Noah's Wife

by Lindsay Starck

  It’s true that she misses the part of her routine that the phone calls provided, and sometimes she misses the phone calls themselves, and sometimes she even misses the lover, a little bit—but then, that’s how Leesl likes it. She likes to miss. She likes to be missed. She defines her love in terms of longing and therefore it is much easier for her to love when the object of her affection is nowhere near her. Not in the same town. Not in the same zip code, or area code. Not even in the same telephone directory.

  “It’s just so much easier,” says Leesl to herself, “to love people when they are far away.”

  Leesl even loves her neighbors, but they would never discern this fact from her behavior. Her house is located on the outskirts of town. When she does attend gatherings she sequesters herself in corners, or stands behind wide wooden tables; and when she meets her neighbors unexpectedly on the street she answers their friendly queries in one or two words and then she steps away and quickly moves on.

  The neighbors shake their heads as they watch her go. “That Leesl,” they say to one another. “She’s as eccentric as they come.”

  They do not know her; they do not understand her; and this is how Leesl likes it. She is still young enough and she has not yet seen much of the world but she has certainly seen this town, and she has certainly seen the intricacy of these relationships, and she has certainly seen how allowing someone close enough to know and to understand sets up both parties for disillusion and disappointment.

  “People are never what we hope they are,” said Leesl to her lover as she was breaking up with him. “If you get close enough,” she adds, “you find that out.”

  She listens to the sound of Noah on the roof and rests her fingers on one of the keys. A throaty middle C echoes within the nave.

  This is, perhaps, why Leesl will be such a devoted organist, and why it is that she has agreed to come to the church and play even though no one else in the town has expressed any interest in going to church at all. The townspeople do not understand the purpose of glorifying a being that they cannot see or touch or understand, because where is the sense in that? They find the whole notion rather difficult, but Leesl finds it simple, beautifully simple, because she prefers to love, to worship, to praise from a great distance, and there is no greater distance than that between this town and heaven.

  eight

  Mrs. McGinn wields her umbrella like a weapon.

  The reaction is instinctive: a stranger has accosted her outside her diner. One might say that Mrs. McGinn wields her umbrella like a musket, but if she heard this she would (respectfully) disagree. Mrs. McGinn does not believe in muskets. Her mother was a Quaker—a real Quaker, with long hair and hands that trembled—but Mrs. McGinn is not a Quaker even though she still sings the songs that her mother sang and she still eats her baked oats with cream and dark brown sugar and sometimes she still feels a light shine out through her skin from her soul, but when that happens she holds her breath and sits quietly with hands folded in her lap and waits for the light to die away again.

  It always does.

  Mrs. McGinn is not a Quaker but she is a pacifist, she was born a pacifist and she will die a pacifist, in spite of her marriage to a man who is disinclined to peace; a man who—even if he is abounding in steadfast love—is not slow to anger. Mrs. McGinn learned early on that any harmless household object could become a weapon if it were thrown with enough emotion. Over the years she has dodged, among other things: lamp shades and soup spoons and melons and stuffed animals and plastic soap dishes and hard handfuls of cold cereal pelting the nape of her neck as she turned away. Sometimes, if she is mad enough, she will turn around and sweep the cereal up in her fist and then she will hurl it right back.

  “Can I help you?” she demands of the stranger, the tip of her umbrella pointed squarely at his chest. They face each other three feet from the door to the diner. If Mrs. McGinn turns her head a little to the left, she can catch a glimpse of her reflection in the long windows that her daughter wiped clean before closing last night. She likes what she sees: her shoulders are back and her stance is unyielding. The rain falls in a rippling curtain over the side of the awning that extends across the sidewalk.

  “Whoa,” the man replies, his hands half raised in mock surrender. “At ease, soldier. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  His skin is sallow, his gaze translucent blue. He would be tall if he were not standing the way he is, with his shoulders hunched and his muscles tense, his eyes flicking up beneath brows as coarse and brown as groundhog fur.

