Noah's Wife (8 page)

“Noah?” says Noah's wife, rising from her pew. He doesn't answer, and so she climbs the stairs to the altar and approaches him behind the pulpit. He doesn't move from his bench—the shadows etched into his skin make his face look eerie,
masklike—and she places one hand gingerly upon the painted concrete wall beside him. “Are you all right?”

His gaze flicks up at her, and then down again. “I'm fine,” he says. “I mean—I'm sorry. They completely overwhelmed me. I should have handled that better.”

“No,” she says instinctively. “No, you handled it fine. You did the best you could.”

The words leave her tongue before she can process them, and it is only when she hears them spoken that she realizes she is lying. She has never lied to him before.

“You didn't know that they would ask you all those questions,” she admits, attempting to modify her statement. “That's true. But Noah—” She hesitates, and finally continues: “Why didn't you just answer them?”

At this he lifts his head and looks squarely at her, his gaze quick and cutting. “And how would I have answered?” he asks her. “Enlighten me, please. What exactly should I have said?”

His tone has never been so hard with her. She shrinks back, but he reaches out and grasps her wrist. Then he gently draws her closer.

“I'm sorry,” he says again. His voice breaks, and he tries once more. “I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to be sharp with you. It's just that they took me by surprise.” He takes a deep breath, trying to steady himself. “For one thing, all those questions came so fast. I simply didn't have the chance to respond to them, even if I'd wanted to.”

She nods, soothed by his answer. Of course—that makes sense. Everything happened too quickly. That's why he lost control. If they had given him more time, he would have been able to provide them with the answers they were looking for. He would have proven himself to be as strong and certain as he always is. Noah's wife hears the door to the lobby click shut and realizes that Leesl must have slipped away.

“Well,” she says, aiming for a tone that's brisk and businesslike. “There isn't anything to worry about. Next time, you'll be ready to respond to them.”

But Noah shakes his head. He releases her wrist and drops his forehead into his hands. “Oh God,” he groans. “Next time.”

“Yes,” she insists. “You'll have another opportunity.”

His voice is muffled, his face still turned toward the floor. “You don't understand,” he mumbles. “To be confronted with all of that doubt, all at once, and to know there's absolutely nothing you can say—” He lifts his head and looks toward the window. “And who can blame them for feeling like they've been abandoned? It's completely dismal here. No wonder the old man walked into the river.”

She starts at this. “I thought you said it was an accident.”

“It probably was. But there are rumors.” Noah shrugs. His gaze flicks up and fastens on her. “Do you think it was?”

There is a tiny splash on the bench beside him and they glance up automatically, see that the roof has once again begun to leak. Noah groans again and returns his forehead to his hands.

A shudder runs through her. “I don't know,” she says. She folds her arms across her chest in an attempt to bottle up her distress. “No one does. But Noah—if the situation is as dire as they say it is, then why did you accept the assignment here?”

“Partly because I believed the rumors,” he replies. He waits, seems to be choosing his words with care. “I've got to think that if a minister drowned himself on purpose, then there had to be a kind of darkness that drove him to it. And what if that darkness is still here? What if the rest of the town needs rescuing before the river swallows them up, too?”

And what if they do? Noah's wife cheers a little at this. Although her husband's tone is less than optimistic and his posture seems to radiate despair, this sentiment is something that the two of them can build upon. Noah needs to be needed; he thrives on a challenge.

“Yes,” she tells him. She kneels down before him to be certain that he hears her. “Maybe there is a kind of darkness here. But you can lead them out of it, Noah. That's the reason why they called you here.”

Perhaps this thought truly restores Noah to himself; or perhaps he hears the note of desperation in her tone, and realizes that whatever he is feeling, he must try to shake it off and rise to reassure her. Either way, she is pleased when he stands and puts his arm around her. “Of course,” he says. He draws her head to his shoulder. “That's right, my dear.”

She watches him closely as they shut up the church and she
remains vigilant all evening. It is true that he is not himself: that afternoon he sleeps for several hours, and when he wakes he is dazed and disheveled. He makes no attempt to speak with her at dinner, and he does not hum hymns to his reflection as he brushes his teeth. That night she lies awake while he tosses and turns beside her, listening to the rain increase its volume.

M
rs. McGinn's daughter hates fighting with the zookeeper.

She doesn't like the tone he adopts, which grows softer and more wounded by the minute; she doesn't like his downcast gaze, the way he twists his hands together, or the pathetic expression that steals across his craggy face. Look at him, for goodness' sake! What a giant he is! One would think that he would have guts enough to stand up to her, a woman half his stature. But instead he cowers, backs little by little into corners, increasing her anger with every step and making it impossible for her to take him seriously.

