The Ninth Wife (21 page)

“But he could have felt that way writing that and then five minutes later maybe he felt completely different.”

“I doubt it.”

“Why? Because people don’t change? Bess, really.” He pokes her in the ribs.

“Things like this can be very revealing.”

“Let’s go upstairs,” says Rory, leading the way.

T
hey make love in the shower. They soap each other’s backs and buttocks and kiss with the water pouring down the sides of their faces. They lie naked under the top blanket and take a nap.

Bess wakes to a lovely melody. Rory is sitting in a big chair in his jeans, softly playing his guitar.

“That’s beautiful,” she sighs, rolling to her side.

He puts down his guitar and comes to lie next to her. He kisses her cheek and places a piece of hair behind her ear.

They are facing each other on their sides, caressing. “So this is what one of those perfect happy moments feels like,” says Bess. “I’ve read about them.”

“It’s superb, isn’t it?” Rory whispers.

“I wish it wouldn’t go away.”

“It doesn’t have to. We don’t have to go to dinner. We’ll order in. Pizza. Anything. We’ll eat lying down, just like this. We won’t move.”

Bess tries to look at ease, but already the idea of pizza and the passage of time is making her stomach flutter. That, and knowing she has to muster the nerve to ask him about his wife who passed away. Neither of them has yet brought it up. What if he says he doesn’t want to marry again? “Hold that thought,” she says.

She sits on the toilet for dreadfully long minutes. Can there be anything more uncomfortable than having to spend time in the bathroom on the first romantic weekend away with a lover?

“Bess?” Rory is pacing in front of the bathroom door and finally gets the nerve to knock. “Bess love, are you okay?”

She feels like an idiot. “My stomach is just off, that’s all. Must be something I ate.”

“Can I get you something?”

“No, I’ll be fine.”

He hesitates. “Bess, are you nervous about something?”

“No, of course not.” She cringes when she says this. “I do my best thinking in the bathroom, that’s all. I’m solving complex mathematical problems. Very important work.”

“Ah, I see.” She hears a thump and guesses he has taken a seat on the floor on the other side of the door. “My Uncle Johnny did a whole crossword puzzle each time he sat on the can,” he says. “When he got tired of that he took work in with him. He was an important man, often called on to write historical agreements between heads of state, that sort of thing. Then after a time he found he could only summon his brilliance while sitting on the can. The rest of the time he was a bumbling buffoon.”

Bess appreciates the levity. She rests her chin in her hands, her elbows on her knees. “So what did he do?”

“What else could he do? He set up an office in there. He put the phone in the sink and built a desk over his lap. It worked fine until my cousin Jimmy got drunk one night, went in, got turned around wouldn’t you know, what with all the machinery in there . . . ended up pissing all over a new Middle East peace accord and that was the end of that!”

Bess laughs. “True story?”

“True story.”

They stay silent for a moment, thinking. A door closes somewhere in the inn. “Are you feeling better then?” he says.

“Yeah. Sort of. I’m sorry. I feel ridiculous.”

“No, none of that now,” he says through the door. “I want you to feel comfortable with me. Tell me I’m scaring you. Tell me I’m moving too quickly. Tell me to bugger off.”

“No, you’re not. I mean you’re doing everything right. It’s just . . .” Her voice trails off. “It’s just that the relationships I’ve had . . . they haven’t, or I haven’t—” She stops, and takes a deep breath. “It’s been so long since someone has said
I love you
to me.” There, she said it. She’s tried hard to bury this pain, this unspoken truth out of embarrassment and fear that she’d continue to be alone, unloved in that way, year after year. But here it is, the truth sliced open and wobbling soft-side up. She hangs her head and feels like crying.

“That’s sad,” Rory says softly. At least that’s what she thinks he says, his voice sounding like it’s part of another hushed conversation. And his saying it’s sad makes it seem even sadder. This exchange would be so much harder face-to-face, she thinks.

“Bess, what can I do to prove that I’m serious about you? That I truly love you?”

She rips off a square of toilet paper to wipe her eyes. “You don’t have to.”

“I know!” he interrupts, sounding elated. She can hear him standing up, getting excited. “Bess, I . . .”

