The Wife's Tale

by Lori Lansens

  That done, Mary gave her thanks and begged one more favour, a call for a taxi, to which Cooper Ross responded graciously, “Emery can give you a ride to the hotel. He’s off in five.”

  Emery Carr smiled brightly and crowed, “Yes. Of course I can give you a ride. It’s on my way.” But Mary caught the withering look he shot his colleague, and the slight grin beneath the other man’s sandy bangs.

  Even with a reluctant Samaritan, a ride was a ride. “Thank you. Thank you,” she said, as they made their way outside. The falling sun crested artfully over a rocky hill in the distance, and Mary paused to look. Having left nature, like so many things, unconsidered, she felt a sudden rush of pleasure from the rugged beauty of the fading hills, a visual parfait, and was relieved to notice that a slight chill seemed to have crept over the parking lot during the time she’d been in the bank.

  Emery Carr, whom Mary guessed to be anywhere between thirty-five and forty-five, drove a Mazda, a tiny, immaculately groomed sports car with stowage instead of a back seat, where he set her collection of plastic bags. Opening the door, she prepared for the chore of setting herself down in the small, squat seat. When she hesitated, he grinned tightly and moved around the vehicle, holding the weight of his disgust with the elbow of her arm. Perhaps he loved no one as fat as she.

  Like the elderly, she felt her burden, and her losses rose like ghosts—Irma, Orin, Mr. Barkley, Gooch, brown vinyl purse—to mock her weak knees and quivering chins. Why didn’t she just return to Leaford to live out the rest of her days with old Mr. DaSilva and the Pauls and the Williams and her mother in the care of St. John’s? She wasn’t up to this. She closed her eyes, heart fluppering and fluttering. Someone will have to deal with my body.

  Emery Carr quietly reminded her that the beeping sound was the car’s alert to the passenger not wearing a seat belt. “You need to buckle up, Mrs. Gooch.”

  “Mary,” she said, opening her eyes. “Please call me Mary.”

  Pulling the seat-belt strap across her body, she once again noted her lessening in the days since Gooch’s leaving. Calories in. Calories out. The reduction was somewhat appalling to her, though. Having as little control over her loss as she had had over her gains, she felt only the ingloriousness of her decline. She did not mean to say aloud, “I just want to die.”

  Emery Carr took a deep breath, and though she supposed he was thinking, Please not in my car, lady, what he said was, “Somebody will turn your purse in. Don’t worry.” With that, he roared out of the parking lot. Mary, instantly nauseated from the car’s low centre of gravity, wondered if, like the passengers in Big Avi’s limo, he preferred the glass up.

  She glanced sideways, and felt compelled to speak when he caught her staring. “You’re nice to drive me to the hotel.”

  “You’re a long way from home.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you down here on vacation?” he inquired absently, inching toward a stoplight in the rush-hour traffic.

  “No.”

  “Work?” She shook her head. “Work or vacation. That’s all there is,” he laughed.

  Or funerals, Mary thought. Or a mid-life crisis.

  “Someone’s gonna turn your purse in. Don’t worry. Purses don’t get stolen in Golden Hills.”

  “Have you always lived in Golden Hills?”

  “God, no! I don’t live here. I’m in West Hollywood.” He waited, glancing her way.

  “West Hollywood?”

  “It’s not Golden Hills.”

  “Is it the crime area?” Mary asked, wide-eyed.

  “No.”

  “The Armenian area?”

  “It’s the gay area.”

  “Why do you live in the gay area?” she asked, then answered herself with some surprise. “Oh.” He laughed at her lack of guile. “I don’t believe I’ve ever met a gay man before,” she said.

  “Yes you have.” He grinned.

  “I’m from a very small town. In Canada,” she reminded him. “I did have a lesbian teacher once.”

  “We’re everywhere,” he said.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked, enjoying her boldness. Intimate conversations with strangers. She’d seen it often in movies and TV, and had been unsure whether she trusted the cliché until she had found herself frightened on the airplane, wishing the brown woman spoke English and might offer her sisterhood.

