Noah's Wife

by Lindsay Starck

  “Noah, you’ve changed your mind!” he cries, clearly pleased. “Are you coming along with us after all? We could use another set of hands on board, that’s for sure. I’ve got no idea what I’m supposed to be doing out there, and there’s plenty of room yet with Stan and Nancy.” He indicates their extravagant, cream-colored yacht moored to the end of the pier.

  “Ezra,” insists Noah, his desperation rising every minute, “be practical. You know this is dangerous. Can’t you wait another day or two? The coast guard said that they’d be willing—”

  “The coast guard!” snorts Dr. Yu’s father. “Since when does it do anyone any good to wait for help from on high? No, if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. Besides, didn’t you hear your wife? We’ve got no time. It has to be now.”

  He looks Noah over as if for the last time, compassion shining through damp eyes. “I know what it’s like to try to hold on to something,” he says huskily. “I know how senseless these little plans, these grand gestures seem in the face of what you’ve lost, and what you stand to lose. But that senselessness, Noah, that irrationality—that’s what sets us apart from the beasts. We’ve got things like hope and happy endings. We find ways to make a cold world feel warm again.” Noah looks down at the boards beneath his feet and suddenly finds himself enveloped in a tight, abrupt embrace. He inhales sharply and smells the singed collar of the magician’s cloak. Dr. Yu’s father ends the hug as quickly as he started it, swipes at his eyes and holds out his hand, which Noah automatically reaches for and shakes. “Take care of yourself, Minister,” says the magician. “Keep your chin up.”

  At the far end of the harbor, several of the boats pull away from their piers. Dr. Yu’s father spins in a half circle and dashes down to the yacht, clambering on board after his daughter. Stan and Nancy are already getting the boat under way, Stan clinging to the helm with his knuckles white and his jaw set in desperate resolve.

  “Here we go, Stan!” Noah hears Nancy shout. He sees her fling one arm in the air in a kind of salute, but Noah does not wave back.

  “Twelve, twenty, twenty-four,” mutters Stan, his gaze fixed on the depth meter. “Oh, Lord. Give me strength.” He slides the boat forward to the end of the pier, waiting for Noah’s wife to grab the last of the supplies from the parking lot and join them on board.

  Dr. Yu calls to her, and she comes. Noah can see her slam the trunk of the car and then spin toward them, taking long strides and gathering speed as she goes. By the time she steps onto the pier she is running, her arms full of plastic ponchos, her feet flying off the ground. He positions himself so that he is directly in her path, so that she has to pull up short as she approaches him—coming to a halt just in time. Her face is inches from his and without thinking, he reaches out to touch her cheek. He recognizes every freckle, every mole; he knows her as well as he knows himself. His breathing steadies and his panic subsides. She will not go without him.

  “Listen,” he tells her firmly. “If you try going back there, you won’t be able to get out again. The rain is too powerful, the winds are too strong.” He takes her hand. “You’re my wife. It’s my job to keep you safe.”

  “That’s what I used to think, too,” she says. She has never looked at him this way before—with her expression full of sorrow. “I thought that by loving you, I’d be protected from everything that was painful in life—safe from loneliness, heartache, uncertainty. But I had it all wrong. No one can promise safety or stability, Noah. The world is too unpredictable.”

  At her words, his chest tightens. He shakes his head, struggling to project the confidence he does not feel. “If that’s true,” he says, “then why wouldn’t you want to stay here, and hold on to what you have—what we have together? Why would you want to go back there? There isn’t anything that you can do for them.”

  “I can try,” she tells him gently.

  “But they are not your responsibility!” he insists. “They never were!”

  She raises her chin. “Then who is my responsibility, Noah?”

  The answer is obvious. “I am,” he says flatly. “And you’re mine. We belong to each other. That’s what marriage means.” He stares at her, his expression dark beneath his brow. Her skin shines bronze in the soft glow of the harbor lights. “I love you,” he says.

