The 19th Wife

by David Ebershoff

  “Dude, your mouth and foot have to stop meeting like that.”

  Maureen threw her purse strap over her shoulder. “I’m going out to the car. Don’t be long, I need to get home.”

  “Johnny, would you go after her? Tell her I’ll be there in a sec. And stay down low in the car.” He left, and I was feeling awfully alone on this mission. But I wasn’t finished. I asked Sister Karen what she thought would happen at the house tomorrow.

  “Oh, he’ll definitely marry some of them, but the question is what will happen to the others. Already one’s disappeared.”

  “Who?”

  “Sister Sherry. You probably don’t know her. She was recently reassigned to your dad. She was married to Brother Eric, but he was excommunicated for challenging the Prophet on some matters. He had four wives; the Prophet took the youngest and split up the others. That’s how Sherry landed with your dad. But she’s been missing for a few days now.”

  “What do you think happened to her?”

  “I don’t know. She could’ve run off, but I don’t know.” She looked at me, deciding something. “I shouldn’t be doing this.” She opened a drawer, lifted out an organizing tray, and held it above her head. An envelope was taped to the bottom of the tray. “After Brother Eric was excommunicated, Sister Sherry came in here and gave me this. She said if anything ever happened to her, I should contact this address.” She removed the envelope from the bottom of the tray and opened it. On a piece of paper was an address in Denver. No name, no phone, just 43 Atwood Street, Denver.

  “You think Sherry went there?”

  “She might have. I don’t know, Jordan, but I just have a feeling she might know something about what’s going on. Why don’t I write her address down for you.”

  “Never mind, I got it memorized. I should be going.”

  Sister Karen stuck her head out the delivery door to scan for trouble. “It’s clear.” Elektra and I ran to the car and lay down on the backseat. I told Maureen to drive out the way we came. “Just play it cool.” Johnny wanted to chat but I told him to shut up until we were on the highway. Maureen drove down the red dirt road and I could see the dust rise behind us. The car shook and rocks shot up and clinked against the underside of the car.

  When we got to the highway, the car stilled and the only sound was the lull of the wheels turning against the pavement. “Do you see any cars?” I said.

  “No one.”

  “Ahead or behind you?”

  “No one.”

  “Johnny, it’s OK.” And we both sat up.

  “Man, that was awesome.”

  I changed out of Mr. Heber’s clothes. “I’ll get these cleaned,” I said.

  “I’ll take care of it.” We argued over that, but Maureen said, “Jordan, it’s fine.”

  I told them about what Sister Karen had said, about Sister Sherry disappearing to Denver.

  “Denver,” said Johnny. “I was there a few months ago. Not bad.”

  “She thinks this wife might know something.”

  “Why would she think that?” said Johnny.

  “That’s just it: she doesn’t think that. She wants me to drive all the way to Denver to talk to someone who isn’t there.”

  “Dude, what’re you talking about?”

  “We can’t trust her.”

  “Sister Karen? But she just helped us like big-time.”

  “I know, but she wants us out of town. Something’s about to happen and she doesn’t want me anywhere near Mesadale when it does.”

  “You’re sounding paranoid.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Dude, have you been watching 24?”

  It was late afternoon and the sun was hitting the car at a low angle. Everything ahead of us was yellow and gold. Sometimes when you’re driving down a back road in Utah, you think if there is a God, then he probably had something to do with all of this. It’s just that fucking beautiful.

  “Maureen,” I said, “who’s that?”

  “Who?”

  I pointed at the souvenir hanging from her rearview mirror. On one side it said ZION, 2006, and on the other was a picture of two young women standing in front of the famous lone tree, the pine bending atop a mesa of stacked red sandstone. I’m sure you’ve seen it. One of the most famous trees in the world.

  “That’s my granddaughter, Jess, and her best friend.”

  “They look nice,” said Johnny. “How old are they?”

  “Twenty-three?”

  “They married?” said Johnny.

  “Oh no, they’re up in grad school. They take their educations very seriously.” I asked what they were studying. “Jess is getting her master’s in nutrition,” she said. “And Kelly—Kelly, she’s studying history, I think it is.”

