The Doctor's Wife

by Elizabeth Brundage

  She nodded that she would, but she had already made up her mind.

  “Don’t you know that I love you, Annie?”

  Silently, she nodded, but she wondered if love was enough.

  “For Christ’s sake,” he whispered, “every move I make is for you.”

  Annie cleaned up the kitchen, taking comfort in routine tasks, and Michael put the kids to bed. When he came downstairs, he offered to take out the trash. “There may be some mail out there,” she said.

  “I’ll check.”

  He went outside with the garbage. As she sponged down the countertops it occurred to her that he’d been out there for a while. When he finally came back inside he looked pale.

  “Any mail?”

  “Just junk.” He tossed the pile into the trash.

  “You all right?” she asked. “You look pale.”

  He said nothing.

  “Is it cold out there?”

  “It’s cold.”

  She stood there. “Want to go to bed?”

  “No.”

  “Michael?”

  He seemed suddenly distant. “I’m going to stay up for a while. I’ve got things to do in the study.”

  She waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. He turned, and left her standing there. “I’m going to bed,” she said to his back.

  “Go ahead.”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  At the study door he looked at her and nodded, but his face remained cold. Without another word, he went into the room and closed the door. Annie climbed the stairs like a child who’d been sent off to her room without dinner. She felt empty again. Lost.

  An hour or two later, she woke up to the remote sound of his beeper. Where was he, in the study? He hadn’t come to bed. Annie sat up, listening. He was in the study on the phone. It was after one A.M.

  Then she saw it.

  Tacked to the wall was a drawing of her. Simon had done it one day at the motel. She was sitting in a chair naked. “I’ll call this one Just Fucked,” Simon had said, and now she saw those words scrawled in Simon’s hand on the bottom of the page.

  Her heart began to pound.

  Now he was coming toward the door. She jumped and slipped back under the covers and closed her eyes as he entered the room. He was pulling on his scrubs and a heavy sweater, tossing things noisily into a bag. He was going in.

  Why, she wondered? He wasn’t on call. Why were they paging him?

  She didn’t dare open her eyes, terrified of what he might say to her. She could feel him standing there, watching her, and she could sense his anger in the way he moved. He jerked open the nightstand drawer, scrambling for a pen; he was writing her a note. He turned off the light. And then he was gone.

  Panting with shame, she began to cry, gulping the air. She ran downstairs hoping to stop him, to tell him she had made a mistake, a terrible mistake, and she’d felt nothing for Simon Haas, nothing! But she was too late. He had already pulled out of the driveway and turned onto the road.

  Weak with apprehension, she gripped the banister and climbed the stairs to her room. Annie ripped the drawing off the wall and crumpled it up. She crawled back into bed, weeping, turning in on herself, unable to find comfort in the soft pillows, the warm quilt. Her whole body ached with fear, sensing danger like an animal keen to its scent, tasting it in her throat, on her teeth, expecting it yet having no idea of how to tame it.

  PART SIX

  Extremities

  62

  TWO DAYS HAVE PASSED and now it is the third. Something has happened to his eyes. The world comes in a blur. There are no windows, no lights, only a smear of daylight. His body is heavy and dense, like he’s been covered with stones. A grave, he thinks, shivering. He did not think it would be like this, his death. From time to time he would imagine it as he does now, picturing himself in a room with a bed, a pink blanket, perhaps, a window where the wild sun beckons him, the distant sound of children running through the house—not his children, but his children’s children. And music, of course. Italian opera filling up the halls, roaming into rooms with unmade beds. Something delicious cooking on the stove, the tantalizing smoke rising up through the banister to his waiting nostrils. A hand turning a wooden spoon, contemplatively, knowing that his death will arrive at any time. And waiting for it. The whole house waiting for it. The chairs in the living room waiting for it. The piano with its grinning white keys. The bowl of pears on the table. Even the dripping gutters waiting for it. Sensing it like a disastrous storm. He has imagined his old man’s hands like the gnarled roots of a lilac bush, quivering a little, covered with liver spots. And Annie’s hands, he has imagined them, too, graceful and warm, unhindered by age. In his dreams, he has seen her taking up his hands like summer earth, the way she knows to turn the soil, and he remembers her now in her big straw hat, making the flowers come up all around the yard. She would come to him, he thinks now, she would hold his hands, she would wait with him to face the worst.

  He imagines his house in the country in total disarray, Annie trying to cope with her ordeal. She will take the kids to her parents’, he knows; that’s where Annie goes when she needs to hide. He pictures his kids sullenly playing chess on the priceless Sarouk carpet in the living room. Henry will be angry when they make him tuck in his shirt, and Annie’s mother, perennially obsessed with order, will insist that Rosie brush her hair. No taming his children, he thinks a little proudly. The image brings him a surge of relief, but it doesn’t last, and he is almost too frightened to think. Your life is over.

