The Ninth Wife (28 page)

“Do your grandparents know you’re doing this, by the way?”

“What am I doing? I don’t know where anyone else is.”

“Okay, I’ll do more digging. Good luck with Rory. He’s meeting you at your grandparents’ place?”

“He said he’d be there.”

“So he’ll be there, honey. Call me from the road.”

C
ricket is arranging the contents of the van when Bess makes her last trip down to join him. She sees a white canvas bag on the sidewalk and is about to thrust it behind the passenger’s seat when Cricket yells, “Don’t touch that!”

“Jeez,” she says. “Touchy.” He takes it gingerly from her and places it upright near where his feet will be. She asks him what it holds, but he ignores her, getting Stella set up in her crate.

The roads are clear. Bess is driving; Cricket is filing his nails. To Bess, the scraping of nails on an emery board tops the list of the most excruciating sounds in existence. “Can you stop that, please?”

“What, this?” says Cricket, holding up his fingers. “Fine.” He puts the emery board back in his bag. “We’re going to have a barrel of laughs, I can tell already.”

Bess yawns and turns on the radio low to catch traffic and weather reports. She sees Stella in her rearview mirror, looking out the window. “You didn’t want to leave Stella in Dogaritaville?”

“Shh,” Cricket says loudly. “I couldn’t do that to her again. The schnauzers ganged up on her last time and stole her treats.”

This could be the longest few weeks of my life
, Bess thinks.

B
ess is relieved to find Rory’s Corolla parked outside the house. She hadn’t seen him since her visit with Carol last week, and she couldn’t read his reaction over the phone to this cross-country trip. In fact, she hadn’t been able to infer much of anything about him lately and she suspects it is the same for him.

“Hi Gerald,” says Bess, getting out of the van. Gerald is peering in Rory’s front window. His hands are hidden in the pockets of his hooded sweatshirt, which he wears despite the seventy-five-degree weather. “You remember Cricket, don’t you?”

“Yes, I remember Cricket. Cricket has a dog.”

“I do indeed,” Cricket calls out from the back of the van. He lets Stella out of her crate, clipping on a leash. “Stella, remember Gerald?”

Gerald pats Stella on her head like he’s bouncing a basketball.

“Where are my grandparents?”

“They’re inside the house,” says Gerald. “Your friend is inside the house, too, Bess. This is his car. It’s not a nice car. I don’t think he’s very rich.”

“You’re probably right about that.” She heads to the house. The screen door wheezes and snaps behind her as she enters. “Anyone home?”

“Hi,” says Rory, appearing in the foyer. He’s holding a Styrofoam cup that smells pleasingly of hot coffee. His smile is friendly but his eyes jitter with restless intensity.

“Hey,” says Bess. She reaches up to kiss him. He offers his lips to be kissed, briefly.

“Bess, dear, we’re all ready for you,” says Millie, coming around the corner. She is wearing comfortable tan slacks and a light yellow sweater, and has tried to camouflage the circles under her bloodshot eyes with makeup that doesn’t quite succeed.

Rory peers out the screen door. “Cricket’s going with you?”

“Apparently,” says Bess. “He sprung that on me this morning. His ex-wife in Denver is really sick.”

“I see. And his little dog, too?”

“His little dog, too.” Bess says this in a witch’s voice, striving for levity.

Rory smiles and turns away. “Let me help you with that, Mrs. Steinbloom,” he says, entering the kitchen.

The house echoes in its emptiness. It has reverted to a mere shelter: walls, floors, windows, the skeletal remains of a once bustling hub of activity and emotions. The smells are gone, too, Bess notices as she goes about the house surveying the rooms—no mothballs in the closets, rising yeast in the kitchen, Ben-Gay in the bedroom. It seems bigger, of course, but harder somehow, with too many right angles. And the basement where she finds Irv is painfully bare. He donated his mannequins to a local store and made sure he wasn’t home when they were picked up. Bess finds him sitting on a stool in the middle of the room, looking as small and insignificant as a lone pebble in a shoe box.

“Hi, Gramp. You doing okay this morning?”

“Bessie,” he says, standing to give her a hug. “I’m fine.” He pats her cheek. “You?”

