The Ninth Wife (27 page)

“So what happened? What did you do?”

What happened?
Rory thinks.
I still can’t get people to take me seriously.
“What happened was,” he says to Katie, “I sold my sense of humor for a buck fifty to a very serious man. Now he’s having a grand ol’ time, walking around Dublin telling jokes and laughing up a storm. And me? Well, I turned into him, see? I became very serious. I never told another funny story ever again. I never laugh and I never ever tell a joke,
especially
not the one about the two gorillas in tiaras at their high school prom.”

“You’ve told that one to me, like, a million times.”

“Nope, you’re wrong. It couldn’t have been me. I’m very serious, remember?”

Katie smiles. A large man eating a soft pretzel brushes their legs as he walks by. “Come,” says Rory. “Let’s get a slice of pizza.”

Katie follows Rory to the end of the line of people waiting to order. They stand by the gallon of ketchup. Katie unwraps a straw to chew on. “Rory?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I come visit if you and Bess get married?”

“Absolutely. You know what she told me when you two first met? She said you were very pretty. She thought you must be fighting off all the boys at school.”

Katie rolls her eyes. “She wouldn’t say that if she knew the boys in my school. Most of them smell like barf.”

Rory laughs. “I see. Well, maybe they’ll smell better in a year or two.”

Rory and Katie catch the tail end of a halftime show featuring two belly dancers who provoke whoops and catcalls with their stomping, jiggling finale. Sean is a few rows down, talking to Babs over the divider. Babs blows Katie a kiss; Katie waves. What must Katie think of her dad and Rory, these two middle-aged, single, divorced men trying to figure out how to win over women? Will she end up marrying for the
right
reasons? Will she want to marry at all? She hasn’t exactly had the best role models. Rory wonders what he could say to help her.
Don’t be afraid
, is what pops into his mind, though he’s not sure what that means.

Sean returns to his seat. “Give her time,” he says.

“What’s that?”

Sean leans back in his chair with his arms crossed, his gaze out toward the rink. “Bess,” he says. “Give her time. She’ll come around.”

“Thanks,” says Rory. Moments later a whistle blows and a new game begins.

Chapter Nineteen

T
he plans to drive her grandparents to Tucson progressed quickly and now the departure day is upon them. The rental minivan is illegally parked below her bay window. Bess is eager to take a few weeks off from work, D.C., her life. She needs time alone to think about Rory, and to be with Millie and Irv as a family before they move away for good. She hopes the journey will help them talk about aspects of their lives they have kept hidden from her all these years. Maybe, too, being together will calm them through this rough transition, curtailing the recent escalation of their vicious fights.

Bess looks around her living room at what she has packed. Gathered around her suitcase are several bags: one for snacks and bottled water; one for her laptop, iPod, and other gadgets; one for maps, guidebooks, a notebook, books—including one on Zen for the martial artist—and CDs of old radio shows from the library she hopes will get her grandparents in the mood to wax nostalgic.

There is also the box Gaia asked her to transport. Bess hadn’t seen Gaia or Pearl since that day at Eastern Market when Sonny called. She didn’t want to. She was too mad at Gaia for accepting Sonny back into her life so easily. But when she found out they were flying to California to live with Sonny, she found it hard to say good-bye. It was too much, all this moving away. Gaia asked her to take the box because she didn’t want Sonny to ask about it and because what it held—a secret Gaia promised to reveal when it arrived—meant too much to risk shipping. Bess said sure, she’d do it. She had decided to drive the extra miles to California anyway in part to visit a grad school friend who was now teaching in the folklore and mythology department at UCLA, but mostly to have the last day of her cross-country journey to herself. It seemed the right way to end this sort of trip. She’d drop off the rental car there and fly home.

Bess checks her iPod to make sure it is fully charged. She has downloaded a variety of music for the trip, mostly from female folk artists for when she feels mellow, and zydeco and gospel a capella quartets when she needs a boost. She has music she thinks Irv would like, too, blues singers like Henry Gray and Willie Earl King, and still others she wants him to hear: good old-time banjo picking and bluegrass the likes of Dwight Diller, Ralph Stanley, and Doc Watson. Maybe she should bring her banjo and try learning how to play. The instrument always makes her think warmly of her dad, playing her to sleep. And now it makes her think of Rory, too. She takes it off her wall, strums a few chords. And then there’s a knock on her door.

