Michael’s Wife

by Marlys Millhiser

  Laurel, Jimmy, and the Patricks gathered on their front steps the night of the Fourth to watch public fireworks displays in the sky over Phoenix. But they were soon forced inside as nature crashed down at them, drowning out the fireworks and putting on a breathtaking display of her own.

  Laurel stood at the doors to the patio holding Jimmy in her arms and watched as the lightning creased down from the dark cloud bank etching the sky like lighted rivers with their tributaries on a black map. Jimmy hid his face against her shoulder, holding himself rigid, his arms almost choking around her neck.

  Lightning cracked close and the lights went out. They waited in a tense, dark silence for the next crack followed at once by floor-jarring thunder and, when it was over, for the next. Each seemed incredibly closer and raindrops turned to sheets of water as the lightning stalked them.

  Laurel’s hands were sweating as she carried Jimmy into the little hallway as if to hide them from the violence outside. “Jimmy, we’re safe in our snug little house. The lightning and thunder can’t get us here.” I hope. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  His answer was one long shuddering sob choked off at the end and no release of the tension in his body. And the storm moved past them, on to terrorize other small children, other childish women.

  The next storm arrived a week later but it came during the day, and this one left a rainbow as if in apology. It was naptime and Jimmy had slept through the thunderous racket. Laurel sat at the kitchen table with a glass of his Kool-Aid and a magazine. But the colorful cover could not compete with the proud rainbow sky. Bold red, a lighter green, and faint lavender feathering at the edges—the rainbow arching up out of her sight.

  A banging on the front door filtered through the noise of the cooler, and when she faced Claire Bently through the screen, Laurel could only stare dumbly at her visitor. It was the same Claire with the full-skirted shirtwaist and light brown hair. But the hair which was usually straight now hung in limp curls, those close to her neck stringy from perspiration. Dark red lips and spots of rouge on each cheek highlighted her sallow skin and some of the jet-black mascara was smudged under her eyes. A strangely pathetic Claire.

  Postrain heat seeped through the screen.

  “Can I come in?”

  “I’m sorry, Claire, come in. I was surprised to see you.”

  “I thought I’d look in and find out how you and Jimmy were getting along. We sort of looked for you the Fourth.” Claire giggled unnecessarily and stared about the room as if she were thinking of buying it.

  That war paint isn’t for Jimmy or me. “We’re fine. Jimmy’s asleep now. Want some Kool-Aid?” Laurel started for the kitchen.

  “Have you got anything stronger?” Claire didn’t follow her but stopped at the door of Michael’s room. When she turned to Laurel the pathetic look had changed to one of triumph. “You can’t both sleep in that little bed.”

  “No. How about a Martini?” How about some rat poison?

  “I’d love one. The house is so quiet now you’ve all left. Professor Devereaux has finally got a start on his new book. He’s kept me busy doing research.” Claire settled at the kitchen table fussing with her hair while Laurel fixed the drink. “Mrs. Devereaux is sweltering in the heat. Whatever possessed her to stay this summer, I don’t know. Especially now that Michael won’t be coming home much.”

  “Why should that matter? I thought she didn’t like him.”

  Claire took a gulp of the drink, which was meant to be sipped, and shuddered. Her eyes filled with tears as the stinging liquid burned down her throat. Laurel grinned. “The only thing she doesn’t like about him is that Michael refuses to notice her sexy ways. She just doesn’t realize that he’s above that kind of thing.”

  This time it was Laurel’s turn to choke over her drink even if it was only Kool-Aid. “Come now, Claire. You haven’t built Michael into some kind of saint, have you? Or a monk?”

  Claire lifted her head proudly. “Michael would never be tempted by a woman he didn’t love. Especially not by his brother’s wife. I feel sorry for Professor Devereaux. You can’t imagine what he’s had to put up with.”

  “The Devereaux brothers seem unlucky in love,” Laurel said more to herself than to her visitor, and a little bitterly.

