The 19th Wife (35 page)

“Oh, and I really like this one from Justine, who just turned eight: ‘You should be careful about saying “I love you” too much. If you don’t really mean it the words will lose their value. But if you do mean it, then you can go ahead and say it all the time.’”

“There,” said Tom when we were back in the car. “That wasn’t so bad.”

“Do they always have doughnuts?” Johnny was laying out four apple fritters on the backseat, taking inventory the way a dog hoards his bones.

“They like people to stick around after. They’re really into being a community. So what’d you think?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Is that a good ‘I don’t know’ or a bad ‘I don’t know’?”

“It’s an ‘I don’t know’ I don’t know. I mean, I’m still not sure it’s for me.”

“That’s OK, as long as you understand that it’s for me.” He was pulling onto the freeway, maneuvering into the fast lane. For such a clean guy, he was a bit of a maniac driver. “Utah, here we come.” He started fiddling with the radio, searching for NPR. “Boy, do I love Sundays. So what do you want to do when we get back? Go swimming? Or we could go for a hike when it cools down.”

“I’m not really much of a hiker. I don’t really like the desert.”

“Around here,” said Johnny, “that’s like a fucking problem.”

“Want to catch a movie?”

“I might have some things to do,” I said.

“Jordan, is anything wrong?”

I don’t know about you, but I hate the phrase
nicest guy in the world.
As in,
I just met the nicest guy in the world.
As if. But now it seemed true. So why was I being such an ass?

“I was just thinking about my mom,” I said.

“When can you see her next?”

“Tuesday. That is, if I’m still around. I have a job that starts tomorrow in Pasadena.”

Tom didn’t say anything but a man doesn’t have to speak to reveal his wound. After a while he pulled over at a parking area. He got out and walked several yards into the desert. Johnny ran after him and unzipped a few yards from Tom. He was talking over his shoulder, yapping about something or other, then a gust of wind came along, billowing the arc of his piss. Johnny laughed and kept on talking and shook off and hopped over to Tom’s side for the walk back to the car. He was very small next to Tom, a pipsqueak of a kid looking way up into the eyes of a man. Tom rubbed Johnny’s head. When he pulled his hand away, the spring of Johnny’s cowlick popped back up.

Johnny fell asleep for the rest of the drive and Tom stayed quiet. Ten minutes before St. George, we cut through the Virgin River Gorge, and Tom said, “I want you to stay.”

I didn’t say anything. Not a word. When we pulled into the Malibu, Tom said, “I see.”

He and Johnny went swimming. I stayed in Room 112 with the dogs and went online to check out that site 5 was talking about. It was a community/resource page for people dealing with polygamy one way or another. I clicked the tab that said, If You Need Help. Tom had left the History Channel on, and while I read the website a navy crew was preparing to launch a missile from the deck of a battleship. When the missile was fired, a white yellow plume of fire shot out of its tail. That’s when Tom came back to the room, dripping in his suit. The missile’s fire flashed in his face. He watched it until the missile hit its target, blowing up a warehouse in the desert. “I was going to enlist,” he said. “After college. Wanted to be an admiral.”

“Really? Why?”

“I wanted to serve my country. But my country didn’t want me.” He changed into dry clothes, then lay down on the bed. “What’re your plans?”

“I’m going back,” I said.

“To California?”

“To Mesadale.”

“All right.”

“I mean now.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, you stay with Johnny.”

“We’ll all go.”

“I should go by myself.”

“Should, or want to?”

“I don’t know.” You know what’s the craziest part of living in a house with a hundred people? It trains you to be alone.

“You sure it’s safe?”

“No.”

“Let me go with you.”

“No, you stay here.”

“Jordan?”

“What?”

“What are you looking for?” I tried to answer, but the words didn’t come. Lying on his side, his head resting on his elbow, he looked too pure to be a part of my messed-up world. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You’re thinking we hardly know each other. And that’s true. But everybody has to start somewhere.”

I got up and opened the curtains. They were gold and backed by a heavy sheet of plastic. Johnny was lying on the concrete rim of the pool, his eyes closed, one foot tapping along to Tom’s ipod.

“Jordan, don’t overthink everything. You’ll talk yourself out of a life.”

