Eleanor leapt across the room, attaching herself to my arm. “Mind? Don’t be silly! Webby doesn’t mind a thing!”
It was now apparent I had married a frivolous girl who would drain my accounts and ignore my orders. My mistake was clear: I had chosen the wrong sister. I had only myself to blame. Soon Elizabeth and Lydia would learn of the promised crystal chandelier, and each would rightfully demand her own. I would spend the rest of my life devoted to the wagon manufactory to support my domestic situations. What had I done? For what cause? I left the sisters to unwrap a bundle of packages delivered from the shops. The packing paper crackled so loudly, they did not hear me depart.
In Payson, Elizabeth froze in shock. “Another wife?”
“It’s not like that. They’re sisters. They’ll live together.”
I had found her outside busy beating her rugs on the line, while Ann Eliza twirled on the swing hanging from a nearby tree. “I won’t do it unless you consent.”
“You don’t care what I think.”
“You’re mistaken.”
Elizabeth continued beating her rugs. “This isn’t what the Lord had in mind. He didn’t mean it to be like this.”
“What do you want me to do? Tell me, and I’ll follow your command. You’re the first Mrs. Webb, you’ll always be the first.”
“I want you to leave my house.”
“May I marry this girl?”
“I don’t care what you do.” Her beater came down hard on the rug, bursting a cloud of dust in my face. Ann Eliza laughed at her ridiculous father.
“Are you withholding your consent? Because if you are, then I’ll drop this matter right now.”
“Stop,” she said. She leaned against the side of the house, exhausted. The dust had settled on her skin, and she appeared worn and gray. “It’s your choice, we both know that.”
“The Prophet says it’s your decision.”
“The Prophet.”
It was the first time I had heard her speak of him bitterly.
“Elizabeth, what should I do?”
“Marry the girl, I don’t care.”
“Elizabeth.”
“Go. Please go.” I tried again, but she shoved me off.
When I left, Ann Eliza followed me to my wagon. “Do you want to replace Mother?”
“No, no, no, no, nothing like that at all.”
“Then what are you doing?”
I tried to explain but failed. “One day you’ll understand.”
“I doubt it.”
My daughter’s rejection continues to sting. Perhaps that has been the most troubling aspect of reading Ann Eliza’s book—learning of the hatred I had inspired in her young heart.
Margaret accepted my proposal. Only after I had her consent did I inform Eleanor. She absorbed the news sourly, claiming I had deceived her. “If you think this gets you out of buying me that chandelier, you should think again,” she yipped. “And I mean the large one with the three tiers.” I assured her she would get her chandelier.
That evening the Prophet married Margaret and myself. Our wedding night was spent in a room down the hall from Eleanor’s suite. She was now mine, but at what cost? In the morning Margaret moved into Eleanor’s rooms. They were now sister wives in all senses, and I was their fool.
What occurred next, and how this conjugal folly ended, might be taken as proof that the Lord punishes those who misinterpret His words. In less than a week I had gone from two wives to four. Almost any Saint will tell you this was not what the Lord intended in His Revelation. Even I was surprised by my conduct. As Ann Eliza reports in The 19th Wife, neighbors and acquaintances commented. Although four wives is a small number compared to the dozen or more among the Apostles and the most powerful Elders, and the countless Brigham himself has amassed in the Lion House, the swiftness of my third and fourth matrimonies caused more than a few tongues to flap.
During my week of matrimonial indulgence, other men more selfless than myself had continued to rescue the emigrants stranded on the trail. Day after day teams left Great Salt Lake loaded with supplies. Brigham himself headed the organizational planning. I understand a large map was posted in his office, marked with red dots between Utah and Iowa where emigrant parties waited for assistance. He led the campaign like a commander in battle, and the swiftness of his decisions would go on to save many lives. At an encampment on the Sweetwater, near the Rocky Ridges, despair had already descended on dozens of emigrants. Food was gone, and death took one emigrant after the next. The survivors, weakened themselves, exerted their final energy to dig a mass grave. But with the arrival of nourishment, the survivors’ ordeal had come to an end. Brigham’s efforts were at last saving lives.
