The 19th Wife (42 page)

SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

D
ECEMBER
1, 1873

ANOTHER REVELATION FROM GREAT SALT LAKE

Yesterday, in the Territory of Utah’s Third District Court, the war between our friends, Brigham and Mrs. XIX, took a turn that even we could not have anticipated. At six o’clock in the evening, Brigham, via his imaginative lawyers, Mssrs. Hempstead and Kirkpatrick, filed a formal answer to his wife’s bill of complaint against the Great Almighty Prophet of the West.

In a quick review of Brigham’s legal papers we have determined his novel strategy for victory. His adamant reply contends that he and Ann Eliza were never married on April 6, 1868, as her suit originally claims. According to Brigham (whose sense of veracity and candor make him well-suited for our distinguished publication), Ann Eliza is not and has never been his legal wife. He makes this claim from a heartfelt and honorable position. Brigham touchingly claims his undying devotion to his first and only wife, the aptly named Mary Angell, who has been his rib since the tenth day of January, 1834, when they were happily betrothed in old Kirtland. Thus already married, Brigham could not enter into a second, let alone nineteenth union of the heart. That would be polygamy! So you see, Your Honor, this woman’s suit is without merit. She is—and here we must adopt the Prophet’s unique words as our own—“merely a social harlot.” What of Brigham’s long-promoted custom of celestial marriage? Simply a hedonistic religious rite with no more legal standing than adultery, admitted the Prophet. Who are the women sleeping beneath the dormers of the infamous Lion House? Concubines, all of them, God bless them each—so sayeth the Prophet.

Next, Brigham confessed to a disloyal liaison with Madame 19. Thus he respectfully asked the court, in its wisdom, to dismiss the matter so that he may return in peace to his only wife, the previously mentioned Angell, to make the kind of restitution we are all too familiar with.

Meanwhile, Sister Ann Eliza, fresh from her escape from the penitentiary otherwise known as Utah, continues to blaze across America’s mountainous hinterland, retelling her tale of conjugal woe to anyone who will listen (and pay up fifty cents). The Sister—retiring creature that she is, delicate as a sego lily, bashful as a desert morn—bravely musters her strength to go forth and tell the truth—her word, not ours—about polygamy. As Americans, each of us must do our part by celebrating her courage, and her message of liberty, while, of course, lining her pockets with gold. To anyone who doubts her sincerity, or her motives, we declare: Shame! Has a woman no right to translate her female subjugation into emeralds and pearls? Godspeed, Sister! Onward, Number 19! Take your pleas to Washington and the President! Thus, we shall predict the last stop on Ann Eliza Young’s historic journey to freedom: The Bank!

THIS CAN’T GO ON

Tom was on the phone freaking out. “It’s Johnny. He disappeared. I was doing some work at the front desk, I told him to stay with the dogs, and when I came back he was gone.”

“When was this?”

“Almost two hours ago. I went driving around looking for him, but I didn’t even know where to start. I just drove up and down St. George Ave. Jordan, where are you? I’ve been calling.”

“There’s no reception in Mesadale. Right now I’m in Kanab.”

“I need you to come home, now. It’s just that—” Tom stopped. “Johnny could be anywhere.”

“Don’t worry. He’s like this.”

“I’m going out of my mind here. What if something’s happened?”

“Don’t start thinking like that.”

“I called the cops. They thought I was nuts. They said, ‘Let me get this straight. You’re reporting a runaway runaway?’ They said they couldn’t do anything for at least twenty-four hours. Jordan, I didn’t even know his last name.”

Part of me wanted to say: Tom, get a grip. The kid’s a flake. He’s gone and there’s nothing you can do. Another part of me wanted to say: I know, I know, and turn this into a conversation between the sob sisters. But neither seemed right and all I could come up with was, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

When I got to the sandwich shop, 5 was closing up, her hair under a plastic beret. “Why didn’t you tell me you married my dad?”

She went behind the counter for a cup of coffee. She took her time, pouring the cream and the sugar, stirring it, rinsing the spoon. Her eyes had a cold gleam, like chips of soda-machine ice. “Why would I want to tell you about the worst day of my life?”

“Because my mom’s in jail for something she didn’t do.”

