Bishop's Road

by Catherine Hogan Safer

  Of course he does. There’s more to life than sex but he buys a couple of books on the subject of the change. Talks to his sisters to see if their fun days are indeed over. Most likely they aren’t but it would help if he could get her to eat a little tofu now and then so he takes her to Chinese restaurants often in hope that she will but she says it tastes like shit and forget it. When he suggests progesterone cream or at least evening primrose oil, she suggests he take a flying leap.

  Ruth is telling lies. Fact is she’s as horny as she’s ever been, maybe more so, but the last time they were going at it she couldn’t stop thinking about Bill and is afraid it will happen again and she just can’t do that to someone as nice as Patrick. Well actually she could, but she’s not about to.

  Sarah is hell bent and determined to lay claim to Peter’s father. She has been checking those Web sites aimed at helping people find their old classmates and neighbours and loves but isn’t getting very far though she did find her best friend from college. Not a big deal since she has been in touch with her for years anyway. Still it was fun to see her name in cyberspace. Ruth was wise not to tell Sarah Bill’s last name or where he came from and there have been thousands of Bills, Wills, and Williams in uniform at any given time. Even if someone in Washington felt like helping it still might take forever to pinpoint the one Ruth had been messing around with.

  “I think I know you,” says Annie Paul to Ginny Mustard. “I’m pretty sure I just spent the last few days with your father. What’s the problem anyway? Are you sick? I came as quick as I could. Your old. man can be damned annoying. Of course you wouldn’t know that, would you, since you’ve never met. I left him in some hole in the ground about an hour out of town. God knows where he is at this point.”

  “Who are you?” This from Nurse Edna. “Are you a friend of Virginia’s?”

  “And that I am. I have to get her out of here now. I can’t say why but that’s what my gut is telling me to do and I find if I go along with it I manage to do right. What have you got her cuffed to the bed for?”

  “She’s a prisoner. Just here on loan while she gets better and then she has to go back.”

  “Well I’m feeling that she’s not going to get better unless she comes with me. Do you have a key for those things?”

  “Yes, but I can’t unlock her. I’ll never hear the end of it if I do that. I’ll be fired for sure.”

  “Well, how about I just whack you over the head with something and take it? They can hardly fault you for that, can they? I’m serious, lady I have to take her away with me now.”

  “Why don’t we ask Virginia what she thinks of all this before we get carried away. As far as I’m concerned she shouldn’t be going back to the jail but there’s not enough wrong with her to keep her in this place. What do you think Virginia? Do you want to go with this Indian woman?”

  “Yes. She knows my father,” says Ginny Mustard. “I want to go with her.”

  “Well, all right. I was planning to tell a pack of lies anyway. Let me think how we can get around this situation. I spend a lot of time with babies that no one wants. Here’s one on the way already loved to bits and won’t make it if her mother ends up back in jail. Where are you going to take her anyway? No. Don’t tell me. I have a pretty good feeling about you. You don’t look the dangerous type even if you did say you’d whack me over the head. Let’s just sit quiet a minute while I work this out.”

  And a minute is all it takes for Nurse Edna to make her plan. “Okay. Here’s what I’m going to do. I will let the doctors know that I think she is in good enough shape to be heading back to jail now. One of them will come in to check and see that I’m right. Once I have everything written up all neat and tidy I’ll pre-tend to call the jail and tell them to come and get her. I’m on the desk for a few hours this afternoon and no one will know what’s going on. I’ll probably get my walking papers over this but I don’t think I care. That baby is not going to make it if Virginia has to go back. But you have to promise to look after her. When the baby comes let me know. If I’m still here we can make a plan to get Virginia put back to do her time. If I’m gone then no one will ever know where she is anyway so it’ll be all right either way. I’ll time it so the doctor doesn’t release her until I’m on the desk and you can sneak out this evening. God, I hope this works.”

  Nurse Edna tells Annie Paul to make herself scarce. “Get out of here until around six o’clock. Do you have anything else to wear besides movie clothes? You might have a better chance not being noticed if you didn’t have feathers hanging from your ear, you know.”

