The Wife's Tale (35 page)

“Oh Eden,” Mary said, stepping inside the dank house, noticing the disarray as she followed the older woman down the hall
to Jack’s room.

“Chita quit,” Eden said. “She called yesterday.”

The drapes were drawn in Jack’s room, but Mary could see in the dim light the dent in the mattress where he had lain, medications
spread out over the bedside tables, a pile of soiled linens on the floor. For the first time, she was glad for her diminished
sense of smell. Eden pushed back the curtain on the floor-to-ceiling window but a clip was stuck on the rod. She yanked at
the fabric again and again, startled when she pulled the rod clear of its hooks and the curtain fell to the floor. With the
sickroom suddenly bathed in bright sunlight, she moved from the window to open the closet door. “I have to decide which of
Jack’s suits should go to the cleaners.”

Mary noticed a collection of photographs on Jack’s dresser and thought of the lovely scrapbook Wendy could make of them, evidence
of the couple’s enduring love. Pictures from the exotic vacations they had gone on. Photos of the two holding hands on a sailboat
Jack had owned, in front of the mansion with the lap pool. “Jack had a boat?”

“He loved the sea. It was awful for him when he couldn’t sail any more. He missed it more than driving. Will you help me decide
between the blue and the gray?”

Mary understood that they were choosing Jack’s burial clothes, and paused to consider before she answered. “Blue.” Scanning
the photographs again, she realized. “Doesn’t Jack have daughters?”

“Three. Eldest is in Redding. The other girls are up in the Bay Area.”

“Are they here?”

“No.”

“Are they coming?”

Eden shrugged.

“Do they know?”

Eden didn’t respond.

“Shouldn’t they know, Eden?”

“They never had the time to say hello. Why would they need to say goodbye?”

“They’re his children.”

“They never called. They never visited. They demonized that poor man. They believed everything his ex-wife said. Jack didn’t
even get to meet his grandchildren. He prayed every night those girls would see the light. They just broke his heart.”

The ringing of the telephone on the bedside stand startled them both.

“Hello,” Eden said into the receiver. “Hello? Hello?” After a moment she hung up, saying, “Lost call.”

“What if it was Gooch? What if it was about Jack?”

“They’ll call back if it was anything important.”

The two women stared at the phone. “Our silver anniversary is in January,” Eden said, twisting the diamond cluster wedding
ring on her crooked left finger.

Mary admired the way the stones scattered the light. “Ours was a couple of weeks ago.”

Eden turned, dawning with memory. “October. Yes. I remember.” She noticed Mary’s ring finger. “Your wedding ring.”

“I had to have it cut off years ago. My finger got too fat.”

“Jimmy was still wearing his,” Eden told her. “When he was here. I noticed he was wearing his gold wedding band, if that means
anything.”

Mary smiled.

“Well,” Eden said, casting a glance at the phone, “I guess it was nothing important. I need to lay down for a bit.” She took
a breath but said no more as she rose, shuffled across the hallway, twisted the knob on the door with her cruelly bent digits
and slipped inside her room.

Mary looked down at her own hands, grateful for their marvelous mechanics, thanking all ten fingers for their years of support.
Turning to go, she caught sight of something in the mirror on Jack’s dresser. A flash of silver at her scalp. She was already
growing roots.

Drawn by the sun, she let her feet urge her out the back door to the patio near the pool, wondering if the pool company had
come by to clean but been shooed away by Eden, or had found no one at home. She saw her soul’s reflection staring back from
the murky green water, but different from the last time she’d glimpsed it. Her changing perception of time had altered the
sum of her reflections. To the past she was no longer servant, and to the mirror comrade, not conspirator. That elusive happiness
she’d so often pondered? Maybe happiness was generally misunderstood, she thought. Maybe happiness was the absence of fear.
She felt herself at the launch of her own transformation, and wished she had a champagne bottle to crack against her knee.
She watched her form in the rippling water and felt a peculiar urge to shout, “Fat Girl Revolution!”

Was that what this all amounted to? This leaving of Leaford? This parting with her appetite? This relinquishing of her fear?
A revolution—not
against
herself but in support of herself? She had Gooch to thank, in many ways. But she could see how even a revolutionary could
lose perspective. And patience.

