The Wife's Tale

by Lori Lansens

  “Did he give you money?” Mary asked, prepared to feel self-righteous.

  “I gave him money. I’ve been paying him back. My boyfriend owns this place. He’s loaded.”

  “When did Gooch loan you money?”

  “Ancient debt.” Heather shifted in her chair, fiddling with her necklace. “Look, Mary, I’m sorry you came all this way, but whatever’s going on between the two of you is between the two of you. You should really go home and work it out.”

  “He’s gone, Heather.” Mary bit her lip to keep from sneering. “You know that.”

  Heather looked at her blankly. “Gone where?”

  Mary waited for the tell, but Heather’s lovely eyes shone with such genuine concern that instead of catching her in a lie, Mary found herself the bearer of her own bad news. “He’s left. He’s left me. He won on the scratch-and-win lottery. A million, for all I know. He didn’t say. And he left me.”

  “He won money?” Heather blinked rapidly.

  “He sent a letter in the mail. He said he won on the lottery. He said he needed time to think. He said he’d be in touch.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I found the restaurant receipts and I thought … I didn’t know.”

  “Wow. Have you called my mother?” Heather asked.

  “I don’t want her to worry.”

  “You don’t want her to know,” Heather corrected her. “Besides, he wouldn’t have gone there. He hates Jack.”

  “So where do I go?”

  “Home. Go home.”

  Mary shook her head. “He talked about a place in Myrtle Beach. This golf resort he always wanted to go to. He wanted to see the White House. The monuments in Washington. Las Vegas? You know how he likes to gamble.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “He could be in Las Vegas blowing it all right now. Or that big casino on the reserve near Montreal.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “Or a Caribbean cruise. He really wanted to go on that cruise I won last year.”

  “Why didn’t you go?”

  Out of habit Mary cast her eyes down, but told herself to look up. “If you can think of anything he might have said? A clue about where he might have gone?”

  “If he said he needed time, why don’t you just give him time?” Heather checked the hands on the wall clock above their heads. “I’m sure it’ll work out, Mary. Or if it doesn’t, maybe it’s for the best.”

  For the best. The doctors had said the same thing about her babies. She was equally offended by the suggestion that her marriage was better off dead.

  “I like the red,” Heather said. “Plays up your green eyes.”

  Mary nodded, looking out the window. A sharply dressed old man, whom she might have described as toady had she been of a different nature, let himself into the restaurant, and Heather excused herself to go to him even before he snapped his fingers. She allowed the old man to kiss her neck before she whispered something into his misshapen ear. The old man glanced at Mary dismissively, then headed back through the swinging doors to the kitchen. A cost. To everything.

  Heather returned, flushed and guilty, not explaining. She didn’t sit down, making it clear they were done. “Well,” she said.

  Wheezing with the effort of untangling her legs from the cage of bistro chair and table, Mary stood.

  “God, Mary! What happened to you?” Heather asked, as if whatever had happened had just occurred.

  “I cut my foot.”

  “Look at you. You can barely get up off the chair.”

  “I’ve put on a few since the last time I saw you.”

  “My God, Mary. How could you just let yourself go like that?”

  The first thought that came to Mary’s mind was Don’t take any moral high ground with me, Heather Gooch. You’re a drug addict. But she said the second thing, which was “I know.”

  Heather glanced at the kitchen’s swinging door, lowering her volume. She softened, ushering Mary to the door. “If I hear from him, I’ll let you know.”

  Mary stopped her, “Take my cellphone number.”

  Heather keyed the digits into the tiny phone she kept in her purse as Mary recited the numbers. “Don’t worry. He said he’d be in touch, didn’t he?”

  “What if it’s too late?”

  “For what?”

  For me, Mary thought.

  Heather stood silent, watching the massive form of Mary Gooch disappear through the restaurant door. Outside, buffeted by the crowds on the sidewalk, Mary made her way back to the Ford, discomfited by her unnatural state of awareness but sure that if she wanted to find Gooch, she had to look up from now on. She felt she’d been walking for hours, and worried that she’d gone the wrong way.

