The Wife's Tale

by Lori Lansens

  “You’ll never sit for me again, will you?” Ronni asked, biting her lip. “You have no idea how hard this all is.”

  Mary paused. “My husband left me too.”

  Ronni reached out with her beautiful hand to touch Mary’s meaty arm. “Younger woman?”

  “He needed time to think.”

  “Tom said that too. He didn’t say he needed time to think about his dick in his girlfriend’s mouth, but that’s what I concluded.” Mary was as startled by Ronni Reeves’s language as she was fascinated by her rage. “Sorry,” Ronni added. “But I’m sure you know the feeling. I was going to ask you again for tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow night? Oh, I don’t know,” Mary floundered.

  “I have a chance at another jewellery party. I really need the money.” She reached for her wallet and pressed some bills into Mary’s hand.

  Pushing the bills back, Mary said, “No, please.”

  “I usually pay my sitters.”

  “Consider it a favour. I’m a family friend, remember?”

  “Will my family friend come tomorrow?”

  “I suppose I could come tomorrow.” Mary wondered how many books she could read aloud without losing her voice.

  “Maybe we could even make it a regular thing? For as long as you’re in town. A few hours in the afternoons, and on the nights when I do Lydia Lee?” Ronni asked hopefully.

  “I really don’t know how long I’m going to be here.”

  “Of course. You’re just waiting until Jack …”

  “I’m waiting for Gooch. My husband.”

  “You just said he left you.”

  “He did, but not permanently.”

  “Oh. When’s he coming back?”

  “When he’s had his time to think. He’s hiking somewhere and then he’s coming back to see his mother again,” Mary explained. “And I want to be here when he does.”

  “So you can convince him to go back home with you?”

  “There’s so much I need to tell him.”

  Ronni Reeves squeezed Mary’s arm. “No matter what you say, no matter how you say it, take it from me—he’s already made up his mind.”

  METEOR SHOWERS

  The song of the long, sleepless night, once so familiar to Mary, had morphed from the turgid requiem she heard in Leaford to a blasting rock opera in Golden Hills, the strum of the Kenmore replaced by howling coyotes, the tick of the clock by night birds repeating the refrain—He’s already made up his mind. Flashing scenes of strangers in a strange land, accompanied by stings on electric guitar. Ronni, the bitter wife. Tom, the betraying husband. Even her in-laws were strange relations. The blonde cleaning women. Ernesto, who thought she was an angel. Jesús García and his stolen yellow sandals.

  As dawn broke over the hillside, Mary thought of the pregnant Mexican girl with the dark almond eyes, remembering the ravenous way she’d eaten her food. Mary could not remember her own last full meal. She told herself she should be hungry, and replied that she was not.

  She focused on the day’s agenda. Go to the bank for new access card, which was set to arrive today. She was eager to check the balance, worried that the money might disappear suddenly, just as it had come. She had no confidence in the constancy of objects. After the bank, she would go to Eden’s to make food for her prayer circle and do whatever else needed to be done, if Eden’s housekeeper had not shown up. A rest with a good book at the hotel in the afternoon. Sitting with the Reeves boys in the evening.

  The sun had risen when she made her way out to the road, and she decided to walk to the bank for the exercise. She squinted from the glare of the wide concrete road. The space between her eyes began to throb again, and she worried that she’d sustained a greater injury than she’d thought when she’d banged her head against the steering wheel in the parking lot in Chatham. The Aspirin weren’t working. She needed something stronger for her pain.

  Up ahead she saw a crowd of men, no women, waiting at the corner lot. Dozens of bouquets decorating the memorial now, and below it a large jar beside the wilted flowers in the soda bottle, collecting coins and dollar bills. A photograph was pinned beneath the sign on the utility pole. She drew closer. The photograph was black-and-white, dated. A young man, steel-eyed beneath a fedora hat. Clearly not Ernesto. She smiled at a few of the workers, who regarded her suspiciously. “Does anyone speak English?” she inquired shyly.

  “You need workers?” one man answered eagerly.

  “No. Oh no. I don’t even have a car. I wanted to ask about Ernesto. He had an accident here a couple of days ago. I know that’s not him,” she said, gesturing to the picture, “but does anyone know him? Does anyone know how he’s doing?”

