The Ninth Wife (14 page)

Pregnant! I thought we had been so careful. Well, I’ll tell you I got drunk that night. By myself. And not on vodka cranberries; I needed my Guinness and lots of it. I remember telling the whole saga to a large, bald bartender who listened well enough and told me, if you can believe this, that I didn’t have any choice but to marry her for that was the right thing to do. The right thing to do! That’s what he said, and there was Lorraine and the priest all over again. I said thank you very much to the bartender, you said just the right words, and I walked out of that bar thinking I had my answer sure enough. I had followed that advice once before and look where it got me and no way in bloody hell was I going to follow that advice again and I was feeling light in my step as I walked back to the apartment to say all this to Olive Ann and who did I see but Cici sitting on the front step. Shouldn’t you be in bed? I said. But she wouldn’t answer.
She wouldn’t answer
, do you get what I’m saying? All that work she did to open up to me, to gain confidence in herself despite her stutter, all for nothing. I asked her question after question, I pleaded with her to speak but she sat there silent, as silent as she’d been most of her life. My God, it just about killed me.

I finally got her to sleep and crawled into bed next to Olive Ann. She nestled into me without waking. I lay awake with her in my arms thinking what I was feeling for her was surely love. And a baby! My baby. I’m sure some other men my age would have wanted to run, but I liked the idea of being a daddy. All the men in my family back home were young when they had children. I was about to turn thirty and what had I accomplished? I suddenly felt as if I’d been so selfish in my life and it was time to give back. Olive Ann and Cici needed me and I really thought I could help them. And maybe Olive Ann getting pregnant was a sign from God, that’s what I was thinking, that I could be happy again.

So in the morning I asked Olive Ann to marry me and she started to seem like her old self. She jumped on Cici’s bed to tell her and then took us both out for pancakes. Two months later we were married in a small ceremony with just Cici and one of our neighbors as witnesses and off she and I went to ski the slopes near Boulder for a honeymoon, leaving Cici with a friend. Neither Olive Ann nor I knew how to ski, mind you, we might have been the only people living in Colorado who could have said that, but it didn’t matter. Olive Ann wanted to ski and said she could pay for it, too, so I didn’t argue. She was alive and wild again and every fall she or I took on the bunny slope just made us horny.

Of course, I was always nervous about the baby. What would a fall do to the baby, I thought. What about too much sex? And Olive Ann promised she’d stop drinking, but she didn’t. She just hid it from me, but back home I’d find half-empty bottles tucked in corners and I think it was then that I started to wonder. I tried to go to the doctor with her, but she didn’t want me there. I was reading up on how to have a healthy pregnancy and tried to suggest things she should eat, but she’d have none of it. Cici and I would have long conversations about what it would be like to have a baby around to play with, but Olive Ann mostly ignored us. And then one day, when she was supposed to be about four and a half months pregnant though she wasn’t showing, I saw something in the trash—a feminine product, I’ll say, and leave it at that.

What you’re thinking is right, I’ll just tell you now: She was never pregnant. Unbelievable that a woman would lie about something like that, no? She tried to tell me she miscarried, but the truth came out soon enough and I don’t know how anyone can bounce back from a deception like that. I certainly couldn’t. Not even for Cici.

You understand why I had to leave, don’t you? I tried to be sympathetic, to be there for Cici. I tried to tell myself that we could just have a baby for real now and everything would be okay, but I knew it wouldn’t. I couldn’t forgive her. Not when she knew how difficult a decision it was for me to marry again.

Cici took it hard, but I told her I wouldn’t leave her. I moved into another flat nearby and took her out whenever I could. Olive Ann didn’t want her to see me so we had to be secretive and that was unfortunate, but we managed. On the last night of 1989, just before it was to turn into a new decade, I took Cici out for a fancy dinner and I clinked my wine to her soda and toasted to new beginnings. Three days later Olive Ann was taken away in an ambulance after she tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists.