“Rory . . .”

“Marry me!” he cries out, and in his enthusiasm he punches the bathroom door and before she can stop it, before she can reach her arm out to brace it shut, the door accidentally swings open.

Rory looks at her.

Bess is conscious of the skin of her thighs against the white porcelain seat, her feet facing forward like a schoolgirl’s, her naked, enervated body curved into a question mark.

“Oops,” he says quietly. But he doesn’t move.

Why doesn’t he shut the door? She’s too far away from it or she would do it herself. “Can you . . .”

“You’re adorable,” he interrupts.

“I’m on the toilet.”

“You’re adorable on the toilet.”

“And sexy. Don’t forget sexy.”

“And very sexy.”

She can only look at him quickly, then look away. “Feel free to close the door anytime, you know. I’m not embarrassed at all. Really.”

“Right,” he says, turning away. He closes the door and she sighs with relief, but she can hear him breathing just on the other side and can sense his hesitation, his desire to say more. “Rory, can you give me a second?”

“Of course,” he says, his steps retreating into the bedroom.

Bess looks to the floor, the ceiling, the walls, trying to make sense of what just happened.
Marry me
, he said.
Was he kidding?
Everything in the bathroom, she notices, looks so white: the shower curtain, the hand towels, the plastic bag in the wicker basket and the tissues, the shelf where there are seashells and a bottle of bubble bath.
It’s so white here
. Is this what that other guest saw? Did he have a reason to notice, too?

This is
the
moment she has dreamed of her whole life, the very moment a man she loves asks her this question, pops it like the cork from champagne, and yet, look where she is. Did she bring this moment on herself? Maybe he’s going for a good story. She wants to ask him why: Why me, why now, why in the bathroom? But in her fantasy it doesn’t go like that, either. In her fantasy, the nuances of his voice and expression aren’t blocked behind a bathroom door. In her fantasy, she screams
yes!
and wraps her arms around her new husband-to-be. Boy, he screwed this up. She reaches behind her and flushes.

She washes her hands and checks her appearance in the mirror, running her fingers through her hair, and makes her way back to the bedroom. She slips on her underwear, T-shirt, and shorts and sits on the edge of the bed.

Rory is standing by the window, looking out. “That was awkward,” he says. Now it’s his turn to sound nervous. “I’m sorry. I don’t always think things through. Obviously.”

Bess catches her body in the act of relaxing. She can feel her shoulders drop slightly, her breathing decelerate. She rises to stand next to him. “Remember when we first met?” she says. “You were weird then, too . . . about going through my drawers at the party and then getting sick from something you ate. Remember?”

He nods. No longer confident and charming, he looks like a little boy who might hide under a chair with a toy truck.

“Well, I didn’t hold that against you.”

He turns to embrace her. “I’m grateful that you’re so forgiving.”

“I don’t forgive you for proposing in the bathroom. That was terrible.” She feels something like joy sprouting from deep within, and this is curious to her. Could it be that the question itself has begun to sink in? Despite the horrendous way he asked, she thinks, he asked.
He wants to marry me.
He loves me that much
. “I do love you, you know,” she says. She rubs her fingertips over the smooth skin of his muscular back.

“Bess,” says Rory, looking down again. “You don’t have to answer. I just want you to know that the idea of proposing . . . it didn’t just come on suddenly. I’d been thinking about it. I was going to broach the subject this weekend, see how you felt.”

Wow
, she thinks.
Future galore.
“Let’s stay in tonight,” she says, taking his hand. “Let’s just talk. I think we need to talk before we, you know . . .”

His head is hanging low. He is pulling at a hangnail.

“That’s what I thought this trip was all about,” she continues. “To get to know each other. I mean, we really do hardly know each other.”

He looks to the window, then back at his hands. “I don’t need to know anything you don’t want to tell me.”

Bess stops his fidgeting by holding his hands in hers. “But I
want
to tell you. I want us to share things.” Where did this sudden strength come from? she wonders. Is it just merely the switching of roles that brings it out?

“See,” says Rory, “this isn’t going to help my cause.”

“Your cause?”