  “Kevin,” Emery replied, and she could see that he was not in love. “Six months, which is like twenty years. We’re celebrating our anniversary this week. A little wine tasting in Sonoma. Do you?” he added, noticing that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. “Have a boyfriend?”

  Mary touched the scar on her ring finger. “I’ve been married twenty-five years. Our anniversary just passed.”

  “But he’s not here with you?”

  She shook her head. “He’s hiking. I have no way to reach him.”

  They stopped at the light where the three roads met. Scrunched in the seat, Mary turned toward the dusty corner lot to look for the collection of Mexican men, but the pyramid of Thermoses was gone. Two men stood like sentries at either end of the lot, scanning the cars, still hoping to squeeze an hour’s work out of the day, or maybe they were just waiting for rides home.

  As the sun disappeared over the peak of the distant hill, Mary watched one of the men—her height, she guessed, broad in the shoulders, with a thatch of black hair and a trimmed moustache and beard—bend to collect his duffel bag and begin a slow walk to points unknown. Something about him set him apart. It was the man with whom she’d imagined she’d shared a glance from the back of the limousine. He had waited. He had not worked.

  His tone officious, Emery Carr instructed her, “You go to the bank tomorrow. I won’t be there but Lucy will help you. She’ll contact your people and get it sorted out. Someone will return your purse. Stay positive. It’s gonna work out.”

  “Stay positive,” Mary said to herself, watching her handsome rescuer stride around the vehicle to open her door. Before he said goodbye, he scratched a name and telephone number on the back of a business card and pressed it into her hand. “This is an old friend who can put you in touch with someone at your embassy if you really get stuck because of the passport.”

  Emery Carr drew out the plastic bags, hanging them on the hooks of Mary’s waiting hands, and checked his watch before asking, “Do you need help getting inside?” Though she did, or thought she did, she could see that he was in a hurry. She shook her head and thanked him again and started toward the hotel doors.

  Taking a fresh red apple from the bowl on the reception counter, she checked into the hotel for three nights. The petite receptionist raised a brow when she paid in cash and explained about the lost purse, and the likelihood that someone would try to contact her there. “Mary Gooch,” she reminded the woman. “That’s a hard name to forget.”

  Crunching the apple, Mary made her way to the elevator, pausing to notice a bookcase in the lobby filled with novels and magazines. She considered looking for something to read but knew she couldn’t manage the extra steps. Once inside her room, she kicked off her big winter boots, wincing from the pain in her heel.

  Reading the instructions on the telephone beside the bed, she pressed the single digit to access an outside line and dialed for directory assistance, discouraged to find that Jack and Eden were not listed in the local directory. She had no way to reach her mother-in-law. Eden had no way to reach her. What if Gooch called?

  She set the phone down, then picked it up again, dialing another number, waiting as it rang. A young male voice answered, “Hello?” There was laughter in the background. “Hello,” she answered. “My name is Mary Gooch. I believe you have my phone. Hello? Hello?”

  The call had been cut short on the other end. Mary breathed deeply and dialed her cellphone again, hoping for a miracle. Whoever had her phone might also have her purse. And even if that person had not found it but stolen it, perhaps she could convince him to return the things she thought
couldn’t be valuable to a thief. Like her passport. Her identification. She dialed again. The young male voice answered, “Hello?” But again the call was cut short. The battery.

  She sighed, drawn to the open window and the stunning vista of dark, rolling hills, and reached for the buttons of her pretty paisley blouse. It was not a lover she found in the Golden Hills breeze but a different kind of saviour. The mother’s touch of cooling air soothing her body, stroking her spirit. And the stars, such as she’d never seen them, so many, so dazzling, so near they might rain down on her head. Mary surrendered her pride and called out to her old friend Tomorrow, begging for one last chance.

  Finding the Aspirin in one of the plastic drugstore bags, she shook out four, swallowing them with the water, unwrapping one of the health bars to chase the tablets down. She thought how unhealthy it must be to eat only health bars, and reminded herself to eat another apple when she next passed by the bowl. Purse gone. No phone. No contact for Eden. No way for Eden to contact her. No money. No identification.

  A plan. She needed to formulate her next plan. As obvious as the calculation of calories in versus calories out, and the rule of three, it was clear to her that a person needed a plan. Stripped down to her underclothes, she flopped back on the bed and closed her eyes.

