The Half Wives

by Stacia Pelletier

  —Lucy Christensen. What brings you here?

  —You invited me, you reminded him.

  —I did?

  Hadn’t he? You fought back panic. As children, the two of you had chased snakes with sticks behind the neighbors’ creek. One time you’d struck a diamondback rattler without meaning to, and it hissed into position, its mouth gaping so wide your own jaw ached. Dean danced a jig to distract it. He smashed its head with a rock.

  —When did I invite you? he said.

  His eyes were red. Liquor-soaked. Your mother was right about one thing: he would not survive California. But this was your first day, your first hour; the train had hardly pulled into the station. Cousin Dean fidgeted, couldn’t stand still, shoved his hands into his pockets, sized you up and down with evident pleasure and equally evident distress: his fellow snake chaser, fellow Lutheran from Omaha. He had left all that behind. But so had you. He couldn’t fathom why you’d shown up at Sutro’s estate. Neither could you.

  —But your letters, you pleaded.

  That was the day you learned a letter is not the same as a summons. Even a kind letter. Even a wistful one. To be summoned, one must be summoned. One must not show up unless an invitation has been explicitly issued.

  A lesson you should have held on to for later.

  Cousin Dean steered you across the estate to Mr. Claude’s taxidermy shed. He deposited you after conferring with the taxidermist man to man, saying something about a favor, a payment. Then he kissed you goodbye. He hadn’t kissed you hello. He returned to his beloved racetracks. He hadn’t written you about those.

  Dean was kind whenever he saw you after that. But he rarely saw you. One time, a year later, already up to your ears in Henry, you ran across your cousin weaving along the melancholy fairground lane called Merrie Way. He said hello and pulled you into his arms, his breath sickly, a whiff of cherry liquor on him.

  —Good Lord, girl, you’re a sight for sore eyes, he said.

  He released you and returned to his greyhounds and racehorses.

  Mr. Claude, however, had all the time in the world for you. Mr. Claude needed a taxidermy assistant; Dean had volunteered you for the role. And he’d promised you’d work for room and board only the first three months. You were payment in kind on a gambling loan, you learned later.

  Is this how it is for other women? The men you don’t want to see, you see all the time. The men you do want to see are ghosts.

  —Where’s Ostrich? Blue whispers; she’s still curled up against Stone’s shoulder.

  Stone looks at you.—Ostrich?

  —A friend, you crisply say.

  Ostrich is her nickname for her father.

  The problem with today isn’t two-year-old Jack. It’s sixteen-year-old Jack who consumes May 22. It’s the nearly grown Jack socking his parents in the gut, demanding their attention, felling his father’s thoughts as Henry digs and weeds and plants, garlanded by immigrant flowers. The potentiality does them in, the person he might have been.

  Stone crosses the walk a few paces ahead of you. Hurrying, you follow him, chasing a man you just met, tramping in his wake as rain drums the top of your head. Haven’t you been here before, haven’t you stepped in this same crack in the earth before? Yes. Ten years ago, outside the Women’s Memorial Church. But now there’s a third person along for the ride, a child. Now the consequences are visible.

  Rain has slickened the stairs leading to the hospital entrance.

  —Watch your step, Stone says again.

  Henry’s pulling up the thistles by now. He’s wiping his brow, the ends of his hair beaded with rain. You’d place money on him forgetting to bring gloves. You always brought them for him.

  Blue lifts earnest eyes to yours.

  —Mama?

  —Yes? you say, leaning in, leaning close.

  —It’s not my fault the skylight couldn’t hold me.

  Stone beams.—What’d I tell you? Going to be just fine.

  Blue

  THIS IS THE FINEST HOSPITAL anyone could imagine. Ma says fresh air is the medicine here, fresh air and rest and light.

  —It’s as fine as the Palace Hotel, Mr. Stone says.

  Three nurses in their starched white uniforms spring into action when they see us coming. There’s an old one, a pretty one, and one who looks too serious.

  —Sakes alive! the old one says, and she pulls me close when she sees how drenched I still am. Ma shows her my cut ear.

