The Tiny Wife

by Andrew Kaufman

  According to the math, this would be the last morning she’d have with us. Tonight she would not just shrink, but disappear. This was information that I did not have, at the time. She hadn’t told me that she’d cracked the code, and that she knew she was about to shrink away.

  I still don’t know why she didn’t tell me.

  Stacey was filled with sadness that morning. She looked up at Jasper and saw this sadness in his eyes. Quickly, she sat up and forced herself to smile.

  “Good morning, baby!” she screamed.

  “Mommy!”

  “Wanna do a trick?”

  “Ya!” Jasper said. Hopping with both feet together, he rotated clockwise.

  “Okay, but you have to be careful with Mommy.”

  “Careful with Mommy.”

  “Very careful – okay?”

  “Careful with Mommy,” Jasper said, nodding. He squished up his face to show that he was concentrating.

  “Hold out your finger,” Stacey said. Jasper extended his index finger. “A little higher, baby. A little higher.”

  “Higher,” Jasper repeated. He raised his finger and moved it over the couch. Stacey lifted her hands over her head and grabbed onto it.

  “A little lower, baby,” Stacey said. Jasper lowered his finger. Stacey reached around it and locked her fingers together. “Now, let’s go!”

  Jasper started to run. Stacey held on tightly. The wind pushed back her hair. Her body swayed to the right and they rounded the corner, into the kitchen. She felt like she was flying and free, but then Jasper came to a sudden stop and the momentum swung her forward. Stacey couldn’t keep her grip. She flew through the air, landing awkwardly on the black and white linoleum tiles.

  “Stacey!” I yelled. I ran around the kitchen island, stopped in front of her, and leaned down. Jasper began to cry. Stacey sat up and pushed my hands away. She looked at her son.

  “Cheerios?” she asked.

  “Cheerios!” Jasper yelled, his tears suddenly gone.

  I filled an orange plastic bowl with the last of the cereal. Stacey climbed up and onto the table. She tried to hide how heavily she favored her left arm. She took a grape with both hands, closed her eyes, and bit into it.

  “Do you have to do that?” I asked.

  “Do what?” she asked back, but with all the grape in her mouth, her words came out like: “Hoo vut?”

  “Hoo vut? Hoo vut?” Jasper said, imitating.

  “What if he slipped?”

  “Don’t overreact.”

  “Hoo vut!” Jasper repeated. He hopped up and down on his chair and then lost his footing. His left arm waved as he regained his balance and knocked over the milk, which swept Stacey’s feet out from under her.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay,” Stacey said, but it was clear that she wasn’t. Jasper’s cries became screams, which grew louder and louder.

  “I’m okay, baby.”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “Okay, let’s go!” I said. I clapped my hands together. “Time for school!”

  “No!” Jasper said. He repeated this word with increasing vigor as I carried him to the front hallway. “No. No. No!” he said. I put on his boots and his coat and his hat.

  “Just leave him,” Stacey called.

  “I’m going to carry you,” I said, as I scooped up my son, “like a sack of potatoes.”

  Jasper laughed. I put him over my shoulder.

  “Bye. Bye. Mom. Meey,” Jasper said as he hung over my shoulder. He waved to Stacey in the kitchen. The half-eaten grape was still in her hands. She listened to the front door close, and then suddenly everything was quiet.

  ∨ The Tiny Wife ∧

  Thirteen

  That afternoon I stood in aisle six of the Sobey’s on Dupont with Stacey inside the breast pocket of my jacket. She could not see out of it. Inside it was dark and stuffy and no matter how carefully I moved, it was impossible for her to keep her balance.

  “I don’t see them,” I said.

  I heard her take a deep breath, and then there was a pause. I’m almost certain she was crying. “It’s the yellow box,” she said, her voice muffled by the fabric.

  “Yes. I know it’s the yellow box. It isn’t there. They must be out of it.”

  “They aren’t out of Cheerios.”

  “Well, it looks like they are.”

  “I’m coming up.”

