The Wife's Tale (11 page)

She nodded dumbly.

“You need to fix that window on the back door. You’re letting out the heat.”

“Yeah.”

“Just put a cardboard for now.” The Greek lifted his arms in a gesture of confusion. “So what the hell, Mary?” She caught
her breath. “What happened with Gooch?” he asked. “Mr. Chung called me an hour ago to say my truck is blocking his produce
guy.”

“Mr. Chung?”

“Gooch left it there, my truck, behind the restaurant.”

“Left the truck? At Mr. Chung’s?” Mary shook her head, not understanding. “When? Why?”

“After they closed. Chung said it must have been after midnight. You tell me why.”

“But Gooch had that delivery in Windsor last night.”

“He didn’t make it. It was still in the truck. Didn’t he come home last night?”

Mary paused. “No.”

“He didn’t call you?”

Another pause. “No.”

“It’s none of my business but… does he do this? Does he not come home?”

“No.”

“What the hell, then?”

Mary followed him as he paced a circle. “He just parked the truck and what? Walked somewhere? I don’t understand. Did he eat
there?”

“No one saw him.”

“Had he been drinking?” she asked.

“How should I know?
Has
he been drinking?”

She took a moment to consider. “No more than usual.”

The pair stood puzzling as a maelstrom of leaves found their legs. Mary had not considered anything resembling this scenario.
The Greek’s coat pocket played a ringtone and he reached inside for his cellphone. Mary held her breath. Gooch?

The Greek read the name of the caller. He looked at Mary, shaking his head, and returned the phone to his pocket—the call
was not from Gooch. “He’s been acting, I don’t know, he’s different since your father died.”

How had Mary not noticed that?

“He’s been talking about his family. His old man.”

“He hated his father.”

The Greek shrugged. “Should we call the police?”

“The police?” she asked, alarmed.

“What if Gooch has been mugged or something?”

“Mugged? Gooch? Who in their right mind would mug Gooch? And for what? Twenty-seven dollars and some Scratch ’n’ Wins?”

“You can’t… Mary, I don’t want to pry into your private business, but is there any place… any place… you can think he might
have gone? Does he have a friend?”

What did he mean? Did he know something? Had he known all along?

“Did he take anything, Mary? Is anything missing from the house?”

“No,” she answered uncertainly.

“Clothes? Suitcase?” His cellphone rang again, and she braced herself. He looked at the number, telling Mary, “My mother’s
sick back in Athens. I have to take this.” He turned away for a short, anxious dialogue in Greek before closing the phone.
“Have you checked the bank account?”

“The bank account? Well, no, of course not. Why would I check the bank account?”

“Never mind. I don’t know.”

“To see if he’s taken money?”

“Maybe.”

“Gooch wouldn’t do that.”

“I just don’t understand.” The Greek shrugged again, his work, such as it was, done. His cellphone rang again. He took the
call, speaking rapidly in his mother tongue. “You tell him to call me, Mary,” he instructed Mary when he’d finished his call.
“Tell him to phone me when he gets back. And whatever it is, we’ll work it out.”

Mary knew she would steal his line when finally she heard from Gooch.
Whatever it is, we’ll work it out.
Watching the gold Cadillac disappear, she released, with distinct relief, a symphony of wind.

Ray, standing at the door behind her, hollered, “Nice one, Mary. Class-ee.”

The decent thing would have been to pretend he hadn’t heard. How long had he been standing there? He held the door open, widening
his eyes. “Let’s go. Come on! Inventory time!” He clapped out the syllables. “In-ven-tor-y.”

Mary found herself paralyzed, keys tingling in her hands, considering the word.
Inventory.
Yes, that’s what she needed to do. She needed to take stock. Was she getting this right? Gooch had parked the delivery truck
behind Chung’s Chinese Restaurant sometime in the night and no one knew where he was? Was this how Irma had felt when life
finally stopped making any sense?

“What are you waiting for, Mary? Let’s
go!
”

She looked up at the clouds racing past, the sun exposed in fragile, shifting rays.

“I’m not kidding,” Ray sneered. “You haven’t been pulling your weight around here, Mary. And I’m not the only one who’s noticed.”

