The Half Wives

by Stacia Pelletier

  —Don’t tell me, you say whenever he introduces the subject.—I can’t hear it. Don’t tell me. Just handle it, Henry.

  There was that time he went on a tear about an injunction.

  —The associations want a city order, he announced, setting aside the newspaper he’d been reading.

  He was out on the porch again in that wicker chair you can’t abide. He poured a tumbler of whiskey as you wandered in and out the front door, trying to decide if you could stand to listen to him.

  —Marilyn, are you hearing me? They want an order to prevent new burials inside the Big Four.

  —What does that have to do with us? you said.

  It was late. Henry had worked late on Wednesdays for years.

  —It sets a precedent.

  —For what?

  —If they succeed in passing a statute for the Big Four, they could apply the same statute back to the city cemetery.

  —Meaning what?

  —When you and I die, they won’t let us be buried beside him.

  You retreated into the house, leaving the wind to sweep the porch. How dare he. How dare he speak these things while you were trying to digest supper. Unthinking, unfeeling, heartless, foul-mouthed Henry. Your philosopher. Your husband. Mr. Head in the Clouds. Your one and only Henry, who must not change.

  He’s lost weight in recent weeks. He didn’t have much to spare in the first place. He’d better not be ill. You’ve tried to take care of him, have made every effort to act the part of a good wife. You eat supper together every night that you don’t volunteer. True, you volunteer three nights a week, but that still leaves the other four, and Henry, to his credit, rarely complains about your absence.

  The other volunteers at Maria Kip sometimes ask if you need to head home at a certain hour. They ask if your husband is expecting his supper.

  —Does Mr. Plageman need you? they say.

  —An excellent question, you reply, and you continue folding the girls’ linens and uniforms.

  You miss living closer to downtown; you miss civilization. You miss streets that don’t dissolve into mud every time it rains.

  You were nineteen, living with your parents and sister in Gettysburg, when you first met him. You remember having to tilt your head up to meet his gaze.

  He was twenty-seven years old, two weeks free of seminary. He could not stop looking at you; he placed you under observation, a current of curiosity, dry heat, a hint of alarm emanating from him. He had spent too many months reading books. He did not know what to do with you. He had forgotten woman existed outside the written word, outside Luther’s pronouncements about Eve, marriage, the Virgin. When he smiled at you, warmth cascaded through the tunnels of your body.

  We cannot seem to keep away from each other, you wrote your sister shortly after you and Henry had married.

  Penny wrote back: How long does that part last?

  Henry used to unbutton your dress, unfasten your laces, and remove your undergarments in a painstaking process that took longer than the act itself did. He’d had no experience with the layers a woman wears. He needed instruction. And practice. You gave him so much practice, he could have become a tailor. Then the bishopric transferred him from Gettysburg to San Francisco, which you hated. And then came years of waiting before Jack arrived, and with Jack two astonishing years of tranquillity and quiet, two impossibly short-lived years of believing you might actually take root out here, this planet of sand and mist and rock.

  When two people lose a child, the ground beneath their feet opens. A crack in the earth swallows them. How they climb out is no one’s business. How long it takes is no one’s business either.

  You and Henry didn’t have to discuss the day’s plan. At one o’clock, you will set down whatever saucers or plates you’re stacking, break away from the orphanage’s grand-opening festivities, board the streetcar west, and disembark at Thirty-Third and Clement. Henry will be waiting at two. He’ll meet you at the entrance on Thirty-Fourth across from the caretaker’s hut, hat in hand. He’ll take your arm, if you allow it, and together you’ll hike the curving path due north, past the other burial grounds. You’ll make your way to the mariners’ graves.

  Then, after: Home, choke down a fried egg, swallow some bouillon, read and reread the same page of your dime novel a dozen times without absorbing a word, the ceiling lower than on any other day of the year, the ceiling crushing you both. At eight or nine, rise, murmur:

  —Think I’ll turn in.

