The Ninth Wife (44 page)

“Well, you’re not going to get all the answers tonight, honey pie.”

“I know. So how are you doing? We didn’t get a chance to talk about the funeral. I thought it was very nice; everyone was particularly nice to you.”

“Yes, that was a surprise. I didn’t expect that from Isabella’s family.”

“What did you do afterwards?”

“I went back to her sister’s place. Her son’s pet tarantula escaped from its tank, I got a splinter in my big toe the size of a canoe, and I discovered butterscotch pudding gives me a rash. Lovely day. So have you talked to Rory?”

Bess is surprised and touched that he should think of asking that. “I called but no answer. Now I have to get my grandmother back to the motel.”

“I’ll wait up for you.”

Millie returns from the cafeteria and Bess gives her a few moments with Irv. She watches Millie cautiously approach Irv’s bed like a cat investigating a new food source. Fortunately, he is asleep; their first real encounter will have to wait until morning. Still, Millie stands close to him and cries, and maybe prays, too, though Bess can’t tell for sure.

The door to Dr. Higgins’s office is half ajar; Bess knocks gently. “Can I come in?”

Dr. Higgins stops writing, places his pen on his desk, and motions for her to enter.

“Visiting hours are over,” she says. “You’re working late.”

He nods politely. “A lot to do.”

“So we’re free to go?”

“Have a seat,” he says, taking off his glasses. She sits while he allows for the long pause one takes before saying something weighty. “I service four hospitals in the area and have seen hundreds of abuse cases over the years, particularly against elders. The system is currently overwrought. I’m treating a woman now whose nephew was charged with looking after her, but instead cashed her checks and ignored her. A neighbor found her in her wheelchair with severe bedsores and sitting in her own waste. The nephew is at large while she’s fighting for her life.” He fingers a silver insignia ring on his right hand. Bess finds herself staring intently at it. “So I’m not going to report this to protective services. They have enough to deal with. Nor do I wish to delay your arrival in Tucson, where your grandparents can begin to settle down and adjust to their new lives. But as I told your grandmother, she needs help dealing with her anger, immediately and regularly. That is of utmost importance. I’ll write up my assessment and in the morning I’ll contact the community they are moving to and see who they have on staff. I’ve spoken with the doctor here; he says he’ll likely release your grandfather tomorrow to your care, provided you can safely transport him to Tucson.”

What Bess mostly feels listening to Dr. Higgins is relief, for what comes through first and loudest, what is easiest for a taxed mind to understand is that they can leave, that no lawyers or cops will get involved and they can put this behind them. But she also knows there can be no more pretending that there isn’t something serious going on that could get worse if unchecked. She knew this all along, deep down, and feels ashamed at the realization that she could have prevented all this somehow. “I should have talked to them,” she says feebly.

“This isn’t about blame. But yes, I think you might want to talk to your grandmother. At least I told her it was high time she talked to you.”

M
illie and Bess each kiss Irving on the cheek, thank Dr. Higgins for his time, and leave the hospital in silence. The darkness outside is crisp and quiet. The opening and closing of the van doors stop the clicking of the crickets. They put on their seat belts, Bess glances at the map, and with hardly a word they set off for the motel.

Bess looks over at Millie for a read on her state of mind, but Millie is staring straight ahead at the road with an impenetrable gaze. The collar of her shirt is tucked haphazardly under her pale blue cardigan, a detail she has never before let pass unnoticed or unfixed.

“Gram, I think we should talk.”

Millie nods and looks down at her lap.

Bess’s heart is racing. “I just think—”

“Yes,” says Millie.

“What?”

“Yes, I think we should talk, dear.”

Bess waits for her to say more, but Millie doesn’t. Bess has learned through her studies how to encourage and record oral histories. Hours of interviews she has conducted or listened to—with immigrants and artists, border crossers and boxcar proselytizers. It’s easier with the garrulous ones far removed from her own experience. Not so with the ones whose pauses quake with the possibility of life-altering truths.

On the dark highway there are few cars. Bess concentrates on holding her hand steady on the steering wheel and moving forward. “Gram,” she says, slowly, deliberately, “what happened to Peace?”

“Who’s Peace?”