A short time later, she heard noises in the kitchen and went to find Eden.

“I’m going back to the hospital.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“No. You could stay though, if you like.”

“Do you want me to stay? Until you get back?”

“I just thought it might be nicer for you than sitting in a hotel.”

When Eden was gone, Mary stripped the sheets from Jack’s bed and opened the windows to sweep out the stale air. She vacuumed
dead skin from the waves of worn broadloom, and dusted the framed photographs on his dresser. After a thorough cleaning of
his room, she washed the dishes and put on the laundry and swept the terracotta floor in the hallway. She hummed while she
worked, pondering her satisfaction. “You know this feeling to serve?” Big Avi had asked her.

W
ith Eden still not home, Mary plumped the pillows on the Ethan Allen and sat down to rest. The drapes were partially drawn
and the room in shadow as she scanned the bookcase, where there were dozens of old books, including some titles she recognized,
and a large leather-bound Bible. She opened the Bible, extracted some of the cash from her purse and tucked it neatly inside
before returning it to the shelf, jangled by the ringing phone beside her. She was unsure if she should pick up, and then
panicked that it might be Gooch.

“Hello?” she answered tentatively.

The receiver went dead on the other end. Or nobody had ever been there at all. Another lost call. Eden said it happened all
the time—like the incidence of left wives, Mary supposed.

As she set the phone back down, she caught sight of a turquoise Chevy pulling up in the driveway. A vintage beauty, which
Gooch would have loved, but she saw that the driver was not Gooch, nor was he among the people climbing out of the car. She
had decided not to answer the door, and was hiding in the hallway out of sight, when she heard a knock. A voice called, “Hello?”

Mary turned to see the face of a young man with blue eyes peering in through the tiny window beside the entrance. Opening
the door, she found four people watching her from the porch. The young blue-eyed man. An elderly woman with gray eyes. A bony
old man with a sable beard and black eyes. A middle-aged man dressed in spandex, who looked as though he belonged on a running
truck or in the pages of a fitness magazine, had green eyes.

“I’m Berton,” the bony old man said. “This is Michael.” The runner. “Donna.” The old woman. “Shawn.” The blue-eyed man. They
smiled as the bony, bearded man continued, “You must be Mary.”

“Yes,” she said, confused as to who the quartet might be and why they knew her name.

“We’re here for prayer circle,” the man said, looking beyond her into the house.

“Oh dear,” Mary said. “Eden didn’t call you? Jack was taken to the hospital.”

Given the nature of his illness, the group seemed unreasonably surprised.

“I guess prayer circle is canceled,” she added, holding the door.

The young man jolted. “We don’t cancel prayer circle.”

“We never cancel prayer circle,” Berton agreed, gesturing into the house.

Mary shifted to allow the four inside. She had envisioned a less diverse group. And hadn’t Eden said there were six? “I haven’t
made food,” she remembered, and was relieved when the old woman—Donna—smiled and patted her arm.

“Will you join us, Mary?” Berton asked, making his way to the living room.

Not wanting to join them, but without reason to decline, she nodded and followed, squinting when Shawn pulled back the drapes
to let in the sun. Berton and Michael took the chairs by the window. Mary found a place on the sofa between the other two.

“Gil and Terri won’t be joining us,” Berton announced, before reaching out to join hands with the runner on one side and the
blue-eyed man on the other. Mary gave her hands to the young man, and the old woman, who also joined hands with the runner.

They considered each other, Mary following their lead, gazing into the blue eyes, the gray, the black and the green. She was
surprised to see that no one in the prayer circle had a Bible, and wondered if they’d borrow Eden’s and find the money she’d
hidden between the pages. It was Shawn who finally spoke, his smooth young voice liberating vibrations from his throat that
trickled down his arm and flowed from his hand to Mary’s. “We are your humble servants. Shawn, Donna, Berton, Michael and
Mary,” he said, casting her a glance. “We’re gathered today to pray for Jack. Lord, have mercy on our brother Jack.”

Together the group murmured, “Let us pray.”

“And we’re here to pray for Mary,” he added, as all eyes turned toward her.

