The Half Wives

by Stacia Pelletier

  —Look, Mrs. Plageman. Isn’t that your husband?

  RICHMOND PROTESTS LOUDLY read the headline. Beneath, five sentences summed up last night’s situation:

  Big Meeting of Property-Owners to Voice Their Will. Potter’s Field Must Be Removed. No Obstacles to the Progress of the District Will Be Tolerated. Sanitary and Other Reasons Urged. Gravediggers from the Cemeteries Attempt to Break Up the Meeting, but in Vain.

  The full article followed, two columns laid out above an advertisement for a dermatologic ointment promising “sleep for skin-tortured babies.”

  Mrs. Wood jabs again.

  —See? That paragraph, there. Read it. That’s your husband, isn’t it?

  About fifty unfriendly persons packed a meeting of the Richmond District Improvement Association last night in Simon’s Hall and caused a disturbance that for a while threatened to break up the meeting. Order was restored by the vigorous action of Policeman Schafer, who arrested Mr. Thomas Kerr and Mr. Henry Plageman for disturbing a public meeting.

  Her bow-shaped mouth parts slightly. Her straw boater bears a mauve ribbon.

  You hand the newspaper back to her.

  —It’s a mistake.

  —Are you sure?

  —Of course I’m sure. My husband went to that meeting last night, but he wasn’t arrested. Don’t be silly.

  You’re not about to let Mrs. Catherine Wood, incoming vice president of the board of managers for the Maria Kip Orphanage, know the truth. You’re not about to tell her you didn’t bother to check if Henry returned home last night. Didn’t wait up for him, didn’t fix him a nightcap as a good wife should. Didn’t cook him breakfast after awakening this morning in your bedroom. You sailed out the door alone.

  —Are you quite sure he’s all right? It sounds serious.

  —Of course I’m sure.

  —If you say so.

  —I do say so. Do you think I’d be here if my husband had been arrested? If that article contained any truth, Mrs. Wood, I’d be down at the police station this minute.

  —I guess you would be, she acknowledges.

  Now you’ve done it. Now you can’t duck out to retrieve him from the park station. You’ll have to fake that everything’s fine; you’ll have to stay here with your hardheadedness and let Henry handle things himself.

  That’s all right. Henry’s fine. He takes care of things on his own. Besides, he landed himself in this mess. He can haul himself out. You’re not being harsh. This is how one has to deal with him, or one will be dragged into the quagmire that is Henry Plageman. Bad things happen to your husband. He’s brilliant and outspoken and unlucky. People misread him; he misreads people. He resists help. He hates being corrected. He scowls when he should grin and grins when he should scowl. He’s so tall, he has to stoop, bend from the waist. This turns him into a leaning tower.

  He’s obsessed with the cemeteries.

  When he returns in the evenings from his store, he sits on the front porch in his dilapidated wicker rocker and smokes a thin cigar; he reads and thinks and broods. If you stand in the bay window, you can observe him without interruption. To get his attention, all you have to do is rap. He twists around, rocking, still smoking, considering one ponderous thought after another, surrounded by potted and hanging ferns, plants you ordered from the nursery, anything to relieve the desolation of a street populated by weeds and sage. He calls to you through the glass pane:

  —What do you need, Marilyn?

  You don’t always have an answer. Just because you ask for him, does that mean you have to have a reason? Can’t a wife issue the summons for no other purpose than the desire to summon?

  —At least the cemeteries make me interesting in my old age, in my dotage, he said recently.

  —That’s not the word I’d choose, you replied from the open door; you had stepped outside to see if rain was coming. It wasn’t.

  —What word? Dotage?

  —No. Interesting.

  Ten years ago he quit his parish. He left his pulpit for no good reason that you could see and opened a hardware store in the middle of nowhere, trading the catechism for the Sears catalog. And so you had to move to the middle of nowhere too, meaning from the Western Addition to the Richmond district, where Henry bought a wood-frame house with ten groaning steps leading up to a slanted front porch. Behind the house, a windmill and a tank supply fresh water. Yours is one of only two homes on the block, a few streets from the city cemetery. You have two neighbors, an elderly couple, former parishioners. When Henry left his pulpit, the Chamberses followed.

