The Ninth Wife (34 page)

“He never told them,” says Millie. “He didn’t like to tell anyone where he was going. Could have been killed and no one would know.”

“I just liked the music, that’s all.”

“There were record players, Irving.”

“Not the same.”

An unpleasant after-lunch odor fills the van. Bess looks accusingly at Cricket.
Wasn’t me
, he mouths, discreetly cracking open his window. Bess continues. “Why are you saying he could have been killed? Gramp? Did you ever get in any trouble?”

“No, no trouble.”

“What are you talking about?” Millie exclaims. “You had a black eye and fat lip at your daughter’s bat mitzvah.”

“That was an accident.”

“Liar.”

Bess looks at Peace. She is sitting directly behind Millie, her Afro framing Millie’s tiny gray head. Did Irv talk to women like Peace at these clubs? Did he flirt with them? Bess is getting that familiar twinge of frustration that happens when her quest for answers results in hard-to-imagine scenes and more pertinent questions. “Gram, did you ever go with Gramp to the clubs?”

“No.” Millie says this as if to a dog that’s jumped up for table scraps.

“No, she never did,” adds Irv.

Bess can’t tell if he sounds angry or wistful, but she is sure there is something in their exchange of
no
’s that she’s not getting. “Meaning what? Gram, you didn’t like the music?”

“No.”

“What kinds of things did you do instead?”

“We stayed home,” she snaps dismissively, conversation over. “That’s it. Your mother and I. We stayed home.” Her voice trails off, her body turns to the world outside her window, flashing past and behind them.

Cricket pats the air near Bess as if to say,
That’s enough for today
, and Bess nods. It is enough, at least, to ponder: her dad escaping to one part of town for the folk scene, her grandfather to another for jazz and the blues, her mom finding solace in staying at home with Millie, the two of them, mother and daughter, feeling abandoned and angry. In the rearview mirror, she sees the short-necked banjo leaning precariously next to Irv and has a sudden urge to protect it.

T
he hours pass, Cricket takes the wheel, and the van slows toward night to the pace of increasing traffic as they approach Chicago along Interstate 90. The weekenders are coming home. Bess watches a passing subway train to their left. She notices how high the streetlights hang overhead, how more of the radio stations are in Spanish. She finds comfort in the electronic signs projecting the time in minutes it will take to get downtown.

She digs through her purse just for something to do: through her kiwi-scented Chap Stick, cuticle cream, hand lotion, mirror, pen and pad, cell phone. There is only one message on her cell phone, but Bess plays it twice. It’s from Gabrielle. “I found Lorraine Doyle,” Gabrielle says. “You’re going to see her in two days.”

Chapter Twenty-four

R
ory’s cubicle walls are covered with overlapping charts, scribbled notes, printed e-mails, and other pieces of paper tacked haphazardly with pins in primary colors. Yellow sticky notes fan out around his computer and hang from the two shelves that hold all his reference books and product manuals. Unlike his colleagues, many of whom keep their surfaces clear and their family photos angled just so, his office makes him look busy and relied upon. Every few months, when a product or an update is due and the software development team is staying until midnight, Rory will be the one to order the pizza and give the pep talks. Otherwise, each morning at nine-thirty
A.M.
he enters the building, winks good morning to Kim the receptionist, and settles in at his desk with his headphones, bottle of water, and bag of pistachios, racking up vacation days he will soon lose if he doesn’t use.

Today, though, he has decided to leave early to meet Gabrielle. He had called her yesterday about Bess’s keys and they figured out that her Monday evening yoga class wasn’t too far from his office. He could get the keys and bring them back to her by the time her class ended, she had said, or he could meet her afterward and they could go together to Bess’s apartment. As he ate falafel for lunch and lamented, yet again, about his phone massage to Bess, he thought of a third option: taking the class with Gabrielle. It would be relaxing, he thought, he has clothes from his gym bag he could wear, and it might allow time for her to offer advice about Bess.

He turns off his computer, says good-bye to whoever is around, and strolls down K Street toward Foggy Bottom. The yoga studio is on the third floor of a new building near George Washington University hospital. Its lights inside are significantly dimmer than those in the building’s hallway.

“You here for the class?” asks the young, fit woman behind a desk.

“Yes,” says Rory. He peeks into the studio behind her and finds it empty. “Am I too late?”

