The 19th Wife (56 page)

WIFE
#19:

EPILOGUE

Focus on the Family

A week later Maureen and I went shopping. We were in a discount women’s store, pushing a shopping cart down the aisle. Maureen had a firm sense of what we needed. “At least three pairs of shoes, one for dressier situations, one for every day, and one for walking and other activities. Any idea what color she likes?”

“Red,” I said. “Mostly red.”

“I’m afraid red can only go so far.” Maureen inspected permanent press slacks, braided belts, t-shirts with piped sleeves, nylon socks, and other basics. “Now let’s go get her some bath things.”

“I have some soap.”

“A woman needs more than a bar of soap.” She examined a jar of face cream. “I’ve gone ahead and made her an appointment at my beauty parlor. She’ll need to figure out what to do with her hair.”

An hour later we unpacked our purchases in Room 111. Maureen hummed about, snipping off tags and folding the shirts and slacks into a drawer she had lined with tissue. When she was done she clapped her hands. “All done. Now, if you need anything else…”

“I’m all set.”

“I know, but if you ever need anything else, you let me know.” She hugged me, her handbag clobbering me in the back.

“I couldn’t’ve done this without you,” I said.

“Of course you could’ve.”

“No, actually, I couldn’t.”

“I’ll just go say good-bye to Tom and the dogs.” Then she was gone, a blur of blue.

The next morning at a quarter to eight, Tom and I waited at the security entrance of the jail. Officer Cunningham was manning the desk. “Big day,” she said. “It’ll only be another minute.” We talked some about our dogs; she was taking her corgis to a show in Colorado next weekend and had their grooming on her mind.

At five to eight a photographer showed up, three cameras hanging around her neck. She gave her card to Officer Cunningham, who told her she could set up in the corner. The photographer opened a camera bag and changed her lenses, wiping them with a small tissue, readying everything so that when the moon-faced clock said it was exactly eight, she’d be all set to capture that picture everyone loves—a wrongly accused prisoner being freed.

I saw her face first through the chicken-wire glass in the door. Really, all I could see were her eyes. “There she is,” said Tom. Officer Cunningham buzzed the door open, then an eternity—as if time stopped and whoever runs the universe went out for a smoke—and finally the door swung open.

“BeckyLyn, over here!”

My mom looked at the photographer. A flash, a click, another flash, more clicks.

“
St. George Register,
” the photographer said. “Can you hold right there?” She wore the dusty pink prairie dress she’d been arrested in, the heavy stockings, the handmade shoes. Her steps were tentative, like she was learning to walk.

“Mom,” I said, “this is Tom.”

He couldn’t help himself: he lunged to hug her. “I’ve heard so much about you!”

“BeckyLyn,” the photographer called, “is that the son who saved you?” She took a picture with one camera, then the same picture with the next, and again the same shot with the third.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“How about a family reunion shot?”

“Time to go.”

I led my mom out to the van. The photographer walked around us, crouching and stepping backward, click click click, saying
how do you feel?
and
happy to be free?
and
this is great, just great.
When we were in the van, the photographer stopped taking pictures. “Good luck, BeckyLyn! Our readers love you!”

Tom was driving. He asked if she wanted the windows up or down or if she needed water. “Or if you’re hungry, we can stop now, but Jordan and I thought we’d take you back to the Malibu first.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Really.” She was looking out the window at the red sandstone cliffs, her face ghosted in the glass.

“Mom, how does it feel to be free?”

“I’m figuring that out right now.”

“And
this,
” said Tom, pushing the key card into the slot, “this is your room. You’ve got a tv, cable, movie channels, a/c, the ice machine’s down the hall. And
this
”—he pointed to an interior door—“this door connects to our room.”

Behind the door Elektra started barking, then Joey. Tom opened the door and the second behind it. The dogs ran into Room 111, snouts pointed right at my mom. Elektra jumped on her, pushing her back onto the bed. After a lot of petting and licking, Elektra relented and my mom stood up and straightened out her dress. She was laughing and saying, “Ah, what fun,” and then her voice went serious and she sat on the edge of the bed. “This is so nice of you, but I’m not sure I’ll be needing any of this.”

“Mom. Tom and I, we want you to stay.”

