The Lonely Polygamist (64 page)

So she set about kissing him again, and as she did she pried open his fist and removed the condom crumpled inside it.

Coming up for air, he said, “I have to tell you, I don’t have any idea how to use that thing.”

“Oh,” she said, “don’t worry, hon, I do.”

In one quick motion she pulled down his sweatpants and underwear, and while she was busy noticing how very
un
impotent he was—a rather difficult fact to miss from her vantage point—something else caught her eye. It appeared as if the hair around his genitals had been trimmed back in an almost perfectly round circle, half an inch long or so, like the green on a golf course cut from the surrounding rough.

“What,” she said, “is
this
?”

He looked down at himself. “Yeah,” he said, “this. I don’t know. A while back I got some
gum
caught there somehow. I guess I got carried away cutting it out.”

In a few moments Trish and her husband would make love for the first time in nearly a year, with such vigor and abandon that they would have to bite their lips and hold their hands over each other’s mouths to keep from waking the house. But right now, slipping the condom from its little golden pouch, she laughed longer and louder than she had in a very long time.

A
SATURDAY AFTERNOON IN LATE SEPTEMBER, THE SKY A CHECKERBOARD
of clouds, the air soft with the coming fall. The Big House renovation is winding down, and none too soon; the work, as always, has been plagued by mishaps and delays, broken sewer pipes and code violations, bureaucratic snafus at the county office, nasty weather of all kinds. The crew, offered a handsome bonus to finish the job by the end of the month, lay shingles and set windows and paint trim with uncommon industry, the entire rear of the house so jumbled with ladders and scaffolding and scrambling men that the whole enterprise brings to mind the Tower of Babel.

Occasionally, the roofers pause in their hammerivng to watch the spectacle below. On the broad, weedy lawn a couple hundred people have gathered for a wedding: rows of folding chairs, banquet tables spread with desserts and finger food, and up front, at the outer edge of the milling crowd, the happy couple, the handsome groom and lovely bride.

The ceremony doesn’t take long. A thin silver cloud passes in front of the sun, casting everything a deeper shade of itself, and as if this is his cue Uncle Chick asks the crowd to be seated. There is a brief bout of musical chairs that leaves at least thirty disappointed stragglers searching for a place to stand. Mostly, this is a typical fundamentalist crowd, comprised of the usual mob of children, the men in polyester suits and bolo ties, the women with their long hair brushed and shimmering in the glassy light. But there are a few who obviously don’t belong (invited here by Golden unbeknownst to Uncle Chick or anyone else): Nelson Norman, settled in next to the banquet tables, having already sampled three kinds of cake and two flavors of punch; Leonard Odlum, looking sorely out of place in a rented maroon tuxedo and trying in vain to make meaningful eye contact with some of the young ladies in the audience; and near the back, Nestor, flanked on one side by a few of his hungover bandmates, and on the other by Huila, her son Fredy, and her silver-haired uncle Esteban, who accompanied the boy on the journey from Guatemala.

Clearing his throat, Uncle Chick takes his place before the groom (who sweats despite the cool air, as if at the tail end of a forced march) and the beaming bride in the pale chiffon dress she wore for her first wedding nearly seventeen years ago, altered to show a hint of cleavage. She lifts a hand to keep her complicated and newly dyed hairdo in proper alignment, and the sudden movement causes the dress, already showing signs of considerable strain, to make a sharp tearing noise at one of its seams.

An hour or so ago, to prepare himself for this moment, Golden snuck out to his work truck while the older boys were busy setting up chairs and fished out his jelly jar from under the bench seat. Though tempted on more occasions than he could count, he had not partaken of it since Rusty’s accident. He held it up to the light: less than an inch of amber liquid at its bottom.
One sip for comfort, two for courage
, he thought, and took one exceptionally long and very deep sip until the jar was emptied. He shuddered, gave himself an exhortatory slap on the face, and tossed the jar into his neighbor’s trash heap on the other side of the fence.

Now, while Uncle Chick cracks his oversized Bible-and-Book-of-Mormon combination to a random page and without looking at it begins to recite a series of wedding-related scriptures, Golden concentrates, making sure not to teeter or sway. Speaking at a good clip, as if he’s trying to get this over with as soon as possible, Uncle Chick explains to the couple that they will be required, from this day hence, to love and support each other, that it is the sacred duty of the wife to submit herself to her husband in all things and in return he must protect and provide for her, to cleave unto her as if she were his own body, that they must share all things in love and righteousness and always keep their marriage bed pure—here he pauses to give Golden a less-than-enigmatic look through the smoked lenses of his glasses—and if they will heed this counsel and keep God’s commandments they shall forever be as one mind, one flesh.

The sun slides free of the silver clouds and Golden is dazzled for a moment, he has to close his eyes and turn his head, and when he opens them again he is looking at his four wives, seated side by side in the front row just to his right, wearing identical cream-colored dresses. They are holding hands and in each of their eyes, even Beverly’s, is the evidence of tears.

For a moment he experiences that familiar, almost thrilling sense of dislocation—
How did I get here? How did this happen?
—and then the web of phosphenes and colored dots clears from his vision and he is struck by the beauty of these women, their generous mouths and graceful arms, their backs held straight as if in defiance or pride. His own body, compressed for so long under the weight of sadness and doubt, creaks at this sudden and irregular expansion of feeling, with the swelling of belief that he
can
do this, that he has the capacity to love and care for these women—his wives!—that his heart is spacious enough to accommodate them all, even this strange woman at his side who nudges him a little to direct his attention back to the matter at hand, her hair crackling in his ear.

