The Wife's Tale (2 page)

If I could just lose the weight.

For all her uncertainty about God, and in addition to the rule of three, Mary Gooch believed in miracles.

T
he night clock never
ticked
for Mary. On this autumn night, the eve of her silver anniversary, the clock
thumped
, a downbeat rhythm in time with her heart, alternative jazz, restless, like a tapping toe or a wandering eye, awaiting the
first notes of an uncommon melody.

Adrift, mattress springing leaks in the dark, thoughts scurrying through portals, drawing conclusions, mixing metaphors, Mary
felt beads of perspiration mingle in a stream down her temple. Slick and sealish in her faded gray nightgown, a triangle of
sweat tickling her crotch, she was dizzy from the dueling sensations of heat and hunger. Heat from the furnace, which she’d
tried to shut off earlier, was still blasting through the floor grates in the tiny country bungalow. Hunger, as always, shouted
to be heard.

Mary held her breath, listening to the sound of a vehicle in the distance. Her husband Gooch? No. Gooch would be coming from
the east. She tossed her undulating flesh and rode the tidal waves until she was breathless on her back, humming a tune to
distract the obeast within. She hummed more loudly, hearing faint assurances from a distant chorus that she was not alone.
There was hope in the harmony, until hunger snickered from the kitchen.

In the hallway, damp nightgown suctioned to her spread, eating from a foil bag she’d grabbed from the kitchen counter, Mary
checked the temperature on the thermostat, licking her salty finger before she slid the lever from Off to On to Off again.
The furnace purred, disregarding its directive. Huffing, she set her bag down and threw open the basement door. Scent molecules
of must and mildew fled like trapped birds as she flipped on the light, struck by the sight of the rotten bottom stair she’d
broken last winter. She hesitated, then closed the door, deciding the heat was to be endured until Gooch got home.

She checked the clock, reminding herself that her husband was often late, and sometimes very late. Mary had kept such nightly
vigils over the years, never questioning her husband’s whereabouts, never admitting her fear of the dark. She returned to
her chip bag, kettle-fried shards piercing her palate, painful but soothing, like the blues.
Enough,
she told herself, then,
Just one more.
And one more. And just the one extra.

Parched, she opened the old Kenmore refrigerator and, while gulping cola from a huge plastic bottle, saw through the window
above the sink moon glow filtering through fast-moving clouds. Flipping her tail of chocolate hair, she sailed across the
tile floor and pulled open the window, welcoming the breeze, stirred by the fall fragrance of ripened red apples and soft
yellow pears, wet earth and decomposing leaves, a savoury decay that would soon fade away when winter came to embitter the
car-exhausted air.

The breeze kissed her soft skin and she shivered, thinking of Gooch. A feral cat yowled in the distance and Mary swiveled
instinctively to check the silver bowls on the floor near the back door. Mr. Barkley’s food and water.

Prick of pain. Gone. No Mr. Barkley. No more worry about Mr. Barkley’s food and water. Mr. Barkley’s worm infection. Mr. Barkley’s
tooth decay. Mr. Barkley had been Mary’s boy, and no less loved by her than any human child by his mother. A decade ago she
had rescued the kitten from a hole into which he’d fallen at the back of the garage, and named him after a basketball player
in hopes of getting Gooch to bond. She nursed the mewling wretch from a turkey baster filled with infant formula from the
drugstore, cradling him in a hand towel, grooming him with a little wet paintbrush to simulate a tongue. She referred to herself
as “Mama” when Gooch wasn’t around. Mama creamed turkey for Mr. Barkley. Mama let Mr. Barkley sleep in the scooze of her cleavage.
Like any mother, Mama didn’t love Mr. Barkley less for his meanness, even though the cat spent the best of his ten years hiding
behind the living-room drapes, shedding orange hair on the green chair, and hissing when Mama was late with his dinner.

On a heat-wave summer night in July Mary had skulked into the kitchen for a snack, surprised to find Mr. Barkley collapsed
in the center of the cool tile floor. She nudged him with her toe and panicked when he didn’t hiss and flee. “Mr. Barkley?”