“As long as you like,” said Tom. “I talked to the owner and we’ve worked it all out.”

“I appreciate it,” she said. “I really do.” And then, “But it’s probably time for me to go.”

“Go? Go where?”

“Back to Mesadale.”

“I’m not taking you back there.”

My phone rang. Roland. I don’t know why I answered. “Honey, I just read about you on the
Register
’s home page. You’re like a little Angela Lansbury out there. Now if only you could solve the mystery of my expanding waistline.”

“Roland, I can’t talk now.”

“All right, but I want to hear all about it, especially that cute thing you picked up, Miss Utah. Leave it to you to solve a crime
and
find a hubby-hub.”

“Not now, Roland.”

“Anyway, when are you coming home?”

“Later.”

“Oh no, don’t tell me you’re going all O Pioneer on me.”

I hung up. “Mom, sorry, an old friend. Like I was saying, I didn’t go through all this to take you back to Mesadale.”

The sunshine through the plate glass made her face look very round and very clean. It was a pure morning light, the kind that reveals everything for what it is. “God was right,” she said. “He said you’d come, and he was right.” She looked around. “This is such a nice place. And these clothes—I can’t believe you bought them for me, they’re so pretty. But I can’t take them.”

“Mom, you can.”

“No, Jordan, I can’t.”

Right then, before she walked out the door, I felt like I had one last chance to save her. I opened the dresser, showing her the new slacks and blouses, the shoes lined up at the door, the face cream and beauty soap laid out on the vanity. I showed her the tv remote and promised to teach her how to use the internet in the lobby. “Mom, please, I want you to stay. Here. With me.” I was trying to tell her we could pick up our lives in Rooms 111 and 112, get the second chance you almost never get. I was frantic to prove the Malibu Inn would make a nice home.

“And there’s a pool! We didn’t show you the pool! Right here, through the patio door.” I opened the glass slider.

Then I stopped. “Mom, please. I don’t want you to go. You can stay here and do what you want. We won’t get in your way.”

“Jordan, I’m sorry.”

“Mom, please.”

“Jordan, I know you understand.”

The thing was: I finally did.

“What if I need to call you?”

“You won’t.”

“What if it’s an emergency?”

“Then you’ll know what to do.”

“Will we ever see each other again?”

“I believe we will.”

My mom and I drove over to Denny’s for the breakfast special. We pushed around our eggs and searched for things to say. The truth was, we’d already said it, and twenty minutes later we were on the road to Mesadale in my van. My mom rolled down her window and the wind blew about the shrub of her hair. We passed the shot-up marker and the wasteland of scrub. I saw the stand of cottonwoods and pulled over to turn onto the road.

“I’ll get out here,” she said.

“I’m not going to leave you on the highway.”

“I want to walk the rest of the way home.”

I turned off the engine and helped her down from the van. The sunlight was warm on my face and cast her skin in gold. The wind kicked up the sand and the dust and I could feel my throat drying out. “So I guess this is it,” I said. “Mom, are you sure?”

She nodded. “I love you. I know you know that. That’s why I can say good-bye.”

We held each other for a while and at some point it was time to let go. She headed up the road, the dust collecting around her ankles, and the sun burned down, and we both knew it would burn hot and high on the desert until all our last days.

When I got back to Room 112, I couldn’t believe it—Johnny was asleep on the bed. The dogs were curled up around him, and Tom was sitting on the other bed, reading. “Shhhh,” he said. “They’re sleeping.”

“I can see that. What’s he doing here?” Johnny’s legs were scratched up, bug bites and a couple of bruises, but otherwise he looked all right.

“He ran away,” he whispered. “I guess he missed you.”

“What are we going to do with him?”

“Shhh, you’ll wake him,” he said. “We’ll figure something out.” And then, “Jordan—”

“Tom—”

“He can stay with us if he wants.”

“Let’s just see, all right? We have a lot going on.”

“I know, but wouldn’t it be nice if he stayed?”

“God, what a family we’d make.”

“Sounds perfect,” said Tom. “Now be quiet.”

“He might not want to stay.”

“He’ll want to.”

“I don’t know.”

“Jordan—”

“Tom—”

“What are you thinking?”

“Stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“You know what they say?”

“What’s that?”

“Endings are beginnings.”

