The 19th Wife (28 page)

At the end of the hall Sister Snow opened a door to a small room with a sunflower paper that was dirty where pictures used to hang. There was a bed, dresser, and a tiny stove. “I hope I didn’t drive someone out of her room.”

“You didn’t, so don’t let it trouble you. Dinner’s at four-thirty. See you downstairs.” Sister Snow has always given me the impression of a woman who is ready to die but will outlive everyone she knows.

Dinner was an affair for fifty, overseen by childless Aunt Twiss. She had been a young widow in Nauvoo when Brigham discovered her notable domestic skills. So industrious was she that other women gossiped about her as if she had committed a crime against them personally. Once a week Aunt Twiss stayed up through the night to scour down her hearth, so that it might gleam in the morning light—an effort that caused some women to boil red with envy. Others chittered on about her method of sweeping: on her knees with a hand-broom, from one corner of a room to the opposite, and back. If her thoroughness in keeping house angered some women, it pleased Brigham, who had been employing her many useful skills since their marriage a few days before departing Nauvoo in 1846.

The large dining room was in the western part of the basement. When I entered for the first time, Aunt Twiss sat me at the end of a table with a group of girls called the Big Ten—Brigham’s elder daughters, ten young women known all over the Valley for their interest in fine clothing and attachment to the curling iron. Aunt Twiss pointed out my chair and said, “I hope you like eggs.” She was neither hostile nor friendly, merely overwhelmed by a compulsive desire for efficiency. She wore a heavy, burdened brow and a complexion overheated from her work. I would soon learn, from four separate sources, that Brigham had never visited her conjugally and never would. “Yet every night, she props herself up in bed, in a fancy sleeping bonnet no less, as if he might come!” one of the Big Ten would go on to laugh in my ear.

The room was loud with women and children, but at precisely four-thirty Brigham arrived. Immediately everyone fell silent except for a few restless children, who were promptly pinched behind the ear. Brigham blessed our food, and afterward we ate a light supper of eggs and spinach, followed by composition tea. Brigham sat at the head of the table, with Sister Snow at his right and Aunt Twiss at his left. I quickly noticed that they dined on pigeon and gravy, with bread, butter, peach jam, and a bowl of strawberries and blackcaps.

Throughout the meal women approached Brigham to discuss their domestic business, and for some, I would later learn, this was their only chance to consult their husband on matters typically discussed between man and wife at the table. Brigham hardly had a chance to eat while advising his wives, although it would not take a sleuth to deduce he must have taken a second (or third?) meal elsewhere. The wives formed a line behind him. When her time came, which was limited to a minute or two, each wife had to leap into her topic while everyone, including her rivals, listened in.

“I need a new kettle.”

“I found my hand-glass in Sister Clara’s room.”

“Susannah isn’t reading properly.”

“There’ll be another next June.”

No matter how serious, or petty, the situation, this was the only opportunity most wives had to discuss their affairs with their husband.

Often a child—one of fifty-seven—climbed his leg and swung from his arm while he conversed with his wives. He was always playful with them, singing “too-roo-loo-rool-lool-or-lool” or producing a raisin from his pocket. It must be said that Brigham loved his children, was interested in their well-being, and guided his wives on discipline and other matters to their proper rearing. Yet even his sincerity could not compensate for the fact that fifty-seven children shared his fatherly heart.

During this the Big Ten huddled in the corner to discuss the topics all girls of this age find most urgent. I felt alone in this foreign world and assumed I would be excluded from it.

My brooding was interrupted by a touch to the wrist. “Aren’t you the actress?”

I turned to find a slender woman a few years older than myself extending a gentle hand in greeting. Pinned to her breast was a brooch of glass grapes as green as her eyes. “I’m Maeve Cooper.”

“Are you one of his daughters?”

“Step-daughter. My mother is Amelia Cooper.” She pointed across the room. “Number thirty-four.”

“Thirty-four what?”

Maeve laughed brightly, throwing back her chin. “You are new here, aren’t you?”

“Do you mean his thirty-fourth wife?”

“Don’t worry, lately he’s slowed down.” She cocked her chin and thought about something for a moment. “I’d say about fifty.”

“Fifty what?”

“Weren’t you about to ask me how many he has in total?”

I liked Maeve immediately and embraced her as an ally in the Lion House. She told me she had been a small child when her mother married the Prophet. “But I might as well be a stranger to him,” she said. “I’m convinced he doesn’t know my name.” And then, “Not that I care.” She was a sly, dangerous girl and our bond was cemented that first evening.

