The Half Wives

by Stacia Pelletier

  He should have turned you around.

  Did you think he would leave his wife and marry you? No. Never. Not in a million years. And yet.

  Henry

  —TOLD YOU I’D WRANGLE US OUT.

  —That you did.

  —Help me track down those potatoes, Plageman. Famishment is my middle name.

  Escaping that police station took time. More time than you wanted it to. As you and Kerr headed toward the exit, release papers in hand, with Sears in the storage room snoring off his stomach bitters, the station head banged through the front door and demanded to know what you were doing. Showing him your papers, you explained that Sears had signed them and your release was therefore legal. You didn’t mention the Orange Wine Stomach Bitters. Beside you, Kerr suppressed a gaseous belch.

  The supervisor called for Sears, who slouched from the storage room, swiping at his eyes and stinking of rancid citrus.

  —Saphead, the supervisor said and cuffed him twice.—Half-cut sot.

  You had to summon all your powers of persuasion, all those rusty homiletic skills, to keep Sears from losing his position. You succeeded, but the process took time, chewed through half an hour you didn’t have, half an hour the garden didn’t have. Marilyn will show up at two o’clock and find your efforts wanting.

  Kerr tugs at his broad-brimmed hat as the two of you step along Stanyan toward the station stables. His belly droops between his suspenders. Shuffling forward, he makes good use of his cane.

  —Let’s stop at that diner on Point Lobos.

  —There’s no time for breakfast, you remind him.

  He looks at you as if you’ve lost your mind and not just your appetite.

  —There’s always time for breakfast, Plageman.

  —I need you to drive me to the city cemetery first. Please. I’m asking for your kindness.

  Kerr, shrugging, acquiesces.—My chariot awaits, he says.

  He doesn’t have anyone expecting him at home. His home is the Odd Fellows’ Cemetery. And by chariot, he means an old gray mare. An old gray swaybacked mare hitched to a hearse.

  Kerr drove you and your arresting officer to the police station last night. Always a gentleman, Kerr is. His hearse is a plain black coupe, modern, lightweight, with room in the back for a coffin. The letters IOOF, for International Order of Odd Fellows, are printed on the side. The vehicle can seat two, three if you count the deceased. There’s an empty coffin in the back right now. A spare, Kerr calls it.

  He’s your ride, your one chance to reach the cemetery on time. His mare will haul your plants and tools to the mariners. But he and his Bess had better be long gone by the time Marilyn arrives. You don’t want her seeing the hearse. Not on this anniversary.

  You glance up. A rare easterly wind is blowing this way, delivering the acrid stench of foundries and slaughterhouses south of Market Street. The good winds in San Francisco are westerly. At the far edges of your vision, the densely populated neighborhoods rise up, jagged and formidable in their newness, shops and flats jammed so close against each other even the fog can’t find its way in. Looming behind the flats are the silhouettes of factories, and the warehouses with their blacksmiths, and the sausage makers crowded in with the paint shops, the hay-and-grass sellers. The Richmond is nothing like those streets. Not yet, anyway.

  You’d do a year’s hard time in that park station for one full night alone with Lucy. You’d give your right eye. Or your left eye.

  You told her so. Early on, in the first year. She’d moved out of the workers’ dormitory and into a tin-roofed cottage hidden on the far side of Sutro’s estate. It was remote. More secluded than the dormitory. No one would come by.

  She moved there for your sake. You were aware of this fact and not entirely comfortable with it. She was trying to protect your good name, to safeguard your privacy for the times you visited. But she seemed genuinely pleased with the new arrangement. She liked the quiet and the austerity of her surroundings. She had detested the dorm, workers coming and going at all hours outside her door.—I couldn’t hear myself think, she told you.

  —My right eye, you confessed to her several days after she’d moved into the cottage.—I’d give my right eye to spend the whole night here with you.

  —Then I have just the thing.

  —What?

  —Glass eyes. A tray of them. Back in Mr. Claude’s workshop. Pick your color.

