Mrs. White

by Margaret Tracy

  “Now I have everything,” he said.

  She had never doubted that he meant it.

  All they needed was a house, and one day, they found the cottage. At first renting it made them wary. They did not want to feel like transients, like “people who live in trailers,” Paul said. And Mrs. Potts, the landlady—before Cornell took over—was a witch. She had this thing about propriety. She wouldn’t even let Joan bathe Paul Jr. on the lawn. “Somebody might see,” she said, and Paul and Joan would laugh behind her back.

  Paul put all of his efforts into fixing up the place. “A fine carpenter I’d be,” he said, “if I can’t improve my own home.” He worked day and night, even when he had a busy day the next day. He hammered, sawed, tiled, caulked, and painted. He seemed like a man in his element, a beast in his domain. He laughed at the thick calluses on his hands.

  “I don’t mind,” he said. “It’s just part of the job.

  Mary was born in the cottage. It was after more struggling, more waiting. Paul would tell her it was okay, that they had the one—a big, perfect boy. But Joan would say that only children were lonely, just as they both had been. She did not want that for her son.

  Paul, of course, had just been comforting her. She knew he wanted a big family. He had said so. But he was willing to give it up to save her pain. It made her even more desperate to try, to do it for him.

  The morning Mary was born, Paul got drunk. He stood on the lawn in his shorts and howled like a wolf. Cars slowed down to stare at him. He was a family man. They were wonderful days.

  And there were bad times too. Business slowed down. They seemed to be in debt forever. The children scared them with illness. And then, a year ago, Paul’s father died of cancer.

  That last—that was the worst. When Paul heard, he did not say anything. He only walked around behind the house. Joan watched him through the window. His dry eyes seemed empty. Then swiftly he grasped a large stick off the ground and broke it across his knee.

  At the funeral he was distant. He seemed especially surly toward his mother. When Joan suggested that they take the poor woman in “until she’s on her feet,” Paul furiously refused. It was the first time he had ever really raised his voice to her.

  But all families had their troubles. They did not change the good times. Not as lies could change them.…

  Sitting on the bed next to Paul, Mrs. White felt tired now. Not just sleepy, exhausted. The effort of seeing her past—her whole life—recast into this new and ugly mold made her weak.

  Could Paul have been lying about everything all along? Did she know him at all? Paul, the husband and father, was not the same man who would roll around in bed with rich wives. One of those men did not exist.

  But maybe she had mistaken him from the beginning. Maybe she had never known him. She thought back to his first lie, so many years ago. What could have happened on that deer hunt?

  When she went to bed her thoughts were troubled and confused. They melted into harrowing dreams: hundreds of disconnected images—rich women in red dresses laughing at her; Paul grinning, eyes bright; Paul’s father being lowered into his grave; and then, over and over again, like a unifying theme, a deer—a deer covered with blood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The usual hectic events of Friday morning passed and Mrs. White hardly noticed. Paul and the children were down, fed, and gone, it seemed, instantly. She was alone. She knew she was due at the thrift shop, and yet she lingered. She poured herself another cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table. Her mind was weary, a blank.

  She took her half-full cup and moved back to the sink to dump it out. She really had to get moving if she was to get to the thrift shop on time. As she stood at the sink, staring out the kitchen window, she saw Cornell coming back out of the woods, carrying his rod in one hand and two large bass on a stringer in the other.

  She watched him passing. For a moment she had an urge to go out and call to him as she had yesterday. She found herself, to her tired dismay, thinking of the deer hunt again, that old deer hunt of the past. Cornell was the sort of person who might be able to tell her just what sort of thing could happen at a deer hunt to make two friends separate.

  But what difference did it make? What difference did it make after so many years? Why did it keep coming back to her, inextricably linking itself to her fears about Paul having an affair?

  She did not signal to Cornell today. She had a feeling, just now, that all men were in a conspiracy together. A conspiracy that included certain women—like Mrs. Sutter, for example—but left women like her out in the cold.