“This isn’t about you, Tom.”

“I want you to make it about me.”

Later, driving out of St. George, I called the number Alton gave me. “It’s Jordan Scott.”

There was a pause. Then, “Come to the house.” He hung up. That was it. The Prophet and I had a date.

The sun was going down before I reached Mesadale, a livid ball plunging from the sky. The desert was burning, everything shot through with reds. In the last twenty miles I didn’t see another car. That’s what the desert’s about: solitude. It’s a test. A test to see if you can stand yourself.

I reached the turnoff. The last of the light was gone now, and the desert cried under the yellow moon. My headlights swept the hard dirt and behind the van the dust coughed up into the black. Up the road the big houses were lit up, gold and white lights in the windows and above the doors. How many did the feds knock on before they gave up? One more and would they have found their man? Taken the Prophet in? Booked him? Put him on secure visits like my mom? Why can’t the FBI find this guy, while he’s inviting me to his house?

Questions lead to questions. Answers aren’t really answers. Mysteries don’t get solved. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Knowing almost nothing. Accepting the unknowable as the end of the story? The end of life?

Maybe.

But if so, then why did I believe in the bottom of my heart I was this close to finding out who shot my dad and stuck the rap on my mom?

THE
19
TH WIFE

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

My Wedding Day

On April 6, 1868, I married Brigham Young in a secret ceremony in the Endowment House. The only witness was the old-timer Bishop who performed the rites. In a matter of minutes, I had become a Mrs. Brigham Young.

My first task as the Prophet’s wife was to accompany him to a small community across the Valley that had found itself torn apart by tragedy. A few days before, two boys, brothers no less, had drowned in a swollen creek. The boys’ mother had begged her local Bishop for an explanation, but the man had failed to console the woman in her time of grief. His inadequacy set off a public meeting of complaints about the Church, Brigham, and the unreliability of God. “What will you say to these people?” I asked Brigham as we drove to the meeting.

“I’ll tell them what I know,” he said. “And what I don’t know, which is a lot. It’s all I can do.”

Our marriage was one hour old, and I found myself touched by Brigham’s willingness to reveal his modesty to me. Brigham pushed his face out the carriage window to take in the breeze. The day was clear and cold, and the afternoon light colored the snow on the western mountains blue and on the eastern front the snow was pink and gold. Watching him, I must confess to a certain fondness, in the way one might feel toward an old, not especially close acquaintance who has maneuvered a place into the heart simply through the longevity of his presence.

As we approached our destination, the shadows off the mountains darkened great patches of the Valley and Brigham became somber. “I read the report,” he said, staring at the empty space before him. “The two boys struggled for some time. The mother watched them cling to a branch. She wanted to jump in herself, but her sister wife held her down. Was she right to do so? Was there any chance of saving the boys? I can’t blame them for wanting answers.”

At the village nearly fifty agitated Saints awaited us. There was not a proper Meeting House, so Brigham stood before the community in the home of a local farmer. “If I could give you the answer that would heal your grief,” he said, “and alleviate your sorrow—if I could explain the role of your boys’ lives and deaths in the context of all things, then I would not be a man standing before you, then I would be our Heavenly Father Himself. But I am not He, nor is any man He, and therefore I cannot tell you what you so desperately want to know. But over time, with prayer and faith, you will come to understand, and your heart will know, even if your mind cannot, that these boys lived and died with purpose, and now await you in the Kingdom above.”

When it was time to depart, the sorrowful mother kissed Brigham’s fingers. As our carriage left the little hamlet, she ran behind as far as she could, crying, “God bless you, Brigham, God bless!” Her voice echoed across the blushing land.

For some time the carriage groaned along the rutted road, the wheels creaking, the leather snapping, the driver clicking and calling at his team. We were deep in the basin, surrounded by young scrub and new grass and the lonely cattle bent in search for early leaf. I interrupted our quiet by saying, “May I ask a question?”

“Of course, anything.”

“What number am I?”

Brigham reached for my hand to warm it between his. “Number?”

“Which wife?”

“It’s distasteful to me to put a number next to you, or any woman.”

“I appreciate that. But I’d like to know.”

