The Ninth Wife (35 page)

They reach the entrance to the Metro. “You’re a good friend to her, Gabrielle.”

“She brings it out in people.”

“Can I ask . . . do you think she’ll come around or am I a lost cause?”

“
Are
you a lost cause?”

“I truly hope not.”

They head down the escalator and touch their SmarTrip cards to the turnstiles. Gabrielle turns to confront him. “Rory, let’s say you guys get married. What are you going to do when the going gets tough, huh? What are you going to do when you find out she gets cranky if she doesn’t get enough sleep? Or that she really doesn’t like to watch sports, or she freaks out if you’re late? Have you seen her wipe her nose on her sleeve? It’s not pretty.”

“Okay, okay,” says Rory, holding his hand out to stop her. “I get it. She’s not perfect, neither am I. Gabrielle, believe me. I’m serious about wanting this to work.”

Gabrielle’s look is hard to discern. She takes a few steps back and turns to face her destination. “Then really show her.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” she calls out as she walks away. “Figure it out.”

Chapter Twenty-five

B
ess walks into the afternoon sun shining off the shop windows along the Magnificent Mile. They’ve been in Chicago for two and a half days; it’s Wednesday now. She and her grandparents are staying at a hotel on Michigan Avenue where she was able to get a discounted rate. Cricket found a place nearby that accepts dogs. Yesterday morning she joined her grandparents for brunch at Millie’s sister’s apartment in Lincoln Park. Bess’s great-aunt Esther lives alone on the twenty-sixth floor of a forty-three-floor building overlooking Lake Michigan. Bess was perspiring looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“Don’t like heights, dear?” Esther had said, offering her a bowl of olives and miniature pickles.

“Not used to it. D.C. isn’t allowed to have skyscrapers.” Bess listened to their conversation about bunions and generic drugs and Esther’s son’s three children growing up so fast. She ate bagels and smoked salmon and cucumber salad doused in vinegar and some nice ripe melon her aunt was eager for her to eat. She touched the textures around the apartment—the lace doilies, the silk flowers, the porcelain figurines, the pastel frames of photos of distant family relations. There was one photo of her mom and Millie and Irv at some function. Millie and Irv were seated below her mom, their shoulders barely touching, their mouths closed in posed smiles. Bess’s mom was leaning in between them, her smile broad as if she had been the one to say smile for the camera and had led by example.

“I wish—” Millie started to say, taking the photo from Bess.

Bess had waited for her to say more, but Millie was quiet. She remembered something Millie had said at her mom’s funeral:
No mother should survive her child
. Bess wrapped her arm around her grandmother’s shoulder. “I wish, too,” she said.

“So tell me,” Esther had interrupted, “why is a girl like you still not married, eh?”

This was Bess’s cue to leave. She knew people were often thinking that around her, but hearing it voiced always made her feel lousy. Anyway, she knew they wouldn’t discuss in front of her the more important topics of her grandparents’ move, their finances, Esther’s failing lungs. Would they talk about their feelings? Maybe. Bess guessed Millie and her sister would get to that while Irv took a nap on the couch.

An hour later, she met Cricket at a corner for a few hours of clothes shopping. Like a cow and a butterfly, Bess moved slowly, chewing her gum, making her way methodically along the sales racks while Cricket flitted about the interior of each store with outstretched arms and an eye for color. Outside, too, Bess liked to go up one side of the street and down the other; Cricket didn’t see the logic of that when there was a store one absolutely must not miss right across the street.

In the evening, she checked her e-mail at the hotel and was heartened to find a message from Rory, even though it was short and simple: “My day,” he wrote with a colon. “Worked late; cooked pancakes for dinner, half of which fell on the floor when I flipped them; called three cable companies; checked out new music software. James Bond has nothing on me. Hope you’re having fun. I miss you. I love you.” They had spoken twice in the last couple of days. He told her he was sore from his yoga class with Gabrielle; she told him more details about her grandparents at Fallingwater. Mostly, though, they worked through some of what came up in his drunken voice mail. He allayed her fears that he might still be in love with Dao and she allayed his that she wasn’t coming back. But the topic of marriage was still raw.
Could
he?
Should
she? Those were questions they couldn’t yet answer and grew tired of thinking about after a while. No wonder his latest e-mail was innocuous, she thought. She had responded in kind: “Dear 007,” she wrote, “that’s a movie I’d pay to see. Here was my (um . . . Lara Croft?) day: ate melon balls at my great-aunt’s apartment; helped Cricket pick out a table runner; wolfed down two pieces of deep-dish pizza; wished you were here. I love you back.”