  “History?”

  “Snooze,” said Johnny.

  “So what’d you find up at the house?” said Maureen.

  “My dad’s fuck chart.”

  “His what?”

  “Oh, my God,” said Johnny. “You found his fuck chart? Let me see.” He grabbed it and started flipping through it. “Yup, that’s what this is.”

  “Jordan,” said Maureen, “what is that?”

  “I guess the more polite term is a marriage management notebook. He used it to keep track of the time he spent with each wife, when he ate with whom, how much time he spent talking with each, that sort of thing.”

  “Yeah, and who he fucked and when.”

  “Johnny.”

  “Dude, am I telling the truth or what?”

  He was. That’s why all the boys called them fuck charts. Almost every man kept one and there was nothing the boys of Mesadale liked to do more than find one and read it. On my dad’s chart there were a lot of indecipherable notations, letters and numbers and squiggly marks.

  “That’s code, dude. Code for what the women like under the sheets. You can’t expect a man to remember all that.”

  “Oh please,” I said. “As if he cared.”

  “I’m telling you. My dad had one just like this, and we cracked the code.”

  “Jordan,” said Maureen, “you realize it’s stolen. We can’t use stolen evidence.”

  “I know,” I said. But actually I didn’t know that. “Even if there’s some important information in it?”

  “It gets automatically thrown out.”

  “No exceptions? Because this has something really useful.”

  “No exceptions.”

  Well, that sucked, because on the last page my dad had made a note that on the night he was killed he spent an hour alone with Sister Rita in her room.

  Maureen dropped us in the parking lot of A Woman Sconed. When I said good-bye, she simply held up her hand. I guess she was still hurt by that stupid thing I said about her faith back in the post office. That’s the thing about religion: people believe what they believe. Never mind if it makes no sense to you. They say the best thing to do is not talk about it. But that’s pretty hard around here. That’s pretty hard when everyone’s always talking about it—especially when they exclude you.

  It was Friday evening, and by Monday morning I needed to be back in Pasadena. I didn’t know when I’d see Maureen next. I tried to thank her for all her help, but she stopped me. “I’ll tell Mr. Heber you’ll be in touch with him about the notebook.” She pulled out, the stuffed penguins swaying as she turned out of the lot.

  “You really messed that up,” said Johnny.

  “Would you shut up for once?”

  He climbed into the van. “Don’t blame this one on me.”

  I sat on my rear bumper and called Roland. I listened to his line ring and ring. Voice mail. “Yeah, hey, it’s me. Things have been a little intense lately. Anyway, I’ll be home soon, maybe even tomorrow. Anyway, if you get—” But I lost the signal and left the rest of my message on a dead line.

  I left Elektra with the goth girl, and Johnny and I drove over to the swimming pool. We both needed a bath, and I needed to think about where I was. After
jumping in the water, Johnny sidled up to two teenage girls catching the last rays of sun on a patch of grass. “You let me know if you ladies need some help applying that suntan lotion, all right?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Nice to meet you too, ladies.”

  “Loser.” The girl who said this was lying on her back in a strawberry bikini. Her downy thighs glistened in oil. It was apparent why Johnny wasn’t ready to give up.

  “Let me start over. I’m Johnny, and despite my first impression, I’m actually a nice guy.”

  It was enough to get the second girl to smile. She set down her paperback mystery and said, “I’m Jen. And this is Laura.”

  Johnny seized the opening: he sat on a tiny corner of Jen’s towel. Fifteen minutes later, he was sharing half of it. They were laughing, and once Johnny pointed in my direction and the girls looked over at me with profound curiosity. The wind had shifted and their voices were no longer clear, but I caught a few scraps of conversation, including, “He’s pretty OK.” And then, “But I love his dog.”

  And so that’s where I was: sitting on the lip of a public pool, my legs hanging in the water. My mom was still in jail, Maureen was pissed, Johnny was ignoring me, Elektra was off getting a sugar high, and who knows what Roland was up to. And my dad was still dead. It was Friday evening. If I was going to make that nursery job on Monday, I needed to wrap things up.

