The Ninth Wife (36 page)

“You have kids?” asks Bess. For some reason, she hadn’t thought of this possibility.

Maggie passes a photo from her wallet. “Erin’s my oldest. Sixteen. Wants to be a pilot, though she says I’m ruining her dream by grounding her too often. She’s funny. I hate her boyfriend. That’s my middle one, Muriel, who thank God doesn’t yet notice boys. She’s too busy playing basketball and ruining my hardwood floors. And that’s my baby, Caroline. Poor thing just got teased by her classmates and made me go shopping for a training bra.”

“And they love New York, eh?”

“They love New York when they’re with their father. He spoils them.”

Bess looks hard at the photo. The three girls look alike, look like Maggie, even look like Rory perhaps, though Bess knows she’s imagining that. Still, it’s difficult to avoid the what-ifs with Rory’s past. What if these were his girls? Would he be divorcing Maggie? Would they be happy?

“What I don’t get,” says Maggie to Bess, “is how Rory did it. I mean, forget the marriages. How did he go through a divorce so many times? The guy,” she explains to Mick, “my first love I was telling you about . . . he’s been married and divorced eight times.”

Mick whistles. “No shit. I hope he’s not picking up the alimony.”

Maggie and Mick look at Bess. “I don’t know,” says Bess. “I don’t think he did, or is.” What an obvious question. How come she hasn’t thought to ask him this?

“You know,” says Maggie, “you would have looked at the two of us when we first came here and thought Rory was the one who would have settled down, had kids, and me, I would have been the one to keep shaming the priests.”

“Excuse me,” says Bess, lumbering off the low seat. “Can you tell me where the restroom is?” Mick points. She walks to where she can’t see them behind the high, curved seatbacks of the booth and decides that it was a bad mistake to leave her bag. She needs her cell phone to call Cricket about dinner. She turns back to the booth, but something about the hushed, staccato nature of Mick and Maggie’s private conversation—
Gerry’s doing it
.
When?
Next week
.
What’s he saying?
Reconciliation
—makes her retreat to the bathroom.

She returns to find Maggie sitting alone, rifling through her own purse. “God, I want a cigarette,” says Maggie. After a few minutes she gives up her search with a disgruntled shove of her purse back into the corner. She looks at Bess. “What?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

Maggie drinks from her glass. She looks away.

“So,” says Bess, “Rory said you wanted to be an actress.”

“Didn’t pan out.”

Maggie mindlessly wipes the condensation off her mug with her forefingers. She seems young and old at the same time: sad, like a little girl who’s dropped her favorite doll in a puddle but is too tired to pick it up and wipe off the mud. “I loved him, you know,” she says.

Bess feels a nervous jolt in her chest. “Rory?”

“He couldn’t let go and I didn’t want him to. The phone would ring and I’d know it was him and I couldn’t answer. Then the ring would stop and I’d feel like I was trapped under water.” Maggie shifts in her seat after a moment and surfaces from her melancholy. “But that was a long time ago.”

Could Maggie still be in love with Rory? Is that why she was so eager to meet Bess? To see her competition? Bess should ask this very question. But she is scared. She feels insignificant in Rory’s world, as if she is a Johnny-come-lately to a land already well settled.

Bess’s dejection must be obvious for someone like Maggie to look at her the way she does now, her head cocked to the side. “Rory and I wouldn’t have made it,” she says. “We were too young. And now we’re too old.”

They sip their drinks. Two couples enter the bar and perch around the piano.

“They say,” says Maggie, “you should never marry someone you wouldn’t want to go through a divorce with. Damn good advice.” She raises her glass. “To good advice and new beginnings.” Bess clinks with her water this time, then gulps half of it down because it’s not quite dark outside and she’s feeling tipsy.

By the time Cricket joins them, Bess has had several cosmos and is drunk. “Cricket!” she exclaims, and then excuses herself to the restroom.