  She hesitates. Her gaze is tender and deep. And in that instant he is certain that he has her; he is convinced that this whole night—the harbor, the sea—has been nothing but a nightmare. He will wake beside her tomorrow morning and all of this will be over.

  “I love you, too,” she says fiercely. “You have no idea how much. And that used to be enough. I used to believe that it was my role to support you no matter what. But I think you’re wrong about this, Noah. I can’t support your choice to leave them.”

  Noah reaches for her—a drowning man grasping at the wreckage of his ship. But before he can wrap his arms around her she has ducked and slid past him and begun again to run.

  And why doesn’t he go chasing after her? His limbs are numb with fear, his confidence shot and his resolve too weak. His heart thuds in his ears and he tries to call to her, but his tongue will not form the words. He feels the cold water of the river close over him once again and he hears himself gasp for air, hears the strangled cry torn finally from his throat. She cannot, she will not leave him here. He calls her name—once, twice, again.

  Does she even hear him? She doesn’t falter, or turn back. Instead she sprints, her black hair streaming out behind her, her limbs glowing beneath the lights that hang over the pier. She soars from boat to boat, lamp to lamp, until she reaches the yacht that is waiting for her at the end. From where he stands, Noah can see her fly up the rope ladder and leap on board, can hear the goose-like call of the horn as the boat pulls away.

  Noah remains on the dock, the scent of her lingering where she stood. He watches as the boats motor forth into the night, falling one after another into line. The fleet grows smaller and smaller, their lights fading one by one, until the last of them has rounded the bend and disappeared. Noah stands on the pier for a long time after, while the stars tumble over the sky and the horizon lightens in the east. He cannot stop expecting that his wife will turn her boat around. He is unable to believe that she has gone.

  thirty-eight

  The morning of his stepdaughter’s wedding, Mrs. McGinn’s husband opens the church door to find that the water has risen halfway up their hill.

  The rain is slamming down so hard that when he draws back inside the building, the forearm that he extended out into the weather feels as though it has been bruised. He kneads it with the fingers of his other hand, drawing blood to the surface. He turns around to see if any of the townspeople were looking at him, if any of them were near enough to see the situation as he saw it—but most of his neighbors are still asleep and the ones who are not are avoiding his gaze. That’s fine by him. He doesn’t care if they’re afraid of him; his only concern right now is to prevent them from panicking. Death by drowning or death by stampede? he finds himself wondering. Which is the easier way to go?

  The end has never felt so close before.

  He slides the bolt in place over the front doors and trudges past the owl perched on the railing. The bird opens one eye and turns her head, sleepily, to watch him go. Those townspeople who are beginning to wake, yawning into their sleeping bags and blinking in the cool, gray light of morning, nestle farther down and press their eyelids shut as he passes them by. After all these years Mrs. McGinn’s husband remains a mystery to them, a perilous enigma, a firecracker on a short fuse. They are well aware of the fact that Mrs. McGinn has a penchant for matrimony and a knack for weddings, but they have never been able to understand what demon induced her to set her sights on her current husband.

  This morning, she is determined to organize yet another wedding. The townspeople assumed that something was afoot yesterday afternoon when they saw Mrs. McGinn’s daughter and the zookeeper briefly disappear
into the basement, only to rejoin the group with their faces shining and their arms wrapped around each other. They heard Mrs. McGinn’s daughter inform her mother that the two of them wanted to be married in the church as soon as possible, and so they were not surprised when Mrs. McGinn marched between the sleeping bags at bedtime, passing out handwritten to-do lists to each of her neighbors with all the things that needed to be taken care of before the service. After they had their assignments, she enforced a lights-out curfew to keep the candles and the light boxes fresh for the ceremony. Her husband slept poorly on the floor beside her—the animals shifted and cried in the night, the rain battered against the stained-glass windows—but managed to doze off before dawn. By the time he roused himself enough to stand and stretch, his wife was already up and gone.

