The Wife's Tale (15 page)

In the junk drawer in the kitchen she found a pen and paper, and sat down in one of the red vinyl chairs. She wrote,
Gooch, I’m out looking for
—but didn’t finish. For what? In that moment, she wasn’t sure.

T
here would be no purple lilacs, it being October and the bushes bare on the path to St. John’s, but Mary wanted to bring Irma
flowers. The flowers spoke of ritual, and this one was important. She eased the red Ford into the snow-carpeted parking lot
at the grocery store, pleased to see that her makeshift roof was bearing up under the strain. The climbing sun, appearing
briefly from behind the gray clouds, warmed her face as she limped across the lot, wondering why she could barely grasp the
scent of fry grease from the burger joint nearby. She entered the grocery store but did not take a cart.

The pretty cashier, whose name tag read
SHARLA
, glanced at the plastic customer card Mary offered and said without looking up, “Hello, Mrs. Gooch.” It was a habit of retail
that Mary found irksome. She didn’t care if it was churlish, she wanted to be anonymous while shopping.

There was hardly any use in pretending, though. The cashier saw her nearly every day. “Hello, Sharla.” Mary put the bouquet
of sunflowers on the conveyor.

“That’s
it
, Mrs. Gooch? No groceries?”

“Sorry.”

Sharla looked up, blurting, “Ohmygod your hair is
red
.”

“Yes,” Mary said, cheeks burning scarlet to match.

“Nice.” Sharla waved the saffron flowers over the scanner. Annoyed, she pressed a button beside her register. “The machine’s
not scanning. I have to get my manager.”

Mary felt the heat of her blame,
If you weren’t so fat the flowers would scan.
“I was thinking I should get something smaller anyway,” she said.

The girl tapped the microphone on her cash register. “Dick at register three, please.
Dick
.” She turned to Mary, sharing—“That’s actually his
name
.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not
your
fault.” Sharla leaned on the button, straining on her toes, flexing her sculpted legs as she searched the aisles. The bass
notes of “Proud Mary” suddenly began to blare. Mary let out a shriek, startling Sharla, who helped her find the cellular phone
beneath the other travel items in her huge brown purse. The phone was so clearly alien to Mary that Sharla had to take it
from her hands and open it and press it to Mary’s ear.

“Hello,” Mary offered, breathless. It was a message from her service provider, but it took Mary some moments before she understood
that it was pre-recorded.

Sharla smiled. “You just close it now. Close it. Just… yeah… close it.”

Mary folded the phone in half.

“You might want to dial down that ringtone,” Sharla said, before pressing the buzzer again. “God, I hate my manager.”

Mary nodded. “Me too.”

“A dick?”

“A
Ray
. But yes.”

Pressing the flowers into Mary’s arms, Sharla gestured toward the door and told her, “I’ll put them on my employee discount
and you can pay me back whenever.”

“But I have money.”

“Just take them, Mrs. Gooch,” Sharla insisted, waving her off. “You’re in here every day, so.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Just say thank you.”

“Thank you,” Mary said, hugging the large bouquet. Leaving the store, she wondered if anyone in Leaford knew that Gooch had
parked the truck at Chung’s and disappeared. Maybe Sharla knew. Maybe her gesture had been made out of pity. Or solidarity.

She entered the front door at St. John’s, wiping her boots on the damp sections of cardboard spread over the carpet as requested
by the handwritten sign. The young man at reception, a recent hire, looked annoyed at the size of the bouquet in her arms.
She did not apologize when she handed him the flowers, particularly as she was also bringing postdated checks for the next
six months of her mother’s care. She asked the young man to please take down her new contact number, in case there was an
emergency. “My cellphone number,” she said blithely, then read it off the card.

She stopped to greet a threesome of elderly women near the door to the common room, proud that she’d had the reputation, at
Raymond Russell’s, of being “good with the geezers.” Nearby, two whittled Williams and a pitted Paul were playing poker for
a pot of pennies. She had forgotten about her flaming hair until the eldest of the Williams let out a long, low whistle. “Well,
hello Ann-Margret,” he cheered.

Old Joe DaSilva, who had been a favorite customer at the drugstore, said, “Hey Red. You like my new robe, Red?”

“You look like Hugh Hefner, Joe,” she said, running her hand over the silky fabric of his shoulders, making the old men laugh.

