The Ninth Wife (37 page)

The woman abruptly finishes her call. “Rory,” she says.

Chapter Twenty-seven

W
hat time is it?” yells Bess from the bathroom with immediate regret. Her voice is too piercing, her throat painfully dry. A slight rub of her foot on the porcelain tub roars like a ship’s bullhorn, the flush of the toilet squalls like Niagara Falls. She curses the shiny, hard surfaces and keeps the lights low.

Just minutes ago, Cricket had smuggled Stella past the front desk, knocked loudly on Bess’s door, and entered her room singing a badly remembered version of her dad’s shout song. “Eight
A.M.
!” he yells. He pulls the curtains apart; Bess squints at the sunny day, snaps them shut again. He turns on the TV, she takes the remote and shuts it off.

“What’s with you?” says Bess.

Cricket looks away dramatically, erectly, as if he were flashing his profile to a portrait artist. Suddenly, she understands. She sits down on the bed. “You’re mad I didn’t tell you about Rory.”

Cricket relaxes out of his pose. “You got positively maniacal that I didn’t tell you my real name, and yet here you are, keeping something like this from me. I had to hear it from a perfect stranger.”

Bess curls into herself and tightens her robe. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Even in my drunken stupor last night I knew I blew it.”

He fingers a postcard on the desk. “You didn’t
blow
it,” he says. “Well all right, you did. But why? I’m hurt that you didn’t think you could talk to me about that.”

“I wanted to tell you. I just wasn’t ready to endure any teasing.”

“I wouldn’t tease you about something this serious.”

“Yes, you would. You can’t help yourself. But that’s why I love you. You make me laugh at my life, and thank God for that.”

Cricket places his hand on his heart. “I can be serious, you know.”

“I know.” Bess rubs her temples. Is the trick to share everything you can with the important people in your life, or know that you can’t sometimes and be forgiving when those closest to you can’t, either? In so many ways Cricket is a mystery to her. So is Rory. So are her grandparents and her parents. Maybe she should be okay with that.

“Here,” says Cricket, handing her two Advil. “Take these.”

She reaches for her water glass. “Why aren’t you hung over, too?”

“I ate a proper dinner. You, my dear, ate bar nuts.”

Bess’s stomach convulses at the thought.

“Come now. Let’s get some coffee in you and you’ll feel better. You can tell me the whole story of the wives.”

“Okay, but I’m not going to meet Lorraine today. Especially not with Maggie. Besides, my grandparents told me last night they’re ready to get going. Or at least my grandfather is. Aren’t you?”

“I defer to the group, but I think you should meet this woman. Could be interesting.”

Bess admits she is curious about Lorraine, about her marriage to Rory, her life since then and how crazy she’s become, about why she stalked Dao. But as she thinks of Dao’s e-mail, Bess asks herself: Does she
really
want to hear Lorraine’s story? Would Lorraine even tell her the truth? Maybe she’d tell her life story like she was a character in a book, which is how Bess would rather hear it frankly, and she could make it any book, any story, any life lived that would sound better than what it was, and maybe still is: the basic personal ad of the human race—troubled, needy person seeks love and salvation.

Besides, Rory wouldn’t want her to go. And after last night, she’s not sure she wants to meet any more of his ex-wives. This isn’t exactly a well-thought-out research project. What
could
she have learned from Maggie about marriage when her two marriages failed? What could the eighteen-year-old Rory really have taught her about the man he is nearly thirty years later? Maybe Rory was right. Maybe she’s stirring up buried feelings Maggie has for Rory when she should just leave well enough alone. She pulls up her capris over a mysterious bruise on her hip and reminds herself to stay positive.

B
ess and Cricket take a cab to the van, parked on a side street around the corner from last night’s club. The street is empty, the bar closed and dark. Bess opens the door and finds Peace lying facedown on the floor. She props her back up and onto the seat.

Cricket coaxes Stella into her crate. “Why don’t you leave the mannequin on the floor?”

Bess thinks about this. Indeed, why doesn’t she? Why is she anthropomorphizing this plastic display pole with painted-on pupils and black lines where her limbs can be spun around and pulled off? “I don’t know,” says Bess. “She’s just a
she
to me, not an
it
. And she has a name.”

