A Reliable Wife

by Robert Goolrick

  She knew all the details of her new life. The details were not a problem. She had rehearsed them for hours and months. The phrases. The false memories. The little piece of music. She had so little life of her own, so little self, that it was easy to take on the mannerisms of another with ease and conviction. Her new self may have been no more inhabited, but it was no less real.

  She undid her hair, the dark curls that ringed her face. She pulled it back until her eyes hurt, and wound it in a small neat bun at her neck.

  She recounted her memories as they reeled into her past. A soldier beside her on a carriage seat. Her mother dying as her sister slipped from her body. The rainbow. She cataloged these memories and sewed them away as neatly as she had sewn her jewels in the hem of her skirt, needing to erase the intricacies of where she had been so that she might become the simplicity of where she was going.

  She was a simple, honest woman, sitting in the unexpected splendor of a private railroad car. A child in white linen, sitting between her mother and a man she did not know.

  Catherine Land sat until the last possible moment, poised between the beginning and the end. The train slowed and then stopped. The porter came in and took her suitcase from the rack. She tipped him, too much, and he smiled.

  Still she stared at her face. She could not, would not live without money or love. Ralph Truitt had shyly promised in his last letter to share his life, and she would take what he had to give. She knew a good deal more about what was to happen than he did.

  She got up, wrapped a heavy black missionary cape around her shoulders, and left the compartment, closing the door softly behind her. She wasn’t nervous. She made her way along the corridor. She stepped down the metal stairs, taking the porter’s hand in the billowing steam, and moved shyly and gracefully onto the platform to meet Ralph Truitt.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SHE STEPPED INTO SNOW, a swirling, blowing blizzard that blinded her, yet dazzled her at the same time. It both darkened and illuminated the air of the platform, surrounding her with an aura of moving light. Strangers darted back and forth, greeting, kissing, hurling trunks and suitcases onto shoulders, sheltering babies from the storm. The snow moved horizontally, spiking in giddying whirls around the hastening figures, flying swiftly upward into dark nothingness. There seemed to be no end to it.

  She had thought she would not know him, not until he was the last man left, but of course she did. His was the unrequited face, his the disconnection from the eddying sea of people around him. She knew him at once. He looked so rich and so alone.

  All of a sudden, she was afraid. It had never occurred to her that they would have to talk; they would say hello, of course, but she hadn’t gotten much farther than that. Now it seemed to stretch into infinity, the endless small talk she imagined as the daily life of married people, the details, the getting and grabbing, the parrying and accommodating, the doing of whatever it was that married people did.

  Because she would marry him, of course. She had said she would and she would. But then what? How to fill the days, the endless round of meals, of chores, the endless hours in this brilliant blindness which seemed to suck out of her all possibility of speech.

  The beginnings were so enchanting usually, and yet she could only stand in frozen dread at all the small complacencies that filled the middle. If she got sick, he would nurse her, she supposed. They would discuss the price of things. He would be tight with money, although he looked expensively dressed. She would ask him for money and he would give it and then she would pay for the things they needed, and then she would tell him what she had bought. They would discuss that at dinner, food she had made for him. They would discuss the weather, noting every change, or read together in the long howling evenings, by some fire or stove. She supposed they would do or say whatever it was people in their situation normally did and said but she realized now she didn’t know what that was.

  In the train car, on the slow ride from Chicago, the edges of things were clear and everything stood out in sharp focus. Here in the snow, in the sharp weather, everything blurred, the edges disappeared leaving only vague unknowable shapes, and she was afraid.

  Still, there was nothing for them, the two of them or anybody else, nothing for them to do except go on, huddle together, wait for spring. She would do what she had to do.

  She stepped toward him, his hands in the pockets of a long black coat, its black fur collar sparkling with snow. She could barely make out his face as he turned toward her, unknowing. He seemed . . . what? Sad? Nice? He seemed alone.