  —Best thing about church was the sermons, Mr. Chambers said.—With Reverend Plageman gone, we saw no need to continue.

  Selling dry goods is more rewarding than pastoring, Henry sometimes says. It’s more practical. The results of mercantilism can be measured, tallied. At Plageman’s Hardware and General Merchandise, Luther’s bondaged will doesn’t matter.

  Your husband employs one clerk, Stevens, whom you adore. Stevens lives in the flat above the store. A couple of times a year, when Henry heads on his business trips to Portland, Stevens takes over. Both men keep permitting their customers to purchase items on credit. Then they forget to send the bills.

  When Stevens does it, you find the forgetfulness endearing. When Henry does it, you find the same oversight exasperating.

  You offered yourself as a solution.

  —I could bill them, you told Henry. I could collect the payments on your behalf.

  He searched your face.—Whatever for?

  —Someone has to do it.

  —You never forget a debt, Marilyn, do you?

  —No, you said.—Not until it’s paid.

  He should have stayed a minister.

  Today is a big day for the orphans. The grand-opening celebration of this brand-new three-story facility on Seventh and Lake starts in two hours. The waxed floors shine. The windows squeak to the touch. Donated chromos decorate the walls. In one corner hangs a lithograph of pointer dogs at the start of a hunt, and in another, a portrait of children with cherubic faces. No real child ever had a face that round.

  The local women’s guilds have sponsored the dormitory rooms and named them after saints. A girl can sleep in St. Agatha’s room, St. Cecilia’s, or St. Ursula’s. There’s no such thing as a Saint Marilyn. You’ve checked.

  Yes, today is fully scheduled, packed to the gills from now until midafternoon. You’ll deal with Henry at two o’clock and not a moment sooner. Ticket sales are expected to be strong for this afternoon’s benefit concert. Where is the twine for that bunting? There’s nothing wrong. You’re fine. You’ve figured out a way to get through, to endure another May 22. Perfectly fine, thank you.

  —I’m glad to hear it, dear . . .

  As Mrs. Wood speaks, she delivers a curious glance. You must have said that last bit out loud.

  A woman who lives in the Outside Lands can be identified by her ruddy cheeks, burned not from sun but wind. This effect now appears in your own mirror. You’ve developed crow’s-feet squinting against the wind, and your cheeks—you will never need a pot of rouge. That, too, is Henry’s doing.

  Mrs. Wood has gathered her volunteers around the staircase to deliver her final instructions.

  —Thirty of the best orphans are on their way. One hundred little inmates will reside here come June, but for today we’re bringing thirty. A representative sampling.

  She pauses to sip her tea, swallows, and replaces the cup in its saucer.

  —And we’re expecting a hundred and forty guests as well, not including the band. Does everyone have her assignation?

  Assignment. She should use the right word. Someone needs to correct this woman’s way of speaking. Henry would. He corrects people’s grammar like he’s brushing lint off a sweater. He thinks he’s doing the person a favor. But you’ve learned to step away and let your husband sort out his missteps in private, let him repair his own mistakes. One has to let Henry Plageman sew his own arm back on or he’ll grow agita
ted and say you’re interrupting him.

  The volunteers circle around Mrs. Wood, anxious and a bit the worse for wear, women of a certain age, sallying forth to do good works. To contribute.

  —Are our stations ready for the guests?

  That’s Mrs. Wood again, running down her checklist.

  —Mrs. Plageman, which station are you covering?

  —The buffet.

  It’s supposed to be a secret, Henry fixing up Jack’s garden each year. It’s supposed to help. And you cannot bring yourself to dash his hopes.

  It’s good that he tries. He tries in all the wrong ways. But that he tries—that’s something.

