The Ninth Wife (10 page)

Bess taps him on the shoulder, feeling a sudden urge to be part of this imaginary world that makes him smile so broadly. “May I cut in?” She means could she dance with him, but he nods and hands her the mannequin, stepping back to clap to the rhythm. “Oh,” says Bess, face-to-face with the woman’s perfect plastic cheeks. “Okay then.” She grabs on to the figure’s tiny waist and slowly twirls her around like a schoolboy at his first social. “Look, Gramp,” she says. “I’m giving Peace a chance.” Either he doesn’t hear her or he doesn’t get it, for his gaze is elsewhere and Bess can tell he is alone somewhere, out there.

“Hello down there! Where are you two? Come back up and let’s go outside.”

Millie’s yelling from the top of the stairs brings Irv back to reality. “We’re coming,” he yells back.

Bess follows him upstairs to find Millie in front of the back door, holding a tray of fruit and rugelach.

“Bess dear, will you bring the tea out?”

Bess holds the screen door for her and comes back with the tea tray. Bess likes their home, their property. The house is a large, two-story mock English Tudor made of brick with stone around the front entrance and wooden shutters painted dark brown. It has a magnificent maple in front and a trellis off to the side with lilacs that will soon bloom in late spring. In the back where they go to sit is a small goldfish pond, now filled with weeds instead of fish; four ornate iron chairs too uncomfortable to actually sit on; and a stone bench pressed up against the trunk of an old cherry tree. Their property would be lovely and colorful had they kept up the landscaping like they used to, but they let it age the way Irv was aging: naturally, nonchalantly, hinting of happier times.

“So how was your day yesterday, birthday girl? What did you do?” Irv unfolds the chairs and places them around Millie’s portable bridge table as she folds the napkins and distributes the cups and saucers.

“Not much. Some friends made me a cake and sang ‘Happy Birthday.’ ”

“That’s nice,” says Millie. “I’m glad to hear you didn’t stay at the office.”

“You work too hard, Bessie. You need to have more fun.” Irv tosses up a raspberry and catches it in his mouth.

“Leave the berries alone, Irving, and don’t tell her what she needs. She knows what she needs, look at her. She’s all grown up. Aren’t you, dear.” Was that really a question? “Eat,” says Millie, pushing the plate over to Bess. “You love rugelach.”

“Thanks.” It’s actually Bess’s mom who used to love rugelach, but Bess doesn’t correct her. “Gram, did you need help with something in the attic?”

“No dear, that’s all right. Gerald already carried some things down.” Gerald is a middle-aged, autistic man who lives nearby with his mother, Vivian—a longtime friend of Millie and Irv’s. He is like a son to them, and was always hanging around their house, wherever that happened to be. Bess’s mom had a particular fondness for Gerald, too; to Bess he was like the older cousin she tried to ignore in private but vehemently defended against bullies in public. Deep down she has always had a soft spot for his harmless, endearing ways.

“How is Gerald?” Bess asks.

“He’s doing fine. If he knew you’d be here he’d have come, you know that.”

“Hey, Bessie,” says Irv brightly. “Why don’t you come down to the store this week. We just hired a new manager. You’ll like him, he’s a nice boy. Jewish, good business sense.” Irv is retired but he sold his store to his cousin’s boy to keep it in the family, plus it allows him to stop in and give advice every now and again.

“What are you talking about?” says Millie, gesturing high above her head with a dismissive flip of her hand. “He’s too young. And his feet smell.”

“What do you know about his feet?”

“I know about his feet.”

“You know nothing.”

“I know he takes his shoes off in your old office, sitting there behind the desk and it’s enough to make you go
meshuggener
with no windows and your air-conditioning never worked anyway.”

Irv swirls his finger in the air as if to say,
Big deal
, and leans in toward Bess. “Don’t listen to her. Feet you can wash.”

“How young is he, Gramp?”

“I don’t know. Twenty-something. But he’s wiser than his years, I can tell you that.”

“Gramp, that’s too young.”

“I told you,” says Millie, wiping the table around her cup with a flowery cloth napkin. “You don’t listen.”

“What’s too young? I should find you an old man?”

“You don’t have to find me anything.”

“All that matters is he’s ready to settle down, have children, I can see it in his eyes.”