  She felt ridiculous, with her cheap black wool clothes and her cheap gray cardboard suitcase. Just begin, she thought. Just move forward to say hello; the rest, somehow, will take care of itself.

  “Mr. Truitt. I’m Catherine Land.”

  “You’re not her. I have a photograph.”

  “It’s of someone else. It’s my cousin India.”

  He could feel the eyes of the townspeople watching them, the eyes taking it all in, this deception. It was too much to bear.

  “You need a proper coat. This is the country.”

  “It’s what I have. I’m sorry. The picture. I’m sorry, but I can explain.”

  This deceit in front of the whole town, this being made a fool of, again, in front of everybody. His heart raced and his legs felt bloodless.

  “We can’t stand here all night. Whoever you are. Give me your case.”

  She handed it to him as he took his hand from his pocket. Briefly, she felt its warmth.

  “This is all. This is everything?”

  “I can explain. I don’t have much. I thought . . .”

  “We can’t stand here in a blizzard, with everybody . . . we can’t stay here.” He looked at her without warmth or welcome. “This begins in a lie. I want you to know I know that.”

  He took the picture from his pocket, her picture, and showed it to her, as though bringing it out from his pocket would somehow make her become the shy, homely woman caught there. She looked at it.

  “Whoever you are, you’re not this woman.”

  “I will explain, Mr. Truitt. I’m not here to make a fool of you.”

  “No. You won’t. Whatever else, you’re a liar.”

  He turned, and she followed him across the deserted platform to a carriage tied up at the side. The nervous horses stamped and blew great jets of steam from their nostrils while Ralph Truitt put her suitcase in the back and strapped it on with thick leather straps. Without a word, he handed her into her seat.

  He vanished in the hurling snow, reappeared and climbed into his seat. He looked at her, full in the face for the first time. “Maybe you thought I was a fool. You were wrong.”

  He snapped the reins, and the horses trotted smartly into the white void. They rode in silence. The lights from the windows of the houses glowed softly, as though at a great distance. She couldn’t tell how near or far anything was from the carriage, in the snow. She couldn’t tell how many stores or houses there were. She never saw the turnings until they made them. He knew. The horses knew. She was a stranger here.

  The snow silenced the wagon wheels. There was no conversation. She was floating in a soundless void in the middle of nowhere.

  “Are there many people?”

  “Where?”

  “In town.”

  “Two thousand. About. More or less every year. Depending.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether more die than are born.”

  They said nothing else. They floated through the snow, the glow of houses in the distance, each one a family, each a series of entwined lives, while they sat entirely separate and alone.

  Ralph had nothing to say. He had expected things, and now she was here, whoever she was, and suddenly everything was different. In every house they passed, there were lives that were wholly known to him. In these houses, the people knew one another; they knew him as well. He had held their babies, been to their weddings, been shocked by their sudden flights into m
adness and rage. He was and he wasn’t a part of their lives. He was there and he had done what was required of him, what was expected.

  They went crazy in the cold; they went deep into the heart of their religion and emerged as lunatics. But even this was familiar. Sane, they wanted to believe that they were the sort of people whose babies had been held and cuddled by Ralph Truitt, and he found it easy enough to foster the illusion that these things mattered to him. Still, their glowing lives, their families, were intertwined in ways that he couldn’t even imagine.

  But this woman was not expected. He was angry. He was confused. He had read her letter until it fell apart in his hands. He had looked at her picture a thousand times. Now it was clear she wasn’t the woman in the photograph, and he had no idea who she might be. His relation to every person in the town rested on the fact that he had complete control over everything that happened to him. Now this wild thing. The train late. The blinding snow. This woman.

  It was a mistake. He felt it in the pit of his stomach, everything wrong, the letter, the picture, his foolish hope. It was a mistake to have wanted, to have felt desire, but he had, he had wanted something for himself. Now the object of his desire was here, and it was all, none of it, what he had wanted.