“Is that what they say?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Johnny, opening one eye. “Will you two please shut the fuck up.” He cracked his smart-ass smile. Elektra moaned and reasserted her position on the bed. Joey swatted his plumed tail. And Tom put his arm around me. The sun was in the western sky and the room filled with its light. I began to imagine my mom walking back into town—the dust in her hair, the hope in her eyes. The road, the post office, the mountain shadow. The excitement as someone recognized her, then someone else, then someone else again. Where would she go? Would she return to her old room? I became anxious and felt a shiver on my spine. Would I wonder about her fate for the rest of my life? Could I handle the not knowing? Would I accept an ending without end? Then I saw four wives greet her, kiss her, take her inside the house. I saw three small children circling her skirt. I saw her old apron hanging on its peg. I saw her swing open the door to her room. I saw her move to the windowsill and stroke the leaf of her aloe plant. I saw my mother on her knees. And I saw myself in her prayers.

AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is a work of fiction. It is not meant to be read as a stand-in for a biography of Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young, or any of the other historical figures who appear in it. Even so, it’s human nature to wonder if a historical novel is inspired by real people and real events, and if so to what degree; and thus I feel an obligation to the reader to begin to answer that question.

Anyone attempting to write about the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, even a sliver of it, will immediately encounter the difficult task of accuracy. That is because on nearly every issue in the Church’s past, and in regard to every person who has played a part in the Church’s often remarkable life, there are at least two, and typically more, combative opinions on what each side sincerely calls “the truth.” In the preface to his 1925 biography of Brigham Young, M. R. Werner states the case plainly: “Mormon and anti-Mormon literature is frequently unreliable.”

Ever since her apostasy from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1873, Ann Eliza Young has been a figure of controversy among Mormons and non-Mormons alike. I don’t expect to settle that controversy with this book. One reason the controversy has lingered is that she left a substantial record of her experiences as a plural wife in her two memoirs and many public lectures. Her enemies and allies have used her own words to denounce or support her, and thus in order to write about Ann Eliza Young I inevitably began with her lectures and passionate memoirs,
Wife No. 19
(1875) and
Life in Mormon Bondage
(1908). The books have their flaws. In them, Ann Eliza can come off as simultaneously hypercritical and hypersensitive. She is selective in her presentation of her story and Mormon history, carrying out an agenda with little subtlety or nuance. Too often her tone becomes strident and vengeful. Her portrait of Brigham Young lacks the complexity for which he was known. And she can get basic information wrong. Yet despite these limitations, her memoirs, as well as her public lectures upon which the memoirs are based, remain the best sources for the plot of her life and, just as important, for appreciating her point of view. If she had not spoken up there would be much about her life, and especially her marriage to Brigham, that we could never know. It is one reason her story is so remarkable—she dared to reveal what thousands of other plural wives bore in silence. Therefore I gratefully acknowledge her original efforts in autobiography. Without them,
The 19th Wife
would have been a far lesser, far more opaque book. Ann Eliza wrote her books to affect public opinion and change policy, but also to shape her legacy; inspired by this, I wrote chapters of an alternative memoir as part of this novel. My long process of thinking about Ann Eliza and her family, and the context of her life, began with her books, and so it seemed only natural to begin my novel where she does, and then veer away.

The 19th Wife
follows Ann Eliza’s basic biographical arc as she describes it, although often I fill in where she skips and I skip where she digresses. I continue past her conclusion and reinterpret where her point of view limits an understanding of her life and times. I also spend time on members of her family, about whom she has little meaningful to say. It is with them—Chauncey, Elizabeth, Gilbert, and Lorenzo Leonard—that I take the most liberties because their biographies are less known and because of the novelist’s need to weave the disparate into something unified. As for Brigham Young, my portrait of him is mostly consistent with that presented by people who knew him, some historians, as well as the sermons, declarations, letters, and diaries he left. Often when he speaks in my narrative, especially at the pulpit, his words are inspired by a sermon we know, through the historical record, he made. I am sure his admirers will argue I linger too long on his egomaniacal tendencies as well as his appetites; and that by quoting him directly on the subject of blood atonement on Chapter IX. Zion. I am overemphasizing his calls for violence. Brigham’s detractors, on the other hand, will probably say I let him off the hook. Thankfully the historical record is vast and accessible; the curious reader can visit the library or go online to form his or her own conclusions.

