The Ninth Wife (39 page)

T
hey stay for a night in Omaha, sleep in, and get back on the road by lunchtime without much fanfare. The stately Great Plains absorb them indifferently, as sky to a bird or a placid lake to its trout—a straight shot through four hundred fifty miles of Nebraskan flatlands. They stop several times for Irv, who says his stomach is upset, but not too badly. Eventually, the sun sinks surreptitiously while their minds are elsewhere. The scattered livestock and vast wheat fields of the lone prairie fade into a sedate darkness like a dream, like sleep, like an end of a film where the road signs come and go like rolling credits. They stop for a tepid, tasteless buffet dinner with mashed potatoes and chicken wings in big tin trays. They stop again for coffee.

Bess and Cricket switch off driving every few hours until the Colorado border is upon them and they agree to push onward while Millie and Irv snore quietly in the back. They play Ghost and Twenty Questions. They play several CDs of
Pride and Prejudice
, repeating the name Mr. Darcy until they are satisfied with their British accents. They roll their necks and marvel at the endless black void beyond the edge of the road. Finally they arrive at a motel near the hospital where Isabella whispered her last words and only then, when Bess parks in the motel’s lot and rolls the van door open to singsong “We’re here” and ushers her grandparents to their room, does she notice Peace, the mannequin, is gone.

Chapter Twenty-eight

M
aggie, what are you doing here?” Rory approaches slowly, trudging through a swamp of disbelief.

“I could ask the same of you,” she says, rising from her chair. She looks sculpted and wealthy, a far cry from the sassy, mischievous girl he knew years ago, but she is still beautiful, still tall and lean and in shape. Her hair is shorter, but it’s still thick and black. Her taut, V-necked shirt is showing enough cleavage to draw Rory’s eyes to her breasts, which he can feel as she leans in to embrace him. His body remembers her.

“This is an unbelievable coincidence,” he says. “I just drove up from D.C. to meet someone and here you are.”

“Meeting your girlfriend?”

“My girlfriend, right, but I seem to have missed her. She already checked out.” Up close, Rory can see the subtle creases around Maggie’s green eyes, but the eyes themselves are still dancing the way they used to all those years ago when she found something to tease him about. He’s starting to wonder:
Is this really a coincidence?
“How did you know I was meeting my girlfriend?”

Maggie looks down at the flowers in his hand.

“Of course.”

“That, and I met her last night.”

“I’m sorry, you what?”

“She didn’t tell you?” Maggie is watching him closely.

“You met Bess? Last night?”

“We had a grand time. I’m guessing she had quite a hangover this morning.”

“Bess? You’ve got the wrong woman. Bess hardly drinks.”

Maggie smiles. She seems to be enjoying this. “Petite, dark shoulder-length hair, cute as a bear cub? She was there with her friend Cricket.
Loved
him.”

Rory is furious. So Bess is out there looking up his other ex-wives? Why didn’t she tell him about Maggie? Who else did she find? “Can I use your phone?”

“Sure.” Maggie reaches down to the table and hands him her cell phone. He calls Bess; her phone rings several times and then goes into voice mail. He doesn’t leave a message. “If it’s any consolation,” says Maggie, “she thinks it’s me calling.”

“Great. Why wouldn’t she answer your call?”

“I don’t know. Probably for the same reason she blew me off today.”

“That’s why you’re here?”

“She invited me on an outing that piqued my interest. You know me, always up for an adventure. When she didn’t show about an hour ago, I parked myself here to do some work. I don’t know how you live without a cell phone.” She stops and smiles, this time with more warmth than mischief. “It’s really good to see you, Rory. You look good.”

“Thanks,” he says, somewhat distractedly. “You look pretty great yourself.”

“Listen, I have an idea.” She gathers up her papers, puts them neatly in a leather case and puts the case into her big straw bag. “You have a car, right?”

“Out front.”

“Perfect. Wait here.” She walks to the concierge station and talks to the person behind the desk. It looks like he’s making a call for her. Rory lays the bouquet on the table and sits in her chair, plagued with indecision and mixed feelings. He looks over at Maggie. Her cropped white pants are attractively snug. He notices, too, how her gold metallic sandals harness the suggestive V of her toes. He sees the man at the desk watch her ass as she walks away. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s go for a drive.”