Acceptance, denial—those could wait. Anger.

“Get to work, Mary.”

“Go to
hell
, Ray.”

In Ray’s expression Mary saw that she had indeed said the words out loud. Climbing into her truck, stabbing the key in the
ignition, thrusting the gear into reverse, she peeled out of the parking lot without checking her rearview mirror, seized
by a burning feeling in her chest as she played back the conversation with The Greek. Gooch gone. Parked the delivery truck.
Disappeared. On their silver anniversary.

In all her many years of sleepless nights, Mary had felt the steadfastness of tomorrow implied in the constancy of each broken
dawn. Tomorrow, like greeting-card love, was patient and kind. Tomorrow was encouraging, endlessly forgiving. She had not
counted on the sudden betrayal of tomorrow, with whom she thought she shared some silent, tacit agreement.

H
ad Gooch been there that morning, he would have plunked down across from Mary as he always did, air rushing out of the cracked
red vinyl chair, with his nose in the American newspapers that served the area, stopping to read aloud from the
Free Press
or
News
while she pretended to listen. Gooch loved America, her politics, sports, musicians, authors, her gift of second chances,
and Mary felt some pity for him when he mooned over the U.S. of A. He was in love, and the object of his affections didn’t
even know he existed.

Speeding down the winding river road under a canopy of flapping geese, she felt the burning in her chest ignite and spread.
Gooch. Gone. Where? She felt that she was not so much driving as being driven as the black sky rose up in her rearview mirror.

Gooch would have informed her about the weather watch before falling silent with the sports pages. He knew how his wife loved
a good storm. Mary didn’t have time for the newspapers, too intent on her broken promises, too busy with her failures, too
preoccupied by her hunger. Life outside of Leaford was not so much irrelevant to her as it was unconsidered. She didn’t view
current affairs as essential education—more as a choice, like entertainment.
Crisis in the Middle East
was a dense novel she chose not to read.
Genocide in Africa
was unconscionable, unbelievable, a badly written movie that got terrible reviews.
Global Warming
? Doesn’t sound funny. There’s a
whole wide world outside of Leaford
. Wasn’t that what Gooch had said?

At last Mary parked the truck in the lot behind the apartment that overlooked the river in Chatham. So this was what it felt
like to master one’s end, she thought. Not a life but a marriage. And not with narcotics but with the truth. She knew what
she had to do, but her resolve was not quite firm enough, and like a gunslinger slugging back that final shot of whisky in
a western, she sought courage in Laura Secord.

A reprieve in the chocolate. Mary might have described tearing open the cardboard as something like rapture, enveloped as
she was by the heavenly scent of cocoa, and lifted by a sense of well-being. Breathing deeply, she peeled the plastic wrapping
from one box, and another and another, tossing aside the lids, digging at the confections, shoveling two and three at a time
into her unhinged mandible. She didn’t care that chocolate squares were spilling onto the seats and floor as she swiped aside
the fluted paper cups. Humming, moaning, her pursuit vaguely erotic,
That’s enough,
she told herself, and then
Just one more
.

The last time she had been in the corridors of the tall, slender building, which always smelled faintly of mildew, she had
said her final goodbye to Orin. At least that’s what she told herself. In fact he’d been the one to say goodbye, “See you
tomorrow, Murray,” to which she’d responded with regrettable harshness, “I picked up a shift, Pop! I’ll be late! So don’t
expect a hot supper!”—which was not goodbye at all.

On that night she had stopped, as she always did, at Sylvie Lafleur’s door, not to knock, not to visit, not to thank the older
woman for her kindness to Orin, but to listen. To the sound of the television broadcasting
Wheel of Fortune
or some other game show in which regular folk won a fortune in cash and prizes. The sound of the microwave beeping. Dishes
clattering in the sink. The balcony door sliding open when Sylvie went out to smoke. Lonely sounds, comforting and familiar,
for in them she heard the music of her own life.