“In that case, you are number nineteen.”

“Nineteen? What about the others?”

“Others?”

“At the Lion House?”

“They’re friends, but not wives.”

“But I’ve heard—”

“Ann Eliza, you’ll hear many things now that you’re my wife.”

“Nineteen, really? That’s all?”

“Nineteen. Really. That’s all.”

As we drove on, dusk poured into the Valley and I fell asleep. When I woke it was dark. “You’re a beautiful creature when you sleep,” said Brigham, stroking my arm. The carriage curtains had been drawn, and I moved away from my husband to reopen them. The night was without a moon, and the Valley was black and empty. Other than the driver we were alone.

“You don’t like me?” said Brigham.

“It’s not that.”

“Then what?” He shifted toward me, his great bulk tilting the carriage on its groaning springs. The horseman slowed his team, adjusting for the shifting cargo. I suspect he was used to this sort of situation. Lurching closer, Brigham attempted to kiss me. Soon he was on me, crying, “Tell me you’ve always wanted me as I’ve wanted you!” He pressed me into the corner of the carriage.

“Brigham, please—” But his animal had been set free from its cage. I turned my head, pressed my cheek to the curtain, and prayed.

Dear Reader!

I speak the truth when I tell you it was at this moment my bodice tore, exposing my sacred undergarments. According to Brigham himself, a woman must never reveal them to a man, even her husband. Eliza Snow had penned a letter to the women of Zion on the subject: “At the time of connubiality, the wife must open a slot in her sacred garments no bigger than necessary to permit the husband his entry. At no time should she preen before him in anything less than what she might wear on the street, nor reveal to neither his eyes nor hands what lay beneath.”

Married half a day, I had already violated my husband’s doctrines. “Turn the other way,” I demanded. “Please don’t look at me.”

Brigham was stunned, apologizing, “I don’t know what happened.” He tried to fig-leaf my breast with the torn cloth.

“Turn around!”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

His animal had retreated to its lair, and Brigham sat beside me, deflated. “I should drive you home,” he said. He rang a bell, his signal, I would later learn, to the horseman to stop circling and head onward to his destination.

When we arrived at my mother’s house Brigham said, “I’ll send my man in, have your mother come out here, and you can ask her to bring you another garment.” He leapt from the carriage. I could hear him speak to the driver, who then trotted to the front door. I could see my mother at her threshold, peering around the man to the carriage. They spoke briefly and she walked with some hesitation to the car.

“Ann Eliza? What is it?”

I explained my predicament. “I see,” she said. She went into the house, returning with an old dress. When she entered the carriage she looked around at the velvet and the lamps and the mother-of-pearl inlay, appalled by the luxury. After helping me change, she said, “That should get you from the street to the door.”

Brigham tapped the carriage with his walking stick. “Almost ready?”

Through the glass I said, “First I want a word with you.” He climbed into the carriage. “Shut the door.” He obeyed my command and settled into the seat with an obvious shame. “What has gotten into you?” I demanded.

“I’m sorry, I was overcome. I didn’t mean to alarm you, but you can’t know how beautiful you are.”

“Thank you, but you’re not fifteen.”

I saw his anger rise, his color deepen, and the eruption begin. Yet he managed to check his passions and the color washed off his face. “I don’t mean to offend you.”

“It’s too late.”

“In that case, you’ll have to forgive me. That’s all I can ask.” Brigham Young, the Great Man of the West, had the hurt look of a scolded boy. He stepped down from the carriage and crossed the street, waiting beneath a poplar. An old couple out for a night walk greeted him. They were astonished to see the Prophet in their path. Brigham spoke with them warmly, as if they were old friends, and the couple flattered him, babbling about the quality of his recent sermon.

My mother helped me out of the carriage, but I refused to go inside. I stood at her gate, waiting for my husband’s return. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go in.” Slowly I realized my husband would not say good-bye to me on the street. He stayed with the couple until I was behind the closed door. From inside I watched him run back to the carriage, hopping on his fat tapered legs. The driver snapped his reins. The horses stamped and flicked and lunged. The carriage tore off before Brigham’s foot was inside. His arm came out and closed the door behind him, and thus alone I spent my wedding night.