When, inevitably, the men turned to Daniel for his thoughts, he almost always backed his wife. “Almost always” because there were times when he vetoed one of her requests, not so much because he disagreed with it, but because his position required him to occasionally assert his dominance over her as her pastor and her husband. He was well aware the other male leaders of the church believed women were, if not a different species entirely, then certainly, as scripture said, “the weaker vessel.”
Max Taggert’s teaching on this point was very clear. His standard texts on the status of women in the church were Timothy’s admonition: “I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man; she is to remain quiet.” And Paul: “Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” Daniel, with his pre-conversion exposure to women like Gwen, found these references antiquated and condescending. But when, early on as youth minister, he had suggested as much, the blowback was immediate, fierce and, surprising to him, led by the women. He never raised the subject again.
••••
In the same passage in Timothy that forbade women from exercising authority over men and directed them to keep quiet, the apostle offered women a single path to salvation: “Yet she will be saved through childbearing— if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.” That path was closed to his wife.
Jessica was seven years older than him, thirty-five when they married. Why she had remained unmarried so long was the subject of speculation in the church, some kind, some not. The kind explanation was that she had forfeited marriage to care for her own mother— a frail, nervous woman who suffered a litany of health problems before cancer carried her off. The unkind explanation alluded to her appearance— short, stocky, and plain. The unkind whispered that marriage to Taggert’s unprepossessing, aging daughter was forced on Daniel as a condition of succeeding Taggert as head of the church.
It was true that Taggert had told Daniel if he wished to succeed him he would have to marry. He made the comment in Jessica’s presence, leaving no room for doubt as to his meaning. But what drew them together wasn’t Taggert’s unspoken directive, but a shared secret. Taggert had begun to slip into dementia in the last years of his life. Between them, Daniel and Jessica concealed his condition until his death. In that work, Daniel saw firsthand her intelligence, discretion, and shrewdness. He also knew she was worried that when her father died, she would lose her standing in a community that was all she had ever known. For his part, Daniel knew a faction of the leadership opposed Taggert’s choice of him as his successor. For these men, who’d been with Taggert from the start, Daniel was an interloper, too young, not born into the faith, and his preaching lacked the hard edge their fanaticism demanded. They wouldn’t challenge him while Taggert was alive, but once he was gone, they would come for him.
A marriage to Jessica would consolidate his position and hers. When he proposed, her reply startled him.
“I can’t have children.” Before he could ask, she continued, “I have a condition called endometriosis. You can ask your doctor to explain it, if you’re interested. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Is that why you haven’t married before?”
“Do you think I’ve had this conversation with other men?” she said, sharply. “With anyone outside my doctor? I’ll marry you because it’s what Dad wants, but if you marry me, you won’t have children.”
But Daniel had a child, Wyatt, so her news, while shocking, also came as a relief; he wouldn’t have to create a second family while concealing his first. Still, because he did not want her to sense his relief, he asked, “What about adoption?”
She glared at him. “Do you think all children are alike, one as good as another? I could never be a mother to a stranger’s child. It would only remind me of my— burden.”
It was then he knew he could never tell her about his son.
He told her, “We’ll carry the burden together.”
••••
Despite his good intentions, the burden had lain most heavily on her. In their family-centered, family-driven community, her childlessness was thrown into high relief, and because her body was the vessel, its failure was attributed to her. Jessica was, depending on temperament, faulted or pitied by the members of the congregation. The whispers and gossip withered her spirit even as it enraged her. Of course, she could show neither grief nor rage to the community. She hid her grief even from him, except when, once or twice, it emerged in a comment or quiet tears. She did not, however, conceal her anger.
“Do you want a divorce?” she demanded after recounting gossip in the church that he was planning to leave her and marry a woman who could give him children.
“Of course not, Jess. I don’t know how those rumors got started.”
“Because I won’t give you one,” she said, ignoring him.
“I don’t want a divorce.”
“I won’t be set aside,” she said. “Not by you, not by anyone.”
“I would never do that to you.”
She only repeated, “I won’t be set aside, Daniel. I won’t.”
At such moments, when her composed mask slipped and she revealed the wounded woman beneath it, he wanted to tell her he loved her. He wished he could tell her everything— about Wyatt and Gwen— and share with her his doubts and fears about his ability to counsel the injured people who came to him for help. He wanted a real marriage, not the business arrangement they had agreed to, but after so many years of that, and with his secret creating an abyss between them, he did not know where to begin.
••••
Daniel took his place at the head of the table in the executive conference room. Around the long rosewood table were a dozen comfortably padded seats. His own seat, inherited from his father-in-law, had a higher back and scrolled armrests— a throne, in effect, that he disliked but that Jessica insisted he maintain in her father’s memory. Behind him a large arched window looked out on the courtyard where children shrieked in the playground, their voices muffled by triple-paned glass. Plates of doughnuts were arranged on the table along with coffee and water carafes; the air had a sweet, yeasty smell.
Jessica sat quietly in a corner of the room, knitting. It seemed to him it was always the same bit of work she busied herself with but never finished. She was not, of course, an Overseer— women were barred from the office— but no one begrudged her presence. Indeed, most of the men appeared not to notice her in the room at all.
••••
Daniel poured himself a glass of water and smiled gamely at the twelve Overseers, all but one white, and more than half well over sixty. All wore dark business suits, white shirts, and subdued ties— they were lawyers, businessmen, bankers, developers. Rich men, mostly, and men of status and power in their professions; not exactly, Daniel had often thought, the fishermen and laborers Jesus had assembled around himself, nor even the men Daniel would have chosen had he had a free hand.
Most of the Overseers had been chosen by Taggert who, Daniel knew, had had his reservations about Daniel’s orthodoxy at times. It wasn’t that Daniel had ever expressed the slightest doubt about any of the tenets of their faith; Taggert was skeptical of his style. The old man had expressed this skepticism succinctly when, once after hearing Daniel preach, he had growled, “A little less love and a lot more brimstone next time. These people have to be scared into salvation.” The men Taggert had appointed as Overseers— led by his old friend and lawyer, Bob Metzger— shared his hard-bitten theology and were not reluctant to try to rein Daniel in when they thought he strayed too far afield from it. He resisted, and relations between him and Metzger’s faction ranged from tense to hostile. Over the years Daniel had been able to appoint a few Overseers of his own. He looked forward to the day when the deaths or resignations of his father-in-law’s men would give him control of the board. He was playing a waiting game,