“Coming,” she sings. “Who is it?”

“Your chauffeur, reporting for duty,” shouts Cricket.

Bess opens the door and sees Cricket in brown Bermuda shorts. To his right is a small suitcase with pink ribbon identifiers; on his left is Stella, looking up at Bess and panting noisily, a blue traveling backpack strapped around her torso. Hanging from his neck are sunglasses and a money holder clean enough to look freshly purchased. There is a whiff of grapefruit about his person. “Where are you going?” she asks.

“With you.”

“What do you mean
with me
?”

“You can’t drive the length of the country by yourself, we both know that. You fall asleep at the wheel, it’s not safe.” Cricket waves her aside and enters her apartment.

“Cricket,” she says, following him. “I appreciate your looking out for me, I really do, but we have everything worked out.”

How would she deepen her bond with her grandparents with Cricket there? She packed folk music and R&B for the montages, not show tunes. And how could she look for Rory’s ex-wives? She hadn’t told Cricket. She had merely said she and Rory had had their first fight, but they were working it out. “Seriously, we don’t have enough room.”

Cricket pours Stella a bowl of water and stands by the bay window. He peeks down at the van. “You can fit Millie and Irv in the glove compartment of that
monstrosity
.”

“It’s smaller than it looks. We can’t fit any more luggage in there.”

Cricket surveys her living room floor.

“Okay look,” says Bess. “You can’t exactly just come in here five minutes before I’m about to leave and announce you’re coming. My grandparents are looking forward to spending time alone with their granddaughter, know what I mean?”

“Touching, but no. They’re thrilled I’m joining you. They used the word
thrilled
, I’m almost positive.”

Bess stares at him, then drops onto her couch. Stella nudges her for a good chin scratch, then licks Bess’s knee just below her denim skirt. “When did you talk to them?”

“Well, I didn’t speak to them exactly. I e-mailed Millie—you know I adore her, she’s so cute on e-mail. I wanted to wish her the best of luck with her move.”

“That’s it? And they invited you without asking me?”

“I offered to help with the driving.” Cricket is now wiping the counter with a folded paper towel, purposely not looking up. “And I may have mentioned I have a friend in Denver who’s dying.”

“Oh please, that’s low.”

Cricket doesn’t look up, doesn’t snap back a snide remark.

“Cricket? That isn’t true, is it?”

Cricket stops moving. “It’s Isabella.”

Bess thinks for a moment. “Your ex-wife?”

“She needs a lung transplant, but they don’t think she’s a good candidate for it. She’s very sick. That’s why Claus wanted me to call her, remember? I haven’t seen her for years and—” He stops abruptly. He has his hand over his heart, a gesture that looks wholly unselfconscious.

Bess feels a deep tenderness toward him. Because he only recently mentioned he had an ex-wife, she had assumed that Isabella was a minor player in the sum of what makes Cricket tick. But she understands how certain people from the past can surface at any time and have an effect as powerful as those who are physically present. She has only to think of her mom and dad to know this is true. “I’m sorry,” she says.

Outside, Bess hears muffled laughter, the closing of a car door, the revving of an engine. She wonders briefly who belongs to the sounds, what they’re talking about, where they’re going. It would be nice to have Cricket along for support and comic relief, she admits. Maybe this could work. “For the record, you should have asked me instead of talking to my grandparents first. And you could have given me fair warning instead of springing this on me as I’m leaving.”

“You’re quite right,” he says, gently. “I’m sorry.”

She loves this soft side of him. “I guess we could go to Denver and then head south. We’re already going north to Chicago for a few days. Millie wants to see her sister.”

“Stella loves Chicago.”

“When was Stella in Chicago?”

“Well, she wasn’t. But she loves the movie. Richard Gere was positively edible.”

“And how do you plan on getting home?”

“I’ll get home, don’t you worry.”

“You’d be on your own today. We’re staying in Pittsburgh tonight and stopping off first for a tour of Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright house.”