  As she accompanies Doctor Hopkirk for Virginia’s examination, Nurse Edna is all stiff and starched and professional and the doctor asks if she is feeling all right herself. It’s not like Edna to be quiet and calm like this. When she realizes she’s over-doing it, Nurse Edna relaxes and even puts up a small argument against the move to prison. For future reference. Should she ever need an alibi. Back at the desk she fakes a call telling the warden that her prisoner is ready to be picked up. She goes to Ginny Mustard’s room and takes the handcuffs off. With a quick hug and kisses on both cheeks she hands the prisoner over to Annie Paul.

  “Put all her jail things in this bag and take it with you.” Another hug and she’s gone.

  “Right. I don’t have a clue how we’ll get away with this,” says Annie Paul. “We’re not the most inconspicuous pair to walk these halls, I’d put money on that. Where are your clothes?”

  “In the little closet there.”

  Annie Paul stuffs pants and shirt - ugly as sin with numbers on the pocket - and handcuffs into the bag. “Now listen to me. We have to be cool. We’re going to walk - can you walk? - not run - no rushing - out the door and down the hall and with any luck I’ll remember which way to turn after that. If you can manage to look as though this is all fine and legal and we have every right in the world to be doing it, we should be okay. I have found in my sweet short life that if you appear to know what you are doing, people assume you actually do and pretty much leave you be. Are you ready? Let’s go, girl and for God’s sake don’t look guilty or we’re screwed.”

  Ginny Mustard couldn’t look guilty if you paid her. Slowly, nonchalantly, even stopping to look through the nursery windows at the brand new babies for a minute, she and her new friend make their way out of the hospital and toward the stolen car just as security is slapping a ticket on the windshield. Annie Paul pulls Ginny Mustard behind a shelter where a dozen nurses are having a smoke break and they wait a few minutes while the fellow makes his way through the staff parking lot.

  “This thing is like driving on a cloud,” says Annie Paul as she helps Ginny Mustard fasten the seat belt over her belly. “I’m half hoping we don’t find your father so I can keep it, though they say parts cost an arm and a leg. You don’t talk much do you? So why is it that you never met your dad before? Geez, I hope I got the right woman. There could be half a dozen Virginias in that place. Probably none looking like you, though. Wouldn’t that be a laugh! I don’t usually get things wrong but it did happen once - my gut messed up and I went over to the grocery store because I knew the owner was going to have a heart attack with no one else in the place. Turned out it wasn’t him at all, but old Doris Tom, and it wasn’t even a heart attack but her falling off the ladder in her basement. She only broke her arm. Some say I can’t see at all but I’m pretty sure I can. Not that I want to but certain things you’re just stuck with, like it or lump it. I expect it’s a good thing I came to get you when I did. Have you ever lived in a teepee?”

  Of course she hasn’t. How many of us have, really, in this time and place? Annie Paul talks most of the way and the lilt of her voice reminds Ginny Mustard of lullabies on the CDs she bought when she lived at Mrs. Miflin’s house. She listens as best she can, looking out the window at the wonderful world she has never seen before, never knew existed, miles and miles of trees and rivers, lakes. When darkness comes she naps. Annie Paul can’t remember where the
turnoff is to the last place she saw Dr. Kamau so she keeps driving.

  At confession early next morning, Nurse Edna tells the priest she told a lie - they never need details so it was okay. She does the Stations of the Cross and a couple of Rosaries and conveniently forgets her indiscretion until Joe Snake comes looking for his wife. She tells the tale. The truth. And while she doesn’t know where Virginia is, at least she’s not in that dreadful jail which is some comfort to Joe Snake and he goes back to his garden to think.

