The Doctor's Wife

by Elizabeth Brundage

  “Yeah, right,” Henry says, angry, and he turns away from her. Annie rubs his back and he shrugs her off. “Just leave me alone.”

  “Henry,” she says. “I’m sorry, honey. I know it’s hard. I know it’s awful.”

  Henry doesn’t move, and then he starts to cry. “It’s not fair,” he says.

  “I know.”

  Rosie squints and swallows hard. “Mommy? Are you scared?”

  The truth is she’s scared out of her mind, but she won’t tell them this. “I’m sad, Rosie, and I know you and Henry are, too. We’re all sad without Daddy.”

  “Do you think he’s up in heaven?” Rosie says.

  Annie nods, tears roaming down her cheeks. “Yes,” she whispers. “He’s up in heaven. He’s with the angels.”

  The children fall asleep in her bed and she lies there trying not to move, not wanting to disrupt them, knowing that sleep is a necessary drug. She listens to their breathing, taking comfort in it, and tries to fathom the reality that her husband is dead, but her brain refuses to accept it. He’s dead, she tells herself. He’s dead.

  Images of Michael flash through her head. His beautiful shoulders, his long beautiful arms, the way he’d squint with approval when the kids made him proud, the way he looked when he slept, his big hands pressed together, as if in prayer, under his cheek. The things she loved most about him but never let on because she was too uptight, too angry all the time— too selfish. Always seeing things from her side. In her mind, she was always the one getting the short end, not him. Her head always stuck on the disappointment. Stupid, she reproaches herself. He worked his butt off for her, for the family; he worked like a fucking dog and look how she repaid him. And now he’s gone.

  Gone.

  The morning edition of the Times-Union runs a story on Michael’s crash without notifying her. The headline reads: “PROMINENT PHYSICIAN DIES IN ACCIDENT: Driving While Intoxicated, Morphine Overdose Suspected.” The paper has printed other articles about the pervasive incidence of doctors becoming addicted to drugs. Furious, Annie calls Gavin Riley, the editor in chief, and screams at him over the phone. “After all the years we’ve worked together,” she says. “How could you do this to me?”

  “Only doing my job, Annie” is his reply.

  “You bastard.” She throws the phone across the floor and drops to her knees, beating the rug with her fists. “Fucking animal!”

  For endless hours she lies around the house, wrapped up in one of Michael’s old coats, her brain like a big knot of twine. Too frightened to go anywhere. She is sick, weak. Can’t eat. Can’t sleep. The children are dull and edgeless, going through the motions. They lie in the big bed with her, watching cartoons. It seems impossible that Michael won’t come back. All those hours when he was away from them, taking care of strangers. All those wasted hours, she thinks, and for what. For this?

  Eating marshmallows, drinking sugary tea. The bare branches at the window. The sunlight falling all over her like a drunk. Her parents are flying home from their Elderhostel program in Napa; her sister, Margaret, is driving up from the city. All day long family and friends wander her big house, dazed, spilling their drinks. Looking after the children. Everything coming apart at once. Strings in her hands. Threads.

  I’m lost, she thinks. I’m lost without him.

  Late in the afternoon Celina James comes to the door. She stands there in her black dress in the pouring rain, her hair twisted in tiny braids, her toffee eyes wrecked with pain. But Annie has no sympathy for her. I don’t want you here, Annie tells her silently, but Celina grabs her and pulls her close. “I loved him, too,” she says.

  They drink coffee together in the kitchen. All around them the house bustles with people. Nervous relatives. The children. Celina holds her hand. “It wasn’t an accident, Annie,” she whispers finally. “That’s what they want you to think. It was them. It was that group.” New tears fill her eyes. “And I’m next.”