  The man who’d hoped for work shook his head. “That’s not Ernesto.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “That’s Guillermo.”

  “Guillermo?”

  “He died in the field. From the heat,” he said, accusing the sun.

  “Oh. That’s awful. That’s just awful.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that for his family?” she asked, indicating the jar of money.

  He shook his head. “That’s for his funeral.”

  The other men watched from under their ball caps as Mary moved toward the utility pole. After studying the photograph for a moment, she reached into her new blue tote bag with the silver detail, extracted a wad of bills and bent to fill the jar with all the cash she had.

  Along with the joggers and walkers and cyclists, Mary made her way down the landscaped sidewalks toward the bank, wondering if Gooch, cosmically sensing the tragedy of Heather, would be drawn back to his mother through this day’s circle of prayer.

  Her new bank card had arrived as promised, and she was eager to try it in the machine on the outside of the building. She withdrew the maximum amount and looked at the balance on the receipt. An additional amount of money had been withdrawn from the account. An additional four hundred dollars. Gooch—it could only be Gooch. The withdrawal was the closest communication they’d had since he’d looked at her with that expression the night before their anniversary and said, “Don’t wait up.”

  Crossing the parking lot, she felt her heart flutter with hope. The withdrawal proved that he wasn’t dead. He hadn’t fallen from some ridge. He was not lost in the woods. He could be, this very moment, racing down the highway, having found the answers he’d been seeking. He might have made the bank withdrawal to see him through the final leg back to Eden’s. She strode the aisles of the drugstore, her sense of optimism slowly strangled by that pain between her eyes. She approached the pharmacist at the back counter, asking about the strongest pain reliever. Realizing that she couldn’t manage the distance to Eden’s house on foot, she asked the pharmacist for the favour of a taxi call. “I’ll be waiting in the shade over by the restaurant,” she said.

  “It’ll take—”

  “I know.” She smiled.

  Inhaling the air outside, Mary judged not a scent but a moisture content. The limousine driver had said the ocean was the opposite way down the road from Golden Hills. A brief quarter-hour drive from where she stood. She longed to go there, to stand in the surf with her pants rolled up, to feel the salty spray on her pretty face and to pray to the sea god for her husband’s return.

  The road was obscured from her seat on the bench, hidden by a row of slender cypress trees. Big band dance music blared through a speaker hidden inside a faux garden rock at her feet. She closed her eyes, enfolded by a pair of strong, thick arms, swaying slightly to the music. She could count on her hands the number of times she’d danced with her husband, each occasion being at some wedding over the years. Gooch would insist on the last dance, pull her to her feet and lean down to kiss her ear, because he wanted to have sex.

  The rest of the evening she’d spend in her chair, sucking a stash of Jordan almonds from pouches of white gauze. Wedding after wedding, Mary had congratulated herself for her independence. She didn’t need Gooch to sit wi
th her all night just because she didn’t like to dance, or didn’t know how to dance, or couldn’t conceive of shaking her bountiful booty among strangers. And she wasn’t just independent, she was confident and secure, encouraging Gooch to take to the dance floor with other women. Take Wendy for a whirl. Go boogie with Kim and Patti.

  All the woman wanted to dance with Gooch. To feel tiny in those big strong arms and possessed by that huge hand at the small of their backs, to feign innocence in the brush of thigh to hip as soft hairs teased blushing cheeks. Flagrant fouls forgiven or forgotten by tomorrow’s hangover. Gyrating groins. Shaking titties. Humping asses. A flurry of holding penalties.

  Gooch liked to joke that Mary “pimped him out” at weddings. “Go dance with Dave’s aunt. Her husband died five years ago,” she’d say. Or “I told Joyce I’d put you on her dance card. Her husband’s got the gout.”

  They’d been strangers at the last wedding they’d attended, the marriage of Theo Fotopolis’s eldest daughter to a boy from Athens. The table of ten at which they were placed was the most distant one from the bride and groom, denoting the Gooches’ rank and stature as guests. The position suited Mary, who had nothing decent to wear and was dressed in a too-casual blouse and skirt ensemble amid a sea of sparkle and shimmer. Introducing herself to their tablemates, she saw that this was the island of odds and outcasts: the morose widower, the chatty spinster aunt, the unmarried photographer, the priest and his mother.

