The Ninth Wife (47 page)

He had told her about Bess when he and Bess first started dating, and now he brings her up to speed: about his marriage proposal; telling Bess about his ex-wives; chasing her to Chicago; his encounter with Lorraine; his trust in Bess plunging when she had the opportunity to tell him about Maggie and didn’t.

Cici listens without interruption. “Hm,” she says when he’s through.

“Hm,” he says.

She sits up. “Let me ponder this.” She dives into the pool.

Rory didn’t think to bring a bathing suit so he is wearing one of the professor’s. The waistband is loose, making him cautious about diving into the water. But the water looks inviting, so he sits at the edge, dangling his legs, which are tired from his run.

“I’ll tell you,” says Cici, treading water, “I never thought you and Dao were well matched.”

“Really? You never told me that.”

“I’m telling you now, probably because it’s occurring to me in hindsight.”

“Why weren’t we well matched?”

“She was too, what’s the word . . . I don’t know . . . intense. Too serious.”

“Huh. What about Gloria?”

“Too young.” Cici does a slow sidestroke to the end of the pool and back.

A cloud covers the sun. Rory scoops water with his palms and watches it trickle through his fingers. “I have a confession. I saw Gloria at Bess’s party and I never told her.”

“What party? Never told who?”

“Bess. You know, that singles party at her apartment where I met her. I was there and I saw Gloria walk in, or at least some woman who looked like Gloria, I didn’t really get a good look. She was pregnant. I kind of panicked and left.”

Cici does another lap. “Did Gloria see you?”

“I don’t think so. At least she never said anything to Bess.”

“Why didn’t you just stay and say hi?”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know. I think maybe because she was having a baby, like she moved on with her life and I didn’t want to deal with that.”

“Why didn’t you tell Bess?”

“I just . . . I thought she might think I still had feelings for Gloria.”

“Do you?”

“No. Not in that way. I agree, we were a mistake.”

Cici swims over to him and rests her arms on the side of the pool next to where he’s sitting. She looks at home in luxury, Rory thinks. Maybe this is the kind of life she’ll end up with. “From what you’ve told me,” she says, “Bess seems like a keeper. She seems good for you. So stop screwing it up and keeping secrets.”

“But she—”

“Stop. If you ask me, you’re the one who started it by not telling her up front about your past.”

“She probably wouldn’t have stuck around.”

“You needed to take that risk.”

“Yeah,” says Rory. “Well, now she’s seeking out my ex-wives behind my back. Talk about trust breakers.”

Cici hops up out of the water and takes a seat. She runs her fingers through her hair and shakes it out. “Rory,” she says, “you need to forgive her. And you need to forgive yourself.”

Rory looks out toward the mountain.
Forgive myself.
For a quick moment he wonders what she means, wonders what he has to forgive himself for, but he knows, deep down he knows he has never been able to rid himself of the shame of his failed marriages, a deep shame that began the day Maggie walked out and has grown stronger ever since.

Suddenly a memory comes to him of his brother Eamonn playing poker with some of the local boys in the back of a warehouse. Rory stumbled upon them one night; Eamonn let him stay provided he kept his mouth shut. Eamonn had put a big chunk of what money he had left on a bluff that Rory exposed with a poorly timed gasp. Eamonn lost. But instead of beating Rory to a pulp the way his friends’ older brothers would have done, Eamonn kept silent. He wouldn’t talk to Rory and that was a worse fate. Rory followed him all over town.
I’m sorry
, he’d say, over and over again until one day Eamonn turned to him.
Did y’
learn somethin’, Rory?
Tell me that, did y’
learn somethin’ that night?
Rory said he learned to keep quiet so he could keep on learning.
Then stop apologizing
, Eamonn had said.

Rory looks over at Cici. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, he thought, if Cici lived in D.C. and could come over for dinner now and again to a home he shares with Bess?

“I love you, you know.” He sticks his finger in her ear the way he used to do when she was a kid because it tickled her.

“I know,” she says, batting him away, smiling. “I love you, too.”

A large cloud slides by and lets the bright sun shine down on them again.

“So you going to invite me to the wedding this time?” says Cici.

Rory smiles.