  Heather’s shouting was swallowed by the hubbub of the street. The silver pendant bounced on her breasts as she jogged through the crowds. Impeded by her killer heels and her history of smoking, she was completely out of breath when, within earshot, she called, “Mary! Stop!”

  Mary did, grateful for the order, and the sisters-in-law stood apart in the crowd, each with lovely long hair and pretty eyes. Heather much taller with her heels, Mary the span of three people. Drug addict. Fat lady. Mary blamed science, brain chemistry, anabolic hormones, ghrelin, leptin, genetic weakness, the media, but stopped when she felt her ancestors, those Baldoon County pioneers whose very survival had depended on personal responsibility, roll in their graves.

  “Jimmy went to Golden Hills,” Heather breathed. “He wanted to see Mum.”

  Blotting out the street noise, focusing on Heather’s blue eyes, Mary took the information in. “He’s in California?”

  “I don’t know if he’s still there but that’s where he was going. I haven’t heard from him since he hitchhiked up here last week to get his cheque from the Lotto office.”

  “He put twenty-five thousand dollars in the account,” Mary said. “How much did he win?”

  Heather shrugged. “He wouldn’t tell me. All he would say was enough.”

  Enough, Mary repeated to herself.

  “He had the ten grand I paid him back, too.”

  “Gooch loaned you ten thousand dollars?”

  “It was a long time ago, Mary. The inheritance money from Dad.”

  “Have you talked to your mother?”

  “You know I don’t talk to my mother.”

  “Should I call her?”

  “She’d just lie for him. Like I did.”

  “I need to see him.”

  “If you want to see Jimmy, then go. Just go.”

  “Just go to California? Show up on Eden’s doorstep? ‘I’m here. Where’s Gooch?’”

  “Unless you’ve got something better. I heard they moved a few years ago. Have you got the new address?”

  Mary nodded. “Twenty-four Willow Drive, Golden Hills. I still send Christmas cards.”

  “You’ve got money. Go get on a plane.”

  “I’ve never been on an airplane.”

  “That speaks for itself.”

  “It does,” Mary agreed, unsure what her sister-in-law meant.

  Heather glanced around the street, possibly to ensure that she was not being watched by one of her old associates, before she said, “I want to show you something.” She lifted the silver pendant, which Mary saw now was a locket, opening it with her long, polished nails, tilting it toward the street light to reveal the picture inside. It was Gooch, at sixteen, Mary guessed—cruelly handsome, that wavy hair, that cocky grin.

  “My son,” Heather said. “He found me last summer through one of those agencies. His name is James. He’s nearly tall as Jimmy. Can you believe that?”

  The boy was his uncle’s spitting image. “I’m happy for you, Heather. Does Gooch know?”

  Heather nodded. “He met him.”

  Mary felt sparks, some ancient thing resurrected.

  “They’ve shot hoops at the park down the street a few times. He’s in medical school. He lives two bloc
ks from me, Mary. What are the odds?”

  That stabbing feeling. Not hunger. It was Mary’s turn to say, “Wow.”

  “I’ve got your number if I hear from him.” Heather lingered, appraising Mary’s face in the blue street light. “I hope you get what you want, Mary.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But if you don’t, you know, you have to push on.”

  Mary felt thirsty, and thought of Orin’s pragmatic suggestion: “Get a drink from the hose and push on.”

  Pressing down the sidewalk, processing the new data, Mary was startled by the ringing of her cellphone in her purse. Proud Mary indeed, she thought, trembling.

  “Mrs. Gooch?” the voice on the other end inquired.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Joyce. From St. John’s.”

  Mary glanced around for a bench, sure she should be sitting to hear the rest of the call; finding none, she leaned against an antiques shop window. “My mother?” she asked quietly.

  “Mrs. Gooch, I thought you should know that Mrs. Shrewsbury passed away tonight.”