“Gramp’s mannequin.”

“I left her in Iowa.” Millie says this without looking at Bess.

“Why?”

Millie looks out the window. “That’s a big why.”

Chapter Thirty-four

T
here are things you don’t know. Maybe it was a mistake you don’t know. Maybe I should’ve told you these things. My family, we never shared. We didn’t talk about the past. If you didn’t talk about it, it would go away. That’s it. That’s how I was raised. So maybe that was wrong. Who’s to say? We all make mistakes.

I couldn’t conceive. It was my fault your grandfather and I couldn’t have our own children, my broken uterus nobody could fix. May you never know such pain in the heart. Now you can’t have babies, so what. They know what to do. Or you adopt, from everywhere you adopt. But you can’t imagine how it was for me, for a new bride in 1940, big Jewish family always pinching your cheek, asking with a smirk and a wink what’s taking so long, shtup, shtup, shtup and c’mon already with the grandchildren.

I stopped seeing our friends. They all had pink babies and perfect kitchens, that’s the truth. Dinner parties were shameful,
shameful
. All that cooing and staring, you’d have thought they saw God in the damn diapers. Kid makes a stink and it’s a miracle like you wouldn’t believe. Kid burps and it’s the funniest thing since Keaton and Arbuckle. We laughed until we cried. Or maybe only I was crying, I don’t know. I stopped going. After a while, I didn’t even leave the apartment.

It was hard on your grandfather, I know that. He liked to get dressed up, go out on the town. Boy, could he look sharp in his suit. He’d tip his fedora, call me babycakes.

He could make me laugh. He could always make me laugh.

Do you remember you asked me about a man in a photograph, when we were packing? Well that was Gerald’s father. Good that you never met him. He was your grandfather’s best friend, what could I do. They went to grade school together. Samuel, that was his name. What a schmuck. You know Vivian, Gerald’s mother? She was religious back then, even. Kept kosher, never lifted a finger on Saturdays, waited on that putz hand and foot and he paid her back how? By cheating, that’s how. With the goyim and the
shvartzes
.

So what happened? I’ll tell you what happened. You hammer all those nails you split the wood. Colored girl comes to him, says she’s pregnant. Poor girl, petite, pretty, skin like caramel, big eyes I never saw blink. She was a waitress at a diner on Rhode Island Avenue. Couldn’t have been more than eighteen. She had mixed blood; her father was white. He was a schmuck, too, I heard. A cheater and a drunk. It’s what she knew, I guess. Samuel offered her money to get rid of it, to go away, that’s what he did, a real class act, but she wanted him to take the baby, give it a good home. She said she couldn’t take care of it working like she was. Well you know your grandfather, can’t leave well enough alone.
We’ll take it
, he told them like he was ordering a sofa.

It was an equation to him, do you understand? An equation.

I didn’t want any part of it. I said Samuel can go pish on his own feet. I said we had no business with a stranger, a colored girl and her colored baby, what would people say? My parents would have a heart attack right there on the spot.

But then the girl’s water broke on my sidewalk. Right there in front of me when I was trying to shoo her away before the neighbors saw us talking. I got scared. Your grandfather laid her down in our bed and called for a midwife. Samuel didn’t want her at the hospital, the cheap son of a bitch.
Oy
, all that pain hour after hour! The girl screamed so loud you wouldn’t believe! I thought she was dying. I almost called the hospital myself. When it was over, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was your mother, a living, breathing, crying miracle of miracles and no darker than a pink cherry blossom.

The girl held her for a few moments, kissed the top of her tiny head, and said take her. Just like that.

All this time I thought your mother was a gift from God. But now I don’t know. I think maybe it was a gift from that girl. The greatest gift. The greatest sacrifice.

Rose, that was the girl’s name. I always thought that was a beautiful name.