Which leads me to the documents (or “documents”) that run throughout the novel—the newspaper articles, the letters, the Introduction by Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Wikipedia entry. Although I am the author of these, they are fictional representations of what it’s like to spend time in the archives and online researching Ann Eliza Young, Brigham, and early LDS history. Many are inspired by an actual text or a kind of text. For example, my Howard Greenly interview with Joseph purposely evokes Horace Greeley’s well-known interview with Brigham in 1859; the devotional poem “In Our House” is my limp attempt at the sincere hymns many Pioneers wrote to reflect their experiences; and the Wikipedia entry is (obviously) written in a style very much like a Wikipedia entry.

The mighty lens of history has enabled me to see Ann Eliza’s life as she could not, and I have used this perspective to tell her story in a way that perhaps broadens it and connects it to our day. All of this is a longwinded answer to the original question, is
The 19th Wife
based on real people and real events? Yes. Have I invented much of it? Yes, for that is what novelists do.

Inevitably I relied on a variety of sources to write this book, each important to my task and worth acknowledging. Many times I turned to Irving Wallace’s thorough biography,
The Twenty-Seventh Wife
(1961), itself indebted to Ann Eliza’s original memoirs. I recommend it, along with
Wife No. 19,
for anyone who wants to know more about her life. In addition, the Irving Wallace Archive at the Honnold Library at the Claremont Colleges holds a fine collection on Ann Eliza Young; I’m grateful to Mr. Wallace for making his original research available to the public and to Carrie Marsh and the other archivists who maintain it today. Just as important were the archives of the
Salt Lake Daily Tribune,
one of Ann Eliza’s most vocal allies. This paper published almost daily reports on her battle with Brigham, devoting dozens of news columns to her story and many editorials to support her cause, and reprinted most of the legal filings in their divorce case. Throughout the 1870s and ’80s the
Tribune
featured a number of articles about the general conditions of polygamy in Utah and serialized sensational personal narratives, such as “Tied to the Stake; or Martyrs of Latter Days” by Mrs. A. G. Paddock, many of which supported Ann Eliza’s claims. This thorough repository—today housed on microfiche at the magnificent Salt Lake City Public Library—helped me with crucial details about Ann Eliza’s life, as well as to better understand its historical context. On the other hand, the
Deseret News,
Ann Eliza’s inevitable opponent, reported on her story from Brigham’s perspective. While other local and national papers covered Ann Eliza’s story in great (and often tabloid) detail, these two publications documented her life story and her apostasy from the Mormon Church as well as any periodical during her day. (The
Anti-Polygamy Standard,
which published out of Salt Lake City in the 1880s, is a useful source for stories of plural marriage a few years after Ann Eliza’s apostasy.)