  One seat, the chair beside Mary, sat vacant throughout the long, delicious Greek dinner, which was to Mary’s mouth as sex had once been to her core. Instantly addictive. She wanted it all and more, and although she hated eating in public, she cleaned her plate of each rich course until dessert. That was when the final guest arrived to fill the seat beside her.

  Mary was in her mid-thirties then. The woman was around the same age but younger looking, much taller and slender, with stylishly short brunette hair and a simple blue dress that hugged her high bust and curving hips. She took her seat, whispering to Mary in a sisterly way, “The singles table, huh? I hate weddings.” Setting eyes on Gooch in his dark suit, she grinned and added, “Maybe not.”

  A spontaneous toast to the bride had stopped Mary from introducing Gooch as her husband. Feeling the fullness of wind in her gut and realizing that she’d eaten too much too fast, she left the honey-infused pastry on the plate and excused herself to find the restroom.

  As she was returning, the band struck up the first chord and the new arrival was pulling Gooch to the dance floor as the big band played a slow song. Gooch spotted Mary in the crowd. He raised his shoulders as if to say, What do I do? Mary turned in the other direction and headed for the truck in the parking lot, leaning against the grille, listening to the music on the breeze, wondering how many songs it would take for Gooch to see she was gone.

  He was there in an instant, scanning the parking lot from the big oak doors of the banquet hall. His long legs drove him forward. He was angry. “You’re not allowed to just run away like that.”

  “Let’s go home.”

  “We’re not going home,” he said, standing his ground.

  “I’m going home.”

  “I’m staying, Mary,” he said, calling her bluff, and he spun on his heel and left.

  No matter how much expertise she had in denial, Mary could not leave her husband alone at the wedding. Back inside the hall, she saw the pretty woman find Gooch in the crowd at the bar. She observed their body language as he spoke to the woman over the din. She looked Mary’s way, then returned her attention to Gooch, grinning. Gooch said something else. The woman looked at Mary again, stunned, then contrite, apologetic, embarrassed. Mary forgave her, though, for like the association exercises given to preschoolers, who would ever draw a pencil line between Mary and Gooch?

  The last dance of the night—the last dance they had ever danced—Gooch approached with that cocky grin, his hand outstretched. “Last dance, Mare.”

  She smiled, lifted her hand to his and let him pull her to the floor. His hand at her back, of which no part was small, he drew her close and guided her in a slow circle through the few remaining dancers and leaned down to kiss her ear, whispering, “I love you.”

  They moved about, Gooch singing into her ear, breath hot, voice rock-star raspy. Mary settled against his body, closing her eyes, opening them when she felt the bump of another rump on the dance floor. The pretty woman in the blue dress—she was dancing with the twelve-year-old nephew of the groom, the boy’s cheeks scarlet with bliss, his mouth a terminal grin. Died and gone to heaven. Mary felt sick.

  In the course of dancing, every view Mary lost of the beautiful woman was one gained by Gooch. She imagined that he was no longer turning at all, his eyes fixed on the boy’s pretty prize. When she felt his fingers squeeze the fat of her back, she flinched. When she felt the growing lump of his erection she pushed him away, saying, “Let’s go, Gooch.”

  Gooch misunderstood the gesture, and was confused when the grasping of her breast in the car was met with a slap. “Not when I’m driving,” she scolded. She cleared her throat and tried not to sound accusatory. “I know what you’re thinking about, Gooch.”

  “I thought you were thinking the same thing,” he laughed, reaching for her thigh.

  “I know what you’re thinking about, Gooch,” she said again, picturing the woman in the blue dress.

  His arousal at odds with his comprehension, and seeing things would not go well, he shook his head. “I’m thinking that it’s been a long time, Mare. I’m thinking I want to make love to my wife,” he said.

  Mary was shivering from the memory of that last dance with Gooch when the taxi pulled up, much sooner than expected, driven by the friendly man with the traffic advisories.