  Henry will incline his head, set down his tumbler, extinguish the lamp, and follow you into the dark. This is the one night of the year he will ask if he can share your bedroom. He has given up asking the other 364 days of the year. Usually you refuse. It’s not that you don’t want him in the room. It’s that you’re not in the room. So if you were to let him inside, he’d swiftly realize he was alone; he’d see that you are, fundamentally, not at home. Marriage is a series of carefully managed letdowns.

  If you do allow him to come in, and once in a great while you will, he’ll sit beside you on the bed, wrap his arms around you, and hug you so tightly, cup his hand so firmly against the back of your head that your hairpins will poke your scalp. He won’t notice. They’re not jabbing his head. He will hold you and hold some more. There’s nothing else he can do. There is no mutual comfort on this night, no crossing from his world to yours.

  When did you start being the mother and stop being the wife? When did you start being the wife and stop being the woman? Wait; all wives and mothers are women, but not all women are wives or mothers. It’s best to distinguish phylum from class, order from family, genus from species. The more particular identification ought to be the more prized one; the specificity of love ought to win.

  Your neighbor Mrs. Chambers says you need to talk more with your husband, to spend more time with him. You maintain a different view. Of late you have seen Henry too much. Familiarity doth not make the heart grow fonder.

  Last week you told him you might become a suffragist if you grew any angrier.

  —You’re angry? he asked, leaning forward to stub out his cigar.

  You tried to explain what you meant, but you tripped over your words, and his eyes clouded. He stood and prepared to head inside.

  —You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to tell me, Marilyn. It’s all right.

  He spoke as if you needed a reprieve, as if you wanted time alone. That was the wrong response. Henry is supposed to make you talk; he’s supposed to force you to say what can’t be said, to articulate the unspeakable, to scrape out the bottom of the pot. How else are you going to improve? You’re not getting better. You’re getting worse. Not in any overt sense. You are not an unwell person. But you are missing some vital piece of information about the world and how it works. You’re certain of this. If you weren’t missing anything, your life would make sense. Wouldn’t it?

  The thought causes you to drop a plate. It shatters. Mrs. Wood bustles over, bosom like the prow of a ship.

  —Are you faint, Mrs. Plageman?

  No. But it’s early.

  Henry

  FOREMAN KERR LOWERS HIMSELF to the iron cot in the corner of the holding pen and sits heavily. The mattress groans. He crosses one leg over the other, knuckles gripping the handle of his cane.

  —Wouldn’t turn down a spot of coffee, he says, and then coughs like he means it. He coughs for a solid half minute.

  That hacking hasn’t helped your case. The Richmond Property Owners Protective Association has taken to arguing that the cemeteries spread disease, that the dead infect the living. A cemetery foreman with persistent phlegm does little to counter this claim.

  Last night, Kerr stumped into Simon’s Hall coughing so hard he nearly capsized, and attorney Hubbs, seated on the dais, stroked his salmon-colored necktie and whispered to the officer on his right.

  The first quarter-hour proceeded uneventfully. The executive committee passed a resolution asking for mail to be delivered to the outside dis
trict. They passed another approving the “firm stance” taken by the streets committee concerning the grading of California between Central and First Avenues.

  Then Hubbs read a letter from Mayor Phelan supporting the group’s campaign to rid the district of the cemeteries.

  Personally, Phelan wrote, I am in favor of forbidding interments within the City and County of San Francisco and the ultimate removal of the large cemeteries.

  Hubbs looked up.

  —Shall we bring this to a vote?

  Your hand shot up.

  —Sounds to me as if the mayor’s forbidding the removal of the cemeteries.

  —I’m not sure how you heard that in what I just read.

  —Look at the structure of the sentence.

  Beside you, Kerr hung his head. He’d been in meetings with you before.

  —“I am in favor of forbidding”​—​that’s the main clause. Then follows not one but two direct objects, “interments” and “the ultimate removal of the large cemeteries.” So, really, it technically means that the mayor is in favor of forbidding both interments and the removal of the cemeteries.