  Annie Paul’s home is like nothing Ginny Mustard has ever seen and she loves it. The teepee sits on a large lot of land with the house that her brother gave her when he left to work in the Territories. Annie Paul never goes inside except to use the bath-room or do laundry and once to sleep when they had the worst weather on record and she had to dig her way out of her own home through twelve-foot drifts. “I’m cool,” she says. “But I’m damned if I’ll die of it.” She buried a very long extension cord from the house to the teepee so she can listen to the CDs her brother left - everything Tom Waits ever recorded and Chopin’s greatest hits. The only bill she pays regularly is the electric, for the music and warmth when she needs it.

  She keeps toasty during the winter with two old duvets that she covered with rabbit skins. She wanted polar bear or wolf to wrap up in but can’t bring herself to kill anything she wouldn’t want to eat even if she could find it. The wolves died out years ago - the only one left is stuffed in a museum in the city - and no one’s ever heard tell of polar bears in these parts. In the summer she sleeps outside unless it rains. She brings an old wooden lawn chair from the basement of her brother’s house for her pregnant guest and sets it outside the teepee. “You don’t want to be sitting on the damp ground in your condition.” She sets up a camp cot. “That’s probably more comfortable than hauling yourself up off the floor in the morning.”

  Annie Paul tells anyone who wants to know that Virginia is a friend who’s come to stay until her baby is born. She borrows maternity clothes from Peggy who recently had her fourth youngster and sent her husband off to be fixed or he’s never coming near her again and that’s the truth, damn it.

  Ginny Mustard learns how to start a good fire - you need blasty boughs - and weed the gardens - Annie Paul’s and her mother-in-law’s, though she has no idea there’s any relationship between herself and the woman whose vegetables she tends since the latter’s name has never come up. If she were to go into Sadie’s living room she would see pictures of Joe Snake on the mantle and put it all together but she has no reason to do that. She misses her husband. Wonders if she can tell him where she is, but never aloud, so Annie Paul has no idea what’s on her mind.

  Annie Paul teaches her to fish trout in the lake - the wonderful lake - a minute down the path from home. How to gut and clean and cook them to perfection and Ginny Mustard can’t get enough of the taste. And the stars - amazing stars - ablaze in the black sky so that she sleeps outside as well. She has never seen such a sight, away from the city lights where they are dim at best. When the sun goes down and the mosquitos come out, so do the little brown bats and if you sit as still as a tree they will come close enough to grab - if you want to do such a terrible thing - as they snatch their dinner from where it swarms your head. Such peace Ginny Mustard has never known and she grows soft from the joy of it overnight, her body rounding where before it had been sharp points and straight lines.

  Joanie’s parents are going home. They can’t find out where their daughter is and when they reported her disappearance to the authorities, were told there’s nothing can be done. As far as the police are concerned the woman left town with her husband willingly and until they have evidence to the contrary it’s none of their business. They won’t question the moving company regarding Joanie’s whereabouts. They won’t ask cops in the rest of the country to keep an eye out for her. They won’t find out where John relocated his company. Until Joanie shows up dead one of these days - which she surely will since nothing good can come of the situation and eventually keeping her under lock and key won’t be enough for John and he’ll lose it altogether - no one cares, except for her mom and dad and they are on their own with their grief.

  Patrick is no help either, for all the pleading Ruth has done on Joanie’s behalf, and she is having second thoughts about marrying him. She knows that Joanie is in trouble but has no proof. So what that he kept her in rags? So what that he kept a tight rein on her movements? So what that Ruth knows - truly knows - that one of these days Joanie will breathe her last in agony and terror? No proof. No proof. Until a woman’s knowing becomes something to bank on and applaud, proof will have to be measured tangibly in ransom notes and blood on the walls, Joanies of the world be damned.

  If Ruth were a younger woman she could give in to Patrick’s reasoning but she’s old enough now to trust herself and put stock in her magic and she gives back her pretty engagement ring which he figures is just a symptom of menopause and tells her so. Big mistake. He’ll be lucky if she ever speaks to him again.

  Ginny Mustard tells Annie Paul that she can smell salt water. “Of course you can. We’re just a spit away from it. Get in the car and I’ll take you there.” Now Ginny Mustard has lived with the ocean all her life but the part of it she knows is rather dirty and rock-bound and she has never once touched it. The ocean Annie Paul brings her to is wide and wavy with sand running along it for miles. “It’s damned cold until August but sometimes I go in now anyway. Take your shoes off and check it out.”

