The Ninth Wife (2 page)

“Pearl,” he said. “Yeah, yeah. It’s
al-raht
.” They rocked their foreheads together.

“Well, if you’ll excuse me,” said Bess, getting into the car, “I have to go.”

“Yes,” said Cricket, “we do have to go. It’s Bess’s birthday today, after all.”

Bess shot him a look.

“No way. Happy birthday,” said Sonny. “You celebrating this evening?”

Cricket started to say, “She’s having a huge blowout par—” but Bess interrupted. “I’m not a big birthday person. I like staying home alone.”

Gaia looked like she accumulated the world’s grief. “That’s so sad,” she said.

Bess glared at her through a long silence until Cricket finally ended the encounter. “Okay then. Off we go. Enjoy your day, you two.” Bess waved good-bye and got into the car.

“He’s having a baby,” she said after two stop signs.

“Technically,” said Cricket, “she’s having the baby and he was probably as yillied as you when he first heard the news.”

“What is
yillied
? That’s not a word.”

“Darling, who knows the Queen’s English better, you or me?” He pointed a manicured finger at her, then picked a crumb off his V-necked shirt, which hung loosely over his large belly.

“Good point. He doesn’t look yillied now, though. He looks happy.”

“For how long? You know as well as I do reality’s a mean ol’ nasty pit bull gonna bite him right in that cute little ass of his, bite him hard, bite a big chunk offa that—”

“I got it, thank you.”

Cricket stopped abruptly at a yellow light and Bess’s head lurched forward, then hit the neck rest behind her. “All I’m saying is,” he went on, “he wasn’t for you.”

“You always say that.”

They drove past an outdoor flea market, a police station, an apartment building under renovation. Pedestrians weaved in and out of the slow-moving traffic. For much of her adult life, Bess has carried on through ups and downs with an even-keeled contentment and indulgence in daily comforts: NPR
Morning Edition
, her travel mug of Good Earth tea, her half-mile walk to work, mid-afternoon squares of dark chocolate, an evening shower, Jon Stewart, her crossword puzzle, and her down comforter. She’s never been one for drama or complaints, knowing very well how lucky she is to have an income, relative safety, and more freedoms than most. But she also happens to be a thirty-something living in a city, with an ache for companionship and kids, and bad luck in the dating realm. Even though she pays little attention to fashion trends, prefers film fests to cocktail parties, and has only one or two close girlfriends, she knows she fits the stereotype. Case in point: Blissful Ex-Boyfriend has glowing New Pregnant Girlfriend while Still-Single Ex-Girlfriend, who discovers said Ex-Boyfriend with Pregnant Girlfriend, spirals downward into a Super Crabby Mood.

“All of this,” said Cricket, looking at her. “It’s about tonight, isn’t it?”

“All of what?”

“All of this,” he repeated, gesturing as if wiping his palm on the invisible shell of her negativity.

Bess looked away. “No, it’s fine.”

“That’s very convincing. Honey, you’re going to meet the man of your steamy dreams tonight, I’m telling you. What about that fiddle player Gabrielle met at a bar last week? You told me she invited him. What was his name, Patrick Sean Finnegan O’Shaughnessy . . .”

“His name’s Rory.”

“So there you go.” Cricket pulled up in front of the school. “Listen. Sweetheart. Try to put the
happy
in
happy birthday
today, okay? And don’t talk to me about being too old. I have hemorrhoids on my hemorrhoids. But you . . . you look ten years younger than you are, you sexy little Tinker Bell . . . no wrinkles, perky breasts, girlish figure . . .”

“Hairy arms, hook nose, fat ass.”

“Your ass is not fat. It’s . . . grabbable.”

“Great.” Actually, she had managed to stave off the saddlebags she often acquires during winter thanks to karate and a near-religious adherence to a daily workout DVD she got at a yard sale, with a woman on the cover so buff she looked bionic. “Say good-bye to your jiggly thighs and watch your rear disappear!” it said on the cover.
Well all right
, she had said.

“Bess, seriously,” said Cricket, gently. “Today, let your friends do nice things for you. You deserve to be happy today of all days.”