  She dissolved into mirth. Before you departed, she kissed you. Lucy kisses best when you’re on your way out the door. This particular demonstration was not one of her mediocre kisses, not one of her wondering-what-life-could-have-been kisses. It was one of her original kisses, the kind that inflames the loins. Lucy’s kiss could resurrect a dead man. Maybe it did.

  Maybe that’s why you’re still clinging to her tether months after she sent you packing. Jailbird; that’s you. Or half-cut sot, the phrase Sears’s supervisor used. You still write her letters. You, at forty-nine, old enough to be the father of a father, still pine in your nightly dreams like a schoolboy while Marilyn, your wife, your noble, disenchanted wife, lies in the next room waiting. For what? For you to come to her? No. Marilyn doesn’t want you to come to her. She expressly told you not to. You spent four years asking; she spent four years refusing. She pushed you out of the room. And when she could no longer push you out, she vacated the room herself. She took over the nursery, added a bureau and a bed. Jack’s room became hers.

  That’s another reason you wound up in this predicament.

  See how easy that was? See how convenient it is to lay the fault at the spouse’s shut door? For shame. You should be ashamed. Chastened might be the better word.

  Inside the stables, Kerr calls a boy to fetch his horse and gig. The youth returns with Kerr’s beloved Bess. The mare picks her way forward glumly, loath to abandon her dry room and board. Chewing the remains of a crab apple, she refuses to acknowledge you; she has eyes only for Kerr; right out of the gate, she does not wish to be associated with this business.

  —How long have we been at this, Plageman? the foreman asks as he adjusts her gear and bit. Bess nickers.

  —Two years.

  —Feels longer.

  —That it does.

  —Think we made any headway last night?

  —No, you say. No, I don’t.

  —Maybe we slowed ’em down, anyway.

  Marilyn thinks you moved her from the Western Addition to the Outside Lands to be closer to Jack’s resting place. That’s partly true. You also followed Lucy.

  Kerr climbs up and situates himself at the driver’s box. He extends his hand to you; you step up, take a seat beside him. Bess sets off, the hearse wheels rattling behind her. She wends her way beneath a pewter sky. She’ll head north along Stanyan to the carriage road that leads through the Panhandle. Then she’ll jog left along Masonic before heading west at Point Lobos Avenue. Always, you are heading west. Albeit with detours.

  Two almost-fugitives, one middle-aged, one in his seventies. Free now; out in the open. Your destination: the Outside Lands. The outermost edge of the Outside Lands. The end of the road.

  —I need to stop at my store, you tell Kerr.

  —Thought you were in a rush.

  —I am. It’s on the way. It’ll take ten minutes. It’s close.

  —What do you need?

  You tick through your mental list.—Pruners. A trowel. And lilies. I ordered calla lilies, two crates’ worth.

  The foreman pulls on the reins, shifting to appraise you.

  —Lilies?

  —Yes. I order flowers every year.

  —Why?

  Two years, you’ve worked side by side together on the cemetery problem, and you’ve never once mentioned your real reason to him. Never explained why you’re in this fight. In your defense, he hasn’t asked. Until now.

  —Plageman?

  —I had a son, you say.

  And then you can’t say another word.

  The old foreman stays fixed, studyi
ng you, until recognition arrives. Something in his countenance gives way. He bows his head, clicks at Bess, and resumes driving.

  —Never really gets better, does it, he says under his breath.

  No, it doesn’t. Not on birthdays and not on death-days. And when both anniversaries fall on the same date, a parent is done for.

  Marilyn

  IDA WINCES AS YOU RAKE OUT the last of her tangles.

  —Ma’am? I think I should have two braids after all. I’m sorry. But that’s what Mrs. Wood told us.

  —Are you sure? Because I’ll do yours up if you want it up. I will. Let me worry about Mrs. Wood.

  Ida bites her lip.—I should take the braids. But thank you.

  —All right. Braids it is, then.

  —With green ribbons to tie the ends? she whispers.

  —Do you have a green ribbon?

  —No, ma’am. But . . .

