The Wife and the Widow

by Christian White

  Kate slipped onto the sofa, pulled Mia towards her and said, ‘Actually, monkey, that’s not quite right. The truth is, we’re not entirely sure where your dad is right now, but we’re looking for him. And wherever he is, I’m sure he’s trying to get back to us too. Are you hungry?’

  ‘I’ll eat when Daddy gets home,’ she said.

  ‘We don’t know how long that’s going to be, monkey.’

  ‘You don’t know anything!’

  ‘Fine,’ Kate said. ‘Eat or don’t eat. I don’t care.’

  Mia slunk off the sofa and marched away, banging loudly up the staircase and slamming her bedroom door shut. Kate closed her eyes and hoped, prayed and begged that Pam could keep quiet for two damn—

  ‘She’s only ten,’ Pam said. ‘One of the many jobs a mother has is filtering.’

  Life doesn’t have a filter …

  ‘I don’t want to scare her, Pam. But I don’t want to lie to her either.’

  ‘Even false hope is better than no hope, dear. Especially for a child.’ She smiled. ‘Now, I know you’re not Catholic, but my mother did always say that a little prayer can help us to feel better. Will you join me?’

  Even with her son missing, Pam had taken the time to touch up her make-up before descending from the guestroom, wearing so much jewellery that she sounded like Christmas coming around the corner. She had either popped a valium or knew something Kate didn’t.

  Pam pulled a small missal from her bag and flicked through it thoughtfully for a while, then stopped and looked up with a satisfied smile. ‘This is perfect.’

  Fisher paced on the other side of the glass sliding door, back and forth across the entertainment deck, smoking cigarette after cigarette, phone stuck to his face. He glanced through the window at Kate, stubbed out his cigarette, collected the butt in his breast pocket then came back inside smelling like all her mother’s old boyfriends.

  Pam took hold of Kate’s hand. ‘I just thought it might help to say a prayer, love,’ she told Fisher. ‘We’re all feeling a little overwhelmed. Will you join us?’

  Fisher ran a hand through his receding hair, sat down next to his wife and sighed. Pam let go of Kate’s hand long enough to make a cross, then took it again in her warm, stubby fingers.

  ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,’ she said, squinting at the book in her lap. ‘Oh, gentle and loving Saint Anthony, whose heart was ever full of human sympathy; our son, John, is lost and in need of guidance. Please whisper our petition into the ears of the sweet infant Jesus, and the—’

  ‘Is there anyone we haven’t called yet?’ Fisher said. ‘Any friends or colleagues?’

  ‘Fisher,’ Pam said in a loud throaty whisper.

  ‘We should write a list,’ he interrupted again. ‘Write down everyone he’s been in contact with over the past month, from people at his gym to whoever makes his morning coffee.’

  ‘Fisher,’ Pam snapped. She was still holding onto Kate’s hand and now gave it a sharp squeeze. The polished rings pinched Kate’s skin, but she kept quiet.

  Without another word, Fisher went back onto the deck and lit a fresh cigarette. Kate hesitated a moment, then followed him.

  The night was still and crisp. A plane cut through the sky above them, blinking red and blue lights against a vast field of black. Below the plane and beyond their sprawling garden of weeping willows, the city glistened beneath a fat moon. The moonlight was sombre, the darkness outside it heavy and deep as an ocean.

  Fisher stood by the safety railing, fiddling with a red packet of cigarettes. He took one out and lit up. Kate joined him. Neither spoke for a long time. Kate kept her eyes fixed ahead, listening to the sharp inhale of cigarette smoke and the long, wheezing exhale.

  ‘What you said in the police station,’ she started. ‘About me being vague, passive to the point of being invisible.’

  ‘Can we not do this now?’ Fisher said. ‘I’m just chewed up over this whole mess. I’m sorry for what I said, really, but—’

  ‘You were right,’ she said.

  He dragged on his cigarette and said nothing. Kate watched him for a moment, then turned back to the moon.