“Here’s what you need to know. Never be late for supper, never be the last one in at night, the ironing is done from dusk to dawn, and don’t bother trying to speak with Brigham directly. Anything you need you can get from making friends with Aunt Twiss or Harriet Cook. Twiss is somewhere between number twenty-five and forty, I really don’t know. And Harriet, I’m pretty sure she’s down around number four or five, so I don’t need to tell you how long she’s been around. Anyway, they might look a bit grim, but they’re really sweet old girls.”

After supper we moved upstairs to the front parlor, also called the prayer room, where the women gathered in circles to knit, sing, and talk in the evenings. It was Sunday night and the theater was dark. There were some eight or ten wives present, plus daughters and friends. I felt as if each wife had a careful eye on me. “I won’t let it bother me,” I told my new friend. “At the end of the season, you and all these women will see me pack my trunk and move out. They have no reason to be jealous.”

“That’s what Elsa said.”

“Elsa?”

“Never mind. Tell me about the theater. What’s on tomorrow night?”

“No, Maeve, tell me. Who’s Elsa?”

It took no more pleading for Maeve to recount the story of what she called “wife number forty-seven or forty-eight, I think.” A coloratura soprano imported from Wadowice, where the beautiful girls are dark and cold. According to Maeve, she was a shapely creature with a mane of red-black hair who sang with one arm draped across an alabaster pedestal. Brigham hired her to entertain at his private occasions, commanding her to sing his favorite bel canto roles from the Italian repertory. “She lived in the room across from yours,” Maeve said. “Then he married her. She didn’t want to, but what choice did she have? She was all alone. Her money came from him. She barely spoke English. How could she leave Utah? The wives made her life miserable.”

“What happened?”

“She disappeared. Ran away, probably. But it’s not an easy crossing to California. I should know. Some say Brigham’s Danites went after her and murdered her in the desert. Forty miles out there’s a pile of white bones by the road and the girls say that’s Elsa. The way the wind whistles through the sockets in the skull, it sounds like her singing, practicing her scales.”

“That’s not true. I don’t believe it.”

“Neither did I. Not at first. But the truth is she was here one night, and gone the next. If you mention her to Brigham—and I’m warning you not to—he’ll turn red as a pepper and huff out of the room. A few wives, when they knew she was really gone, they raided her room and fought over her silk.”

“It can’t be true.”

“You’re probably right. Even so, no one can explain what happened to her.”

The next night at the theater my mind was preoccupied. I fear I gave one of my lesser performances, but the audience forgave me. Looking out into the theater, with thousands of eyes glowing in the dark, it was impossible not to wonder: What would become of me?

THE
19
TH WIFE

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Marriage and Its Aftermath

For the next three months, I turned my attention to the theater. The more time I spent on stage, the more comfortable I became and, perhaps, the more my talent took root. I was cast as the little sister or ingénue in a number of slight plays no longer remembered, including
That Blessed Baby
and
The Good-for-Nothing.
The players, myself included, launched a movement to offer more serious fare, but Brigham re-enforced his ban on tragedy. “I won’t have our women and children coming here to be frightened so they can’t sleep at night.” (He would later revise this policy, when he discovered he could not attract a certain beautiful Gentile actress to play in
Macbeth
rewritten with a happy ending.) There was also, for a time, a prohibition against sentimental romances that glorified monogamous love. I remember one evening when a Saint of about seventy stood up in his seat and hollered, “I ain’t sitting through no play where a man makes such a cussed fuss over
one
woman.” He turned to his twenty-four wives: “Git up!” They filed out of the theater, all twenty-five, in a noisy column. For any actor pursuing his art, Brigham’s theater was not always a venue of ideals.

Despite these restrictions, the theater became my refuge from the Lion House. I spent most of my time there, arriving early in the morning and staying until long after the curtain fell. The Lion House served as nothing more than a way-station, and I had little time to consider the plight of the women stranded there. For several weeks, the only time I saw Brigham was when I was on stage and looked into the Presidential box. He was often with six or seven wives and a number of children, watching raptly from his velvet-padded rocker.

After each performance, I would sit at my dressing table, my heart anxious whenever a knock fell on my door. Yet always it would turn out to be one of my new company friends coming to share in the triumph of our evening, or my director, with notes to improve my technique. One night—it was during my run as Emily Wilton in
The Artful Dodger
—I sensed Brigham’s gaze upon me with special intent as he leaned forward on his cane. The director had placed me upon the stage so close to Brigham’s box I could nearly feel his eyes upon my flesh. In the final act, I stumbled on my lines. For a long moment—one of the longest in my life—I could not think of what to say. I looked about me, but my co-actor offered no assistance, for my stumble had thrown off his presence of mind as well. I turned and found myself looking into the Presidential box. Brigham mouthed the words
I shall be…
and it was as if an invisible hand had reached down and turned a crank to revive my memory and I carried on to the end with a particular intensity that brought the audience, Prophet included, to its feet.