If he had no intention of leaving this town, why didn't he tell her this before?

“There isn't anything for me out there, Angie,” he says now, his voice sounding sad and low. “This is where I belong.”

She snorts. “This?” she repeats. They stand outside the
primate house, where the roof is caving in. With a sweep of her arm, she takes in the ruined gray buildings, the rotting signs, the field of sludge that used to be the African grasslands. The ducks are paddling through puddles in the roads while the peacocks slog past, their lovely feathers caked with mud and their eyes shut tight against the rain as if they, too, like their human counterparts, cannot bear to see what has happened to the former glory of this town. It has been weeks since anyone besides Mrs. McGinn's daughter has set foot inside the zoo.

“But there isn't anything for
me
here, Adam!” she snaps, dropping her arm to her side. “Do you think I'm going to work in my mother's diner for the rest of my life? Is that what you want for me?”

He shakes his head. “Of course it isn't,” he says. “Come on, Angie. Be fair.”

Mrs. McGinn's daughter scowls. What he wants, she knows, is the same thing that her mother and everyone else in this town want: for their lives to return to the way they were before. They are waiting for the rain to end, waiting for the town to regain its fame and fortune.

“After all,” she hears them remark to one another in the diner as she refills their glasses with water, “who ever heard of a rain that lasts forever?”

They're dreamers, all of them, mutters Mrs. McGinn's daughter to herself as she spins on her heel and stomps away from the zookeeper. Her boots sink so deeply in the mud that when she yanks them out, they almost pull right off her feet. She pauses
for a moment, wondering if the zookeeper will try to follow her. Looking up the road, she sees the highland cows huddled beneath trees that are bending under the weight of the water and force of the wind, leaning dangerously close to fences that look ready to snap if the branches fall. She listens, but there are no squelching footsteps behind her; only the doleful lowing of the cows and the rushing of the rain through the leaves. Is it her imagination, or is the rain growing stronger?

She continues on, dashing over the koi pond and through the waves that are sloshing over the footbridge. The koi watch her go with bubble-eyes, the water in the pond so high that in a day or two they could easily flop out and over her feet. The zookeeper claims that the zoo is in trouble—he has a
sense
about it, he says. But when she asks him if he has a plan to save it, he only looks more stricken and reminds her that the funds have all run dry. With no money, no staff, he is certain that if he were to leave now, all of the animals would either starve or drown. And would that be the worst thing? wonders Mrs. McGinn's daughter as she shoos a wild boar out of her path. What exactly is the problem with letting nature run its course?

The leaves on the dogwood trees she passes are pale and waxy, cradling stubborn flower buds that have refused to open in the rain. Another spring has flowed into another summer, realizes Mrs. McGinn's daughter. Hadn't she planned to be married this summer, if the rain was gone, just as she had planned to be married the summer before? She is tired of being engaged, quite honestly; she is tired of leaning forever toward the future,
waiting for the rain to end so that her life can finally begin. She is not like the rest of her neighbors, who seem content in their belief—though it must grow dimmer by the day—that the future of this place will be as brilliant as its past. How can they not see it?

“If you really believe in action,” she said to her mother yesterday afternoon as they stomped down the hill after Noah's service, “then why are we still here?”

She has asked her mother this question at least a thousand times before, but yesterday was the first time that her mother stopped in her tracks and spun around to face her, her green eyes blazing with the heat of her frustration.

“Angela Rose,” replied Mrs. McGinn, grasping the sleeve of the girl's raincoat to yank her even closer. “Did I raise you to be a quitter? Did I raise you to be a woman who gives up on things when the going gets hard?”

She paused for several long, cool seconds. Her face was so close that their noses were almost touching, and her daughter only responded so that her mother would pull back.

“No,” she muttered.

“No,” repeated Mrs. McGinn, satisfied. “No, I didn't.”

Then her mother turned and continued striding down the hill, and after a pause, the daughter followed—trotting to keep up. What was there to say to that? As she watched her mother's back descending, she was filled with fury at her father and at all the men who left her. If they had been faithful, then perhaps Mrs. McGinn would not be so obsessed with fidelity. If they had
stayed, then perhaps Mrs. McGinn's daughter would not need to stay now.

Then again, she reflected, when her mother stopped to wait for her and wrapped an arm around her daughter's waist so that the two of them could walk beneath the same umbrella—then again, she understands that her mother is not an easy person to love. It is hard to love such a fiercely loyal woman, hard to admit that your emotion will never be strong enough to match hers. Everyone who has ever tried to love Mrs. McGinn has only fallen short.