  “Hold on,” I told her. At the end of the aisle were two college students buying the breakfast cereals their parents wouldn’t let them eat as kids. I waited until they were gone and then I looked to my left. “Okay,” I said, “now.”

  Several days ago, I’d made a series of cuts into the fabric of my jacket, which led from the bottom of the pocket all the way to my right shoulder. Using these like a ladder, Stacey climbed out of the pocket and reached my shoulder before anyone else came into the aisle.

  “For Christ’s sake, David,” she said. “It’s right there.”

  “Where?”

  “There.”

  Following the end of her finger I saw the yellow box of Cheerios. “Oh yes. There they are. Thank you. Do you need help back?” I asked, but by then she’d already returned to the darkness of the pocket.

  ♦

  While I unloaded the groceries, Stacey climbed over the radio, up the heating vent, and onto the dashboard. Her brow was sweaty, and her tiny chest rapidly rose and fell. I climbed into the driver’s seat and shut the door.

  “Not safe up there,” I told her. Stacey rolled her eyes. I fastened my seat belt with more force than was necessary.

  As we drove out of the parking lot, Stacey sat with her legs in a V, leaning slightly forward with her palms pressed flat against the dashboard to keep her balance. Her hair fell over her face. She swayed slightly to the radio. Traffic was heavy, but it was okay because Stacey looked happy and lighthearted, like she used to look when we’d first started dating. The moment I parked in front of Jasper’s daycare she became sad again.

  “Why don’t you just ride in my pocket?” I asked.

  She shook her head and I had to resist the urge to pick her up and carry her with me. Three steps from the car I stopped, sighed deeply, and turned around. Opening the driver’s side door, I rolled down the window three inches.

  “Sorry,” I said, because she’d already told me that this made her feel like the family dog.

  ♦

  Stacey sat on the dashboard and took off her shoes and put them back on. She worried that she’d made a horrible mistake – that she should be spending her last hours doing everything she never did, instead of trying to make everything as normal as possible. Her breathing became rapid and shallow. She looked out the window and focused on the gently falling snow, and she regained her calm. Then she saw Dawn running east on College.

  Dawn did not look well. Her hair was messy, her shoes untied and her face unwashed. But far more disturbing was how tired she appeared.

  Stacey ran along the dashboard, jumped down the steering column and straddled the signal arm. She shimmied to the end of it and used both hands to flash the headlights.

  “Dawn!” Stacey yelled. “In here! In here!”

  Stacey’s voice was small but it carried out the two inches of open window. Dawn scurried inside the car. She curled into a ball and huddled in front of the driver’s seat with her back against the pedals. She looked up at Stacey and then closed her eyes tightly.

  The lion rounded the corner. It stopped. Elevating its nose, it sniffed and then walked toward the car.

  “Do you see him?” Dawn whispered, her eyes still closed.

  “I do,” Stacey replied.

  When the lion was parallel with the car, it stopped, raised its head, and sniffed again. It lowered its head and sniffed the concrete. It stepped slowly toward the car. It sniffed the bottom of the door up to the handle.

  “Don’t move. Don’t say a thing,” Stacey whispered.

  The lion’s claws struck the window. Stacey was knocked forward, an
d she struggled to regain her balance on the signal arm. She looked up and saw the lion’s paws pressed against the glass. Its breath fogged the window in increasingly larger circles.

  “Don’t let it get in,” Dawn whispered.

  Looking down, Stacey saw the keys in the ignition. The lion pounced again, rocking the car. Taking a deep breath, Stacey let herself fall from the signal arm. She fell headfirst, reached out and caught the ring of the key chain as she passed it. She pushed the bright red panic button with her feet; the car’s headlights flashed and the horn honked, and then the lion ran away.

  After a while, Dawn rose up until her eyes were just above the dashboard. She looked at College Street. She looked left and right and then left again. She turned herself around and slouched into the driver’s seat. She held out her hand, which Stacey stepped onto.

  “Who’s left?” Dawn asked.

  “Well,” Stacey said, “there’s me. And there’s you.”

  “Well, we won’t go like Grace Gainsfield,” Dawn said.