  —She’s going to need stitches, the nurse says.—And she’s chilled to the bone.

  I could have told her that.

  They hightail it with me upstairs to the second floor. The serious nurse leads me over to the first bed. Ma and Mr. Stone stick close. The old nurse brings blankets, and the pretty nurse peels off my stockings while Ma flits about and tries to tell them what to do. This pavilion has ten beds, and I am the only patient.

  The serious nurse removes the largest of the glass shards first. This hurts a good bit. Then the other two pull out the smaller splinters, rinsing and cleaning, bandaging my cuts with cloth.

  —You’ll be right as rain by the time we’re done with you, the pretty nurse says.

  They tell me to lie still and wait for the doctor. Mr. Stone hasn’t left. He’s still hanging around. And for no good reason. Ma doesn’t need him.

  —Want me to fetch anyone? he asks her.—Your husband?

  Fine orange hairs sprout above his lip. If that is a mustache, it is a poor one. The lines around his mouth deepen when he smiles. He must smile a good bit.

  —No, she says.—No. Thank you.

  Then she adds: I’m a widow.

  Her hand squeezes my shoulder. Her hand is saying hush. It has said this word before. Upside down, her face resembles a puppet’s.

  —I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Stone says.

  —It’s all right.

  —Hard to lose someone.

  —Yes, she says.

  Her hand clamps my shoulder in an iron grip. I won’t spill the beans about the whopper she just told. Yes, it’s a lie; yes, my mother lies to people. It’s not the first time.

  —What time is it? she asks and turns to look out the window.

  —Sakes alive, Ma, I say.—There’s not a clock outside.

  She laughs. Mr. Stone pulls a watch on a leather strap from his pocket.

  —It’s a quarter to eleven. You in a hurry to be somewhere?

  She doesn’t answer.

  This bed is softer than mine. Someone has opened one of the windows, and a breeze sweeps past the white sheets on the beds, blowing out the germs.

  Ma stoops close and tucks the sheet around me, too tight. Beneath the sheet, I feel cold. And when I’m cold, I’m contrary.

  She needs to stop telling people she’s a widow. The first time she said that to someone, I wasn’t ready. I burst into tears. I flung myself into her lap. She had to stand up right then and excuse herself from the newspaperman she was asking to read her work. She hadn’t wanted to take me to his office in the first place, but I’d talked her into it. She walked me home right then.

  —What happened to Pa? I sobbed once we made it home. She sat me on the bed and rubbed my back for a solid half an hour telling me that nothing had happened, nothing at all. Calling herself a widow was just the way she chose to introduce herself to some people, and she hoped I would not contradict her.

  —But why would you say that?

  —Because it’s easier.

  —But how come it’s easier?

  —Because then people don’t pry.

  —But why would they pry?

  She rubbed my back, harder than my back needed.

  —People pry when they’re concerned. And when they have nothing better to do, Blue, nothing in their own miserable lives to keep them occupied.

  She crossed over to the stove to cook flapjacks, which we sometimes shared for supper. She oiled the griddle. She kept her back to me.

  —Think of it like playing chess, she said. Pa wa
s teaching us how.—We have to be careful. We have to think ahead, to plan how and where we take the next step.

  —But why? I said.

  She wandered outside after she’d finished flipping the cakes. She sat on the front step. Her sleeves were rolled high, past her elbows. Flour was in her hair, but I didn’t tell her. She said she wanted to watch the sunset, but by the time she went out, the sun had gone to bed. It grew so dark the bats came out.

  She didn’t come inside for a long time. I ate all of the flapjacks.

  A man wheels a laundry cart past our door. The old nurse watches him pass and explains that in this hospital, the morgue and the laundry dwell side by side.

  —Sometimes we forget which one’s which, the pretty one adds, and laughs. Ma doesn’t laugh with her.

  Ma should be the one teaching Pa chess and not the other way around. Ma has true talent. She can lasso her enemy three or four moves ahead, whereas Pa becomes caught in a net of thoughts and can’t decide what piece to play next.