  ‘You see me as someone who needs protecting,’ she said, the words burrowing up from somewhere deep and dark and well hidden. ‘You think that because John does, and John believes it because I let him. I thought that’s what he wanted. I thought that’s how he wanted me to be. So, I fostered that. I nurtured it. But that’s not who I am, Fisher.’

  He turned to her and asked, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m stronger than people think, so please, from here on in, don’t talk to me like I’m a child, don’t look at me like I’m a hysterical woman. Give me the respect of talking straight.’

  He flinched.

  ‘Alright,’ he said.

  ‘Alright.’

  Fisher flicked his cigarette into the garden that stretched ahead of them like a bottomless void. The butt sailed for a while, exploded into red sparks, then faded. Kate let that mark the end of their conversation and went back inside the house.

  * * *

  Mia was in her bedroom, dressed in the Spider-Man onesie John had bought her. The room was bright, full of yellows and blues, but the little girl sitting cross-legged on the carpet was somehow colourless.

  Her small hands were pressed into a steeple, and she was whispering.

  ‘Can I come in?’ Kate asked.

  Mia shrugged, which Kate chose to take as an invitation. She sat down next to her daughter and asked, ‘Were you praying?’

  ‘I guess,’ Mia said. ‘I don’t know. Gran said I could ask God to bring Dad home. Can God really read people’s minds?’

  ‘Your grandma believes he can.’

  ‘If God can read my mind, I’m worried he might not bring Dad home.’

  ‘What makes you say that, monkey?’

  She shrugged. ‘Sometimes I have bad thoughts.’

  ‘We all do,’ Kate said. ‘We can’t have good thoughts all the time. That’s not how people work.’

  She studied her fingernails. ‘Sometimes I have bad thoughts about God.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, for starters, how did Noah fit so many animals on the ark? And if rain filled up the planet then that would mean it was fresh water, so how did the saltwater fish survive? And where did all the water go and by the way why did God kill all those Egyptian babies? And what’s with Abraham and—’

  ‘TMI, monkey.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

  TMI (too much information) was an expression used often in their house. If Mia was explaining what part of the pig bacon came from over breakfast, or describing the life cycle of maggots when driving past roadkill, or listing the different modes of execution used to carry out death sentences in America, or a million other disturbing things she somehow found online, TMI stopped her in her tracks.

  ‘It’s good to be questioning stuff,’ Kate said. ‘I still haven’t really decided where I land with the whole God thing, but you don’t need to be thinking about all that right now.’

  ‘But I can’t help it, and if God is real and he can read my thoughts, then he knows I’m thinking all that, and if he knows I’m thinking all that, maybe he won’t bring Dad home.’

  ‘If God is real, he understands. And if he isn’t, your dad is still coming home, Mia.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Because I won’t survive without him, Kate thought.

  ‘Because he has you to come home to,’ she said.

  A hint of colour returned to Mia’s face. She folded against Kate, who drew her close, feeling the warmth of Mia’s small body against her own, and wanting badly to cry.

  * * *

  Around three am, Kate climbed into her big empty bed, pulled herself into a tight ball beneath the covers and told herself John was coming home. He would come home, and he would warm the cold side of the bed, and she would wake in his arms.

  Sh
e cried for a long time that night. She wanted to sob, craved it, but she didn’t want to be heard, so she let it out in dribbles, fits and starts. She was a champagne bottle whose cork was slowly edging out, but she couldn’t allow herself to pop. After several painful hours, her mind began to quieten, and her body slipped into a sort of stand-by mode. It didn’t feel like sleep, exactly. More like entering a state of suspended animation. Wake me up when John gets home. She must have slept though, because when the phone rang, it took her a few long moments to recognise the sound.

  ‘John,’ she whispered. Her voice sounded heavy and spooky in the darkness. She scrambled for her phone. She had gone to bed clutching it and now it was lost in the tangle of sheets. She could see its glowing screen beneath the top sheet, hear its muffled ring. She found it and hit the answer button without looking at the caller ID. In her heart, she knew who it was.

  ‘John?’

  There was a pause on the other end of the line, then a man with a Middle Eastern accent said, ‘I’m sorry to call so late, ma’am, but this is Tom from Sanctuary Security. We have an alert registering in our system that says your home alarm has been triggered.’