“You’re early, but that’s good. First time?”

“I took yoga a year ago and embarrassed myself by knocking over the person next to me.”

She laughs. “I meant new to this studio. But good to know. This is a class for all levels, but do take it easy.”

“Thanks.” Rory pays for the class, plus extra for use of a mat.

“You can go in,” she says. “The class will start in about twenty minutes.”

Rory enters the sparse studio and sets up his mat in the back corner by the window. There is a wall of cubbies behind him but he has nothing but his keys and wallet so he keeps them by his mat. The wallpaper on the front wall is of a pleasing bamboo forest. On a ledge by the stereo is a small Buddha, incense holder, and gong. He lies down, closes his eyes, and tries to meditate. Dao tried to teach him how to empty his mind and breathe deeply, focusing on tensing and releasing individual body parts while letting go of negative thoughts like bubbles floating up to the sky, but he never quite got it. He’d fall asleep, grow bored, or get frustrated that his negative thoughts kept coming back like a film of floating bubbles in reverse. The closest he came to understanding its relaxing powers wasn’t with Dao (for she often unnerved him), but with Pam in Seattle. Life with Pam slowed to a calming pace: slow walks, long discussions, quiet afternoons watching the rain fall on the hospital grounds. Sometimes, when her pain was acute, Rory would tell her stories until her medication took hold and she fell asleep. Then he’d sit with her and take comfort in her breathing, letting his mind wander. He recalls wishing he had known her before she was in the later stages of cancer. How would they have met? Would she be so accepting of his past? Would he desire her? He thought so. On the night of their wedding in a downtown hotel room, they lay in each others’ arms. She kissed him and he felt something. He gently massaged her body, lingering on the places she said felt good. Though she had too little strength by then to lift her own overnight bag, she was able to reach down and help him orgasm. They laughed afterward, and then they cried. It was in those moments that he started to crave a future with her while at the same time understanding to his core that it was not meant to be.

“Hey.”

Rory opens his eyes and sees Gabrielle standing over him, her rolled yoga mat tucked under her muscular arm, her water bottle dangling from her finger. Her belly button is pierced with a tiny gold ring. Whereas Bess seems unaware of her own beauty, Gabrielle wears hers proudly.

“Hi,” he says, sitting up slowly.

“You were snoring.” She bends down and unrolls her mat next to his.

“I was? Sorry.”

“You’re taking the class?”

“Thought I might.”

“You do yoga?”

“Not really.”

“Didn’t think so.” Gabrielle sits and extends her long legs out straight, reaching over to wrap her hands around her toes. Rory tries the same move and can get no further than his fingers wiggling above his ankles.

“You’re good at this,” he says.

“I’ve been doing it for years. It helps if you commit to something and stick to it, know what I’m saying?”

She says this last bit looking directly at him with a few bobble-head bobs for emphasis and he knows instantly that Bess told her about his ex-wives. He thought he had detected something in her voice when they spoke on the phone. “Bess told you.”

Gabrielle looks at him as if to say,
Duh
.

“Right,” he says. The room is filling up with mats and limber bodies. Rory is starting to feel out of place. “C’mon then, you’re supposed to be on my side.”

“On your side?” she whispers.

He tries to whisper, too, but he’s never been good at it. “You’re the one who introduced us.”

“Funny, you didn’t mention your
harem
when we met.”

“That’s not fair.”

Gabrielle loses her upright yoga posture when she waves away his comment with a dismissive flip of her hand. “Seriously,” she says, a few notches above a whisper, “eight of them? What do you do when, like, you’re up there and the priest or whatever says
until death do you part
? You just laugh?”

The woman on the purple mat in front of Rory shoots him and Gabrielle a look. Gabrielle apologizes. The woman who checked him in is now sitting cross-legged at the front of the room, welcoming everyone to her class with a warm smile and good eye contact.