Such a scene repeated itself across the trail. Rescuers led the hand-cart expeditions over the mountains and into the Great Salt Lake Valley. Some arrived grateful for salvation. Others arrived angry for what they perceived as treachery. Some joined the community of Saints. Others, once restored to health, left for California, abandoning the leader who had brought them so far. Throughout the autumn the emigrant parties continued to arrive. Once or twice a week they appeared at the mouth of what became known as Emigration Canyon. They would descend from the mountains in a weary column, arriving at Temple Square, just as the party that brought Eleanor and Margaret to me had done a month before.
By November, the last party reached Zion. They were the most miserable of all. Noses, ears, and fingers blackened by frostbite. Mothers of dead children wandered with their arms cupped around the ghosts of their babes. Broken men wept. It was a terrible sight, but at least it was the last of the hand-cart fiasco.
Standing on Temple Street, I witnessed these final emigrants stagger into our beloved city. With me was my most recent wife, Margaret, who thankfully never showed as much interest in her tailor as her sister did. She cried for her fellow journeymen, her own ordeal still fresh, and showered them with white chrysanthemums. It was startling to see how starvation and deprivation had removed their individuality. Each now appeared similar—eyes sunk into their skulls, cheeks carved out, lips the color of ash. I held my new wife as we watched the last of the souls pass before us. All was silent, except for the creak of the cart-wheels—the crying iron will remain in my ear until my final day. As will the shout that rose up from the mass of starving souls: “Virginie, look! It’s Mr. Webb!”
At once Mrs. Cox and Virginie ran from the parade of misery into my arms. She was as much an image of wretchedness as the other souls, but in truth even more so, for I had known her previous beauty. “Mrs. Cox, I didn’t know,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
Stunned and wordless, I led Mrs. Cox and the girl to Lydia’s cottage. Once again my second wife welcomed strangers into her home. As Lydia worked through the evening, satisfying her visitors’ needs, on occasion she shot me a glance that said all too clearly: Another wife-to-be? I took Lydia outside. “It’s not what you think,” I said.
“What do I think?”
“You think I’ve brought her here as a future wife. Well, I haven’t.”
“I hope four is enough.”
I assured Lydia four women could meet my needs. “I have another plan for Mrs. Cox. You’ll see.”
Despite my previous affection for Mrs. Cox, I had come to realize that the feelings generated for her in Liverpool had been supplanted by my present conjugal duties. My plan was this: I would reunite Mrs. Cox with Gilbert in Payson. I would be more than happy to see my son take over as her betrothed. After all, this is what he wanted. Even Elizabeth would respect this arrangement. “You’ll like Payson very much,” I told Mrs. Cox on the journey south. “I know Gilbert will be glad to see you.”
I deposited Mrs. Cox and Virginie at Elizabeth’s house. If Lydia had restrained her displeasure, Elizabeth did not hesitate to unload hers. She pulled me into the barn, where Ann Eliza was watering the horse. “Don’t tell me she’s another one of your brides.”
“No, no, no—you don’t understand. Gilbert’s t
he one who wants to marry her. He’s long had his heart set upon Mrs. Cox. True, she’s a widow, but she isn’t a year or two past thirty. And although she comes with a child, she also comes, I believe, with an income that should help our boy establish himself beyond our purse.”
Elizabeth softened. “Does he know she’s here?”
“I was just about to set out to find him.”
I left my wife with the feeling one has after a narrow escape from danger and located my son at the manufactory. “She’s arrived,” I reported.
“Who?”
“Mrs. Cox.”
Gilbert dropped his mallet. “Mrs. Cox? And she’s well? Virginie, too?”