  Hubbs frowned.—Plageman, what’s your point?

  —The mayor doesn’t favor the removal of the cemeteries. If he’d wanted to say that, he would have written, “I am in favor of forbidding interments and of removing the cemeteries.” It’s basic grammar.

  —I see, the attorney said acerbically. Chuckles arose from the audience.

  You pressed: So, while the mayor might want to stop new burials in the cemeteries, he doesn’t approve of removing the existing deceased from their current resting places. I think that can be accepted as obvious.

  In the back of your mind, with every argument, every useless thrust, a refrain repeated itself: Don’t let them move Jack. Marilyn will not survive it.

  Hubbs crossed his arms.—Thank you for that comment. I suggest we move on to a vote.

  He read the proposed resolution aloud:

  —“The district lying between Golden Gate Park and the Presidio and west of Central Avenue has made enormous strides in its rapid growth and development. With the exception, that is, of the blight on the district known as the City Cemetery, which is the burying-place of paupers and all Chinese”​—​he briefly glanced up from his reading—“many of whom die of loathsome diseases. This blight, as you all know, is situated just west of the settled portion of the Richmond district, over which the ocean winds blow direct from this potter’s field and carry with them microbes and other invisible messengers of death and disease, thereby imperiling the lives of many of our citizens.”

  He paused again.

  —It appears death is contagious, you called out.

  Kerr laughed, and when the foreman laughs, of course, he coughs. You shouldn’t have said what you did, but you couldn’t help it. These neighborhood groups have been the bane of your existence for two years. We need to remove the cemeteries because they block the way to Ocean Beach, they say one month. We need to remove the cemeteries because they create pestilence, they say the next. Or: We need to remove the city cemetery, but not the Big Four. Or: the Big Four, but not the city cemetery. Think of the parks we could build. Think of the children. The tourists! Or: Hold on, let’s use the land for civic purposes. We want the bodies removed. They stink. The Chinese scrape flesh off the bones of their dead and ship those bones in boxes to Shanghai. Take them all away; we don’t want to see them. We don’t want to live next door to the dead. Especially not someone else’s dead. Take them to San Mateo County. Cart them to Colma.

  Hubbs read on:

  —“Now, it just so happens that the city cemetery occupies the most beautiful western spot of the peninsula. It lies in close proximity to the world-famed Cliff House, Seal Rocks, and Sutro Heights. Boards of health, both state and local, have declared that the cemeteries are dangerous to public health.”

  Kerr dug around in his pocket for a peppermint, found two, offered you one. You motioned it away.

  —Now, gentlemen, are we ready to call for a vote? Hubbs said.

  Kerr popped both peppermints in his mouth and rapidly stood.

  —No, no, no!

  You rose to stand beside him. He linked his arm through yours. With his other hand, he thumped his cane.

  —No! he repeated.

  —Only property owners in this neighborhood can vote, Hubbs warned.—You, sir, are not a property owner.

  —The hell I’m not, he roared.—I’m foreman of Odd Fellows’. That’s more property than the rest of you gentlemen have put together.

  You joined in.—People would never know there was a cemetery here in the first place if it wasn’t for you, Hubbs.

  —Plageman, you don’t have the floor. You’re out of order.

  But what you’d said was true. The Richmond residents didn’t care about the cemetery, hadn’t fretted about it one damned second until Hubbs started his petition, knocking on people’s doors, telling them the dead were going to come out of their graves and spread infection.

  —Poverty killed half the souls in the city cemetery, you said.—Is destitution transmissible too?

  A heavyset man in the first row lumbered to his feet.

  —If you don’t like this meeting, gentlemen, I suggest you go away and hold a meeting for yourselves, one that you do like.

  —No vote is going to happen tonight, you fired back.

  —Amen, Kerr trumpeted.