“You can’t see a damn thing through those glasses,” says Millie, which was true. His glasses were filthy, but he didn’t seem to mind. Irv must have learned over the years how to refocus past the bad spots.

“What do you know.”

“What do I know?” she yells, her raspy voice flaring up like a bucking horse. “Why don’t you leave your granddaughter alone? Why do you have to make her feel bad talking of children, eh? What’s with you?” Millie is slumped a little too low for the table, the edge of which comes up to her ribs. Where she gets the chest power to yell so loudly, Bess can’t figure out. Talk of children always seems to rile her.

“I’m looking out for my granddaughter, what’s your problem?”

“You’re my problem!”

“Okay, that’s enough,” interrupts Bess, looking back and forth between the two of them. “This is supposed to be my birthday celebration.”

“Speaking of your birthday, dear,” Millie says quietly, regaining her composure. “Irving, please go get her gifts on the dining room table, will you?”

“Of course, seeing as you asked so nicely.” Irv disappears inside the house. A squirrel darts up a tree. A lawnmower erupts in the distance. Bess rolls her neck and pours herself more tea. Her grandmother is pensive, running her fingertips along the table’s edge.

“Here we are,” says Irv, placing before Bess a wrapped box and a colorful bag.

“How pretty.” Bess opens the bag first, finding a nice card with their signatures below a line of X’s and O’s. She unwraps each gift inside—a pair of black leggings, tangerine-scented lotion, fancy Hanukkah candles—and rattles off sentiments of appreciation.

“Good, dear, I’m glad you like the gifts. They’re just tokens.”

“Open the box, Bessie. But be careful, it’s fragile.” He pushes it a few inches in her direction. She unfolds the bow and loosens the box from its wrapping. What’s beneath the tissue paper shocks her. It’s a Chinese porcelain vase, white with blue markings, about six inches tall, delicate and lovely. It has been on display in her grandparents’ various homes for as long as she can remember, a gift from a young Irv to his new bride, a gift Millie polishes with her sleeve sometimes when she’s on the phone. Bess had asked a colleague about it once, a Chinese-American woman who paints porcelain pieces in the old tradition with a goat’s-hair brush. The woman said if it was an authentic ginger jar from the eighteenth century, it could be worth about fifteen hundred dollars.

“I don’t understand,” says Bess, holding it out in her palm. “Why are you giving this to me?”

“We know how much you love it, dear.”

She carefully places it back in the box. “Listen, just because I admire something doesn’t mean I need to possess it. It’s yours.”

“It was your mother’s favorite piece. She’d want you to have it.”

“Don’t get me wrong. It’s beautiful. But I can’t accept this. Thank you very much for the gesture, but really . . . no. It should stay right here.”

Irv and Millie exchange glances, then they look down at their hands.

“What’s going on? Gramp?” But he couldn’t look at her.

“Bess, honey,” says Millie hesitantly. “We, that is your grandfather and I, we can’t keep everything anymore and this is a little thing, it’s true, but it’s so fragile and could break if you don’t take it and take care of it.”

“Not following here. What do you mean you can’t keep everything?”

Millie takes a deep breath. “We had a hard winter this one past, Bessie. We’re not getting any younger, you know. My arthritis gets so bad sometimes I can’t button my own shirts and your grandfather forgot and left the burner on last night after he made his hot cocoa and something started to smoke and he didn’t ever hear the alarm. I had to shout at him to turn it off.”

“Like you need a reason to shout,” says Irv, hunched in his chair.

“Never mind, I got plenty.”

“Gramp, is that true? You left the burner on?”

“Maybe I did. Turned out okay in the end, didn’t it?”

“The two of us are taking so many pills we can hardly keep track,” Millie continues. “And it’s impossible to get around anymore. You know how bad your grandfather’s eyesight is, and they think I need cataract surgery. We hardly know anyone on the block anymore so we just keep to ourselves and, well, it can get lonely, can you understand that?”

“Yeah,” Bess whispers. The synapses of her brain, clotted with denial and incomprehensibility, are not letting this new information get in. But loneliness she can understand. She has only to hear the word and her mind envelops it, no questions asked.

“So your grandfather and I think it’s a good idea for us to move to a smaller place and someplace warmer.”

An ant crawling up the stem of Bess’s spoon feels like her worst enemy. She wants to squash it with her thumb. “Where are you going?”

