The Ninth Wife (32 page)

peace,

dao

Bess sends an instant message to Gabrielle, thankful to find her online.

Where are you?

Pittsburgh. I’m exhausted. How come you’re not out? It’s Saturday night.

Paul’s coming over. I introduced him to my parents tonight.

Wow, that’s huge for you. How did it go?

Big love fest.

You like him.

Kinda.

C’mon. You haven’t introduced anyone to your parents since Jackson Kendall in the tenth grade. He could be the one.

Whatever.

Uh huh.

What?

I’m just saying.

What about you? Go all right with Rory?

We talked. Hard stuff. Hey, check your e-mail. I forwarded a response from Dao.

Hang on. (Pause.) Shit, that’s fucked up. You totally have to find her.

Who, Lorraine? Don’t think that’s a good idea. She sounds unstable.

What, like Dao sounds stable?

But she’s on e-mail, not face-to-face.

Or so she tells you. She could be stalking you for all you know.

Stop it. (Pause.) What do you think she means by a “cushioned route to the truth”?

No idea. Like I said, lunatic. She communicates with the dead, c’mon. I’ll get on it, see what I can find. I may have a lead on Fawn. She’s out West somewhere, so you have time. Will e-mail details. Gotta go.

Wait, Gabrielle? (Long pause.)

You okay?

Yeah, sorry. Have fun with Paul.

What she was about to write was that she was worried about her grandparents. Gabrielle has known them since eighth grade when Irv would drive the two girls home from lacrosse practice. Irv and Gabrielle have a tender fondness for each other, but Bess always thought Millie was a bit cold to Gabrielle. It was nothing overt—Millie was polite enough to offer treats and ask after her family, but there was never a follow-up question or a relaxed moment when Millie made an effort to get to know her. Bess suspects her grandmother is racist deep down, but she doesn’t want to dwell there. Millie would never admit it anyway. Still, Bess wonders sometimes if Gabrielle has those same suspicions. It shames Bess. Gabrielle would listen to Bess’s worries about Millie’s anger and be supportive, no doubt, but Bess decides it isn’t worth polluting the already tainted image Gabrielle has of Millie.

Instead, she calls Rory and is disappointed when she gets his voice mail. She imagines what he might be doing—laughing in a group at a pub, jamming with his friends. “Hey,” she says at the beep. “I’m in Pittsburgh. I’m wiped. It’s been a long day. Not a bad day, just a long day. Well, kind of bad. My grandparents are fighting of course, but I think it’s gotten worse. They made a scene at Fallingwater. I’ll tell you, I’m going to dread being with them in public for the rest of the trip. I wish you were home. I wish you had a damn cell phone. Call me when you get in, you can wake me up. I’ll go to bed naked and it’ll be like—” The beep cuts her off and leaves her in silence.

She turns on CNN headline news on mute and gets ready for bed. Before she shuts off her computer she types a response to Dao.

Dear Dao—

Thanks for the information about Lorraine. She does sound unstable, which is kind of the way Rory described her, though in a different way. When he was married to her, he said she was sweet and went to church and volunteered at lots of charities, that sort of thing.

Rory told you about his ex-wives before you were married, right? He didn’t tell me until we were dating for three months, which was also pretty much at the same time he asked me to marry him. Bad idea, don’t you think?

I guess what I really want to ask is: Why do you think your marriage to Rory didn’t last? Was it because of his past marriages? Forgive me if I’m getting personal. My grandparents have been married sixty-five years and I’m beginning to think it was a mistake for them to have stayed together all that time. I wonder if my parents’ marriage would have lasted, if my father had survived his car accident.

Anyway, thanks again for your responses, and your honesty.

