The 19th Wife

by David Ebershoff

  “I used to know men like James Dee.”

  Like any young woman defying her mother, I stormed out the door.

  At the Lion House I sought an ally in Maeve. “Tell me you’re happy for me,” I begged.

  “I wish I could.”

  “You too? But why?”

  “Because I know Mr. Dee. In reputation.” We were in the parlor, gathered for the evening in a corner where the other women and girls could not overhear. Maeve whispered, “He’s known to know many women.”

  “Again, I don’t believe you.” We argued for as long as we could before our voices disturbed the wives from their knitting. They looked our way with desperate interest. I knew at least one of them would not stop until she had learned the subject of our debate. Polygamy inspires this in otherwise thoughtful women—the relentless need to know another’s business. And yet what did I have to hide? Soon Mr. Dee would move me out of the Lion House and I would never have to suffer another night with the eyes of a dozen lonely wives dismantling me with their glares.

  I could see that my new friend Maeve was not really as close to my heart as I had believed. The root of her displeasure, I assumed, was jealousy. I blamed this not so much on Maeve herself but on the warping effects of polygamy. Even its children can’t escape its distortions of the heart.

  For comfort, I turned to my old friends Lucinda and Katherine.

  “Tell me what he looks like again?” inquired Lucinda.

  “Is he kind?” asked Katherine.

  There is great comfort in knowing that old friends, even after a gap of time, remain the same. Neither knew anything of Mr. Dee. Neither had a reason to doubt my judgment, although Lucinda said, as we left Goddard’s, “I wonder why your mother doesn’t like him.”

  I could look back and examine why I ignored the counsel of those I loved most. A number of reasons might explain it, but none more so than my desire to escape the clutches of Brigham Young.

  “Tell me,” I said one evening to my betrothed. “What do you think of plural marriage?”

  “Horrid institution.”

  “Even if it’s the surest way into Heaven?”

  “If you ask me, it’s our Church’s one great stain. I sometimes worry it’ll be our undoing.”

  I nearly collapsed with relief. With this declaration locked in my heart, James Dee and I were married on April 4, 1863, in the Endowment House. Brigham sealed us before a small group, including my mother, whose rumpled face told me she could not enjoy the day. For a bridal dress I wore a bulky robe and ugly green apron. Beneath this, the sacred undergarments embroidered with cabalistic designs at the breast, navel, and knee. Brigham invited Maeve to attend the ceremony, and although she was no longer my closest friend, an old and gentle affection for her renewed itself on that special day.

  I was scheduled to perform in The Artful Dodger on my wedding night. Brigham asked if I would prefer to hand the role over to my understudy. “Never!” I was a professional and I would meet my obligations. And so as a fresh bride, I took the stage. Word had spread that I had been wed earlier that day. When I made my entrance the audience erupted in congratulatory cheers. The applause repeated itself each time I entered from the wings and again at the end of the evening. By the time my husband and I returned to our rented room at Brigham’s hotel, I was afloat on the triumph of the day. It was the greatest moment of my marriage. Rare joy would follow that eve.

  The first trouble came swiftly, when Dee suggested we move in with my mother. “What about your house?” I said.

  “It’s rented. I thought they’d be gone by now, but their plans changed. Lovely family of Saints. A wig-maker, he is. You should see what he can do with a horse’s tail. Only one wife, a nice girl from Sweden. They asked for an extension. They’ve a child who’s not been well. What could I possibly say?”

  Reader, what could I say? Temporary financial trouble had recently forced my father to retreat from supporting four separate households. A few months before my marriage, Sister Lydia and Diantha had returned to my mother’s house, as well as Mrs. Cox and Virginie. I told my husband her house was full and he would not be comfortable.

  “It’s only for a month or two.”

  “I don’t want to live in a house full of wives.”

  “Darling, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s that, or a tent.”