  “I asked several people outside where I could find the mayor,” he says, deftly brushing the water from his sleeves. “And they sent me here.”

  Mrs. McGinn lowers the umbrella and immediately extends her hand. “Well,” she says, flattered by the title. “We don’t have a mayor, but I’m head of the town council. You came to the right place.”

  “A woman?” says the stranger. His chuckle sounds from deep in his throat. “In charge of the whole town? Well, there’s something you don’t see every day.”

  “Times are changing,” retorts Mrs. McGinn. After they shake, she makes an attempt to soften her tone. “Please let me know if there is anything I can do to make your stay here as comfortable as possible.”

  The man looks appalled at the suggestion. “Oh no,” he says. “I have no intention of staying. I’m only here to talk to you about the situation.”

  “The situation?” Mrs. McGinn’s smile, though still fixed tightly to her face, decreases in sincerity. “What situation?”

  “Let’s go inside,” the man suggests, “and discuss it.”

  Mrs. McGinn is not happy, but she moves to unlock the door to the diner and glances at the clock as she enters. Noah’s wife will be arriving any minute for the meeting Mrs. McGinn had requested to discuss the photography for her daughter’s wedding. Mrs. McGinn had been pleased at the prospect of this appointment because it would allow her the opportunity to bring out all four of her old wedding albums—ostensibly to share her vision for her daughter’s nuptials but more truthfully to show off the pictures to someone who has not yet had the good fortune to admire them. She carries them in a waterproof tote bag, the albums wrapped in plastic for extra protection. Once inside she drops them on the nearest table, listening to the thud with a pang of satisfaction. It is clear that she has been through enough weddings herself to be something of an expert on the matter.

  The door opens again behind them, the bell chiming, and the minister’s wife steps across the threshold. She pushes her hood away from her high, broad forehead and runs her fingers through her hair. Mrs. McGinn greets her and then turns once more to the stranger.

  “The diner opens in half an hour,” she tells him. “I’ll give you ten minutes.”

  The man moves swiftly to pull out a chair for Noah’s wife, who thanks him and sits. Mrs. McGinn pulls back her own chair and pushes the albums across the table. She opens one for Noah’s wife to peruse during this unexpected interruption. Noah’s wife obediently turns a few pages, but she pauses as soon as the man starts speaking. For the remainder of the meeting she sits as motionless as she might in a pew, her lips slightly parted, leaning forward in attention.

  “I’m with the state weather service,” the man says. “We’re aware of the unusual weather patterns in the mountains, and I’ve been sent up to monitor the rain and to notify all the towns in the area that for the time being, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.”

  “We’re used to the rain by now,” announces Mrs. McGinn. “If you’re so concerned, why didn’t you come years ago, when this whole thing started?”

  The weatherman folds his hands together. “Because we’ve developed better tools,” he says shortly, “and so we’ve got better information. Our radar reports are now computerized and colorized, so we can see and track severe weather patterns with more precision than before. This area in the hills has been of particular interest over the past few years, and from what we can tell, the ra
in will only get worse—much worse—before it gets better. I’d advise you to come up with an evacuation plan as soon as possible.”

  “Excuse me?” says Mrs. McGinn.

  “An evacuation plan,” repeats the weatherman coolly. “You need to leave.”

  Mrs. McGinn snorts, her fire-colored curls—stiff with hairspray—bobbing above her shoulders. “No one’s going anywhere,” she says. “Not on my watch.”

  The weatherman looks from her to Noah’s wife, and then to her again. “I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation,” he says. He removes a pack of cigarettes from the lining of his coat and pulls one out. Both women watch him light it up.

  “Oh, I understand,” says Mrs. McGinn. “And I don’t know about all your other towns, but here, we’re not afraid of getting our feet a little wet.”

  “Your houses could flood,” he insists.

  “Then again, they could not!” she declares. “How do you know?”