“Yes, Millie told me. I’ve already seen Fallingwater, thank you very much. I had to pee through the entire tour. I’ll read in the van. And I already called a friend in Pittsburgh. She has graciously opened up her home to me and Stella.”

“Okay then,” says Bess, slapping her thighs and standing up. “It’s the four of us.
Five
of us, excuse me,” she adds, patting Stella. “It’s nine-thirty, we should be on our way to Millie and Irv’s. You have more luggage downstairs, I take it?”

“Just a wee thing.”

“You don’t have anything
wee
,” says Bess. “With Gaia’s box we’re already tight, but we’ll make it work.” Bess hands Cricket the van keys. “Why don’t you put your stuff in the van and I’ll meet you down there.”

Bess needs to talk to Gabrielle. She chose to tell her about Rory after her trip to Boston mostly because she thought Gabrielle could ask Paul, her new boyfriend at the Social Security Administration, to get information on the whereabouts of the other ex-wives. Paul was the guy Gabrielle met at the singles party; they’ve been hot and heavy ever since. Gabrielle—after she heard the story and stopped saying
holy shit
and laughing and apologizing for laughing and saying she was ready to get serious,
holy shit—
agreed to help Bess locate these women. After all, Bess pointed out, she was the guilty party who introduced her to Rory in the first place.

“Sorry I woke you,” says Bess to Gabrielle’s yawn. “I’m leaving soon and you’re the only one with a key to my place. Can you water my plants and take in my mail?”

“What happened to Ignatius?”

“Turns out, Cricket’s coming. He just told me.”

“Quite the party.”

“It’s fine. Hey, did you ever ask Paul if he could get any information for me?”

“He’s not helpful. Even if you could get him their social security numbers, he says he’d get in big trouble if he tried to look them up, something like five years’ jail time. I told him he’d look hot in an orange jumpsuit.” Gabrielle yawns again, a long, vocal yawn in a high register. “So what’s the update? Did you ever hear back from the oil slick chick?”

“Yeah, listen to this.” Bess boots up her laptop and reads Dao’s e-mail.

“Concubines in a pleasure palace? She’s on something.”

“She does sound kind of strange. It’s like she’s some guru who’s been alone on top of a mountain too long. But maybe she’s really wise.”

“Or she might be a fucking lunatic. Did you write her back?”

“I did.” Bess had typed several drafts, in fact, before she sent it. There were too many questions—What was Rory like back then? Do you think he would have honored his vows had things been different? What made you want to get married? What made you want a divorce? Is your new husband like Rory?—on and on until she wanted to crawl under her covers and never come out. Dao was the real deal. That was Rory’s longest relationship, probably his healthiest one, too. She seems key to understanding Rory. But Bess decided to keep it simple. For now she needs information.
Today I visited Rory’s second wife, Carol,
she wrote
.
I’m not sure why, and I’m not sure what I got out of it, but I liked her.
And I suppose I understand Rory a little better, which is why I’m writing you, and why I’m thinking I might search for Rory’s other ex-wives, even though I’m not at all sure it’s the right thing to do.
Did you ever do that? Might you know where I can find them?
I’d very much appreciate the help if you happen to have information on any of them.
Thanks
. She didn’t know how to end it.
In solidarity
. . .
Peace to you, too . . . Sincerely . . . All best . . . Yours?
Bess had erased all of them and wrote, simply,
Bess
, as if the word in the end was best left alone.

“What about his first wife?” Gabrielle continues. “Did you call her?”

“Maggie? Yeah, we’ve exchanged messages. I found her through her ad agency in New York. She’s some sort of executive there, travels a lot. She seems eager to hear about Rory. What if she’s still in love with him? Or he with her?”

“Please. Too Hollywood. You’re not going to try and conjure up the one six feet under, are you?”

“Her name was Pam, and no, no séances scheduled in the immediate future.”

“So who does that leave? You saw Carol, you’re e-mailing with Dao, and you know how to reach Maggie.”

“There’s Lorraine, his third wife with the dogs; Fawn, the one-nighter from Las Vegas; Gloria from 9/11; and Olive Ann, Cici’s mother, but I don’t really have the desire to meet her since she’s in some institution somewhere.”