  Cornell had gone by and Mrs. White still stood at the window, overlooking an empty lawn.

  She felt frustrated with herself. Why did these things keep coming back to her, like a sore that just wouldn’t heal? She remembered how after Paul’s father had died, Paul had for a short time become convinced that he had cancer too. He lay awake at night worrying about it. He checked his body hourly for lumps and moles. He became obsessed with the idea, and nothing she could say would convince him that it wasn’t true. At last he’d had to go to a doctor and have a checkup. The doctor had told him he was having—what was it?—a “mourning reaction.” The doctor said that meant that sometimes, when someone you loved died, you begin to think that you are going to die, too, in the same way.

  Mrs. White was not having a mourning reaction, but she did feel that she was obsessed now by the idea of Paul’s lying to her in the same way that Paul had been obsessed by the disease. It wouldn’t leave her no matter how many times she told herself she was being silly. It just got bigger and bigger, worse and worse. It wasn’t only a question of Paul’s affair anymore. It was all sorts of things, all sorts of memories and ideas that kept coming back to her, wouldn’t leave her alone.

  An image from the scarlet-soaked nightmares of the previous night was before her. Then gone.

  With a sigh Mrs. White got her bag and prepared to go to the thrift shop. She walked outside, intending to head for the Pinto. Instead, she found herself wandering aimlessly around to the street in front of the house. She stood on the curb, facing the hill that led up to Cornell’s house. She could just barely make out the big white converted barn between the leaves of the trees.

  Before she really knew what she was doing, she had crossed the street and started up the path that led up the hill. The climb was not steep, but she wasn’t used to such exertion, and she found she was breathless by the time she came within sight of Cornell’s house.

  The house was large and cubical, with picture windows on the first story, and smaller, gabled windows up on the second. A driveway came up to the side of the house from the far side of the hill.

  Cornell was standing at the end of the driveway, with his back toward her as she came forward.

  “Yoo-hoo,” she called. It was halfhearted and Cornell didn’t hear her. She called again. He turned and waved at her and she saw he was holding a knife in his hand.

  She approached him until she could see that he was standing over a makeshift table formed by a flat board balanced on two cinder blocks. On top of the board he had laid one of his two dead bass. The big fish, its mouth still moving, gasped forlornly as Cornell held it down.

  “What a surprise,” Cornell said as she came alongside him. He blinked and pushed his glasses back on his nose. “Hold on a second while I put this poor beggar out of his misery.” He turned back to the fish, then paused and looked at Mrs. White again. “Maybe you shouldn’t watch,” he said.

  But she did watch. She watched as Cornell laid his knife just under the bass’s gill and began to cut the head away with a sawing motion. The fish flopped under his hand in weary desperation, and then the head came away from the body, entrails spreading out between the two parts.

  Mrs. White turned pale, though she couldn’t say why. She had seen fish cleaned before. She had seen plenty of animals die. That’s why she’d come up here after all, to ask about deer hunting. But suddenly Cornell’s action
seemed grotesque, and worse than grotesque.… She saw, almost as if it had happened yesterday, Mike talking angrily to Paul, his mouth shaping the word disgusting.

  Cornell turned the fish on its spine and dragged the knife across its belly. He reached into the split he’d made and brought out a fistful of guts. They were scarlet and yellow and some of them squeezed out between his fingers and ran down his wrist. He hurled them underneath a small black maple that stood nearby.

  “Stuff makes great fertilizer,” he said over his shoulder.

  He placed the eviscerated bass to one side and brought the second one up on the table before him.

  “Anyway,” he said, “is there something I can do for you?”

  Mrs. White seemed caught off-guard by the question. “Do?” she said.

  “Yes.” He looked at her and smiled a little doubtfully. “Or is this just a social call?”

  “No,” she said, her voice soft. “No … I … I came up—to ask you something.”

  “Shoot,” said Cornell.

  “I don’t remember now—I can’t seem to remember what it was.…” Mrs. White smiled miserably. “Isn’t that silly?” she said.