She blushed when the older William patted her breast, which he’d mistaken for her arm, and said, “Stay for this hand. You
can be my Lady Luck.”

“Your color looks better,” she observed.

“They changed my medication.”

“That explains a lot. Stay away from my mother,” she joked, leaving the men to their cards.

In the common room Mary found her mother parked alongside the new patient, another frail white woman, Roberta, a stranger
from Kitchener who never had visitors. Side by side, snoring in wheelchairs with blankets tucked up to their chins, they reminded
Mary of toddlers in strollers at the park, and she understood why mothers said they looked like angels when they were asleep.
She found a seat between her mother and Roberta and set her hand on Irma’s terminally bony shoulder. “Mum?”

But it was Roberta, afflicted with some mysterious misfortune of aging, who opened her eyes. “Yes?” Mary was too startled
to respond. “Yes?” Roberta repeated, catching her gaze so that Mary couldn’t turn away. “What is it?”

Mary faltered. “I came to say goodbye.”

The old woman shrugged.

Mary clasped Irma’s cool fingers, addressing her mother in a whisper, hoping Roberta couldn’t hear. “I came to say goodbye.”

“You want my forgiveness? Now that I’m dying? Is that why you’ve come?” Roberta demanded.

Mary paused, seeing the old woman’s longing, and answered, “Yes.”

Roberta nodded slowly. “I suppose I’ve waited a long time for that.”

“Okay.”

“So much time wasted.”

“Yes,” Mary agreed.

“
Wasted.
”

“Wasted.”

“How will you remember me?” the old woman asked, searching Mary’s eyes. “What will you think of?”

“The way you brushed my hair,” Mary told her, all the while squeezing Irma’s hand. “I’ll think of the way you brushed my hair.”

“What else?”

Mary paused. “And I’ll think about… how I always admired your strength.”

“I’ve always said what I thought and thought what I said.”

“I know you loved me.” Mary kissed her mother’s parchment temple and joined the two women in gazing at the distance.

Unaware of how long she’d been sitting there—for since the death of the clock, time had ceased to be sequenced, at once here
and now and then and before—Mary finally squeezed her mother’s bony fingers, the ritual of farewell sadder and more natural
than she’d imagined.

On her way out she stopped to say goodbye to the table of men playing cards, and reminded the young man at reception that
it was her
cellphone
number they should try if she needed to be reached.

The path tilted before her. She heard a distant cry for nourishment—not a pain in her gut but a cerebral reminder to eat.
The Oakwood Bakery was two blocks from St. John’s.

The Oakwood was the only independent bakery left in Baldoon County, the Tim Hortons coffee chain having annihilated the competition
years ago, but Mary remained a loyal customer, particularly since they had added the drive-through window and she no longer
had to expend the energy of leaving her car, or suffer the reproving looks from the other customers, even if she had to concede
their point. What
did
a woman her size need with a box of honey crullers?

Opening the door, she remembered her frequent visits to the Oakwood with her mother as a child. Before groceries on Fridays,
because Irma never shopped on an empty stomach, it had been their habit to stop at the bakery, where they would find a stool
at the large U-shaped counter, and where her mother would remind her, “Don’t swivel,” a thousand times before she’d have to
smack Mary’s knee. Irma would order the raisin bran muffin and strong black coffee in those squat white cups, which always
came with saucers. “I like the light in here at this time of day,” Irma would say. Or “I love how this place never changes.”

Mary would have her choice of donut from the dizzying array, a decision that caused more agony than rapture as she often regretted
the choice of jam-filled, wishing she’d gone for the custard, the fritter instead of the fancy. Irma would tear off tiny sections
of muffin that she popped into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully, and though they rarely breathed a word, Mary felt connected
to her in their sensual enjoyment of the place.

On the morning before Christopher Klik’s funeral, the Brody family stopped in at the Oakwood for breakfast. Not in the mood
to swivel in her snug black skirt and tight white blouse, Mary sat still on the stool between her parents at the counter near
the door. The waitress grinned tightly as she dithered between the rainbow sprinkles and the lemon puff, finally deciding
on the double chocolate glaze. She asked for a taste of her mother’s muffin and a try of her father’s cinnamon bun before
tucking into the unusually small chocolate donut, which would not remotely satisfy the obeast. She attempted to tear her donut
into small pieces as her mother did, but only made a mess of her fingers. “Eat that
properly
, Mary,” Irma said.