“Where?”

“To find Bess. There’s a possibility she kept her appointment.”

“What appointment?”

“Just trust me.”

Suddenly Rory is flooded with memories of their marriage: of Maggie’s assertiveness, her spontaneity, her curiosity; of his passivity, his naïveté. And here they are again, together in an unfamiliar city, falling back into their old roles.
Wait here
, she commanded, as if decades hadn’t gone by, as if Rory is still that scared young thing right off the boat. Years ago he would have followed her anywhere, her spell over him was that strong.

“Rory, c’mon,” she says with affection, reaching out to gently squeeze his forearm. “I haven’t seen you in all these years. We have so much to catch up on. And who knows,” she says, letting go of his arm and adjusting her bag on her shoulder. “It might have been God’s plan for us to meet like this.” She smiles and winks.

Not long after his marriage to Maggie, Rory shed his Catholic responsibilities and turned agnostic. Over the years he’s had spiritual longings, but they always stem more from nostalgia than a deep-rooted belief in a higher being. Maggie, on the other hand, rejected the Church even before they left Ireland.

“Sir?” says the bellhop. “I’m afraid you need to move your car. Would you like me to park it for you?”

“No, thank you,” says Rory. “I’ll move it.” He turns back to Maggie.
What to do?
It’s not like he has a better plan. And if Bess really is where Maggie thinks she is, why not show up with Maggie? After all, Bess was the one who conjured her up. “Excuse me,” he calls out to the bellhop, catching him on his way back outside. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“I do.”

“Then please, give these to her.” He hands over the flowers and the bellhop thanks him and bows. “So where to?” he says to Maggie.

Maggie smiles and slides her sunglasses on like a movie star. “You drive,” she says. “I’ll navigate.”

T
he road out of the city is flat and in disrepair. “There are two seasons here, winter and construction,” a gas station attendant had told Rory and he can see it now, two lanes being funneled into one past large machines and people in hard hats. They pass signs advertising wholesale mulch and discount tires. There is an industrial smell in the wind rustling the cornstalks and trucks behind and in front of them, going slower than Rory can tolerate, especially after all the driving he did this morning. Maggie apologizes for not knowing the trip would take this long, but she holds true to the secret of their destination.

“So what did you and Bess talk about last night?” says Rory. If she knows about his marriages, he figures, best to get it out of the way now.

“You, of course. Until the piano player sat down.”

“You always loved to belt it out in public.”

“Still do. We sang one Elton John song after another. You and I knew every word, remember? ‘Pinball Wizard’? ‘Rocket Man’?”

“ ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’? ‘The Bitch Is Back’?”

Maggie laughs. “Yeah, well. I may have been the first bitch in your life, but I hear I wasn’t the last.” She is flashing that impish smile again.

“Go ahead, say it.”

“What?”

“My life. It’s ridiculous.”

“I would never say that.” Rory looks at her askance. “I wouldn’t. Though, you have to admit it’s not exactly the norm, right? I mean, eight of them? Or eight of us, I should say? Just because you sleep with a girl doesn’t mean you should marry her, you know.”

“Funny. I did learn that lesson when you left me.”

“Aw,” she croons. “You still get that stubborn little boy look when you’re mad, you know that?”

For the rest of the trip they catch up on the last few decades. She tells him about her work, her marriage and divorce, her children, her occasional longings to return to Dublin, to be closer to her father, now retired from a long and lustrous film production career and recovering from hip surgery. Would she really ever go back and live there? Rory wanted to know. Maybe, she says. She’d like her daughters to know Dublin, to have dual citizenship.

Maggie touches his hair. “Look at all that gray. Makes you look distinguished. God, I hate that about men.”

They stop at a gas station so Maggie can get a soda. Rory eyes a bag of popcorn, which prompts the store’s cashier, with a neck brace and gauze taped to his forehead, to inform him that popcorn is the state snack food of Illinois. Rory asks what the state bird is, to which the cashier says hell if he knows, he doesn’t sell birds. Maggie and Rory laugh together on the way back to the car and for a moment Rory is back thirty years ago in Dublin, sharing an inside joke with a gorgeous, clever girl his age with long black hair who he could hardly believe chose a boy like him over all the others. He pops in a music tape.

