The Half Wives

by Stacia Pelletier

  But did you actually say that part? Maybe it came as a thought; maybe the words never issued from your mouth. Back then you had the opposite problem to what you’re experiencing now. Back then was a long time ago.

  Henry still writes monthly letters to your sister on your behalf. You have refused to correspond with Penny until she agrees to come to San Francisco for a visit. It’s a ridiculous standoff. But pride is a demanding mistress.

  You sometimes read his letters to her before he drops them off at the grocer’s for posting. In one, he assured Penny she didn’t need to keep worrying about you.

  Your sister manages better and better these days, he wrote. She stays active; she has become a pillar of the community.

  A pillar! Who wants to be a pillar? They never move.

  You left that particular letter on his desk and went and found Henry in the kitchen. He was feeding Richard scraps of smoked pork.

  —Stop trying to make it better, you said.—Your trying to make it better only makes it worse.

  He straightened, confusion crossing his face, and Richard barked his dissent.

  —What do you want me to do? Would you rather I do nothing?

  —Yes, you said.

  This wasn’t true. It was the exact opposite of true. In your defense, it wasn’t one of those days when Henry made himself available for conversation.

  You can have excellent conversations with your husband, fine discussions indeed; after twenty-two years of married life, you feel confident declaring there is no better listener in the world than Henry Plageman, but everything depends on his mood. One has to strike at the exact right time. The problem is you can never predict when that moment will arrive. Admittedly, your own communicativeness fluctuates too.

  You wrote only one letter to Penny after she sent that picture of herself and her husband in the forest.

  Sister, you’re too late, you told her. The frontier’s been settled.

  She didn’t write back.

  You shouldn’t have phrased it that way. Shouldn’t have been such a know-it-all. But you wanted to save her from disappointment, from the realization that life promises more than it can deliver. Maybe she already knew.

  Henry

  WRITING YOUR FINAL SERMON took eight months. You produced other homilies in the meantime—you were never completely paralyzed—but that last sermon, the one you started working on for All Souls’ Day, presented a Gordian knot of difficulties that prevented its completion until well over half a year had passed, long after All Souls’ and on into the drizzly, damp summer of 1887. You finally tore the sermon up and rewrote it as three lines. Delivering those three lines took everything, depleted every ounce of reserve.

  The members of the Women’s Memorial Church, named in honor of the Women’s Home and Foreign Missionary Society in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, met in a rented downtown storefront crammed between a dry goods store and a dressmaker’s. It wasn’t fair of you to spring something new on them. Lutherans, even Lutherans in San Francisco, are a wary people. But once the words were ready, they would wait for no man; the sermon had to be delivered. Your voice shook a bit, and you could not pull your gaze away from the fair-haired stranger seated in the front row. Your eyes found hers as she shifted position, orienting herself in your direction.

  You cleared your throat and addressed your congregation.

  —Here is what I still hold true:

  —One: God is fundamentally unknown and unknowable.

  —Two: Nonetheless, we seek God’s face.

  —Three: Grace lies between those two poles.

  You closed your Bible and bowed your head; silence washed over the sanctuary.

  —Thank you, you said and stepped away from the pulpit. Briefly you thanked your congregation members for their years of kindness, wished them every blessing. A temporary replacement from the bishopric would be in the pulpit the following Sunday.

  They would be in good hands. In excellent hands. In better hands than yours, you assured them.

  No one made a sound.

  Maybe they feared that if they said anything, if they responded with even a single word of sympathy, you might not be able to leave; you might keep drowning right in front of them for four more years.

  Down the aisle you trod, making for the exit. You passed the stranger—Lucy—as you left. Her head turned to follow you.

  Foreman Kerr feigns a stomach cramp. He doubles over and moans. From his piles of paperwork, the desk sergeant takes notice.

  —He’s poorly, you offer.—Might be catching. Probably you need to release us both.

  Sears scowls as he lumbers to his feet.

