The Ninth Wife (29 page)

He looks over at Gerald. Gerald is standing on the sidewalk, slightly hunched, rocking back and forth with his hands cupped around his eyes as if he’s blocking out light while gazing in a window. Rory suspects he is crying. “You all right there, Gerald?”

Gerald suddenly takes off, walking quickly at a slant as if he’s heading determinedly into a strong wind.

“Shit,” says Rory under his breath. He gets into his car and turns on the engine. He has no idea what to say to Gerald, or even how to talk to him, but he suspects the right thing to do is to keep an eye on him for now. He follows behind Gerald, driving slowly while his mind wanders.
So
, he thinks,
Carol Pendleton
. He still feels angry at Bess for going behind his back to find her, though he supposes he understands why she did that. What’s getting at him, at least in part, is that it made Carol real again. Like old scars from a childhood accident, his past marriages are inescapable, they are a part of who he is, but he’s gotten good at hiding them from view and ignoring them or transferring them to the realm of a good yarn as if they happened to someone else. He even felt this way retelling the whole story to Bess as he did telling it before to others, like he was playing a part in someone else’s play. Maybe that’s why he’s always a little surprised when his listeners are shocked. Don’t they see it’s just a story after all? But then Bess actually saw Carol. Carol is twenty-five years older, living (not surprisingly) in the Boston area. Rory imagines what their conversation was like. Did Carol frame him in a positive light? How much did she elaborate on the crazy, drug-induced shenanigans they found themselves in—the raucous party-crashing, cop-bashing, peace-disturbing tribulations of twenty-year-olds on the fringe? Rory is sure he alluded to it all with Bess, though perhaps not to the degree Carol might have. Though if she’s anything like she was, she’d have the discretion not to go into details, especially not about his promiscuity. He was sure Carol knew how much he slept around, even though they never talked about it.

Oh God
. Rory is suddenly bombarded with a jarring memory of one of the girls he had sex with back then who, he discovered too late, was a junior in high school. When he tried to end their trysts, she threatened to divulge the details of said trysts to the police, but somehow Carol had stepped in and saved his ass. Was it a phone call she answered, threats made in return? Rory can’t fully recall. All he knew was, Carol made her go away. What would Bess say if she knew?

Gerald stops abruptly. Rory, lost in thought, finds he is looking at Gerald directly through his open passenger side window. “Gerald,” he calls out, “can I give you a ride?”

Gerald doesn’t answer right away. He just stands there, moving his fingers around. Then he walks around to Rory’s side. “Is this yours?” he says, handing Rory a coffee cup from the roof.

“Ah, how stupid of me,” says Rory, chuckling. “Kind of amazing it didn’t spill.”

“No, it isn’t. You were only driving the speed of walking.” Gerald walks back to the passenger side and leans into the window. “Do you want to see my beetle collection?”

Rory is taken by surprise. He feels sad for Gerald, which at the moment is a welcome distraction from his own self-pity. “Sure,” he says. He puts the car in park, expecting Gerald to get in, but Gerald takes off again, walking more slowly this time. Rory follows him for three more blocks. Gerald turns into the driveway of a brick house that’s smaller than its neighbors. Rory parks on the street. The lawn looks to be several days’ overgrown, but the general appearance is not without its charm. Though the shades are drawn, the potted hydrangeas are as welcoming as the flowery doormat and the ornamental bunny on the front step. Gerald’s bike (Rory assumes it’s Gerald’s) is leaning against the garage. There is a rusted rake on the ground and an unraveled hose pointing toward a pile of stones and four cut-off gallon milk containers filled with muddy water. Rory picks up a newspaper still in its plastic bag. “This is your house?”

“Yes,” says Gerald, examining his milk cartons.

“What ya got there?”

“Nothing. Follow me please.” Gerald picks up two stones and walks to his front door. He rings the bell three times. “That’s a mezuzah,” he says, pointing to what looks to Rory like a pack of gum stuck diagonally to the door frame. “It protects us because we’re Jewish.”

“I see.” The door opens to a dark interior. Gerald goes in and the door closes behind him. Rory finds himself standing on the stoop in front of the closed door, wondering if he should knock or turn around and go home. Before he can decide, the door opens again to a short, plump woman in sneakers, hospital pants, and a cardigan. Her frizzy gray hair frames her round face and a particularly shiny forehead. She smiles up at him.