  “Oh, he never loved her; he just felt sorry for her. Before he knew what had happened he was married.” Claire finished her drink with defiance as if she’d taken it on a dare. “Her father killed himself because he’d gambled away the family fortune. Her fine old Boston family was broke. Old Mr. Devereaux was always throwing it up to her that she was too good for the Devereaux but not for their money.”

  The Martini had caused Claire’s pupils to dilate. The attempt at sophistication was giving way to the more natural sullenness. She looked about her with obvious contempt. “This place is awfully small. Do you like it here?”

  “I don’t mind it.” Laurel busied herself putting a leg of lamb and some potatoes in the oven, hoping to heat Claire right out of the house.

  “I’ve always wished I could learn to cook. But Mother did most of it until she got sick, and when she died I came to Tucson. So I’ve always had it done for me. Did you know I was born in China?” Claire went into a lengthy tale of her parents, who were missionaries in China, being forced out by the revolution, of their parish in San Diego, her father’s death, and the struggle for survival of his wife and daughter.

  It was a bleak story. Claire nursed a sick mother, worked long hours in a drugstore, and went to night school to get secretarial training. They lived in one cheap apartment after another, each cheaper than the last. Laurel could picture her walking into the grand existence of the Devereaux house with a room of her own, dining with the family, someone to wait on her and a handsome Michael about her own age. No wonder the Devereaux’ were so important to her.

  Claire’s eyes kept slipping to the electric clock over the refrigerator. “When does Michael get home? I’d like to see him before I go.”

  Laurel sighed and put an extra potato in the oven. “I don’t know. He doesn’t come home at any particular time.” Not till he thinks I’m in bed. The pilot light in the oven had gone out and it whumped as she relit it. She put the salad in the crisper and fixed them both a drink.

  “You know, you’ve changed, Laurel. You look … oh … harder. More like I expected you would look.” Claire giggled nervously and went on to talk of Janet’s irritability.

  But Laurel had stopped back at the first statement, barely listening to the chatter about Janet. She was changing. They were making her into the Laurel they expected her to be.

  Claire stopped in midsentence, a slow Martini smile lighting her face, looking beyond Laurel. And Laurel turned to find Jimmy just inside the kitchen, his hair rumpled from sleep, the Teddy bear dangling from one hand. He stood stiffly tense, as he had when she’d held him during the storm, staring at Claire with round mesmerized eyes. She expected him to bolt as their visitor suddenly got to her feet and gushed toward him.

  “Hello, little fellow. Claire’s missed her little boy so much.” But he didn’t run and Claire picked him up. Jimmy gave a long shuddering sob and dropped the Teddy bear.

  “Claire, you’re frightening him.”

  “Don’t be silly. I raised him, remember? You’re not afraid of your old Claire, are you?”

  Jimmy placed a hand on each of her shoulders and pushed back, his feet kicking her in the midsection and below. Claire gasped and released him, and he fell to the floor next to the Teddy bear.

  “Jimmy! Are you all right?”

  “Is he all right? What have you done to him?”

  Jimmy peered at Claire from the safety of his mother’s arms. “My house!”

  “Honey, Claire just came to visit you in your house. She isn’t going to take you away. He’s just afraid you’ve come to take him back to Tucson.”

  “What does he have here he didn’t have in Tucson?”

  “Freedom, the run of the house, th
e backyard, a playmate, and he gets to see more of his father.”

  “Humph! His skin is too fair to be out in the sun much. And look at the scratches on his legs.” But her eyes were saying something else. You’ve done this. You’ve turned him against me.

  Claire’s lips pressed in so tight a line they almost inverted. Hurt and hate bulged in her eyes, outlined by the crimson flush. And Laurel felt the other woman’s hate engulf her, felt her own body stiffen as Jimmy’s had. For a moment she too was afraid of Claire Bently.

  “Go see Sherrie?” The plea in Jimmy’s voice drove her to change him and take him over to Myra’s.

  While Laurel set the table, Claire swirled the olive around in her drink. They both had wilted some in the sweltering kitchen. “Aren’t you going to wait for Michael?”