  And when you arrive at the graveyard this afternoon, he’ll regard you with eyes you cannot bear. He’ll pin you with a pleading expression, a softness, a pliancy lingering around his mouth. He’ll scrutinize you, waiting for you to compliment the garden, yearning for some quality in you, some essential spark of the Marilyn he once knew. He seeks some litheness, a forgotten curvature of your soul.

  You do not have what he seeks. Or if you do have it, there’s not enough to go around. You do not possess enough to cover yourself and him too.

  You’ve tried to tell him, but he fails to listen. Either that, or he listens but you haven’t told him. It’s growing harder to distinguish between the two.

  Mrs. Wood calls the volunteers to join her in a prayer. The piano tuner has arrived; the band of the Third Artillery from Angel Island is expected momentarily. She addresses the group, ten earnest women behind the scenes, a circle of bustles and sashes and plumed hats, heads ducking in unison.

  —Dear Father—

  As she prays, you squeeze your eyes shut.

  —We thank You for this opportunity, for this blessing, for this day.

  Now open your eyes. Now shut them again, until the redness imprints itself behind your lids, until all you see is darkness interrupted by redness, silence by light.

  Jack Plageman would have turned sixteen today.

  —Thank You for Your mercifulness and Your power.

  Mercy. Mrs. Wood should have said mercy instead of mercifulness.

  You squeeze harder and harder until you feel like your eyelids might never open again. You no longer believe in a powerful God. You no longer believe in your husband. You hold on to both. They are necessary. They are handholds in the rock.

  Henry

  THE CITY CEMETERY OFFERS few distinguishing markers. Paupers’ coffins, constructed of rough-hewn boards, have sunk and shifted over time. Broken slats doubling as headstones burrow sideways, wandering out of place. It’s easy to step where firm soil used to be, to twist an ankle. Abandoned corners and rotting fences greet the visitor. The dead are spread wide. They march all the way to the Golden Gate.

  Jack Plageman is buried with the master mariners at one of the highest elevations in the city cemetery. The mariners overlook the strait and the bay. Ships pass through the Golden Gate as the headstones keep watch.

  Your neighbor Chambers belongs to the mariners’ group. Chambers acquired the plot on your behalf; he obtained permission for your son to be buried there. You’re not a mariner. You’ve never sailed a day in your life. But you wanted Jack to be able to see the coast.

  When you asked Chambers to speak to the mariners, to request the favor, he didn’t hesitate.

  —How much space does he need? the mariners wanted to know.

  —No space at all, really, Chambers said.

  —What size coffin?

  —Small.

  —Small?

  —Small. Chambers nodded.—For a two-year-old.

  Them’s mariners, you overheard a gravedigger telling his dog when you visited once at sundown. The old man stood leaning on his shovel as the dog nosed a coffin rope. They’re put there so’s they can see the ships come in.

  Burials in the city cemetery require patience. Sand seals off any open holes wherever the wind blows. Dig a hole an hour before an interment, and, if the wind kicks up, the hole will vanish by the time the coffin is lowered, driven sand filling the earth’s cavity.

  That’s what happened in Jack’s case. The ground didn’t want to take him. You had to borrow a shovel and enlist Chambers’s help to reopen the hole your parishioners had dug out of the goodness of their hearts the day before.

  Fingers blistered, lips chapped, the two of you rolled your sleeves past your elbows and attacked the earth, sand flying, swallowing sand. Marilyn sat, countenance ashen, in the funeral carriage. Her eyes stayed on the waters of the strait.

  When it came time to lower the coffin into the ground, you went to her, opened the carriage door, and held out your hand to help her down. The sun burned high overhead, rankled and acrid.

  —Sweetheart, it’s time, you said.

  She sank to the floor of the carriage. A smothered cry expelled itself. She would not allow you to help her.

  A few days after the funeral, you paid your first solo visit to the cemetery, and the rain poured so hard it nearly blinded you. Finding Jack’s grave proved difficult. You blundered up and out of a shallow ditch, and a half-buried plank, driftwood, snagged your trousers, causing you to fall, palms scraping gravel, the particles sharp with minerals, dried salt crystals.