She yanked her hands back from the strangers. “You don’t have to pray for me.”

Shawn tilted his head. “Eden told us why you’re here.”

The son’s wife. Of course, Eden had told her prayer group about the fat daughter-in-law who had come to California to look
for her wayward husband. She could see by their expressions that they had prayed for her already. For Gooch too, no doubt.
Mary wondered if Eden had told these people about Heather. The blue-eyed man said nothing about praying for the lost daughter’s
soul.

“Please, Mary.”

Wedged between the old woman and the young man, certain of her obligation to Eden and with nothing more to lose, Mary took
his hand and joined with Donna once more. In the glare of the hot sun, she shivered when Shawn said, “Lord, help Mary Gooch
find what she’s looking for.” The group murmured their assent. “Let us pray.”

Mary lowered her gaze along with the others, waiting for the prayer circle to begin. She guessed that they would take turns
reading Scripture before offering their special prayers for Jack’s soul. And their meditations on her own search. She hoped
they would pray for Heather. Someone had to pray for Heather.

The clock ticked but no one opened their eyes. With the sun on her face and the bodies pressed against her and the heat of
the strangers’ hands in her own, Mary watched the foursome of bent heads. Were they really talking to God? Could such communion
be read on a face?

She thought of Jack, sorry for his end, even if he was little more than a stranger. And sorry for Eden, who would be left,
like her, alone. God help Eden, she thought, and wondered if it counted as prayer. How many times in how many nights had she
prayed to God? Wished to God? Given hollow thanks. Made shallow requests. Uncertain as to the exact nature of the him or her
or it she was trying to reach. She considered her altered relationship with her own spirit; here she was, thousands of miles
away, different. People did change. The path of a life could take a sudden left and deliver a very different future.

Focused on her breath, thinking of Heather’s half-lived life, Mary was determined that her own end would not be one of calculated
risk. She saw her path rise up, not a trench in the mud but a cobbled road under a canopy of trees. As she waited for the
prayer circle to begin, she realized that it already had.

When it was over, she felt cheated by the brevity of their silent joined prayer, and was shocked to see by the clock that
a full hour had passed. The quartet left as quietly as they had come, no clap of thunder, no shouting rhetoric, no platitudes,
no proselytizing. No words at all.

When the Prius pulled up a short time later, Mary was enjoying a respite of calm on the Ethan Allen.

“I forgot to bring some pictures for him,” Eden said, bursting into the hall.

“Did they say how long he’d be in?” Mary asked. “I cleaned out his room. The sheets are in the dryer.”

“He won’t be coming home, Mary,” Eden said stiffly.

“Why don’t you sit down a minute?” Eden took a spot beside her on the sofa. “Why don’t I make you some tea?”

“I don’t want tea,” Eden said. “I want Jimmy. I want Heather. Oh Mary, what have I done?”

Mary gathered Eden’s fingers.

“The last time I saw her, she had vomit on her sweater,” Eden said. “I can’t stop thinking about that.”

“The last time I saw her,” Mary said, remembering Heather with the locket, “she was smiling.”

After a time, feeling Eden’s quiet breath beside her, Mary realized that the old woman was asleep. Like a weary mother with
a sick child, she closed her eyes too. When she opened them again she was alone, Eden clanking dishes in the kitchen down
the hall. She followed the sound, stopping at the doorway as Eden announced, “We should eat something.”

“Yes,” she agreed, though neither moved toward the fridge.

“I have to get on the phone with the agency before I go back up to the hospital,” Eden reminded herself.

“You don’t need to hire a replacement for Chita. I could help, Eden. I’ll help.”

Eden paused. “Would you stay with me?”

“You want me to stay with you?”

“You could sleep in Jack’s room.”

Mary checked the clock, remembering her babysitting job. “I can’t be back here until nine, though.”

“Why not?”

“I’m babysitting for a woman up the street.”

“Babysitting?”

“It’s for someone I met. She knows you and Jack. Ronni Reeves. I sat for her last night.”

“Well, I suppose you always were the type to make friends easily.”

Nothing was further from the truth, Mary thought, but said, “Yeah.”