  “Mrs. Shrewsbury?”

  “Roberta Shrewsbury?” The other old woman. “Why are you calling me?”

  “Our new receptionist saw you talking with her earlier in the common room, and since we can’t reach her next of kin … I didn’t know you knew Mrs. Shrewsbury.”

  “I don’t.”

  “But she asked for you.”

  “For me?”

  “She asked for you before she died. Her final words were ‘Tell Mary I love her.’ I assumed that meant you.”

  “No.”

  “There’s no Mary listed in her relations.”

  “Some other Mary.” Thinking of Heather’s renting of her name, she added, “We’re everywhere.”

  Roberta Shrewsbury was part of someone else’s rule of three, like The Greek with his mother in Athens—a distinctly separate triangle of grief—but Mary felt sorrow at her loss.

  As the mystery of Gooch’s disappearance had been somewhat unravelled, Mary knew, or at least felt hopeful, that she might find her husband of twenty-five years in California. Livin’ the dream. It would not be Gooch who completed the trio. She and Irma were running neck and neck.

  Forgiveness. The old woman, Mrs. Shrewsbury, had forgiven her Mary, whoever she was—daughter or sister, Mary guessed—and had seemed lifted even as she’d mourned the wasted time. Was that all anyone really wanted before they died? To forgive? To be forgiven? She was gratified to think that the stranger at St. John’s had had a chance to say goodbye. To someone.

  Relieved to see the parking lot in view, she stopped to catch her breath, hoping the hairy man, whom she could see watching her through the window of his tiny shelter, would deliver the keys to her instead of making her walk the remaining steps. Approaching the shelter, she could see him rifling through the huge pegboard on which dozens of car key sets were hung. He turned to face her, pulling open the window.

  “You give me your keys?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Yes,” she answered. “I’m the red Ford pickup.” She pointed.

  “I don’t have. You don’t give to me.” He threw up his hands, suggesting that the problem was hers.

  “You said, ‘No keys no park,’ and I gave them to you.”

  “I don’t remember,” he sniffed. “You look.” He turned the peg-board so that she could look, but she did not see her distinctive flashlight key chain among the shiny objects.

  “Not there,” she said.

  “You don’t give to me.”

  “I did give to you,” she insisted.

  He threw up his hands again. Mary heaved a sigh.

  “You have more key?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Someone can bring?”

  “No one can bring.”

  The man smiled sympathetically. “You go home, get keys. I am nice guy. I don’t charge parking. Come.” Not merely generous but gallant, he took Mary’s heavy arm and escorted her like a bride back toward the street, where he whistled for a taxi and helped her ease her load into the cracked back seat.

  “Where to?” the driver asked.

  GOD TO SOUL

  Mary Gooch had never in her forty-three years set foot inside an airport, and had no context for the shifting tone of air travel. She knew from television news, which was background noise when Gooch was home, about the tighter security and longer waits, rising jet fuel costs, diminished service. She did not know that purchasing an economy ticket to Los Angeles, California, would deplete the bank account by nearly seven hundred dollars. And she did not know she’d have to take off her boots.

  She’d always considered the prospect of air travel, like any travel, with fear and reluctance, but she was too preoccupied by thoughts of Gooch—what she would say to him and how she would say it when, or if, she found him—to focus on anything but their reunion. Looking up as she passed through the security checkpoint, she was vividly aware of people’s predictable expressions but felt disconnected from the source, and was not mortified when the scowling officer looked at her passport picture and remarked, “You should get a new photo if you’re going to keep the red hair.”

  As she limped toward the gate to wait for her flight Mary was overcome by dizziness, and stopped at a shop to purchase a granola bar, which she would eat directly, and an apple to save for the plane. There was a wall of magazines—sports mags, home decor, celebrity news, health and fitness—which she glanced at briefly, deciding that she didn’t really need to know who had the best or worst beach body, and no longer cared if that beautiful couple adopted another refugee child. She moved toward the book section, basing her choice of three novels on cover art and rhapsodic reviews.