  My mother accepted us without any complaint or I-told-you-so’s. She was also grateful for Dee’s plastering skills, for a number of chinks and hairline cracks in her walls had been preoccupying her. Dee, skillful in the art of pleasing a mother-in-law, fixed whatever she asked of him, whether of plaster or not. He even plugged the mouse hole behind the stove with a stopper he whittled down to size. “It’s good of you to help her like that,” I told him after we had been living with her for a month.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “If that’s how you feel, next time tell her no.”

  “Oh, Ann Eliza, aren’t you sweet. Life isn’t so simple. I can’t say no to your mother.”

  “Of course you can, if there’s a reason.”

  “You are a child, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t speak to me like that.”

  “You really don’t understand. Your mother, she’s been dying to have a man to boss around. What with your father living anywhere but here, she’s had all her wifely energy bottled up.”

  “You don’t know a thing about my mother.”

  “When I agreed to move in here, I thought you would side with your husband, but that was my mistake.”

  “Agreed to move in here!”

  Oh, you can imagine the words that ensued. When our argument had worn itself out, I went to bed but found myself too agitated to sleep. I lay awake through the night, waiting for dawn when I could ask Dee his true feelings about our marriage. But I didn’t have to. The next day I met an even clearer version of my husband, and I cared not for him in the least. We were strolling on Main Street when we happened upon Maeve. A delicate veil framed her lovely if overlong face. I introduced my friend to my husband. The exchange was brief and un-noteworthy until, after our departure, Dee said, “Who is she?”

  To my Dear Female Readers, I ask—is there a question more devastating to the heart? Three simple words, when put together on a husband’s lip, are constructed of nothing but betrayal and deceit. Or at least in Mormondom, where a man’s whim can bring him another wife. “You met her at our wedding,” I said.

  “That’s right, now I remember. She was in blue, with some sort of large broach—a bunch of grapes, wasn’t it? Yes, it’s all coming back. The blue, the grapes, the position on the breast. Indeed.”

  “She’s one of my friends who warned me against you.”

  “Don’t be coy, darling. Tell me exactly what you mean.”

  Repeating the rumors back to my husband would bring me no happiness. It would only make me look the fool. I therefore fibbed my way around the truth. “There have been a few words spoken that your faith is less than full.” Oh, what a mistake to be dishonest!

  “My faith! Is that it? She doesn’t know me from Adam, does she? She doesn’t know anything about my good family I left behind in England for my faith. She doesn’t know anything about the hardship of my journey here, it’s a big ocean, the Atlantic is, and rather rough in December. I arrived with no friends, no contacts, nothing more than my plastering trowel and my faith. My good faith. Now why would this girl go on about the sincerity of my belief? Because I haven’t fifteen wives, is that it? Does everyone around here think a man’s got to have his own harem to be a true Mormon? If that’s it, if that’s the reason my good reputation’s been tarnished, then I’m quite sure something can be done about it.” If only that were the end of his speech, but I shall spare the Reader the second phase of his rant. My husband’s monologue ended with: “I love my Church, and I’ll prove it if I have to.”

  As you no doubt know, the best way to incite outrage is to attack false piety. When provoked, the insincere man must ce
rtify his earnestness. It is the animal in him—the scratching, the grunting, the marking of territory. This is how I account for Dee’s subsequent actions. A few days later he announced, “I saw Sister Maeve. By chance we happened to be visiting the tinsmith at the same time. She asked after you.”

  “Please don’t do this to me.”

  “Do what? By the way, you said Maeve lives in the Lion House?”

  “That’s right, upstairs, the seventh door on the left, tell her I say hello. And while you’re there, why not call on Brigham’s daughters? I’m sure the whole of the Big Ten will appeal to you.”

  “No need to get prickly, my love. Maeve’s an attractive girl—what with those enchanting green eyes—but not a beauty in the classical sense, wouldn’t you say?… Love, what’s wrong? Where are you going?”

  I abandoned my husband on the curb.