  8

  IT IS LIKE FLOATING in water, the way his body feels, floating on a black sea. Remote. He drifts and floats, thinking of Annie. There is a sound he cannot place. He is dreaming, shivering. His mother, dead five years, appears at his side. She stands over him, shaking her head. What have you done now, Michael? She smells of mushrooms and is a little green with death, but no, the sun is out, it is wickedly bright, and they are on the beach. There she is in her checkered bathing suit, in her fluffy pink bathing cap, holding something in her hands. An animal. What kind of animal? It is a rat. She holds it up, swings it by its tail. And he can hear it, like a clock. Tick, tock, tick, tock. His mother stands on the shore, growing smaller, waving to him, waving her arms. He is out too far. The raft has drifted. Maybe he has fallen asleep. Come back, Michael! He doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. I am laughing now. I am laughing and laughing. The more he laughs, the harder it is to breathe. The water is black and deep, thick as tar. It pulls him down, grips his feet. It isn’t fair! I’m caught. Hands smash through the surface, trying to pull him out. He twists and reaches, but cannot grab hold. I can’t breathe!

  Later. Hours later. No, seconds. Something crawling on his head. Warm fur, sharp feet, a long wet tail. He tries to catch it, but it is too quick. And he is afraid of it. He would not know what to do with it if he caught it. Kill it with my bare hands. He does not like the idea of catching the rat.

  Now the woman is near. He can smell her: tea rose, lemongrass. It is a familiar scent, yet he cannot place its origin and it confuses him because it reeks of springtime, the citron ache of grass before rain, and he knows that it is autumn now. She is washing him, humming a tune he has heard innumerable times but still cannot name. He does not know for certain if he is dreaming, because the woman is beautiful, as if in a dream, and her voice is sweet and the sound of her singing comforts him. The way she moves, like the lines of a poem, making him see things in his head. I know you, he thinks, yet he cannot place her. I’ve seen you before.

  Her hands wringing out the cloth, the sound of water like rain in a storm, a single drop running down his ear, all the way down inside of him. Her breathing, like wind, a warm wind that smells of bread. The cloth glides down his chin, his neck, down the length of his arms. She feeds him more pills and he swallows them willingly. Anything to escape, if only in his mind. He wants to tell her about the rat, he wants to tell her that he is terrified of it, but he cannot move his mouth and he knows that it will return. The lines of her body mingle with the shadows as she moves to do her work, singing, always singing. Whispering her prayers. Once he thinks she is crying. Who are you? his brain screams. What have you done?

  Much later, she whispers his name. He does not want to open his eyes. He hears her strike a match, smells the tiny, sulfurous explosion. The flame hisses as it melts the wick of a candle. She is a blur, her hair the color of ripe corn. He breathes in her wet-wool smell. In the half-dark of what he imagines is late afternoon, he discerns the shapes that make her whole. A red sweater. A green scarf. You had black hair before, he implores her with his eyes. She wears the smell of snow like a child. The smell of freedom, like too much perfume. It makes him want to throttle her. She shakes off the cold, rubs her hands. “Michael,” she says again in the warm voice of a lover.

  Yes, what? What do you want?

  He cannot dream of speaking.

  “Are you feeling better? You look much better today, really, much much better.”

  He doesn’t feel better. In fact, he feels worse.

  She moves away and for a few horrible moments there is nothing but space and silence and it terrifies him. He listens to the silence and discerns the sound of her breathing and imagines that she is just sitting there, watching him, the way one observes an animal in the zoo.

  “I wasn’t always like this,” she whispers, and he smells her cigarette. Wanting to see her face, he twists slightly, prompting a spasm of pain up his spine. “I won’t hurt you if you’re good.”

  He doesn’t say anything, his throat jammed up with
anger. Then she’s gone again and he hears something rattling on the cement, snaking across the floor. Moments later he feels something cold and tight coiling around his ankle. A chain, he realizes, hearing the snap and click and spinning of a lock.

  “There’s a rat,” he mutters at length, unable to address the chain just now.

  “No,” she answers matter-of-factly. “There are no rats. There are no rats in this house.”

  “Why are you doing this?” he hears himself say.

  “Why am I doing this?” She laughs a little.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to rest. You’ve been badly hurt.” Her tone is curt, void of emotion.

  “Is that—is it a chain?”

  “Yes, it’s a chain. But it’s long. You’ll be able to get to the toilet. There’s a sink, too.”

  “No.” He struggles to speak, overwhelmed suddenly. “Please! Let me out of here.”