  “Yo, Jordan! Get over here!”

  Johnny introduced me to the girls as “the dude I was telling you about.” And then, his voice dropping: “Listen, dude. We’re going to head back to Jen’s house. I’ll catch you later.”

  “What do you mean, later?”

  “As in, later. As in, not now. Dude, chill.”

  “Where will I catch you?”

  “Man, what’s your problem today?”

  The low sun speckled on the water. All around kids were running and dive-bombing into the pool. A gang of teenage boys was sharing a pack of Marlboros. Two old ladies were wading in the shallow end. “Nothing’s my problem.”

  “So I’ll give you a call.” He rolled over, exposing his narrow back. He was thin and strong, and his shoulder blades sharpened as he reached for a sip from Jen’s Coke. In another life, Johnny would’ve been a high school wrestler with a so-so GPA. Now he was just a sweet little con.

  XII

  THE ACTRESS

  THE 19TH WIFE

  CHAPTER NINE

  Secrets of the Faith

  Not long after I turned sixteen, I fell ill with a malady that remains unexplained to this day. I took to bed with a sodden chest and fever. After three days my mother sent word to my father about my condition. They had lived separately since my father’s conjugal spree four years before, he in Salt Lake switching beds among his wives, and my mother and I alone on a small, productive farm in South Cottonwood, about ten miles outside the city.

  When my father saw my true condition, he accused my mother of neglect for not having called a doctor. They argued for some time at the foot of my bed over how to improve my health. Finally she conceded her prayers were no longer adequate and sent for the one man she believed could restore my condition—Brigham Young. Brigham decided I should receive my Endowments—a sacred honor bestowed on few youths outside his immediate family. For the first time since I fell ill, my mother’s face sparkled with joy. For a woman with a faith as deep as hers, this was as high an honor as one can hope for while on Earth.

  The Endowment Ceremony is a ritual so secret that a Saint risks expulsion from the Church, and even death, should he reveal its contents; it is so esteemed that Saints speak of it as second in glory only to their promised ascent to Heaven. Up until this point, I had spent little time pondering theological truths. I accepted everything I was told about God, Christ, and Joseph and his Revelations, and Brigham’s Divine authority—for everyone I loved told me these were true. If you were to ask me at this age if I considered myself devout, I would have enthusiastically replied, Yes! I prayed, attended services, sang the hymns with full lungs, and tried to live by the Articles of Faith and all the other wisdom Brigham imparted in his sermons on Sundays. I never once wrestled over any metaphysical questions for myself, for Brigham’s churchly system, all-inclusive as it was, left no open territory in the theological landscape to mull over. Thus, I believed my Endowment Ceremony would be the highlight of my young spiritual life. Yet now, so many years later, I understand I believed all this simply because I had been told it was so.

  The next morning at seven o’clock, still under the spell of fever, I entered the Endowment House. In those days it was the most sacred site in all of Great Salt Lake, and the most secretive. Those who had been inside were forbidden to speak of it. Such secrecy encouraged every kind of rumor; some described the interior as a simulacrum of Heaven itself; while others suggested it was as dark and dank as a crypt. The Endowment House is said to share architectural traits with the Freemason’s Temple. As a young man Joseph encountered Freemasonry, and perhaps joined a Lodge, and thus some of his detractors have declared the Endowment Ceremony a derivative of Freemasonry’s ritualized meetings. Both utilize secret grips and passwords, a structured order of personal development based on degrees, and other symbolic gestures and signs. Yet having little personal knowledge of the Freemasons’ organization, I cannot verify these claims. However, I can reveal to my Dear Reader that the only exoticism inside the Mormons’ Endowment House is the unusual number of bathing tubs.

  Once through the doors I was met by Sister Eliza R. Snow, one of Joseph’s many widows whom Brigham had married shortly after his martyrdom. Sister Snow led me into a vast bath-room with a row of zinc tubs divided by a long green curtain. I was not the only one present—five other women, all unknown to me, had come for their Endowments as well. In addition to them a dozen women, most years past sixty, stood around, for what purpose I did not know. The old women, buttoned up in blackcloth, stared at me intently, and when it came time for me to strip my clothes, they chose not to avert their eyes.