She splashes her face with cold water and wipes her neck with scented towelettes. She tries telling a woman coming out of a stall what she plans to say to Cricket. “There’s a guy I know’s been married eight times and he’s my boyfriend and I’d be the ninth. Do you think that’s funny?” The woman has her lipstick out and her lips puckered, leaning into the mirror. She looks at Bess’s reflection and chuckles. Bess chuckles. The woman starts laughing so Bess starts laughing. Now they are laughing so hard the woman’s face is wet and her mascara is running and Bess is leaning against the wall and snorting. “I know,” says Bess, as if continuing some imaginary conversation. Then another woman comes in, sober apparently, and changes the mood.

The bar is more crowded than when she had first arrived. Where are Maggie and Cricket? she wonders. Her eyes follow the sound of the music. She notices two jolly people singing a duet around the piano. There is clapping.

“Cricket,” she calls out, and waves. He sees her and makes his way to the booth.

“There you are,” he says, reaching across to retrieve his martini glass.

“Do you know Maggie?” They glimpse Maggie still at the piano, singing over the shoulder of the piano player, who looks like Mickey Rooney.

“I do now,” yells Cricket over the din.

Bess is confused. She can’t read his countenance. She can’t get her straw to her lips. “I have to tell you something,” she says.

“Without spitting, if you please.” Cricket wipes a napkin across his cheeks.

“Maggie is Rory’s ex—” She stops to count with her fingers. “Ex-ex-ex-ex-ex-ex-ex-ex-wife.”

“Yes, she told me who she was.”

“When?”

“When you went to the loo.”

“Did she tell you—”

“Yes, yes. I know all about Rory the octo-husband.”

The disappointment Bess feels is oddly monumental. “But I was supposed to tell you.”

“And yet you didn’t.”

“Are you mad?”

Cricket twiddles his fingertips at Maggie. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

“But are you mad?”

“Encore!” Maggie yells, beckoning to Cricket. The few swaggering serenaders around the piano cheer him on.

“I’ll be back. My public awaits.”

Bess is ready to go. Cricket and Maggie are acting like new best friends, bringing Bess in as an insignificant third to their pronoun party—
You’re a doll! He’s a peach! She’s a hoot! You’re a blast! She’s a ham!
—laughing at their antics. Cricket nonchalantly grabs her forearm like he had never heard of a germaphobe.

“Look,” says Maggie, hanging on to Cricket’s shoulder. “I think Bess is sulking.”

“I’m not sulking,” Bess slurs.

“Yes, you are.” Maggie is laughing, circling her glass above her as if she were addressing an adoring audience. “You thought you’d get me to tell you something about Rory and all of us would suddenly make sense to you, isn’t that true? Well let me tell you something, honey, life doesn’t work that way.”

“I’m leaving,” says Bess, and walks out of the bar. Cricket finally takes pity on Bess and joins her in a cab back to the hotel. Bess won’t remember the cab ride home, or Cricket putting her to sleep, or leaving the van at the bar, or how many drinks she had overall, and she won’t remember earlier in the night inviting Cricket and Maggie to join her the next day to see Lorraine give her a haircut.

Chapter Twenty-six

R
ory had hopes of making it to Chicago in one day, but he got a late start this Wednesday morning and figures the best he can do is bed down for the night in Toledo. All things considered, he’s impressed with himself at how quickly he pulled his trip together. It felt like old times. In less than forty-eight hours—from the time he had the idea of going after Bess (on his walk home from yoga on Monday) to the time he turned off the lights in his apartment just before noon today—he had wrapped things up at work, packed, mapped out a route, filled up his tank, and serviced his old Corolla, which took longer than expected.

What he would do once he got to Chicago was another story. He hadn’t yet worked out all the details on that front. He had originally told Gabrielle he wanted to send flowers to Bess to let her know he was thinking of her. She gave him the name of the hotel where Bess was staying and said she’d be there until Friday. What he didn’t share with Gabrielle is that he would deliver those flowers himself. At this rate, though, if he drove all the way through he’d arrive in the middle of the night and be exhausted. Better to get a good night’s sleep, shower, and be presentable when he arrived on Thursday. But that means he’ll have just one day with her before she’s scheduled to head out. Maybe she could postpone for a day or two. Maybe he could continue on with them and pick up his car on the way back. Maybe he could follow behind them, sharing the ride with Bess part of the time. Or maybe this is another half-baked, impulsive, nut-job idea that he should never have acted on.