“Thanks, Cricket. I’ll try.” She smiled for him, though she knew it would take more than anyone could muster today to get her out of the doldrums. This morning she actually woke up wondering what would happen if she ceased to exist, how her sudden absence might make the sound of a tiny ping after which the world would go on with its jackhammers and jet engines and boisterous dinner parties.
Why is this birthday making you so down?
her young assistant at work had asked last week. She didn’t know precisely, but she had a few guesses. For example, Bess had said, thirty-five is the age they start checking for birth defects. Her assistant had looked puzzled.
Shouldn’t they know by now if you have birth defects?
Bess stared at the innocent tilt of her head.
I mean the birth defects of a fetus.
It’s not so easy for me to have a healthy baby anymore
, Bess said.
Oh, right
, her assistant had said, and then didn’t seem to know what else to say.

Bess shut the door behind her and walked around to Cricket’s window. “Thanks for driving me. How about you? You doing okay?”

“Me? Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” Despite his wit and outward nonchalance, there is a fog of sorrow about his person that Bess both identifies with and longs to fully understand.

“We’ll talk later?”

“I insist.”

S
top.
Kyunyeh
. Put the target away and find a new partner.”

Bess doesn’t hear her teacher at first. She is kicking hard, breathing heavily, sweaty and determined.

“Hey,” says her partner, putting his hand up and pulling the target behind him.

“Oh, sorry,” she says. He leaves her to put the target in the corner, and she watches him bow to a new partner. Just like that.

Bess shifts her weight from foot to foot, giving her adrenaline time to adjust. She bows to a nearby student, a strong, bearded father of little ones in the karate school. “Defensive releases,” her teacher announces, which means one person grabs hold while the other practices self-defense and escape techniques. Her new partner motions for her to ward off his attacks, so Bess stands and waits. He chooses a bear hug from behind. She has learned to yell
no!
; to try and hit his face with the back of her head; to grab his pants and kick his knee, scrape his shin, stomp on his foot, turn and knee him in the groin and in the face when he doubles over; to push him and run, but at the moment she has forgotten what to do. She can feel his breath on her cheek. His big frame is wrapped around her torso and she feels . . . what, exactly? Comforted? Secure? Turned on? She wants to lean her head back into the crease of his neck, push her hips up slightly into his crotch. It has been so long since she has truly spooned with someone, horizontal or vertical. This partner of hers with his arms wrapped around her has the sweetest hum of a breath, and all she can do is close her eyes. And then he lets go and coughs.

“I’m really sorry,” she says for the second time today. “I spaced out there for a second.” She turns toward him and quickly looks into his eyes, then down at her feet.

“Start again?”

“Sure,” she says, feeling wholly unsure about so much at the moment.
Tonight there will be seventy people in my apartment
, she wants to scream.
Most of them are strangers to me, and if that isn’t excruciating enough, thirty-five of them are SINGLE MEN! So sure, attack away!

This time he chooses a mugger’s hold. He wraps his right arm around her neck from behind, grabs her left wrist, and stretches it back behind her.

“No!” she yells. She digs her chin into his elbow, play-kicks him in the shin, stomps on his foot, twists her body under and away from his arm, kicks him again in the knee, yells, “No!” more loudly this time, and runs away to safety.

Chapter Two

I
was just a boy the first time I got married, barely eighteen and just out of school. This was back in Ireland, in a suburb of Dublin. That’s where I grew up, I mean. My mother wanted me to go to university straight away, but she had my sister still in school and I knew that would be tough enough. My parents weren’t rich—far from it. My father was a credit officer, worked long evenings and worked hard, but he was an honest man. My older brother, Eamonn, helped out some, but we couldn’t count on him. He was a rough one and it ’bout near broke my parents’ hearts.

My mother was traditional. She didn’t care for the new social changes afoot and she for sure didn’t like the violence up north. My father, he believed in their cause, I think he did anyway, but he was a peaceful man and not one to stir the sea. They knew how close me and Eamonn were and they knew, too, if they didn’t intervene I’d get caught up in whatever he was caught up in. He’d come home to take me out and they’d yell all the way to Belfast. “Jaysus,” Eamonn’d yell back, “let the boy live a little!” But they’d have none of it.

I’m telling you all this by way of explaining the start of my marriage to Maggie McCabe in 1978 and our trip to America. I loved Eamonn, you know, but his lifestyle wasn’t for me. I was kind of happy-go-lucky you might say, playing my fiddle and pulling off the occasional prank. One day my mother saw me hanging about the house and gave me a swift kick out the door. “Go find y’self a job, Rory,” she said, and so I did.