  When he enters the cell, he ignores you and checks Kerr’s pulse, then feels the older man’s forehead with the back of one hand. This sergeant doesn’t want any fatalities on his watch. He’s boozy and sour enough as it is.

  Kerr groans.—Somethin’ I et, somethin’ I et. Fetch me what tonic you possess, Officer, for the love of God.

  Sears blinks; he’s dubious. Grudgingly, he agrees to help.

  —Come on, then, he says.—Hop to. There’s a dispensary in back.

  Kerr smiles conspiratorially at you and reaches for his cane. What’s his plan? You’ll go along with anything if it gets you out of here.

  It’s a quarter past ten. That garden won’t plant itself.

  You don’t see how you could have preached anything else that day. Three lines; that’s as much as people want to hear in a sermon anyway. If they’re honest.

  Besides, you’d been losing their confidence, watching your parishioners drop off one by one like streetlamps blinking out along California Street on a windy night. Simplify, simplify, simplify, you had urged, week after week, your homilies shortening, your silences lengthening.

  —Theology is a matter of economy, you had said.—The faster life passes, the fewer words a man needs.

  —Even in a sermon? one of the elders asked.

  —Especially in a sermon. What’s left to say?

  They stared at you, expressions sagging.

  —Think about it, you went on, a bit desperately.—What can I possibly say that would do you any good?

  Hold on. Get ready. There’s really very little we can control.

  You grasped the hands of two parishioners, both octogenarians with wild white hair.

  Hold on to each other, if you can.

  And if you can’t, be gentle.

  Staying away from Lucy is like giving up whiskey for Lent. You take pride in your accomplishment, thrust out your chest and congratulate yourself on your willpower, on how clean you have wiped the slate. Then you fish out your watch on its chain and realize it’s eight in the morning, Ash Wednesday, and all your nobility and principle, all your self-congratulations, fly out the window, squawking.

  She’s vowed to stay away. She’s really gone and done it this time; she’s broken the chain. She’s vowed to leave you alone. Which really means she’s asked you to leave her alone. You’ve learned her lexicon. Learned to translate the language of Lucy.

  To wit:

  Lucy says: I need to let you go.

  She means: I need you to let me go.

  Lucy says: I haven’t been my best self of late.

  She means: You haven’t been your best self of late.

  Lucy says: I agree with you completely.

  She means: I couldn’t disagree with you more.

  How long since you’ve held her, pulled her into your arms? Blue’s birthday. Over three months.

  You don’t want to be left behind. Too late. You don’t want to grow old. Too late. One or the other, you could handle. But both?

  Does such a protest matter to any powers that be; does it count in some divine book of fairness? No.

  Kerr directs himself to Sears.

  —Let Plageman come too, he says, plucking at the sergeant’s dark sleeve.

  Sears scans you unsteadily, absorbs the fact of your height.

  —Name?

  —Plageman. Henry.
>
  He consents.—All right. Come along, Plageman Henry. Let’s fetch the old man some medicine. But don’t cause me problems. I have problems enough on my own. I don’t need new ones.

  You hold up your hands: you’re problem-free. You’re old and pitiable too. See? You slump and shrink low so your height doesn’t jar him. Your height tends to agitate ordinary men.

  The calla lilies had better be in decent shape this year. Marilyn prefers what’s grown in a hothouse. She does not trust the outdoors to sustain life on its own. She adores tulips, tuberoses, heliotrope.

  She prefers the hothouse version of you too, the supervised version. She wants indoor Henry, the man you were before moving to the Outside Lands. A husband of means, standing, gravitas, a man on his way up, not down, not descending into the catacombs. A man who says the right thing always. Outdoor Henry? Not a chance.

  Outdoor Henry is a wreck, a hulking wretch, a Goliath who stoops, roams dunes, flings out the wrong words when the right ones don’t suit him. Outdoor Henry fled his pulpit, unable to tolerate the supplicatory countenances of his parishioners, men and women asking him to help them make sense of their lives, to assure them that their brief, brooding lives somehow mattered. “The life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”; thank you, Thomas Hobbes. The old philosopher knew nothing about love, though. Or maybe he did.