  Reaching Eden’s, she saw the Prius but no other car parked in the driveway, and reckoned that Chita had again not shown up for work, just as Eden had feared. She rang the buzzer, wondering if her mother-in-law was out beating rats from the bushes when she didn’t answer the door. Finally Eden appeared, flushed and breathless. “He’s at the hospital. He had a seizure when the nurse was here last night. I’ve been up with him all night. I’ve just gotten back.”

  “Oh Eden,” Mary said, stepping inside the dank house, noticing the disarray as she followed the older woman down the hall to Jack’s room.

  “Chita quit,” Eden said. “She called yesterday.”

  The drapes were drawn in Jack’s room, but Mary could see in the dim light the dent in the mattress where he had lain, medications spread out over the bedside tables, a pile of soiled linens on the floor. For the first time, she was glad for her diminished sense of smell. Eden pushed back the curtain on the floor-to-ceiling window but a clip was stuck on the rod. She yanked at the fabric again and again, startled when she pulled the rod clear of its hooks and the curtain fell to the floor. With the sickroom suddenly bathed in bright sunlight, she moved from the window to open the closet door. “I have to decide which of Jack’s suits should go to the cleaners.”

  Mary noticed a collection of photographs on Jack’s dresser and thought of the lovely scrapbook Wendy could make of them, evidence of the couple’s enduring love. Pictures from the exotic vacations they had gone on. Photos of the two holding hands on a sailboat Jack had owned, in front of the mansion with the lap pool. “Jack had a boat?”

  “He loved the sea. It was awful for him when he couldn’t sail any more. His missed it more than driving. Will you help me decide between the blue and the grey?”

  Mary understood that they were choosing Jack’s burial clothes, and paused to consider before she answered. “Blue.” Scanning the photographs again, she realized. “Doesn’t Jack have daughters?”

  “Three. Eldest is in Redding. The other girls are up in the Bay Area.”

  “Are they here?”

  “No.”

  “Are they coming?”

  Eden shrugged.

  “Do they know?”

  Eden didn’t respo
nd.

  “Shouldn’t they know, Eden?”

  “They never had the time to say hello. Why would they need to say goodbye?”

  “They’re his children.”

  “They never called. They never visited. They demonized that poor man. They believed everything his ex-wife said. Jack didn’t even get to meet his grandchildren. He prayed every night those girls would see the light. They just broke his heart.”

  The ringing of the telephone on the bedside stand startled them both.

  “Hello,” Eden said into the receiver. “Hello? Hello?” After a moment she hung up, saying, “Lost call.”

  “What if it was Gooch? What if it was about Jack?”

  “They’ll call back if it was anything important.”

  The two women stared at the phone. “Our silver anniversary is in January,” Eden said, twisting the diamond cluster wedding ring on her crooked left finger.

  Mary admired the way the stones scattered the light. “Ours was a couple of weeks ago.”

  Eden turned, dawning with memory. “October. Yes. I remember.” She noticed Mary’s ring finger. “Your wedding ring.”

  “I had to have it cut off years ago. My finger got too fat.”

  “Jimmy was still wearing his,” Eden told her. “When he was here. I noticed he was wearing his gold wedding band, if that means anything.”

  Mary smiled.

  “Well,” Eden said, casting a glance at the phone, “I guess it was nothing important. I need to lay down for a bit.” She took a breath but said no more as she rose, shuffled across the hallway, twisted the knob on the door with her cruelly bent digits and slipped inside her room.

  Mary looked down at her own hands, grateful for their marvellous mechanics, thanking all ten fingers for their years of support. Turning to go, she caught sight of something in the mirror on Jack’s dresser. A flash of silver at her scalp. She was already growing roots.

  Drawn by the sun, she let her feet urge her out the back door to the patio near the pool, wondering if the pool company had come by to clean but been shooed away by Eden, or had found no one at home. She saw her soul’s reflection staring back from the murky green water, but different from the last time she’d glimpsed it. Her changing perception of time had altered the sum of her reflections. To the past she was no longer servant, and to the mirror comrade, not conspirator. That elusive happiness she’d so often pondered? Maybe happiness was generally misunderstood, she thought. Maybe happiness was the absence of fear. She felt herself at the launch of her own transformation, and wished she had a champagne bottle to crack against her knee. She watched her form in the rippling water and felt a peculiar urge to shout, “Fat Girl Revolution!”