The Ninth Wife Read online

  THE NINTH

  WIFE

  a novel

  AMY STOLLS

  FOR CLIFF

  Rowing with just one oar

  I lost that oar

  For the first time I looked round at the wide stretch of water

  Look, that dandelion drenched by a shower

  is making the best of it, pursing its lips

  Stand firm, little girl

  —KO UN, FROM Flowers of a Moment

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Part II

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part I

  Chapter One

  March 2005, Washington, D.C.

  Pick a partner,” says Bess’s karate teacher, “and get a tombstone.” As Bess learned nine months ago when she began her schooling in Tae Kwon Do, a tombstone is a black rectangular punching bag that you hold against your torso as a target for someone to kick you repeatedly in the stomach. Or, ideally, your solar plexus, your myung chi, the soft spot at the top of the rib cage that if kicked directly with a powerful eap chagi, say, by a one-hundred-ninety-pound software engineer from Bethesda, can knock the breath out of you and send you flying across the room into a pile of smelly sparring gear. Tombstones, Bess has come to realize, are a good thing. Tombstones can save lives.

  The dojo where they practice karate and self-defense twice a week is an old elementary school gymnasium in the heart of a Latino community. It smells of sweat and mildew. The white ceiling, veined with cracks and water stains, sheds paint chips onto the buckled wooden floor where the occasional cockroach scurries from the dark corners behind the mats. Only two of the tall windows open, but to lift the industrial-strength glass is to risk dropping it and smashing a finger. Bess looks around at the other students in their white gis cinched with belts in white, yellow, green, and blue. She sees pairs make eye contact, bow to each other, get ready for the next drill, and she realizes she is the only one left holding up her hand, signaling her availability.

  “Watch this time,” says her sensei. He is a sexy second-degree black belt with the body of a gladiator, a man who knows how to swing his nunchucks. He points her off to the side. “Come in next round.”

  In elementary school Bess was an A-for-effort player, not the last teammate to be picked but never the first. What she lacked in grace and coordination she made up for with good sportsmanship, happy to be one of the ducks who clapped for the goose. It’s possible her tendency to flinch at anything thrown at her could be traced to a year of red rubber balls flung meanly (though, in retrospect, perhaps flirtatiously) at her nose by one greasy-haired, hygiene-challenged Douglas Lillicrop in the third grade. Regardless, she didn’t see herself scoring points or winning races or really venturing beyond the fitness trends of the decades—aerobics, Jazzercise, Pilates, yoga—until she saw an ad for the D.C. Karate Association.

  The first time she wore her gi she also mistakenly wore her lucky Valentine’s Day panties that showed through where she sweated like a boiled lobster in gauze. And last week in the turtle tot class where she loves to volunteer she bopped one of the cutest tots on the noggin with a foam noodle to get his guards up and he responded by throwing up on her feet. So there were setbacks. Still, working out at the dojo usually makes her feel upbeat and alive, and a force to be reckoned with. In the girls’ bathroom one time, an eight-year-old in the ninja class caught her confronting her own reflection in the mirror above the thigh-high sink, saying, You talking to me? You talking to ME? The little girl wanted to know why she was saying that. Bess laughed and said she was just practicing looking tough. Well then sorry, but it’s not working, the girl told her. I see you around. You’re too nice. She suggested Bess get a gold front tooth, tattoo her knuckles, and stop smiling so much. Then you be badass, she said. Bess thanked her for the advice.

  So Bess might not appear badass but she feels that way sometimes and loves it. She loves the power in thinking of herself in simple warfare terms: you kick, punch, strike; you block, protect, defend. An ebb and flow of pure primal instincts, the body an arsenal of weapons—forehead, back of the head, knees, elbows, feet, fists in various formations, fingers for grabbing and jabbing. For the first time in a long time, she’s in good shape and feels confident in her physical self.

  Her emotional self, on the other hand, is another story.

  “Switch,” says her sensei, and Bess bows to a thick, squat man with a hairline that begins on the top of his head. He begins kicking. Bess tightens her stomach behind the tombstone to absorb the blows, keenly aware that today is her thirty-fifth birthday and here she is getting kicked in the gut. Which, in a sense, is a manifestation of how her birthday began this morning when she saw Sonny.

  She was getting into the car of her close friend, Cricket—a sixty-six-year-old retired mortgage broker who lives on the first floor of her building. Cricket cooks her casseroles, pulls dead leaves off her plants, and brags about his Shar-Pei, Stella, named after his favorite character in A Streetcar Named Desire. He is celibate and gay, and gossip is to him as gasoline is to his black Buick LeSabre. He began visiting Bess often and unannounced two years ago after she organized a community support effort on his behalf. Before that she had only exchanged cordial hellos in the corridor with him and his flamboyant partner and, if there was time, commented on the weather and scratched his pooch’s ears. But the news of his partner’s death from a sudden staph infection hit her hard for reasons she couldn’t explain. She’d see Cricket sitting at his window, alone, lonely, sad, and distant. One morning, she posted notices on her neighbors’ doors and coordinated a schedule of dinners, errands, and, if he desired, company to help him cope. To everyone else he posted a notice in the lobby of sincere gratitude. To Bess he bowed, introduced himself anew with his hand over his heart, and said he would be forever grateful for such kindness. Bess has thrived on his friendship ever since.