  “Sometimes when he’s late he eats on the base.” She set a place for him anyway, knowing he probably wouldn’t be there to use it. “Won’t you stay for dinner, Claire?” Please don’t.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Somehow I can’t see Michael sitting in this room eating.” Claire’s smile hardened and she said quietly, “He’d have married me if you hadn’t come back, you know.”

  “Paul says he wouldn’t divorce.”

  “He couldn’t. You weren’t there to divorce. But in five more years you would have been declared legally dead, and then he would have remarried and it would have been me.”

  “Had your plans all made, didn’t you? Well, Michael wasn’t exactly unoccupied here while you so self-sacrificingly took care of his child in Tucson.” Laurel leaned across the table and put her face as close to Claire’s as she could get it. “Claire, has Michael ever asked you to wait for him, told you he loved you? Has he?”

  “Yes. No. Well, he didn’t have to. It was understood.” Her giggle gave her away. “He doesn’t have to tell me anything, because I know him.” Her angry flush deepened the color of her rouge.

  “Okay. You know him. I didn’t mean to upset you, Claire, don’t cry.”

  “I’m not crying!” Smudgy mascara tears ran down her cheeks. “And I don’t believe Michael has been seeing women here. You’re just saying that because you’re jealous of me. Things aren’t going so well for you, are they? He isn’t coming home for dinner. He never does, I’ll bet. And he sleeps in a separate room. And do you know why? It’s because of me, Laurel. Me.” Laurel started to rise, but Claire grabbed her arm and forced her to sit.

  “And you know what else? I’m glad you came back. Because now he’ll see every day what kind of a person you are and his loathing for you will grow to the point that he’ll get rid of you no matter what any church says.”

  Laurel broke away and went to the oven. “You’ll feel better after some food, Claire.” But when she’d put the dinner on and returned with Jimmy, Claire was fixing herself another drink. “If you don’t eat instead of drink, you’ll never get back to Tucson tonight.”

  Claire got through a few bites of lamb and the entire third Martini before she fell apart. She was in the middle of her one date with Michael. It had been his last year in college and they’d gone out to dinner with several other couples and then to a dance. Finally Laurel forced a swinging, swaying Claire to dance into the bedroom, and took her dress off.

  “The bedshpinning round, round, round.…”

  “I’ll call Janet and tell her you’re spending the night.” But Claire already slept. She’d just returned to her dinner when Michael came home.

  “Claire sick, Daddy.”

  “More like crocked,” Laurel said between her teeth as she sliced off some roast and put it on Michael’s plate.

  He looked at the empty place, the empty gin bottle on the counter, and arched an eyebrow. “I’m sorry I missed the party. Where is she?”

  “In my bed—if the spinning hasn’t thrown her out by now. You get the floor tonight.”

  “She really hung one on?” That marvelous laugh filled the kitchen. “Good old Claire. What I don’t learn about women in my old age.” Michael explained that he’d eaten, and then decimated the roast anyway. He was still chuckling as he crawled into his makeshift bed on the living room floor where he managed to block all movement within the room.

  Laurel went to sleep thinking how unwittingly cruel men were. She dreamed that the beige bungalow was burning and that Claire Bently was outside the door swinging an ax at her whenever she tried to escape and Michael stood on the patio laughing and laughing and.…

  The next morning a subdued pale-greenish Claire left before breakfast, explaining that she must get back to her work, pausing long enough to blush a good-bye to Michael.

  He was in rare good humor, so Laurel got up the courage to ask him for money. When he handed it to her, he grabbed her wrist and held it so tightly her hand went cold. She couldn’t look at him.

  “If you’re going to use this to skip out on me, don’t take Jimmy with you. I’ll have the law on you if you do.” Then he laughed at her and left looking like an astronaut in his silver-gray flight suit.

  She, Myra, and the children spent the afternoon shopping at the Base Exchange and then went on to a nearby shopping center. Among other things she returned with a round avocado area rug and matching drapes for the living room, yellow drapery material for the patio doors, twelve pairs of training pants, and a red tricycle.

  Pat sat in the kitchen with a can of beer when they hauled their purchases into Myra’s house to separate them. He helped them carry Laurel’s packages to her patio door.