“Hello,” she says.

“Hi there.” He hands her the bagged newspaper. “My name is Rory.”

“Nice to meet you.” Despite her warm countenance, she doesn’t invite him in. It seems like she’s waiting to hear what he’s selling. Should he say he’s Gerald’s friend?

“Excuse me, Mom,” says Gerald. “He’s here to visit me.”

“Gerald, don’t push.” She points a doughy finger his way and shakes her head.

“Ma’am,” says Rory, “Gerald and I met last week at Mr. and Mrs. Steinbloom’s home. I was there with Bess.”

“Oh! Forgive me, I know just who you are, Millie told me. Please come in. I’m Vivian, Gerald’s mom. Very nice to meet you. You’re from England.”

“Ireland, actually.”

Vivian studies him, head to toe, like she’s gathering information for a gossipy phone call to Millie. “They got on the road all right? Millie was a wreck this morning.”

“They seemed okay. Just sad.”

The foyer is cluttered with coats, hats, umbrellas, a bike helmet, and other outdoor paraphernalia. On the wall next to a glued puzzle of a rabbi is a note reminding Gerald to take off his shoes and wash his hands. Rory can see the living and dining rooms from where he stands: the plush, baby blue carpeting, the sectional black leather sofa, the glass coffee table trimmed in gold. There are at least a dozen wooden boxes with compartments the size of ice cubes, each housing a little glass animal or figurine. “Can I get you something to drink?” says Vivian.

“No, thank you.”

“I would like a glass of cream soda,” says Gerald.

“You have too much soda.”

“I would like a glass of cream soda,
please
.”

“Gerald, how about drinking some water? Remember what the doctor said? Eight glasses a day.”

“Your shoes,” says Gerald, pointing to Rory. “After you take them off you can come up to my room. It’s to the right.” He disappears into his room.

“
Oy gutenu
,” says Vivian, closing the door. “You’re a very nice man to come visit my son.”

“Oh, my pleasure,” says Rory, bending over to untie his sneakers. “I think this morning was a bit rough on him.”

“Yes, yes it was. Millie and Irv are very special to him. To both of us. And poor Bess, I think she’ll feel their absence most of all. It’s a good thing she has you.” She says this last bit as if baiting him for an interesting response, but he simply stands and smiles down at her. He suddenly recalls Maggie’s dad asking him what his intentions were with his daughter. The man scared him half to death just by looking his way so when he pulled Rory aside and asked him this question, Rory nearly vomited on the spot.
I intend to marry her, sir
, he had said, sounding prepubescent, and the man laughed. It occurs to him that people like Sean still laugh when he utters those words.

“How long have you two been together?” she asks.

“A few months now.”

Vivian is standing with her hands on her hips with her thumbs forward, the way he’s seen Gerald stand. Her eyes are still roaming Rory’s surface: his hair, his arms, his jeans, his white gym socks.

“Bess is very special,” says Rory to fill the uncomfortable silence.

Vivian goes into the kitchen and comes back with a large jar of salsa. “You’re a lucky man to snatch her up,” she continues. “I never understood why a bright, pretty girl like Bess never settled down. Can you explain it? Will you open this for me?”

Rory opens the jar and hands it back. He should be going up to see Gerald now before he says something gossip-worthy. “Please excuse me, but I don’t want to keep Gerald waiting too long. Up that way?”

“Yes. You sure I can’t get you something to drink? Something to eat?”

“No, thank you. You’re very kind, but I don’t think I can stay long.”

“All right then.”

Gerald’s room is marked “Private Property” on the door and warns against trespassing. Rory finds him sitting at his desk playing chess on his computer. Rory clears his throat. Gerald doesn’t react. “Hey, Gerald,” he says.

“I have three minutes and twenty seconds left,” says Gerald without turning around.

“Okay.” Rory takes the time to look around the room. There is a mound of clothes on an unmade twin bed next to a tall dresser with a fish tank, various canisters of fish food, and what looks like four different types of deodorant. The posters on the walls are either in Hebrew or astrological or botanical in nature, showing solar systems and plant life and insects. A mobile of planets twirls languidly above a coatrack in the corner where a gray, janitorial-type uniform is slung—at least Rory assumes it’s a uniform. Does Gerald work? he wonders. He had never thought about that until now. Also on the coatrack is a kitchen strainer attached to the end of a long cane. On his desk next to his computer are two stacks of books and several framed photos.

