The Wife's Tale

by Lori Lansens

  “Studying the constellations?”

  “Walking down the rows. Picking random books.”

  “I suppose that’s what young people do now when they go Googling, or whatever that’s called.”

  “I’m not much of a computer guy.”

  “You’re a random-book guy.”

  “It wasn’t just the books. I liked the place. The library. The dust. The quiet.”

  Offering proof of his proclivity, the man fell silent once again. Mary watched the night sky, hoping to see another meteor fragment alight in the atmosphere. “I’m right off the highway. The Pleasant Inn,” she noted.

  Emboldened by the shooting star, or maybe it was the buzz from the bottle of beer she’d consumed, she demanded, “Why did you pretend you couldn’t speak English?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes it’s easier.”

  Heather Gooch had said that too. It’s easier to be someone else.

  When they stopped at the intersection, Mary’s eyes fell upon the dusty lot, the scene of the crime, where she’d first seen Jesús García scanning the road. When he followed her gaze to the utility pole, she felt caught. Managing to sound both pitying and patronizing, she added, “It must be awful to be a day worker.”

  “I work at the plaza down the road,” he said. “My uncle, the old man with the bad hip? He picks me and Ernesto up here on his way out of the valley, when he can.”

  “And when he can’t?”

  “We take the bus.”

  It was obvious from his apparel that he did not work at the bank. As he did not expand on the nature of his employment, Mary felt disinclined to ask. She was curious, though. The drugstore. The travel store. She’d seen a sign for a shoe shop. The chain restaurant.

  Helping Mary out of the truck and seeing her into the hotel lobby, Jesús García took her hand. “Thank you, Mary. Gracias.”

  “You’re welcome, Hay-su.” A smile played under his moustache, and she hoped he might flash that brilliant grin once more. “Do I say it wrong? Hay-su?”

  “You say it fine.”

  Mary watched him pass through the hotel’s double doors and out to his waiting truck. The receptionist at the counter, whom Mary recognized as the girl from the previous night, called out, “Mrs. Gooch?”

  “Yes?”

  The receptionist saw the stains on Mary’s outfit. “Is that blood?”

  “There was an accident,” she explained. “It’s been a long day.”

  The girl smiled. “I have your purse.”

  NOTHING GETS OUT BLOOD

  Mary’s joyous reunion with her brown vinyl purse soured quickly when the receptionist repeated what the police had told her. The purse had been found by a sniffing dog in the bushes near the corner lot at the intersection. The woman’s raised brow implicated the Mexican day workers, which Mary thought unfair. There were some personal items left in the purse, but no wallet. No phone. No passport. The sheriff held little hope that her identification would be returned. “My manager says we’re gonna need a credit card imprint if you’re staying past tomorrow night.”

  Back at her room, Mary noticed that she’d unintentionally left the Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the door handle. Inside, she found everything as it had been. The made bed. The health bars on the table. The water. The sunscreen. She kicked off her tight shoes and settled down upon the bedspread to open her purse, bitter that it had shown up without her wallet.

  She caught her reflection in the mirror over the dresser. Unmoored, unidentified, unidentifiable. If only there were twenty people just like her crammed into the room, from the same world, in the same predicament, equally unsure what to do next. Not company for her misery but a band of brothers and sisters, like the Mexican immigrants. A tribe. She could see that she needed a tribe, and saw her folly in making Gooch her whole existence.

  Jesús García had a tribe. He was the king of the tribe in that house splashed with colour and guarded by the hundred shoes at the door. She remembered the photographs of his family on the fridge, the pretty wife with the almond eyes and the handsome, dark-haired boys. Perhaps he didn’t wish on stars because he already had all he’d ever wanted. She thought of his face as he pointed out the Milky Way. He said there was nothing magical about the stars, but he seemed under their spell nonetheless.

  After retrieving the number for directory assistance and being passed on to a Canadian operator, Mary asked for the number for Bistro 555. A plan. A dubious plan, but all she had. She would explain her predicament to Heather and ask her to wire a humble sum, which she would pay back immediately when her situation improved.