  You’ve never taken Marilyn to Sutro Heights, even though she’s asked, even though she would adore the horticultural extravagances, the groundskeepers who have wrested control away from nature; she’d admire the engineers who had tricked the ocean into pouring itself into a catch basin. Tourists daily peer into that basin, scanning for trapped marine life. She has asked to visit Sutro’s, but you can’t take her. If she wants to see it, she’ll have to make that journey alone.

  Marilyn has all of the Richmond district, all of San Francisco, if you’re honest. She has your house, your shop, your income, your basset hound, your food, your coffee, your coat when she’s cold. She has your history, your youth. She has the top drawer of your bureau for her earrings and brooches.

  Sutro’s belongs to Lucy.

  Next year will be your eleventh in this predicament. How can you be marking anniversaries with two different women? You are and you can. It appears not to be a scientific impossibility. Other men should be warned.

  Marilyn

  JUST TWO NIGHTS AGO, you almost asked him if something was wrong. You almost said: Where are you? Where did you go?

  But if you force Henry to talk, to tell you how he’s doing, he’ll answer by way of the cemetery. He’ll tell you how the city cemetery is doing. You cannot abide hearing how the city cemetery is doing. Therefore, you cannot abide hearing how your husband is doing.

  Chambers stopped by two nights ago. He wandered across the street at dusk. He and Henry settled themselves into chairs on the front porch, where they gossiped and confabulated like two spinster sisters.

  —How are you, neighbor? Chambers asked.

  —Holding up, Henry said.

  Holding up is your husband’s most common reply. Bearing up is the alternative.

  As Chambers settled in to smoke his cigar, Henry looked around for Richard. He called the old dog outside while he and Chambers swapped tall tales. From the parlor, seated at the writing desk by candlelight, you heard them laughing. You stole a glimpse out the bay window. Henry scratched Richard’s velvet ears. He lit a cigar and let the darkness steal over.

  Mrs. Wood beckons you into the kitchen through two swinging louvered doors.

  —Now, Mrs. Plageman. We certainly do appreciate your help.

  She plants her hands on a table filled with platters of finger sandwiches that leave behind the humid odor of eggs past their prime. The first orphans and early arrivals have started to file inside, the guests powdered and primped, the girls anxious to please the adults, to say the right thing always.

  —But I must tell you, Mrs. Wood continues, we haven’t placed you on any committees yet for the summer. We’ll have to wait on that.

  —Wait for what? you ask.

  —I have to request the rector’s input. Since you’re not a member of the Episcopal Church.

  —Or any church, you can’t help but add.

  Are you really forty-one years old?

  —Well, Mrs. Wood says with an embarrassed laugh.—Well, I don’t quite know what to say to that.

  —Your rector needs me. This orphanage needs me.

  —Of course we appreciate—

  —I’m the only one who can balance your accounts. I’ve been tracking all the income and expenses. I compiled your annual report.

  —And, as I said, we are all so grateful for your service. Now, if you’ll excuse me a moment, our little inmates need supervising.

  The new building being celebrated today cost more than fifty thousand dollars. You should know; you kept the books. It’s brick, three stories, with stone ornamentation. When the chapel’s ready, it will boast a stained-glass window, a portrait of a sitting Jesus with children clambering into His lap. Under the window, a plaque with the words SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME will hang.

  You were not involved in the selection of that window.

  Two of the orphans, squirming with excitement, race each other to the kitchen. The littler one skids on the newly waxed floor. Mrs. Wood pushes through the louvered doors and snatches the offender by the wrist.

  —Mind your manners, she barks.

  She looks back at you and smiles, a bit self-conscious.

  —I tell my nieces the same thing I tell these little inmates: children should be seen and not heard.

  —I disagree, someone calls out.