  “Hey, Bess,” she heard from across the street. She had just opened the car door. “Bess, it’s Sonny.”

  “Oh my God, this is going to be good,” murmured Cricket from the driver’s seat, peeking over his sunglasses. They watched Sonny tug a pregnant woman toward them like a suitcase on wheels.

  Bess had no time to block and defend. “Sonny,” she said, more as an identifier than a greeting. Sonny was a beau
tiful thirty-year-old Asian-American Southerner, and that mix alone had been enough to get her attention three years ago when he pulled his supermarket cart up behind hers and said she had nahce-lookin’ onyens. He was a graphic designer who worked at home and had time to woo her. Over the six months they dated he was full of surprises, and she loved that. He played the harmonica, quoted Chomsky, and meditated each morning to try to cure his sciatica. He was strange, but she was strangely drawn to him, and when he ended it, it was not because she wasn’t strange enough for him (as she suspected) but because—and he was brutally frank about this—her age scared him. He didn’t want to think at all about marriage and especially not about kids.

  “You look good, Bess,” he said. “You change your hair?”

  “My hair? Probably not.” Rebuking every suggestion any hairdresser had ever given her to branch out, Bess’s straight, thick, dark brown hair has always stopped above, at, or just below her shoulders, depending on her mood and the season. Often she defaults to putting it up loosely in a clip, always making sure she has a lock of it handy to fidget with the way she used to do in adolescence—twirling it around her finger and clamping it between her lips.

  Sonny looked the same: goatee, black hair hanging in his eyes, runner’s physique, flip-flops, hemp necklace, thick knuckles.

  “What have you been up to, Sonny?” said Bess, looking down at the pregnant girl’s protrusion.

  The girl looked at Sonny, then smiled at Bess. “Sonnyboy’s always up to something,” she said, patting the large bulge under her peasant shirt. She had long soft red hair and a scattering of freckles on her cheeks. “I’m Gaia,” she said, pronouncing it Gay-a. Bess nodded hello.

  “So where you headed?” asked Sonny.

  “Karate.”

  “No kidding.” Sonny made a few karate chops as seen on TV. “I bet you can beat me up now.” He leaned into Gaia. “Baby, she can kick mah ay-ass.”

  Cricket, observing all this from inside the car, choked down a laugh.

  “What’s that?” asked Gaia, pointing to the seat.

  “My old belt.”

  “How come it’s not black?” said Sonny, tossing a few fake punches to her shoulder.

  “It’s a pearl belt. From when I first started. I’m a white belt now.”

  “Pearl? For real? What’s next, lavender?”

  Bess contemplated a demonstration: a palm thrust to the nose, a kick to the groin. “Pearl,” said Gaia, like an interruption, something she pulled from the air.

  “What, honey?”

  “Pearl,” she repeated, dreamily. “That’s it, Sonny. That’s the name for our baby.”

  “Pearl,” he said. “Yeah, yeah. It’s al-raht.” They rocked their foreheads together.

  “Well, if you’ll excuse me,” said Bess, getting into the car, “I have to go.”

  “Yes,” said Cricket, “we do have to go. It’s Bess’s birthday today, after all.”

  Bess shot him a look.

  “No way. Happy birthday,” said Sonny. “You celebrating this evening?”

  Cricket started to say, “She’s having a huge blowout par—” but Bess interrupted. “I’m not a big birthday person. I like staying home alone.”

  Gaia looked like she accumulated the world’s grief. “That’s so sad,” she said.

  Bess glared at her through a long silence until Cricket finally ended the encounter. “Okay then. Off we go. Enjoy your day, you two.” Bess waved good-bye and got into the car.

  “He’s having a baby,” she said after two stop signs.

  “Technically,” said Cricket, “she’s having the baby and he was probably as yillied as you when he first heard the news.”

  “What is yillied? That’s not a word.”

  “Darling, who knows the Queen’s English better, you or me?” He pointed a manicured finger at her, then picked a crumb off his V-necked shirt, which hung loosely over his large belly.

  “Good point. He doesn’t look yillied now, though. He looks happy.”

  “For how long? You know as well as I do reality’s a mean ol’ nasty pit bull gonna bite him right in that cute little ass of his, bite him hard, bite a big chunk offa that—”

  “I got it, thank you.”

  Cricket stopped abruptly at a yellow light and Bess’s head lurched forward, then hit the neck rest behind her. “All I’m saying is,” he went on, “he wasn’t for you.”

  “You always say that.”