  He once crossed Post Street in the middle of traffic to rescue a puppy lying in a gutter. This happened before he and Ma had me. When he told me the story, I asked if I could meet the dog he saved.

  Ma said, very quickly: It died.

  Pa frowned at her.

  But Pa lives with his head too high in the clouds. His head is stationed at too high an altitude. I told him so.

  —Ostrich, your head is in the sky, I said.

  He never comes with us to Ma’s workshop. She used to invite him, but she gave up when he kept saying no. He’s always working at his hardware store. He’s so busy he has to sleep there. So Ma takes me there sometimes instead.

  I like Mr. Claude, but the glass eyes in the animals make me feel strange.

  The first time she took me, Mr. Claude announced I would be his right-hand girl, his helper. He assigned me to the birds.

  —The birds are the simplest, he said.

  Ma snorted.—He said the same thing to me the first week I moved here. Fooled me completely. An hour off the train, abandoned by my cousin, and here came Mr. Claude, handing me a foot of wire. Yes. A foot of wire, a scalpel, and three crows. They were hardly cold.

  She was talkative that day. Mr. Claude, smiling, asked me to step closer and have a look.

  —We will skin them first. We will skin them before we stuff and mount them. It’s a science, Miss . . . ?

  —Blue.

  —Miss Blue.

  The pouches beneath his eyes quivered.

  —Taxidermy is science and art. Never forget that.

  Ma reached into her box of projects, pulled out what looked like a feather duster.

  —A juvenile horned owl, she said.—A fledgling shot out of its nest by a tourist. Are you sure you want to stay for this, Blue?

  —Sure as a hog at a trough, I said.

  I wanted to see that owl’s insides.

  —An excellent beast, Mr. Claude said, and he smiled.—He’ll be your first.

  —It can’t be more than a few weeks old, Ma said disapprovingly.

  —You’ll have to work around the buckshot to cover it up, Miss Blue.

  —What for? I said.

  He rested his hand on my shoulder.

  —It’s the first principle of our profession. Your mother learned this lesson long ago: Never allow the cause of death to remain visible.

  Mr. Claude showed me how to record the owl’s measurements and clean the talons, so tiny. Small enough for a doll. Ma broke the upper wing bone so I didn’t have to do it. I think I could have, though. She taught me to feel the bones and sinews. She helped me arrange the owl on its back. Its snowy fuzz made me sneeze.

  She separated the down along the breast and cut into the owl with a scalpel. She worked her way around the whole bird. She separated the owl’s skin from its muscles. Her face didn’t change the whole time. I peeked into the owl. I saw gristle, something that looked like an ear of corn, and stringy blood vessels.

  —The first time I did this, Ma said, not glancing up, I cried all the way through.

  I looked at Mr. Claude, who nodded again.

  —It’s already dead; that’s what I told her. I said that to your poor mother her first day doing this work. Don’t you worry, Miss Lucy, it’s already dead. You can’t do anything to hurt it.

  —And what did she say? I asked.

  They couldn’t remember.

  The old nurse has disappeared. She returns to announce that the doctor’s on his way.

  —Just a few more minutes, she says and pats Ma’s hand.—He’ll stitch up your daughter’s ear in just a few more minutes. And he’ll have a look at those other lacerations. He’ll examine her behind that curtain.

  She points to the far end of the ward.

  —There’s a bed in the back, the pretty nurse explains.—For privacy during minor operations. Only doctors and nurses allowed.

  —Not a chance, Ma says.

  The old nurse frowns.—He doesn’t want you fainting on him. Your husband can take you to the dining room.

  —I won’t faint. And that man is not my husband.

  —I’ll take him off your hands, then, the pretty nurse offers.

  Ma rolls her eyes. Mr. Stone blushes.

  Lucy

  EARLY ON, YOUR MOTHER WROTE from Omaha: Do you understand what you’re doing?

  Of course, you wrote back. Yet another untruth. But a mother does not want to hear that her child is lost, is hanging by the fingernails from the cliff rocks.