“That has nothing to do with me.”

“You were his wife.”

She sipped her coffee slowly, cautiously putting together her words. “If you think holding a knife to your stepdaughter’s throat while you rape her is a wedding ceremony, then I guess I am his wife. Or his widow or whatever. But if you don’t think like that—and for some reason I thought you of all people wouldn’t—then you’d realize I’m no more his wife than you are, asshole.” She started cleaning up the sandwich counter and throwing the prep trays into the sink, and they made a terrible clang, stainless steel on stainless steel. “You think your life sucks so much? Well, guess what? My life sucks worse.”

“Jesus, I had no idea.”

“Yeah, well, you have no idea about a lot of shit. Now go sit down.”

I sat in a booth by the window, and she carried over two sodas and two wax-paper cups. “Don’t say anything. Just let me tell you what’s going on.”

“OK, but first—”

“No, stop. When I’m done, then you can speak, all right? First of all, let me start by saying this whole thing sucks. Like big-time. OK, so let’s begin. Like I said, I ran away a couple of months ago. I just split, caught a ride over here, and got this job. I knew it was crazy to stop here. I should’ve left Utah, but you know what, I love my mom. Or I used to, or I still do, I don’t know. Anyway, like I told you, I couldn’t leave her back there so I thought I’d go back and rescue her. Except, how the fuck was I going to do that? I didn’t have a car or any money or anything. But I kept thinking it was possible. You know Sister Karen?”

“The postmistress?”

“She’s been really helpful in all this. She got my letters to my mom without him seeing them. I kept writing her telling her I was OK and not far away and to hold tight, I was coming for her.”

“And?”

“Jordan, let me finish. So that went on for a few months and I was kinda at a standstill. Then my mom writes me this letter saying she’s sick, real sick, maybe even dying. Says she’s had a heart attack or something, she was real vague about it, but she said the Prophet told her she didn’t have much time. When I got the letter I totally flipped. I walked down to the end of town and caught a ride back to Mesadale. When I got to my mom’s cabin, she was really happy to see me and started crying, but I was like, Mom, I thought you were sick? So she goes, Oh that? I’m all better now. The important thing is you’re back. I know your stepfather will be real glad to see you. Then she walked over to the big house to get him. When they came back I was totally scared to see him, but he just said, I’m glad you’re back. Please stay as long as you like.

“And that was it until the next day. I woke up and everything was really peaceful, you know how quiet the desert is in the morning before everyone gets up, and I was lying in bed just thinking about that when my mom came and sat down. Sarah, honey, there’s something I want to talk about. That’s when she sprang it on me. She wanted me to marry him, her own husband—I know, right? But she had it all planned out, or he did, or someone did. Obviously it was time for me to go, but when I opened the door there he was on the porch. He was in a bolo tie and his hair was greased back and he was wearing some sort of cologne, like old leather, and he wasn’t alone.”

“The Prophet?”

“You guessed it. He had this creepy smile, his lips curled up on his teeth, and it was so obvious what was coming next I started screaming my head off, yelling, There’s no fucking way! My mom, she took me into her room, told me to calm down, and when I didn’t she slapped me, not hard, but just hard enough to show the Prophet whose side she was on. Then you aren’t going to believe what she did, I mean no one’s ever going to believe this, but it’s true: she got out her wedding dress and said, real calm and everything, Now, honey, put this on.

“I was fighting her, kicking her, telling her to go fuck herself. Then there was a knock on the door. It was the Prophet. Sister Kimberly, let me have a word. When we were alone he came real close and squeezed the back of my neck the way you grab a dog. If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m going to kill your mother and then you. I swear to God that’s exactly what he said, not that I believe in God, but you know what I mean. He goes, I’ll kill you, you little slut. Not now. Not tomorrow. But I’ll be coming for you and you’ll be scared the rest of your life because you’ll know one night I’ll be at your door and when you open it you’re going to find your mother’s head in a fucking bag.”

5 stopped. Her eyes looked like they’d seen the worst the world could offer.

Then she laughed.

“And so I married him. That night—the night he was killed—I took off from Mesadale. I heard all the screams in the house, I didn’t know what was happening, but it was my chance to get out of there and so I ran down the road into the night.”

