The Ninth Wife (17 page)

Anyway, I won’t dwell on what you can already assume. The four of us had a beautiful wedding under the Fremont Bridge, in front of the troll, married by Steven, our counselor from the support group who was also a justice of the peace. It was drizzling, it being April in Seattle, but that didn’t sour the mood. Pam was in a wheelchair by then, but she looked lovely in a white dress Yasmin had picked out for her and flowers I’d bought her that morning. We celebrated with poached salmon and Chardonnay overlooking the bay and we were happy.

And then . . . well, and then she was gone. That’s what I’ll say because the last undignified days of cancer are not ones to remember, though I’ll tell you that on the day it happened, the very day she slipped away two months after our wedding—that’s what it seemed like, slipping away, for there was no fight left in her—I was dozing in a corner chair and when the nurse woke me and told me, I felt like someone had taken all the bones out of my body. What I remember is not being able to stand. What I remember is the feeling of staring at the TV like I used to do for hours back in Ireland when I was young, utterly mesmerized. It was around the time of the O.J. murders, and they kept playing that intolerably slow car chase. I remember watching the Bronco in the hospital that day and thinking that at the moment of Pam’s death the world must have turned into a funny place. Murder and car chases and cops, it should all be fast and furious the way it usually is, but there he was going thirty miles an hour on the highway. Was he really going that slow? I thought. Did this woman I love really just die? And then it was strange but sitting there in the chair next to Pam’s bed, the nurses moving about, taking care of things, touching my shoulder with their sympathies, I felt a profound sense of peace. I don’t know how else to describe it. I watched the Bronco pull into a driveway and stop—
he was giving up
—and with that I held Pam’s cool hand and cried and thanked her, my Pam, my wife, who showed me what it was to love again, God rest her soul.

And I did. Love again, that is, deeply and passionately in a way I hadn’t yet experienced. My marriage to Pam taught me how.

Chapter Thirteen

W
ith her new karate belt, Bess has stepped up to a new class, and now each week whips into play with a hundred
kima
punches. To get into position, she takes a big step sideways and squats with her butt out and her knees directly over her ankles. If she holds this stance long enough her thigh muscles start to burn, reminding her that sometimes the more difficult things in life come from trying to stay still.

From there, she twists her hips into alternating jabs,
hana, dool, set, net, dasut
, and with each count she keeps her eyes up, aims to the middle, squares off her shoulders, keeps her wrists straight, and—because she is concentrating hard—she throws in a childhood habit and lets slip from out the side of her mouth the tip of her tongue. When her teacher walks in front of them, telling this one
power
, this one
speed it up
, this one
good intensity
, he gets to Bess, points to her tongue, and shakes his head. It is in one of those moments of lost dignity that she has this thought: If she wants to be taken seriously, she should keep her mouth shut.

“It’s funny almost, but true. I really should just keep my mouth shut.” Bess is talking to Rory as he drives them north into Rockville where he will meet Millie and Irv for the first time. He has agreed to spend this Sunday afternoon helping them pack for their move. It is part of his reparations for missing the concert a few weeks ago. He had a gig he’d forgotten about, he told her, so she brought her assistant and was glad she went, but nevertheless, she told him it wasn’t considerate what he did. He assured her that it was not, as she’d put it, a “foreshadowing.” He apologized, she forgave him, he apologized again, she kissed him so he’d shut up, then they had satisfying makeup sex. Still, it reminded her to tread cautiously where future plans were concerned.

“Bess, seriously,” he says, “your teacher wasn’t telling you you talk too much. It’s kind of cute the way you read into things.” There is a rattling in his old Corolla. He presses down at points on his dashboard to find the culprit, then gives up and searches instead for a music tape, several of which he is sitting on.

“Looking for this?” says Bess, holding one up. His car is so musty and messy it makes Bess cough. There is dust on the dashboard, crumbs in the cracks of the threadbare seats, coffee stains on the carpet below his bare feet. It doesn’t seem to bother him. He must be the only person she knows whose car still plays cassette tapes.