In this single bright moment, surrounded by his loved ones, his new home being raised in a racket of hammering and shouts, the air imprinted with the scent of hot sawdust, he is ready to believe that anything is possible.

He can’t help himself; before he turns back he steals a look across the heads of family and friends, finds Huila near the back standing by the propane tank. He can’t be sure, but she appears to be holding Nestor’s hand. They both smile broadly, her son clutching his mother’s leg, the weathered old uncle looking around, an expression on his face that says,
These are some very strange people.
Huila is wearing the peasant dress he first saw her in, the one decorated with yellow pineapples and bananas in rough yarn, and he knows that for all the undeserved bounty of his life, she will always be there, at the edge of his vision, to remind him of all the things he can never have.

Uncle Chick asks the wives to come forward and take their place next to the bride: Trish closest to Maureen, then Rose-of-Sharon, Nola, and Beverly at the end.

Now that Trish is standing, the slight rounding of her belly is obvious. After that first night months ago, until her morning sickness (which seemed to peak during evening hours) got the better of her, they’d had sex with some regularity on the Barge’s smelly decks, healing sex, tired sex, sex whose only purpose, it seemed, was to make the world and everything in it disappear. Though she was never enthusiastic about it, Golden insisted they use the condoms he had purchased, in a moment of abject embarrassment, from the old bald druggist in St. George. Now the sight of his young wife, flushed at the cheeks, radiant with the new life inside her, he can only accept as a miracle, a divine rebuke to his selfish desires.

Both Rose and Nola have a different look to them as well, Rose with her hair in a simple bun, her skin tanned from a summer spent mostly outside, away from the hubbub of construction, herding kids and working in the family garden, and Nola, who has shed a good fifteen pounds since finding out that it would be Maureen Sinkfoyle joining the family (she has let it be known that her new life’s goal is to be “only the second tubbiest wife in the Richards clan”). And there is Beverly, at the end of the line, a flash of new gray at her temples, coughing quietly into her fist. A month ago, after she had succeeded in her campaign to ensure that Maureen would be Golden’s fifth wife, she informed him in the most matter-of-fact way that she had been to see the doctor, who told her what she had suspected for quite a while: she had inoperable lung cancer, almost certainly contracted from exposure to radioactive fallout. She would not seek treatment, which had little chance of helping anyway, and her only request of him was that he keep this news a secret for as long as she asked. She would spend the rest of her time tutoring Maureen and making peace with the other wives, to ensure that once she was gone the Richards family would soldier forward in harmony and righteousness until the promised day, on the other side of the veil, when they would be joined together again.

From the back of the house there is the sharp whine of a power saw followed by some good-natured cursing in Spanish, and one of the redheaded Sinkfoyle brothers (both of whom will be adding their number to the ranks of the Richards family any moment now) makes an off-color joke under his breath that draws a few titters from the crowd. Uncle Chick barks out a cough of warning and turns to address the wives. He asks them if they are ready to stand as Sarah of old and sacrifice their personal desires to the greater glory of God and His kingdom. To each one in turn he asks, “Do you, willingly and of your own accord, give this good sister to this man in marriage for time and all eternity?” and each one, with only a slight hesitation, nods, says, “I do.”

At this point of the ceremony, it is up to Trish, as the last wife, to deliver the bride. She takes Maureen’s wrist, but doesn’t seem to possess the strength to lift it. A muscle in her jaw flares and, in a single, insistent motion, she places Maureen’s right hand in Golden’s and covers them both with her own. The other wives step forward to do the same and as they huddle close, breathing the same air, Golden hopes to meet their eyes, to assure them of his love for them, his good intentions, but he can see only a series of wet, flesh-colored blurs, and the moment is lost when Uncle Chick, by the power vested in him by no one but the true and living God, pronounces them man and wives. They step back, and for those in attendance it is difficult to say if the tears they discreetly knuckle from their eyes are tears of sorrow or joy.

The groom is instructed to kiss the bride, and Maureen tugs Golden down by his tie and mashes her face into his. The crowd exhales a sigh of relief and the Richards children, prodded by the several old church ladies who value politeness and decorum above all else, step uncertainly forward to offer their congratulations. Under a wide western sky they gather round, father, mothers and children, the whole mob of them shaking hands, giving kisses and exaggerated hugs, as if hoping to convince themselves, once and for all, that they are that most wondrous and impossible of things: one big happy family.

While I tried to defer to geography and history whenever possible, in this book they have been employed opportunistically; where they didn’t serve the story, they were blissfully ignored.

I’d like to offer my thanks to these people and organizations:

The families in Utah and Arizona for their generosity and insight, for allowing me into their lives.

My editor, Jill Bialosky, for taking on this book and under difficult circumstances, and to all the good people at Norton who have helped along the way.

Francis Geffard, editor at Albin Michel, for his knowledge and appreciation of the American West, and his support of my work.

Peter Rudy and Aaron Cohen, friends and first readers, whose advice and criticism made this a better book.

Matt Crosby, whose sharp eye and editorial instincts saved the day.

Colorado Art Ranch and the Retreat at Railroad Ranch, for providing time and beautiful places in which to write.

Raye C. Ringholz, author of
Uranium Frenzy: Saga of the Nuclear West
, and Carole Gallagher, author of
American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War
, for their work on American nuclear testing and its victims.

Dorothy Allred Solomon, whose memoir,
Daughter of the Saints
, is the best account of polygamy ever written.

And to three people in particular, my deepest gratitude:

Carol Houck Smith, who didn’t get to see this book into print, but whose influence lives on every page.

Nicole Aragi, for so many things: advice, humor, perspective, friendship, support.

Kate, for strength and sweetness, for being there every step of the way.