  Regaining your footing, you faced north. Beach sagewort spotted the path, pale twigs stretching toward a fallen sky. You could not ask anyone for directions. It was raining; this was the city cemetery; no one visited the city cemetery in the rain.

  Besides, a father should not have to ask for directions. A father is supposed to be good at directions. He should be able to find his child. He should know where his child is at all times.

  But you lost Jack that day. You forgot where you’d buried him. You had laid him to rest among paupers and seamen instead of in one of the better cemeteries because you used to believe the Gospel when it said blessed are the poor. You used to believe Luther when he wrote every town should support its own poor.

  Once you finally found the grave, you couldn’t leave, or you might not find it again. The fog pulled back, replaced by a howling night wind. The temperatures plummeted. The skies swept themselves bare. The strait vanished into blackness. You spread your overcoat on the sand, on top of where Jack lay; you rested your coat on the top of your son’s grave, and then you couldn’t remove the coat, because to move it would mean leaving him exposed. So you sat there and couldn’t head home, because if you rose to leave now, you would have to don your coat, and if you donned your coat, then Jack wouldn’t have it, and nothing would lie between your child and the night but wind and darkness; he would be marooned out here in the wasteland with nothing but sand to cover him. You couldn’t stay, couldn’t leave. You sat, blinkered. Your knees locked up.

  At last you remembered the living and staggered up, reaching for your coat. You retraced your steps to the entrance on Thirty-Fourth and Clement. Losing your bearings, you missed the last streetcar of the night. You walked home. At the time, you and Marilyn still lived in the Western Addition; the walk took two hours. You returned to a wife beside herself, saying she could not afford to lose anyone else, saying this was what she deserved, she knew it, all her life she had been waiting for God to punish her, and now look. You were too spent to pull her into your arms; you went ahead and pulled her into your arms. Sand had caked your neck, filtered into your coat, invaded the pockets and stitching. It funneled downward, sifted to the floor. Sand from Jack’s resting place dusted the redwood boards.

  In the morning, on your way to the kitchen in your stockings, you slipped. Tiny grains ground underfoot for days. No amount of sweeping would remove them.

  The desk sergeant has disappeared down the corridor. He returns with the cane stumper himself, Odd Fellows’ foreman Thomas Kerr. The sergeant shuts the older man in the holding cell with you and stomps away, the stink of drink lingering.

  —He’s in worse shape than I am, Kerr says once the sergeant’s out of earshot.—And that’s saying something.

  One lo
ok at the old foreman and you can tell he slept poorly. He’s hoary and cragged and weathered. He grips the ivory handle of his cane and bends over it, low and searching, like the old woman in Luke’s parable who loses a coin and has to comb the floorboards for it.

  —Some night, you say.—Some meeting.

  Kerr nods.—Least it’s over.

  —I’m not sure it is.

  —It is. They’ll forget us by tomorrow.

  When the foreman smiles, he reveals two rows of crooked yellowing teeth.

  —Tomorrow’s not what I’m worried about, you say.

  Today is the problem. You have to make it to the cemetery today. Before two o’clock. Well before. Preferably right now.

  Marilyn will make it through this day if the ritual stays unchanged. If it doesn’t move a muscle.

  Marilyn

  AT TWO O’CLOCK YOU WILL MEET Henry in the cemetery. What if he’s late? He’ll find a way. He’ll resolve whatever argument led to last night’s arrest. The officers will treat it as a misunderstanding, a dispute among neighbors.

  Probably he’s negotiated his release by now and is headed to the mariners, striding with those skinny legs of his, that hitching gait. He never takes the streetcar or rides Bailey when he can walk instead.

  —I think when I walk, he once explained.

  —Why can’t you think when you ride? you asked.

  —They’re not the same.

  As for you, well, you think all the time, walking or riding, standing or sitting. Your mind won’t shut off. Meanwhile, your husband spends an increasing number of hours outside, braving the elements to chase his thoughts, to catch up with his conscience.

  You have done your utmost to dodge this business with the cemeteries. You don’t want to know what Henry’s doing about them, what he’s quarrelling about now.