The Ninth Wife (11 page)

“You wouldn’t be the first. You’re quite charming, you Americans.”

“Thanks. I don’t usually start up phone conversations like that.”

“Well, you should. I think you’re on to something. The whole hi, hello, how are you bit can become a thing of the past. Shall I try it?”

“I think you should,” she says, sitting back down. Her grandparents must have stopped arguing, since she can’t hear anything from inside the house.

Suddenly he screams
FUCK
so loudly into the phone she jumps back. She hears some other voices in the background, and then Rory sounds like he’s talking to someone else. “I just can’t be
lieve
the price of these Snuggles,” he is saying. “Can’t a guy soften his fabric without going broke?”

“Making new friends at the supermarket?” says Bess. She thinks she can hear Gabrielle’s distinctive laugh.

“You should have seen that woman’s face,” says Rory. “I think I really just scared her half to death.”

“We’ll have to fine-tune our new greeting.”

“Yes, let’s work on that.”

The sound of Rory’s masculine voice ignites a small electrical storm of desire inside her, but she is uneasy. The house is too quiet. She picks up the fallen cup and saucer and uses her cloth napkin to wipe the spilled tea on the table. “Listen,” she says, “can I call you back? I’m with my grandparents and I really should go.”

“Of course. Right. I think your friend wants her phone back, too. I just wanted to say I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye last night. I had to run off to a gig.”

“That’s okay. You missed all the excitement.”

“So I hear. And I missed your pie, which Gabrielle tells me is to die for.”

“I pay her to say that.”

“I doubt that. Listen, can I make it up to you? Would you like to get together?”

Bess smiles and mouths,
Thank you
up to the heavens. “Sure.”

“I’m playing fiddle Tuesday night at the Four P’s in Cleveland Park. I was thinking you could come by. I’m on at eight, but come by anytime.”

“Okay. Sure. I’ll see you then.” She hangs up before Gabrielle gets back on and says something embarrassing that he could hear. She feels giddy.
He asked me out!
Hallelujah!

She’s in the shade now that it’s spread across the table and she shivers from a slight breeze. She holds the Chinese ginger jar and traces its design with her fingertip. How will she protect this delicate vase? It looks too easy to drop or crush. She’s already seeing it in pieces on the table, sharp-edged and dusty. She leaves it for the moment and enters the house. “Hello?” she calls out. She makes her way to the kitchen. Her grandfather is standing by the back window looking out with his hands clasped behind him. He is wearing a threadbare undershirt. The old wrinkled skin on his arms like that of rotten apples hangs on his bones, soft and easily bruised. She could cry for him he looks so vulnerable. “Gramp. You okay?” He looks at her as if he doesn’t recognize her. “Gramp?”

“Oh, Bessie dear,” he says with little breath behind it.

“Gramp, where’s Gram? Where’s your shirt?”

“I don’t know.”

Bess notices black and blue marks on his arms now that she is standing next to him. Maybe he really is losing his balance and bumping into things. Maybe he needs help, more help than she can give. She turns to look out the window with him, at the old cherry tree and the empty pond. “What are you going to do with all your mannequins?” she asks. But he doesn’t answer. He looks so old, and so lovable. “It’ll be all right,” she says, and reaches out to hold his hand.

Chapter Eight

I
carry around the weight and shame of those years after Lorraine like a hunchback. Sometimes the shame is all I have. My memories are foggy at best. My downward spiral started slow: one drink here, another there to drown out the loneliness. Beer turns to hard liquor, and liquor empties the pockets so you find yourself in seedier places where the local barflies gather around you like fresh dung. Twenty-four years old and three failed marriages, for Christ’s sake. Not to mention my brother dead and gone and me missing the last six years of his life.

So predictably, I lost my job. I packed up my things and thought it was high time I saw America, for real this time . . . the whole big expanse of it. I hitchhiked from one place to the next, playing my fiddle for handouts and sleeping in two-bit motels, you know the kind that advertise “No Pests,” and you know if they’re advertising that, that’s the least of your worries. I had some skirmishes, but mostly I was okay and after about six months this one trucker said,
You like drinking? Gambling? You should go to Vegas
, and that’s just what I did.

