Husband and Wives (3 page)

My cell phone rang and I saw that it was Milt. I said, ‘Yes, Sheriff?’

‘Hey, babe, glad you could make it.’

‘What do you need me to do?’ I asked.

‘You know what a plural family is?’ he asked me.

‘Yes, a polygamist – usually, almost always male – with multiple wives.’

‘Yep. Well, that’s what we got here,’ he said. ‘The two women out there on the street are the two surviving wives, and all the children are this man’s kids. Can you take them into one of the other houses and get what you can out of ’em?’

‘No problem,’ I said, although I’d rather have a go at the husband. I knew very little about plural families, but had my own feelings on the subject. Subservient women, domineering men, and children raised to continue the tradition, if one wanted to call such behavior a ‘tradition.’

I walked up to the group, working my way up to the two women holding babies. ‘Excuse me, ladies,’ I said. ‘I’m Dr McDonnell, a consultant with the sheriff’s department. The sheriff has asked me to talk to the two of you. Would it be possible for all of us, including the children, to move into one of the other houses?’

‘Of course,’ the older of the two women said. She held out the hand that wasn’t holding a baby. ‘I’m Carol Anne Hudson, and this,’ she said, indicating the younger woman, ‘is Rene Hudson. These,’ she said, spreading her arm to indicate all the children, ‘are our children.’

At that declaration, the oldest of the girls ran up to her and latched on, hugging her tight. Carol Anne pulled the girl to her. ‘It’s all right, Lynnie. It’s all right.’ She turned to the younger wife. ‘Rene, why don’t we take everybody into my house?’

Rene nodded. Of the two, Carol Anne stood out. She was tall and slender, her strawberry-blonde hair shining in the sunlight of an autumn day. Her face, devoid of make-up, was lovely and so pale you could actually see blue veins beneath the skin of her throat. Her eyes were a piercing blue and her mouth wide with generous lips. And even in the shapeless housedress she was wearing, you could almost see a perfect body beneath.

Rene, on the other hand, appeared to be lacking in all categories while standing beside her fellow wife. She had mousy brown hair and was short and somewhat pudgy. Nothing stood out about Rene. She was just there. Theirs would be an interesting dichotomy.

The house Carol Anne led us to – the one she declared to be hers – was on the right as you entered the cul-de-sac. It was a large, two-story house, all gray-blue with white trim and shutters and a bright red front door. The driveway that led to a detached garage was littered with bikes, skateboards, scooters, and other boy-stuff, including a basketball hoop attached to the front of the garage.

The red door led us into a home as outstanding as Carol Anne. The foyer was tiled in white ceramic, the walls painted a dark blue, and the stair rails and doorframes were a brilliant white. A great deal of the dark blue wall space was taken up with exquisite black and white close-up photos of the four boys. On the right of the foyer was a large dining room with a table that sat ten. The table was old and trestle style, while each ladder-back chair was individually painted in bright primary colors to depict different scenes. The walls were painted a bright red and covered in colorful tropical-looking paintings. On the left of the foyer was the living room. It housed the largest flat-screen TV I’ve ever seen, and the furniture consisted of several old and slightly decrepit recliners and futons, all covered with bright-colored throws. The walls, painted a bright yellow, were filled with photos and paintings and
objets d’art
.

‘Ben,’ Carol Anne said to one of the boys, ‘please take everyone upstairs, OK?’

Three of the older girls grabbed the babies and trudged up the stairs behind the others.

‘You have a lovely home, Mrs Hudson,’ I said as I took a seat on a futon.

‘Please, call me Carol Anne.’ She grinned. ‘There are too many Mrs Hudsons.’ Her face fell and tears sprang to her eyes. ‘Oh, dear Lord, I don’t believe I said that.’

Rene came over and sat next to Carol Anne on the other futon. The women hugged, holding on to each other for what seemed an inordinate length of time.

Finally they broke apart and Carol Anne said, ‘What can we tell you, Dr McDonnell?’

I had an overwhelming urge to tell her to call me Jean, but didn’t give in to it. I needed to control the situation as much as I could, and keeping myself in the role of authority figure would help me do that. ‘To start with, I don’t know a lot about plural families. Could you tell me the origin of yours?’

‘The origin? Well, it goes back to the origins of the Church of the Latter Day Saints. Monogamy is new to the Church. Rene and I were both raised in plural families. My mother was my father’s second wife out of three, and Rene, your mom . . .?’