  Hubbs, stern as a schoolmaster:—The health of our citizens is paramount. And it must and shall be protected by the removal of the cemetery.

  Remove a cemetery? How does one remove a cemetery?

  Marilyn asked this question when you first told her about the neighborhood’s plan. Barefoot, in her nightgown, black hair unbound, your wife bit her thumbnail till the quick sprang red. She didn’t look her age. She looked fatigued, but, in that astonishing way some women have, her exhaustion rendered her lovelier, more finely wrought, than she was when rested.

  She lowered her hand and warily eyed you.

  You told her not to worry; you told her you would take care of things. Jack will be safe. Jack will never be touched.

  You should not have promised that. Never promise a wife something you’re not one hundred percent certain you can deliver. Possibly one hundred and thirty. She’s taught you that without uttering a word.

  Marilyn does not want any native plants in Jack’s garden. She prefers eastern flowers; she wants imports. She wants to pretend she’s in Gettysburg, where she still dwells in dreams. Marilyn Plageman has resided in San Francisco more than twenty years, and she still wakes up each morning hoping Pennsylvania lies outside her window. She misses the trees.

  Courting, you sent her flowers, cut flowers; that’s how she developed her fondness for them. You remember the first time you caught the lavender scent of Marilyn McLarty’s black hair, thick as a rope when she unwound the braid from its coil.

  To the mission field, the Lutheran bishopric announced shortly after you married. To California. When you told her the news, she looked at you as if you’d dragged home a dead horse and settled the carcass in the parlor. More cut flowers followed, as did a journey west, a hand-carved bed, nights spent listening to the wind moaning while memorizing her young body, her pliancy, the pulse visible in her neck, the homesickness she tried to disguise as quietness. With Marilyn, you felt as if the sun were shining on your face for the first time. The sun did not last.

  And she cried last year when you told her the neighborhood men wanted to shut down the cemetery.

  —What about Jack? she kept saying.—Are they going to move our Jack?

  —What about the land? you added; it was the wrong thing to say.

  —Who cares about the land out here? For God’s sake, Henry.

  She disappeared, fled to her bedroom, before you could explain. Jack is the land. He’s been there fourteen years. His body has settled in, sunken down, dissolved to sand. As has your marriage.

  Hubbs fi
nished his speech.

  —Here are the procedures for the vote. Only property owners will be allowed to participate.

  You glanced at the back of Simon’s Hall, and there was Lucy Christensen.

  She stood holding a notation book in one hand and Blue’s hand in the other. Eight-year-old Blue had come to the neighborhood meeting. The two of them hid in the rear, behind the last row of chairs, which held the reporters, men sporting bowler hats, brandishing pencils, clutching papers.

  You blinked, forgot your next line of argument. Lucy had shown up where your wife could not. Lucy, whom you hadn’t seen in almost four months.

  Her fair hair was pulled away from her face. She wore her old black dress, the faded one. Her square jaw was set. She had strong shoulders, a sturdy, compact form. A steady gaze. Calm. Careworn. As you watched Blue looking up at her, admiring her mother, your thoughts seized up.

  Ten years, Henry. Ten years. Fool.

  You mailed her another letter last week. She hasn’t written you back. Each time you compose a new epistle, you tell yourself: This is the last one; I will not send any more; I will give her up. There. See? I have relinquished her.

  Then you return to your desk, Richard staring longingly up at your lap, and write another:

  We see most clearly in others what is truest of ourselves. But I paid no heed to my own advice.

  It is no small testament to the extraordinary quality of your person that in the blistering heat of our final conversations, you held your ground, refusing to let me use my narrative to force from you what you can give only in your own voice, not mine. And only from that very space of rupture in my speech—indeed of its cessation—can the gift beneath find its own space that alters speech.

  Probably she thinks you’ve lost your mind. Probably she sat there with your letter, curled up with her legs tucked under her at the kitchen table, the same table you bought for her, her brow knit as she read your effortful words, saying to herself: What in the world is he talking about now?