  The wind mutters all night long. He can hear the wind rippling the window screens. He can hear the wind groaning like a man with a broken heart. Something drips. He hears the tidy scuffling of squirrels and wonders if they’ve gotten into the cellar. In his dreams he sees their long furry tails. “Squirrels,” he tells the woman when she comes to tend him, but she refuses to admit it, hastily wiping the feverish sweat from his face. She comes and goes like a vision in a nightmare. She keeps him drugged, but he does not refuse her, taking the warm broth into his mouth, bitter with codeine, dense with salt, his head in her lap like a child’s. His pain is voracious. There is nothing he can do but accept her care. She is the healer now, this strange woman whom destiny has cruelly paired him with.

  The room is damp, insalubrious, and makes his throat sore. The mattress upon which he lies is wet under his back, but he will not tell her this. The old wool blankets stink of mothballs, but he has convinced himself that it will keep away the squirrels, because he knows they are there, fussing in the dark, an ominous vigil with their tiny yellow eyes.

  Like a blind man, he tries to read the subtle variations of the dark. Once, he asks her to turn on a light, but the question enrages her. “Don’t you get it, Michael? There’s nobody here. There’s nobody living here. Why would I turn on a light if there’s nobody here?” She starts to pace nervously, lighting a cigarette. “Do you want someone to show up here? Is that what you want? Because the minute that happens, you’re dead, understand?”

  She takes out a little box of pills. “I’ve got to calm down. You’ve gotten me all upset.” Swallowing a few of the pills, she comes up close, standing over him. “You think this is easy for me? Huh?” She kicks his leg and he recoils, turns inward. “You think I like being here?” Another kick, only harder. “You think I like the fact that I had to do this?”

  Shaking, he braces for another kick. A moment lingers between them. He feels her watching him, making up her mind, sensing her power over him. The kick does not come, and he turns slightly to see her circling the room, mumbling to herself. Round and round and round in a tight circle. She crouches down, hugging her knees. “I’m sorry I kicked you. I’m sorry, okay?”

  She looks at him, waiting for him to forgive her, but he does not and she starts to cry.

  “Nobody sees me,” she whispers. “I’m a ghost. I’m invisible.”

  “I see you,” he answers at length. “You’re right there.”
r />   Flashes of the accident come back to him with visceral clarity. He remembers her voice, insisting on the seat belt. He wouldn’t drive without one, she’d told the men. It will look suspicious to the police. Now that he thinks of it, that seat belt was what saved him. There was the deafening slam of the car door, the man’s farewell—See you later, asshole—and then the rolling car, the bristling feeling in his belly, the anguished uncertainty of a carnival ride as the car soared through the air then dropped to the ground below. Let it go, he remembers thinking, feeling his body fall through space. Let it all go.

  Numb is what he is, he thinks, in a state of shock. A womblike sensation of nothingness. A state of being—empty. He gives himself up to it. He gives himself up to it because there is nothing else.

  Time drifts. His head fills with snakes. Now they are spiders. His head spins a web of fury. He doesn’t know. I want my wife, he thinks. I want my Annie. The floors squeak overhead, back and forth and back again. There is the sound of heavy rain. No, it is not rain. It is the woman crying. She frees his hands and he brings them to his face, he covers his face like a shield. He cups his hands together, he braids his fingers, he whispers to his thumbs. Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people.

  She has chained him to the furnace. There are two separate loops around each ankle, old-fashioned bicycle locks attached to steel cables, the sort he had as a boy, encased in thick yellow plastic with cylindrical combinations. The cables are locked to a larger chain, the sort you’d use to tow a car, which snakes across the floor and is padlocked to the furnace. The chains dishearten him; he has no idea how to free himself of them. Yet if he could find something sharp, a pair of pliers even, he might be able to cut them. In the dark, gasping and spitting, he crawls across the cement floor, hoping to encounter something he might use to cut through the plastic, but the cellar floor is a vast wasteland and he encounters nothing. On his hands and knees he is a wounded animal, an animal shot in the leg, an animal whose hand had been severed by a trap. It makes him think of poor Molly. He finds himself overcome with a fierce rush of anger. The feeling depletes him, and suddenly exhausted, he drags himself back to the mattress. He begins to shiver, his teeth chattering. A fever coming on, he realizes. Before long, his body simmers in the dampness. He must stay focused, he thinks desperately; he must methodically plan his escape.

  She comes down later with her usual tray. He isn’t interested in the food. What he wants are the drugs. Something to temper his pain. Something to stop the infection. “I need an antibiotic,” he insists.

  “You’ve been taking one.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  “Are you all right? You’re shaking.”

  “No, I’m not fucking all right. I’ve got an infection! I’ve got a broken fucking hand!”