  Having already endured a lengthy wait, she did not groan like the other passengers when the announcement over the loudspeaker apologized that the flight would be delayed another hour. What did it matter? An hour. Two hours. A day. Mary wasn’t expected. Neither did she have expectations. What was it to journey to an uncertain place if not an adventure? She’d never had an adventure before. It was high time. That was what her sister-in-law had meant.

  Mary rolled down the passageway to the plane and squeezed down the aisle toward her seat at the back. She could see what the other travellers were thinking; people were being charged for excess baggage, and she was getting away with something. Worse, they were already hours late leaving and the fat nurse was making them later. Yes, she thought, repelling their stares, I am late. I am fat. There but for the grace of God go you.

  When she reached her row, she found that her seat was in the middle, the space far too small for a woman of her girth. She would be spilling out of it, claiming breathing room from the sullen young man at the window, and the exotic woman with the smooth brown skin and the diamond in her nostril. The young man drew his trim body toward the moulded wall when she crammed herself into the spot, and quickly plugged his ears with the white buttons from his music player. There was much ado over the fastening of her seat belt, as she was sitting on one end of it and couldn’t see around herself to find the other. The brown woman, who’d risen to allow her passage, shifted the ball of lavender satin she held and found Mary’s belt, but it was impossible to buckle, since the previous occupant had not been morbidly obese. Mary panicked, trying to connect the too-short belts.

  Careful not to spill the contents of her lap, the brown woman reached over Mary, extending the belt as far as it would go, with just barely enough of the strapping to join over her expanse. When the buckle clicked, the woman flashed a set of blinding white teeth. Mary smiled back and whispered confidentially, “This is my first flight.” The woman nodded in a way that made it clear she didn’t understand English.

  The captain welcomed the passengers aboard the flight, which Mary found charming until they were informed that there would be another delay, whose cause she could not hear over the cusses and groans. The brown woman stared serenely ahead, resting her arms on her lavender pillow. The
young man beside her found a small electronic device in his coat pocket—one of those BlackBerrys, Mary guessed, or iPhones—and began working his thumbs furiously over the keys.

  Mary reached into her vinyl purse and extracted one of the novels, each of whose covers had promised laughter and tears. She began to read and, finding a masterful storyteller behind its pages, was instantly and gratefully transported to another place. She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there—she’d been somewhere else altogether, with a fictional family on a journey to experience the redemptive power of love—when finally the aircraft started to move.

  As the airplane taxied to the runway, Mary found it peculiar that she didn’t find it peculiar to be squished into a tiny airplane seat preparing to be transported to a whole separate world that was not fictional, and set down her book as the plane found speed, then rose off the ground. She felt her stomach drop as it climbed into the still black yonder, thrilled by the banking loop it took toward the wide glass lake. She’d never ridden a roller coaster, but imagined the gut-churning excitement was not dissimilar to what she felt watching the city fall away, with the itch to scream No! and Yes! at once. Mary Gooch was leaving, not just leaving Leaford, but her country, for the first time in her life. Goodbye Canada, she heard herself think, and was struck numb by a fear that she might never return.

  My home and native land. She’d never thought to ask herself what Canada meant to her, the sovereign nation whose proximity to the U.S.A. (at least according to Gooch) infected a portion of the country, like an envious little brother or a disaffected sidekick, with an oft-debated inferiority complex.

  Hockey. Gun control. The French. Back bacon. Beer. National health care. A lingering fondness for the British monarchy. She ran over the long list of sports heroes and celebrities who hailed from the Great White North, though many had admittedly found their fame and fortune outside her friendly borders. Gooch would have named a thousand other characteristics that helped define the country, and she realized with some sense of shame that, with her lack of political curiosity, she had as little grasp of the world she was leaving as of the one she was about to enter. She’d taken Canada for granted, like the steadfastness of Tomorrow.