The Ninth Wife (33 page)

Cricket’s hug good-bye to Sylvie is heartfelt and long.

“How do you know her again?” says Bess as they pull out of the parking lot.

“We met at the DMV thirty years ago,” he says, spraying Lysol on the dashboard. “Isn’t she a doll?” Cricket talks about her for the next twenty minutes, how her husband left her for a nurse, how she practically built her new sunroom herself, how she was the top-ranked bowler in the county. It has started to drizzle, just enough to make the windshield wipers squeak every now and again and require continual readjustment. Bess loses her desire to share Rory’s voice mail with him.

“Excuse me,” Bess interrupts. “Do you all mind if we stop for coffee?”

“No dear,” says Millie. “I’d like some, too.”

“I could use a restroom,” says Irv.

“We just left,” snaps Millie.

“So what? I have to go again. You want me to go in the van?”

“Ech, don’t be vulgar, Irving.”

H
ey,” says Bess into her cell phone, “I got you.” She is in the back of a gas station’s convenience store, where the others can’t see or hear her.

“Hi,” says Rory. He sounds sleepy.

Bess feels awkward. “So where were you last night?”

“I met Sean out at Iota. One of his friends was in the band, sort of a rockabilly sound. Good crowd. We ended up going back to Sean’s place to watch
The Godfather
.”

“Oh. I tried to call you. Did you get my message?”

“I did. How was Fallingwater?”

“Beautiful.”

“Hey, before I forget . . . what’s Gabrielle’s number? I left my running shoes at your place and she has my set of keys.”

Bess gives him the information and thinks,
This is weird
. Why isn’t he bringing up his message? Does he not remember making the call? Should she say something? “What time did you go to bed last night?”

“I don’t know. Was late.”

“You were drinking.”

“I had a few.”

“A few?”

“Why the inquisition?”

“Because you’ve had a problem in the past.” This conversation isn’t going at all the way she’d like it to.

Rory is quiet for a moment. “You’re right. It’s been a long time. I was upset that you left, but believe me, I won’t be doing that again soon. Not given the way I feel now.”

Now Bess is quiet. “So you hung out with Gerald.”

“Yeah, he showed me his beetle collection and I met his mom. Wait, how did you know I saw Gerald?”

“You left me a voice mail.”

“Oh no. Last night?”

“Yup.

“What did I say?”

“You said you wanted my titties.”

Rory laughs. “Well, that’s true.”

“You were worried I went to Vietnam.”

“Oh boy.”

“You said, ‘We have to talk.’ ”

“Bess, honey, I had too much to drink. I’m a babbling buffoon when I drink, I’ve told you that.”

“Rory, are you still in love with Dao?”

“No. That’s the truth.”

Bess sees Cricket making a purchase at the counter. “I should go,” she says.

“Where are you?”

“We just left Pittsburgh. I’m at a gas station.”

“Oh,” he says, and yawns. “Okay. Call me tonight. I’ll be home.”

A
t well past one o’clock, the travelers take a seat at a deli in the warehouse district of Toledo, Ohio. Stella is in view outside, lying under an awning.

Bess had hoped to see Toledo. She wanted to imagine Rory living there, married to his third wife, Lorraine. She knew only that it was an industrial city on the westernmost part of Lake Erie, a sprawl of factories and warehouses. It seemed a destination ripe with potential on a day filled almost entirely with sitting and thinking and conversing. Looking at her map, she drove downtown and urged everyone to join her on a walk before lunch along the Maumee River. They obliged her for an eighth of a mile until the droplets of rain felt heavier and threatened to trigger the pain in Millie’s arthritic hip. They passed up the Kid McCoy’s Tavern with the boxing gloves on the door for a restaurant called Grouchy’s, because it looked filled with local lunchers, though Bess had a fleeting thought of it as a bad omen given Millie and Irv’s propensity for public wrangling. It sets her on edge. They settle in and place their umbrellas under a wooden table.

“Speaking of names,” says Millie, watching the busboy pour her water, “how does someone get the name Cricket? It’s unusual, no?”

“My mother coined it. She said I was her moral conscience, like Jiminy Cricket.”

“How interesting,” says Millie. “What is your given name?”

“Walter.”

Walter
, thinks Bess. “You never told me that.”

“You never asked.”

