The Tiny Wife

by Andrew Kaufman

  The rest of the day was spent measuring things. Stacey and I became obsessed with it. We measured the length of our bed, and the distance between the bedspread and the floor, and how far apart the curtains were when open. We measured our incisor teeth and the circumferences of our necks. We went outside and calculated the combined length of the cracks in the sidewalk in front of our house, and the average amount left unsmoked on discarded cigarette butts. We measured all that. We measured the next day too, and then we picked up Jasper from daycare and drove straight to St Matthew’s United Church. I parked across the street. Jasper started crying.

  “I guess I’d better go,” Stacey said. I measured the concern in her voice and agreed.

  Stacey leaned between the seats and kissed Jasper. This made him stop crying momentarily, but he started again when she got out. She shuffled over the curb and up the stairs of the church. The arms of her sweater and the cuffs of her pants were turned up several times. She looked back twice, both times at Jasper.

  The account of what followed is what Stacey told me happened. I have no reason to doubt that she told me anything but the truth, but I admit that I did not witness any of these events. Stacey told me that her initial impression was that the basement of St Matthew’s United Church had been chosen because the dingy linoleum floor, low ceiling, and florescent lighting made it the perfect place for a support group to meet. Folding chairs had been unfolded and placed in a circle. A stack of upturned Styrofoam cups sat beside a giant silver pot of drip-brewed coffee. The only thing missing was everybody else: Stacey had arrived exactly on time, but even Detective Phillips was nowhere to be seen.

  Stacey filled a white Styrofoam cup and stirred in sugar with a brown plastic stick. To the right of the coffee pot were a fan of name tags and several Sharpie magic markers. Stacey uncapped a marker, but as the tip touched the paper she paused. An inkblot formed on the top left corner of the name tag. When she started writing again, she did not write Stacey, she wrote Calculator. As she placed the sticker on her chest, she heard someone coming down the stairs.

  The steps were heavy and quick and belonged to a woman. When she reached the bottom of the stairs she did not stop to introduce herself. She took the folding chair from the top of the circle and dragged it across the floor to the west wall, where a small window near the top looked onto the street. She stood on the chair and stared out the window. Several other sets of footsteps went by, and then she breathed. She jumped off the chair and joined Stacey by the coffee.

  Stacey pretended to focus on her name tag so she could study the woman without looking directly at her. Her clothes were wrinkled, ripped, and dirty. She looked very tired and smelled of stale sweat. It took several moments before Stacey recognized her as the woman who’d stood four behind her, who’d handed an opened envelope, the kind you’d send a letter in, to the thief. The thief had taken it without question.

  She looked at Stacey’s chest, uncapped a marker, and wrote Envelope on a name tag. She put it on. “Where is everybody?” she asked.

  “Beats me,” Stacey said.

  They sat next to each other in the circle of unfolded folding chairs. Ten minutes passed, and then Detective Phillips came down the stairs. He smelled of cigarettes. Seeing their name tags, he stepped to the table, wrote Front Door Key, and placed it on his chest. He poured a coffee and joined them.

  Next down the steps was Jennifer Layone, then Sandra Morrison and finally Grace Gainsfield. David Bishop came in five minutes later, and then Diane Wagner five minutes after that. The seven of them sat in a circle among the thirteen chairs. They waited another fifteen minutes. No one spoke and they all looked at the floor.

  “I guess…” Detective Phillips said, “we should start?”

  “Could I?” Jennifer Layone asked.

  Everyone looked up from the floor and directly at her. She was in her mid-twenties, wore thick-framed black glasses, and had shoulder-length blonde hair. Her skirt was long and ruffled and her boots were second-hand.

  “This is gonna sound very, very strange,” she said.

  ♦

  On Thursday 22nd February, one day after the robbery, Jennifer Layone was searching underneath the couch for the remote control when she found God. He looked almost exactly like she’d expected him to look – long white beard, robe, sandals, the whole thing. But he was very dirty. It was dusty underneath her couch, and since she was doing laundry anyway, she took him with her to the laundromat.