“Talking about my past is not going to help me prove to you how serious I am, Bess. Trust me. It’s going to muddle things. It always does. Please promise me you won’t let it.”

A familiar wave of panic returns to her stomach. “I don’t get it. Did you murder someone? How serious are we talking?”

“Nothing like that.”

“Well then, whatever it is, I’m sure we’ll get through it.”

Dusk has set in and the sheer white curtains on the window look ghostly.

Bess rises and turns on one of the lamps by the bed. “How about you tell me about your wife. I’d like to hear about her.”

Rory runs his hands down his face and slips limply to the floor. “Wives,” he mumbles.

“What?” she says, standing above him.

“Wives,” he says again. He is cringing as if about to get hit.

Bess takes a moment. “Wives?” she cries. “
Plural?
” She starts to pace. “So you were married more than once. Okay. When were you going to tell me this?”

“This weekend. I was. Look . . . five minutes ago you were in the bathroom because you yourself couldn’t talk about . . . things.”

“Not true, and we’re not talking about things; we’re talking about wives, Rory. And what does that mean, anyway? Two? Two wives? Please tell me it’s not more than that.”

Rory doesn’t answer.

“Rory? How many?”

“Eight.”

“JESUS CHRIST!” Her fingers are pressed to her temples. “You’ve been married
eight times
?”

“Bess, I can explain.”

Now she’s hyperventilating. The room is spinning. She has to sit down. “Eight times,” she breathes.

“It sounds worse—”

“Eight times you were married. And you’re what . . . forty-five?”

“Bess . . .”

“Eight wives.”

“Technically . . .”

“Technically? Technically, you were married to eight different women before you met me.”

“I know this sounds off.”

“No, not at all, it sounds perfectly normal. I just want to be sure I get this right: I’d be your
ninth
wife. Technically, I mean, I’d be your ninth, that’s all I’m asking!” She takes a deep breath in the space of his no response. What is she supposed to do now? Run out? Wouldn’t any sane woman do that? Cricket was right to caution her. She should have known.
The toilet, of all places.
How fitting.
She looks at Rory on the floor, his face in his hands. He suddenly seems like such a stranger. And yet, not a bad stranger or a scary one, just a stranger.

“This is a big deal,” she says.

“I know.”

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to believe you when you say you’re serious about marriage.” Now she looks at him and sees his eyes are glassy.

“Whatever I could say, I’d say, Bess. Whatever I could do, I’d do. I love you. Maybe I’m a hopeless romantic, but I do. I want to be with you.”

“You’ve said that now eight, no—nine times.”

“Not exactly, but yes, that’s too many times, I agree, and I’ll be paying for it for the rest of my life, but can you honestly tell me that’s worse than not saying it enough? I never lied, Bess. My crime is that I love with too much hope.”

Was that rehearsed?
“But why get married each time? Why not just live together?”

“Because, despite what it looks like, I actually believe in the institution.”

“I need some air,” she says, and leaves the room.

The woman who checked them in is sitting in the living room with a book in her lap. Her curious countenance tells Bess that the walls of the B&B are far from soundproof. “Is everything all right?” she asks.

“Fine,” says Bess, curtly. She’s in no mood for this woman who’s been married seventeen years to one man and brags about it to every guest who walks through the door. “I just left something in the car.” Bess hurries outside. The trees are rustling from a slow breeze, fading under the darkening sky. She feels lost and unsteady. Her stomach, though, is not forcing her back into the bathroom. But why? Was her body trying to tell her something? Did she know deep down to expect something like this? Maybe now the knowing is better than the not knowing, even though the knowing is pretty damn lousy. And now what is she supposed to do? Call a cab and get out of here? Ask him to take her home? She looks up and sees Rory in the window, looking down at her. She just told this man she loves him; maybe she owes it to him to hear him out. And frankly, she’s curious . . . how does somebody pull off having eight wives?

Slowly, she retreats inside, and stands in front of their bedroom door. Rory opens it, though she hadn’t knocked. “We’ll go,” he says. “I can take you home.”

“I don’t want to go home,” she says, quietly, not meeting his eyes. She crosses the room and sits on the bed. He closes the door and sits by her. He waits for her to speak.