Now she’s walking along the lake by herself, watching the beachcombers and bathers, wondering why she hasn’t yet gotten the guts to tell Cricket about Rory’s ex-wives, or tell Rory about her search for the rest of them. In an hour she is reluctantly getting back in the van to meet Maggie at the airport. Tomorrow, she apparently has an appointment with Lorraine.

Gabrielle had hit the jackpot on the whereabouts of Lorraine Doyle, Rory’s third wife, thanks to Gabrielle’s cousin, a cop, and a record of petty theft and violations of temporary restraining orders. Turns out she’s a hairdresser in Joliet, Illinois, about an hour and twenty minutes south of Chicago. Gabrielle took the liberty of making an appointment for Bess for a cut and blow dry.

“That’s not funny,” said Bess.

“You have to do it. And take her picture. I want to see what this woman looks like. Oh, and by the way, I think Rory’s last wife is back in D.C.”

“Gloria? Did Rory tell you that?”

“No, I told you, he said he doesn’t keep in touch with any of them so I didn’t push it. I found her brother’s name on a few 9/11 memorial Web sites where people can write comments about the victims. Gloria writes in every few months. Nothing major, just how much she misses him, but she happened to mention that she was back in the District where she first heard the news, and how strange that is. Last entry was in April. Want me to ask her to get in touch?”

“On the Web site? No, that’s tacky. Let’s leave it for now. Good work, though. I owe you.”

Bess stops along her walk to admire a sailboat out on the lake. It’s been over a year since she’s been to Chicago, when she came to meet with the curators of the Polish Museum of America about a traveling exhibit. Early this morning she had coffee with the new head of the University of Chicago Folklore Society, but it was nothing official.

It’s nice, this time alone. She sits on a stone wall, dangling her legs, and wonders what Michigan town is across the water that she can’t see.

And then her thoughts turn to Maggie.

I
’m outside baggage claim. United. Where are you?”

“Almost there,” says Bess, following the road signs toward arrivals. She pulls up to the curb. Maggie had described herself as tall, thin, chin-length black hair, won’t know what she’s wearing but carrying a woven straw bag and maybe, if she remembers, a red scarf around her black roller bag. Bess sees the scarf and is immediately intimidated. Even the two gentlemen next to Maggie are checking out her figure in her black pencil skirt and sleeveless, racer-back white top. Her long legs are stunning in strappy sandals. Her toned biceps cascade down to chunky modern bracelets and shining red fingertips. Her bust is sizable and her neck is long and graceful, framed in a relaxed, layered bob, swept forward into her face so her casual gesture to brush hair out of her eyes looks sexy even from afar.

Bess parks the van and checks her teeth in the mirror. With her hair up in a halfhearted ponytail and mocha stains on her prairie skirt, Bess feels like Maggie’s poor gofer. She walks to the curb. “Maggie? Hi. I’m Bess.” She holds out her hand.

“Hello,” says Maggie. “Of course, there’s the gold van.” Her handshake could hold a person hanging from a bridge.

“Should I park? I didn’t know how much time you have.” They had discussed having a drink in the airport, but Maggie never verified the arrangements.

“Change of plans. I’m staying overnight. Let’s get out of here.”

Rory was right, Maggie’s green eyes are piercing. A dark freckle on her cheek looks like an accessory. She smells faintly, pleasingly of musky perfume.

“Friend of yours?” she says, pointing to Peace in the backseat.

“It’s my grandfather’s.” Bess had removed much of the bulky contents of the van, especially Gaia’s box, in case she had to park it on the street. She kept Peace for company, and because a few days ago at a rest stop she had heard a little girl with a doll say, “Look, Mom, they have a grown-up’s doll.” Bess liked the idea of that, of having her own quiet, comforting protector with her.

“Take this exit!” Maggie points to what’s immediately coming up so that Bess has to swerve across two lanes to catch it. She cuts off a taxi. The taxi driver honks. Maggie blows him a kiss. “Excellent,” she says. “Now turn here.”