  Shyly she tilts her head toward the bunting you earlier strung along the staircase: pine-green ribbons in abundance. She smiles hopefully at you. No one could deny that face.

  You nod.—Fetch me a pair of scissors, Ida, and you’ll have your green hair ribbons.

  Beaming, she limps away. Mrs. Wood will not be pleased to find the ends of the bunting snipped for a child’s hair decoration. You halfway hope she finds out. You halfway hope she tries to forbid it.

  The task for today is to get through, to endure, to cross over to the other side of the calendar. How you do it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to be pretty.

  Returning with the scissors, Ida tries and fails to hide her excitement; her cheeks are flushed; she’s breathless. She’s had too much stimulation. These Maria Kip residents rarely escape their fixed routines. They don’t know what to do with a morning of comparative freedom.

  —All right, Ida. Here I go. Shield me.

  She moves to stand between you and the arriving guests so no one can see what you’re doing. You reach out, snip one of the fancy satin bows tied along the stair railing. Ida covers her mouth with her hand.

  —Keep watch, you tell her.

  She nods energetically.

  Finished snipping, you come away with two sleek green ribbons. You pull her into the corner, away from the staircase.

  —Come here, then. Let’s see what we can make of these.

  Threading the ribbons through her hair will allow you to create two lovely braids, special and festive, against the rules. None of Mrs. Wood’s other charges will be wearing such finery. Ida hugs herself with delight.

  Will this be your most important accomplishment of the day? Quite possibly. Of the year? That too.

  Henry’s putting in the plants by now. He won’t want you to witness his struggle with the roots. He wants you to think things come easily for him.

  But you’ve learned a few lessons over the past few years. It’s time to catch your husband in the act of improving nature.

  Henry

  YOU’VE LEARNED A FEW LESSONS YOURSELF:

  When with Marilyn, don’t think about Lucy.

  When with Lucy, don’t think about Marilyn.

  When in the black-and-white-tiled kitchen, stay in the black-and-white-tiled kitchen. When on the ferned front porch, stay on the ferned front porch. Don’t mix and match locations.

  Remain immutable. Stay the same in both places. You can’t have your worlds changing and you changing too. Something has to remain the same. The only one who can achieve inalterability in this situation is you; the inconstant one must become constant. Achieving this equilibrium will take effort; it will take some doing. It’s one reason you will be tired all the time.

  There won’t be enough of you to go around. Get used to it. This is what you’ve chosen. Or what chose you. The solution to this deficiency does not lie in enlarging yourself. Nor does it lie in bisecting yourself, splitting your heart down the middle. The solution requires presenting your whole person, whatever in God’s name that means, to each woman at each location and then withdrawing entirely, leaving everything behind when you depart one or the other so that you can offer your whole person all over again the next time.

  In theory, this plan works. In practice, it fails. It assumes you can just pick up and leave. Which you can’t. It’s not possible.

  You’ve left vital organs behind, you’re sure of it, when you depart Lucy’s, when you try to leave and Blue has not yet fallen asleep, when she patters out of the bedroom after you, spies you tiptoeing toward the front door, attempting to slip out without disturbing her.

  —Ostrich, she’ll say.—Ostrich. Why are you leaving? I still have things to tell you.

  You leave your heart in one place, your stomach in the next. You return to Marilyn, then sneak off to Lucy and Blue, and then back to Marilyn again, disemboweled, hollow as a carved pumpkin. You shake it off. Shake off the disequilibrium and become steady Henry again. Whereupon the cycle recommences.

  An hour with Lucy, and you want to be a better man. An hour with Marilyn, and you know you’re the worst man in the universe.

  The other problem with that last lesson, with lesson five, to be precise, is it assumes your wife and your lover each have nothing better to do than sit around and wait for you. It assumes that they both desire your company. And it paints that yearning as a well that never runs dry, as a continuous impetus for reliving thirst. Relieving thirst, that is.

  This depiction isn’t true. It’s so far from true, so much more mercurial, that thinking about it makes you splutter, makes you cough until you double over.

