The Wife's Tale (41 page)

Peeling off her robe, Mary returned to the backyard and the cold water of the pool, kicking slowly toward the deep end before
she realized she was too tired to swim laps. Arms outstretched, legs kicking, weightless but heavy, she fought the metaphor—all
this time waiting for Gooch, was she really just treading water?

Later, she woke to the ringing of the telephone and reached for the receiver beside the bed. “Joyce?” she asked, groggy.

“Mary? Mary? Are you okay?”

“Is it my mother?”

“Mary? It’s Ronni. What’s going on? I’ve been worried. I was just about to put the boys in the car to drive down there.”

Mary sat up, surprised to find the room filled with sunlight. She looked at the clock. It was past noon. “I slept. I overslept.
I’m sorry. I’ll be right there.”

“No, Mary. It’s okay. I’m taking the boys to the mall. We have to do some shopping. I’ve decided to go back east for Christmas.
We’re leaving next week.”

Mary could not respond. Leaving?

“Are you there?” Ronni called through the line.

“I’m here.”

“The boys and I want to celebrate Christmas with you early. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Mary?”

“I’m here.”

“Your mother-in-law will be back, right? I mean, you’re not going to be alone?”

“She’ll be back,” Mary lied. Eden had telephoned her the day before to say she’d decided to spend the holiday in Santa Barbara.
She was keeping company with an old friend of Jack’s, and Mary had sensed a burgeoning relationship in her tone. Her mother-in-law
had started to see Jack only weeks after James had died from the car crash, so Mary wasn’t surprised, but she wondered what
granted Eden such strength and resilience.

Dragging herself out of bed, she dressed in one of her new outfits and walked to the end of the driveway to collect the newspaper.
She settled down to read but couldn’t focus. She went to the kitchen, glancing at the refrigerator apologetically. She decided
to drive to the bank.

Outside the bank, she checked her balance record. Gooch had withdrawn more money. She fumbled with her access card, shoving
it back into the machine, demanding the maximum amount.
I will take it all out, Gooch,
she heard herself think. That money is rightfully mine. She thought of Ronni Reeves’s rage, which had dimmed over the passage
of days, and felt the rise of her own.
Left me without a word. Coward. Taking money that belongs to me. Bastard.

She was stuffing twenty-dollar bills into her wallet when she nearly collided with a man exiting the bank. “Emery Carr,” she
said. With her shorn silver hair and substantial loss of poundage, he did not recognize her. “Mary Gooch. You gave me a ride
when I couldn’t find my purse.”

“Wow,” Emery Carr said, remembering and recognizing her. “You look different.”

“Yes.”

“I thought you’d be back in Canada by now. Lucy told me you got everything sorted out. This is a long vacation.”

“It’s not really a vacation,” she said, walking alongside him.

“You look like a completely different person. Were you down here for one of those makeover shows? I love
What Not to Wear
.”

Mary laughed. “Sort of.”

“Well, I love what they did.”

She blushed, realizing that they’d walked toward the nearby deli and he was holding the door for her to enter. “I’m going
for a late lunch too. Will you join me?”

Inside the restaurant Mary fought her nausea, ordering coffee and scrambled eggs and toast. Emery Carr squinted when he saw
that she was not eating. “You want to send it back?”

“I just can’t eat,” she confessed.

“Well, you have to eat,” he insisted. “I can see you’re on a diet, but…”

“I’m not on a diet. I just… can’t. I can’t seem to swallow.”

Emery patted her hand. “You’ve lost an awful lot of weight. I mean, from the time I first met you.”

“I know.”

“Good for you. It’s just… you have to eat
something
.”

She nodded, pretending to nibble at her toast. The black coffee gave her some false energy but it was his company that revived
her. They talked about the political climate. “It’s like there are two Americas,” he said. “We think differently. We interpret
the Constitution differently. We’re divided straight down party lines. Is it like that in Canada?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. My husband said
liberal
and
conservative
mean different things there. Plus we have more parties. We have the NDP and the Greens.” She was proud of herself for remembering,
but could not have explained any of the parties’ platforms. She wondered if she should buy a computer so she could look such
questions up.