  “First we must cleanse you,” Sister Snow explained, helping me out of my dress. In a matter of seconds she had me crouching in a steaming bath. Sister Snow had a heavy, downward appearance. The skin of her cheek looked as if it might slide off the bone. The old woman bathed me with great enthusiasm, scrubbing as if sudsing the flank of a horse. There is an indignity to such submission, especially with others looking on. Yet, given the circumstances, it was difficult not to hope—not to believe, I should say—that this ancient woman, with her raw red hands, could scrub away my mysterious malady.

  Next Sister Snow raised a horn above me, declaring it to represent the horn of plenty. Olive oil filled the horn, and in a swift motion similar to how a butcher slaughters a pig, she pulled my head back, exposed my throat, and dribbled oil across my brow. “Sister, I ready thy head for glory.” The oil ran into my eyes and ears, and yet I did not fidget or break the solemnity of the moment despite feeling like a slab of meat being dressed for the broiler. “Sister, I anoint your mouth.” She poured the oil across my lips. “Sister, I anoint your breast.” The oil was slimy upon my chest and flowed down the flesh in between.

  Sister Snow continued: My stomach, my thighs, my loins! Soon I glistened in oil. I was miserable, and yet this was supposed to be the greatest day of my life. I wanted to ask: Did Jesus intend this? But I dared not. Sister Snow was so certain in everything she did, I knew my doubts had to be wrong. And so I stood naked, golden and slick, while the line of old women ogled and prayed. I glanced to my oiled companions in this ritual, but each woman, as naked as I, had shut her eyes.

  I had deduced what was transpiring on the other side of the green curtain: several Brothers were receiving their anointments. I could hear them sloshing in their baths and the slurping oil trickling into their unthinkable regions. Reader, recall I was sixteen: Find me the girl of this age who does not giggle when imagining fat old men greased up like pigs!

  Cleans
ed and anointed, I was ready to dress for my Endowment. Sister Snow handed me two undergarments, each made of plain muslin. The first was similar to a sleeping-set, the shirt and drawers of one piece. Sister Snow explained that I must always wear it until I entered my grave. “It will keep you safe,” she said. “And protect you from the assassin’s bullet and the enemy’s sword. If only Joseph had been wearing his at Carthage.”

  The second garment was identical to the first and was its replacement. When I needed to wash one, I would remove half of the first and cover myself up again with the second before removing the rest of the first. This way I would never be naked again. If Mormondom’s young men rebel against the Church’s restrictions against alcohol and tobacco, the young women rebel against the sacred undergarment. I have known many girls to secretly trim theirs with lace, satin ribbons, and other frippery. Oh, were Brigham to discover this concealed truth, would he be angry or pleased?

  Atop this unpleasant item, I was dressed in a white dress and a secondary skirt, bleached stockings that bunched at my ankles, and soft linen slippers. Over this I wore my Temple robe—a baggy item with a strip of linen belting it in place. For a hat, Sister Eliza tied a small flag of Swiss muslin to my head. I looked like nothing so much as how a schoolmistress would dress a child in a pageant of angels. I felt silly and very much like a little girl; and yet none of the women around me seemed to share my sentiments. They held out their arms, letting the Sisters pull on their clothing as if they were corpses being prepared for burial. (In fact, these were the garments we would be buried in, whenever that grim day came.) These women were older than I, certainly more knowledgeable, and I was ashamed of my own lightness of spirit in comparison to theirs. I told myself I must stop thinking the way I was. I prayed to God to reveal the magnitude of the moment.

  Next the curtain dividing the bath-room was pulled back in a dramatic fashion, similar to how a theater’s curtain swiftly reveals a new scene. Standing opposite were six men dressed in their own white robes and caps. Men are generally less capable of tolerating discomfort, and for the most part they fidgeted and looked to their feet. Anyone could see they were embarrassed to stand before their friends and neighbors in outfits suitable for a doll.