  They drove past an outdoor flea market, a police station, an apartment building under renovation. Pedestrians weaved in and out of the slow-moving traffic. For much of her adult life, Bess has carried on through ups and downs with an even-keeled contentment and indulgence in daily comforts: NPR Morning Edition, her travel mug of Good Earth tea, her half-mile walk to work, mid-afternoon squares of dark chocolate, an evening shower, Jon Stewart, her crossword puzzle, and her down comforter. She’s never been one for drama or complaints, knowing very well how lucky she is to have an income, relative safety, and more freedoms than most. But she also happens to be a thirty-something living in a city, with an ache for companionship and kids, and bad luck in the dating realm. Even though she pays little attention to fashion trends, prefers film fests to cocktail parties, and has only one or two close girlfriends, she knows she fits the stereotype. Case in point: Blissful Ex-Boyfriend has glowing New Pregnant Girlfriend while Still-Single Ex-Girlfriend, who discovers said Ex-Boyfriend with Pregnant Girlfriend, spirals downward into a Super Crabby Mood.

  “All of this,” said Cricket, looking at her. “It’s about tonight, isn’t it?”

  “All of what?”

  “All of this,” he repeated, gesturing as if wiping his palm on the invisible shell of her negativity.

  Bess looked away. “No, it’s fine.”

  “That’s very convincing. Honey, you’re going to meet the man of your steamy dreams tonight, I’m telling you. What about that fiddle player Gabrielle met at a bar last week? You told me she invited him. What was his name, Patrick Sean Finnegan O’Shaughnessy . . .”

  “His name’s Rory.”

  “So there you go.” Cricket pulled up in front of the school. “Listen. Sweetheart. Try to put the happy in happy birthday today, okay? And don’t talk to me about being too old. I have hemorrhoids on my hemorrhoids. But you . . . you look ten years younger than you are, you sexy little Tinker Bell . . . no wrinkles, perky breasts, girlish figure . . .”

  “Hairy arms, hook nose, fat ass.”

  “Your ass is not fat. It’s . . . grabbable.”

  “Great.” Actually, she had managed to stave off the saddlebags she often acquires during winter thanks to karate and a near-religious adherence to a daily workout DVD she got at a yard sale, with a woman on the cover so buff she looked bionic. “Say good-bye to your jiggly thighs and watch your rear disappear!” it said on the cover. Well all right, she had said.

  “Bess, seriously,” said Cricket, gently. “Today, let your friends do nice things for you. You deserve to be happy today of all days.”

  “Thanks, Cricket. I’ll try.” She smiled for him, though she knew it would take more than anyone could muster today to get her out of the doldrums. This morning she actually woke up wondering what would happen if she ceased to exist, how her sudden absence might make the sound of a tiny ping after which the world would go on with its jackhammers and jet engines and boisterous dinner parties. Why is this birthday making you so down? her young assistant at work had asked last week. She didn’t know precisely, but she had a few guesses. For example, Bess had said, thirty-five is the age they start checking for birth defects. Her assistant had looked puzzled. Shouldn’t they know by now if you have birth defects? Bess stared at the innocent tilt of her head. I mean the birth defects of a fetus. It’s not so easy for me to have a healthy baby anymore, Bess said. Oh, right, her assistant had said, and then didn’t seem to know what else to say.

  Bess shut the door behind her and walked around to Cricket’s window. “Thanks fo
r driving me. How about you? You doing okay?”

  “Me? Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” Despite his wit and outward nonchalance, there is a fog of sorrow about his person that Bess both identifies with and longs to fully understand.

  “We’ll talk later?”

  “I insist.”

  Stop. Kyunyeh. Put the target away and find a new partner.”

  Bess doesn’t hear her teacher at first. She is kicking hard, breathing heavily, sweaty and determined.

  “Hey,” says her partner, putting his hand up and pulling the target behind him.

  “Oh, sorry,” she says. He leaves her to put the target in the corner, and she watches him bow to a new partner. Just like that.

  Bess shifts her weight from foot to foot, giving her adrenaline time to adjust. She bows to a nearby student, a strong, bearded father of little ones in the karate school. “Defensive releases,” her teacher announces, which means one person grabs hold while the other practices self-defense and escape techniques. Her new partner motions for her to ward off his attacks, so Bess stands and waits. He chooses a bear hug from behind. She has learned to yell no!; to try and hit his face with the back of her head; to grab his pants and kick his knee, scrape his shin, stomp on his foot, turn and knee him in the groin and in the face when he doubles over; to push him and run, but at the moment she has forgotten what to do. She can feel his breath on her cheek. His big frame is wrapped around her torso and she feels . . . what, exactly? Comforted? Secure? Turned on? She wants to lean her head back into the crease of his neck, push her hips up slightly into his crotch. It has been so long since she has truly spooned with someone, horizontal or vertical. This partner of hers with his arms wrapped around her has the sweetest hum of a breath, and all she can do is close her eyes. And then he lets go and coughs.