  Now he follows the scent of pancakes and the murmur of voices to the basement, where he finds Mauro manning the griddle while Mrs. McGinn bends with great concentration over a spiral-bound notebook she borrowed from Noah’s old office. Her husband does not need to look at the paper to know that she’s drawing up another series of lists.

  “Eat a good breakfast, people!” she calls out. Her voice soars over the rippling conversation and the rattling of cutlery. “The ceremony will be held at seven o’clock this evening. We’ve got a lot to accomplish before then. Come check in with me if you have any questions about your assignments!”

  Mrs. McGinn’s husband gives a little wave to Mauro and drops into a chair across from Mrs. McGinn. “Evelyn,” he says. He picks up her fork and spears a piece of untouched pancake. “Good morning.”

  “Morning, Jackson,” she says, glancing up from her work. “How did you sleep?”

  “Fine,” he mutters.

  “Good. I have a favor to ask of you.”

  “Before you do,” he says, “I’ve got to tell you—this is a terrible idea. The water’s rising. We should be spending our time building boats or something, not trying to organize this charade of a wedding. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Charade?” repeats Mrs. McGinn, her tone a warning.

  “Yes, charade. Do we have a minister? Do we have a judge? The judge left months ago—and we should have, too. Who the hell do you think is going to perform the service?”

  He can sense the frustration beginning to bubble into his chest. He glances at the plastic syrup container, feels the sudden, unquenchable urge to grab it and hurl it across the room.

  Mrs. McGinn sees the look, recognizes the signs, and briskly moves the container out of reach. He glares at her.

  “Stop it, Jackson,” she says. “Calm down. The wedding is happening. I’ve got people on cleanup and decorations, Leesl on the organ, a few volunteers to tease the bride’s hair into something better than the matted bird’s nest it looks like now. If we can rearrange the potted plants, remove the sleeping bags and the buckets of feed, arrange the candles in the windows and the light boxes near the pews, whip up some sort of buffet from this stack of canned goods—well, then we’ll have a wedding, and it will be beautiful, as weddings always are. Don’t you remember ours?” She takes his hand. “I’ll perform the ceremony, Jackson.”

  “A woman minister?” scoffs her husband. “Who’s ever heard of such a thing? I’ll bet that it’s not even allowed.”

  “Allowed by whom, Jackson?” demands Mrs. McGinn, her gaze fiery and her tone defiant. “Who is here to stop me, pray tell? Adam and Angie can find a courthouse and make it legal later. They’ll sign the papers some other day.”

  “There won’t be another day, Evelyn,” he snaps. He removes his hand from hers. “Have you looked outside this morning? Trust me—the end is nigh. This is it.”

  “All the more reason to throw a party,” she says, her chin set stubbornly. “Let’s go down dancing, shall we?”

  Mrs. McGinn’s husband considers his wife. Her face is rutted and pallid without her makeup. Her ears are bare, and as he runs his eyes along their curves he is reminded—as he always is—of the sea, of the spirals of conch shells that he used to whisper into when he found them as a boy on the beach. He decided early on that he would support his wife in all her endeavors, and he will continue supporting her now.

  “You said you had a favor to ask of me?” he says grudgingly.

  “Yes,” she replies, satisfied. “You’re in charge of all the lights. And will you walk her down the aisle?”

  He hesitates for half a second. The thought had not occurred to him, but who else is there to do it? Besides, he has been married to his wife long enough to know that even if he says no, somehow he will end up performing the task anyway.

  Mauro, stopping by the table with another stack of pancakes, overhears the end of the conversation. “I can be helping you with the lights, Jackson,” he offers. “So many birds, so many stones! But only first I must be finding the iron for Adam.”

  “The iron?” repeats Mrs. McGinn. “He doesn’t have a suit to press, Mauro.”

  Mauro shakes his head. “Not that kind. A piece of the iron, I mean, for his pockets. So that the marriage will be having much luck.”

  Mrs. McGinn swallows her coffee and takes the superstition in stride. “All right,” she says. “I can’t argue with that. Go find your iron, and then meet Jackson in the nave. We could all use a little extra luck at this point, I suppose.”