  “What about that river running through downtown?” he presses her, tapping the cigarette on the plastic ashtray that sits in the center of the table. “What do you think will happen if it rises much higher?”

  “It won’t,” she snaps. “It never has before.”

  Although she arranges her features to maintain a stern expression, she is beginning to feel the flutter of panic in her gut: one hundred butterfly wings beating against the walls of her stomach. She takes a deep breath, does her best to swat them flat.

  Everything will be fine, she reminds herself while the weatherman explains the situation in more detail. Soon the rain will end, as rain always does. In the meantime, there is too much here to lose. She has been witness to the exodus of this town for years; she knows that when people leave, they never come back. Those who have stayed have houses, lives, families here. Most of them have nowhere else to go.

  “It’s been raining here for a long time,” she announces. “And we haven’t had a problem yet. I appreciate your concern, but we’re staying put. Now if you’ll excuse me—I’ve got to open up the kitchen.” She stands and shoves her chair under the table with an air of finality, hopes the weatherman will pick up on the hint.

  “Fine,” he says. He drops the butt in the ashtray and sways to his feet with lazy grace. “But you haven’t seen the last of me. I’m being paid to get you out of here, and I’m not going anywhere until I’ve done it.”

  Mrs. McGinn makes no effort to disguise her contempt. “That sounds awfully mercenary,” she says.

  The weatherman grins. “Damn right it is.”

  At this, Mrs. McGinn spins on her heel and marches back behind the counter. “Thanks for stopping by,” she snaps over her shoulder. Then she slams through the swinging doors.

  In the kitchen, she flips the switch on the coffeemaker and places the griddle on the stove. She cracks a cartonful of eggs into a bowl with more force than usual, taken aback by her own anger. This man should not have had such an effect on her; she should not allow herself to be affected by his gloomy prophecies. What does he know?

  She glances through the round window in the swinging door, sees Noah’s wife gazing out at the street with an expression of relief. Like Mrs. McGinn herself, she seems glad that the weatherman has gone for the time being. Perhaps she is grateful not to have been asked to take a side. Her fingertips are resting on the open photo album, and Mrs. McGinn wonders which picture it is that she has paused upon; which husband is smiling up at her now. Abruptly she turns away from the door and whips at her eggs, the whisk gleaming in the ruthless white light of the kitchen. That is the problem with the photos, she knows—they are deceitful. They shine with the promise that a marriage will turn out to be something other than what it actually becomes.

  Mrs. McGinn knows a thing or two about disappointment. She has had four husbands, and all but one have been unfaithful. Each time she has loved and lost she has retreated into her bedroom and lain down with her bowed head at the foot and her stockinged feet at the head and she has stayed there for hours, inverted in this way, while the world flips and her stomach lurches and her small calico cat purrs into her shoulder and licks at the salt that runs dyed with mascara from the crinkled corners of her eyes to the painted line of her mouth. Mrs. McGinn may be a real warrior (in her own peaceful way, that is), she may be strong and bold and quick at dodging flying fruit, but she is not invincible. She is, in the end, a human being—as breakable as any other—and it is in these moments that she feels the most broken, that she wonders what it is about her, what she has done wrong, why it is that each and every husband has strayed.

  “Am I so unlovable?” she has asked the cat, time and again. “What is wrong with me?” She worries that her daughter, too, finds her unlovable and that her daughter sometimes asks herself: What is wrong with my mother?

  What she wants most in the world—besides the former glory of this town—is for her daughter’s marriage to be beautiful and painless and lasting. She does not know if such a thing is possible, but she refuses to give up hoping for it. She will not abandon ship so easily.

  “You may not think so to look at me now,” she tells Noah’s wife upon returning to the dining room. “But I used to be very beautiful. See, that’s me, can you see how that’s me, years and years ago?” She jabs at the photograph in question.

  Noah’s wife looks, dutifully, and then looks again at Mrs. McGinn in order to evaluate the resemblance. She nods.

  “You are very beautiful even now, you know,” she says kindly.