“Good,” she says, “let’s shake on it.” He extends his hand and she pulls him into the pool.

Chapter Thirty-seven

T
he palm trees are dancing in the breeze, the saguaros on the sidelines are raising their arms and cheering. The Union Pacific train pulls ahead with its fastened loads of logs and crates, leading the way. It’s hot and dry on the split highway cutting its way westward through miles of flat desert. Signs warn of “Blowing Dust Areas.” The parched mountains toward the horizon look like dung piles. Off in the distance an oil refinery stands alert, a state prison lies low, two sheriffs’ cars idle side by side on a cattle guard while their drivers chat. The distance between haciendas grows and then there is nothing but sky and sand and brush.

Bored and tingling from exhaustion, Bess follows the phone lines and changes lanes to stay awake. On the border into Pacific Time there are no working radio stations, no cell phone coverage, no rest stops or gas stations for forty-mile stretches, and for the first time today she looks at the empty seats surrounding her in the van and the big sky outside and feels utterly alone. But it’s not a bad feeling, she takes note—this being alone. She feels calmed by the solitude, comfortable even with her own company.

Still . . . what does one do when there’s so much aloneness?
The desert needs show tunes
, she can hear Cricket say like some modern-day Fitzcarraldo.
Sing, darling.

What is Cricket doing now? she wonders. Is he laughing at something Claus has said? Is he feeling at peace? She hopes so. She hopes he finds a place to leave Darren’s ashes behind. She never made much of an effort to get to know Darren, but she will with Claus, if he becomes important to Cricket.

Hours ago, just after she offered her version of the past to Irv and Irv stayed annoyingly silent on the subject, she imagined asking him to undergo a DNA test, to see if they really are biologically connected as she still suspects, but now she feels differently. How wonderful to feel differently, it suddenly occurs to her. She doesn’t need to know. Doesn’t want to know, even.
Why not?
a tiny voice inside her yelps. “Don’t know, don’t care,” she says, smacking her hands on the steering wheel.

But this new attitude seems more suited to her mother’s strict, incurious ways than to her own, and the feeling doesn’t last. Bess admits she does want to know more about her grandfather, and more about Rose, her
biological grandmother
, a term that sounds like it’s from a foreign language. Did Rose regret giving up her child to a woman so stubborn she still says the word
shvartze
not thinking it might apply to her own daughter and granddaughter?

Why and when Millie fights her battles is a mystery to Bess. Why didn’t she take her stand early with Peace, for example, before they left Maryland, rather than disposing of her surreptitiously in Iowa? Maybe it was to allay her guilt for bruising him. And why
was
she hurting him? Was it selling the house that started it all or made it worse? Is this what we become when death is around the corner?

Bess is feeling the heat. She closes her window and turns up the AC. Well into California now, past Joshua Tree National Park, the air is hazier. Temperatures have to be in the high nineties. Hundreds of white windmills like airplane propellers are spinning madly amid rolling green farmland. She sees signs for a casino and bowling lanes.

She takes a swig of water and thinks back to the time before Rory. She remembers the dread of having a singles party. She thinks of Harry the divorcé who left a card on her pillow, of Sonny and other blip boys, of the depth of her loneliness and despair at being single in a spouse’s world. But now that she thinks of it, Rory’s ex-wives all found themselves a spouse at one time or another and are they any happier than she in the end? Lorraine, Maggie, Fawn? Carol seems happy, but that was true before she and Ina were married. Maybe Dao’s the happiest of all. But then Millie’s right . . . how can anyone know for sure who’s really happy?

Where is Rory?
She calls him again, and again her call goes straight to voice mail.

She pictures him nude. He looks great nude. And how adorable is he playing his fiddle? And his accent, his humming in the shower. He really is a nice guy—someone who picks up the Indian takeout and helps with the dishes and holds doors open and wants to hold hands. Bess’s mind starts montaging the course of their courtship and can’t stop—images of Rory sitting, standing, sleeping, snoring, watching TV, making love. Her favorite time to observe Rory is during their morning routines, when she feels the power and intimacy of being a couple—watching him spit toothpaste into the sink, glide on deodorant, snap on his boxers, look around for his wallet. It’s when she feels most in the present. Nighttime, just after they turn off the light and kiss good night, is when she allows herself to imagine their future—shopping at Home Depot, visiting Ireland, decorating a nursery.