  Jennifer put him in a washing machine. She was running low on quarters, so she washed him with a load of jeans. She must have forgotten to check the pockets because when she took God out of the washing machine, he was covered with little bits of Kleenex. This disappointed God. He wouldn’t look Jennifer in the eyes and he left the laundromat without saying goodbye. Now she was no closer to God than she’d been before the robbery.

  ♦

  Jennifer Layone concluded her story and everyone was silent. At the back of the room was a radiator, which clicked.

  “The thing is,” Jennifer continued, “ever since that moment I’ve been looking for him. Not all the time, but with whatever else I’m doing, whether I’m at work or downtown, I’m looking for him. I honestly expect to see him sitting at the back of the bus, or between files in the file cabinet, or in the refrigerator behind the milk. And even though he never is, that’s enough for me. It’s all I need.”

  Jennifer looked down at her hands. The clicking of the radiator continued. The woman who’d written Envelope on her name tag stood up. Her folding chair slid backward and fell over. “That’s it?” she yelled. “That’s all that happened to you?”

  Then, as quickly as she started, she ceased to speak. She froze and looked toward the stairs. Everyone turned to see what she was looking at, and it was at this moment that a lion ran down the stairs and into the basement.

  The lion stopped in front of the table where the coffee was. It licked its black lips with its pink tongue. It sniffed the air, turned, looked directly at the woman whose name tag read Envelope, and leaped toward her.

  ♦

  Three days after the robbery and three months and five days after she’d left her boyfriend of six years, Dawn Michaels was walking across the living room of her newly rented apartment when she felt a searing pain at the bottom of her leg. She doubled over and clutched her calf with both hands. She rolled on the ground. The pain was unlike anything she had ever felt before, and it caused her to scream. She kept her hands around her calf and her eyes closed. The pain was coming from the lion tattoo just above her ankle.

  Dawn had gotten the tattoo almost exactly three months earlier.

  It had been a way to commemorate the newly discovered courage that had allowed her to leave her boyfriend. It had just finished healing completely. Blood soaked into her sock and then the tattoo leaped off her skin.

  Its smell was musky, and for a moment she remembered a circus her grandmother had taken her to when she was six. The lion’s eyes were dark and its slit-shaped pupils were frightening. It wasn’t colored the green and gold of her tattoo, but in true-to-life yellows and oranges and black. It grew and grew until it was full-sized. The lion stood in front of her, its mane moving with the breeze coming in the living room window. Dawn could feel its sour breath on her face. The lion narrowed its eyes. It came nearer. Dawn turned and ran. She ran as fast as she could and the lion chased her. Neither had stopped moving since.

  ♦

  “This way,” Stacey yelled. They ran through the circle of chairs, and through a door at the back that led to a large hospital-sized kitchen. Stacey shut the door and put her weight against it. The lion charged and the door kicked but she managed to keep it closed.

  “Over there,” Stacey said. She nodded toward a back door at the far end of the kitchen and continued to keep both her hands and all her weight against the door. “What’s your name?”

  “Dawn.”

  “I’m Stacey.”

  The lion’s right paw came thr
ough the gap between the door and the frame, claws extended.

  “You need to run now, Dawn,” Stacey said.

  Dawn ran. The lion crashed into the door and knocked Stacey to the ground. It growled as it leaped through the kitchen. Ignoring Stacey completely, it raced out of the church. Stacey stood up. She ran a hand over her clothes and walked back to the meeting room.

  “Should we…” Detective Phillips started. He paused.

  “Let’s meet again,” Stacey suggested. “How’s tomorrow?”

  Those in attendance nodded vigorously.

  ∨ The Tiny Wife ∧

  Six

  Not everyone inside Branch #117 at the time of the robbery met a bitter or tragic end. There were several cases in which the manifestations were neither devastating nor crushing. Where, in the end, little changed. Such was the case of Sam Livingstone, who had recently been promoted to assistant manager in the bank. Although he had taken the afternoon of the robbery off, he’d gone back to work the next day.