  “No, we will not go like Grace Gainsfield.”

  The two women were silent for several moments.

  “I have to go,” Dawn said. She set Stacey on the dashboard and then opened the driver’s side door. “Have to keep moving,” she said. Dawn got out of the car and ran west, and Stacey did not urge her to stay.

  ∨ The Tiny Wife ∧

  Fourteen

  Eight days after the robbery, Grace Gainsfield, who had given the thief a small pressed flower that she used as a bookmark, had woken up in cold wet sheets and discovered that her husband had turned into a snowman. Getting out of bed, she stepped in a puddle on the floor. She looked back at her husband. His head was melting faster then the rest of his body; the left side of his face was lopsided, its mouth and eye sockets grotesquely elongated and droopy. The phone rang and, in shock, she answered it.

  “Hello?”

  “Did I call too early?” her mother-in-law asked.

  “No, no. I was up.”

  “Can I speak to Daniel?”

  “Um. He isn’t here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Work.”

  “At 6.30?”

  “You know Daniel.”

  “Are you still coming on Thursday?”

  “Thursday?”

  “For dinner.”

  “Oh, yes,” Grace said. “Absolutely.” She looked down at the floor. The jeans she wore yesterday were at the edge of the puddle, and water had started wicking up the left pant leg. “Of course we’ll be there.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll have him call you.”

  “Thank you. Goodbye then.”

  “Bye.”

  Grace set the handset back on the cradle. She lifted it up and slammed it back down. She did this three times. She did not look at the bed; she looked at the puddle beneath it. She counted the drops of water falling into it. She noticed that the drops were getting bigger and that the interval between them was rapidly decreasing.

  Quickly, without looking at her husband, Grace ran from the room and down the stairs, her wet feet leaving prints on the hardwood floor.

  The sun was shining through the large bay window, which made the snowman melt with even greater speed. Grace returned from the kitchen carrying a black plastic garbage bag. She took a deep breath and then slid the bag underneath the snowman. Holding the bag tight, she pulled the snowman off the bed. It landed on the floor with considerable force but remained intact. She pulled it out into the hallway and down the stairs to the basement.

  A large white freezer sat against the west wall, humming loudly. Grace emptied it all on the concrete floor. Only then did she realize that the snowman wouldn’t fit. Water had already turned the concrete floor a darker gray and begun to pool on the plastic beneath the snowman’s head. She ran back up to the kitchen. She collected a large knife, a small paring knife, a roll of paper towels, and the rest of the box of black plastic garbage bags. Carrying these things with her, she ran back down to the basement. She picked up the long knife, twirled it in her hand, and, with great force, severed the snowman’s head.

  It took several attempts. Her arm was tired before she separated it from the torso. She lifted the head off the black plastic garbage bag and set it inside the freezer.

  Changing her grip on the knife, Grace used a stabbing motion to separate the bottom of the snowman from the middle. This she cut into smaller chunks. Ice sprayed everywhere. Her shirt became damp. She hacked the middle until it, too, was in many smaller bits. She placed all of it inside the freezer. Then, gently, she crossed the sticks-for-arms on top of the pieces of the snowman and closed the freezer.

  That evening, Grace began to collect snow. She collected snow from the hoods of cars, front porches, and church steps. She collected snow that had been walked on by many, by none, and only by children. She put out a tray and collected snow that had never touched the ground. She carefully labeled each sample and took it inside, where she held her experiments.

  She applied heat and studied the snow as it turned to water. She watched the water turn into vapor. She froze the vapor and studied it as it turned to ice. She worked all night. On Friday she called in sick for work. All day Saturday and all day Sunday she continued to study the snow in all of its states. On Monday she called in sick for work again and continued her experiments.

  Just after noon her work was interrupted by a persistent knock on the front door. When she opened it, she saw two detectives, an older one and a younger one. The older one was holding up his badge and spoke first.

  “Are you Grace Gainsfield?”

  “Yes.”

  “May we come in?” asked the younger one.