Please
, she thinks,
please don’t be breaking up with me.
Please give me a chance.

A
ccording to Gaia’s latest e-mail, she, Sonny, and Pearl moved into the suburban ranch house of Sonny’s uncle in Riverside, California. Bess’s plan was to stop there for a quick visit to drop off Gaia’s box on her way to her friend’s place in Los Angeles, but she got a late start. So instead, she apologized to her friend and had called Gaia to ask if she could spend the night.

She follows Gaia’s directions and finds the house in the dark, driving the quiet backstreets, squinting to read numbers on houses. She parks along the curb and turns off the engine, figuring the house is one of the three on the other side of the street. She shuts the van door slowly, but it still crashes down on the silence of the neighborhood. She looks for a sudden light in an upper window, but nothing happens.

It’s hard to see. The nearest streetlamp doesn’t seem to be working and the lights in the houses are all off. She walks up the driveway of one and sees it is the wrong one, so she heads to the house next door. The number matches, but it’s difficult to discern which is the front entrance. The door facing the street has a walkway leading up to it, but the door itself looks unusable. The handle is duct-taped to the siding and the screen is barricaded in front with big boxes and a set of golf clubs. The door facing the side of the neighbor’s house has a small awning, two potted plants on either side, and a stroller a few feet away.

Bess approaches the side door. The darkness is so consuming she’s scared of it. She thinks she hears leaves rustling. “Hello?” she says, looking behind her. Nothing. She opens the screen door and raps lightly. “Anybody home?” She raises her fist to knock again when she hears a footstep from behind and when she whips around she sees a figure in the shadows coming toward her quickly, now nearly upon her, his hair hiding his face, a weapon in his hand, a tall frame, a threatening build, “
No!
” she yells, and with every ounce of her body, with every thought in her head from every self defense class she ever took in her karate school, she tightens into a machine of self-protection, yells, “
Groin!
” and snaps a hard kick to her attacker’s balls.

She hears a sucking in of breath and then, “
Ow!
Fuck
! Motherfucking
shit
!”

A light turns on inside the house, a dog barks down the street. The door opens and the light spills out onto her attacker lying on the ground, wincing, clutching himself. Bess looks up to see Gaia in the doorway. “Sonny?” says Gaia.

“Baby,” Sonny whines from the ground. He is barefoot and has on black sweatpants and a black T-shirt. “Jesus Christ, Bess.”

Gaia opens the door and joins them outside. “Bess, hi. You made it. Sonny, what are you doing on the ground?”

“Hell, Gaia. She yells
groin
like she’s yelling halfway to China and I’m lying here holding my dick, what do you think happened? Jesus Christ, motherfucker.”

“Stop saying Jesus Christ like that,” says Gaia. “You know your uncle doesn’t like it.”

“Yeah, well he ain’t here and I got me balls gonna swell up like fucking pumpkins.”

“I’m sorry,” says Bess, coming out of her daze, looking from one to the other. She’s still shaking from what happened, though from being attacked or successfully striking out at her attacker she can’t tell.
I struck an attacker
, is one of the thoughts.
I did it
. And, too, she is now admitting to herself how good it just felt to hit Sonny of all people, the noncommittal ex-boyfriend and abandoner of his pregnant girlfriend. “Sonny, what did you think I’d do, coming at me like that, in the dark, holding—”

“A balloon, for Christ’s sake!” He points to a long, blue balloon nestled at the foot of a nearby bush. “The tail of this damn dog a clown made for my daughter.”

“Well, I didn’t know that. You came at me with it.”

“I was playing. I saw you drive up, thought I’d have some fun.”

“That’s how you play?”

“Sonny, you need help?” says Gaia.

“No, just let me be for a while. Go on inside.” He pulls himself up to a seated position.

“Sonny, I said I was sorry,” says Bess. She notices his hemp bracelet and the length of his hair, which is thick and black and down to his shoulders. She has always liked long hair on Asian men.