“Is that you playing?”

“Me and Sean O’Leary. Remember Sean?”

“That flirt. God, he hated me for leaving you. You know I saw him not long after we split up and he threw a beer in my face.”

“I can’t believe that. You must have said something to provoke him.”

“Me?” Rory looks at her long enough to see her wink at him.

They turn onto a small two-lane street and start to see signs of commerce. “Pull in here,” says Maggie, pointing to a parking lot. The storefronts stretch half a block and include a post office, a hair salon, a drugstore, a candle store, and a fudge shop. Rory parks in an end spot in the shade and turns off the engine. He doesn’t see Bess’s minivan.

Maggie opens her door. “Just . . . keep an open mind, all right?” That was one of Maggie’s stock phrases in their relationship,
keep an open mind
. He learned that good and well early on. If only he hadn’t also learned to keep such an open heart.

The door to the Sunshine Hair Salon opens with a little bell’s jingle overhead. The hairdresser closest to the front turns off her blower. “Can I help you?” she says, motioning with a round brush. Her client sitting below her looks up from her magazine. The fruity, chemical smell of hair products is overwhelming.

“I hope so,” says Maggie. “Is Lorraine here?”

Lorraine?
Did Rory hear her right?

“Lorraine!” the hairdresser yells. She looks like a former cheerleader who shows off her routines when she’s drunk. The stylist next to her says something that makes her laugh.

Lorraine enters from the back room, shaking a bottle. Rory hardly recognizes her. She’s so much larger, so much heavier, and tattooed all up and down her arms and calves and across her ample bosom. She seems to be straining to stay upright against the weight of her bust, made worse by her high-heeled wedges. Her hair is long and the unnatural color of a ripe cantaloupe. “Did someone call me?”

“You have visitors,” says the cheerleading hairdresser, then to the side but loud enough for Rory to hear, “let’s hope they’re customers.”

There is a moment before Lorraine sees Rory, a moment when he contemplates making a run for it. Where’s Bess? Why did Maggie really bring him here? He finds himself furious again, at Bess and now at Maggie. Are they in cahoots? He looks over at Maggie, but all Maggie is doing is standing back, watching him, gauging his reaction. He would scream at Maggie if he could. How dare she get her kicks this way.

“Rory McMillan,” says Lorraine, approaching cautiously. She walks around him, checking him out.

“Hi, Lorraine,” says Rory tentatively, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“So you’re alive.”

“You could say that.” He can’t look at her as she’s circling. He looks, instead, at her silver ankle bracelets and toe rings and the rhinestones on the back pockets of her jean shorts.

“You aged pretty good.”

“Thanks. You, too,” he says, and happens to catch Maggie’s eye.
Don’t be mad
, she mouths.

“Who’re you?” Lorraine says to Maggie. Even her voice, once ethereal in her church choir, has deepened to a smoker’s rasp.

Rory has a mind to tell Lorraine exactly who Maggie is, if only to divert Lorraine’s attention. If Lorraine had a fault years ago besides her strangeness, it was her jealousy. She wouldn’t allow Rory to mention Maggie’s name. He never knew what prompted that . . . a found letter perhaps? Spoken words in his sleep? It didn’t matter. Lorraine had never met her or seen her and she preferred it that way.

“I’m his sister,” Maggie says, ratcheting up her brogue.

“Mary?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly Lorraine is more welcoming. She holds out her hand to Maggie. “Nice to meet you. You visiting from Ireland?”

“Yes.”

“I’m saving up to go. Me and my guy. He’s going to take me.”

Lorraine shakes her bottle again. “So,” she says to Rory. “You need a haircut or did you just come to reminisce about the good ol’ days?”

Maggie lets out a laugh.

Lorraine punches Rory in the shoulder. “Laugh, McMillan. That was funny.” A phone rings. Lorraine sashays awkwardly to the counter to answer it.

Rory shoots Maggie a look. “Can I speak to you for a minute,
sis
?” He holds the door for Maggie and follows her outside. He waits for the door to close behind them. “What the fuck was that?” he yells.

“Wow, you’re really mad. I’ve never seen you like this. Good for you.”

“Don’t talk to me like a child. What are we doing here?”

“I thought Bess would be here.”