  LIVING THE DREAM

  It was Irma who appeared in Mary’s dreamscape, not as she was but as she had been, dressed in a belted cardigan with a smear of plum lipstick over her thin, pursed lips. “Mary,” she was saying, from behind the wheel of a stretch limousine, “oh Mary! You’ve got blood all over yourself!”

  Looking down, Mary found fresh stains on the chest of her crisp white blouse. “It’ll come out,” she said.

  “No, dear. Not blood. Nothing gets out blood,” Irma argued over her shoulder, not paying attention to the black road. Suddenly Gooch was there, waving his arms madly, struck by the limousine and bouncing up on the hood like the deer in the headlights.

  Heart thumping, Mary woke with a start to see not a cracked ceiling above her bed but the emergence of dawn over the hills outside the Pleasant Inn. When she tried to rise she was stopped by a sharp pain between her eyes. The place where she’d hit her head on the steering wheel. Leaford. Sylvie Lafleur. The country house with the cardboard in the window of the back door. Raymond Russell’s. Wendy. Kim. Feragamos. The Oakwood. She could neither confirm nor deny the existence of that other life, but remembered that, in her current incarnation, along with her husband, she had also lost her purse.

  Massaging her headache, she winched herself out of the bed and, after taking some Aspirin and eating a health bar, went to the bathroom sink. There she handwashed her underwear and the pretty paisley ensemble that Frankie had sold to her, with the French milled soap she found beside the faucet. She hung the wrung items in the sun on chair backs near the open window, praying for a quick-dry miracle.

  Returning to the bathroom, she set the shower on warm, delighted to find in a small wicker basket all the travel needs the hotel hoped would make her stay more pleasant. These included shampoo and body wash and a shoe polish kit and, to her enormous relief, a travel toothbrush with a tiny tube of paste. She brushed vigorously as the mirror steamed over.

  Under the pulsing jets from the shower head she soaped her aching body. After drying her skin and hair with the plush white towels, she was caught by her nude image in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. “I am Mary Gooch,” she heard herself say, even as she knew she was someone else altogether. Flaming red hair in a sporty shoulder length with a side part. A very pretty face. She studied her form, which had shifted in dimensions. This was not a body that wore a comfortable rut in the carpet but one that had ridden thousands of miles on an airplane, one that had climbed half a hill.

  She found the tubes of sunscreen in the plastic bag and stood before the mirror to apply it. She smoothed the white lotion onto her face where Gooch had kissed her. And her neck, where he’d whispered the unspeakable. And the shoulders he’d once caressed. She imagined Gooch and herself lounging on the sun-filled deck of the Caribbean cruise, passing him the sunscreen with a kiss, purring, “Will you do my back, hon?”

  As the lotion disappeared, Mary slathered on more. Beautiful skin, clear, untouched by the damaging rays of the sun. Another mercy by default. She applied the lotion to her chest, smoothing the cream into her cleavage, and, as if her hand belonged to another, watched those restless fingers inch over her enormous, heaving breasts. She shivered reaching the areola, big as a dinner plate, and pinched the rose nipple lightly.

  Mary made the bed, even though she realized that a hotel maid would be coming by later for just that purpose, and tidied the mess she’d made around the sink. She could not decide whether she was anxious because Eden had no way to contact her, or because she was suspicious that her mother-in-law had no intention of doing so.

  She checked the clock. First a trip to the bank to sort out access to her funds. Then on to Eden’s about the lost purse and the unlisted number. She tried not to think beyond the plan, toward the long day and lonely night in the hotel, waiting to hear from Gooch.

  In a closet she found an ironing board and iron, and decided that the Pleasant Inn must be a fine chain to offer such amenities. She ironed the billowing paisley on the lowest heat setting, afraid of spoiling the delicate fabric with an iron she didn’t trust, and after pressing her underwear she climbed into the still-damp clothes. Even with the weight of her awful winter boots, and although she could feel that her wound was bleeding again, Mary felt lighter in mysterious ways.