  Cornell nodded. “Happens to me all the time,” he said. “And I mean all the time. Remember the guy who would forget his head if it weren’t screwed on?” He laid his knife under the fish’s head.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. White. She was still trying to smile. “Yes.”

  “I’m the original,” he said. He started to saw away at the fish’s head.

  This time Mrs. White did not stay to watch. Without another word she turned away and started to hurry back down the path when Cornell’s voice stopped her.

  “Mrs. White?”

  She turned and saw he was coming toward her, his greasy knife in his hand. Her eyes remained on the blade and she took a step backward.

  “Mrs. White,” Cornell said gently. He stood above her now. Since their talk yesterday he had begun to feel a bit less surly toward the woman. Her plight—or, at least, what he thought to be a plight—was one with which he could identify. “Pardon me for asking—really,” he said. “But is there anything wrong?”

  “Wrong?” she said. She forced herself to look into his face. She saw that it was a kindly face overall, if a little soft. “No,” she said, “nothing’s wrong. I—I just have to get to the thrift shop, that’s all.”

  Cornell examined her for a long moment. He nodded then, slowly. “Heard anything more from your friend?”

  “Friend?”

  “Yes, the one who thought her husband was having an affair.”

  “Oh—oh.” Mrs. White’s lips were pale. They trembled once, briefly. “No, nothing. Nothing.”

  Cornell nodded again. “Well—it’s a good thing she has a friend, a friend like you. A person who has friends doesn’t have to face things by herself. She doesn’t have to face things alone.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s true,” said Mrs. White. She smiled again, more naturally this time. “I—I have to go. Dorothy will be waiting.”

  Cornell stood and watched her dowdy figure scurrying back down the hill. Absentmindedly, he pressed the tip of his knife against his nose. When he realized what he was doing, he put his hand down and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  He didn’t like to admit it to himself, but he felt vaguely uneasy. Probably it was just the usual guilt that Mrs. White could inspire in him. He laughed at her—he knew it—he laughed at her simplicity and her dowdiness. And then, when he saw her, he realized that—well, she was simple, she was dowdy … but she was decent too. And simplicity or sophistication, dowdiness or beauty aside, decency ought to count for something. Maybe it ought to count for everything.

  He went back to gutting his fish.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Mrs. White sat in the thrift shop, sewing with Dorothy Howell. Her fingers moved blindly, as if willed by someone other than herself. She tried to think of nothing and she thought of everything.

  She thought of Paul—young Paul—and his deer hunt with Mike. She thought of the crude, ecstatic, violent, and wonderful way he had taken her that night she had asked him about it. She thought of Mrs. Sutter, and she thought of Paul’s telling her that she must think her barn was repairing itself.

  Mostly, over and over again, she thought: A man can’t live a lie, he has to leave a clue. He has to leave a clue. He has to leave a clue.

  She frowned deeply as she sewed. Dorothy’s chatter whistled by her ears like wind.

  “And I said, how dare you charge me those kinds of prices when I can get the same thing for half that at …”

  Mrs. White drove home quickly. In the rearview mirror she caught a glimpse of her worried eyes and thought: This will not make me any more beautiful; this won’t make me more beautiful for Paul.

  Mrs. White drove past the expensive homes. In a home like one of these her husband was betraying her. Her knuckles grew white as she gripped the steering wheel.

  A man can’t live a lie.

  She approached a Stop sign without noticing, and had to stop suddenly. As she did, she threw her arm out to protect a child who wasn’t there. She studied her own extended arm before she drew it back.

  He has to leave a clue.

  As soon as the car started moving again, her thoughts began to race along with it. She understood nothing. She knew nothing. Her life had been good, so good for twenty years. That hadn’t just been a façade. It hadn’t. Paul loved her. She knew it, she was sure of it. And then she didn’t know. And then she was sure of nothing.

  A clue.

  She pulled into the driveway, her mind strangely calm.