I guess I didn’t really know what
bipolar
meant when we were together, though I could always sense something was off. The state took Cici away from her. It was so sad, for both Olive Ann and Cici. I tried to get custody, but it proved too difficult when her real father was willing to take her, and in the end her father wasn’t such a bad guy. But it meant Cici had to move up to Alaska and we had to say our good-byes. That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

I’m happy to say, though, that Cici and I managed to stay in touch. We both liked to write letters, so much so that I feel as if I was a small part of her growing up. She’s been to visit me on and off over the years, and now I’ll tell you, she matured into one hell of a woman. She beat her stutter and got herself into Oberlin College. She’s going to grad school now in California for her MBA. Olive Ann stayed in Denver, got on medication and steadied herself, sometimes for long stretches, but she was never really okay. About every six months, or so Cici told me, she’d refuse to take her medication and they’d find her out on the street doing crazy stuff. I visited her once, but it was too painful for me to see her like that, so I didn’t go back.

But backing up to when Cici left for Alaska . . . that’s when I finally hit bottom with my drinking. The loneliness just came back full force. I’d rather not go into details on this leg of the journey, seeing as it’s outside of the story I’m trying to tell. I’ll save it for another time if you like. Suffice it to say rock bottom, if it doesn’t land you in the grave, can be a good thing in the long run. It got me into rehab and that’s where I took responsibility for my life.

And that’s how I came to marry Pamela Crane in the spring of 1994. I have no regrets about marrying Pam. I gave her a gift and she gave me the same gift back tenfold. What was it we gave each other? Peace. We gave the gift of peace.

Chapter Eleven

B
ess opens Rory’s fridge and pours filtered water into her Nalgene bottle, taking a sip before closing the lid. She tiptoes to his front door and slips the bottle into her knapsack, trying not to wake him this Sunday morning. She has seen him almost every night since they met four weeks ago and as a result, she’s been unfocused at work, unfazed by annoyances—sighs,
Oh well
when she misses a bus, laughs when she steps in a puddle, presses the wrong button on the elevator and is confused when she enters the wrong office. Each day she replays in her mind their encounter from the day or night before and is afflicted with sudden hot flashes and smile bursts in sober places, like last week at her boss’s mother’s funeral.
About time you’re happy
, Gabrielle had e-mailed.
You deserve it, girl.
I thought we were waiting for goddamn Godot.

Rory’s apartment is clean, but cluttered, and masculine in that much of its contents feel more useful than aesthetic—computers and computer gadgets, music magazines, a soccer ball and other sports equipment, clothes piled up in the closet. She likes that he has family photos on his desk, a star chart on his wall, and mugs, calendars, carry bags from charities he’d supported that help reduce world hunger, protect the environment, bring music to at-risk kids. And, of course, musical instruments—fiddle, guitar, keyboard, harmonica. His apartment turns her on, and in that department he has proven deliciously skilled. The fact that she is having sex again is enough to catapult her into blissfulness, but that it is hot and heavy, varied and frequent, and in the last few days particularly tender . . . well, it’s enough to send her over the edge.

“Hey,” he yawns, appearing in the doorway to his bedroom in his gray boxer briefs, still looking half asleep. He rubs his face, scratches his disheveled hair, yawns again. “Where you off to?” He has the hoarse, scratchy voice of someone uttering his first morning words after a late night.

“I’m meeting Cricket for brunch. Sorry I woke you.” Bess takes in his long legs, his not insignificant biceps, his broad chest with just enough hair to feel texture with her fingertips, the shadow of scruff on his cheeks, the whole picture of this man of hers—
of hers!
—standing half naked before her. The word
lucky
comes to mind: lucky that she is the one who gets to watch him sleep, to wake up feeling his naked skin next to hers, to know him in a way that not many have. Or maybe many have. She wishes she knew. Despite her vault-opening admissions of past relationship blunders, he hasn’t shared all that much about his own, nor could she find much evidence of past relationships in his place except for two photos of a young girl named Cici who he said was the daughter of an ex-girlfriend. He talked about Cici as if she were his own daughter, Bess noticed, but said very little about Cici’s mother. She lives out West so he doesn’t get to see her often, but they try to talk once a month.

Rory shuffles into the bathroom to pee. She loves that he keeps the door open, even though she doesn’t feel comfortable doing it. She loves watching him pee, how he arches his back slightly, how he holds his “Vincent.” (
Vincent?
she had asked when they were first formally introduced. He told her an older boy in primary school named everyone’s pecker and it just stuck. Considering his mates’ were labeled Digger and Sister Mary, he considered himself lucky.)

He flushes and saunters over to her. She kisses him good morning. He kisses her with the hope of an even better morning, slipping his hand under her shirt. “Do you have to go right now?”