—Bess

Chapter Twenty-two

B
essie! Where you? Why aren’t you in my bed! I took a cab home, I swear. Sean’s fault. See what happens when you leave? I keep telling Sean we’re meant to be. Are you naked? I want your titties! That was Vincent talking. Come here you naughty naughty! Also Vincent. I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.
Godfather
. Greatest movie ever. Sean can go suck my BLEEP! Seriously, you’re not answering your phone. You left me message. Your grandparents are naked! Ha ha! Okay, not funny. I hope they are all right. At least they have each other. Hey, I played with Gerald this morning. Did you know he has a Bess beetle? You’re much more attractive. Did you know you were Gerald’s favorite? It’s because you’re young. You might have to marry him instead of me. He’s a good guy. Listen, I’m sorry we had a fight. I love you, Bessie. You get me. You have a banjo. I’ll be your family. Just give me a chance. I just farted! So Carol’s happy? That’s good. Maybe Carol found the right person. That’s what it’s all about right? Getting married for the right reasons. Do you think we’re right, Bessie? Do you think I’m old? Did I tell you I saw Gerald? I like Gerald. Let’s take him to a cloud forest, okay? When you get back. When are you getting back? At least you’re not seeing my other ex-wives. Fuck ’em. Carol’s not so bad. She would help my case. Case closed! Rory McMillan the perfect husband! Yeah, right. Who my kidding. A perfect fuckup. A perfectly fucked-up human being who any sane woman should run the hell away. Maybe I really can’t do it. Maybe if I do do it I’ll die. Kaput. Dead on arrival. That’s a loaded question, Bessie. Should we go there? I don’t know, Bessie. I don’t know what I’m doing. We should talk. May be for the best. When are you coming back? Are you coming back? Shit, are you not coming back? Are you going to Vietnam? Great. You know what? All the women I know can go to fucking Vietnam and figure out their fucking identity and have a big fucking Vietnam stir-fry together and talk about Rory the fuckit and how they all got away. Never mind. Ignore me, Bessie. I don’t know what I’m saying. Seriously, though. Don’t go to Vietnam okay? And don’t die. I love you.

Chapter Twenty-three

B
ess wakes up moody. She thinks maybe it’s because the hotel’s alarm clock went off an hour early to the undulating voice of a Sunday preacher. Or because the open curtains reveal a sad, misty morning as gray as smoke, a bad beginning for a tedious day-long drive straight through Ohio to Chicago. She brushes her teeth looking into the mirror.
What’s your problem?
she asks aloud.

And then in the defiant eyes that stare back at her she sees her father, not in photographs as she has been wont to remember him but alive, looking at her mother across the dinner table.
What’s your problem?
she could hear him say. She can see him slumped over his meal, unshaven, holding the newspaper in one hand.

Bess sits on the edge of the tub, startled. She had not thought of her father in this way before, as husband to her mother, as a man in his thirties not much older than she is now. His death must have buried these images under the more endearing ones of his loving side he saved for her, his young daughter.

She returns to the bedroom and stretches out on the floor for a few warm-up positions she’s learned in karate. What was her parents’ marriage really like? she wonders. She had always assumed by her mom’s grief that it was something worth missing. The few times she tried to ask her mom more details about her marriage, her mom became as vague as her grandparents on the subject, focusing more on the shared sweet and gentle examples of parental adoration for her.

She takes a deep breath and on the exhale is flooded with a memory of Pete Seeger on stage singing “If I Had a Hammer,” or not singing so much as calling out the lyrics a beat ahead so the crowd could join him. Her dad sang loud; Bess tried to sing louder. She sat on his shoulders so she could see over the crowd and when the song was over she touched his mustache because it tickled, flapped his ears because they were there, let go of her hands because she knew her dad wouldn’t let her fall. That was a year before his death.

What are we going to do with the world, Bessie Girl?
he used to say. She would come up with all sorts of answers—
Toss it in the air?
Hide it?
Lick it through to its bubblegum center?
—but she knew it was just something he said to pass the time. And their time together passed often at parks, coffeehouses, school gymnasiums—anywhere there was folk music playing he went and took his Bessie Girl (why was her mom never included?). He liked to inform people that she had the same name as the singer/songwriter Bess Lomax Hawes, sister of Alan Lomax and daughter of John Lomax, all of them well-known American folklorists, making her name reason enough to draw her to her chosen field.