  He had wanted a simple, honest woman. A quiet life. A life in which everything could be saved and nobody went insane.

  He couldn’t turn her away, couldn’t leave her in a blizzard. He couldn’t be seen leaving her. There would be talk. He would appear to be unkind. So he would take her in from the storm, give her shelter for a night or two, no more. Her beauty troubled him the most, so unexpected, the sweetness of her voice, the fragile bones of her hand as he helped her into the carriage. Who, then, was the woman in the picture? It troubled him, enough so that he was sharp with the horses and would not look her in the face.

  “I have an automobile,” he said, for no reason. “It’s the only one in town.”

  She didn’t know what to say.

  “It’s not good in the snow.”

  I am in the wilderness, she thought. Alone with barbarians.

  They were leaving town, and the horses were skittish in the wind. He was never rough with them, and now he could feel their nerves through the leather. They just wanted to get where they were going.

  Catherine saw, through the snow, the endless flat fields on one side and, on the other, a broad river, clogged with ice. So bleak and forlorn.

  She thought of the lights of the city, the endless activity, the beer halls lit up in the snowy nights, the music, the laughter, the girls pinning on their hats and rushing out to find adventure. The girls would laugh in front of warm fires with men who had written them love letters. They would eat roast beef and drink champagne and rush everywhere, their dresses hiked to their knees as they ran through the snow, the laughing girls, drawn by the warmth of the gaming tables and the fires and the music and the company.

  Here, out past the lights of the town, there was no sound. There was nothing except them, their carriage, the lanterns shiny on the road.

  The river looked hard as iron.

  She pictured the music hall girls. The men with decks of cards in their pockets and revolvers tucked in their boots. The sweetness of the languid air in the opium dens, warm when the night was too cold to move, the Chinaman waking them with tea when the storm had passed or the dawn had come or all the money was gone. The trolleys would already be running, taking people, normal people, to work. And the girls would laugh, knowing what a ruin they looked.

  A million miles away. Another life, another night, a million miles down the slick black river to the bright and clanging city. Her friends were already decked for the night, seeking the heat, the music washing over them, their beautiful dresses, and laughing at her folly. She was already a thing of the past, to them. They had no memory.

  The deer came out of nowhere, racing, bucking with terror, and was gone in an instant. They saw its frightened eyes for only a second, as its antlers brushed past the horses. Suddenly the world was in white chaos.

  The horses leapt back in terror, charging upward in their traces, jerking the carriage sideways and almost over, righting it again as they bolted. Catherine heard a single shrill whinny, like a scream, and they were racing off, bits in their teeth, cracking ice flying from their manes, Ralph standing now, standing in his seat and pulling at the reins with all his strength. She felt the terrible chill, the awful dread of the thing she hadn’t expected.

  The horses veered, pulling them off the road, the wheels cracking into new snow, a sound like a blade through bone. The carriage hurtled through a thin fence and everything was noise and chaos and Ralph had one leg up on the front of the carriage, screaming the horses’ names, pulling back, swearing, and the cold seemed sharper, and Catherine, terrified, holding on, rigid with fear, felt the cracking thud as the carriage hit a rut, the leftover gash of some autumn rivulet, and Ralph was thrown into the air, the reins flying. She saw him just long enough to see the iron rim of the wheel strike his head as he fell beneath the carriage, and then they were off, jolting and careening wildly, the horses wild, too, off the road now, heading toward the black river.

  Catherine groped blindly. The reins whipped in the wind, but she found them, took them in her hands. The carriage rocked in the pitted field, but she held on. Her foolish cloak was streaming in the wind, choking her, and she ripped it from her neck and it flew out behind, a momentary ghost in the swirling snow.

  She knew enough to let the horses run. She knew enough to hope in their natural instincts. Her strength was no match for the terror she felt pulsing from the horses’ black rumps. She held on. She did the only thing she could.