  Sam sat twirling clockwise in his chair. He did not know why he’d been promoted. He didn’t feel he deserved it. Ever since he’d received the promotion he’d sat in his new chair, behind his new desk, in his new office, completely unable to get anything done. Sam shut his eyes and imagined he was underwater. When he opened them, he was. Everything was underwater. Exactly the same, just underwater. His phone rang. He picked up the receiver and noticed how much lighter it felt. “Sam Livingstone,” Sam said.

  “Sam?” asked Tim. Tim and Sam were promoted at the same time. “This is gonna sound – ”

  “My office is underwater too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are we supposed to do?”

  Something crashed into Sam’s office door. “Hold on,” he said. “I gotta call you back.”

  Sam leaped from the chair, swam over his desk, and unlocked the door. Sam’s new boss bobbed in the hallway.

  “Why was this door locked?”

  “I needed to concentrate.”

  “I see,” she said. “What are you working on?”

  “The Barkhouse matter.”

  “The Barkhouse matter? I thought you were on Samuelson.”

  “Nope, still Barkhouse.”

  “I need that done.”

  “Finishing it now.”

  Sam’s boss nodded, swiveled on the carpet, and swam down the hall. Sam looked at his watch. It was 11.30 a.m. After lunch Sam realized he could float. He floated up to the ceiling. It was fantastic; it felt like flying.

  Sam swam out of his office. He did a long, graceful somersault from the ceiling down to the photocopier and then back up to the ceiling. The tellers pretended not to see him.

  Around 3.30 p.m. Sam swam back into his office. He locked his door and sat down in his chair. An hour later he’d finished the Barkhouse matter and emailed it off to his boss.

  Just after he hit ‘send’ Sam kicked something under his desk. He looked down and, for the first time, noticed a big plug stuck in the floor. Being curious, he pulled on it. The plug didn’t budge. He grabbed it with both hands and pulled again. The plug came free and Sam fell back into his chair. The water started draining. In ten minutes, all the water was gone.

  ♦

  Nine days after the robbery, while sitting alone at a table for two in a crowded restaurant, Sandra Morrison became convinced that her heart was a bomb that would go off in ten minutes. She knew the notion was ludicrous, yet her palms began to sweat and her cheeks flushed. Her heart beat faster, which made her worry all the more.

  Sandra checked her watch and realized that three minutes had passed since her discovery. She pictured herself exploding: her blood splashed on the wispy yellow curtains and soaked into the gray fabric of the dress worn by the woman to her right. Lumps of her heart and brain landed in bowls of the daily special. Her heart beat even faster.

  Sandra, once more, checked her watch. Three minutes remained. She could hear her heartbeat. She knew a decision had to be made. She was sure that if she didn’t get out of the restaurant she would explode, killing everyone around her. But she was just as convinced that getting up and running would make it real – that her heart would explode only if she gave in to her fear that it would.

  She looked at her watch. There was one minute left. She watched the second hand sweep. She stood up. She sat down. She pushed out her chair and took two steps away, and then she ran back to it. She shut her eyes. She grabbed on to the table and ground her teeth together. “Everybody down!” she shouted, and then nothing happened.

  ∨ The Tiny Wife ∧

  BOOK TWO

  ∨ The Tiny Wife ∧

  Seven

  On the evening of Wednesday 28th February, seven days after the robbery, there were many reasons not to go to couples counseling: it had been a struggle to get Jasper to bed and we’d just succeeded in doing so; we were both tired, and talking about our marriage, which had not been on solid footings even before the robbery, seemed repetitive and counterproductive. We were weary from two years of looking into his room late at night and being convinced he wasn’t breathing, from his not sleeping and our not sleeping and the sleep training. We were drained from the who’s-not-carrying-their-weight conversations and the constantly trying to decide whether we were going to have another one or not, and asking ourselves daily if we were good parents and whether we were still in love with each other. But the babysitter was already at the door. So we went.