  And it is true that Mrs. McGinn is still striking, in her own way, even if she has lost the eyebrows that were once so distinctive (she has to draw them on now, with a brown clay pencil), even if her lips are closer to white than to red and even if her skin has begun to fold into small dark pouches below her eyes. It is true that she is still very proud and very pretty, even if she is not quite as beautiful as she was when she was twenty-five. But who is? she would like to know. Who is?

  “It would have been nice,” Mrs. McGinn declares, “if that weatherman, or whatever he called himself, would have given us some kind of prediction.”

  “Didn’t he?” asks Noah’s wife in her gentle way.

  “A good one, I mean,” retorts Mrs. McGinn. “I’d like to know how long the rain will last so that I know exactly how long we need to postpone the wedding. It’s the uncertainty that drives me crazy. Those two have been engaged for two and a half years already, but I simply won’t have it raining on my only daughter’s wedding day. I’m not superstitious, but I know full well that marriage is a challenge. Every pair needs all the luck it can get.”

  “It rained on my wedding day,” remarks Noah’s wife. “And everything was fine.”

  Mrs. McGinn ignores this. She flips the pages of one of the albums in quick succession until she lands on one of her daughter dressed as a flower girl, her lips pursed in a grimace.

  “Anyway,” continues Noah’s wife. “Couldn’t you hold the ceremony inside the church? You should see what Noah has done to the place: it’s gorgeous. And I know you haven’t heard him preach, but he’s very good. Really, he is.”

  Mrs. McGinn scowls down at her photo album. She doesn’t care how well spoken the minister may be; she has no interest in asking his God for anything. Although Mrs. McGinn truly does believe in a higher power (at least on her better days), she does not need to sit under a stranger’s vaulted roof in order to hear another man’s opinion on the matter. Mrs. McGinn possesses conviction enough for twenty women; she has plenty of opinions of her own.

  “We’ve all been up there before,” she says to Noah’s wife. “And the old man couldn’t help us. Why would we go up there again?”

  Noah’s wife blinks at her, reflecting. “Noah is different,” she says after a moment. “He could help you. He helps everyone. You’re the leader of this town, and people look up to you. If you only gave him a chance—well, you might find that he could save this place.”

  Mrs. McGinn stares at her. What has gott
en into everyone today? If she had known when she woke up this morning that ignorant weathermen and bored housewives would come waltzing into her diner to tell her how to run her town, well—she might have yanked the quilt back over her head and refused to come out at all. The people in this town do not need a minister to deliver them any more than they need a weatherman to rescue them.

  “If I might be so bold as to ask,” says Mrs. McGinn to Noah’s wife in a brittle tone, “what exactly does your husband think that we need saving from?”

  Noah’s wife leans quickly back. For a few heartbeats, she is silent. Then: “The old minister—” she starts to say.

  “Yes. The old minister walked into the river. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us will,” snaps Mrs. McGinn. “If we wanted to go to church, we’d go to church—but that isn’t what we want. So if your husband is here to play the part of a hero, to shower us with truth and light, to bring us back to the proverbial fold, well—” she snorts. “We’ve got showers enough as it is in this town, and there isn’t anything more truthful than that. So he might as well give up, and go back to where he came from.”

  “I can’t go home and tell him that,” says Noah’s wife faintly.

  “Then tell him something else,” replies Mrs. McGinn. “That is not my problem.”

  Noah’s wife apologizes. Soon after, she packs up her things and prepares to go. At the threshold she turns, hesitates, and finally speaks. “I wish that you would reconsider.”

  Mrs. McGinn sniffs, believing this to be unlikely. It is only later, in the middle of her morning rush, that she wonders if there might be a reason to climb up there after all. She pauses with a tray of pancakes balanced on her palm, her checkered apron slightly off-center, and looks into the gray faces of her neighbors. They bark orders at her and at her daughter; they change their minds halfway through their meals and then claim they are dissatisfied. They snap at each other, and when they are not complaining they are silent.