“And here you are.”

“Here I am. You know what the fucked-up part is? I still love my mom. Jordan, I’m only fifteen. I want her back. Am I insane or what?”

“You’re not insane.”

After that, 5 and I talked about the Prophet and Mesadale and all sorts of other shit too. If you drove by the sandwich shop that night, you would’ve seen the silver-green lights burning through the plate glass and two kids at a booth in the window, eating corn chips and drinking soda and shredding their wax-paper cups on the table and talking for hours, just like two kids anywhere who’d rather stay out than go home to bed.

“Just one question,” I said. “Why would Sister Karen help you like that?”

“You haven’t figured that out by now?”

“Figured out what?”

“You really don’t know, do you? Sister Karen’s the conductor.”

“The conductor?”

“Of our underground railroad. She’s the one who helps the girls get out.”

THE GIRL IN SLC

Inside Room 112, I found Tom holding a bag of ice to Johnny’s eye. “What happened here?”

“Not much, dude. And you?”

“He’s high,” said Tom. “And he has a black eye. And I found this on him.” He pointed to a cheap gold watch on the credenza.

“Where’d you get that?”

“This guy. It was weird, he just gave it to me. Isn’t that weird?”

“Plus he’s scaring the dogs.” They were watching the scene from the bed. Elektra was agitated and shaking, and Joey was panting hard.

“Johnny, where were you?”

“With the ladies.”

“There’s no point in talking to him,” said Tom. “He’s totally looped. Thank goodness you’re home.”

Technically it wasn’t my home, but it didn’t seem like a good time to point that out. “What can I do?”

“Get him ready for bed. He should sleep in here tonight.”

“Anyone got anything to eat?” said Johnny. “Krispy Kremes, maybe?”

“Bedtime, big guy.” I pulled Johnny out of his jeans, dumped him on the bed, and threw a blanket over him. “Now go to sleep.”

“I’d kill for a Whopper,” he said. “Or some McNuggets.” He was stumbling into sleep, his words slowing down. He smacked his lips, let out a soft moan, and pushed out a final thought for the night: “You think they got a Snickers in the vending machine?” Then he was out. He’d sleep till dawn.

Tom was on the edge of the other bed, stroking Joey’s ear. He had to be pissed at me for bringing this mess into his life. “I was really worried,” he said. “About both of you. What do you think got into him? Maybe he freaked out because you weren’t around?”

“I’m afraid this wasn’t a onetime event. Johnny’s got a lot of issues.”

Tom shrugged. “I don’t care. He can stay as long as he wants.” And then, “You too.”

He went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. I opened his laptop and went online to that website,
19thwife.com
. Under the If You Need Help tab, there was information about a place in Salt Lake called the Ann Eliza Young House. There was a picture of an old gabled house with a big stained-glass window. At the top of the page it said, We’re always here.

Tom came out of the bathroom stripped to his sacred underwear. That’s another thing I love about the Mormons: that crazy holy underwear is actually kinda sexy. Roland calls it God’s lingerie. Which reminded me: I hadn’t talked to him in days. He still thought I was coming back for the nursery job the next day. Isn’t that how it works sometimes—the big decisions, I mean. You don’t actually make them, you just roll into them once they’ve become inevitable. Sometime between meeting Tom in the lobby of the Malibu Inn and now, I had decided to stay in Utah to see this thing through.

“Question,” I said.

“Shoot.”

“Why do you still wear that?”

“What? You don’t like it?”

“It’s not that. I mean, don’t you have to be a Mormon to wear that underwear?”

“Technically, but it’s not about the church anymore. It’s about me. Besides, it’s actually pretty comfortable. You know what my mom used to say when I was a kid? She used to say, wearing these was like wearing a hug. I know that’s cheesy but it’s kinda true. The only problem now is you have to have a temple recommend to buy them. But I found this site online where I can get new ones.” He sat on the bed. “What about you? Do you always sleep in your clothes?”

I hadn’t even noticed that I had crawled into bed in my jeans. “I don’t know, I guess. Does that bother you?”

“It makes me feel like you’re ready to bolt.”

“Don’t think of it like that.”