  Thinking of Mia, Kate swung her feet off the bed and switched on the bedside lamp. Her legs were hot and sweaty; she’d gone to bed in jeans.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked. ‘I don’t hear an alarm going off?’

  ‘That’s strange,’ the man from the security company said. He had started chewing something. It sounded like an apple. ‘Can you confirm you’re at 118 Neef Street, Belport Island?’

  ‘Belport Island? No. I’m at home, in Caulfield. You must be calling about our holiday house.’

  ‘Are you saying you’re not at that address, ma’am?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Well, someone is,’ he said.

  6

  THE WIFE

  The last couple of hours before close were always especially slow at the Buy & Bye. Abby alone in the store, with nothing but her thoughts and the sound of muzak to keep her company – an instrumental version of Cat Stevens’s ‘Father and Son’.

  Bobbi had promised to drop in with all the juicy details about what her sergeant said might be a big one, but so far, she was a no-show. While she waited, Abby restocked the Schweppes fridge, topped up the liquor cabinet, updated the specials basket, swept the floors, mopped the cool room, scrubbed out the deli, rotated the fruit and vegetables, cleaned out the break-room refrigerator, oiled that damn shopping trolley with the damn squeaky wheel, then checked her watch.

  Time was dragging offensively slow, like an Easter Sunday sermon. Every time a car rolled past the shop, Abby leaned over her counter to look for the white and blue of Bobbi’s cruiser, desperate for a distraction. She was about to check all the use-by dates on the milk cartons when she saw an ancient green Saab roll up outside. All but one of the hubcaps were missing, and the rear side window had been smashed and covered with a collage of plastic shopping bags. They flapped in the breeze like gills.

  The Saab door opened, and a seventy-something woman in high heels stepped out, swaying and stumbling awkwardly like a newborn foal. Eileen Betchkie.

  Despite the chill, Eileen was wearing nothing more than a tight mini and a tighter tank top, pink bra strap dangling strategically off one shoulder; she had bleached yellow hair, midnight-blue eyeliner and a couple of healthy handfuls of false cleavage.

  She’d make a hell of a drag queen, Abby thought, if not for her walk. She moved with a hunch, as if the ghosts of all of her past mistakes rode on her shoulders, and if the island grapevine was accurate, she’d made plenty. She’d burned through four marriages, gone bankrupt twice, had three convictions for drugs and one for prostitution.

  They were just rumours, of course. If Belport had one thing in abundance, it was gossip.

  The electronic bell above the door chimed as Eileen swept inside. There were goosebumps on her broad, bare shoulders. Her arms were muscular and toned, as if she’d spent a life chopping wood.

  ‘Evening, darling,’ she said when she reached Abby’s check-out.

  ‘How are you, Eileen?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I think I’m depressed. Or lonely. Or both. Did you catch 60 Minutes last night? There was this woman somewhere in the UK who dropped dead in front of her TV, and nobody noticed for seven years. Seven years.’

  Eileen was one of the Buy & Bye’s most regular regulars, and Abby had already started bagging up her items: two packs of Winfield Reds and a five-litre cask of Rawlings Pinot Noir, which had the honour of being both their cheapest and largest boxed wine.

  Eileen pronounced it Pee-not Norie, and lived by the motto, Don’t ever reach for the top shelf unless you’re not the one who’s paying.

  ‘Can you imagine what was left of the poor woman when her family finally bothered to drop by for a visit? Mummified. Liquefied. Erk. Do me a favour, Abby: if a week goes by and you haven’t seen me in here, come knock on my door.’

  ‘Of course,’ Abby said. ‘It’s all part of the service here at the Buy & Bye. We help you find what you’re looking for, pack your shopping bags, and every once in a while check you’re not a corpse.’

  Eileen grinned. Her teeth were unnaturally straight and white. ‘Speaking of abandonment, why is your husband ignoring my calls? I may not have as much money in the bank as the rest of his customers, but my old man had a saying: Every client is the most important client. He sold Holdens for forty-six years and loved every second of it. He would have died right there in the middle of his showroom if the gout hadn’t hit him like it did.’