  Soon afterward the breakfast crowd disperses, each to an appointed duty. When Mrs. McGinn’s husband climbs the stairs and returns to the nave, he finds the church full of life. People are dragging furniture across the floor or piling sleeping bags against the wall or stacking and restacking crates and cages. The zebra flares its nostrils and paws at the carpet. The cattle low, deep and mournful. The zookeeper comes dashing around a corner, in pursuit of an ostrich that has escaped its cardboard-fence corral. He curses when the bird pauses to tear a page from a hymnal with its beak. It swallows the song whole.

  Mrs. McGinn’s husband watches the proceedings, shaking his head and standing silent witness to the chaos. When he feels a powerful wave of melancholy break against him, he drops down without warning onto the organ bench.

  “Hey,” says Leesl, who is paging through music in a nearby pew. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he says gruffly. She stares at him, making him feel as though he must add more. “The whole thing is such a farce.”

  Leesl doesn’t need to ask him what he means. “I can see that,” she says kindly. “Your wife is right—it’s good for everyone to keep busy. But I’ve never understood the fascination with weddings, to be honest. Or the desire for marriage.”

  He raises his head. The light in the church glints off her glasses and makes her dull hair shine “How do you mean?”

  “Well,” she says, “people change. It’s very optimistic to promise to love someone forever when you know that—in five years, in ten years, twenty—both of you are going to be really different than when you started out. There’s a good chance that you’ll wake up one day and find yourself married to someone you don’t even know anymore, someone who isn’t the same person you fell in love with.”

  She hugs the sheet music to her side. “People fall out of love all the time,” she says. “It’s terrifying, and it’s heartbreaking, but it’s the truth. And a wedding contradicts that. It’s like everyone is getting together and saying that ‘forever’ is a thing you can count on, that everything will always be the same. But nothing ever stays the same. One minute your life is routine—you’re waking up in the morning and going to work the way you’ve been doing every day for years. The next, your house is washed away and your entire existence is gone with it.”

  Mrs. McGinn’s husband is surprised by Leesl; he has never heard her speak so much at once. Is she right? Is that why people get married? he wonders, as he sets himself to the task of stringing lights across the ends of the pews. Is that why his wife married him? Is that what his stepdaughter is hoping to find with her zookeeper?

  He remembers that when he asked Mrs. McGinn to
marry him, she hesitated.

  “How do I know you won’t leave me?” she asked in a voice that was childlike and wounded. “How do I know I can trust you?”

  There it was, he thought to himself. There’s the chink in the armor. His wife may be the bravest woman this town has ever seen, but everyone fears being left.

  “You don’t know,” he had replied, honest because she deserved it. “Every relationship is a risk. Marriage is a leap of faith.”

  When Mrs. McGinn’s husband remembers his father and his mother, the smashing glass and the flying plates, he feels the ache in his chest of a heart long broken. He learned at an early age that the only people who can truly hurt you are the ones that you love.

  • • •

  AFTER THE LIGHTS are strung and turned on, he spends an hour arranging candles in the windows and around the altar. When Mauro joins him, the peacocks tottering behind, Mrs. McGinn’s husband asks him if he found the iron he was looking for.

  Mauro shakes his head. “Not yet,” he says cheerfully. “But instead I am finding these.”

  He holds out a fist and uncurls his fingers to show Mrs. McGinn’s husband the two brass curtain rings resting in his palm.

  Mrs. McGinn’s husband nods and pulls another stack of candles from the box. Why not? he asks himself, doing his best to channel his wife’s cheerful determination. The young couple is being married among sheep dung and moldy hay, with wild animals pacing the perimeter and the rain pounding against the roof. Why not have Mrs. McGinn as their minister, why not make their vows while exchanging curtain rings? Never mind the fact that the whole thing seems more than a little absurd. Perhaps that is the nature of the ritual.

  • • •