  Mary waited, breathless, recognizing the voice on the other end of the phone. “Hello,” she said, “I’m calling for He—Mary Brody. May I speak with Mary Brody?”

  “Who’s calling, please?”

  “It’s her sis—friend. Old friend. I was in earlier this week. You’re the actor, right?”

  “Yeah. I remember you.” The fat woman looking for a tall man. “Hold on.”

  The phone clacked against the brushed nickel counter three thousand miles away. The background noise was deafening. As she waited, Mary checked her toiletry bag, which appeared to be unopened. She was pleased to find her hairbrush, since the hotel had only offered a comb. Who would steal her spare set of navy scrubs? Finally the actor/bartender returned to the line. “Someone said she went out of town.”

  Mary thanked him for his help and gave Eden’s number, which Mary Brody should call immediately upon her return.

  Where was that business card on which Emery Carr had written that telephone number? She glanced around the room. The maids had not come to clean, so the card couldn’t have been thrown out. She rose, scouring the tabletops. Checking the waste-baskets. She imagined herself standing beside Emery Carr’s sporty Mazda. He’d handed her the card and … and she’d put it in the pocket of the paisley ensemble! Yes!

  Which she’d washed the previous night. Heart sinking, she reached into the pocket of the voluminous skirt and felt the flaccid rectangle. The black writing was smeared. Impossible to read. And Emery Carr was tasting wine with his boyfriend in Sonoma.

  She could call Wendy, she thought, realizing that she was desperate. Or Pete. She could call Pete at work. Ask him to wire money. Or Joyce. She’d left postdated cheques at St. John’s—maybe there was a way to access her money through them.

  The time was eight-thirty, but with the three-hour time difference it was past business hours and too late to call the gang of old friends, whom she’d never really counted as hers but Gooch’s anyway. She leaned against the sturdy table unwrapping a health bar. Before she could take a bite, she caught sight of the dried blood on her arm, and bent her weary head to take full account of the splattered, rusty stains already set in the flimsy fabric.

  She unbuttoned the blouse and stepped out of the skirt, rolled the lovely clothes into a ball and pitched them into the trash. Nothing gets out blood. Once again she had nothing to wear. Then she remembered the other navy scrubs that had been in the plastic bag from the beauty salon.

  As cool water thundered into the shallow sink, Mary checked the deep slash pockets and was gratified to find another card. Big Avi. Miracle Limousine. More than ever, she believed in miracles. She reached into the other pocket and her hand met a small, slender book that she knew was her passport, which she now remembered stuffing into her pocket when the limousine driver pulled up to the curb at the Los Angeles airport. Her passport.

  That awful mug shot. Mary Gooch. Citizen of Canada. Born March 1, 1964. Staring at her photograph, her proof of identity, she paused to distill the day, the common and uncommon dramas and the mercies small and large. Joy—she added it to her repertoire of recent emotions and thought, I am cured. She was no longer a victim of abstract malaise. None of her feelings were abstract. She could have named each glorious sensation—hope, excitement, panic, grief, fear—and drawn a map to its derivatives. This was also what happened when people veered from their carpeted ruts, s
he thought. They found themselves on roller coasters and got addicted to the ride.

  It was hardly nine o’clock in California. Those late-eating people in Toronto were just finishing dinner. Food! Once again she had forgotten to eat. Or neglected to eat. Or been too nauseated to eat. She glanced around for the health bar but became distracted by the chore of washing her navy scrubs. The passport! She had no one with whom to share the news, so she thanked God, providence, fate and Big Avi.

  After scrubbing her clothes vigorously, she wrung them out and pressed them with the hotel iron on high heat before hanging the damp items on chair backs near the window. Returning to the bathroom, she climbed under the pulsing warm water in the shower. Up. Down. Lean in to take the curve. She felt alive.

  The passport. Lost and found. Like’s Heather’s son. A miracle. All that had happened because she had lost it. She wouldn’t have gone back to the bank. She wouldn’t have asked the cleaning women for a ride. Would the white van have hit Ernesto? Who would have held his hand? And there were all the things that could happen now she’d found it. She could determine her balance. Access her funds. She could continue at the hotel and wait for Gooch to return. It could only be a matter of days. A week, maybe. Two at the most.