  After only a few months of marriage, Dee and I were in steady battle. He knew how to torture me and never once passed up the opportunity to turn the knife. “I was thinking of taking a second wife,” he would say, igniting me with rage. No doubt he took pleasure in seeing me degrade myself in fury. Even the threat of a plural marriage reduced my composure and self-containment; its ugly promise reverted me to childish dismay. During these days, I was in rehearsals for the upcoming season at Brigham’s theater, set to open in October. As my marriage collapsed, I became more and more disengaged. The disruptions of home-life consumed me. By the time we went into dress rehearsals for the season premiere, I withdrew from the company, never to return to the stage.

  Reader, do you not see! This is polygamy! Not the family portraits of forty, bursting with clean, smiling children and simple, proud wives. Before I married Dee I was a reasonable and assured woman. A man’s word could not destroy my self-regard. I was but eighteen and I had already defied Brigham Young! Now, in a few short months, I had become one of those pitiable creatures—the woman who begs for her husband’s attention and weeps when she is alone. Those who know me today would not recognize me during this period. I take no pride in my former self, but my mission in writing this book would not be served were I to portray myself as always strong, always defiant, always certain of my path. Polygamy undermines even the most resolute.

  Such was the pathetic state my husband had reduced me to when I discovered I was carrying my first child.

  THE 19TH WIFE

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Brigham Rescues Me

  I shall refrain from detailing our marital discontent, which went on for the next two years. Our arguments were always of the same variety—Dee noting a young girl, speaking incessantly of her beauty, followed by reports of the two strolling downtown. If only the unfaithful heart could act with originality! Every so often he would mention spending time with Maeve, and my greatest fear was that she would become my sister wife. I endured this for two years, my sole comfort, aside from my mother, coming from my boys, first James Edward, whom I later took to calling Eddie in order to expunge any memory of his father, and, in 1865, Lorenzo Leonard.

  During my recent travels, as I have discussed my personal history from the lectern, many times a woman in the audience has inquired, Mrs. Young, why did you ever put up with that horrid Mr. Dee?

  Why, indeed? I can offer many reasons, although none is inspiring or that which we expect from our heroines. I was young. I had two small children. I knew no women who had divorced their husbands, and so this option was all but foreign to me. Lastly, I did not wish to admit I had been wrong. These “excuses” are not exceptional, but they reflect my truth, familiar as it may be. Honest Reader, if you peer into your own heart, I know you will understand.

  I shall jump forward, then, to an evening in the autumn of 1865, when Dee interrupted a quiet hour in my mother’s sitting room by saying, “Ann Eliza, dear, did I mention I passed your old friend Maeve?”

  The boys were playing with wooden blocks on the carpet at my feet. I watched their glossy heads bent over the house they were erecting. James, the elder, was showing his brother the different sizes. They were so pure and free of matrimonial agony!—and I became mournful that they would not remain so forever. They would grow up in Deseret, and suddenly I had a vision of my boys as young men, marrying women one after the next, consuming them with gluttonous speed, inflicting their own version of conjugal tyranny upon undeserving hearts. My boys would become their father.

  “Ann Eliza? Did you hear me? I saw Maeve.”

  “I heard you.”

  “Now I don’t want you to get upset, but I went ahead and asked her to marry me.”

  “What did she say?”

  “To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t the first time I asked. I’ve been in pursuit for many months. But I’m telling you now because this time, ah, yes, this time, she said, ‘Let me speak with Brigham.’ ”

  “I see. And if he grants her permission?”

  “We’ll marry as soon as possible.”

  “Where will she live? Because she won’t be moving in here.”

  “Yes, you see. The timing could not be better. My tenants have decamped. Gone down to St. George, God bless them. My little house is free. It’s not very big, and the stove is old and you have to duck when you climb the stairs, but Maeve doesn’t strike me as the kind of girl who cares about those things.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Please don’t be like that. Maeve has never said a bad word about you. She loves you like a sister.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Always in a rush, aren’t you? All right, then. We both know I can’t marry again without your approval. So I’m asking for it. There you are. After this, I won’t ask for another thing.”

