by Lori Lansens
She anticipated nausea but it did not come. He waited until she’d eaten a little more before taking the plates to the dishwasher. She watched his broad back, calculated the thickness of his limbs. “You could go in past your knees,” she said. “You could, Hay-Su. In the ocean, go in past your knees.”
He smiled and opened his mouth to say something, but his cellphone rang and he excused himself and spoke rapidly in Spanish as Mary watched, hypnotized by his lips moving beneath the crisp moustache. He finished his call, apologizing. “I have to go, Mary. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I’ll be ready.”
He leaned in and brushed her cheek with a kiss so soft that she could not say with certainty it had been a kiss at all. “Feliz Navidad,” he said.
“Feliz Navidad.”
The night clock did not tick or hum or make any sound at all, but her skin ached and itched from the sunburn and Mary could not find a comfortable position in bed. She tore the last meaty leaf from the aloe vera plant and squeezed the clear gel over the backs of her legs and shoulders.
She was not caught by her reflection but sought it out in the closet mirror door, dropping her robe from her shoulders as she approached. She remembered that girl, Mary Brody, lonely and uncertain. The young bride with her secret. The wife she’d become. A lifetime consumed by hunger. She was no longer that woman. She saw beauty in her form, its subtle animations, its mysterious intentions and universal conclusions. Like the brown hills undulating on the horizon. The cresting ocean waves. Her head did not ache. Her heart did not flutter. She felt she might be electrocuted by the light she felt within.
In the darkness she found her way out to the swimming pool and eased her legs into the cool water. Floating beneath the stars, she thought of the day she’d quit her job at Raymond Russell’s. Stock-taking day. You’ve come a long way, baby, she told herself, then realized that the slogan came from an advertisement for cigarettes and was deceptive in its congratulations to the liberated woman.
Remembering the magazine questionnaires that condensed celebrated lives, Mary decided that she would edit most of her responses. To the question Greatest Adventure? she now had an answer: Mary Gooch had climbed to the top of Golden Hills. Battled her beast. Searched for God. Found acceptance. Biggest Regret? She was through with regrets. And to the question Greatest Love? She would keep Gooch with her in a locket around her neck. A graphic on a T-shirt. His name emblazoned on the back window of a car.
Her potential cheered from the trees shivering beyond the pool as she considered her future. She could climb Everest, join Greenpeace. Go to college, learn Spanish, read the classics. Vote. She recalled Ms. Bolt’s admonitions as she saw the path before her rising and falling, making sharp turns over ragged cliffs. No worn broadloom. No comfortable rut. A dazzling existence beckoning with uncertainty. Proof that there are miracles.
Tomorrow came, and Mary rose like the phoenix in the timid light of dawn. She wrapped Jack’s old robe around her body and moved into the kitchen and toward the refrigerator. She was hungry. Not starving. Not craving. Not jonesing. Just hungry. The way people get hungry. She opened the cupboard and found a can of tuna. She cut slices of tomato and avocado and took some grainy bread from the freezer. She sat down at the table and ate the food slowly, chewing and swallowing carefully, considering the nuance of tastes and textures, satisfied by the modest amount. There was no beast in her gut, gatekeeper or otherwise.
There was just Mary Gooch, eating enough.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank those women in my professional life who’ve guided me over the years as together we’ve published three novels. I’m especially grateful for the critical eye of my longtime agent, Denise Bukowski, for her frankness in discussion, her wise counsel, and her friendship beyond work. I’m also thankful for the talented editors who helped shape Rush Home Road and The Girls and whose insights were critical to the final draft of The Wife’s Tale: Diane Martin from Knopf Canada; Judy Clain from Little, Brown and Company; and Lennie Goodings and Ursula Doyle from Virago U.K.
Thanks also to Louise Dennys of Knopf Canada; Michael Piestch of Little, Brown and Company; and Richard Beswick of Virago. Sharon Klein, Marion Garner, Deirdre Molina, Carolyn O’Keefe, Heather Fain, David Whiteside, Nathan Rostron, Jericho Buendia, and Gena Gorrell, my thanks to you, too.
On a more personal note, I want to express gratitude to my children, whose love is divine, and to my husband of twenty-five years, who inspires me still. As my research for this book consisted mostly of conversation and observation, I thank my parents, Judy and Phil; my brothers, Todd and Curt; Kelley (my sister-friend); and Sherry and Joyce, my two oldest and dearest friends. Thanks as well to my husband’s family, and to the many friends, not all of them wives, or even women, with whom I’ve shared confidence over the years, and who contributed to the story of The Wife’s Tale in ways they couldn’t know.
Once again, I owe a debt to southwestern Ontario, in whose memory I find Baldoon County. Finally, I wish to thank my tribe in southern California, the group of mothers from a Topanga school who welcomed this transplanted Canadian into their fold as I wrote the story of an outsider searching for her place.
LORI LANSENS is the author of two bestselling novels, Rush Home Road and The Girls, which was a Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year in 2006 and a finalist for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, Lori Lansens now makes her home in California.
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA
Copyright © 2009 LLMT, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2009 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited.
Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Knopf Canada and colophon are trademarks.
www.randomhouse.ca
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Lansens, Lori
The wife’s tale / Lori Lansens.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37304-5
I. Title.
PS8573.A5866 W44 2009 C813.′6 C2009-900433-X
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