  “I forgot, this is locked. We can’t get in this way. I’ll go around.…”

  “No it isn’t, see?” Pat slid open the screen and then the door.

  “That’s funny. I’m sure I locked.…”

  The odor seemed to gush out the door and into their faces—heavy, nauseating, unmistakable.…

  “Get back.” Pat dropped the packages and ran across the kitchen floor to the stove, turned, and ran back out to take a deep breath. “It’s not the jets on the stove.” He pulled the patio door shut.

  “Shouldn’t you open the house up?”

  “I don’t want to move it around. Gas rises. Where’s my toolbox?”

  “Under the barbecue where you left it. Pat, you’re supposed to open windows.…”

  He rummaged in the toolbox. “Myra, this is no time to argue. And will you two get away from that door?”

  “But.…”

  “If that gas gets stirred up and seeps down to those pilot lights, that place will—where the hell’s the wrench?—that place will explode. I’m going to try to turn it off at the meter.”

  He pulled a wrench from the jumble of tools. “If I can figure out how to do it … God almighty, will you get away from that door!”

  Laurel and Myra moved off the patio.

  “Myra, call the fire department and the utilities company. Tell them there’s a massive gas leak in that house. Laurel, get Colleen and the kids together. Then everybody out of here. Go over by the base fence … Laurel! Laurel!”

  Pat shook her roughly and then slapped her. “Move. Both of you!” He roared it at them. His face had turned ashen. He ran off around the side of the house.

  Myra looked shocked at her husband’s actions but did as she was told. Laurel moved in a half-daze to Colleen’s door. Colleen was gone.

  She gathered the children from the swings and took them across the road to the chain link fence. My God! Who? Why?

  Michael came home just as the firemen were wrapping up the cords on the big explosion-proof fans. Only a hint of the nauseous, deadly fumes remained.

  Laurel stood backed up against the sink, her hands holding onto the counter behind her. A repairman, a fireman, and Pat Patrick knelt around the back of the stove, shaking their heads. The stove had been pulled away from the wall.

  Michael literally ran around the partition. “What’s happened? Where’s Jim?”

  “Gas leak. He’s at our house; he’s okay.” Pat stood up. “This is Mr. Devereaux.”
>
  “Had a close call here, Mr. Devereaux.” The fireman pointed behind the stove. “These old rentals aren’t kept up like they should be. You’re lucky Mr. Patrick was around and knew what to do.”

  Michael looked from Laurel to Pat to the repairman. “The stove?”

  “No. The compression nut between the service pipe here and the flexible connector on the stove.” The repairman was short and wiry and obviously puzzled. “That nut was almost completely off.”

  Michael knelt with the others to look. “How could that happen?”

  “Well”—he scratched his chin—“the best way is to take a wrench and loosen it.”

  “You think someone did this purposely?”

  “I didn’t say that but.…” He shook his head for the hundredth time. “I’ve only seen this happen once before. Usually if there’s a leak, it’s because the stove’s been moved around too much and the flexible connector gets a crack in it. But just last month, a suicide case decided turning on the jets wasn’t fast enough and he loosened the compression nut. If you want it fast … that’s a good bet.”

  Suddenly everyone was looking at Laurel.

  “I wouldn’t decide to commit suicide, loosen the connection to the stove, and then go shopping for the afternoon.” Her voice sounded far away, as if she were hearing herself from the next room.

  The fireman busily wrote his report as they talked and just as busily crossed it out. “Look, I’ve got to put something down here. Did you move the stove at all today, Mrs. Devereaux?”

  “I haven’t moved it since we’ve lived here.”

  “Have you been working around the back of the stove? Or tried to retrieve anything that had fallen behind it?”

  “Jimmy’s truck rolled back there.”

  “How’d you get it out?”

  “With a broom handle, but I’m sure I didn’t touch anything. It was just after lunch. Before we left.…”

  The fireman brightened and turned to the repairman. “Could that do it?”

  “I suppose … if it was loose and she hit it.…”

  Everyone looked satisfied and relieved. Everyone but Laurel and the repairman.