I don’t like talking about my year there. It’s hard to be filled with so much regret, and it was regret galore even then, immediate regret, which is the only way I know to talk about my drunken mistake of a marriage to Fawn Gilman.

Let me tell you straight out that Fawn was twice my age: I was twenty-six, she was fifty-two, and she found that hilarious. In fact, just about everything was hilarious to Fawn. She was hyped up on you-name-it most of the time, coke and martinis mostly, and everything about me—and me and her together—was just too damn funny to her. We met at a bar, got drunk, went back to her place, met at the same bar the next night, and so on and so forth. I don’t think I ever saw her in the middle of the afternoon, come to think of it. I was either sleeping or playing blackjack at the Venetian—my luck wasn’t so bad, it got me free drinks, but I always played until my money ran out. But then what did I care? I was a kept man. Fawn always paid for my meals and we always went back to her place, which wasn’t a bad gig for a guy like me, seeing as her condo was large and luxurious. She had two bars and a marble bathroom with a Jacuzzi and a TV set into the wall. It was pretty incredible.

And Fawn was a good-looking fifty-two-year-old, I’ll tell you. Her skin could look kind of green and her eyes deep in their sockets were a little worse for wear, but you could tell she was gorgeous once, there were still remnants. She had long shapely legs, in fact a great figure all around that she loved to show off in tight, sexy outfits. She was a dancer in her past and kept a dancer’s posture. I admired the way she stood and sat up straight, or the way she attempted to sit up straight anyway when she was two sheets to the wind.

And that laugh of hers! Like I said, she found everything hilarious and every few minutes she’d let out a long, robust laugh with her mouth wide open, her hand smacking the nearest shoulder. It was so catchy everyone around us would be laughing, too, though they wouldn’t know at what. She’d gasp for air and laugh some more, laugh, gasp, laugh, gasp, until she’d have a coughing fit and have to drink a shot to soothe her throat.

That’s how we got married one night, laughing, gasping, on the verge of passing out.

It started because someone at the bar brought up the issue of marriages in the plural and I, too drunk for self-censorship, confessed that I had three under my belt. Three what, they wanted to know. Three marriages, says I. There was a pause, and then an explosion of laughter, initiated by you-know-who. One of those damn laughing fools wanted to know if I was going for four before I reached puberty, which caused a whole new wave of laughter. Fawn’s laughing, in particular, went on longer than usual and made her eyes drip big, black mascara–filled tears down her cheek. What’s so funny, someone asked her, as if she needed a reason more specific than life itself. She’d been married
five
times, she blurted out when she could finally catch her breath,
Isn’t that a howler?
She liked that word
howler
, which always struck me funny seeing as she came alive at night and looked sort of wolfish with her big pointed nose and red fingernails like claws. Another sloppy buffoon yelled out that if we married each other, we’d have an even ten between us and that was apparently the howler to beat all howlers. It gave Fawn the hiccups. It made her snort out of her nose and rise up from her seat, fall to the ground, get up again and declare that a dare’s a dare: she and I would get married that night. No one had mentioned a dare, but that didn’t stop the crowd from cheering us on.

It being Vegas there was a twenty-four-hour chapel of the famous something-or-other across the street and the crowd of drunks followed us down the red plush carpeting to the altar of white pillars and potted geraniums and there an enormous man with sideburns down to his chin and a mustache thicker than I’d ever seen in my life—that’s what I remember most about him, his facial hair—this man asked me if I’d take this woman to be my lawfully wedded wife and I yelled out,
I’ll take them all!
or something to that effect, and then I threw up on his cowboy boots. Fawn yells out,
See? He loves me!
and everyone is now doubled over with laughter. That’s the last thing I remember of the night: a crowd of drunks bending over their knees trying to breathe because they’re laughing so hard.