Bess’s leg cramps from staying in a spread-eagle stretch too long, so she stands and prepares for a shower. Would she be so much like her dad if he had been alive through her formative years? Or would she be more like her mom, content with her grocery checklists and cabinet of cleaning supplies and low-risk mutual funds? She would have been named the very practical-sounding Beatrice, she was told, had her mother gotten her way. Would Beatrice have become an angst-ridden folklorist? And then Bess has this startling thought as she drapes her towel over the shower rod and tests the water: Had she become like her dad the same way Cricket became like Darren, as a way of hanging on? And if so, who is she
really
, underneath all that?

No, that’s stupid. She was too young when he died. And what does it matter how she ultimately got to where she is now in her career and in her life?

That sounds like Rory. She stands in the shower, lathering the soap, and wonders why Rory didn’t call her back last night. Did he even come home and get her message? Was he thinking of her at all?

What would her dad advise her to do about Rory if he were alive? She can’t imagine, not having known him well enough. And her mom? Don’t do it, probably. Or maybe not. Maybe her parents had a lousy marriage and would have been divorced. Or maybe they would have had a rebirth and fallen in love all over again and bought a little house in Bethesda that smelled of baking bread and sparkled with jolly Thanksgiving feasts.

Bess turns off the water and towels herself dry. Then she gets dressed and checks her cell phone, which she hadn’t realized was turned off.

I
’ll be right down,” she says to Millie, who phoned her from the lobby. Bess wasn’t running late until she listened to Rory’s voice mail, and now she’s stuffing her roller bag with forgotten items and rushing around her room feeling nervous, phrases running through her mind like
we should talk
and
maybe for the best
and
I don’t know what I’m doing
. She knows she shouldn’t put too much stock in drunken messages, but can’t they be revealing, too? He said nice things, funny things, and they made her laugh, but he ended with a statement about Vietnam. Could he still be in love with Dao? Maybe she’ll play it for Cricket, see what he thinks. Then she’d finally tell him about Rory’s past.

“Good morning,” she says to Irv. He is looking at the floor and lost in thought. Millie is standing near the reservation desk, arms crossed, watching a couple check out. They are both frowning. Millie turns to Bess as she approaches and her frown disappears.

“Good morning, dear.” Millie walks over to give her a kiss. “How did you sleep?”

“Okay.” Bess drops her bag by Irv’s feet. She rubs away the throbbing in her cheek where Millie smacked her kiss. Bess had tried once to describe to Rory what Millie’s kisses are like. She means to be affectionate, Bess had explained, but she’s bony and surprisingly strong.
Feels like this
, she had said, poking her thumb into the hollow, soft spot of his cheek.
Ow
, he had cried out.
That’s some kiss
.

“Gramp? You awake?” He is scratching at a small ink stain on his shirt. Bess notices it is a long-sleeved shirt again.

He looks up. His cheeks are sunken and stubbly. “Oh, yes. Morning, Bessie. Where’s your friend?”

As if on cue, Cricket and his friend Sylvie walk in, laughing, engrossed in a conversation that continues even as they are standing in front of Bess and her grandparents for several moments. Bess notices an immediate difference in Cricket: his gait is relaxed and slow and he is genuinely laughing. She can’t remember the last time she heard Cricket laugh. “Four in the morning,” Sylvie is saying. “In a green apron stuck to the radiator. Don’t tell me I don’t remember.”

“Morning,” says Bess, more loudly than she intended. “You two are chipper.”

“Hello, fellow travelers,” says Cricket, bowing his head. “Ready for another adventure on the open road?” Sylvie’s giggle at that comment sounds almost mean.

“I’ll get the van,” says Bess. Stella is outside on a leash tied to a railing. Bess unties her, gives her a hearty head rub. The inside of the van is muggy and smells of old coffee. Peace is still waving, still smiling and wide-eyed, though she has slipped half off her seat to lean sideways against the window. She looks as if she’s on an acid trip enjoying a private joke. “Morning, Peace. Sleep well?” Bess adjusts her to sit upright, picks a bit of yarn out of her Afro, and adjusts her hand so it is no longer in a wave. She looks at Stella sitting in the passenger seat and then back at Peace. “Cricket’s friend kind of looks like a ferret, don’t you think?”
Oh, completely
, she answers for them.