“Yes, but do you know her
real
name?”

“Funny,” says Bess, but the question lingers in her imagination. It’s possible that Peace is a replica of someone real, a specter of a buried secret. “Tell me,” she says as Cricket takes the wheel. “Have you thought about why Peace is important to my grandfather?”

“I know why. She’s one of the hundreds of lovers he had in his swinging days, only she was the rarest of pearls who loved him back and he has lived all the sorrowful days of his life with regret that he had to say good-bye to her forever.”

Bess rolls her eyes. “You’re reading romance novels again, you mush-brain.” Though, she thinks, it would explain a lot about his fighting with Millie. “Let’s say you’re right. Why wouldn’t my grandmother have tossed Peace out the window by now?”

Cricket parks in front of a diner where he can leave Stella in view, tied to a railing outside with a bowl of water. “Because Millie murdered the woman,” he says, slamming his door. “She was never caught because she’s good. She’s CIA-trained, the little old lady thing is all an act. She made it look like a suicide. And so she feels guilty. It’s her way of paying penance. I don’t know why you’re asking me this, it’s all very clear.”

“All right then,” says Bess.
And you weren’t going to poke fun at Rory’s ex-wives?
Right
.

They get a table and Bess nods an emphatic yes to the waitress who greets them with coffee. Cricket orders them both an egg-white omelet and whole wheat toast. Bess dumps more sugar than she’s used to into her cup. The heat on her scratchy throat feels good. She watches Cricket inspect his glass for lipstick marks. She feels grateful that he’s here with her on this trip.

“Cricket,” she asks, “do you think Maggie could still be in love with Rory?”

“Irrelevant. He loves
you
, right?”

“I’m kind of insecure on that front.”

“What a surprise.”

Their breakfast comes. Cricket sprinkles salt into his palm, then pinches it onto his omelet. “So are you going to give me the unabridged story, or do I have to wait another three weeks?”

Bess tells him the full story of the wives as best she can the way Rory told it to her, then about Dao’s e-mails and Carol’s kitchen. Cricket listens and sips his second cup of coffee. “What do you think?” she asks, biting into a triangle of toast.

Cricket shakes his head.

“Now’s the time you decide to keep quiet? Thanks.”

“Sweetheart, look,” he says, wiping the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “Do I think a marriage with him would last? I have my doubts. There, I said it. But marriage is always a risk. And so what if it doesn’t work? Would that make you absolutely unhappy for the rest of your life? I would hope not.”

Should she be going into a marriage contemplating how she’d be as a divorcée? Bess begins to respond and then stops when she hears Cricket’s cell phone ring. He looks at the number and takes a deep breath before he answers.

“Hello?” he says. “Yes? What happened?” There is a long silence before he says, “I see.” Another long silence, then “I’ll be there. Thank you for calling
.
”

“Who was that?” says Bess, though she already suspects she knows what it was about.

“That was Claus,” he says, pushing his plate away. “Isabella passed away last night.”

“Oh, Cricket.”

B
ess had called Millie and explained the situation and within two hours everyone was packed and ready to head off to Denver for Isabella’s funeral on Sunday, three days from now. All are glum and eerily quiet, watching the waning view of the city skyline as they drive out of town. Cricket is especially languid, and Bess is tired and headachy, but Millie and Irv seem distracted, too, perhaps by hard farewells and fears of what lies ahead. Millie doesn’t want to leave her sister. Bess knows this. Millie is thinking she might never see her again, despite Bess’s assurances to the contrary. And even Irv is probably thinking in terms of never again, though Esther isn’t one of his favorites. He is more than halfway to his new home and every mile must strike a death knell. Bess doesn’t know if this is what’s getting Irv down, but she thinks it’s a good guess.

Cracker?
she hints at Cricket, holding out a white bag of his favorite cheddar fish-shaped crisps she finds folded into the cup holder between them, but he declines with only the fleetingly gracious smile of the privately sad. He doesn’t want to talk about Isabella and Bess is respecting that.

“I love you,” she says into the space of the van. The words sound ethereal, like falling feathers.

No one responds. Millie’s gaze is out the window to the left, Cricket’s is to the right, his cheek pressed against his fist. Irv is staring at the seatback in front of him, his head bobbing from the bumps in the road.

