Mrs. White

by Margaret Tracy

  Each time she saw them, she would ask Mike as casually as she could: “What are you two always kidding about?”

  Mike would answer, but then he would steer the conversation elsewhere. She couldn’t blame him if he preferred to talk of other things.

  The year wound down, and Joan had never even spoken to Paul. She began to despair of ever meeting him. She tried to feel happy about seeing Mike, tried even to dream of marrying him. And still, in his skinny arms, she thought of Paul, and the strong muscles under his T-shirt.

  But there came a day when her mind changed, when she knew for certain that she couldn’t be happy with Mike much longer. She and Mike had gone for a drive and had stopped along the side of a dark road overlooking Lake Glenida. They had necked in the front seat of Mike’s father’s car for a long time and then she had stopped it, afraid it would go too far.

  They spoke quietly, breathlessly, for a while, and then, as if inevitably, Paul’s name came tumbling from her lips again.

  “He hardly ever answers in class,” she said. “But he doesn’t seem slow or anything. Really, he seems to … know it all.”

  Mike shrugged, peering out through the windshield. He shook his head sadly, but gave in to her and spoke about him.

  “It’s just an act,” he said. “It’s, like, protection. He doesn’t know it all, he just likes to pretend he does. He’s got troubles.”

  Joan kept her voice from sounding eager. “Troubles?” she said.

  “Yeah, like at home. Parent troubles.”

  “What kind?” said Joan.

  Mike sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. Not all of it anyway. His old man—he always seemed like a nice enough guy to me—but Paul says he’s pretty rough on his mom.”

  “How do you mean?” she said, and her face flushed.

  “I don’t know,” said Mike. “Paul says—he says he hits her.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” said Joan.

  “It really gets to Paul,” Mike went on, giving himself over completely now. “I mean, he really likes his old man. He loves him. He’s said so in so many words. So when the old man starts swinging, you know, Paul’s always gotta take his side, like, ‘She had it coming.’”

  Joan just shook her head. “Wow.”

  “I’ve heard him say it. ‘She had it coming, she had it coming, he wouldn’t have done it if she didn’t have it coming.’ And, you know, I’ve met his mom and I’m telling you she’s … well, she’s a real sweet lady. You’d have to be nuts to want to haul off on her.”

  There was a pause. Joan sank back into the seat, her face now pale. “Poor, poor Paul,” she whispered.

  “Yeah. Poor guy.”

  “Do you think he’ll be … scarred?”

  Mike thought about it, then he shrugged. “Hard to say. Could go either way. I mean, these things can get to a guy, I guess. But Paul is tough; there’s no question about that. He’ll pull through.”

  But Joan kept shaking her head. She was gripped by a terrific urge to go to Paul White and help him. She felt she knew him now, knew who he was, and the image of a strong man with a broken heart claimed her quickly, as if she had been waiting for it.

  “Mike,” she said softly, “would you mind taking me home now?”

  It was a long time ago now. And today, as Mrs. White sat waiting for Paul to return from work, she reflected on the almost predestined way in which a complete stranger becomes a husband, and a husband—or at least it was so for her—becomes everything.

  CHAPTER TEN

  About two weeks later Paul worked late again.

  Mrs. White took the opportunity to make stew. Paul loved her stew and it was not something she always had time for, with all the tenderizing and simmering it required.

  By six, the major part of the cooking was still ahead of her and she was in her kitchen. It was nearly May now, and the days were longer. The setting sun was still above the distant forest hills; its rays poured through the kitchen window and lay across the floor, brightening and warming the red linoleum Paul had laid there.

  Paul would be home in little more than an hour, so Mrs. White had to bustle to get everything ready. But at least the children were out of the way. Mary was upstairs in the tiny den watching The Flintstones on television. Actually, she was watching The Flintstones, coloring in her Strawberry Shortcake coloring book, and singing a little song at the same time. She was busy anyway.