With the help of a school chum, I got work at a television studio, running errands mostly. It didn’t pay much but it was thrilling, and not just because I was working the set and sharing pints with the camera crew. It’s where I first saw Maggie. She was the daughter of a producer and the same age as me, a little wisp of a thing, but the brightest, prettiest green eyes and straight, thick black hair that would sway just top of her short skirt when she walked away. She could be as crazy and blinding as the sun direct, hamming it up and getting the laughs, or like a little firefly, moving about stealthily behind the scenes, flickering her charm here and there until you wanted to follow her anywhere. I thought I was the luckiest guy alive to be the one she took a shine to. It wasn’t long before we were passing each other love notes and stealing kisses in the dark.

I knew right away I wanted to marry Maggie. We talked about it, would dream about where we’d live and what we’d do. Her father, though, wasn’t all that happy about her being with a poor, uneducated punk like me. So we started talking about running away together, but then something happened. The television show we were working on was suddenly plucked off the air in mid-run in a storm of controversy, which, much to her father’s chagrin, was all about Maggie.

The show was called
The Spark
. It was, I should say, a pretty bad drama all things considered, but it had a way of stirring things up. Maggie appeared in episodes on occasion. She was an aspiring actress and her father let her play bit parts. One week, they were filming a scene with a nude model in an art class who comes on to her teacher. The woman who was supposed to do it got the chicken pox, and no makeup was enough to erase the red marks. So Maggie lobbied to do the scene instead. I say lobbied because there was her father to contend with, of course, and no one wanted to step on the toes of a producer. But then he’d been out of town and hard to reach, they couldn’t find another actress in time, and Maggie was pretty persuasive when she wanted to be. Plus her father was a forward thinker all things considered, an outspoken advocate of women’s rights and free expression.

So she does the scene—tastefully, I might add—and the episode runs and suddenly the public—everyone!—is up in arms. And I mean everyone, not just the Church and the government wankers. I didn’t realize this until the whole thing blew up, but it was apparently the first nude scene in an Irish television show. Jesus, it caused such an uproar, you should have seen the letters in the papers. Seriously. It was unbelievable. You’d walk into any pub in the city and they’d be talking about it so much the story grew until it was almost farcical. And Maggie’s dad—he was furious. At his daughter, sure, but he’d made peace with that by the time the show aired. No, it was his show, see, and he was livid at the prudish, almost hysterical censorship. And it was that, really. Like it was okay for foreigners to bare skin on screen, but our own kind? Never. And poor Maggie, she took it the hardest. She could hardly leave home without all the taunting. And it was supposed to be her big break.

So that’s how we got married and why we left the country. Maggie’s father, now having serious money problems because of the canceled season, was all too happy to marry his daughter off to a nice respectable chap and send her to America, the land of free expression. And my parents—happy, too, that I was marrying up and eager to save me from Eamonn—sent me off with their blessing. Her father used his connections to get us visas. We had a small wedding and took off the next day. My father hugged me good-bye and whispered in my ear, “I know y’won’t come back to live here, son, and that’s okay. You’ll have a good life in America and I’ll see you again.”

And just so you know, my brother made it through his rough years and died of pneumonia six years later. My mother passed on, too. But my father and my sisters, they’re doing all right. My dad and one of my sisters have been out to visit.

Anyway, I left, with Maggie on my arm. We arrived into Boston and tell the truth, I was scared to death. We went to Boston because it was thick with the Irish and we figured that’s a good place to start, but I’ll never forget standing out in the street in the South End, just off the bus from the airport with our suitcases, dirty snow in the curbs and steam coming up from the roofs of the brick row houses, a fat black woman in rags walking past talking to herself, and I just remember getting this wave of panic and thinking,
What have I done?
I had never been out of Ireland. The city looked and felt like Dublin in the way one industrial city can feel like another, you know what I mean, gray and cold and always simmering under the surface. Plus Boston wears its history like a fur coat, rich and proud, and while it’s a history I didn’t know a whole lot about, I knew some of it was against the English and that put me at ease. But beyond that, everything new came at me at once and all I could do was retreat. I think what struck me most, and Maggie, too, was the sheer variety of people: the color of their skin, their languages, their foods, their faiths, their mannerisms. You didn’t see a lot of that back home. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in it all, it’s just that it seemed to me, at the time anyway, that everyone kept to their own kind and no one got along all that well. The Italians, the Jews, the blacks, even the Irish had their own neighborhoods, their own hangouts. So I guess I just followed their lead. I got a gig playing the fiddle a few nights at an Irish bar in Quincy Market and the rest of the time got hooked up doing construction with other Irish ex-pats. I spent my off time watching American television in our small studio apartment, or at the bar where I worked, drinking watered-down beer and missing my family.