“How come I always have to ask you to share things with me?” she snaps, scraping the chair aggressively against the floor, annoyed that it is slightly off-kilter and too low. “I bet Sylvie knows your name. Did
she
ask?” Bess is careful not to raise her voice, but is cognizant of her petulant tone. She gives in to the chair by slapping her back against its seatback.

“What’s wrong?” Cricket observes her above his reading glasses.

“Nothing,” she says, quietly, examining her menu. “It’s just . . . my parents are dead, my grandparents are moving away, and you’re a stranger to me.”
And who knows if Rory is in my future?
“Forget it,” she adds, because what she just said aloud is too revealing, too raw to share before she’s had time to mull over the feelings and manage their presentation.

Cricket fans his hand out on top of her menu and lowers it to the table. “Darling, look at me.”

Bess obliges. She steals a glance at her grandparents, who are regarding her with heartbreaking pity.

“My name is Walter. My middle name is Clive. The men in my family used to call me Trey, because I was the third Walter Clive. My stage name, should I ever need it, is Bambi Barker or Tinker Bell Moon, depending on which childhood pet and street I use. What else would you like to know?”

Bess relaxes her shoulders. Her eyes moisten, but she will not let herself cry. She half smiles at Cricket, loves him in this moment. “I’m good for now,” she says. “Thanks.”

A stalwart waitress takes a pen from behind her ear and says, “What’ll it be today?”

Bess can see in the faces of her grandparents that they are distressed by what she has revealed. From the moment the shock of their move wore off—just hours after they told her—Bess expressed her full support, claiming her only regret was that she wouldn’t be close enough to look after them. When they admitted guilt for leaving her she told them time and again she’d be okay, that it’s perfectly understandable what they’re doing. Now she’s blown her cover. “I think I’ll get the Garbage Salad,” she says, hoping to lighten the mood. “What are you going to get, Gramp?”

It doesn’t work. Irv looks wilted. His legs are crossed as usual, but his body looks caved in, his shoulders slouched, the loose skin of his unshaven cheeks droop like Stella’s jowls. His unseeing eyes are now cast downward at the table, but they rise to Bess’s eyes and soften when he hears her question.

“He hasn’t even looked at the menu,” says Millie.

Irv waves her comment away. “I don’t need a menu. I’ll have a hot dog. I haven’t had a good hot dog in years.” He twirls the ice in his water glass with his straw.

“What are you talking about, Irving?” says Millie, rolling her eyes. “You got one at the baseball game we went to with Bea and Harvey, and you said the same thing. And then you had gas pains all night.”

“So that was a long time ago.”

“It was last month,” Millie says too loudly.

“So I like them, what’s it to you?”

“Fine. You want to kill yourself, be my guest!”

“Mind your own business!”

“Mind your own business, he says! Your business is everyone else’s business, mister, and always has been!”

“
Enough!
” Bess cries out to Millie at such a volume the diners at neighboring tables turn their heads. “My God,
leave him alone
! If he wants to have a hot dog,
that’s his choice
!”

A fork clinks a plate, a child’s leg swings.

“I think we need a few more minutes,” Cricket says to the waitress, who nods slowly and says, “Take your time.”

Bess can tell Millie is hurt. Millie is trying not to show it by remaining poised and smoothing out her napkin on her lap and looking everywhere but at Bess, who broke their unspoken contract. She didn’t step in to keep the peace. She took sides.

“I’m sorry,” says Bess, reaching her hands out to Millie across the table. So much for Zen and the art of self-control. “I shouldn’t have said anything.” Millie shrugs as if to say,
It’s nothing
, or maybe,
I understand
,
we’re all hurting
.

“I think I’ll get a hot dog, too,” says Cricket, eyeing Bess. “You and me, Irving. Hot dogs for the men.”

T
he food arrives and they manage to move on to other topics, carried mostly by Cricket and Bess. Millie offers short answers to long questions and otherwise eats her salad quietly. Irv cuts his hot dog with a fork and knife and closes his eyes with each bite.

“Gramp. Who was a better cook, your mom or Gram?” Bess already knows the answer to this.

“Millie,” says Irv, sipping his water.

Bess waits for him to elaborate. “Didn’t I hear you say,” she nudges, “that you never met anyone who could cook a brisket like Gram? And what about her banana bread?”

