The Half Wives
Page 1
Contents
* * *
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Epigraph
Preface
Saturday, May 22, 1897, 9:00 a.m.
Henry
Marilyn
Henry
Marilyn
Henry
9:30 a.m.
Lucy
Blue
Lucy
Blue
Lucy
10:00 a.m.
Henry
Marilyn
Henry
Marilyn
Henry
10:30 a.m.
Lucy
Blue
Lucy
Blue
Lucy
Blue
11:00 a.m.
Marilyn
Lucy
Henry
Marilyn
Henry
Marilyn
11:30 a.m.
Lucy
Blue
Lucy
Blue
Lucy
Henry
Marilyn
Henry
Lucy
Marilyn
Lucy
12:00 p.m.
Marilyn
Henry
Lucy
Marilyn
12:30 p.m.
Blue
Henry
Marilyn
Henry
Lucy
Marilyn
1:00 p.m.
Henry
Marilyn
Lucy
Blue
Henry
1:30 p.m.
Lucy
Marilyn
Henry
Marilyn
2:00 p.m.
Henry
Blue
Lucy
Henry
Blue
Henry
2:30 p.m.
Blue
Lucy
Blue
Lucy
Marilyn
3:00 p.m.
Henry
Blue
A Note About San Francisco History
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Connect with HMH
Copyright © 2017 by Stacia Pelletier
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.
www.hmhco.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pelletier, Stacia, author.
Title: The half wives / Stacia Pelletier.
Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016034890 (print) | LCCN 2016046882 (ebook) | ISBN 9780547491165 (hardback) | ISBN 9780547519463 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Ex-clergy—Fiction. | Wives—Fiction. | Parent and child—Fiction. | Family secrets—Fiction. | Life change events—Fiction. | San Francisco (Calif.)—Fiction. | Domestic fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / General.
Classification: LCC PS3602.R722885 H35 2017 (print) | LCC PS3602.R722885 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016034890
Cover design by Martha Kennedy
Cover photograph © Irene Lamprakou / Trevillion Images
Author photograph © Mark Pelletier Photography
eISBN 978-0-547-51946-3
v1.0317
Cemeteries, like people, must move onward to make room for those pressing behind.
—San Francisco Call, 1902
Preface
—BLUE? WHERE’D YOU RUN OFF TO?
The wind carries Ma’s voice. She’s outside the pump station.
—I’m in here.
My reply isn’t loud enough. Overhead, gray sky glares through the broken skylight.
I kick again, until I’m floating on my back. How deep does this cistern go? Deep enough. I’m half floating, half paddling, glad now for those wretched swimming lessons she made me take.
—Blue!
The water in this well is moving. It gurgles and foams. It tugs at my shoes and skirt and sailor jacket. A man’s voice reaches my ears:
—Hear something again. Swear I do.
—I’m here, I call again.
Ma’ll have to pay for that broken skylight. She’ll have to stop her work, march me home, tell me to change out of my wet clothes and put on something presentable, and that will make her late. If I cause her to fall behind whatever she’s trying to do today, whatever task she’s trying to accomplish, she’ll grow not angry but sad, which is the worser of the two.
—This is a day to remember, Blue, she said while serving my oatmeal this morning. She set the bowl down so hard, the oats slopped.
—It’s a day for the record books. Your mother is finally going to be brave.
Then she turned and wrung out the dishtowel, wrung it until it was drier than dry, until her hands reddened.
Saturday, May 22, 1897
9:00 a.m.
Henry
Waking IS NOT THE MOST ACCURATE way to describe your current state. You’re leaving your bed. That’s it. That’s a fairer phrasing. Leaving this mattress, this flea trap, after eight hours.
The last fellow to stay here left behind a maroon robe. You’re now wearing it. You’re not proud. You’re cold. You’re cold, and you feel old. The robe ties with a sash around the waist. You’re still wearing last night’s suit beneath it. The robe turns you into a velveteen sultan. You’re double-dressed now.
Stand; pace the cell; that’s right—get the blood flowing. That’s the trick. The robe is too short, and your legs are too long. The police dragged you here last night. You’re in the park lodge, otherwise known as the Golden Gate Park police station. They arrested you after the so-called mass meeting.
If by mass meeting they mean fifty people, all right, fair enough. But Hubbs did not achieve a higher head count than that. Neighborhood consensus be damned. That’s what they tried to claim—consensus.
Not one soul except the officers of the cemetery associations has lifted a voice against it.
That was Hubbs’s line, Hubbs the attorney, leader of the Richmond Property Owners Protective Association. He spoke last night to the assembly at Simon’s Hall. Over three hundred thousand citizens of San Francisco are in favor of the removal of the graveyards. And again, in the same speech, stroking his handlebar mustache: You can’t make money and be successful alongside of a graveyard. And again, in conclusion: What use could a dead man have for a view?