‘She was Daddy’s fourth, and last,’ she said with pride, ‘wife. But this was after his first wife had died, and her children, my brothers and sisters, were all adults by then.’

‘And your husband and Mary?’ I asked.

‘Jerry’s mom was a second wife, but it didn’t work out and there was a divorce. She raised Jerry all by herself, but in a plural community, so he saw how well it
could
work,’ Carol Anne said. ‘Mary was from a single family with several siblings. She and Jerry met in high school and were married right after graduation. They both went on to college. Mary got her teaching degree, and Jerry got his masters in electrical engineering.’

‘And Mary had three of her babies while she was still in college!’ Rene said proudly, then welled up, realizing she was talking about her deceased friend, or whatever you’d call that relationship.

‘At what point did you join their family, Carol Anne?’ I asked.

‘When I was seventeen. Right after I graduated high school. I knew them both quite well from church, and Jerry had been quite attentive to me, and he and Mary came together to ask my parents, since I was technically underage, but they agreed. It was right after Jerry and Mary both graduated from college. Mary worked for several years as a teacher while Jerry was getting his masters, and I was the homemaker, taking care of Mary’s three and then having three of my own pretty quickly,’ she said with a smile. ‘It was a very good time. We all lived in one house, and then when Jerry got his masters we were going to continue with the two incomes, but then Mary got pregnant with Nathaniel . . .’

Rene laughed. ‘And then you got pregnant with Oscar . . .’

Carol Anne laughed back. ‘My fourth son. And then Mary got pregnant with Candice, and then Nell and then Margaret, so it just seemed better for both Mary and me to stay at home with our children. There were too many children for just one house, so Jerry built Mary a really nice house on the same property as the original house back in Oregon, and then the eight of them – Mary and her seven children, moved into that house, and my four boys and I stayed in the older house. Which, believe me, was plenty big enough!’

‘I take it Little Mark wasn’t born until you moved here?’

‘Right. He’s only fourteen months,’ Carol Anne said.

‘Didn’t you resent Mary getting the new house?’ I asked.

For a second Carol Anne looked genuinely confused. Then she smiled. ‘Oh! I guess some people would,’ she said, ‘but that’s not how we work.’ She smiled at me and, to my amazement, I believed her. Was it just because of the beautiful smile, the lilting voice? Was I getting a girl-crush on beautiful Carol Anne?

Rene spoke up. ‘Jerry told both of us – Carol Anne and me – that Mary was his soulmate. She would always come first, but that they both had love enough in their hearts for more.’

‘And the children!’ Carol Anne spoke up, her face beaming. ‘I couldn’t love Mary’s children more if they came from my womb. And Rene’s, too.’ She shook her head. ‘It must be difficult if you’re not from a plural community, or know plural families, to understand the . . .’ she tilted her head and said, ‘dynamic? Is that the word you use?’ I nodded. ‘OK, the dynamic of our lifestyle. God, family, country. In a lot of Christian homes, it’s God, country, family. But when you’re in a plural family . . .’ She looked to Rene and they spoke in unison, both smiling. ‘Family
is
country!’ And they laughed.

‘Gross!’ came loud and proud from the stairway as two boys bounded down the stairs and into the living room.

One, with reddish-blond hair and freckles on his nose, said, ‘Michael just did a number two so bad we’ll have to fumigate, Mom!’

‘Oscar!’ Carol Anne said, as the other boy interrupted. ‘Yeah, Mama Carol Anne. It was ripe!’

Standing and taking both boys by the nape of the neck, Carol Anne said, ‘Dr McDonnell, this,’ she said, shaking the smiling boy with the reddish-blond hair, ‘is my son, Oscar, and this,’ she said, indicating the other boy, ‘is my son by Mary, Nathaniel. They are both very rude.’ The way she said ‘my son by Mary’ came out as almost one word.

Rene stood up. ‘I do believe that’s my cue to go change a diaper,’ she said and headed up the stairs.

Both boys tried to hide their smiles. ‘Sorry,’ they said in unison.

‘Say hello to Dr McDonnell,’ Carol Anne said.

They both did.

‘Now if you’re so sure you’re going to vomit, why don’t you go outside and play?’ she said.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ they said in faux-rejection, then both ran screaming for the front door.

After the door closed, I asked Carol Anne, ‘Nathaniel is Mary’s son, right?’

‘Yes,’ she said, pulling her arms across her chest, as if suddenly cold.