  —Where’s this store of yours again?

  —Tenth and California.

  —Let’s swing by the Big Four on the way. See how Odd Fellows’ fared last night.

  Kerr saws at the reins. The mare veers right, turning from Stanyan onto the tree-lined carriage lane of the Panhandle.

  —We don’t have time.

  —Won’t take but a few minutes. Right, Bessie?

  The mare slows to a halt in the middle of the thoroughfare. A black horse and racing buggy speed past. You glimpse the driver standing in his seat, cracking an impatient whip. Bess, standing still, flicks her ears. She thought it was time to stop. She’ll land on any excuse. She’s stopped three times now, and you’ve traveled only a few blocks.

  —Is this her top speed? you ask.

  —It’s close. Kerr clucks her back into motion. The world’s slowest outlaws crawl on.

  Last year, the mayor signed into law an order prohibiting any further sales of burial lots within the city and county of San Francisco. The city cemetery doesn’t sell individual plots, so it wasn’t affected directly. But it’s next. Marilyn didn’t take the news well when you told her.

  —Some meeting, Kerr says; he’s obviously thinking about what’s next for his Odd Fellows’.—Mark my words, Plageman, they’ll shut us down. They’ll shut us down and then they’ll move us. In five years no one will remember any of us existed.

  —But people need cemeteries.

  —They need ’em, but they don’t want to see ’em. People don’t want to be reminded every day where they’re going to wind up.

  You called your wife cold-blooded that day you told her about the mayoral order. The two of you were quarreling. You wanted her to be informed. She wanted you to solve the problem.

  Was it fair to call her cold-blooded? No. Did you apologize? Yes. Did she accept your apology? She never responded.

  Kerr clicks twice. Bess will trudge north on Masonic, traveling past the cemetery of the same name. She’ll pass Calvary Cemetery on the right, the burial ground for Roman Catholics. There’s no cemetery dedicated to Lutherans. There aren’t enough of them out here.

  The foreman straightens his shoulders and hums an old-time hymn. He’s entering familiar territory.

  Lucy’s first year joining you: Nine in the morning, May 22, her nose running as she shivered in the mist. You found her at the entrance waiting.

  Bewildered, you halted in the middle of the path. You had told her about May
22; you had relayed to her the day’s course. You’d hoped she might think of you that day, might remember what you were doing. You didn’t dream she’d want to involve herself in the actual work. The two of you had known each other less than a year. This anniversary wasn’t hers.

  —You’re here, you said to her.

  —I thought we might need these, she replied, and from the folds of her skirt she produced two pairs of gardening gloves.

  —Thank you, you said and, confounded, fell silent.

  She walked with you north to the mariners’ graveyard. As you reached Jack’s grave, she tied the strings of her straw hat tighter beneath her chin. Resolve took over her features. Then she dropped to her hands and knees and began pulling up thistles and weeds. She knew exactly what needed to be uprooted and what needed to stay. She was a natural at it. The two of you worked three hours side by side. Under your gloves, blisters bloomed.

  Midway through, you paused and studied her. She was still on her knees in the sand.

  —You’re spent, you said.—You’re exhausted.

  —I’m all right, she said, wiping her face with her sleeve, streaking her cheek with grit.—I’m fine, Henry.

  You told her you could handle the rest of the work; you’d been tending this plot of land on your own for four years now. She didn’t have to stay. You’d be all right.

  —I don’t want you to be compromised, you said.

  She met your eyes. The wind whipped a stray lock of hair free of her hat.

  —That word makes sense only in hindsight, she said.

  You had no idea what she meant. You tried again a few minutes later. She was still attacking the weeds, although they had surrendered some time before.

  —Lucy, you said.—It’ll be all right. You can return home.

  —No, she said, and in that moment she looked younger than you’d seen her. Younger and more damaged.—No, don’t send me away yet, Henry. Please.

  You were living on borrowed time. Stealing fire from the gods. All the clichés you hate, pathetic, overwrought phrases. You needed them anyway.