Some people argue bibliographies have no place in fiction, but several books and documents have helped me with so many matters large and small that I want to give them the thanks they are due. I haven’t included this list to show off the extent of my reading (or lack thereof) but to acknowledge a set of authors whose work I learned from: “Ann Eliza Young” by the American Literary Bureau;
Brigham Young: American Moses
by Leonard J. Arrington;
Twenty Years of Congress
by James G. Blaine;
No Man Knows My History
by Fawn M. Brodie;
Emma Lee
by Juanita Brooks;
The City of the Saints
by Sir Richard F. Burton;
The Pioneer Cookbook
by Kate Carter;
In Sacred Loneliness
by Todd Compton; “Forest Farm House and Forest Dale” by Edith Olsen Cowen; “Brigham Young, His Family and His Wives” compiled by the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers; “Unique Story—President Brigham Young” compiled by the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers; “Autobiography of Moses Deming” by Moses Deming;
The Women of Mormonism
edited by Jennie A. Froiseth;
Nauvoo Factbook
by George and Sylvia Givens;
By the Hand of Mormon
by Terry L. Givens;
The Mormon Question
by Sarah Barringer Gordon; “Letters” by Irene Haskell;
Solemn Covenant
by B. Carmon Hardy; “Eliza Jane Churchill Webb, Pioneer of 1848” by Olivette Webb Goe Henry; “Chauncey Griswold Webb, Pioneer of 1848” by Olivette Webb Goe Henry and Nina Beth E. Goe Cunningham;
Old Mormon Kirtland
by Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and T. Jeffrey Cottle;
Old Mormon Nauvoo
by Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and T. Jeffrey Cottle;
Life of James Redpath
by Charles F. Horner; 111
Days to Zion
by Hal Knight and Dr. Stanley B. Kimball;
Under the Banner of Heaven
by Jon Krakauer;
The Story of the Mormons from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901
by William Alexander Linn, especially Chapter IV, “The Hand-Cart Tragedy” “Utah’s Forty Years of Historical Amnesia” by Theron Luke;
Historic Dress in America
by Elizabeth McClellan;
Redburn
by Herman Melville, especially Chapter 38 for its vivid depiction of Liverpool’s slums;
Sounding Brass
by Hugh Nibley;
The Fate of Madame La Tour
by Mrs. A. G. Paddock;
Eccentricities of Genius
by Major J. B. Pond; “August Announcement of 1875” by the Redpath Lyceum; “Brigham Young Divorce Case” by Brigham Henry Roberts; “Ann Eliza—Mrs. Young’s Lecture Last Night—The Story of Her Life” by the St. Louis Republican, December 30, 1873;
The Book of Mormon,
translated by Joseph Smith, Jr.;
The Pearl of Great Price
by Joseph Smith, Jr.;
God Has Made Us a Kingdom
by Vickie Cleverley Speek;
Brigham Young at Home
by Clarissa Young Spencer and Mabel Harmer;
Mormon Country
by Wallace Stegner;
Expose of Polygamy in Utah
by Mrs. T.B.H. Stenhouse;
Tell It All
by Mrs. T.B.H. Stenhouse (it’s worth noting that Stenhouse’s books inspired Ann Eliza’s memoirs in many ways);
Roughing It
by Mark Twain;
Mormon Polygamy
by Richard S. Van Wagoner; “Interview with Joe Place, April 23, 1960” by Irving Wallace;
Brigham Young
by M. R. Werner;
The Bold Women
by Helen Beal Woodward;
The Journal of Discourses,
Volumes 3 and 4, by Brigham Young;
Diary of Brigham Young, 1857,
edited by Everett L. Cooley;
My Dear Sons: Letters of Brigham Young to His Sons,
edited by Dean C. Jessee;
The Complete Sermons of Brigham Young;
and
Isn’t One Wife Enough?
by Kimball Young.

I owe a great deal to the following institutions and their staffs for making their collections readily available through open stacks and policies of access. Each contains a variety of useful, idiosyncratic materials that I gladly co-opted for my use: the Salt Lake City Public Library; Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library; the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library; the Provo Public Library; the Washington County Library in St. George; the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum; and the Nauvoo Family History Center.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has devoted countless resources to creating and staffing dozens of historical museums, many of them free and open to the public. I visited these institutions several times, lingering to take notes and talk to the missionaries serving as docents and guides. Without the church’s careful and abundant preservation of the past throughout Utah, as well as in Nauvoo, I could not have conjured up Ann Eliza’s world.

I want to thank the Metropolitan Community Church of Las Vegas for warmly welcoming me into their sanctuary. Although the sermon on Chapter XIV. Wife #19: Off the Strip is inspired by one I heard there on December 18, 2005, the scene itself is fictitious and does not depict this actual church or anyone in its loving congregation.

A number of people generously shared their stories with me. Without them I could not have written this novel as it is: Flora Jessop, Carmen Thompson, Steve Tripp, Mickey Unger, Beverly White, Kevin, Jimmy, Peter, and Susan. Thank you all.

Kari Main of the Pioneer Memorial Museum read the book in manuscript, correcting a number of errors. Her sharp, knowing eye fixed the book in many ways. She was an ideal reader and these few words are not enough thanks for her efforts.

The supremely talented Catherine Hamilton drew the illustration on Chapter XI. Wife #19: The Con of the West; it is based on an original 1876 etching by Stanley Fox.

I’d like to thank the Danish Arts Council for their support while I was revising the novel; Peter and Gitte Rannes for their warm hospitality at the Danish Centre for Writers and Translators in Hald; and Nathaniel Rich and Martin Glaz Serup for a productive retreat.