“So he told you all about it?”
“He told me a bit, yes. And the next summer I went to Palmyra, to watch him perform at Hill Cumorah.”
He said this as if I knew what it meant. I didn’t, so he had to explain.
“Then, after Dad died, I was very, I guess, lost in a lot of ways. We had to go through all that gruesome stuff together, and we were all barely speaking to one another. Also there was somebody I’d been in love with. She wasn’t speaking to me, either.” He looked glumly down at his sandwich.
“Rochelle Steiner?” I said.
Lewyn turned to me, plainly stunned.
“Sally told me. Sally also has a lot of regret about Rochelle Steiner.”
“Well, she should,” he said tightly. Then he clammed up again.
“Maybe it’s something the two of you should talk about.”
Lewyn shook his head. “I’m more likely to go out for a beer with Harrison.”
I opted not to say that a beer with Harrison was equally in the realm of the possible, and very much my personal intention where my brothers were concerned.
“So it was a bad time, that year.”
He nodded. “And there was this moment, I remember thinking, I’m just going to reach out for anything that makes me feel better.” He stopped. “I’ve always thought, good thing it wasn’t drugs. I’d be dead.”
“Well, religion is the opiate of the masses, I’ve heard.”
“Something to that.”
“So,” I said, nudging him, “you went to the local Mormon church and said: Here I am! Convert me!”
“No, no. First of all, temples, not churches, and you can’t enter the temple until you already are a member of the church. But it didn’t happen like that, either. I got this insane idea to go and be in the pageant, myself. I’d seen it performed. I saw these hundreds of people, working on it together. And their faith together. And I thought, well, I’ll fill out an application and mail it in and see what happens. I told myself it would be an interesting experience, not necessarily a religious one. And I said I was a church member already, which was wrong of me.”
“They couldn’t check? I mean, wasn’t it all on some database?”
“Probably. Or maybe they couldn’t imagine a non-Mormon taking the trouble to apply, and lying about it. I got a letter instructing me when to turn up in Palmyra, and so I went. And I get to this community college, Finger Lakes Community College, where everyone was staying, and I’m completely terrified they’re going to find out I’m not one of them. But they kept us so busy, right from the get-go, and no one was lurking around questioning anyone else’s bona fides. Everything was superorganized, very structured, and crazy accelerated. You audition, like, on the first day, then you get put into a cast team, and bang, you’re running around from breakfast to bedtime, not just rehearsal but workshops and service assignments. I was cast as a Lamanite.”
“A what?” I said.
“Generic bad guy. Mainly I shook a spear in the air.”
A pair of Dalmatians with a short woman attached came by, slowed, and then veered hopefully toward the sandwiches. They were pulled away.
“You know what’s interesting, they actually recognized me as Jewish, they just assumed I was a convert. They all wanted me to know how much they loved and supported Israel. I probably did more thinking about the Bible in those two weeks than I ever had before. And by then I’d read the Book of Mormon. Or skimmed it.”
I didn’t want to say anything. I wanted him to keep going.
“And then, I started to get this feeling around it, not just all the moving parts of putting on this big show, but the presence of history, and the story of Joseph Smith and the early church, unfolding on the exact spot where it happened—just the meaning of the place, and the undertaking. And there are so many families doing this together, and the feeling of community was really overwhelming.” He paused. “Do you believe in anything?”