“Good, Gramp.” She’s been worried about Irv and how he’d take to their final departure. “Are you all set?”

“Let’s go!” he says, and leads the way upstairs. Whatever he’s been through to say good-bye to the house and the life he’s led here, Bess can tell he’s done it privately and on his own time. He must have made a pact with himself to make peace with it all—at least outwardly—before she arrived to drive him to his new home. She admires him for that.

“Oh, Bessie,” he says, stopping at the top of the stairs. “Is it all right if we take Peace?”

Bess thinks for a moment. “The mannequin? With the Afro?”

Irv nods.

“Sure,” says Bess, making a quick tally of how little room they have in the van. Hell, they’ll make room. “Of course we can.”
So he didn’t part with all of them after all
, she thinks. But Millie catches this part of the conversation and is suddenly furious.

“You’re not bringing her with us!” she screams.

“Yes I am, Mildred! Yes I am!” Irv pulls Peace from the front closet and carries her around the waist out the door. Millie follows indignantly, her hands in tight fists, her cheeks flushed red. Bess half expects her to yell out,
It’s her or me!
but Millie collects herself and turns back into the house.

Bess wonders if this is something she should get in the middle of. Is Millie angry over the object itself or what it represents? And what
does
it represent to Irv? To Millie? “Rory,” she says, walking out with him, “while they’re finishing up, let’s talk, okay?”

“Please,” he says.

Bess lets Cricket know where they’re going and leads Rory to the stone bench in back of the house by the old cherry tree. For a few moments they sit in tense silence. Bess feels afraid. She takes a deep breath and reaches out to play with his fingers. He raises his other hand to her cheek and runs his thumb along her bottom lip. “I’ve missed you,” he whispers. Her eyes well with tears. She has missed talking to him, honestly and openly. She has missed laughing with him, hugging him, making love to him, lying in bed in his arms. He is an attentive lover, the kind to slow the pace and study her with his fingertips. He caresses the inside of her wrists, the soft baby fat around her hips, the rim of her belly button, and by the time he surfaces to kiss between her breasts and finally her lips she is fully present, and she is happy. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she says, wiping her eyes. “I was scared you wouldn’t want to see me off.”

He lifts her chin to kiss her. “Bess, please don’t shut me out. I know this is going to take time. We don’t have to rush into anything, it’s just . . . I feel like I might lose you, that you’ll pull away from me and I don’t want—”

“Stop,” she says, softly. “You don’t need to. I’m sorry. I didn’t think what this must be like for you.” She looks down at her lap. “I have to tell you something.” She looks back at the house. “I saw Carol.”

Rory jerks back as if he just popped a balloon. “Carol who?”

“Carol Pendleton. I called her and she invited me over when I was in Boston.”

Rory throws up his hands. “Unbelievable!”

“I wanted to tell you before this. I did. It was hard not telling you. And she was just like you described. She was very nice.”

His leg is shaking. He is alternating between flexing his fingers and tightening them into fists. “It’s not right that you did that, Bess. It’s
my
life.”

And it’s a free country
, the little girl in Bess wants to cry out. “I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d tell me not to go.”

“That’s exactly what I would have told you.”

“But this is how I approach things when I’m confused, Rory. I do research.”

“I’m not one of your assignments, Bess.”

“No, you’re more important than that. You’re the one I’m considering marrying for the rest of my life. Please.”

Rory glances at her, trying, it seems, to figure her out. His eyes are swimming in anger. It lets her know she can’t tell him about Dao’s e-mail, or her intention to seek out the others. She will, in time, and hopefully he’ll forgive her. After all, he didn’t tell her right away about his wives. He of all people should understand how hard the truth can be.

“She’s doing well, in case you’re interested.”

Rory runs his hand down his face. Bess can tell Carol’s well-being is not where his head is at the moment. “Bess, why can’t you see that it’s all just . . . history?”

“What do you mean? It’s not worth exploring? Look at what I do for a living.”

“But you don’t have to know everything about the past to live in the present.”

“And you don’t have to dismiss it all so easily, either.” Bess realizes she has raised her voice, and lowers it. “You can’t disconnect from a past just like that, just because you want to. I’m trying to understand you and you’re a sum of your experiences. We all are. I need to understand those experiences to understand you.”