  “Here.” When she hands him the pills, their skin touches. Hers is softer than his, and warm, and it alarms him. It alarms him because he was not ready for her. He was not ready to grab her wrist, her arm, her fucking neck. He was not ready to throttle her senseless. He takes the pills and drinks down a glass of water that tastes like rust. He wipes his mouth, looking at her, trying to figure out where she’s put the gun.

  “It’s right here,” she says, answering his thoughts. She takes out the gun, proficiently opens the cartridge, then snaps it back into place. She just stands there watching him. “I’m a very good shot, actually. In case you’re wondering.”

  “I don’t care about your gun,” he lies. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  She flashes a bitter smile. “Shucks.”

  “I’ll give you whatever you want. What is it you want? There must be something. Is it money? Tell me. I can get you money.”

  “No one can give me what I want.” She sulks.

  “Let me try.”

  “You’re not ready. You need to rest. You need to heal.”

  “Take me to a hospital.”

  “That’s not an option. At least you’re alive. Try to be grateful.”

  “Barely alive,” he grunts.

  “You look better today. Much better. I can see a big difference.”

  “I told you. I’m very sick. I’ll die here. My eye, for one—I can hardly see out of it. And my hand. If it’s not set properly, if it’s not put in a cast, I’ll never be able to practice again. I’ll never be able to deliver a baby. Is that what you want?”

  She says nothing to this.

  “Look how I’m sweating. I’m burning up! For Christ’s sake! Please! Out of human decency! Take me to a hospital!”

  “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to scare me.”

  “I don’t want to die!”

  “I have to go now.” She starts for the stairs.

  “Please don’t go,” he begs her. “Don’t leave me here.”

  “Try to eat. You need your strength.”

  “I’ll never eat for you.” He hurls the bowl of oatmeal after her. “I’ll never fucking eat!”

  He hears her upstairs, running across the squeaking wood planks out into the world beyond, a world he does not imagine he will ever see again. The hours twist and turn and his mind careens through a tunnel of desperation. She does not return for what seems like days, and he craves the drugs she’s been feeding him, craves them feverishly. His hatred of her taints his blood like a poison, yet she is his only way out of this awful place. His heart spins with dread. He must somehow convince her, he realizes, to let him out.

  He wakes hours later in a cold sweat. On the tray next to his bed there are several Baggies full of pills—unlabeled—he cannot possibly identify them—and a large bottle of water. She must have bought them on the street, he surmises. Or stolen them from the pharmacy. Even in his pain, he knows better than to take the pills without knowing what they are. Better to be especially cautious now, he thinks. Better to be ready for her. Even with only one good hand, he is angry enough to rip her throat out the first chance he gets. Something on the tray catches his eye and he fishes out a large manila envelope. Inside the envelope is a pair of glasses, cheap drugstore bifocals. He puts them on, relieved that his vision is slightly improved. There’s more inside the envelope: photographs. Pulling them out with curiosity, he finds himself looking at pictures of his wife and Simon Haas. They are naked on a bed in a motel room. Gasping, his mouth watering with rage, he witnesses their lovemaking in black and white, noting the variety of positions, a sordid erotic display. How could this be? he thinks. How could she do this?

  Examining the photographs, he feels light-headed. Weak. It’s not the sex that bothers him most, he realizes. It’s the expression on her face. The way her head is thrown back with her eyes closed and her mouth open as if a languorous sigh is coming out of it. An expression of utter joy, he decides, and one that he cannot recall ever seeing in his own bed.

  63

  ON MONDAY MORNING, Lydia unlocks the cellar door as if it were the cage of a wild animal. She sinks down each step, slowly, with trepidation, as if any moment the wild beast will break free of its chains and rip her to pieces with his teeth. Descending into the dampness, she can smell his awful smell. Like the stink of her dying father, he is not particularly fastidious when it comes to hygiene. It is deliberate, of course. He thinks it will keep her away from him. He doesn’t realize her level of tolerance. He doesn’t realize how important he is to her.

  She hears the wind. The wind is great. The wind is magnificent. The wind has filled her with spirit. Driving here in the early evening she’d marveled at the trees moving their black limbs all at once against the copper sky.

  “Our Father, who art in heaven,” she blurts out, going down the steps. “Hallowed be thy,” but she can’t seem to finish. He lies there in a fit of despair. He has not touched the water by his bed, nor has he eaten any of the food she’s left him. If things go on like this he will die, just as he has warned, and her plan will have been a failure. Lydia did not anticipate this kind of reaction. She does not know what
to say to him; she does not know how to cheer him up. If only he would take the pills. They were very expensive and they are very good; she has sampled several of them herself. Scattered across the floor are the photographs of Annie and Simon, ripped to shreds. As she nears him, she sees that he is crying, his whole body shaking. It puts her in mind of her father, at the very end, when he would lie there and weep with the TV blinking and all the wild pussy willows clawing at the windows.