“Tomorrow I’m going to buy you some PJs.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

We pulled up the blanket, and Elektra dug under and curled up between us. Joey found a spot at the foot of the bed. The room went quiet except for the sighs of the dogs. “Jordan?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you a question about your mom?”

“OK.”

“What was she like?”

“What do you mean?”

“What kind of mom was she?”

“I don’t know, pretty average, I mean considering.”

“Did you get to spend a lot of time with her?”

“Sure.”

“What would you do?”

“I don’t know, the usual stuff.”

“Like what?”

“We’d hang out, I guess.”

“Did she bake you cookies and things like that?”

“Not really.”

“No?”

“It was kind of hard to do any baking. The kitchen had all these rules.”

“What else would you do?”

“I’d hang out in her room sometimes.”

“And talk?”

“Yeah.”

“About what?”

“All sorts of stuff.”

“Like what?”

“God and the church and things like that, but other things, too.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Like the sun, and how different it was in the summer from the winter. And the mountains and how pretty they looked when there was snow. And Virginia.”

“Who’s that?”

“Our old dog.”

“What happened to her?”

“She’s still alive.”

“You must miss her.”

“Virginia? Yeah, sometimes.”

“I meant your mom.”

“Sure, I guess.”

Tom dented his pillow and turned on his side. “Jordan?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think’s going to happen?”

“She’ll either get out or she won’t.”

“When are you going to see her again?”

“Soon, real soon.”

In the morning I told Tom about the place in SLC. “I’m taking Johnny there.”

“Maybe there’s someplace closer.” He was getting ready to go to the front desk, pinning his name tag to his shirt. He had a bright polished look, his cheeks shining with morning cheer.

“There’s no place else,” I said. “I don’t want him to put you through another night like last night. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Wait till Saturday and I’ll go with you.”

“This can’t wait. A lot can happen in a week.”

“I’ll miss you.”

“C’mon, it’s only been two days.”

“Two days is enough.” And then, “But I guess not for you.”

I decided to leave Elektra with Joey in Tom’s room. She didn’t like that idea and ran out to the van and tried to jump through the window. I had to drag her back inside. As I pulled out of the lot her brown snout was in the window, leaving prints on the glass. Tom was in the lobby behind the front desk, keeping his eye on my van, watching me as I drove off. He waved as I pulled out but I don’t think he saw me wave back.

Johnny slept most of the way on the futon, still hung over from last night. Every once in a while he woke up to announce he needed to piss, but other than that he was more or less passed out. It was nearly five hours to SLC, which gave me way too much time to think.

I first saw the temple from the freeway. I guess you’d say it’s beautiful, what with all that white granite and the forest of spires and the gold angel playing his trumpet on top of that gold ball. I shook Johnny’s foot and told him to wake up. “There it is,” I said. “The mother ship.”

Johnny stared out at the temple. “You ever been here before?” he said.

“Nope.”

“Me neither. It’s not really what I expected.”

“What’d you expect?”

“I don’t know, for some reason I thought it would look like heaven.”

“Maybe it does.”

“Where’s this famous lake?”

“Out there somewhere.”

“I don’t see it.”

“I’m sure it’s there.”

“So tell me, Mr. International Poster Boy for Gay Marriage, what brings us to Salt Lake?”

“What are you talking about now?”

“You and Tom, pretty serious, right, right?” He started whistling
here comes the bride.
“No, seriously, why’d we drive all the way up here?”

“I’ve got an appointment.”

“Is it one of our chat session ladies? I’ve been dying to meet the others.”

“I never heard back from them. This is someone else.”

We were off the freeway now, driving toward Temple Square along an eight-lane road pumping traffic into the city. Except there wasn’t much traffic and no one was walking around. I stopped at a red light for a tram to cross. I was the only car waiting and there wasn’t anyone on the tram.

“I’m going to drop you somewhere and I’ll go have my meeting and then come back for you. I’ll probably be gone a little more than an hour.”

“Whoa whoa whoa, wait a minute, you want me to do what?”

“Just hang out somewhere.”

“Why are you giving me the heave-ho all of a sudden?”

“Because you look like shit and smell like pot. I can’t take you to a meeting.”

“No way, dude, you don’t haul my ass to SLC and then leave me in the van.”