  Of course you knew how one Sunday at the Women’s Memorial Church, your third Sunday apart from your mother, twenty-one years old, new to San Francisco, new to your life, would metamorphose into an afternoon with a once-preacher whose sermons had dwindled to haiku. Of course you knew how that one afternoon would divide into two, and then four, and later would transform again, becoming an hour in your room at Sutro’s boarding house, gas lantern sputtering, Henry uttering your name, incantatory, as if he had never before laid hands on a woman.

  And of course you knew how that one afternoon, that lone blazing hour, would turn into a decade, your whole life, such as it is, yours and Blue’s. The requirements of daily concealment have so shaped, so altered your topography, that some days you catch sight of yourself in a mirror and fail to recognize the woman looking back. The editor at the Banner thinks the Richmond is busy reinventing itself. He hasn’t seen anything yet; he should try being a woman.

  You cannot remember what you looked like before Henry. That girl—you cannot recall her face.

  You do recall your cousin’s face. Rough. Contrite. Good Lord, girl, you’re a sight for sore eyes. Then back to his gin and greyhounds.

  The day you finally lost him—lost Dean, that is—the day your cousin took his life, plunged from the highest available altitude, Blue saw him. Blue bore witness to an act she was too young to comprehend. She was not yet four at the time.

  —He was trying to fly, she told you afterward.

  For every man who has lost his way, God has assigned a woman, slavering to save him. Has God also assigned a man to every lost woman? No.

  You first saw him in church. You went because you were homesick. Because your cousin had mentioned a congregation. Before he abandoned you to Mr. Claude and his creations, Cousin Dean had said, apologetically, as if he bore responsibility:

  —There’s only one good Lutheran church in this city. The only one where the pastor speaks English. It’s downtown.

  He made it sound like he attended. He didn’t. He didn’t attend services at any house of prayer except the one in his letters home to his parents.

  You went only the one time. You arrived late. A tall man loomed over the pulpit. An overgrown stalk of a man, weighted with intelligence. Too much intelligence. The front row held the only available seats. He noted your entrance. He observed as you sat down, smoothed your skirt, and folded your hands in your lap. When you looked up, his eyes held a question.

  He remained silent. Long enough that you
shifted in place, grew uncomfortable. Then he turned to his Bible, not to read but to close it. He had fair hair that hung past his collar. No beard and no mustache, which was rare for a man in those days. He still doesn’t have them, which is rare in these days too. His brow made him look angry, locked in a private argument. Never fall for a man whose chief antagonist is himself, whose chief conversational partner is the man in the mirror when he shaves.

  You watched him. He wasn’t getting anywhere biblical. He gripped both sides of the podium and studied his shut Bible. A muscle in his jaw tensed. In the row behind yours, a woman rustled her skirts, whispered to the man beside her:

  —He never got over it.

  Got over what? You would help him. By God, any woman would help that man get over anything.

  Her companion whispered back:

  —That was so long ago.

  —Yes. Years. But you know how these things are.

  —I forget what happened to it.

  —Choked. Choked to death in its crib. And with both parents home.

  He began his sermon. He stopped talking after the third sentence. God is fundamentally unknown and unknowable. Nonetheless, we seek God’s face. Grace lies between those two poles.

  You sat in the front row and couldn’t move. The austerity of those lines cut through you. Grace is a living thing. Grace means Stay alive. Keep moving.

  You couldn’t stop looking at his hands. You thought: This man has given up trying to save himself. Someone else will have to do it for him.

  He stepped away from the pulpit, reached for his hat, said his goodbyes, and then walked out. He took in the sight of you as he strode down the aisle toward the door.

  Here I am; you looked right at him. Your eyes locked with his. Yes, you started it. The opportunity spread itself with feathered wings across the table. All it took was one cut. All it ever takes is one cut, if your hand is steady and you stick to it.

  He pulled his eyes away and opened the front door, shoving his hat on his head. He was bidding them farewell, leaving his congregation to face their Sundays alone, to handle their own burials and weddings and baptisms. He was leaving his calling, years of study set aside, abandoned.