Unable to kneel down, she pulled a red vinyl kitchen chair to the sprawled cat and, using her feet as cranes, raised him high
enough that she could grasp his front paws and drag his limp body up to the shelf of her bosom. Seeing that he was dying,
she stroked his ginger head and whispered, “Mama’s got the Tuna Treats,” so his final thoughts would be hopeful. A brief spasm.
Mr. Barkley present. Mr. Barkley past. And no idea why he died, except a guess that he had eaten a poisoned rodent. The vinyl
chair mourned as Mary rocked side to side, kissing Mr. Barkley’s snout, which she’d never done in life for fear he’d bite
her nose.

The lights were on and the air foul when Gooch returned very late that night to find the contents of the fridge weighting
the table. Mary was tonguing rhubarb pie from the well of a large silver ladle and didn’t care that she’d been caught. When
Gooch stared at his wife, not comprehending, she managed to choke out, “Mr. Barkley.”

When Gooch still didn’t understand, she gestured to the refrigerator. “I didn’t want the bugs to get at him.”

Thoroughly disturbed by the thought of the dead cat in his refrigerator, Gooch set his large comforting hands on her shoulders
and assured her that he would dig a hole first thing in the morning. He kissed her cheek and said, “Near the big trees out
back, Mare. We’ll plant some bulbs to mark the grave.”

“Iris,” Mary agreed, chewing and swallowing. “Purple.”

With birds rejoicing in the oaks and Gooch towering at her side, Mary sprinkled dirt on Mr. Barkley, whose stiff body she’d
wrapped in two hundred feet of plastic food wrap, before Gooch set him down in the dark, moist hole.

Now, gazing into the brooding night past the trees and beyond Mr. Barkley’s grave, Mary was sorry to see that there were no
lights in the neighbors’ houses to either side. It made her feel less lonely when she could observe other people’s quietly
desperate lives. The fighting Feragamos with their brood of teenage boys lived in the ramshackle Victorian an acre to the
west. Penny and Shawn, the young couple with the newborn who screamed at each other whenever the baby cried, were on the other
side of the creek. The Merkels’ house beyond the breadth of cornfields was much too far to spy on without binoculars, though
she doubted there’d be much to see. And the scrubby orange farmhouse where the Darlen twins (famous because the two girls
had been born joined at the head) used to live was now the local history museum and kept only summer hours.

The old willow at the end of the drive was suddenly assaulted by a hard-driven wind. Parked beneath the tree, the red Ford
pickup truck with its custom-made sunroof gathered teardrop leaves. The sunroof had been jammed open since spring. It had
been on Mary’s list of things not getting done for months:
Sunroof repair
.

Come home, Gooch. Come home. Why are you so late? Where are you? Mary’s worry prompted a craving and she found the beef jerky
stick she’d hidden from herself, tucked in the back of the cupboard behind the soup cans. Chewing, she remembered her list.
Sunroof repair. Furnace repaired? Replaced? Checks due at St. John’s Nursing Home. Work extra shift for Candace. Gooch’s suit
from the cleaners.
She opened the buttons of her nightgown and padded back to her room, farting indignantly, tired of the list, making promises
to tomorrow. Tomorrow, self-confidence. Tomorrow, self-control. Balance. Restraint. Grace. Tomorrow.

Whiffing the scent of self-pity as she found her lonesome bed, Mary Gooch thought, as she often did, about a boy she used
to know.

A
s a girl, Mary Brody had been content spending her summers reading novels in her room or listening to loud music on the radio
while her peers gathered in tube tops to smoke their mothers’ Peter Jacksons and share their true despair. There were girls
down the street, Debbie and Joanne, who, like Mary, read books in their rooms, and with whom she believed she might have struck
an alliance, but Mary preferred to be alone, with her hunger.

Even as she wallowed in her feasts, she worried about her mother’s keen eye for inventory, and made frequent trips to Klik’s
corner store to replenish the stock, using money sent by distant Brodys for Christmas and birthdays. Irma had started working
full-time as secretary at the tool-and-die shop when Mary was five years old, and had told Mary then that, if there was ever
an emergency, she should go get help from Mr. or Mrs. Klik.

The Kliks were a stern couple with six children, one of whom, Christopher, in Mary’s grade, had been diagnosed with a rare
cancer the year he turned twelve. Mary, the fat girl, and Christopher, the sick boy, had some bond of distinction, though
they rarely exchanged more than irritated glances.