“That’s the one.” He pops it in the player and taps his fingers on the wheel to the Chieftains’ “Changing Your Demeanour.” “You know my grandmother used to scold us for getting words wrong. Before she passed, God rest her soul, she would sit in our kitchen and say, ‘Boys, don’t mince your words, don’t mumble your sentences!’ She said it so often we’d make fun of her for it. Then one day in winter she had a stroke, poor thing, and lost her ability to differentiate between her S’s and her SH’s. ‘Come boysh,’ she’d say, pointing to the chairs, ‘shit, shit, and have shome tea.”

Bess laughs. “True story?”

“True story.”

Bess never knows whether to believe him. In the beginning, he rarely relented on his “true story” defense and Bess would get frustrated. But since then she’s taught herself to not care about believing, to feel lucky that she’s with a man who can make her laugh. Now, when he tells a story of lady luck or the girl next door, of boyhood bullies and devilish shenanigans, she asks,
True story?
, he says,
True story
, and they leave it at that.

“My grandmother isn’t the stuff of legend, but she can be a character,” says Bess. “She’s very nice, you’ll see. Or maybe you won’t. She and my grandfather fight a lot and haven’t been hiding it lately, so who knows if they’ll hide it from you.”

“It’s got to be stressful for them, a big move like this. Are you sure they’re okay with me helping them pack? It won’t be awkward?”

“No, they’ve heard all about you. Besides, they don’t have a choice. They sold the house; the closing’s next month and there’s so much to do to get ready.” Bess is touched by Rory’s sensitivity. She is touched by the way he grabs on to his chin with the V of his thumb and forefinger as if stroking an imaginary beard, how his fingers stay there to pinch his ruddy cheeks and scratch below his ear. She loves the relaxed way he sits behind the wheel, his legs spread open, the thick material of his jeans peaked below his belt like an erection. She reaches out to touch him.

“Bess, c’mon now, I’m driving.” He is smiling, warding off her advances.

She retracts her hand, gazing out the window and surveying the passing houses, thinking of her grandparents leaving their home. She’s been over to see them often in the last month and each time is more difficult than the last. One more box packed, one more carload to Goodwill. They are disappearing one bubble-wrapped bowl at a time. She’s glad Rory is coming with her today. “Have I told you how long my grandparents have been married?”

Rory glances at her and doesn’t answer.

“Yeah okay, I’ve told you. But it
is
amazing, isn’t it? Sixty-five years? Unbelievable.”

“Unbelievable,” Rory mumbles.

How long does she have to wait to ask if marriage is a future consideration? Bess wonders. Did Millie experience this with Irv sixty-five years ago? Probably not. They probably both daydreamed of growing old together as young lovers and now here they are, old and together.

“I can’t imagine what it would be like to be alone again after sixty-five years,” says Bess. “Maybe that’s why my grandmother wants to move. I think she’s thinking how she’ll cope when my grandfather’s gone.” Bess leans her head against her headrest, enervated by the sadness of these thoughts, seeming more portentous said aloud.

“It is sad,” says Rory, pensive and distant. “I don’t think it matters how long you’ve been married, it’s hard to lose someone you love, to see death come and take her away.”

Bess turns to him. “You said her.”

“What?”

“You said take
her
away.”

They come to the end of the road and he has to ask which way to go. She tells him to turn here, fifth house on the right, but her words are on autopilot, separate from the shock that’s locked her mind on to a million new questions. “Rory,” she finds the strength to say, “were you married to someone who passed away? True story?”

He pulls up to the house, looks at her and then down at his lap. “True story. Bess,” he says hesitantly, “we should talk . . .” and before he can say anything else, before he even turns off the engine, Millie and Irv are at the edge of the curb, knocking on her car window, smiling, waving, bending over to see past her to the nice boy she has brought for them to meet.
Hello,
they cheer
, hello young man, we’ve heard so much about you, come in, come in.

W
hen it comes to how they feel about their impending move, Millie and Irv are polar opposites. Millie, for whom packing is akin to spring cleaning, sings and flits about and wonders out loud how nice the weather will be out West, how many of her new neighbors will like to play bridge, what activities she and her sister can do together, and Bess, too, when she comes to visit. Irv, on the other hand, slogs and slumps and bumps into boxes. He curses their contents, empties them faster than he fills them looking for something that he’s forgotten. He doesn’t want to talk about Tucson or the move or the damn bridge players, and in his saddest moments, he says good-bye to Bess as if he’ll never see her again, an old elephant going off to die.