“You Canadians are more progressive.”

“Because we have national health care?”

“Socialism is scary.”

“Because of our gun control laws?”

“Don’t get me started.”

“Gay marriage?”

“Gay marriage. I don’t believe in marriage anyway—straight, gay. It’s unnatural. But not to allow it? That’s discrimination.”

“My husband said people don’t want to see gay marriages because they’re afraid you’re going to start recruiting.”

“What about your husband?” Emery Carr asked. “Has he seen the new you?”

Mary looked up from her coffee cup, took a deep breath and, in her exhalation, told the handsome teller the story of her life
as a wife.

Outside the restaurant, he surprised Mary by giving her a gentle hug. “You looked like you needed that.”

“I did.”

“You’re not gonna die, you know. You’re gonna pick yourself up and dust yourself off. You are woman. Hear you roar.”

She laughed and nodded.

Later that night, she sat on the edge of Jack’s bed, staring at her reflection in the mirror above the dresser.
You’re not gonna die
, Emery Carr had said.

I
n the advertising pages of the newspapers Mary’d been confronted by invitations to dozens of local New Year’s Eve events.
She hated New Year’s Eve the way she hated Christmas. So many sleepless nights she’d tossed in her bed making promises to
Tomorrow, and those promises to the New Year, the
resolutions,
seemed even more contractual.
Next year will be different. Next year, self-control. Next year I will talk to Gooch. Listen to Gooch. Go with Gooch when
he asks.
She had been aware of the statistics on holiday depression long before she started reading the newspapers. The spiral was
familiar.

Where, in the previous weeks, she hadn’t considered that Gooch might not have returned by Christmas, she felt certain now
that he would not be back by New Year’s and perhaps not by her birthday in March. As she had dropped out of her old life,
so had Gooch, and he had less reason to return than she did. She’d even stopped thinking of the dwindling balance in the bank
account as a barometer for his homecoming. Gooch was resourceful. Whatever money he had, wherever he was, he would survive.

Swimming in the morning, she thought of Eden, and Jesús García—left, bereft, they sailed forth. She felt her chest constrict
when she rose from the water, remembering the little house in Leaford with the broken glass in the door and the bloodstains
on the walls. She thought of Irma with her gawping mouth and sunken, distant eyes. The wide Thames River, where she’d skated
as a child. She had forgotten Leaford’s face but heard her call, wintry and severe.

Arriving at the Reeves house for her Christmas celebration with the boys, Mary forged a smile. When they gathered around the
huge faux evergreen in the formal living room, she accepted the triplets’ hugs and kisses and was choked to receive their
gifts—photographs of the boys in frames decorated by each with glitter and heart shapes. She led them in singing Christmas
songs, and choked down a few bites of the lumpy potatoes the boys had mashed and the salad they’d helped make especially for
her. Ronni was as drained as Mary by the end of dinner, and still had to pack for her trip back east.

Embracing her friend, Ronni promised that the week would go quickly. “At least you only have one relative to deal with, Mary.
I’ve got twenty-four, and every one of them will have something to say about Tom and me. I’m sick just thinking of it.”

“It’ll be good for the boys to be with family.”

“I hate to think of you alone with your mother-in-law.”

Back in the truck, Mary started toward the house but made an impulsive U-turn in the road, deciding to head to the ocean to
look at the stars. At the intersection she glanced at the lot, and was shocked to see Jesús García standing alone at the utility
pole. She pulled in when the light changed. He grinned broadly when he recognized the Dodge Ram, shouting out with surprise
and confusion, “Mary!” He strode toward the vehicle, pausing when he saw her shorn silver hair.

Her hand flew to her scalp. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

“It suits you.”

“I was just heading down to the ocean. Let me drive you home first.”

“You got nothing better to do?”

“No.” She laughed.

He climbed into the truck. “I’ll come with you, then.”

“To the ocean?”

He paused, uncertain. “If you don’t mind the company.”

Blood rushed to her cheeks as she pulled out of the dusty corner lot and set course down the long, hilly road.

“Maybe you’ll see another shooting star,” he said, flashing that blinding smile.

As they drove, Mary glanced sideways at her passenger. “You said it’s been years since you saw the ocean. Why?”