Rory understands that he is not to speak anymore, though his thoughts are loud in his head as he follows the movements of the teacher, rolling his shoulders, reaching up, breathing in and letting it out. For the next hour he glimpses Gabrielle’s positions: the hold on her down dog, the reach of her warrior. Rory feels like a Saint Bernard among statues. It doesn’t help that he’s having a hard time focusing on what he’s doing, with thoughts of Bess and Gabrielle throwing him off-balance. Did Bess tell Gabrielle about his voice mail? That would be bad. He thinks back to when he and Gabrielle first met. He’ll admit he was cagey about his past, since they quickly started talking about Bess’s party and being single. Rory told her he was single because he hadn’t met the right woman. That was true, wasn’t it? Bess Gray, the woman Gabrielle wanted to fix him up with, the woman Gabrielle said was beautiful and smart and who loved foreign men and had killer abs and not a mean bone in her body, why was this woman still single? Rory wanted to know. Was she too picky?
Don’t you watch
Sex and the City
?
Gabrielle had asked. He didn’t.
Well it’s the curse of our generation.
And if you ask me, it’s all your fault
. My fault?
Men like you, not having your shit together
.

“Psst,” says Gabrielle to get his attention. Rory’s head is buried under his hips, an awkward position he got into not without difficulty by lying on his back and swinging his legs up over his head. Everyone else is relaxing on their backs with their eyes closed.

“I can’t get out of this,” he says awkwardly to Gabrielle under the bunched fabric of his T-shirt and sweatpants.

“See now, that’s just sad,” she says quietly as she gets up, grabs his legs, and pushes them up over his head and back to the floor.

He sighs with relief. “Thanks.”

She goes back to her own mat, fixing her towel for a headrest. “I should have left your sorry ass in the air.”

“Admit it, it’s a cute ass.” Rory is smiling even though he’s on his back supposedly relaxing.

“Yeah, well, somebody should kick it straight into the middle of next week if you ask me.”

The teacher walks among them, spritzing something floral-smelling into the air. After a few minutes, she rings a gong three times signaling the class members to sit up, put their hands together, and say,
Namaste
.

“Namaste,” he says to Gabrielle.

“Namaste,” she repeats. People stand slowly and start to gather their things. She hands him a paper towel. He wipes his brow. “For your mat, Einstein,” she says, handing him another. When Gabrielle’s guard is up, Rory noticed tonight, Gabrielle moves like a lioness, confident in her skin, her dark eyes alert and on the offensive. The rest of the time, or at least most of the time Rory has spent with her, her confidence plays out in a penchant for teasing. He wipes down his mat, rolls it up, and returns it to the front room. He and Gabrielle retrieve their shoes among the dozen or so pairs at the entrance.

“I suppose you want these,” she says, handing him a set of keys.

“Ah, thanks. How will I get them back to you?”

“You can keep those. I have another set. Bess said it was okay to give them to you. She said she’s got nothing to hide.” If Gabrielle had a signature look, it would be lips pursed and a slight tilt of her head downward so she’s looking at you out of the top half of her eyes.

“I think you’re enjoying this.”

“Hey, you can thank Bess for that one.”

The evening air outside is balmy but not hot. They decide to walk the extra blocks to catch the Red Line. Gabrielle leans to the left to offset the weight of the large striped canvas bag hanging off her right shoulder. Rory offers to carry it but she declines. “So,” she says, “you been in touch with any of them?”

“Who?”

“The cast of
Lost
. Who do you think?”

“My ex-wives? No. Why?”

Gabrielle casually eyes a dress in a window display. “Just asking.”

Rory suddenly feels suspicious. Bess must have told her about Carol.

They walk on for a block in silence. Rory is intimidated by Gabrielle, knowing that whatever impression he makes on her will now be communicated to Bess. He wants to ask her about Bess, but doesn’t exactly know what or how to ask.

At the next corner they stop and wait for the light. “Do you know how we met?” says Gabrielle.

“You and Bess?” He’s relieved that Gabrielle is guiding the conversation. “Didn’t you go to school together?”

“Yeah, but that’s not why we’re friends. I got really sick when I was thirteen. I had meningitis, was home from school for, like, three weeks. Bess and I were in three of the same classes. We weren’t friends, but we knew each other. She was the one who brought me the homework and helped me keep up with what we were learning. I was eight long blocks out of her way. Sometimes she stayed late, keeping me company, doing whatever. She knew I liked this boy in one of our classes, too, and she’d carry notes between us. My whole family loved her. She was shy, but she was a good sport about things. She played jump rope with my little sisters, listened to my brothers’ records, helped my mom cook, asked a lot of questions. You know I think she came initially because she was kind, but I think she kept coming back because she craved a family. So it’s life’s cruel joke that she’s still single into her thirties.”