Occasionally, as Mary Brody left Klik’s dusty store, she’d find the boy parked at the bike rack near the trash bins, perched
atop his one-of-a-kind moped, which Chatham Cycle Shop had donated because he was dying. Christopher’s photograph had been
on the front page of the
Leaford Mirror
, his frail white fingers gripping handlebars, the shop owners, puffed with charity, holding his emaciated body steady on
the seat. Mary hoped that Christopher hadn’t read the story below his picture, even as she envied the boy his prognosis. He
seemed to be better loved for the fact of his imminent demise.

Exiting Klik’s store one day when she was in seventh grade, carrying a loaf of bread and a jar of honey and a pound of mixed
candy, Mary had cringed to find Christopher hunched beside his moped, holding his legs at his ankles. He looked to be in pain,
though he didn’t appear to have fallen. She’d stopped without drawing near and asked, “Want me to get your mom?”

The boy shot her a look. “
No.
”

They turned their attention to a large black crow flapping around the trash can. The bird landed on a plastic bag and cocked
his head to watch them. “I hate crows,” Mary said.

“They hate you too.”

“I don’t care.”

“Like my motorbike?”

She raised a brow, pretending she’d just noticed.

The small boy sat up, finding her pretty eyes. “Wanna ride it?” She thought the question rhetorical. “Nobody but me’s ever
ridden it.”

“I know.”

“Everyone wants to.”

“I
know
.”

“You can.” Christopher glanced down the road to ensure that there were no approaching cars or strolling people. Then he drew
his shirt up over his concave chest. “Do this,” he said, pinching the pink nipple on his right breast, “and you can ride it.”

Mary had not ridden her own bicycle yet that summer, feeling the effort of peddling and balancing too great for her big, tired
body, and she was electrified by the prospect of such vehicular freedom. Had Christopher been a well boy, she might have run
to call Irma at work, but he was a sick boy, and Mary didn’t consider his request prurient, just odd.

She stepped forward, reaching her stubby fingers toward the boy’s translucent skin. When he batted her hand away, she was
shocked by his speed and strength. “Not to
me
, dumpkopf.”

“You just said,” Mary said, screwing up her face.

“To
yourself
,” Christopher wheezed.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Sorry.”

“Do it and you can ride my motorbike.”

Fair trade. She lifted her ribbed tank top, allowing her pillowy breast to spill forward, and pinched her rose nipple lightly
before pulling the fabric back down.

Christopher grinned broadly. “Pervert.”

“Can I ride it now, Chris-to-
pher?
”

His regret seemed genuine. “I didn’t think you were really
gonna
. My dad’ll kill me if I let
anybody
.”

She sat down on the curb beside him, scooping slimy jelly beans from her bag, chewing with vigor. Remembering her manners,
she offered the bag to Christopher, who said, “I don’t like candy.”

Mary was incredulous. “But you own the store! You could have all you want!”

Christopher paused for effect. “I could.”

They were quiet a moment. The fact of the child’s premature death stirred within their mutual sense of injustice.

“No fair,” Mary said finally.

Christopher curled his lip and sucked his snot succinctly. For the moment, no distance between them. “You’d be pretty if you
weren’t so fat,” he said plainly.

“Okay.” Mary shrugged, flattered. Studying him, she wondered, not for the first time, if he knew he was dying. She was astonished
when he answered her thoughts.

“I’m dying from what I got, so.”

It was clear to Mary that Christopher Klik was magical, or mystical. “Weeks or months?” Her parents had wondered that at the
dinner table.

“What kinda question is that?”

“Sorry.”

“Besides, you’re dying too. Everyone is.”

Struck by the realization that the magical boy was right, Mary watched his tiny whiteness, waiting for further enlightenment.

“Show me that titty again,” he demanded.

Meeting his gaze, she lifted her shirt and moved her hand hesitantly toward her breast, plucking at her nipple as he watched
open-mouthed.

When she finished, Christopher Klik grinned. “I’m telling
everybody
you did that.”

Mary grinned back, because she knew he had no one to tell. She waited to meet his eyes before leaning in to whisper, “I’ll
be your girlfriend till you die.”

The boy didn’t pause to consider, but wagged his head back and forth and made a pained move to rise.

Without turning to look, clutching her corner-store bag, Mary hurried off, terrified by the painful burning lump that had
suddenly become lodged in her throat, convinced that the dying boy had infected her with his tragic disease. She opened the
refrigerator door in her quiet, empty house, hoping that the choking feeling could be relieved by a gulp of juice. Then she
thought some honey toast might help, Popsicles, peanut clusters from the freezer, the rest of the mixed candy, some leftover
ham.