  Grace backed away from her door. She sat at her kitchen table. The detectives stood. “Are you aware that your husband has been reported missing?” the older one asked.

  “No, I wasn’t. Thank you.”

  “He’s been missing for five days now,” said the younger one. “The report was made by Rebecca Gainsfield. Do you know Rebecca Gainsfield?”

  “That’s his mother.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “It seems a little odd that you weren’t the one who reported him missing,” said the younger one.

  “Do you know the whereabouts of your husband?”

  “Yes. He’s in the basement in the freezer,” Grace answered. The detectives exchanged a look.

  “Can we see him?”

  Grace nodded. She opened the basement door and walked down the stairs. The detectives followed. She opened the freezer. The detectives looked inside. The older one nodded sadly, and the younger one looked at him.

  “Okay, thank you, Mrs. Gainsfield,” the older detective said. His voice was gentle and sad. The younger one didn’t say anything at all. Leaving the freezer open, Grace showed the detectives to the door.

  Grace had many more experiments planned, but she was suddenly quite tired. She made tea but didn’t drink it as she sat in their bedroom, looking out the bay window. It began to snow. The snow collected on the windowsill and the tree branches and the sidewalk in front of their house. It seemed unstoppable and infinite. Just as it was getting dark outside, she walked back down to the basement, pulled the freezer from the wall, and tugged the cord from the socket.

  The freezer stopped humming. She opened it and climbed inside. She closed the lid.

  It was quite cold inside, but the chill eventually dissipated, and the snowman began to melt. The water rose. Soon she could feel it on her shoulders. She closed her eyes as it covered her face.

  ∨ The Tiny Wife ∧

  Fifteen

  The construction paper paintings masking-taped to the wall swayed as I walked past them and down the hallway to Jasper’s daycare. When he saw me, he did something he’d never done before: he found me more interesting than a percussion instrument. The tambourine fell to the floor as he ran toward me. I opened my arms but he pushed past them, pulled open the breast pocket of my tweed jacket
, and looked inside. “Mommy?” he whispered. “She’s in the car,” I said.

  He ran away, picked up the tambourine, and rejoined ‘The Wheels on the Bus’. When music class was finished, I helped him into his coat and outside he ran to the car, where he stood in front of the passenger door, jumping up and down.

  “Mommy hug, mommy hug, mommy hug,” he screamed.

  “Step back, baby,” I said. Jasper continued bouncing. I lifted him up, set him on the sidewalk, and opened the door. He ran and leaped. The upper half of his body landed on the passenger seat but his lower half didn’t quite make it. His legs stuck out of the car, his yellow boots kicking in the air, like he was swimming. I looked up to the dashboard to share the scene with Stacey, but she wasn’t there.

  I picked up Jasper and got several kicks to the chest, but Stacey wasn’t beneath him. I put him back on the sidewalk and searched under the passenger seat. I looked under the floor mats, the emergency brake, the pedals. I could not find my wife. On my hands and knees I searched under the passenger seat and the driver’s seat. Sippy-cups and toy trains and old newspapers were thrown to the sidewalk. I still couldn’t find her. I looked in the back seat and saw her standing on top of the headrest, smiling down at our son while holding her index finger to her lips.

  “Jesus Christ, Stacey!” I yelled.

  Jasper began to cry. I got out of the car, picked him up and opened the rear door. Stacey climbed down from the headrest and jumped the last couple of inches, landing awkwardly on a seat belt. I swung Jasper into his chair and fought with the straps. Then I stopped, breathed deep, and got down to eye level with him.

  “Mommy hug?” I asked.

  “Mommy hug!” he squealed. I extended my open palm and Stacey climbed onto it, although we didn’t make eye contact, and I lifted her up. Jumping off my hand, she landed on Jasper’s chest and climbed up his ski jacket. At the Y formed by the top of the zipper, she raised her arms and grabbed as much of Jasper’s throat as she could.

  I shut the door and walked around the car. After I’d pulled into traffic, I turned the rearview mirror on a 45-degree angle so I could see both of them. Stacey had climbed up to Jasper’s shoulder and was speaking into his ear.