The gray carpeting in the building’s hallway was soiled with muddy imprints from tramping boots, but apart from that the place
seemed unchanged. Mary passed the door of the apartment where her father had lived, and didn’t feel inclined to trace the
outline of the number on the wall beside the buzzer as she had thought she might. She could hear the sound of loud music—punk?
rap? she wasn’t sure—coming from within. She’d been told that a single mother had taken the place and was likely to be evicted
because of her unruly teenaged son.

She reached Sylvie’s door and stopped. She listened. No sound within. She waited. Pressed the buzzer. Nothing. Then she set
to banging on the door, but like she wanted out, not in. The sound of the music ceased in Orin’s old apartment and the door
was flung open by a sullen boy with purple hair and kohl-lined eyes. “What?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I was looking for Sylvie Lafleur. Do you know her?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know where she is?”

The boy shrugged and pulled the door shut. Something feline about his expression reminded Mary of her mother—that catlike
smile, wary and remote. Irma had fixed that smile on Jimmy Gooch so many Septembers ago, when he’d announced that he and Mary
had decided, given her pregnancy, to be married.

Irma’d asked him directly, “You’ve considered the alternatives?”

“There are no alternatives,” Orin had countered, folding his lean arms over his buckled chest.

There had been a vase of glorious pink roses on Dr. Ruttle’s desk, which Irma would have considered too feminine a touch for
a man’s office, if she had been waiting with Mary in the examining room the week before. Mary already suspected that she was
pregnant—the cessation of menses, the swollen breasts, the nausea—but when Dr. Ruttle confirmed this, she responded with surprise
and confusion. Gooch had, after all,
promised
that she could not get pregnant if he
withdrew before deposit
.

Flushed and sweating in the cool September air, munching the stack of saltines she’d been keeping in her purse to stem her
nausea, Mary had walked from Ruttle’s office through the old part of town to the high school, where Gooch was taking a special
class to make up for the time and grade point average lost to the accident. He was hoping to start university in January.
With the choice of institution now independent of its athletic record, he’d promised Mary that he would enroll in Windsor,
which was under an hour away. Mary’d found a nearby night school offering a course in fashion and design, but she hadn’t applied.
She was too busy with Gooch and working at the drugstore and keeping house for her parents, and hadn’t got around to it.

Wading down the high school hallway for the first time since spring graduation, Mary could not conceive of a way to tell Gooch
about her pregnancy. She glimpsed her huge boyfriend through the open double doors to the parking lot, leaning against the
tan Duster, shaking his head fatally as though he’d already heard the news. She was surprised to see cigarette smoke swirling
near his ear, and Sylvie Lafleur beside him, childlike next to the giant teen. Sylvie glanced up to find Mary watching from
the shadow of the hallway, waved, then ground the cigarette with the toe of her shoe and started in Mary’s direction.

“
You
talk to your boyfriend,” she called on her approach. “Tell him it’s a
crime
to throw away his future.” She dropped her
h
’s and
th
’s and said ’
im
instead of
him
, and
trow
instead of
throw
. “There are so many options. So many
choices
.” She sounded, briefly, like a tiny white French Ms. Bolt.

The future. Although she tried to see the big picture, Mary found her canvas painted over, scene upon scene, not quite right.
A bad angle. A poor perspective. A landscape where there should be a portrait. All the pictures vandalized with graffiti,
the same dripping red word,
Gooch
. “Pick one, Murray,” Orin would say, holding a bouquet of assorted lollipops. “Pick.
One.
”

“She’s giving me shit because I don’t want to go to McGill,” Gooch explained, after Ms. Lafleur disappeared back into the
school. “She’s already worked it out. Which I did
not
ask her to do.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not going.”

“Okay.”

“If I did go, I’d want you to come with me.”

“Come with you?”

“Come with me. Or I’d still see you on weekends.”

“McGill is in Montreal. That’s seven hours away.”

“I can’t leave my mother anyway. Not now. This thing with Asswipe isn’t gonna last. I can’t leave her. With Heather.”

“You don’t even speak French, Gooch.”

“The journalism school is outstanding.”

Outstanding.
Such an American word. “Yeah?”

“She thinks she can help me get assistance. There’s the insurance money from my dad, but she thinks I should save that.”