She does not blame others for leaving, as her mother does. Two years ago, there were twelve girls who gathered at the McGinns' house for the daughter's bridal shower. They perched around the table in the dining room, the orange carpet soft and shaggy underfoot, the wallpaper alive with butterflies. Mrs. McGinn served them tea and scones on one of her many sets of wedding china while Mrs. McGinn's daughter opened gifts. Someone noticed a slow stream of water leaking in beneath the windowpanes, and Mrs. McGinn set out one of her floral serving bowls to contain it. There was a certain dogged elegance in the whole affair. But of those twelve girls, only four are left in town—and not even the ones that Mrs. McGinn's daughter liked best. Her friends promised they would write, but they don't and she does not blame them. What would she say in her replies, anyway? What news can there be, as long as it keeps raining?

The only news, in fact, is that it might be raining harder. She looks up as she crosses the wild grass of the former savannah,
hopping the sunken fence with ease. They used to keep two elephants here—Maxwell and Rosabelle—but when it became clear that the zoo was in decline, Rosabelle was sold to a safari park across the country. Mrs. McGinn's daughter still remembers the day that the truck arrived to carry Rosabelle away, and how Maxwell tried to climb right in after her. It took all the zookeepers on staff at that time to drive him back—they waved brooms and hayforks, sprayed the elephant with hoses, tried luring him down again with treats and toys—she doesn't recall what finally worked. She only knows that when the truck with Rosabelle finally departed, Maxwell threw his weight against the fence and cried.

“He's not crying,” one of the older keepers assured Mrs. McGinn's daughter. “That's the rain on his face. That's what you see.”

She disagreed, and audibly: it had already been raining long enough by that time that she could distinguish tears from water. Maxwell moped for days, refusing food and drink. He twined his trunk around the fence and wouldn't leave the spot where the truck had been before it vanished. He grew weak and unsteady on his giant feet, and after ten days of this behavior the keepers had no choice but to call in a veterinarian from the city. The man checked the elephant over, peered into his eyes, heard his heartbeat, and pronounced the animal depressed.

“They can suffer sadness, too,” he declared, to all the townspeople's surprise. “They know what it is to lose something.” His prescription was that they send Maxwell off to join Rosabelle;
and since at this point the zoo needed cash more than animals, the owners were only too happy to make the sale.

That was how it went, for the next few months. The owners unloaded all the animals they could, and then they left the zoo for dead. The only person who stayed on was the zookeeper, who continued to draw his salary from what was left of the endowment and who cared for the animals who were not claimed or who had been forgotten. The townspeople, for their part, watched the slow dismantling of their zoo with increasing frustration. It had been what set them apart, what made their fortunes and provided them with a sense of civic pride. When cars and buses full of visitors rumbled into town at the start of the season, they used to come out of their shops and houses and wave until the sweat rolled down their arms and faces. They used to help the proprietors of bed-and-breakfasts air out all of the rooms, and those townspeople with bedrooms to spare would hang out signs indicating that they could be let. They opened up the windows of their shops and restaurants and were
happy
when strangers stepped in to dine or look around. This town used to be, remembers Mrs. McGinn's daughter, genuinely hospitable. It was a quality that tourists never failed to comment upon.

And now? She makes it out of the zoo and hurries through the dusky streets toward home, the drops beating ceaselessly against her shoulders. As she passes the minister's house, she glances sidewise at the rain that blows in sheets across their yellow windows and feels a pang of guilt for the dinner invitation
she declined. For a few weeks there, it seemed that Noah's wife was inviting everyone—and although none of the townspeople ever spoke of it aloud, somehow they were unanimous in offering polite but cool regrets.

They do not trust strangers, not anymore. Not after all the uninvited men and women who came in and carted their livelihood away. They have grown cold and suspicious, hardened against newcomers—and even each other—as they have hardened against the rain. They do not want the minister here, or his wife; they do not want to be reminded that they might have played a part in the former minister's demise. They do not want the weatherman here either, tinkering with his strange tools in the empty apartment over the general store and telling them when he sees them on the streets that the end of this place is drawing near.

No, reflects Mrs. McGinn's daughter, tiptoeing through the hallway so that her mother will not hear her, climbing the stairs silently to her room—no, at this point they want only to be left alone. She curls into a ball at the foot of her bed, and when the calico cat comes pawing at her hair, she reaches out and pulls him close. As he laps up her tears (as he has lapped up her mother's tears so many times before), she closes her eyes against his sandpaper tongue and wills something to change.