She saw that her parents had no appetite, and was relieved to think that they wouldn’t notice if she ate their breakfast too,
lost as they both were in the mortal struggle of the day. She shoved the remainder of her donut into her mouth and turned
just as the door opened on the silhouette of stunning Karen Klik, sheathed in black for her younger brother’s funeral, long,
blonde hair blown bone-straight, lashes coated with waterproof mascara, car keys dangling in her long fingers, no doubt running
some errand for the wake. Their eyes locked.

“You have chocolate on your blouse,” Karen said.

Panicked, Mary reached up with her hands, smearing more of the chocolate on her starchy cotton shoulder.

“Oh, Mary,” Irma cried, diving into action, dunking a napkin into a water glass, yanking at Mary’s shirt. “Oh,
Mary
.”

When Mary finally had the courage to look up, Karen Klik was still watching. Mary didn’t know the word for what she saw in
the grieving sister’s eyes. Heightening her humiliation, there had later been a heated discussion among the ladies at the
wake about what would best remove the chocolate stain, until Mrs. Klik’s sister-in-law pointed out, “She’s
bursting
out of it anyway. Send it to the ragbag.”

Shaking off the shame of that day, Mary pulled open the door to the Oakwood and stepped inside. The clerk behind the counter
looked up, surprised. “Hi, Mrs. Gooch,” she said, recognizing her from the drive-through. The conversation across the counter
ceased abruptly and all eyes fell upon her. She saw instantly how foolish she’d been to wonder if anyone knew.
Everyone
knew about Jimmy Gooch winning the lottery and leaving his fat wife to go on some middle-aged vision quest.

Casting her eyes down, Mary caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection of a chrome table, struck by the shade of her hair,
a deep fire tone that she allowed, for a moment, was not hideous next to her complexion.

Mary hadn’t sat at the U-shaped counter since she was a child, and never
this
U-shaped counter, since shortly after her classmate’s funeral the structure had largely been destroyed by the second fire
in its history, and Irma’d stopped driving there before groceries on Friday. Mary guessed that it was because she could no
longer say,
I love how this place never changes
.

To fill the silence, she told the clerk, “I thought I’d have a coffee,” and started for the counter. The rest of the customers
returned to their cliques—the quartet of farmers, the mother with the brats, the three retired schoolteachers whom Mary recognized
from Leaford Collegiate but who seemed not to recognize her. The cashier from the Zellers. The waitress brought her a black
coffee. “Excuse me,” Mary asked her. “What would be the fastest way to the highway from here?”

One of the farmers answered before the waitress could open her mouth. “Take this road to Number 2. Left on Number 2 takes
you straight to the 401. Hope your tires are good. They’re calling for more snow.”

“Where you headed?” the farmer who was not wearing a ball cap asked.

“Toronto,” Mary decided, since the restaurant receipts were her only real lead.

He curled his lip and croaked, “I hate Toronto.”

“We put your order in the freezer when you didn’t pick it up last week, Mrs. Gooch,” the clerk called out from behind the
counter. “Do you want them now?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Your cakes, from last week? Isn’t that why you’re here? Four of them, right? And the pastry assortment.”

Mary froze as the room hushed and eyes turned. Flushed, she rose and paid her tab. “Could you deliver the cakes over to St.
John’s?” she inquired quietly.

“Cost extra for delivery.”

Mary tried to stop her hand from trembling as she fumbled for her cash.

R
oaring down the highway in the big Ford truck, listening to the Motown tape Gooch had mixed for her years ago, Mary watched
the landscape, the flat farms and soaring silos banked by dense thickets of forest. A few tenacious trees clung to the fall
show but most were bare and black from melted snow. She saw a sign for the next service center, reminding herself that she
needed to pee and eat something. Even with a break on the road, she hoped to get to the restaurant in Toronto by dinnertime,
when more of the staff would be there, to ask questions about Gooch. Gooch was nothing if not memorable. Maybe he’d talked
to someone about a trip he wanted to make. A place he wished he lived. Offered some hint of where he might have gone. Mary
understood now, though she’d criticized such plots in prime-time drama, that in real life one could do nothing but follow
the faintest of clues when the faintest of clues were all one had.