“We’re moving to Tucson near my sister, Shirley. They have a nice place there, she sent us pictures. Two-bedroom apartments where there is a nurse on duty twenty-four hours and shuttle buses to the market and places of interest, and other people like us, Bess.”

Bess’s foot is tapping uncontrollably. “How come nobody told me this before?”

“Sweetheart, we didn’t want to concern you with this until we had to.”

Bess looks at her grandfather, who has remained quiet. She implores him with her eyes to say something. He tries to avoid her stare but he can’t. “Bessie, we don’t like to bother you. But you’ve seemed kind of down lately.”
Has it been so apparent that an old man nearing senility with poor eyesight and dirty glasses can see that?

“I’m fine. I’ve just had a lot of work to do, but I’m not as busy now. Really. I’m fine.” She stops herself for fear she will say,
I’m fine
too many times until the meaning of the phrase reverses itself.

Millie gets a little popped bubble of energy and pokes Irv’s shoulder. “You—don’t just sit there. Say something else. Don’t make me the bad one here.”

“What do you want from me?” he yells back, straightening his back, confronting her. But then he retreats back into his shell, hunched quietly in his chair. “I never said I was fully sold on the idea,” he says softly.

“Don’t you dare do that. We’ve talked about this.”

“You talked about this,” says Irv, more loudly, gaining steam. “You and Shirley. I never said I wanted to live around a bunch of old farts.”

“Don’t give me that. I got news for you, you
are
an old fart.”

“I can run circles around anyone my age and you know it.”

“Yeah, because you’d be
lost
, you and your circles!”

“Shut your trap, Millie!”

“Stop!” yells Bess.

Irv stands up so he can look down at Millie and raise his fist in the air. “I’m perfectly capable . . .” he is saying when he knocks his cup of tea into her lap.

“
Idiot!
” Millie jumps up and wipes her pants down furiously with her napkin. “What is wrong with you? Are you blind? Are you blind and deaf and stupid, old man?”

“I said shut your trap, Mildred! Just shut it!”

“Go to hell.”

“Stop it, both of you,” yells Bess again. They are all standing now, the two of them screaming with pointed fingers and heaving chests, two cocks in a pit and Bess in the middle with both her hands out when suddenly her cell phone rings from inside her knapsack. She could ignore it, but she doesn’t know how to stop the ring.
Shit
, she hisses as she flips it on.

“Bess. It’s Gabrielle.”

“Hey. Listen. Can I call you—”

“So I’m at the Social Safeway,” Gabrielle starts in, “I’m in the detergent section, minding my own business, and guess who I bump into?”

Millie in mid-scream heads into the house and slams the screen door behind her. “Gabrielle,” says Bess, pacing. “I really can’t—”

“C’mon, Bess. Guess.”

Irv screams something to the door and throws his hands up in the air. He screams again and his voice is hoarse. “Gramp,” says Bess with her phone away from her ear, but he doesn’t listen. Instead, he storms into the house after Millie and leaves Bess standing over her birthday gifts.

“Okay, I’ll tell you,” Gabrielle is saying. “You’re no fun today. He hasn’t stopped asking me questions about you so I said I’d call you right now on my cell.”

“What?” Bess says, halfheartedly. She feels defeated. She takes a seat at the table. It sounds like her grandparents are still fighting in the kitchen, though she can only make out a word here and there.

“Hang on,” says Gabrielle, and then Bess swears she hears Millie bark out,
Fuck you!
But that couldn’t be. Millie? This tiny old Jewish woman saying,
Fuck you
? You’ve got to be kidding. But then as if to confirm her suspicions she distinctly hears Irv scream it back.
Fuck you, too, you fucking bitch
. Bess is
whoosh
, back up on her feet. Where did they get that from? Never once has either of them cursed in front of her, Bess is sure of it. She half laughs. They sound so ludicrous, like children trying out the nasty bits their parents have forbidden them to say. But her amusement is short-lived while she realizes what has happened for their fights to have escalated to such a degree. “Fuck,” she says. “Fucking unbelievable,” she now yells so they might hear her. “
Do you hear what that sounds like?
Fuck!
” she screams.

“Hello, Bess?”

It’s a male’s voice.
Oh God, it isn’t
. “Yes,” whispers Bess.

“It’s Rory. From last night?”

It is.
Fuck
. “Hi. Sorry for yelling that in your ear.”