  Stopping at reception, she took an apple from the bowl and explained her problem to the woman on morning shift. “I’m the one with the lost purse. The sheriff’s office knows I’m here. I’m Mary Gooch. Will you call a taxi for me?”

  The woman furrowed her brow. “It’s gonna be a half an hour to forty-five.”

  “Oh.”

  “This isn’t New York.”

  “No,” Mary agreed, and shuffled over to the big chairs by the window to wait. Her attention was caught by the bookcase, where she spied, miraculously, the bestseller she had begun to read on the plane and had lost along with the purse. Uncertain as to whether, as in a library, she was required to sign the book out, she approached the counter to ask, “Can I read this?”

  “Uh-huh,” the woman responded without looking up from her computer screen.

  “Do I have to pay? Do I have to sign it out?”

  “They’re for guests. Most of them are from bookcrossing. This location’s a favourite drop-off.”

  “Bookcrossing?” Mary asked blankly.

  The young woman looked up, smiling through her irritation. “People leave books for other people. They do it all around the world. Bookcrossing.” She might have added the teenaged refrain—duh.

  “Why?”

  “To share books.” Again—duh.

  As she found a spacious leather chair near the bookcase where she could comfortably read while she waited, Mary enjoyed the idea that a complete stranger had left the book for another complete stranger’s edification, and thought of the volumes communicated in the exchange. She quickly found the page where’d she left off reading on the plane and fell back into step with the family drama, fearing for the teenaged son, who’d lost his way, angry with the father, who’d taken a young mistress, and cheering for the heroine, who’d been accused of a crime she had not committed. When the taxi arrived a full hour later, she wished for three more minutes to finish the chapter.

  The driver of the taxi was surly and silent, a pleasing combination that Mary decided not to take personally. He might be preoccupied by any number of things. Miserable for any number of reasons. He might be lonely. Filled with self-recrimination. Maybe his relatives were dead. Perhaps, like her, he was recently arrived from a far-off land and was no longer certain who he was.

  With the morning unfolding in Golden Hills, Mary was glad for the chance to sit quietly in the back seat of the taxi to rea
d her own life story, which had been for so many years meandering and plotless, and which now appeared to be in the throes of rising action. She became excited writing the next chapter, anticipating the moments of her future. A sharp black Escalade, a gas hog (Gooch would have forgiven himself the indulgence when he rented it), parked behind the Prius at Eden’s house on Willow Drive. The door opens and he is there, standing taller than she remembers. He’s not surprised to see her. He’s been waiting. A sloping crease in his forehead begs her forgiveness, a lift of his shoulders and a wan smile say, Ah, life.

  Stopping at the intersection, she saw the Mexican men, many more than the day before, gathered around the utility pole that anchored their collective. A brown pickup pulled into the lot trailing a cumulus cloud of gold dust. It took a moment, as the dust settled, for her to see the men scrambling over each other, moments ago comrades, instantly contestants for the chance at a day’s pay. Once the truck was full, the others shuffled back to the pole, scanning the road for the next employer.

  Driving down the main road, she was once again stunned by the volume of cars, but also surprised to see humans dotting the sidewalks or cycling beside them, dressed like the Tour de France athletes Gooch watched on TV, hunched over silver handlebars, lean and grim. The walkers were dressed in workout clothes, ears plugged with music, pumping arms and marching feet. Most but not all of them were slim. One woman, not nearly as large as Mary but of a standardly unacceptable body mass, was chugging down the street with her head held high, eyes focused on a target, ignoring or celebrating the jogging flesh on her bones. You go, girl, Mary thought, and wished she could say it as convincingly as other women did.

  She paid the driver and tipped generously, although she found it shocking to have to pay seventeen dollars to be carried such a short distance. If she stayed in Golden Hills for any length of time, she’d have to find less costly transportation. There must be a bus. Did all the nannies and maids have cars? The maids—she realized she had forgotten to leave money on the bed for them. She’d promised herself long ago that if she ever stayed in a hotel she would tip the maids, prompted by a conversation over cards one night, François accusing Pete of cheapness when, on a Mexican vacation the other couples had taken together, he’d refused to leave money on the bed. Gooch, who stayed in motels when he needed to, had agreed. “You should tip the maids, Pete. Don’t be cheap.”