  Junior was outside on the lawn, throwing a tennis ball. His father had built him a tall backstop that hurled the ball back at him. It had a strike zone drawn on it and, as Mrs. White vaguely understood it, certain areas that represented hits and outs. She did know that that would amuse him until his father got home, and that after dinner she would have to exert all her maternal influence to get him to do his homework rather than return to the backstop by the light of the driveway lamp.

  Mrs. White peeled potatoes carefully with a short-bladed knife; she plopped them into the pot on the stove. While the brown mixture burbled on the low heat, she returned to the cutting board on the counter and laid a carrot on it. She gripped a small butcher’s knife and with short, heavy, expert strokes, sliced the vegetable into little pieces. These, too, she added to the pot.

  It was almost six thirty when, in her judgment, the stew was ready for a taste test. This process, which had added untold inches to her waistline over the years, she performed with a certain amount of ceremony. She stood over the pot peering down at the bubbling stew. She reached for the canister in which she kept her wooden spoons and carefully selected one. She always selected the same one, and always carefully. She dipped the spoon into the stew and let the liquid run into it. She had to go just deep enough to get the flavor and not so deep that she would draw off any of the expensive ingredients. Stew—good stew—and Mrs. White made wonderful stew—was not cheap.

  She tasted it. The sun had lowered a little and the beam that came through the window had risen. It illumined the pink flowers on her white blouse and touched a loose strand of strawberry and silver hair that had fallen loose about her ear. It warmed her both in fact and in appearance.

  As she leaned over to take a second taste of the stew, she bent into the beam. It lit her face and hair now, and though it brought out the lines and wrinkles and gray, it seemed also to soften her features and, oddly, make her look younger than she was. She looked rather pretty leaning over to taste her stew.

  This time, when she had held the spoon delicately to her lips for a moment, she paused. She lowered the spoon and stared thoughtfully at the back of the range. The stew—she pronounced it in her mind like the god of light—was good. The stew was good, but it was missing something. The stew needed garlic salt.

  The decision made, she turned purposefully to the white shelves to the right above the stove. She ran her fingers along the jars of spices and herbs quickly. There was no garlic salt.

  Somewhat pettishly, Mrs. White went to the refrigerator. She opened the door and searched through the various plastic fruit and vegetable bags to see if she had any garlic. She was out of this too. She sighed, and returned to her stew pot.

  She tasted the stew yet again and yet again; there was no question about it—it needed garlic salt. She stood there for a moment, making her decision. Either she could send Junior to one of the neighbors or call his father at work and ask him to pick some up on his way home. She hated to call Paul at work, but it would be easy for him to stop at the A&P. It might even give him an excuse to work a little less late than he had planned.

  The kitchen phone extension hung on the wall beside the sink and Mrs. White went to it. A local phone book dangled from the wall by a yellow rope and she flipped through it. Paul was working at Mrs. Sutter’s. The Sutters had an old barn just like the White’s, and like the Whites they wanted it refurbished inside to make it strong enough to hold their new car. Paul said they had just bought a new Mercedes. He joked that he would leave a few nails sticking up to catch the tires and agree to fix it only when the Sutters bough
t an American car.

  Mrs. White dialed. She put the phone between her shoulder and her neck in order to free her hands to peel an onion over the sink. As the Sutters’ line rang, she looked out the window to where Paul Jr., with all the intensity of Thug McGrew, or whatever his name was, continued to hurl his tennis ball against the backstop.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Sutter?” said Mrs. White. “This is Joan White, Paul’s wife.”

  The voice at the other end was very correct and upper class, but it was friendly too.

  “Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Sutter. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. I was just wondering if—”

  “Hold on a second—oh, damn,” said Mrs. Sutter, “my noodles are—just a second—they’re boiling over. Let me just—there—I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

  Mrs. White smiled. “That’s all right,” she said a little more easily than before. “I was wondering if I could speak to my husband for a moment. Is he there?”