  And Ginny Mustard does that. Stands for the first time in real water. Until her feet turn blue. She tastes it. “Like tears but not so warm.” She sits on the sand and lets it run through her fingers a hundred times before she’s ready to leave and doesn’t say another word until the next morning.

  “When is that baby due, anyway? You’re starting to look like you could pop any minute.”

  “I was pregnant in November. After the wedding.”

  “So. Let’s figure another month or so. We should find you a doctor, I guess. Old Cecil’s wife used to deliver babies. Probably still would if we asked her nicely. I daresay it’s not the sort of thing you forget how to do. Most women around here go off to the hospital these days but I don’t think that’s the best place to be yanking a kid into the world. Full of sick people and all. Would you rather have it here or in the hospital? Up to you.” Ginny Mustard wants to have her baby in the teepee. “Smart move,” says Annie Paul.

  Joe Snake has confided in Ruth. Has told her what he knows about his wife’s whereabouts, which is nothing really. Ruth says, “I can’t believe that you haven’t figured out how to track down one of your own. There can’t be too many places for a native woman to hide around here. Aren’t there reserves or some-thing? I know there was a crowd out around Central and some on the French Shore. Have you even checked to see if she’s there? God, you men are such friggin’ bricks sometimes! Did you find out what she looks like? Whoever took her? Did you ask your parents if they know anyone fits the description? No. I bet you didn’t. Just holed up with your misery. Go talk to that nurse again will you, for God’s sake. Exhaust the possiblities before you start sitting around feeling sorry for yourself.”

  Anyone looking for sympathy these days would do better than to ask it of Ruth. She’s pissed with the world again and has little time for its whimpering and moaning. “So. I was going to frig around in your garden today but I’m not in the mood any more. Where do I sign up for university courses? Walk over with me, will you? I have a vicious need to learn something interesting. I’ll go with you to the hospital and you come with me to the university. It’s a gorgeous day. You won’t need that sweater. “

  “I think he moved,” says Judy. “I’m sure I saw one of his eyelids twitch a few minutes ago. Come with me.” Judy tugs Nurse Edna’s sleeve and guides her to the little room at the end of the hall. But Frankie, if he did move at all, isn’t going to do it on command and they both stare at him for a few minutes before Nurse Edna
is called away.

  At the front desk she is met by Joe Snake and Ruth who want to know more about the mystery woman who stole Ginny Mustard away. “I can’t tell you much. Other than she was dressed kind of odd, she seemed like an all right person. I figured she could be trusted, you know, and so did Virginia. She went with her fast enough.”

  “Well, how old was she? How tall? Did she have long hair or short? And what do you mean dressed kind of odd. What did she have on for God’s sake?” Ruth is not very patient at the moment. Humankind is really beginning to annoy her.

  “She dressed like those Indians you see in the movies. Natives I think you’re supposed to call them now. She’s tall, though not so tall as Virginia, and she looks strong, like she might chop wood for a pastime. She had her hair done in a couple of long braids and she had slipper things on her feet. Moccasins I guess they were. Her dress was real pretty. Looked like leather with some little beads sewed on up around the neck. I remember thinking she must be hot wearing it this time of year. She had a nice necklace too and an earring with a long red feather hanging off it. That’s all I know so it’s no good to be asking me anything else. I’m after going over it and over it in my head ever since it happened. I think your wife is okay. I’m sure she’s in good hands.”

  “Well there you have it,” says Ruth as she and Joe Snake walk along the river to the university in search of Ruth’s enrichment. “She’s probably right, you know. She doesn’t seem the type to go along with something like this if it didn’t feel right. And if the prison thinks Ginny Mustard is in the hospital, and the hospital thinks she’s in jail, sounds to me like she’s a free woman. Shit! Do you know what will screw this up? Her parole hearing. When is it?”

  “Not until December. Long after the baby is born.”