  Towelled off and hair blown dry, Mary climbed into bed but could not sleep. Her hand shot for the television remote control but paused. That novel. She had hidden it on the top shelf before the taxi had ferried her off for the day. But she had no dry clothes to wear down to the lobby. She reached for the telephone and called the front desk. “I’m sorry to trouble you,” she began, “but I was reading a book in the lobby. I left it, well, I hid it, actually, behind the travel books on the top shelf. Is there anyone who could bring that book up to me?”

  “Right away, Mrs. Gooch,” the woman responded, though Mary had not mentioned her name.

  Right away, Mrs. Gooch. So it was true. Ask and you shall receive. Mary’d never asked for much before, particularly of herself.

  In minutes there was a timid knocking, and she accepted the book through the slender crack she made in the door. “Wait just a sec,” she called, afraid to sound like a big shot. She found the roll of dollars and peeled off an American five for the squat brown boy at her door. “Gracias,” he enthused.

  “De nada,” she answered, realizing she had overtipped.

  Mary tore open the book the way she once had torn open the takeout from Chung’s, salivating for the story. She settled down to read the family saga, a fictional roller coaster but no less thrilling; the next chapters revealed that the accused main character was found innocent, and the teenaged son, after nearly dying tragically, found redemption in the assisted suicide of his terminal aunt, and the cheating father, as the author sought final vindication, was diagnosed with impotence. She slowed her pace as the pages dwindled. She did not want the book to end.

  The stars were framed in the large window beyond the bed. She set the book aside and settled on a height of pillows, staring into the cosmos, thinking of Jesús García’s expression when he’d first seen her face, a tender reminiscence, and recalling his comment, which had explained his stare: You remind me of someone I used to know. Her name was Mary too. For the first time in memory, her final thoughts before sleep were not of Jimmy Gooch.

  A FAIT ACCOMPLI

  In the morning Mary could not remember her dreams. She did recall that she’d been awakened in the night by a mournful sound and had staggered through the dark to the window, thinking of Mr. Barkley the cat. She couldn’t see the blackened hillside but realized that the sound was coyotes howling in the dense chaparral. Eden had talked about coyotes on the phone in a conversation long ago, after a neighbour, while soaking in his spa, had his head confused with some furry prey and was surprised by a coyote clamping its jaws around his skull. But surely that couldn’t be true. It occurred to Mary that she couldn’t really trust anything Eden said. Especially in regard to Gooch. Any mother would lie to protect her son.

  Cramming her blistered feet into Eden’s loafers, she remembered the hundred shoes at Jesús García’s doorway. The plaid shirt. The accident. The bitten tongue, and the bruises on the old man’s sepia skin. The meat on the platter. The woman’s kind smile as she urged, “Buen provecho.” She touched her right palm absently, thinking of Jesús García’s grip on her hand.

  She was anxious to get to the bank, but it wouldn’t open for a while. Mary knew Eden would be up, though, if she ever slept at all. She glanced around the tidy hotel room, remembering the previous day, when she’d despaired of a long, lonely night there. Instead she’d been led down a different path, driven by an enigmatic stranger.

  Dressed in her pressed navy scrubs, and after leaving a five-dollar bill on the bed for the maids, she set out for the lobby. There, she requested of the male receptionist, whom she’d never seen before, the favour of a call to the taxi company. Before he could respond, she said, “I know it’ll take a while. I’ll be over there reading.”

  “The taxi guy is in there,” the young man said, pointing at the hotel restaurant down the hall. “He’s a big fat guy with a toupée.” He was suddenly red-faced, realizing his gaffe.

  In the restaurant, she spied the rotund taxi driver lost in a newspaper at a table near the window. “Excuse me,” she began, pointing at a car in the parking lot. “Is that your taxi?”

  The man set down his newspaper, smiling warmly. “Where do you need to go?”