“But those experiences . . .” Rory searches for words. “I was a different person in each of those experiences.”

“You were and you weren’t. I need more to go on than that. I had this friend once. She hardly listened to anything I said. I must have told her a million times how much it bothered me, and she would try to listen, but that would last a week and then she’d go back to her old ways. This went on for years until I finally said:
I can’t have a friendship like this anymore
. She was not going to change. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“But she could change. She just didn’t want to.”

“I don’t think she could. Or maybe she could, but it was a default mode for her. What’s your default mode?”

“What’s yours?” Rory cries out. “To distrust? Find fault?”

Bess looks to the house, recalling the fights between her grandparents. Is this what they feel when they argue? Like having a boa constrictor tightening around your chest?

“Bess,” Cricket calls out from the kitchen window. “We should get going if you want to make Fallingwater in time.”

Bess waves and says she’ll be right there. Then she looks at Rory. Her mind is reeling. Is he having second thoughts about his marriage proposal? How long will he wait for an answer before his love wanes and the question is no longer in play? What if he finds out about her quest for his ex-wives and rescinds the offer for good? “Rory, don’t give up on me, okay? I need to do this trip.”

He sighs deeply.

I
n twenty minutes they are set to go. Stella’s in her crate in the back next to Peace, her right arm bent upright in a permanent wave. Bess positioned her behind Millie so she wouldn’t see Peace easily, and put a T-shirt and a pair of her shorts on her. Irv and Millie are in the second row of seats, waving to Gerald through the window. Millie’s eyes are glassy. “I hope Gerald will be okay,” she says. “I so worry about him.”

Bess reaches through the open window and squeezes Millie’s hand. She knows how fond Millie and Gerald are of each other. But she suspects Millie’s sadness goes deeper than that, tied up in the feelings of more permanent good-byes, of change, of letting go. She can’t imagine what her grandparents must be going through right now. She looks over at Irv. He is fiddling with the map.

“So long,” Cricket yells to Rory from the passenger seat. Bess had been cagey explaining to Cricket why she had been in a bad mood after her weekend away with Rory. Ever since, Cricket has been acting as if Bess is keeping secrets and Rory is surely to blame for something.

“G’bye yourself,” Rory calls out. “Have a safe trip.” And then it’s Bess and Rory’s turn to say good-bye. He leans on the van and looks at the ground. She wipes her sunglasses on her cotton shirt.
I’ll miss you
, she says
.
I’ll miss you, too
, he says
.

Bess drives out onto the suburban street. In the mirror she can see Gerald and Rory waving good-bye. Poor Gerald. She is touched by the poignancy of their image together.

“Look at Rory’s cup. He’s going to drive away with it still on his roof,” says Cricket.

“Oh, I think you’re right,” says Millie. “People do that all the time, don’t they now.” She tries to sound airy, but her scratchy voice betrays her dolor.

“Mildred, you’re sitting on my hat,” says Irv. “Move your tuchas.”

“America,” says Cricket, “here we come.”

Bess catches Millie and Irv looking back at their diminishing house. They turn back around and she sees in their faces the depth of their sadness.

Chapter Twenty

R
ory watches the van turn the corner and feels the emptiness of a long day ahead. There is a silence particular to the suburbs that makes him feel sleepy. It’s a silence of distant noises—the tiny cries of birds and insects, the low hum of a car or plane or lawnmower as if everything interesting is happening far away. He remembers this feeling from his teenage years, lying on the front lawn of his post-WWII tract home, the other members of his family out somewhere: at school, church, the pub, playing football. He’d daydream of hopping a bus to Dublin, though he rarely acted on his escape impulses until his mother kicked him out of the house to get a job. Then, it seems, his impulses went into overdrive and have been strong ever since. At one point during this week a deep-rooted desire to escape his relationship with Bess and even the city took hold the way it used to in his twenties, that desire to say to hell with it and move on in the hopes it would all get easier if he left the hardships behind. But thankfully it was a fleeting thought, recognizable to him now as a puerile cop-out. Still, as he leans against his car under a warm sun in the heart of Rockville, he can’t help feeling left behind and out of control.