The Ninth Wife (4 page)

In the end, Gabrielle decided to come and initiate among their friends a citywide search for single men to bring to the party in honor of Bess’s birthday. Gabrielle, in fact, found one quickly—a guy at a bar ordering a drink with a sexy accent. She found out he was a fiddler, which she knew Bess would love, then told him about the party, and
Voilà
, she had said,
he thinks it’s a great idea and wants to come
. It was then that Bess allowed herself to get excited. She remained excited until one
A.M.
this morning, when she woke with her stomach in knots from a party-gone-terribly-wrong nightmare.

To calm her nerves, she got out of bed and made pies, one for her party and one for her grandparents. A pie was Bess’s signature dish, as it was for her mom, who taught herself how to make them well and then taught Bess. It wasn’t a tradition that came down through generations, but at least it was a shared endeavor, a way for them to connect. Even before she knew how to make them herself, Bess recalls the comforting smell of one baking in the oven. She recalls rushing home with her dad to a warm piece à la mode. Her mom would have made her an apple pie for her birthday. It was her favorite.

B
ess arrives home to find her phone’s message light is blinking like a silent alarm. She’s exhausted. She takes off her coat and stands in a corner to imagine the party in action. Should she run her small, plug-in rock fountain? Should she put salsa on the stereo, or zydeco or opera? Maybe the blues. She has to make the dip. She has to decide what to wear and then allow time to rehang all the articles of clothing she will end up trying on and nixing.

Her phone rings just as she is getting out of the shower. “What are you wearing?” says Cricket in a breathy voice.

“Pervert,” she says, dripping onto her Zapotec rug.

“I was thinking your corduroy miniskirt to show off those muscular legs.”

“Can’t. Varicose veins.”

“What about that black halter top, it’ll show off your sexy forearms.”

“Flab.”

“Hair up in a twist, of course.”

“Neck zit.”

“What is this, nonfat English? I’m coming up. You’re having a brevity crisis.”

Bess sneezes, then sits down on the toilet lid and hangs her head. “Cricket,” she says, her voice cracking. “I’m really nervous.”

“Honey, hold back those puffy red eyes, I’m coming right up.”

A minute later, she moves toward the knocking on the door and accidentally rams her pinky toe into the foot of her antique desk. She cries out from the sudden sharp pain. She greets Cricket standing on her good foot, wiping a runny nose and wet eyes with the back of her hand.

Cricket envelops her with a hug. “No really, you’re gorgeous. Sort of a Mommie Dearest look, I like it.”

Over the last two years, Cricket has developed into a germaphobe. Bess has a theory that it is somehow tied to unresolved feelings over the death of his partner. But Cricket views his lifestyle as part of a higher truth: the world is dirty with its hidden microbes and bacteria and viruses, and humans are at the top of the food chain for one reason and one reason only: Lysol.

“Cricket, you’re hugging me.”

“True, but you’ve just showered and I’m banking on the fact that you used soap.”

Bess hobbles with him over to the couch. She accepts a tissue and follows his advice to breathe deeply. “Cricket, I wish you could be a little bug in my ear, telling me what to say tonight. You’re so good at clever banter. Tell me how you do it.” Cricket’s bulbous nose and ears that he had surgically pinned back as a retirement gift to himself look sunburned, as if they had been scrubbed long and hard.

“It’s the gay shtick,” he says, “the badminton of racquet sports. Nothing to hurt you, nobody sweats, lots of prancing around the subject. They should teach it in school. Gaybonics, they can call it. Lord knows there’d be fewer wars, more costume parties.” Cricket goes to the kitchen to rinse two wineglasses. He opens a Shiraz and smells the cork. “Here,” he says, handing her a glass, “this is the other secret of the gay shtick.”

Bess begins to sip, proclaiming her final ruling on the allergy predicament.

Cricket wags his finger at her as she lowers her glass. “Not yet. Let it breathe, Bess dear. Sometimes you need to let things breathe. Here, I have something for you.” He pulls a small box from his shirt pocket. “Happy birthday.” Inside the box is a necklace with a silver pendant etched with a spiral design. “Do you know what that symbol means?”

Bess recognizes the spiral as Native American. “It’s a petroglyph, isn’t it? From ancient Southwestern cultures.”

“Listen to you. So you didn’t sleep with someone to get your doctorate. Congratulations. But what does it
mean
?”