  Once in the kitchen, she began to remove food for supper. She opened the refrigerator and peered in, but she was unable to decide whether to make steak or chicken. She closed the fridge door distractedly.

  Just then Mary’s familiar little knock came at the front door. It was a minute or so before Mrs. White heard it.

  “All right. I’m coming.”

  Mrs. White opened the door and gave Mary a quick, preoccupied kiss. The little girl began to tell about her day at school, but Mrs. White only nodded, thinking instead of Cornell’s remark.

  “… and Mrs. Jenkins said I did the best of all the girls in …”

  Finally, Mary went to watch TV, and Mrs. White, when she heard the theme song of The Electric Company, went back to the cupboard. She was taking out the Ragú spaghetti sauce when she thought about her husband’s socks.

  Paul had left a pair in the den a few nights before, and she had meant to pick them up but had forgotten. She would take a minute to do it now. She had to do it quickly, though, before Paul came home. She had to have dinner ready, after all.

  Mrs. White went upstairs and into the den where Mary was. She stepped over the little girl and scooped up one black sock, then searched beneath the sofa and found the other. With these clutched tightly in her hand, she went quickly into the bathroom. She shut the door behind her.

  There was a round wicker hamper standing near the bathtub. Mrs. White put the socks into it. As her fingers entered the pile of laundry, they pushed in deeply. They burrowed almost to the bottom of the hamper, and as they did, they turned over the collars of shirts, lifting them up so she could see them, and brought pieces of underwear up to the surface to be examined.

  After a while Mrs. White brought her hand out and hurried next door to the bedroom.

  Again she shut the door. Her eyes moved slowly around the bedroom, over all the familiar objects: night tables, bed, dresser, closet. She stopped there. In the small crack beneath the closet door she noticed a thin line of color. She opened the door and found that one of Paul’s shirts—a red one—had fallen from its hanger to the closet floor. She picked it up and fluffed it out. She patted the pocket. In another moment she hung the shirt up on the rack. Then, one by one, she frisked and felt all of the shirts hanging there. Finally, she stepped out and shut the closet door.

  Again she turned; again she s
urveyed the room. This time, with no provocation, she moved to the dresser. She knelt down on the carpet and pulled out the bottom drawer. She grabbed fistfuls of Paul’s sweaters and yanked them out, letting them fall, crumpled on the floor beside her. Beneath them, in the drawer, there was nothing. Without replacing the sweaters, Mrs. White opened the next drawer up.

  She pulled out his underwear and shook each piece and let them fall to the floor. She ran her hand along the wood at the bottom of the drawer. Then she moved to the next drawer.

  This was their jewelry drawer. She pulled it all the way out so she could lay it down on the floor next to her. Then she snapped open the cuff link boxes and carefully examined the tie clips, the rings, the broken watches. She took up, at last, a shabby leather wallet. Paul had stopped using it long ago and Mrs. White thought he had thrown the thing away. She brushed a bothersome loose hair from her eyes. Then, slowly, she opened the flaps of the wallet.

  Behind her the door swung open silently as Mrs. White’s fingers probed the empty wallet. The floor creaked behind her and the wallet clapped shut in Mrs. White’s hand. She turned swiftly, still on her knees, to face the broad silhouette approaching her.

  “Hi, Mom,” Paul Jr. said. “What’s for dinner?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  When Junior had gone, Mrs. White sat on the floor, breathless. She felt dazed. What had she been doing? She didn’t even know what she was looking for. She didn’t even know if there was anything to look for. Mrs. Sutter must be nearsighted; Paul was a little thoughtless one night. That was all. But she had accused, tried, and convicted her husband of twenty years of being a cheat.

  She whispered, “Oh,” shaking her head at herself. Then she got slowly to her feet, and began, determinedly, to clean up the mess she’d made in the room.

  When she stepped out, she adjusted her hair again and breathed a heavy sigh. As she came down the stairs into the kitchen, the effort of composing her expression was obvious on her face.