“Where are we going?”

“I know a place. Best sausages in Chicago. Take the next right.”

M
aggie McCabe, gorgeous as ever!” A well-dressed man with the manner of the establishment’s owner greets Maggie at the door. He embraces her, then makes a show of grabbing her ass. “What did you do with my little Irish girl, you corporate whore?”

“She’s still here, Mick,” says Maggie, pinching his cheek. “And she’ll take a pint of Guinness. And one for my friend here.”

Bess feels tiny. She hates Guinness. She doesn’t even like beer all that much. “I’ll just have a club soda, thanks. I’m driving.”

Maggie and Mick are arm in arm, looking at her. “Mick,” says Maggie, “this is Bess. She’s dating my first love. Can you believe that? My first love!”

“Actually, he’s my fiancé,” says Bess, but she says it so meekly that neither Mick nor Maggie hear her over their conversation that has them laughing and patting each other on the back. She wonders why she even said that. She never said yes to his proposal, has never even said that word aloud.

Ceiling fans turn slowly over a black-and-white tiled floor and rounded red booths along the side wall. It’s almost evening, when Bess assumes a piano player will start his shift and pull in more patrons than the seven or eight currently lounging about.

Maggie scoops Bess’s elbow and steers her toward a private booth. “Mick, we’re taking a table,” she calls out.

The two of them slide in and stare at each other. “So tell me,” they say together and look amused. “About Rory,” Maggie finishes. “I want to know everything about him.”

Has he aged well? Maggie wants to know. Is he gray? Is he handsome still, with that scrumptious smile? Did he quit smoking? Is he playing soccer? Is he still playing his fiddle? Where does he live? Is he happy? Does he ever talk about me? Does he still cross his eyes slightly when he comes? Ha! Tell me, does he not have the sexiest cock you’ve ever seen?

Maggie is soaking up Bess’s information and firing more questions faster than Bess can answer, or wants to answer, or can’t answer even if she had time. Is he happy?
Am I?
Rory suddenly seems like a stranger to her. How can it be that he liked someone like Maggie and now fancies someone like her? Does he have a type? Did he see similar traits in his wives or was he going for opposites? “You know what?” she says to a passing waitress. “I changed my mind. I’ll have a cosmopolitan, please.”

“Good for you,” says Maggie. “So what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Ever been married?”

“No.” Bess sees in Maggie a familiar expression she has grown to hate. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I’ve just had bad luck, that’s all.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to. Are
you
married?”

Maggie leans her head back on the seat. “I was. Divorce went through in May.”

“I’m sorry. Is he the same man you left Rory for?”

Maggie looks up at Bess, puzzled. “The man I—? No. I met John a few years after I’d moved to New York.”

“Oh.” Bess tries to access what information Rory had told her about their breakup. Didn’t she leave him for an attorney, someone who brought her to New York to be an actress? “Can I ask what happened?”

“Who’s to say? Fatigue. Boredom. Depression. Infidelities.” Maggie’s voice gets softer with each vague, unattributed reason. She turns to the bar with her empty mug and signals for another beer. “How’s Rory’s family?”

“Fine, I think,” says Bess, getting a little weary of Maggie’s inquisition. “I mean, his mom passed away, and his brother did, too, before that. I can’t remember his name.”

“Eamonn,” Maggie says softly. “That was a sad day when I heard the news.”

“Did you know him? Well, I mean?”

“I did, yeah.”

It is the way Maggie says
yeah
that makes Bess notice her vulnerability for the first time since they spoke on the phone days ago. It could even be that her brogue slipped out on that word, giving a glimpse behind her certitude of a young immigrant teenager, scared, but hell if she’d show it.

Mick delivers Bess’s cosmopolitan. “Your drinks are on the house, ladies,” he says. He is older, in his early sixties, Bess guesses. He carries his age well the way some gray men can, elegant and polished like a mid-twentieth-century movie star.

“Thanks,” says Bess.

“Cheers,” says Maggie. “To Rory.” She clicks her mug to Bess’s delicate cocktail glass and spills sticky pink liquid down Bess’s wrist. “Mick, join us.”

“For a quick minute,” he says, slipping into the booth. “How’re the kids?”

“Brats, every one of them. I hate the teenage years.”

Mick laughs.