  With an urge to adjust his hair, Mary answered, “Willow Drive.” Unlike the taxi driver she’d ridden with the previous day, this man was friendly and chatty as they climbed into the car. “Lucky you found me before I ordered,” he said. “They put up a good breakfast here. And you would love their lunch buffet.”

  From a distance she counted nearly a dozen day workers waiting at the utility pole. She strained to look as the taxi drew closer but could not find the face of Ernesto. Jesús García had said he worked at the plaza, but Mary was still disappointed not to see him among the hungry men in the dusty lot.

  Between the men’s faded blue legs, her eye caught a flash of colour—a flourish of pink garden roses in a soda bottle vase. And another bouquet of flowers scattered on the ground nearby. She imagined that one of the day workers had brought the flowers to beautify their surroundings. Or maybe teenaged lovers had rendezvoused there the previous night. “Mexicans,” the driver muttered under his breath as they passed.

  As the taxi joined the throngs on the main road heading in the direction of the Willow Highlands, the driver claimed knowledge of every alley and side street from Camarillo to Pasadena, freely sharing his classified secrets about the best routes to take to places she’d never go at various times of the day and on certain days of the week. “But if you’re heading into L.A. you gotta be on the road before six or you’re dead at the 405.”

  “Twenty-four,” Mary said, pointing.

  “You’re thinking 23, which takes you up to Simi Valley.”

  “Twenty-four,” she repeated. “Right there. The house. Please.” She noticed the Prius in the driveway, but no other vehicle. Gooch was not there. Yet.

  As she crept up the cracked walkway of the small white house, she could not reconcile the chill she felt with the full glare of the sun. A scent. Familiar. Electricity, but not a storm—the storm was past. Something burnt. Hair on Irma’s curling iron. Popcorn in the microwave. A fait accompli.

  She knocked once, sensing a presence. Eden opened the door, her half-raised face fallen completely, her eyes wide and startled. That deer-in-the-headlights dementia she’d seen in Irma’s eyes. Frozen confusion—she knew it well. There was that chill.

  “I made tea,” Eden said, and started back toward the kitchen. Mary followed, closing the door behind her, entombed. Jack. Where was Jack? She saw it clearly now. Jack was dead, and Eden was stunned. That was the look. Even expected death, even merciful death, was shocking. Here today, gone tomorrow. Jack present, Jack picked. No more jumping candlesticks.

 
; “You found your purse,” Eden remarked when they reached the kitchen.

  Mary nodded, glancing past her into the room where the sick man slept. The bed was empty. She pushed forward to look for the motorized chair. It was not in the room. “Eden? Where’s Jack?”

  “He wasn’t here. Thank the Lord.”

  “Where is he?”

  “It’s Tuesday. Or is it Thursday?” Mary didn’t know for certain, but thought it was Wednesday. “The church group takes a few of them out to the park for an hour every other day. I can never remember which day is the other one.” Eden leaned against the counter. “I made tea.”

  “Tea sounds good.”

  “They all drink iced tea down here. I never have got used to that. I like my tea hot. Two cubes. Do you want a cube?”

  Mary typically took four sugar cubes, and cream rather than milk. “Just black.”

  “I suppose the money and all was gone.”

  “The wallet was gone,” Mary said, sipping, “but I found my passport.”

  Eden nodded but hadn’t heard. “You haven’t heard from Jimmy, have you?” Her mother-in-law’s tone implied that she wasn’t keeping secrets about Gooch after all.

  “He has no way to contact me, Eden. He doesn’t know where I am, remember?”

  Something caught Eden’s attention, and in an instant she was out the sliding patio doors, sidestepping the murky pool with a broom in her hand to beat the devil out of a cowering green bush. “Get out!” she screamed. “Get out!”

  This was the mother Gooch had described to Mary on that first night under the serious moonlight. The one who made scenes. The one who’d thrown her husband’s clothes into the Rideau Canal. She wondered briefly if Eden had started drinking again.

  Following her outside, Mary saw no creature scamper from the bush as her mother-in-law slashed wildly, cracking branches, scattering leaves. “Eden? Eden?” Avoiding the swinging broom, Mary drew closer, calling, “It’s gone. It ran out that way.”