  “Oh, let me—no,” said Mrs. Sutter. “I don’t see him. I think he left awhile ago.”

  There was a pause as Mrs. White glanced over her shoulder at the clock on the wall. It was six thirty-five. When Paul worked late he usually quit about seven. He must have quit early and started home. She had a picture of him in her mind for a moment—where he was now, what he was doing at this instant: driving his truck over the back roads, bouncing in the cab with his baseball cap perched on the back of his head, singing along with the radio. That meant he would be back in ten minutes, and no garlic salt.

  “Oh, all right,” Mrs. White said finally. “Sorry to have bothered you.”

  “No bother,” said Mrs. Sutter. “It was nice talking to you.”

  Mrs. White hung up and stood at the window for a moment, an onion in her hand, watching Junior hurl the tennis ball.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Paul wasn’t there. Paul wasn’t home. In his eyes there was a terrible absence, a terrible, hungry emptiness, as if the very soul had gone out of him, as if he were desperate to replenish it, to replace it with the soul of another.

  Paul wasn’t there. Paul wasn’t home. Paul drove down the wooded back lane, sweeping under the trees, sweeping by the hovering forest, with its dark, murky, threatening shadows and coves—sweeping by it all like the beast of prey he had now become once again. Like the hunter.

  He felt the pressure. In his stomach, in the hands that gripped the truck’s steering wheel as if for fear of falling out, of falling from the earth. The pressure was not building anymore. It had built to the outer limits of his body and his mind. It was just whistling in him now like the wind through the forest hemlocks, like the steam from a teapot. Whistling and whistling, waiting to be set free.

  Paul was hunting. He would let the pressure go. He would be set free.

  He knew where to park the truck. He had been studying the area since the pressure began to build. First casually; then carefully. Then intensely studying every inch of the house, every move of the woman who lived there. Oh, yes, he knew, as the wolf knows, where to hide … where to park the truck so it was hidden by the trees, so it wouldn’t be found. And how to approach the house from the woods.

  He came on foot. She would be out now. He knew that too—knew it, not as a man knows, not as a series of words, as a logical sequence, but knew it from a practiced sense, an instinct, knew it as the animal knows. Like the hunter.

  He was near the edge of the forest, near the house. Silently, he changed from his work shirt and jeans into the bloody overalls he had worn twice before. He changed and when, during the change, he stood naked in the woods, he wished that he could remain naked, wished that he could go naked to the house and release the pressure not with a weapon but with his nails and his teeth. Silently. Independently. Completely. Omnipotently. Like the hunter.

  Then, changed into the overalls, he came forth, sprinting out of the forest to the back door. He had it open in seconds, the weak suburban lock springing easily away from his file.

  He was in the house. He was in the house for the second time—the second time since the pressure had begun and he had come to study it. He knew now exactly where to go. He knew exactly where she would go. He found the walk-in clothes closet. Its door was slightly ajar. After he had entered it, he made sure the door was slightly ajar again.

  He moved to the back of the closet behind the clothes hanging from their rod. He drew the butcher knife from the cloth loop at the waist of his overalls. He crouched in the rear of the closet, cradling the knife easily, confidently, in his hands.

  He waited. He listened. He heard the car—a Camaro, he remembered—pull into the driveway outside. He heard the car door open and close. He pictured the woman getting out of the car. Manchester, her name was. Teresa Manchester. He knew her too. A long, shapely, round-eyed brunette. Still slick from the city. Still arrogant in her beauty. Still sleek and swift and difficult to capture.

  Like the deer.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Mrs. White could have sent Junior to a neighbor’s to get the salt. But by the time he tore himself away from his game—“In just a minute, Mom, okay?” she could hear him now—and got on his bike and stalled and dawdled—before he got home and got back, well, she could be at the A&P and home.

  She got her car keys out from under a pile of coupons on the counter. Then she banged lightly on the kitchen window. Junior glanced over and a perfect rebound flew back past him.