  The next day I called at the Lion House. More than two years had passed since I had lived there, but little appeared different. True, there was a new rotation of wives and visitors, along with the attendant children and widowed mothers &etc. Yet the mood was as I had left it: the dim halls, the constant patter of feet on the stairs, the girls whispering behind open books. On my way to Maeve’s room I passed Aunt Twiss. “We’ve missed you,” she said, weighed down with a basket of wash.

  I confronted Maeve immediately. “You’ve seen Dee,” I said.

  “Yes, he’s been plastering downstairs for a month. Did he tell you I sent my good word?”

  But I would not be deceived by her innocent demeanor. “What did Brigham say?”

  “About what?”

  “About Dee’s proposal?”

  “Proposal for what?” Then she understood and her eyes widened into little pools. “Oh, Ann Eliza. You don’t think—” She rose to close the door. “It’s not what you think.”

  “Did my husband propose to you, or did he not?”

  “I’m telling you, you don’t understand. He’s proposed to me six or seven times now, and each time I tell him I can’t marry him. But he persists.”

  “Maybe he persists because you encourage him.”

  “He persists because that’s the sort of man he is. His head’s thick as his plaster.”

  “Why did you tell him you would discuss it with Brigham?”

  “Because I was tired of his attentions and I knew Brigham would shoo him off. Ann Eliza, can you keep a secret?” It was a clear morning and the early light from the window framed her in a shimmer of white sun. “You mustn’t tell anyone, but I’m Brigham’s wife.”

  “What?”

  “Number fifty-something or other. For the past six years.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because Brigham wants to keep it a secret. He realizes that people are beginning to talk about his wives. He didn’t want another wedding in the news.”

  “Why would you marry him?”

  “Because he’s Brigham! How could I say no?”

  “But why not leave him now?”

  “Oh, that’s why I’ve missed you.” Maeve stopped to kiss me. “Yes, why not leave? There are a thousand reasons. I have no money. I know no one o
utside Mormondom. Leaving would mean leaving my mother as well. Where would I go? How would I get there? What’s between here and California? A desert white with bones.”

  “There must be a way.”

  “Maybe there is, but what then? And what about later, after I die?”

  We both knew such defiance would mean exclusion from Glory. I’d be a reckless friend to advise her to risk her Salvation. “I can’t take that chance,” said Maeve.

  “What did your mother say when he told her he had married her daughter?”

  “It broke her heart three times. Together her husband, her Church, and her daughter had betrayed her.”

  I held Maeve, and our old friendship repaired itself with this intimacy. I stayed with her for an hour, then kissed her good-bye. That evening Dee and I were in the parlor of my mother’s house. He was busy with the newspaper while I worked my needle. The boys were on the carpet with a yellow ball.

  “James,” said Dee, folding down his newspaper, “be a big boy and climb up and get your father the dictionary.” I told my husband I would do it. “No, let the boy.”

  “It’s too high.”

  “Let him stand on a chair.”

  “He’ll fall.”

  “Not if he’s careful.”

  James was so eager to please his father that he dragged a chair to the bookshelf and struggled to stand upon its seat. “James,” I said, “get down.” But the boy was determined. “Dee, he’s going to fall.”

  “Let him try. You’re bringing him up soft.”

  We argued some more until little James, not even two years old, was wobbling upon the chair, struggling to reach the dictionary that was higher than his head. It was absurd! I leapt to my feet and pulled the boy from the chair. Dee flew to grab the boy from me. “Let him be!” Our beautiful child was caught in a tug-of-war. Dee yanked on his legs so roughly that the boy began to cry.

  My father happened to be visiting that night, discussing financial matters with my mother in the next room. “What’s this?” he said, rushing in—my mother half a step behind. He shoved Dee in the shoulder, sending him reeling against the carpet. He landed so hard he popped the air out of the yellow ball, which caused little Lorenzo to burst into a fit of laughter. “You don’t go around roughing up children,” shouted my father. “Not in my house.”