  The horses raced on in a frenzy. They galloped down a small bank, skimmed onto the frozen river, the carriage arcing dangerously, so that the horses were spun in a circle, leaving crazy black trails on the powdered ice, really frightened now, aware, suddenly, of how far they were from safety. One of the horses slipped, lost its footing and collapsed onto the ice, which cracked and shimmered but held. Catherine sat mute with fear, with the idea of death in the frigid water, drowning, tangled in dying horses.

  The river held. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. As the horses struggled to find their footing, she climbed the traces and lay along their steaming necks. As the black gelding stood again she was there, whispering in its ear, the words coming from somewhere and lost in the wind, but enough, whispering, holding her hand gently against the softest part of its throat.

  The horses calmed beneath her hands, their panic passed. They heard her voice, barely audible above the howling wind, and they stood patiently as she inched her way back through the harness, her hands never leaving their flesh, never letting them forget that she was there, was in charge, promising them safe delivery.

  She gently picked up the reins again and they walked, exhausted now, her eyes straining in the howling dark to pick up the ruts in the snow so she could tell where they had come from, driving them slowly back to the place where the deer had leapt out of nothing and sent the stillness flying into panic.

  On the road again, the horses stood pitiful and defeated. The gelding almost collapsed, but pulled himself upright, and together the two horses hauled the carriage into the white blindness. Miraculously, the lanterns had held, and she could see a short distance ahead.

  They almost ran over Ralph before she saw him. He stood calmly in the middle of the road, swaying a bit, blood streaming from a gash in his forehead, a gash deep as bone.

  She jumped from the carriage. She hadn’t come all this way to have him die now. Not now. She caught the hem of her skirt on the edge of the seat, heard the quick tear of the cheap material as she almost fell into his arms. The blood covered his face, mixing with the snow clotted in the fur collar of his black coat. She took his elbow. He shook her off, but then he staggered, and she took his arm again and this time he didn’t push her away but leaned into her, so that she realized the size and solidity of him, t
he depth of his chest, even through his heavy coat the heat of his body was clear. She helped him to the seat, the blood streaming from his forehead. She found her cloak, her foolish thin cape, and covered his shivering legs.

  “The horses all right?” His voice was strained.

  “They can carry us.” She climbed up. “Which way, Mr. Truitt?”

  “They know. Just let them go.” The horses moved forward, one limping and wheezing, and both blind in the night, but sure of their way.

  Ralph sat as stiffly as he could, trying not to give in to the searing pain, but it was too much. He felt himself slowly crumpling, his hurt body folding in against hers. He felt it as her arm came up across him, pulling him down, pulling his head to rest against her breast, her racing heart.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THERE WAS BLOOD EVERYWHERE. It was frozen into the fabric of her dress, stiff and black. It was on his head and face and clothes and beneath her frozen fingernails. Still, she was calm, determined he would not die. And then she saw the house, and a face at the window.

  There was a moment of utter stillness in which she took in every detail, the weight of Ralph in her arms, the house, the face at the window, stricken with terror, the horse, its broken leg, realizing now that the cracking sound on the ice had been bone not ice. She saw herself, her hair wild around her head, her hands chill and raw, her skirt light, the hem spilling her jewels in the snow. She saw them standing in the yard, snow up to the iron wheel hubs, the horses’ heads drooping in exhaustion and pain, the house itself. The house.

  It’s like a clean white shirt, she thought. A clean white shirt hanging on the back of a door.

  A neat, columned porch, a warm rust light through drawn curtains, the turn of a chair left out long past summer. Details. She couldn’t see the whole of it, couldn’t see the point at which the peaked roof met. But it seemed warm. It seemed nice.

  The horses stopped, the brown mare stamping its hooves, the black gelding couldn’t take another step, its right front leg raised off the ground, hoof hanging dangerously. The light from the porch lit up the sweat on their heaving flanks, turned the breath streaming from their wide nostrils into bright wispy feathers.