“I won’t leave you in the van. We’ll find a park somewhere.”

“I’m not sitting in a boiling ass park where all the repressed Mormon fags can chase me.”

“Johnny. You know how I feel about that word.”

He mimicked me: “
You know how I feel about that word.
”

“Here. Right here.” I pulled over, cutting off the guy behind me. “Here’s a mall right here. You go in there and hang out. Give me two hours. Here’s ten dollars. Buy yourself a hot dog and go fuck yourself.”

“Someone didn’t get laid last night and is now taking it out on me.”

“Why are you always so nasty?”

“Because I’m from Mesadale, you mother.”

“That excuse is getting old.”

“Look in the mirror, buddy.”

“And none of your running-off shit, either. If you aren’t here in exactly two hours, I’m driving back to St. George and you can have a really nice life.”

“You’re a total motherfucker, you know that?” Johnny popped the door and ran off, the black soles of his sneakers flashing until he was gone.

The Ann Eliza Young House was located on East South Temple Street, a block from the LDS Temple, the Tabernacle, the Family History Library, and all the rest. It looked like a lot of the old houses around there except I recognized it by the golden beehive in a pane of stained glass. I rang the bell and a girl a few years older than me opened up. I told her I’d seen the website and wanted to know if it was true.

“If what’s true?”

“If you’re really here to help.”

She laughed like I’d made a joke or something, and then she saw I was totally serious and led me inside to a back office. There were a couple of pictures of the girl on her desk, shots of her with her arms around other blond girls. One picture showed the girl in her missionary outfit, with the black-and-white name tag and the long dark skirt, standing in front of the lights of Times Square.

“Have a seat. Our director’s out for about an hour, but you’re welcome to wait right here.”

“I only need a little information.”

“I’m happy to tell you about our program, get you oriented and everything, but only the director can formally admit you. If you want, I can show you the boys’ room and you can take a shower and put on some—”

She stopped. “What’s wrong? Are you hungry? We have some veggie lasagna left over.”

I told the girl I wasn’t hungry. I told the girl I wasn’t there for me. “I’ve got a kid. I mean, he’s not mine, he just started hanging out with me down in St. George.” I told her the whole story. Well, not the whole story, just the part about Johnny latching on to me.

“I am so sorry,” the girl said. “I thought—”

“I know.”

“You look so young.”

“I wanted to check this place out. But I don’t want to leave Johnny just anywhere.”

“Of course not. You want to leave him someplace where he’s going to have a chance.”

She was an attractive girl, pert, maybe twenty-four, her banged hair well conditioned and full of shine. Her features were small and precise, almost a little hard and cold, and she gave off a fresh, antibacterial soap odor. “The Ann Eliza Young House is a really special place,” she said, her voice a little formal and practiced. “There’s nothing like it in Utah, or the country, for that matter. With all this debate about polygamy and the Firsts, sometimes we lose sight of the fact that there are kids out there who need a place to sleep. Tonight. That’s why we’re here, for those kids who don’t have anywhere to go and can’t wait for the policy debates and law suits to get sorted out. You want a quick tour?”

She led me down a hall, saying, “I don’t know how much you know about what’s going on with polygamy these days.”

“A little.”

“Then you know how much help these kids need. What we do is give them a place to live and begin the process of letting them be kids again. What was happening before was they’d go from a house with eight or ten wives and thirty or forty kids—”

“Sometimes more.”

“Yes, sometimes more, and then they’d get dropped into a foster family and the kids would be sent off to school, and everyone would say, OK, they’re fine. Well, they weren’t fine. These kids have some unique issues, and we’re here to help them adjust. By the way, what’s your name?”

I told her. “And yours?”

“Kelly. Kelly Dee.”

She showed me around upstairs, the boys’ bunk room, the community bathroom, a lounge with a box of DVDs and a rack of worn-out paperbacks. She was leading me down the staircase when she stopped on the landing to point out the stained-glass window. The sun was hitting it, illuminating the beehive, and the pieces of glass were thick and smooth and gold and white. “Isn’t that beautiful?” she said. “That’s original to the house, from the 1870s. Stained glass was very rare at the time around here. That window’s sort of famous. Do you know who Ann Eliza Young was?”