He holds his map against the steering wheel. Forty more miles to Toledo, he surmises. Too late to go back. Besides, he’s curious how Toledo has changed since he lived there. He never really liked the city, truth be told. That could have had more to do with his life with Lorraine and Eamonn’s death than with the city itself, but in his memory it’s hard to separate it all.

Lorraine was strange. He should have known that from the very first day they met. What was that pop song she liked? It was by a male singer. Sting? No. Phil Collins. Lorraine loved Phil Collins, whereas Rory—if he listened to pop music at all—liked artists like Prince and David Bowie. How could he have married someone who loved Phil Collins? How could he have moved into that small apartment with her and all those stinking, slobbering layabouts? He never told anyone, not even Sean, that she liked to have sex from behind in a bathtub full of her stuffed animals. He’d get distracted by the dogs scratching at the door or the suspicious after-hours comings and goings at the car dealership he could see from the bathroom window. Sometimes he’d have sex with Lorraine and think about Maggie, and feel guilty.

He pulls off the highway just as the rain starts. There are signs for the Comfort Inn East and Rory decides that’ll do. He’s been driving for more than eight hours and it’s getting dark. He checks in and drops his bag off in his room. Just out of curiosity he calls the local operator and asks for Lorraine Doyle. Not that he’d seek her out if she did still live in town, but he’s relieved nevertheless that the operator has no listing.

Rather than dine alone at a sit-down restaurant, he decides to visit the White Castle he used to frequent and eat while driving around familiar streets. The rain has stopped. He drives past the building where he used to work, the field where he played rugby and the bar he and his teammates liked to go after games. He contemplates going in the bar for a drink, but rules against it. He’s tired of driving, more tired than nostalgic.

Back in the hotel he sinks into the bed and turns on the TV. He wants to call Bess but is afraid he’ll let slip a hint of his plans, so he refrains. He flips through the channels, lingering on an old episode of
M*A*S*H
, which always reminds him of Carol. Does it remind her of him? he wonders. He never understood what was so special about Toledo that made Klinger pine away for it in a dress.

He gets an early start in the morning, feeling refreshed and excited. According to his map it looks like it’ll take just over four hours, which means he can make it before one. If Bess isn’t at the hotel—and of course why would she be in the middle of the day?—he’ll call her cell phone from the hotel and go meet her.

Once he’s in the city he sees a florist and double parks, lucky not to get a ticket. The colorful bouquet he chooses is accented with red roses. He wolfs down a sandwich and reaches his destination in pretty good time. The air is crisp and clear, the sky above the lake is a feel-good blue, the tall buildings lining the river look regal. Rory pulls up his car and stops midway in the hotel’s half-moon driveway, letting the bellhop know he’ll be right out.

“Excuse me,” he says to a woman in uniform at the front desk. “Good afternoon. I’m looking for Bess Gray, please.”

The woman smiles and types at her computer. “Pretty flowers.”

“Thanks.”

She types some more. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t see her among our guests.”

“That must be a mistake.” Could Gabrielle have given him the wrong hotel? “What about Mildred and Irving Steinbloom?”

“No. Oh wait, I’m sorry.” She reads from her screen. “Yes. They were guests. They checked out this morning.”

Rory lowers his bouquet to the counter. “They left?”

“It appears that way, sir.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“According to our records.”

“What time did they check out?”

“About two hours ago.” She looks at the flowers. “I’m so sorry.”

He rubs his temples.
Shit
. This can’t be. “Did they happen to say where they were going? If they were leaving town today?”

“I’m afraid I don’t recall.”

“Right,” he says, because really . . . what more can he say or do? Bess said they’d go to Denver for Cricket so that’s probably the direction they headed.

Shit, shit, shit
, he says to himself. Should he try to catch up with her? How would he know exactly which way they went? He should call, find out where they are, why they left early, if everything’s okay.

With his bouquet now hanging down by his leg, he looks out toward the lobby, wondering what he should do now. There are three people sitting in plush chairs near a fountain. The one closest to him is an attractive woman on her cell phone. She’s looking at papers as she’s talking. Possibly sensing that she’s being watched, she looks up at Rory and it is in that moment that the world stops and time zigzags off track. Rory couldn’t say who recognized whom first. “Maggie?” he says with utter astonishment.