Afterward, sitting at my table, I waited for the inevitable knock. I knew Brigham would come tonight, and I would have to thank him for his assistance. Up until then I had tried to deny the grasp he had about me, but this incident had made everything clear. I worked in his theater, I lived in his house, he was my spiritual leader, now he even told me what to say!

Then it came: the knock on my door. “Brother Brigham—”

Yet I opened the door to find a stranger greeting me with a box of sugar-stick jaw. “Will you permit an admirer to commend you on your performance?” The man spoke with an English accent, had a rugged complexion, and wore boots caked in plaster. His name, I soon learned, was James Dee. We spoke for what turned into an hour about the theater, his passion for Shakespeare, and Brigham’s silly ban on tragedy. “What a lovely Ophelia you would make!” he said. Dee plastered log cabins for a living, a more lucrative practice than I might have realized, for he owned a fine six-room house not far from Temple Square. “I might be revealing too much in telling you I have been following your career.”

“It’s hardly a career, Mr. Dee. I’ve only been on the stage a few months.”

“Yes, but already your talent outshines your peers.”

I scolded him for his flattery and decided this was a good time to open the box of candy. We sampled the sweets, then, alas, parted company. “Farewell!” he cried. “Thou art too dear for my possessing.”

There might be no greater cause for caution than a suitor who quotes the Bard on the threshold. Yet, Dear Reader, please recall at the time I was eighteen. I had been standing guard against Brigham’s inscrutable affections for so long that Mr. Dee’s slipped unnoticed under the gate. He promised he would return the following night, and he did. He said he would bring me a yellow rose and there it appeared, on my dressing table, a tight bud upon a long red-green stem. He said he would read
Twelfth Night
aloud to me, and he did so. In the first week of our acquaintance he kept each promise he made. He offered to help my mother with a crack in her ceiling, arriving at the promised hour. He balanced atop his ladder while my mother and her visiting sister wives looked on with interest. “Who’s this one, then?” Eleanor asked. “Wish I had someone bringing me a box of sugar-stick jaw.”

Mr. Dee made his presence felt so quickly and with such command that I could not help but grow feelings for him. By the seventh day of our friendship, we were in love and engaged.

“Engaged?” cried my mother. “You hardly know the man.”

I reminded her she hardly knew my father when they married. “Even so, I must tell you something: I don’t trust him.”

“How can you say that? After he plastered your ceiling!”

“I used to know men like James Dee.”

Like any young woman defying her mother, I stormed out the door.

At the Lion House I sought an ally in Maeve. “Tell me you’re happy for me,” I begged.

“I wish I could.”

“You too? But why?”

“Because I know Mr. Dee. In reputation.” We were in the parlor, gathered for the evening in a corner where the other women and girls could not overhear. Maeve whispered, “He’s known to know many women.”

“Again, I don’t believe you.” We argued for as long as we could before our voices disturbed the wives from their knitting. They looked our way with desperate interest. I knew at least one of them would not stop until she had learned the subject of our debate. Polygamy inspires this in otherwise thoughtful women—the relentless need to know another’s business. And yet what did I have to hide? Soon Mr. Dee would move me out of the Lion House and I would never have to suffer another night with the eyes of a dozen lonely wives dismantling me with their glares.

I could see that my new friend Maeve was not really as close to my heart as I had believed. The root of her displeasure, I assumed, was jealousy. I blamed this not so much on Maeve herself but on the warping effects of polygamy. Even its children can’t escape its distortions of the heart.

For comfort, I turned to my old friends Lucinda and Katherine.

“Tell me what he looks like again?” inquired Lucinda.

“Is he kind?” asked Katherine.

There is great comfort in knowing that old friends, even after a gap of time, remain the same. Neither knew anything of Mr. Dee. Neither had a reason to doubt my judgment, although Lucinda said, as we left Goddard’s, “I wonder why your mother doesn’t like him.”

I could look back and examine why I ignored the counsel of those I loved most. A number of reasons might explain it, but none more so than my desire to escape the clutches of Brigham Young.

“Tell me,” I said one evening to my betrothed. “What do you think of plural marriage?”

“Horrid institution.”

“Even if it’s the surest way into Heaven?”

“If you ask me, it’s our Church’s one great stain. I sometimes worry it’ll be our undoing.”