“Weary but well. The child, too. Very much the same indeed. She’s waiting for you at your mother’s house.”
I was not privy to his first conversation with Mrs. Cox, but I know its outcome. Later that evening I found my son in a tavern, drunk on whiskey. I lifted him by the collar to carry him home when he said, “It’s you.”
“Of course it’s me. I’m here to take you home.”
The boy swatted me away, stumbling, trying to right himself by gripping the bar. “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “It’s you she wants.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Not drunk enough not to know that she came all this way to marry you.”
Although intoxicated by the quart, he spoke the truth. Mrs. Cox had journeyed to be my wife. I had given her enough signal to ensure, in her mind, my intentions. I had a promise to keep.
“She will be the last,” I begged of Elizabeth. “But I must go through with it.”
“Three in one month,” she said. “Three!”
“There’ll be no more. You have my word.”
“Your word.”
“I promise.”
“If you marry her, you’ll never live with me again.”
So it was. I married Mrs. Cox in Salt Lake and settled her in a cottage between Lydia’s and the one shared by Margaret and Eleanor. I have spent the years since shuttling between their beds. I do not believe I have ever in my life behaved more like a beast than during this period, for this is how a dog acts, not man. Three wedding nights in three weeks—alas, all excessive pleasures must be repaid.
Yet to say I regret my marriages would imply I regret knowing these women. Only with Eleanor is this the case. Among the others, each is a kind-hearted woman who has been asked to bear more than she should. I have vowed to them all never to marry again. I shall keep this promise. Already I had more than my share. I tried to apologize to Elizabeth. She waved me off. “What’s done is done,” she said. I tried again, but she shut her door in my face. On the third attempt she said with quiet resignation, “I forgave you long ago.”
The noteworthy sorrow had reached its climax and was now in retreat. My family, in its new form, would press on for many successful years. I only wish I could say the same for Ann Eliza. Often I wonder if it was I who set her on a path of antipathy to our faith. How else to explain the root of her rage?
Here beside my writing table lays open her book. How many people across the country hold The 19th Wife in their hands? How many are meeting me through its pages? And yet now that I have recounted my own memories, and peered into the well of my soul, I can see that my daughter has portrayed me with accuracy. Her words have destroyed me because they are true. She concludes her long assessment by writing, “In the end, I suppose my greatest disappointment has been in realizing my father, like Joseph and Brigham before him, tried to shroud his passions in the mantle of religion. He used God to defend his adultery. I have yet to hear him acknowledge his lies.”
Yet some truths come too late.
I am, I realize, but a man.
XI
WIFE #19:
THE CON OF THE WEST
BACK AT THE MOTEL GRAYBAR
“There it is,” I told Mr. Heber. “Proof of how my mom’s prints got on the Big Boy.”
He leaned across his desk to look at the picture again. “Tell me where you got this.”
I walked him through my meeting with Alexandra and her chat session with my dad.
“Oh, for crying out loud.” He pressed a button on his phone. “Maureen, can you come in here? Listen, Jordan, these date stamps are thrown out of court all the time. Everyone knows they’re usually wrong.” The door cracked open. “Maureen, would you make a copy of this?”
She looked at the picture. “This your dad?”
“So what if the date stamp’s wrong,” I said. “We have someone who says she received this picture just before he was shot, and that’s a big deal.” He didn’t say anything. “Isn’t it?” Still didn’t say anything. “Mr. Heber, am I totally clueless, or what?”
“I’m just thinking of all the ways a prosecutor could tear this apart. We’re going to have do better.”
“But right now it’s all I’ve got.”
All this, everything I’ve been telling you, it was happening too fast. I stared into Heber’s face—the slick, Aqua Velva complexion, the eyes blue as dawn—but it was like seeing a set of meaningless colors and shapes. I couldn’t pick up anything from this guy. You know when your mind’s off, just wandering anywhere but where it should be, and you open a book and you see the letters but they don’t make any sense? Might as well be Chinese? It was like that. I thought of my mom in her cell. Did she understand any of this better than me?