  “I’m going to the store,” she called. “I’ll be back in just a minute. Keep an eye on the stew.”

  Paul Jr. nodded impatiently before he turned to run after his ball. Mrs. White knocked on the window again. Junior turned toward her, ball in hand, a disgruntled frown of “What now?” forming on his face.

  “And listen for Mary,” she said.

  He nodded, his sigh obvious but inaudible. Then Mrs. White turned down the flame on her nearly perfect stew.

  She went to the stairs and called up to Mary. “I’m going out. Your brother’s outside. Call out the window to him, honey, if you need anything.”

  A faint cry of acknowledgment could be heard over a cartoon’s canned laughter. Mrs. White pushed the strand of loose hair back behind her ear, took one look around, and stepped outside.

  The Pinto started, coughed, and stalled out, and Mrs. White almost cursed. Quickly she turned the key again. The engine chugged a moment, but then caught. Mrs. White reminded herself to ask Paul to take it in for a checkup. She would ask him as soon as she got back.

  Paul always criticized the way she drove. “Hands on the wheel, head in the clouds,” he called it. It was not her highway driving that bothered him—she paid attention then—it was the way she drove on her usual errands around the neighborhood. She didn’t pay attention then, he said.

  Today, hurrying, because she knew Paul would be home in minutes and looking for his supper, she drove as if to justify all his complaints. Her car weaved distractedly through the familiar narrow streets, and even bumped once on and off a curb while making a right turn. She switched on the radio and changed stations until she found a song she liked. Then, after a while, she just shut it off. While she was busy with this, she narrowly avoided killing a squirrel.

  The Pinto went by the stately, well-kept homes on Pine and Stamford. At one house, a handyman was busy taking down the storm windows. He handed them carefully over to a young assistant, and the spring sun glanced off the heavy glass. Paul could have done the job alone and in half the time, Mrs. White thought. That was something else she should bring up when she got back: It was long past time to put up the screens again.

  She pulled into the A&P parking lot at high speed. She parked with a loud screech of tires, and got out and started for the store. Then she paused, turned back, and locked the front doors. She left the back doors unlocked, but she didn’t remember this until she was halfway to the store again, and then she decided to forget it.

  For a minute she stood impatiently on the rubber
mat before the In door, waiting for the electric door to open. When it didn’t, she charged at it, her hand out to push. Just as she got there, it sprung open, and she nearly fell through. Exasperated, she hurried inside.

  By force of habit she yanked a cart free from a huddled chain of them and started with it quickly down the aisle. There were two kinds of garlic salt on the shelves there: Durkee and the generic. Only the Durkee had a price stamped on it—$1.09. Mrs. White twirled the generic around and around but could find no sticker. She could picture the checkout girl holding her up while she sent to find out the price. She took the Durkee and put it in the cart. It looked silly down there at the bottom all by itself.

  She rushed back to the checkout counters and found herself at the end of a long express line. She craned her neck to look ahead of her: there were people on line with more than ten items—one woman must have had at least fifteen. Mrs. White tapped her foot impatiently, hoping someone would let her go ahead. No one did. By the time she got up to the checker, her face was hot.

  “That all you’ve got?” the checker, a tubby high-school girl, asked.

  “Yes. This is the express line, isn’t it?” said Mrs. White.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, then.”

  The checker shrugged, popping her chewing gum. She twirled the little salt container around in her hand, missing the price tag twice. Then she got it and tapped the numbers into the computer cash register.

  “You could have got generic for less,” she said vindictively.

  “There was no price on the generic,” Mrs. White snapped back loudly. “How was I supposed to know what it was?” The checker threw the salt into an oversize bag and Mrs. White grabbed it up. “You ought to price things so people can see. And there are people on this line with more than ten items.”

  Mrs. White went out, her head high.

  On the way home Mrs. White careened around corners she had seen too many times to notice anymore. She did not stop at the Stop sign on Market Street—well, no one did—she just barely slowed down.