  Your hand goes to your mouth. Dear God, that was you talking. What you think keeps turning into words.

  —Pardon?

  —My mistake, you say.

  Another new arrival, an older girl, gangly, with a brace on one leg, walks up to the little one and leads her away without a word.

  Time is not a cure. Time is a reminder. Anniversaries slit the envelope wide.

  Henry

  SERGEANT SEARS LEADS THE WAY down a long, dull corridor with neither vent nor window. He ushers you and Kerr into a storage room crammed with unused chairs. In the corner sit an ancient medicine cabinet and a desk whose drawers no longer close.

  Sears heads for the cabinet. From its depths he retrieves every conceivable medicinal option: dyspepsia powders, arsenic complexion wafers, liver pills, peptonic stomach bitters.

  —No, no, no. Kerr moans, shaking his head each time something’s offered.—Need something stronger.

  —Stronger than arsenic? you say.

  Kerr frowns at you.

  While Sears searches for the right tonic, Kerr asks him questions, befriending him. How long has he served at this police station? Too long. Does he have young ones at home? Yes, and they’re wringing the life out of him. What’s the weather like outside this morning?

  —Foggy, Sears says, and he produces a bottle of Orange Wine Stomach Bitters, which promises to cure gastric ailments, indigestion, want of appetite, malarial diseases, low spirits, nervousness, and “that tired feeling.” You’re tempted to take some yourself.

  —Good, Kerr says and snatches the bottle.—Very good. Now grant me a minute, friends.

  Without ceremony, he lowers himself to a chair, settles into a comfortable slouch, and takes a swig.

  —It’ll pass. Just takes time. I’m old. Bear with me, Sarge.

  Now it’s you and Sears standing around wondering what in God’s name to do while Kerr’s having himself a tipple and an impromptu snooze.

  You reach for your watch, check the time. Nearly half past ten. Sears finds a chair for himself and pulls it up to the desk. Gloomily, he eyes the scored surface.

  —Hard morning? you say.

  One kind question is all he needs. It’s all most people need. One kind question, and the sluice gates open, and in swims the sea.

  Sears counts off
a list of troubles. A son with nervous tremors. Debt collectors. A daughter with an abscessed tooth. A wife who won’t touch him, not even after he strung up a retractable indoor clothesline for her to use. He had thought she might feel gratitude.

  You remain standing before his desk, still garbed in your velveteen robe. You listen, nod, and make sympathetic noises, because what else is there to do when your captor confesses his sorrows? Sears’s eyes are watery.

  Kerr interrupts.

  —Plageman? he says, still slumped in his corner, bottle in hand.—Tell our fine guardian why they locked us up here.

  That’s easy enough.—They locked us up because of the cemeteries.

  —The cemeteries? Sears says, eyeing the stomach bitters.

  —Plageman, tell him.

  So you introduce the sergeant to the problem of San Francisco’s burial grounds.

  —In the 1860s, some politicians decided to move Yerba Buena Cemetery out of the way.

  Sears observes you distrustfully.—Out of the way of what?

  —City Hall.

  —It was in City Hall’s way?

  —It was about to be, Kerr chimes in, straightening in his chair and helping himself to a second swig.—Just as soon as they built it.

  You nod.—They dug up the cemetery and moved the bodies to the edge of the city. They thought they’d moved them out far enough.

  Sears cocks his head. He listens to your recounting, forgetting himself. People are at their best when they’re forgetting themselves for a moment, a month, a year. Ten years, in some cases. That’s what Lucy would say.

  —The city was on a self-improvement mission, Kerr says.—They dug up the old pioneers. Buried ’em in what’s now the city cemetery.

  —Did they get all the bodies moved?

  —No, you say.

  Kerr pats his stomach.—Tonic’s doing its job. Thank you most kindly, Sarge.

  —Kerr? you say.—Those bitters contain more alcohol than what a man can purchase in a tavern.

  Sears eyes the bottle with new interest.—Is that so.