Bess is familiar with the symbol and has heard the theories of its possible meaning. The most likely explanation is that it is simply decorative, the thirteenth-century doodling of dawdlers. A Navajo colleague once told her it was a symbol for the walk home after a bachelor party, after which he laughed heartily. But she can tell Cricket is bursting with a different answer. She feels such genuine love for him at this moment. “I don’t know,” she says. “What does it mean?”

Cricket looks pleased. “It symbolizes the inward and outward journey of life.”

Bess nods in recognition. Maybe it did mean life’s journey long ago. And if it didn’t, so what? She stands and kisses his forehead. “I love it. Thank you, Cricket.”

“Ech,” he says, making a show of scrubbing his forehead.

“Darren would have been proud. You picked the perfect gift.” She says this with immediate regret when he casts his eyes downward. Sometimes, on her way home from work, she catches sight of Cricket staring out his window, a wistful look to him like a wheelchair-bound patient watching kids on a swing set. Sometimes her heart sinks to see the pain in his stare. She has given him four names of therapists specializing in grief, three books on losing a partner, countless links to Web sites for the body and soul. But neither her outreach efforts nor her listening abilities have worked with him. He might have talked to someone else, but he hasn’t opened up to her. She wishes he would. “What I mean to say is, thanks for being such a good friend. You mean a lot to me.”

“You’re welcome,” he says simply, genuinely. He holds up his glass. “To tonight.”

T
he phone rings and rings again, as it is connected to the buzzer downstairs. People arrive and introduce themselves, then quickly make their way to the wine. The ones who know it’s her birthday come with little gifts, even though she had insisted otherwise. In a short time there are pockets of lively conversations around her apartment, and Bess can no longer hear whom she is buzzing up. The space of her home fills up with smiles and voices until it feels crowded and she has to graze the forearms of her guests as she squeezes past them to replenish the ice, change the CD, explain the origins of her unusual taste in art—a silk smock, a carved gourd, a wooden chicken given to her by a one-armed Santero from Santa Fe. She finds that if she busies herself with hostess duties, she doesn’t have to talk to anyone at length, though her friends tell her to slow down.

“Bess, leave the quiche. It’s fine. Come meet Harry. Harry works with me at the firm. Harry, this is Bess.”

“So you’re the brave party host.” Harry swaggers before he holds out his hand. “Great idea. I’ve never been to something like this.”

“Harry’s recently divorced.”

“That sounds so negative,” says Harry. “We divorcés say we’re
newly available
.” His laugh dies down as quickly as it had erupted. He leans in toward Bess. “I’ll tell you, though, it’s nice not to have to spend the first twenty minutes of conversation figuring out if a woman’s available and I’m wasting my time, know what I’m saying?”

“Will you excuse me?” says Bess, already backing into her kitchen. “I just remembered the dip.”

She stands on a stool and surveys the talking heads in her home. People seem to be mingling and having a good time, though she notices the food has hardly been touched. Of course, what an obvious mistake. This is a singles party, where there is a collective consciousness of the inelegance of chewing, of getting something lodged in one’s teeth.

She hears a crash and a sudden hush in conversation. A sheepish man standing by her hutch says
oops
and bends to pick up the pieces of a small vase. He meets her gaze across the room and mouths,
I’m sorry
. “Don’t worry,” she calls out and smiles, and the buzz of conversation resumes. She carries a full garbage bag past her guests and out to the relative silence of the trash dump in back of her building. She takes a deep breath to relax, but that’s a bad idea at the side of a bin of the week’s rancid leftovers. So she goes back inside to the first floor and knocks on Cricket’s door.

“What happened? What’s the matter?” Cricket stands in his doorway in a terry-cloth robe, holding a handkerchief and a candelabra.

“I came to borrow a pint of blood and some harpsichord music,” says Bess, eyeing the candelabra. She sneezes three times in a row.

“Funny,” says Cricket, getting her a tissue. “I’m polishing. What’s with the party escape?”

Bess hears choral music behind him, possibly from the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, of which he and Darren used to be members. She slips off one of her strappy, kitten-heeled thong sandals that Cricket made her buy online and stretches her banged toe. “I just came to tell you it’s going okay.”