She lingers and sighs, then pulls away. His growing erection: sweet. His morning breath: not so sweet. “Sorry, I gotta go. I’m already late. We’re still on for tonight?”

“Tonight?”

“The concert.”

“Oh, right.”

“You can go, yes?”

“Not sure. Maybe. I’ll have to see. I’ll call you.” He says this as he heads into the kitchen.

Bess suddenly feels deflated. “Oh, okay,” she says. “Later, then.” What runs through her mind is that she bought concert tickets three weeks ago because he said he would go. But she doesn’t want to sound naggy. Is he a commitment-phobe like so many of her past boyfriends? Is this a bad omen? Though they’ve hinted at exclusivity, talk of a future together,
anything
in their future, it seems, feels too emotionally risky. Maybe if he doesn’t end up going, she tells herself on the walk to the Metro, she’ll get the nerve up to say something. Until then,
stay positive!
she reminds herself.

S
tella is sitting and panting in front of Tryst, a neighborhood café along the Eighteenth Street strip of Adams Morgan in Northwest D.C. Her leash hangs from a polka dot collar under her triple chins and loops around the leg of the table where, at the edge of the café whose floor-to-ceiling windows open to the sidewalk, Cricket is basking in the sun shining down on his double latte. He has on his black sunglasses, which he uses to surreptitiously check out the bulge of the muscular cyclist who bends down to pet Stella before he enters the café. Bess watches Cricket lift his sunglasses to better glimpse the cyclist’s behind when he walks away.

“Sorry I’m late,” says Bess, sliding into her chair. “Thanks for getting the table.”

“Look stately, Stella darling,” says Cricket, rubbing her belly. “Be regal for Daddy.” Stella yawns and lies down. “You’re smiling eerily,” he says to Bess without looking up. “Stop that.”

Cricket rarely says hello. Bess often feels like she fades into his scene, as if onlookers who thought he had been talking to himself will see that he’d been speaking to someone all along.

“Can’t help it,” she says, grinning even wider. “I’m glad to see you.”

Cricket looks to be the largest man in the crowded café, and possibly the oldest, definitely the most flaming, for he likes to turn it up when they go out together. His white silk shirt hangs loose over his gut. His silver pinky ring glistens like a beacon when he pats his wide and shiny face with his napkin. A sun visor covers his large skull and rests on sun-reddened ears, the right one pierced with the tiniest of diamonds. “What did Daddy tell you about licking your loo-loo?” he says to Stella. “We don’t lick our privates in public, my angel.”

“Speak for yourself,” says Bess.

The young tattooed waitress comes to stand at their table so they are eye-level with her pierced midriff. She says she’s sorry, but they don’t have asparagus on the menu, healthy or not, and no she’s afraid they don’t have Brussels sprouts, either, and c’mon Gramps, you got the menu right in front of you, to which Cricket places his hand on his heart and orders a plain bagel. Bess orders a waffle with strawberries and Nutella.

“Cricket, really,” says Bess. “She wasn’t exactly Miss Congeniality, but you don’t have to be so difficult, either.”

According to certain friends of his, there was a time years ago when Cricket wore jeans and tees and a baseball hat and wouldn’t admit it aloud but liked to watch the Super Bowl. That was when Darren was alive. They lived together for years and it was always Darren who was the dainty one. He was an interior designer, and sometimes shared clients with Cricket: Cricket, the mortgage broker, helped young couples purchase a house; Darren helped the couple make it a home. But after Darren died, Cricket started walking his walk and talking his talk, even wearing his clothes. He used to oscillate more between his two personas—old and new, gay and flaming—but now he’s almost
become
Darren, and Bess is beginning to question his stability.

Cricket ignores her comment and turns his attention back to Stella, his neck ballooning like a bullfrog’s when he looks down. “Poor thing, look at her. I don’t know what’s bothering her.” He holds up Stella’s paw, then rubs her belly. “Have I been neglecting my canine princess, have I? Yes, I have; yes, I have.” He sits back up and leans in toward Bess. “I think she’s still traumatized from that time she had to wait all alone for my return,” he says, glancing at Stella and holding his finger up to his lips. “Shh, poor dear. She idolizes Lassie, you know,
idolizes
her, practically begs me to put the old movies on. She likes it when I pretend to be a teenage Elizabeth Taylor, calling out to her to come home.” He takes a sip of his latte with puckered lips.