“You seem like a very nice man,” he says solemnly to Rory. “You take good care of my granddaughter. She has meant the world to me.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Irving!” yells Millie. “Enough with the past tense. Do you see what I have to put up with?” They are all standing in the kitchen keeping Millie company as she does some early preparation for dinner. She refuses to let anyone help, but Bess knows she likes to talk when she cooks. The kitchen is yellow and bright and where there used to be photos posted on the cabinets of Bess and her mom and her grandparents’ siblings’ grandkids, there are now Post-it notes in Millie’s frilly handwriting about utility bills and change of address forms.

“Smells good in here,” says Bess. The kitchen has the scent of citrus and rosemary, remnants of which are stuck to Millie’s white apron.

“Thank you, dear.” With the wooden spoon Millie slaps the rump of a capon as if sending it on its merry way and slips the dish into the oven. The slapping of poultry is part of Millie’s superstitions about cooking. Pat the rear end of a bird and it’ll be tasty and moist. Toss a matzo ball in the air and it’ll cook through to perfection. Say a prayer over a brisket and there will always be food on your table.

“Gramp, listen to your wife, will you? I’m still going to mean the world to you tomorrow, right?”

“Ech, tomorrow,” says Irv, wiping his brow with his monogrammed handkerchief and placing it back in his pocket. “Who can think about tomorrow.”

“Well you get back to me then, okay?” Bess rubs his back.

“Rory dear,” says Millie, “pass me that bowl behind you, will you?” The name Rory sounds odd coming from Millie’s lips, as if it’s some slang she overheard and is trying out. He looks like a giant next to them.

“Bess tells me you’ve been married sixty-five years,” Rory says to Millie.

“I’m afraid so.”

“What’s your secret?”

Millie runs her hands under the sink and turns off the faucet with her elbow. She looks at Rory over the rim of her glasses. “Inertia.”

From the time they entered the house, Bess has been mostly quiet, mulling over their conversation in the car. She let Millie and Irv do the talking through the tour of the main floor and out behind the house. They told him of that stone wall over there—
See it?
—and this entryway—
Look at the detail—
and oh, how many times they caught Bess’s parents kissing under the old cherry tree—
Don’t get any ideas you two
, which Bess took to be approval of her new nice young man. At this last comment before they walked into the kitchen, Rory squeezed Bess’s shoulder and she took a deep breath and tried to shake off her funk.

So what if he didn’t tell her about his wife? He’ll share in time, and that can only bring them closer together, like it did with Cricket. In the quiet of a recent pajama-clad night, when Cricket seemed more like his old self—subdued and reflective—he had poured Bess a cup of jasmine tea and told her a few stories of his nine-year marriage to a young typist from his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, named Isabella. He and Isabella were close childhood friends whose parents practically arranged their marriage when they were in preschool. Cricket was in sales and hardly home; she tended the garden, folded sheets, twirled the phone cord around her pink-frosted fingernails when she gossiped with girlfriends. He regretted putting her at the center of that gossip when he left her. Bess had more questions, but she was sleepy and had to ask for a rain check to hear more, and somehow that seemed okay with Cricket. It was the not knowing that had hurt. With a good friend, the knowing has time and space to grow and take root. It should be no different with Rory.

But then there was something still niggling at Bess:
We should talk
. Every person who has ever been dumped knows those words, like the poised palms right before they push you off the cliff.

While Millie sets the oven timer and Rory steps out to use the bathroom, Irv leans in to Bess and mimics her countenance with a frown. “Have a nut,” he says, reaching out to her with a bowl of salted cashews. Despite his sight impediments, his memory loss, and his own grievances, Irv can sometimes be very perceptive of Bess’s moods. He doesn’t usually come out and ask her what she’s thinking; instead, he offers her something to chew on like a mother offering her crying infant a pacifier. When Bess says, “No thanks,” he moves the bowl closer to her and says, “You like cashews.” He says it as if she may have forgotten who she is and he is there to help her remember. She takes a few nuts. He smiles approvingly and reaches up to gently pinch her cheek. “You’re young. What could be so bad in your life that you can’t enjoy a nut, eh?”