  Our counselor was an elderly woman named Jeanne Roberts, whose long fingers, gray shoulder-length hair, and fleshy ears, which were slightly elongated at the top, gave her a distinctly elfin appearance. Three years ago, when we’d first started seeing her, that she’d looked so much like an elf had been endearing. On several occasions it had greatly contributed to our sticking with it. But on Wednesday 28th February, with Stacey having lost 28 millimeters overnight, 83 millimeters overall, she just seemed stupid.

  The three of us sat in her tiny office. I watched Stacey’s feet dangle above the carpet. Fifteen minutes into our hour-long session not one of us had spoken.

  “Stacey, you look sad today,” Jeanne said, finally. She did not directly mention how much Stacey had shrunk, though it was obvious. Stacey still refused to buy new clothes, so what she wore was many sizes too big.

  “Of course I am,” Stacey said.

  “Of course,” I repeated.

  “David, do you have something you want to say?” asked Jeanne.

  “No. Sorry. I’m okay.”

  “Doesn’t seem like you’re okay,” Jeanne said.

  “Well, of course she’s tired,” I said. There was more anger in my voice than I wanted there to be and I could have left it at that, but I didn’t. “She’s always tired. I don’t get to be tired.”

  “Direct your comments to Stacey, not to me.”

  “You’re mad because I said I’m tired?”

  “She expects everything and gives nothing.”

  “Talk to Stacey…”

  “I can’t believe you’re going here.”

  “I’m literally carrying you…”

  “How long have you been waiting to use that?”

  “And you can’t even be there when I’ve had a bad day. I’m not even allowed to have a bad day.”

  “David, are you trying to say that you feel underappreciated?”

  “That’s because every day is a bad day with you. David, you’re the reason I’m like this!”

  “David?”

  I said nothing. I would not look up from the floor.

  “I’m the one who’s shrinking!” Stacey yelled. “And all you can do is whine about how hard your life is!”

  “So it’s my own fault that you’ve put me at the bottom of your list of priorities?”

  “You act like none of this was your decision! The house, the kid – all of it. I need someone who can help me. I need a partner. I need someone who can just be nice to me,” Stacey said.

 
She said this quietly. She didn’t say anything for the rest of the hour, and neither did I.

  ∨ The Tiny Wife ∧

  Eight

  That night I woke up just after three o’clock in the morning. I don’t know what woke me. It wasn’t Jasper. I was awake, and in the absence of his screaming I became irrationally angry at him. Of all the nights for him to sleep through, why did it have to be the one that I couldn’t? There was only silence, and the silence continued. I looked to my right and Stacey wasn’t there.

  I pulled the sheets off the bed and I couldn’t see her. I lifted the pillow but she wasn’t underneath. I got out of the bed and looked under it, fearing that she had already shrunken away to nothing.

  I don’t know what I’d thought would happen, until then. I may have never really thought it through. I’d imagined she would just keep shrinking, getting smaller and smaller. Maybe we’d have to set up a microscope on the kitchen table or something, but she’d still be around. We’d always have her. She’d just be smaller.

  Without getting dressed I rushed out of the bedroom and down the stairs. On the second landing I stopped: I could see her sleeping on the couch. My heart beat quickly. I was out of breath. I didn’t know if I should try and get her to come back to bed, so I played it safe and left her. The moment I was back in bed, the phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh,” the voice said, “it’s you.”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s me,” he said, and he did not have to say any more.

  “Who do you think you are?” I started. “You fucking, goddamn – ”

  “Hey, hey, hey,” he interrupted. His voice was calm and reassuring. “Listen, maybe you should just, you know, listen, for once. Your wife tells me you’re not so good at that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Calm down. Relax. I’ll quit baiting you. Ask me anything you want and I’ll answer.”