I woke up the next morning, or afternoon I should say, feeling horrendous, and seeing that there was no ring on my finger, I was thankful that whatever it was I did the night before, I didn’t do the worst possible thing, which was get married again. Fawn wasn’t there, so I let myself out of her place and went back to my apartment to sleep some more. It wasn’t until I went back to the bar that night that I was delivered the blow. It was the bartender who told me by way of congratulating me.
Congratulate me for what
, I said, and he started laughing. I wanted to punch his face in, I was so sick of laughter. Fawn came in then, and I said to her,
Is it true?
It’s true
, she said, but thankfully she wasn’t laughing. Maybe she saw the look on my face.
It’s not so bad, honey
, she said,
we’ll have a grand ol’ time, one howler after another
. She said that, but I don’t think she really meant it. I think she was as regretful as I was, only she’d done so many regretful things in her life she learned to take them in stride. I stood up and kissed her cheek. She looked really sad, not just down-and-out sad but to-the-core sad, it’s hard to explain, like there were things in her past I didn’t know and wouldn’t understand if I did, but it was too late anyway.
You’ll give me a divorce
, I said quietly. It wasn’t a question. She wouldn’t look at me. She stared at her drink.
Good-bye, Rory
, she said just as softly,
it’s been fun
. And I left. I never saw her again. I filed the divorce papers right away and she obliged.

Don’t you think a marriage like that shouldn’t count? I mean, if your country declares war and it’s over in one day, that’s different than, say, a war that lasts a year or five years. Consider the casualties, the lasting effects. Nobody will even remember when that one-day war happened or which country it was against, will they? Will it be listed in the history books because someone called it a war? I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I guess I just get angry that people can have lots of relationships that no one would blink an eye at, but because mine have formal labels they get listed against me somehow, and they get lumped together as if they’re all equal, but they’re not. I’ve been married eight times, this is true, but Fawn shouldn’t count. She just shouldn’t. It was an evening that got out of hand. No casualties, which is more than I can say for my marriage to Olive Ann. Olive Ann Fennelly had a daughter, Cici.

I loved Cici more than words can say.

Chapter Nine

F
ollowing a full workout, Bess and her fellow karate students stand at attention and recite the student creed, beginning with
I intend to develop myself in a positive manner.
When they are told
shio, shake it out, good class,
Bess jogs to the back of the dojo, wipes her neck down with her towel, and glances at her watch. She has an hour to get home, shower, and catch the Metro up to the bar if she wants to see Rory’s first set, but she needs the full first date prep time, so she gulps her water and with a wave and a quick
Have a nice evening everyone!
she bows and rushes out.

By the back door, she sees the mother of one of the teenage students rocking an infant and her mind starts to wander, first to Gaia and her baby whom Bess makes a mental note to check up on, and then to Rory. Is he good with children? Does he want children? Does he have children? He must be in his mid-forties, she figures. That could mean a lot of things. He could be a father, divorced, widowed. Maybe he has an ex-wife who never leaves him alone. Maybe he really is just single, never married, in which case what’s wrong with him? Is he a player, a commitment-phobe, a closeted gay?
Oh, just stop
, she can hear Cricket say.
Is there something wrong with you that you’re still single?
Nice positive manner you got there.
She wishes she knew where Cricket was. She could use his sage counsel tonight.

At home, she primps and parades in front of her mirror in her new boho chic, earth-colored ensemble, feeling like an actress playing a part, albeit a more feminine, sexier part than her usual persona. Yesterday she didn’t know what
boho chic
meant, and is still not sure, though she was educated on the subject for an entire lunch break by her assistant and an equally young salesgirl whose style Bess admired.
The first date!
her assistant had exclaimed.
You know what that means . . . shopping spree!
Now she’s looking at her gladiator sandals and mid-length peasant skirt and form-fitting white T-shirt and wondering if she should give it up and throw on jeans. She grabs a light sweater and runs out the door before she loses her nerve.

It is quarter to ten when she finally arrives. The bouncer surprises her by asking for her photo ID with a flirtatious body scan. Bess surprises herself by reacting with a giggle.
A giggle
, for God’s sake. She blames the skirt.