“Indeed,” says Cricket. “Millie dear, your banana bread is pure heaven.”

Bess pokes Cricket under the table, points her chin at Irv. “Gramp?” she says.

Irv wipes his chin. “Yes, Millie is talented in the kitchen. I’ve always told her that. It’s one of the reasons I married her. She’s fed me exceedingly well.”

Bess eyes Millie as if to say,
Now it’s your turn
.

“Thank you,” says Millie. It looks like she is going to say something else, but then stops herself. She does this often, Bess notices.

“And,” says Irv, quietly, “she used to enjoy a good hot dog, too, if I recall.”

Toward the end of their meal while Cricket is recounting scenes from his mother’s kitchen, Bess catches Irv cutting a small piece of his hot dog at the tip and slipping it onto Millie’s plate. Millie ignores it at first. She lets it stay there for several minutes until she thinks no one is looking, most of all Irv, then places it in her mouth.

Bess feels as if she has glimpsed an angel.

T
hey walk after lunch to digest. Stella pees on the sidewalk. Bess resigns herself to the fact that she cannot possibly get to know Toledo in a couple of hours. She tries to imagine a young Rory strolling down the sidewalk with his young, plump, churchgoing wife. Would he have held her hand? Raced her to the corner? What happened to turn her into a mad stalker?

Cricket calls to Millie to come see a window display and as she joins him, Irv sidles up to Bess. “So how is Rory?”

This catches Bess by surprise. “He’s okay, Gramp.”

“Good, good,” he says, thoughtfully. He coughs into his fist. “He seems like a good man. Someone you can really depend on.”

Bess knows what he’s trying to say, that she’s not alone in D.C. This is one of his life buoys. Why not let him think she’ll be well looked after? She doesn’t want her grandparents to know there is trouble with Rory. It is her life buoy to them. “He’s a good guy,” she says assuredly.

I
n the van, back on the highway, Irv discovers the banjo that Bess has all but forgotten. “Gramp, you play, right? Play for us,” says Bess. Irv strums the strings. Millie opens her window and lets the noise of the traffic in. Bess, from her driver’s vantage point, presses the button to close it.

Irv begins to play and sing and suddenly the van is filled with a noise akin to a squealing squirrel caught in reverberating power lines. Cricket cracks open his window. Bess follows suit and with a fleeting glance at Millie’s smug stare, opens the back windows, too.

“Gramp,” says Bess. “Gramp!”

Irv stops his playing.

Bess thinks to engage Irv in conversation as a distraction, at least until they stop for gas and she can place the banjo out of his reach. “Where did you learn to play?”

“I just picked it up.”

Bess and Cricket exchange looks. “Just like that?” says Bess quickly. “From records? Or did you hang out in Georgetown?” Now a wealthy, well-kept section of the city, Georgetown was once the bohemian section of town in the late 1960s.

“No, that was your father who went there,” says Millie. “Your grandfather went where the
shvartzes
went.”

“I went where the music was, Mildred, so who cares who was there.”

“All the time he went there, even after we moved.”

“Moved where?” says Bess.

“Out of the city.”

Bess is elated. She, again, has rolled up her window because finally, now, this conversation is why she is stuffed into this gold van driving a bland highway toward Middle America. “That was after the riots in ’68, right?” Bess has read extensively about Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and its effects on D.C. Twenty thousand people raised hell until Lyndon Johnson called in the largest number of troops sent in for a U.S. disturbance since the Civil War. They arrested thousands. The inner city economy was devastated. Many moved out to the suburbs. “Do you remember what the riots were like?”

“Scary,” says Millie.

“They had a right to be angry,” says Irv.

“So that’s why you moved out?”

“One reason,” says Millie, quietly.

“What were the other reasons?” Bess asks, which prompts a look from Cricket that says,
Easy there, champ
.

Neither of her grandparents answers.

“Gramp,” says Bess, trying again, “you went to those jazz clubs on U Street?”

“Oh sure. I started going when I was eighteen. We’d drive down from Baltimore to see Jelly Roll Morton play at the Jungle Inn.”

“You never told me that.” Bess tries to imagine Irv at eighteen, a small Jewish, out-of-town white boy trying to see over the all-black crowd at a time when blacks weren’t allowed in many white clubs. “Your parents couldn’t have been happy with that.”