I nearly collapsed with relief. With this declaration locked in my heart, James Dee and I were married on April 4, 1863, in the Endowment House. Brigham sealed us before a small group, including my mother, whose rumpled face told me she could not enjoy the day. For a bridal dress I wore a bulky robe and ugly green apron. Beneath this, the sacred undergarments embroidered with cabalistic designs at the breast, navel, and knee. Brigham invited Maeve to attend the ceremony, and although she was no longer my closest friend, an old and gentle affection for her renewed itself on that special day.

I was scheduled to perform in
The Artful Dodger
on my wedding night. Brigham asked if I would prefer to hand the role over to my understudy. “Never!” I was a professional and I would meet my obligations. And so as a fresh bride, I took the stage. Word had spread that I had been wed earlier that day. When I made my entrance the audience erupted in congratulatory cheers. The applause repeated itself each time I entered from the wings and again at the end of the evening. By the time my husband and I returned to our rented room at Brigham’s hotel, I was afloat on the triumph of the day. It was the greatest moment of my marriage. Rare joy would follow that eve.

The first trouble came swiftly, when Dee suggested we move in with my mother. “What about your house?” I said.

“It’s rented. I thought they’d be gone by now, but their plans changed. Lovely family of Saints. A wig-maker, he is. You should see what he can do with a horse’s tail. Only one wife, a nice girl from Sweden. They asked for an extension. They’ve a child who’s not been well. What could I possibly say?”

Reader, what could
I
say? Temporary financial trouble had recently forced my father to retreat from supporting four separate households. A few months before my marriage, Sister Lydia and Diantha had returned to my mother’s house, as well as Mrs. Cox and Virginie. I told my husband her house was full and he would not be comfortable.

“It’s only for a month or two.”

“I don’t want to live in a house full of wives.”

“Darling, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s that, or a tent.”

My mother accepted us without any complaint or I-told-you-so’s. She was also grateful for Dee’s plastering skills, for a number of chinks and hairline cracks in her walls had been preoccupying her. Dee, skillful in the art of pleasing a mother-in-law, fixed whatever she asked of him, whether of plaster or not. He even plugged the mouse hole behind the stove with a stopper he whittled down to size. “It’s good of you to help her like that,” I told him after we had been living with her for a month.

“Do I have a choice?”

“If that’s how you feel, next time tell her no.”

“Oh, Ann Eliza, aren’t you sweet. Life isn’t so simple. I can’t say no to your mother.”

“Of course you can, if there’s a reason.”

“You are a child, aren’t you?”

“Don’t speak to me like that.”

“You really don’t understand. Your mother, she’s been dying to have a man to boss around. What with your father living anywhere but here, she’s had all her wifely energy bottled up.”

“You don’t know a thing about my mother.”

“When I agreed to move in here, I thought you would side with your husband, but that was my mistake.”

“Agreed to move in here!”

Oh, you can imagine the words that ensued. When our argument had worn itself out, I went to bed but found myself too agitated to sleep. I lay awake through the night, waiting for dawn when I could ask Dee his true feelings about our marriage. But I didn’t have to. The next day I met an even clearer version of my husband, and I cared not for him in the least. We were strolling on Main Street when we happened upon Maeve. A delicate veil framed her lovely if overlong face. I introduced my friend to my husband. The exchange was brief and un-noteworthy until, after our departure, Dee said, “Who is she?”

To my Dear Female Readers, I ask—is there a question more devastating to the heart? Three simple words, when put together on a husband’s lip, are constructed of nothing but betrayal and deceit. Or at least in Mormondom, where a man’s whim can bring him another wife. “You met her at our wedding,” I said.

“That’s right, now I remember. She was in blue, with some sort of large broach—a bunch of grapes, wasn’t it? Yes, it’s all coming back. The blue, the grapes, the position on the breast. Indeed.”

“She’s one of my friends who warned me against you.”

“Don’t be coy, darling. Tell me exactly what you mean.”

Repeating the rumors back to my husband would bring me no happiness. It would only make me look the fool. I therefore fibbed my way around the truth. “There have been a few words spoken that your faith is less than full.” Oh, what a mistake to be dishonest!

“My faith! Is that it? She doesn’t know me from Adam, does she? She doesn’t know anything about my good family I left behind in England for my faith. She doesn’t know anything about the hardship of my journey here, it’s a big ocean, the Atlantic is, and rather rough in December. I arrived with no friends, no contacts, nothing more than my plastering trowel and my faith. My good faith. Now why would this girl go on about the sincerity of my belief? Because I haven’t fifteen wives, is that it? Does everyone around here think a man’s got to have his own harem to be a true Mormon? If that’s it, if that’s the reason my good reputation’s been tarnished, then I’m quite sure something can be done about it.” If only that were the end of his speech, but I shall spare the Reader the second phase of his rant. My husband’s monologue ended with: “I love my Church, and I’ll prove it if I have to.”