‘Does he know?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘That’s up to his father,’ she said. At which point the front door opened and a disheveled and beaten-down Jerry Hudson walked in the door. I took that opportunity to leave.

TWO

Milt Kovak – Monday

‘
I
just think it’s another way of subjugating women,’ she said as we came in the front door.

‘What is, Mama?’ Johnny Mac, our six-year-old son, asked.

‘Sorry, honey,’ Jean said, ruffling his hair. ‘Work talk. Promise – no more.’

‘What’s subgating?’ he asked.

‘Sub-ju-gating,’ Jean supplied. ‘Look it up in the dictionary.’

‘I don’t care that much!’ Johnny Mac muttered under his breath as he turned and headed for the living room.

I laughed and Jean threw her purse on the kitchen table and leaned her crutches against the wall.

‘Oh, you think that’s funny, do you?’ she said. ‘At that age, I would have looked up the word then been in the encyclopedias looking up proof!’

‘Yeah, kinda neat having a normal kid, huh?’ I said, smiling.

‘He is
not
normal!’ Jean replied.

I got behind her where she stood at the sink and kissed her neck. ‘Sorry, sweetie. I don’t think our Johnny Mac is gonna skip three grades and be a freshman in college at fourteen.’

‘He could!’ she said, a little whine in her voice as she brutalized a potato.

‘I’m gonna change clothes,’ I said, heading to our bedroom, which was on the other side of the kitchen.

‘I’ll be there in just a minute. I want to get these potatoes on first.’

It had been a rough day, for me and Jean both. Although she appeared to disapprove of a plural family, she seemed somewhat fascinated by the idea. And to tell the truth, so was I. Where the man, Jerry Hudson, got the nads to try to support three women and three households of kids was beyond me. Where he got the funds was another matter. Would that be enough to make a man want to kill his wife? His oldest wife. Running out of money, gotta get rid of one, why not the oldest? The other two – whoa. The redhead was hot, but that little brunette – she had one of those round little butts that you just wanna . . .

Anyway, that was one theory. Jerry came home, killed his wife, while his kid was asleep in the next room? Cold, man. Really cold. I couldn’t see the man I met doing that. But I’ve read up in Jean’s books about sociopaths, who mimic the behavior of others, as they have no indicators in themselves to real feelings and stuff. Jerry Hudson could be one of those. But somehow I doubted it. What about the wives? Gotta be some jealousy going on. How could there not be? Three women, one man? Shit. Have you ever tried just dating two women? A man could get killed that way.

We had some dinner and Jean got Johnny Mac bathed and dressed for bed. I took him upstairs to his bathroom to brush his teeth. Then we hit the bed, said our prayers, and I got him tucked in.

‘Daddy?’ he said as I started to leave the room.

‘Yeah, tiger?’

‘When did you know you loved Mommy?’ he asked.

Hum. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘just about the minute I saw her.’

‘No, really.’

‘It was pretty fast, big guy. Why do you ask?’

He rolled over, his back to me. ‘Oh, no reason. I just think I love somebody.’

I sat down on the side of his bed. ‘Who’s that?’ I asked.

‘Miss Crenshaw.’

‘Miss Crenshaw your teacher?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘She’s beautiful.’

‘You’re right, son. She’s a real pretty lady.’

‘’Night, Daddy,’ he said.

I kissed his ear. ‘’Night, son.’

I left the room, heading back down the stairs. When I was in first grade, my teacher was a mean old bag named Mrs Van Nubbins. She had tightly curled gray hair, thick glasses, and a big ass. She also carried a ruler around and would always swat your knuckles for no good reason. Nowadays teachers are always young, pretty, actually talk to the kids, and they don’t hit. There’s something to be said, every once in a while, for progress.

Later, when Jean and I crawled into bed, I told her about Johnny Mac’s crush on Miss Crenshaw.

‘OK,’ she said putting down her medical journal and taking off her reading glasses. ‘The general therapy for this—’

‘Whoa now!’ I said. ‘I didn’t tell you this as a psychiatrist, I told you this as his mama, for God’s sake.’

‘I’m both,’ she said.

‘I know that, and you know that, but Johnny Mac doesn’t know that. He’s in love with his teacher. OK. Let him have it. It’s barely October. By Christmas, he’ll have a crush on some little girl.’

‘You’re right,’ she said.

I faked a heart attack. ‘Lord, I’m coming!’ I said to the ceiling. ‘Take me now! She actually said it!’