  ‘You’d be better off asking Ray that, Eileen. Did he forget to do something at your place?’

  ‘He never showed up,’ she said. ‘There’s a row of paperbark trees outside the shed that are older than me, and after the winter we’ve had it won’t take much more than a beefy fart to knock them over. Ray said he’d fell them, but I haven’t heard a peep out of him. Now, I’d rather give my business to you, sweetheart, but little Wei who runs the bait shop said he’d do the same job for half. He’s Chinese. They have a better work ethic than us; I’ve always said that.’

  ‘That’s weird,’ Abby said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing. I thought Ray said he was at your place. We probably just got our wires crossed, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, either way, tell him to get his arse onto my paperbark trees.’ She opened her Winfields and left the plastic wrapper on the counter for Abby to collect. She put a cigarette to her lips and retrieved a blue lighter from between her breasts. Noticing Abby’s expression, she said, ‘Relax, darl, I’m not gonna light up indoors.’

  The streetlights flickered on outside the shopfront as Eileen walked out into the darkening street.

  Eileen was the last customer for the day. Bobbi still didn’t show up. Abby spent the rest of her shift slowly closing up. As she drove home over the crest of a hill, she looked out over the island and saw lights on in all the big holiday houses. The lights were on timers, designed to discourage break-ins and squatters. All that endless emptiness spooked her, so she found a song on the radio she could sing along to and turned it up loud.

  When she got home, Abby found Ray in the bedroom. He was laying out his clothing for the next day and was regarding the contents of their closet the way an explorer might regard a mysterious tablet etched with a forgotten language.

  ‘You wear the same thing every day,’ she said, startling him. ‘How can it possibly take you this long?’

  ‘Oh, you know, dress for the job you want and all that.’

  She looked into the closet. It was nearly entirely grey, filled mostly with grey work shirts with Island Care printed on the pockets.

  It made Abby sad that Ray spent his work days alone. It reminded her of the smell of a childhood lunchbox, made her picture an old man eating alone in a restaurant. He had tried to take on employees before, but they never stuck with the job long. Last season he hired Russ Gr
aves, a man who was, to hear Ray describe it, a few peas short of a casserole; not smart enough to get bored and not imaginative enough to get lonely. But as it turned out, he was both. His resignation letter explained that if he didn’t quit, he was likely to fill his pockets with stones and throw himself into Elk Harbour.

  ‘How was work?’ she asked.

  ‘I spent the better part of my afternoon fishing a dead possum out of Dan and Louise Buckley’s indoor swimming pool,’ he said.

  He peeled off his singlet.

  ‘Did you bring it home for my taxidermy?’ she asked.

  ‘I thought about it, but it had been in there for a while from the look of it. And the smell. I don’t think even you’d go near it without spewing. How about you? Work okay?’

  ‘Same old,’ she said.

  ‘You’re home late. Did you work back?’

  ‘Delahunt Street is a lake,’ she said, stepping out of her slacks and into her raggedy old pyjama bottoms. ‘It took me an extra ten minutes to get home.

  ‘It’ll be at least twenty-four hours before it drains, and that’s only if we don’t see any more rain overnight, which seems unlikely.’

  ‘God, when did we become the type of couple to talk about the weather?’ She dropped her Buy & Bye tunic into the washing basket and climbed under the covers. ‘Jesus, it’s freezing in here. Hurry up and come keep me warm.’

  Ray slunk into bed and she spooned him aggressively.

  ‘Eileen Betchkie came in tonight,’ she said.

  The muscles in Ray’s forearms tensed suddenly, then relaxed. It was a micro-movement, nearly imperceptible to the untrained eye, but a wife knows.

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. She told me you didn’t go by her place, but I thought you said you were there yesterday. Apparently there’s a load of paperbark trees that will blow over if you fart on them. She worded it better than that, but you get the gist.’

  ‘I swear to God that woman is losing it,’ he said. ‘I spent the whole day in her yard with the chainsaw and either she didn’t notice or she forgot. I don’t know which is scarier. To be honest, I’m not sure she should be living out at that place all alone.’