He leans into the hallway to hear the unmistakable rumblings of happy partygoers upstairs. “Thank you for the timely update. Fix your strap.” Bess untwists the strap of her off-white camisole. After twenty minutes of outfit changes, she overruled Cricket and went for what was most comfortable—jeans and a simple black cardigan. She let Cricket choose the shoes and is starting to regret it.

“Stella!” he yells. Cricket’s Shar-Pei bolts past Bess and into the foyer. “STE-LLA!” He sounds like a drunken Marlon Brando. Bess tries to help. “No. You go back to your party. Hurry now. Go, go, go.”

At the entrance to her own place she hesitates once again.

“Excuse me,” she hears behind her, “are you going in?” It is a maple-syrup voice, a slow-pouring purr that gives her a quick shiver.

“Me?” she says, turning up toward this handsome man’s puckish smile. He looks straight out of the Dust Bowl, lean but strong, a narrow face, thin lips, weathered skin that hints of bold adventures. He runs his hand through his thick, wavy, salt-and-pepper hair and it falls back defiantly to his brow. His sharp nose slopes off to the right, his two front teeth are slightly askew, as if they know they take center stage and are too mischievous to line up at attention. What strikes her most, though, are his beautiful green eyes under tufted peppery eyebrows, as animated and lucid as carbonated limeade.

Someone she doesn’t know opens her door and beckons, “C’mon in, it’s a party!” Together they step into her bare, narrow hallway.

“Do you know the hostess?” he asks. He is rolling up the sleeves of his white button-down shirt, and Bess finds herself mesmerized by his hand movements as she would a magician’s. She has an urge to touch his knuckles. They are mountain ranges to her knuckle hills.

Do I know the hostess?
“Truthfully,” she says, “I really don’t think I do.” They are far from a window with its gift of an evening breeze and Bess’s upper lip is now glistening, which, added to her runny, itchy nose, must be very attractive.

“Well, she’s clever.”

“She is?” Rather than pull out the crumpled, dirty tissue from her pants pocket, Bess disguises a quick two-finger wipe-down of her nose and upper lip by pretending to scratch her cheek.

“The invitation to this party. It was clever, don’t you think?” He moves like a soccer player, slightly bowlegged, comfortable at a slant. And is that an accent she detects? A faint lilt here, a skipped beat there, syllables stressed or glossed over in unusual ways?

“I guess,” she says.

“But then I have to say, it was definitely hiding something.”

Oh God, shoot me now.
“What do you mean?”

“I mean there was an undercurrent of real angst, sadness, fear, a visceral desire for truths coupled with an overpowering exhaustion at having eluded those truths for years.”

He’s psychoanalyzing with an accent. This can’t be good
. “Really. All that.”

“Absolutely. It made me want to rifle through her drawers, check out her medicine cabinet, look for her journals. That’s what I always do first at parties.”

She is too shocked to respond.

He laughs. “I’m kidding.” He holds out his hand. “You’re Bess Gray. My name’s Rory. Rory McMillan.”

“You’re the fiddler?”

“That’s me.”

“How did you know who I was?”

“I was here earlier. Gabrielle pointed you out. I was just suddenly really sick from something I ate that I had to run outside for some fresh air.”

“Oh no. I—” and then she sees his face. “You’re kidding again.”

“Sorry. I actually saw you leave your own party so I walked out to find you.”

“I see.”

“Now you don’t know what to believe. Sorry about that. I did like your invite. It made me want to meet you. That’s the truth.”

A high-pitched cackle and a drunken snort erupt nearby. Bess uses the interruption to put the focus back on him. “You’re Irish.”

“Now wait. Is that my lying that gave it away, or my accent? Careful now.”

“Your accent.”

“Then you’re good. I haven’t lived in Ireland for almost thirty years.”

“I hear a lot of accents in my line of work. Plus Gabrielle told me.”

As if summoned, Gabrielle appears around the bend behind two other women. She seems drunk and unsteady.

“Gabrielle!” Bess calls out. “Gabrielle, report to me please.”

“Hey!” she says, seeing Rory as she approaches. She kisses him on the cheek. “Glad you could come. You two have met?” She exaggerates a wink to Bess. Her hoop earring is caught in the long end of a brightly colored silk scarf wrapped stylishly around her Afro puff. Bess fixes it for her. “Rory, my new friend,” Gabrielle continues, “did I tell you what I do for a living?”