“Jordan, let me give you a little advice. When you find a lead, you’ve got to turn it over and over, again and again, look at it from every angle before you decide what it is. That’s how things work around here. Think of every reason this photo might not help your mom. If it’s still got some value after you’ve done that, then you’re on to something. Ask Maureen, she’s the best.”
“Not the best,” she said.
“Look, I’ve been back in Utah for—what?—five days, and at least I’ve figured one thing out: there’s no such thing as perfect evidence, Mr. Heber. Or the complete truth, or whatever you want to call it.”
Heber and Maureen stared at me, working hard not to roll their eyes. So much for my little speech.
“I went out to see your mom yesterday,” Mr. Heber said.
“And?”
“And she’s not telling me some things she really should be.”
“Like what?”
“Her story about what she was doing that night is still a little fuzzy. That’s not going to work. I keep getting the sense there’s something she doesn’t want me to know.”
“Maybe she’ll tell Maureen?”
“No, I think she’ll tell you. Go back and see her, Jordan. Find out what you can.”
“I thought you were leaving Utah.” My mom was cradling the yellow receiver between her shoulder and her chin.
“I decided to stay.” And then, “I believe you.”
She looked up, the glass partition magnifying her eyes.
“I know there’s all this evidence against you,” I said. “But I believe you.”
Everything was the same at the jail today: Officer Kane, the ammonia covering the smell of piss, the row of women weeping into yellow handsets, baby-talking to their children who were growing up without them. I used to tell Roland Mesadale was like living in jail. But it wasn’t. Jail was like living in jail.
I held the picture up to the glass. “Do you remember taking this?”
“Of course. That was just last week. It was our anniversary.”
“Your anniversary?”
“Yes, I wanted to take a picture with your father. I got dressed up and asked him to put on a tie, and we went down to his den and shot that picture.”
“Who took it?”
“No one. We used the automatic button thingy.” I told her how I got the picture. It upset her to hear her husband was sending it out to strange women, but she understood why this was a break.
“But we need more,” I said. “I need to figure out why Rita said she saw you coming up from the basement.”
“What’d you talk about?”
“It was a husband-and-wife conversation.”
“Mom, the more I know, the more I can help you.”
“Let’s just say we had a conversation about the time he was spending with me. Or lack thereof.” Some facts are less good than others. And this was one of those facts. It was a potential motive—jealous wife.
“Did you have an argument?”
“I wouldn’t say an argument, your father and I never argued. But we discussed the matter, and I told him how I felt.”
“Which was?”
“He’s my husband, and I expected to see him from time to time. That’s all. And that’s when I went upstairs. And then—” She looked down at nothing in particular, just away. “And then I never saw him again. That’s the hardest part. I always thought I’d spend the rest of my life as his wife.” She took her time to collect herself. “You know what Officer Kane said after you left the last time? She said you’d be back. I told her I didn’t think so, but she said she could see it in your eyes.” A few feet behind my mom, Officer Kane stared out into nothing. Clearly she wasn’t supposed to get involved.
Isn’t it interesting what a stranger can offer? A little wisdom, a little mercy, a little love. That’s what I was thinking as I drove off from the jail. And this: unless I came up with better proof, twelve strangers in a box would decide my mom’s fate. It’s crazy to think it could come to that, but I guess it happens all the time.
WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST
I called Maureen. “I have a big favor to ask.”
“Shoot.”
“No, a really big favor. I need you to drive Johnny and me to Mesadale. Right now. I wouldn’t be asking if you hadn’t—” That’s all I had to say. She agreed to meet me at A Woman Sconed in half an hour.
When I got to the café, the goth girl and Johnny were playing Ms. Pac-Man and Elektra was sleeping on the couch. “How’d it go?” said Johnny.
The 19th Wife Page 22