So it’s Henry Plageman against three hundred thousand, then. Henry Plageman presently being held in the police station. Your odds could be better. That’s nothing new. The neighbors don’t know what to do with you. The improvement associations have declined to let you serve on their boards. You’re the thorn in their flesh, the pebble in their shoe, the cliché they overuse. He’s against progress. He’s against property ownership.
—I am a property owner, you reminded them.
When you took the stand at the front of Simon’s Hall, towering over the podium to say your two-minute piece, for a moment there, you felt on fire, suffused with that old sensation of arresting an audience. Then the members of the Point Lobos Improvement Club started whispering, and their wives started smirking. You lost your temper, banged your fist on the podium like an idiot, like a politician.
—Have some respect for the dead, you said.—Of which I am not yet one.
Now you’re the sole occupant of this holding pen across from Golden Gate Park, this rat hole that shares a wall with the local sanat
orium. A threadbare sheet covers your mattress. This police lodge serves the entire Richmond district, all of the Outside Lands. And it’s May 22, a day that comes but once a year and, when it comes, lasts as long as a year. Your timing couldn’t be worse. That’s nothing new either.
If your mind wanders toward the Cliff, toward the occupants of the black-and-white-tiled kitchen inside the cottage at Sutro Heights, pull on the reins and tell yourself: Stop.
Your watch has to be somewhere. It’s in your coat, the old Prince Albert slung over the chair next to your hat. Your head’s pounding. The policeman blessed you with his billy club last night. Your watch: nine o’clock. Christ. You slept later in this pen than you do in your own bed. You need to be long gone before this day takes over. Be ready, in place, prepared. Your small family has followed the drill for fourteen years, has perfected it. May 22. Marilyn’s day; your wife’s day. It will swing you from the rafters; it will wrap its limbs around your neck. This day will force you to carry it. You’ll do whatever it commands.
The police arrested a second man last night. He must be locked away in a backroom.
Thomas Kerr has to be close to seventy. Thomas Kerr, foreman of Odd Fellows’ Cemetery, arrested, like you, for disturbing the peace.
You don’t care for the cemetery foremen, not as a rule. But they’re your only allies left in this fight. They’re salesmen; they sell peace after death. They trade in burial plots, coffins short and long. They drive hearses, hire gravediggers, maintain grounds, chase vagrants off private property.
When you told them you couldn’t let the proposal to close the cemeteries reach the board of supervisors, when you declared you needed to kill the proposition before anyone called a vote, the foremen agreed to help.
The cemetery men want to protect the Big Four: Laurel Hill, Masonic, Odd Fellows’, and Calvary Cemeteries. All these reside within spitting distance of one another, blocking the Inner Richmond, with Odd Fellows’ touching the district boundary.
Your attention falls farther west. The city cemetery, also known as the Clement Street or Golden Gate Cemetery, contains the finest land in San Francisco, in all of California, if by finest one means wild terrain overlooking the Golden Gate strait, a windy hinterland with views of Mount Diablo and Mount Tamalpais across the waters, desolate gravesites surrounded by dunes and topped by native scrubs, pansy flowers, poison oak, berries.
The cemetery men regard you with interest and pity. They don’t disagree with your cause. It’s one for all and all for one at this point.
But the city cemetery is the largest and poorest, the most dilapidated. It’s a potter’s field, a burial ground for the immigrant, the indigent, the homeless, the nameless, the outsider. It’s filled with Chinese and Italians, Jews, forgotten mariners, wanderers of obscure Scandinavian and Germanic origin. It also holds the benevolent associations, members of the Knights of Pythias, charity cases from the St. Andrew’s Benevolent Society. It’s an underground metropolis. Here and there someone has tried to tend a grave, has left behind an offering or artifact: a bracelet, glass beads, a pair of eyeglasses. The Chinese leave clothing.
You have to find a way out of this police station. Does Marilyn know you’re here? She thinks you’re still home, sleeping. Your wife never comes to your bedroom anymore. She respects your privacy too much. She’ll be out the door early herself. Marilyn will survive today, survive May 22, by staying in motion, by moving ceaselessly. She will not slow down once. Not until, say, eight o’clock tonight, at which point she’ll go to pieces. You’ll be there when that happens. Your wife needs you. She doesn’t want you, but she needs you. You understand this. Oh, do you. You can’t help her; your presence does not console her. But to leave would cause harm, so you stay. You are not a physician, but you strive to live by the oath a physician is required to take. It’s the one law, the one principle you still retain; in common parlance, first, do no harm. This is easier lived than explained.
So you will stay and sit with her through the night after cramming the stove with coke, the stove you will light even though it’s May, especially because it’s May. And if Marilyn permits, you’ll hold her, guide her head until it rests against your chest, gather her in. Wrap a blanket around her. Not a quilt. Never a quilt.
—No, she’ll say.—No blanket. Get it off me, Henry. I’m burning up.
—You’re freezing.
—Take it away.