But like I said, I was young then, not much older than Rose. I knew what your grandfather wanted me to do and I said to him where she couldn’t hear, I said,
Irving, if we take this baby, the girl’s out of the picture.
It’s our baby
, I said,
ours
.
She’s got to go away like Samuel said
. I was quite adamant. I didn’t like that girl, lying there in my bed. Not one bit. Don’t ask me why, probably I was jealous. I wanted her out of my life forever. Besides, adoptions were hard enough in those days with all the hoops they made you go through,
oy gut
. And a colored baby? Never mind. Your mother didn’t look colored, so no one had to know. Samuel of course was in favor of the whole thing and paid the girl to keep quiet. He and Irv did something, I don’t know what. Fudged the paperwork, whatever it took, I didn’t care. I had a baby. A stinking, burping miracle of my own and I can tell you all I did for years was stare at her beautiful, beautiful face. Sometimes I hugged her so hard I made her cry and we’d both cry and I would comfort her and say,
Mama’s here
.

Rose? Rose went away and I never saw her again.

We moved into a new apartment to make a fresh start. I made your grandfather promise he wouldn’t ever tell your mother she wasn’t ours, you know, in
that
way. He didn’t like it, not at all, but he promised. He did it for me. And oh God, did he love her. I don’t think anyone loved a little girl as much as your grandfather did, same as he did with you. We were happy. Maybe the happiest we ever were. Every play we went to, every piano recital, every teacher conference and pediatrician appointment we went to together,
together
, and when your mother had nightmares, we let her sleep in our bed and I would fall in love with this, my family, again and again.

Samuel, in the meantime, was still a schmuck. He finally got his own wife pregnant, God bless. Vivian had several miscarriages, and then gave birth to Gerald in 1965. But there were complications. I don’t even want to talk about it. He turned out to be a good boy, that’s all that matters.

Samuel, he saw those medical bills, and that was it. He shook his fat pig head and walked backwards out the hospital doors and disappeared. What kind of a
shit
leaves his wife and newborn son in the hospital? Thank God she remarried Lou, the Orthodox Jew. He was a good stepfather to Gerald. He’s deceased now.

Anyway one day, just after Gerald was born, your mother, oh she was, I want to say, sixteen? She comes to me and asks if she’s adopted. Just like that! Like she’s asking the time. I’ll never forget it. Your grandfather was in Boston on business. We were on the stoop, banging the dust off our blankets, and I stopped cold. I was terrified if you want to know the truth. I wanted to know what made her ask. She says she overheard Vivian talking about her. Vivian always had a big mouth. What did Vivian say? I ask. She says, quote unquote,
That my birth father is a prick and my birth mother is a fool
. Well, I’ll tell you . . . I didn’t say a word. Not one word. What should I have said? I didn’t even know if she knew what those words meant. And then a miracle. Your mother said she could understand why we didn’t tell her. She thanked me for being her real mother and walked up to her room. That was it. Let her think we’re the good ones, I said to myself. Weren’t we?

I’ll tell you something, your mother was always wise beyond her years, calm and determined. Not even the cancer slowed her down until the end, remember? It is what it is. That’s what she used to say all the time, like your grandfather.
It is what it is
. And that was fine with me. You wouldn’t believe how I feared a moment like that, her finding out, how it gave me nightmares! I thought if it ever happened she’d hate me for the rest of my life. Such good luck I felt. I didn’t even tell your grandfather. Toast gets a little burned, you scrape off the black and no one has to know, it’s good as new, so what.

It was your grandfather couldn’t let well enough alone. He had had some sort of fight with Samuel before Samuel left. I don’t know what it was about, he wouldn’t tell me, but it upset him for weeks. He would pace the hallway, three, four in the morning. He wouldn’t eat, not even my brisket and you know how much he loves my brisket.

Next thing you know he’s going to look for Rose. I begged him not to, but you can’t talk to him when he gets that way he gets.
Eingeshparht
, you know that word? Stubborn. That’s your grandfather. He wouldn’t tell your mother, he promised me that, but he had to do it for his own sake. That’s what he said. I was terrified all over again, and so angry. He’d be out every night, God knows where. Twice I called the police I was so worried.

He found her all right, and I hated her all over again. I hated her for being a drunk. I hated her for taking advantage of my husband’s pity. I hated her for stealing my husband every Sunday, every
goddamn
Sunday he’d visit her in her crummy apartment under a bridge and bring her challah and milk when he should have been home with me and your mother, reading the funnies or, or, or fixing the faucet. I hated her for ruining my marriage, my family.