“Time. Circumstances. I have other obligations.”

“But you used to take your family to the ocean?”

“I used to take my family to the ocean. We never swam, though. I was fifteen when we moved down from Michigan. A boy drowned
that summer. My mother wouldn’t let me go in past my knees. She was afraid I’d be carried out by the riptides.”

“Sounds like my mother. In the winter she was afraid I’d fall through the ice.”

“My mother had a dream. A vision of me drowned in the sea.”

“That’s awful. What an awful thing to be told.”

“I don’t swim. To this day I’ve never been in past my knees.”

“But you’re so strong.”

“I wouldn’t let my boys go in past their knees either.”

“Did your wife think you were crazy?”

“She believed in visions too. Miracles.”

Mary did not have to ask if Jesús believed in those things. “Wishing on shooting stars.”

“Of course.”

“I never swam much,” she said.

“Afraid?”

“Not of the water.”

They drove the rest of the way in silence, soothed by the rising hills.

Once parked at the roadside, they agreed to a short walk in the surf. Night had fallen but Mary felt safe in his company,
stealing his strength to make her way through the sand. “It’s so dark,” she said.

“That’s why it’s the best place to see the stars.”

“How do you say
stars
in Spanish, Hay-su?”

“
Estrellas.
”

“Es-tray-as,” she repeated. Lifting her eyes, Mary beheld the sky, and was suddenly stricken by sadness for the collective
of souls to which she’d once belonged, standing on their cold tile floors with their noses in refrigerators, needles in their
arms, cigarettes in their mouths. She inhaled the salty air, fixed on making a memory—the water, the breeze on her shorn silver
scalp, the dazzling
estrellas
before her.

At the water’s edge they took off their shoes and rolled up their pant legs. Mary was glad for the cover of night when she
asked, “Who do I remind you of, Hay-Su? That day, you said I reminded you of someone.”

“My fifth-grade teacher. Miss Maynard. Mary Maynard.”

“I remind you of your teacher?”

“I broke my leg that November I turned ten, and for the whole winter I had to stay in with Miss Maynard at recess and lunch.
She gave me licorice whips and extra worksheets. Told me how smart I was. Once she kissed my forehead. I never wanted spring
to come.”

“She looked like me?”

“She said my name just how you say it,
Hay-Su
.”

“Was she big? Like me?”

“Yes,” he answered plainly. “She smelled like cookies. Pretty green eyes. I had such a crush on her.”

The rolling ocean scored their journey through the sand. “Let’s walk up that way,” Jesús suggested.

“Hay-su?” she called into the night. “I can’t see you.”

He stepped back, finding her at the water’s edge. “Take my hand.”

She reached out, feeling for his fingers, the pleasant shock of joining palms. They walked on, leaving footprints in the sand
that were instantly stolen by the pulsing water. She could not remember the last time she had held Gooch’s hand. Had she known
what was to come, she would never have let go.

“Can you see that crest there?” Jesús asked, gesturing at a faint shadow in the distance. “That’s the best place to see the
whales. They come so close.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“They migrate in the spring.”

Mary stopped, realizing. “I won’t be here in the spring.”

“Your husband will be back before that.”

Mary joined him in gazing at the sky. “My husband isn’t coming back.”

“You’ve heard from him?”

She wagged her head in the blackness. “No. I just wanted to say it out loud. See what it felt like.”

“What did it feel like?”

“Pretty much what I imagined.”

“You’re done waiting?”

She fell silent.

Jesús set his hands on Mary’s shoulders, turning her to look up at the sky. “Fall is a good time of the year to see the Andromeda
constellation.” She followed his pointing hand. “Perseus. And there, below, see the V-shape?—Andromeda. And below that the
square—Pegasus.” He searched the sky a while longer. “Pisces. The fish. Can you make it out?”

“Pisces. That’s me. I’m supposed to be artistic and sensitive.”

“Are you?”

In the darkness she turned toward him, taking his face in her hands, pressing her mouth to his, an impulse as shocking to
the kisser as it was to the kissed. She stopped, feeling his lips cold and rigid. “I’m so sorry.”