Then you’ll hold her again, and when it becomes time to sleep, you’ll ask to lie down beside her, to visit her room and sleep with her in your arms. Some years she will say yes, and other years, most years, she will rise and drift out of the parlor without uttering a word. As if the question did not hover there between the two of you year after year, as if the man who asked the question never existed. Maybe that’s accurate. Either way, the rule remains the same: Wait to fall apart until the last gasp of the day. Don’t collapse too soon. She cannot hold her burden and yours too.
Marilyn retired early last night. She didn’t accompany you to the neighborhood meeting. She can’t stand the words the debaters use. Disinter. Exhume. Remove. Right about now she’ll be arriving at the Maria Kip Orphanage for the grand opening of its new facility. Orphans are her latest cause. Last year it was the San Francisco Nursery for Homeless Children. The year before that, it was the Home for the Aged Poor of the Little Sisters of the Poor, on Fourth and Lake.
This station has to have a telephone. No—you can’t ask for Marilyn’s help this morning. Any diversion from the day’s plan will unravel her. You’re off schedule as it is. You’ll have to find a way out of this station on your own.
There’s time, but not much. Nearly a full day’s labor awaits.
What supplies are needed? A trowel. A rake or shovel. Pruning shears.
What plants? Roses? No. You tried them once. Disaster. Calla lilies are better. That’s what you ordered.
And if your mind wanders outside, bounds again toward the tin-roofed cottage at Sutro Heights, the modest lean-to overlooking the ocean, then haul your thoughts back the same way you’d haul your dog, Richard, away from a stray cat and tell your thoughts: Sit. Stay. Let her be. Let Lucy Christensen find the way on her own.
Your name is Henry Plageman, and you are forty-nine years old, too tall for your own good, six feet three inches, more tree than man; you shed pieces of yourself every time the wind moves. You used to be a Lutheran. You used to be a minister. You have a wife. You have two children, one living. You have a lover, or you used to. What counts as success in this life increasingly troubles you. By now you have come to grips with the fact that becoming a great man is not going to happen to you. You’d settle at this point for being a good man. This, too, is proving impossible. Of late you have picked your battles with exceeding care. Often, you lose.
The light down the station corridor flickers on and off, a lone incandescent bulb suspended from the ceiling with twine. The front door creaks open. A desk sergeant, shirt stained and untucked, shuffles inside. He reeks of stale beer. Noticing you in the lockup, he rubs his eyes. He has the look of a man who would rather be someplace else. You know the feeling.
—Good morning, you say.—I hope you slept well. Now please get me the hell out of here.
Marilyn
YOU ARE THE WIFE IN THIS TALE; you are the one people will call faithful.
You are also the volunteer, the decorator, the baker, and the breakfast maker. You’re the butler, the accountant, the lawyer, and the tailor. You’re the mother, the woman who has lost something. And you slept as long as you could this morning—which was not very—because May 22 never fails to ground you, never fails to rip off a chunk of wing. You can’t imagine where you’d fly even if you could.
Maybe this is your problem. Maybe it’s time to exercise some imagination.
Richard roused you at half past six when he began whining to be let out. He should have stayed put. He should have remained curled at your side, his mucosal eyes meeting yours; in that predawn moment y
ou saw that the only way to survive today was through Richard alone, geriatric basset hound Richard, who never says a word, who tottered into your world with his thumping tail one year after your life stopped, who has followed ever since, wordless, patient, cold-nosed, nudging you outside, sniffing your hands, observing you, observing Henry, canine head cocked, measuring your conversations. I’m still here, you told him—told Richard, that is—quietly, so your husband wouldn’t hear. Your dog understands what Henry has failed to comprehend: you dwell in purgatory.
Henry tells you he lives there too, but if that’s the case, why can’t you find your husband beside you anymore; why can’t you feel him near you? Two people in limbo should be able to glimpse each other, to call out across the canyon. At the very least, one should hear an echo. On the surface, you remain Lutheran; underneath lurks a good old-fashioned Romanist. You yearn for miracles, signs and wonders, prayers for the dead, indulgences, confession to a living person. What good is a sin confessed to the air, admitted without consequences? The only good confession is one that hurts.
You are Marilyn McLarty Plageman, forty-one years old; you never thought you would be this old in your life. You are still beautiful. And today is Jack’s day. You hate it; you are wedded to it. This day is here when everyone else fails you. It never fades and never changes. It never implores, never broods, never disappears for hours in the study, then reemerges in a cloud of exhaled cigar smoke to send Richard outside to do his duty. This day prostrates itself on the sandy beach and spreads its limbs in frantic love of you. This is your day, your submission. You would leave it all behind if you could.
That’s not true. You could leave it all behind if you wanted. But you’ve borne enough; you’ve earned the right not to move, not ever again if you don’t choose to.
You do want to move, sometimes. You do and don’t, both.
The news is buried on page 14. You didn’t learn about it until you finished hanging the streamers and haggling over the placement of bunting along the balcony and stairway landing. You wouldn’t have picked up the newspaper at all if Catherine Wood hadn’t just forced it on you, her finger pointed, charged with jubilation.