Gerald gets up from his desk and without looking at Rory walks around him to his closet. He reaches up to a top shelf and pulls down two wooden boxes and places them in the middle of his floor. Then he retrieves two more, and two more after that. He carefully arranges them in a semicircle and sits down on the floor in front of them. Rory can see now they are display frames, each about eighteen by twenty-four inches, each with dozens of beetles pinned in neat columns. Up close they look both prehistoric and futuristic with their tiny eyes and antennae, their armor and claws.

“This is a mega-ce-phala caro-li-na,” says Gerald, pointing to one of the larger and more colorful ones in his collection. “It has seven abdomen segments because it’s a male. I didn’t catch this but I could have, I could have easily caught one even bigger if I lived in Georgia, USA.”

“Impressive,” says Rory, referring more to the sheer number of beetles and the care with which they’ve been organized and labeled. He follows Gerald’s lead and sits down on the floor, too. “What’s that one?” he says, pointing to a large beetle almost three inches in length with long mandibles like the horns of a male deer.

“That’s a giant stag beetle. There are one thousand two hundred species of stag beetles in the world. It can’t turn over very easily if you put it on its back.”

“It’s like me with a backpack,” jokes Rory.

Gerald ignores him. He takes off his sweatshirt and throws it onto his bed. “I have one hundred sixty-two beetles,” he says. “No, one hundred sixty-three.”

“Did you catch them all?”

“No way.” He shakes his head. “I saved up and bought these ones on Beetlesforsale.com. It’s a company in Taiwan. The rest my father gave me. He’s dead.”

Now that Rory is on the floor and leaning against Gerald’s desk he can more easily see Gerald’s photos. One is of a man with a fedora, his hands in his trouser pockets, a cigar between his lips, his expression tough and impenetrable. It is the same man whom Bess saw in a photo and asked Millie about. Millie had said he was a bad man.

“I’m sorry to hear he passed away,” Rory says. “Is that him?”

“Yes.” Rory wants to ask more but is afraid of how Gerald might react. Was he really a bad man? How bad is bad?

Gerald puts his face close to one of the boxes as if he is studying the details of his insects. “Kenneth Gray is dead, too,” he says.

Rory thinks for a moment.
Kenneth Gray?
Oh right, Bess’s father. “Did you know him well?”

Gerald is now examining the side of one of his boxes, moving his head up and down while keeping the box still. “He let Bessie Girl jump on the sofa.”

“I’m sorry?”

Gerald makes a fist and winds it up over his head like he’s going to throw a lasso. “Kenneth Gray let Bessie Girl jump on the sofa. JUMP, JUMP, JUMP!” he suddenly yells with his chin in the air, frustrated with Rory, it seems, for not understanding. Then he goes back to studying his beetles.

Rory just watches him, wishing he knew what was going on in that head of his.

A long minute or two of silence ensues until Gerald says more quietly, “Bess didn’t jump on the sofa anymore after Kenneth Gray died.”

Rory knew Bess grew up without a father for most of her formative years, but he never really thought more of it than the fact itself. Now he finds himself imagining Bess at nine, ten, and in her teenage years. Was she lonely? Who taught her about boys? About men? Her mom? Might this have anything to do with why she never married? No one could live up to the memory of her father, sort of thing?
Aw go on
, he can hear the devil on his shoulder say.
Piss off with your psychobabble.

Gerald reaches over to his desk, grabs one of the other photos and thrusts it at Rory. “That’s me and Bess and Carol Gray in Montauk, Long Island, New York, on July eighteenth, 1976, eleven
A.M.
My mother took the picture.”

Bess with her little pink bathing suit and pigtails looks to be about six years old. Gerald must be twice her age but looks younger. They are sitting next to each other and hugging, eagerly and genuinely hugging each other, arms wrapped tight, cheek to cheek. Bess is smiling widely; Gerald is not exactly smiling—his lips are puckered—but his eyes are engaged with the camera. Bess’s mom is smartly dressed in blue shorts, halter top, and wide-brimmed hat. She has an arm around them both though she’s not looking at the camera. She’s looking at them the way Rory has seen moms look at their young children: full of pride and poised to protect. They all look so happy.