Bess clears her throat. “I love you all, you know. I just want to say that.”

“We love you, too, dear,” says Millie, and that’s all that is said.

Interstate 80 stretches across Iowa toward a big sky horizon that makes Bess feel like she’s driving toward the edge of a flat earth. There is little in the scenery to lodge in the memory—a bland gray highway with trucks and cornfields and clusters of ignorable trees. Bess’s mind wanders and comes back every now and again to the road, amazed that she can drive sixty-five miles an hour for this long without truly paying attention.

She puts in a CD of traditional folk songs, and her mind turns to Rory. Someday when things are good and steady, she thinks, she will tell him about Maggie and Dao.

Her mind then wanders to Gaia, wondering how she’s doing. They haven’t spoken since Bess left D.C. And little Pearl. Sonny doesn’t deserve a precious baby like that. Are they doing family things together?

Her cell phone rings and she checks to see who the caller is: Maggie.
Crap.
Cricket said she invited Maggie to go to Joliet to see Lorraine and now here they are, blowing her off. Bess makes a mental note to call Gabrielle and tell her to cancel the appointment with Lorraine. Oh well. She looks over at Cricket. Poor Cricket.

Her attention comes back to the road. She presses a button and shuts off the CD. “How about an episode of
The Shadow
?” she asks her fellow travelers. No answer. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
inquires a foreboding male voice.

T
he best place to eat along Iowa’s section of I–80, say the guidebooks, are any of the German-style restaurants in the Amana Colonies.

“Sounds touristy,” says Irv.

“I’m not eating ham,” says Millie.

Cricket uncharacteristically doesn’t have an opinion.

“C’mon, the Amana Colonies are an historic landmark,” says Bess. “One of the oldest communal living places in America.”

“What does
communal
mean, they share toilets?” says Irv.

“Don’t be stupid, Irving.”

“They share property, Gramp, help each other out. Like the Amish. Let’s try it.”

Bess pulls into the largest of the seven villages, located in a river valley of quiet, rolling hills. Signs welcome them in German. Plank fences surround well-kept clapboard houses and shops selling antiques and wooden furniture and woolens. People strolling about look round and rosy-cheeked.

“Shalom, I want to say in a place like this,” says Irv.

“You can,” says Bess. “I don’t think they’ll mind.”

They decide to take a look around before settling on a restaurant. Quickly enough, they get separated by the shops. When Bess tries to regroup, she can’t find Cricket. She elicits Millie’s help. “Wait here, Gramp, okay? We’ll be right back.” She leaves Irv to enjoy the scent of freshly baked bread in the bakery shop. “Go,” he says. “I can stay here all day.”

Bess calls Cricket’s cell phone, but gets his voice mail. Millie and Bess search the craft shops and the general store. They search the Amana Meat Shop and Smokehouse, the Broom and Basket Shop, the Amana Wool Mill, and the Olde World Lace Shop. They stretch their necks around brick walls, down stairwells, in the middle of clustered leisure seekers with white sneakers and patriotic flag lapel pins. They wait outside a public restroom and ask a patron coming out if he’s seen a large pink man with a floral shirt and diamond earring and he says no, he hasn’t.
Cricket
, they yell.
Walter
. “Damn him!” Bess yells, and then looks down into the eyes of a pigeon-toed girl holding a red ball on her hip.

“Does your friend have a Shar-Pei?” The girl seems to be about ten years old, with thick purple-framed glasses and frogs on a charm bracelet.

“Yes, he does,” says Bess. “How did you know?”

“How did I know you had a missing friend or how did I know he has a Shar-Pei?”

She is actually waiting for an answer.
Smart-ass kid
. “Both. Have you seen him?”

“I heard you ask about him, that’s how. And I know what a Shar-Pei is because my stepmother has one. He’s on the trail.” She bounces her ball on the pavement.

“I’m sorry,” says Bess, “he’s where?”

“Over there.” She points away from the shops to the edge of an acre of lawn.

“You go,” says Millie. “I’ll check on your grandfather.”

Bess watches Millie walk away. Millie’s arthritic hip makes her lean to the left and take lopsided steps, but she holds her head high like an injured marathon runner walking to the finish line.