of the blessing, Donahue yelled, "Well, not everyday you get to see a Mormon God in action, is it!"

Of course, Joseph knew what Donahue was doing. He was taking his show back. God had stolen his audience, and Phil was calling back all his strength. No more the ambivalent, shrugging, "I give up" Mr. Donahue. This was a man of power, lord of daytime television, the grand inquisitor of Tabloid T.V. With a flick of his wrist, he had summoned Jerri Shelley. "Break it up," he told her.

Right in the middle of the blessing, Jerri said, "I'm sorry, folks, but your time's up. We have coffee for you downstairs."

Joseph, the voice of the blessing, closed it in Jesus' name, and said to Jerri that everything was all right and he wouldn't care for coffee, which was against the Word of Wisdom, section 89 of the Doctrine and Covenants, and she ought to read it sometime.

Jerri smiled bravely, escorting God from the proscenium. At his whispered request, she pointed him towards the restroom, which God entered.

That was the last anyone saw of him. When Joseph went in to check on him five minutes later, the restroom was empty.

Returning to the hallway, Joseph announced peacefully, "He done what he come to do, Utahna."

Donahue was talking to a psychiatrist on stage, a hard-looking, skinny woman with fashionably frizzed peroxide hair. "A lot of women—particularly Mormon women—take superegos to bed," she was saying, "either their own superegos or their husbands'." Donahue nodded thoughtfully. But his face, Joseph saw—even from a distance—was victorious and defiant. Phil Donahue could have been wielding an axe.

As for Joseph, he was experiencing two sensations simultaneously. A sort of numbness was spreading from his gut to his arms. This, he was certain, was his first manifestation of acute aplastic anemia. The second sensation happened a bit lower down: Joseph wanted his wife. He could feel it: eternal potency building up in his groin.

He took Utahna's hand, murmuring, "Know something, honey? You are one beautiful woman, one gorgeous lady. I think I haven't been telling you like I should have. I do love you, hope you know that."

"I'm sorry if I embarrassed you," she answered, wiping her lips with a Kleenex.

"I'm the one apologizing," he said, and abruptly, "Utahna, let's go have us some marital relations, d'ya think we could? Let's go make some senior citizen whoopee, whaddya say—while there's still time. You just never know."

She squeezed his hand.

Then he said, "Utahna, you name him. Or her. Our firstborn of the next life. I want you to choose the name."

Her eyes moist, she kissed his chin quickly and—more passionately—his lips.

Jerri Shelley, recovered, showed them the exit. Behind them on stage, Phil Donahue was saying, "Annd we'll be back."

Joseph opened the door for his wife. The outside light leapt to her white hair and exploded in radiant shivers. Her eyes dazzled him. Oh, Utahna was glorious—so glorious it made him blind.

"Kiss me again," he said to her, stepping into the light. "Utahna, kiss me again!"