  “Rest now.” She starts up the steps. “You’re hurt, Michael. You need to rest.”

  “You won’t get away with this,” he blurts. “I have friends. My wife.”

  “Your wife. I’d forget about your wife if I were you.”

  “They’ll be looking for me.”

  “They’ll never find you here.”

  They’ll never find you here.

  “What is this place?”

  “This is my childhood home,” she says dryly. “This is where it all began.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “This is Papa’s house.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Two days. No more questions, Michael.” But she stands there waiting. “I have to go now. I’ll be back in the morning.”

  Her footsteps echo dully as she climbs the stairs. Overhead, the squeaking floors. Then the distant sound of a car door, an engine turning over. And then nothing. Nothing at all.

  Two days.

  He lies very still, listening feverishly, attempting to identify the sounds around him. There are the rats, scampering across the floors overhead. Although he sees no windows, he can hear the wind wafting against the windowpanes and it is an empty sound that depresses him. A shutter slams against the side of the house, reminding him of the beating he took from those people, their relentless cruelty. He can hardly breathe, his broken ribs sharp as knives. Wind rumbles over the metal cellar doors like the feet of children, a small boy, perhaps, the age of his own son. It comes to him that his face is drenched with tears. He cannot remember the last time he cried.

  9

  THINKING BACK on it now, Annie understands that there is no escape. They had tried and failed. Like people running from a blazing circus tent, they had left the suburbs of Albany behind, the manicured cul-de-sacs, the trim, paved driveways, the benign, redundant perfection, hoping to find a new kind of freedom in the country, where they would be left alone, removed from the scrutiny and judgment of well-meaning neighbors. “Land of the free and the brave” Michael used to call it, but it was true in a way, and everyone who lived there knew it. In High Meadow, they’d met people like themselves who lived in crumbling old houses full of eclectic antiques purchased at local auctions and displayed like props on a stage. Cracked plaster walls were adorned with paintings of strangers from earlier centuries who gazed out from their crooked gold frames during dinner parties as the guests dined on roast lamb and potatoes and conversed about books and movies and the awful state of politics and the next school function, for which they would all doubtlessly volunteer. High Meadow was a strange little town, known for its abundance of pristine homes and horse farms. Just twenty miles from the city of Albany, it had miraculously staved off developers. The village consisted of a single paved road, Main Street, which was flanked with charming little shops that appealed to the weekenders from Manhattan and Annie’s students from St. Catherine’s. There was a bank, a post office, and the famous Black Sheep Café, with its cast of droll regulars who met each morning over coffee to discuss the morning paper while half a dozen stray dogs dozed at their feet. The Knowles’ neighbors were horse people, both rich and poor. They drove pickup trucks or Land Rovers. They walked the long roads in great hulking sweaters. Annie and Michael knew nearly everyone by sight, and everyone knew them back, and there were town gatherings where they’d meet newcomers, who were rare—the annual Fourth of July parade, the Halloween party at the fire station, and the spring pig roast, where everybody drank too much homemade wine and fell asleep under the stars on the town green. The children attended the public school, after which they spent long afternoons running through fields, up to their hips in yellow grass, or biking down dirt paths strewn with rubble, or skipping rocks in the creek, or lying on their backs in an open field, watching the sweeping drama of the sky. At night the front lawns were littered with skateboards and toppled bikes, the twisted heads of abandoned Barbie dolls. Doors were left unlocked and it was not unusual to glance at a woman’s purse left on the seat of her car, always there the next morning. In fact, there were few crimes to speak of. A group of teenagers were once caught getting drunk in an abandoned house. Three members of the Women’s Art League were fined for making tombstone rubbings in the graveyard after hours. Occasionally, a patrol car would turn down their road, easing past the scattered houses like a parade float, but it wasn’t routine. Because everybody knew that nothing ever happened in High Meadow.

  Until now.

  She doesn’t know why she drives out Valley Road. Perhaps a morbid curiosity is all. To try to understand what happened, to see the car, to put it all together in her mind.

  The road is slippery and she has to drive slowly. A fire truck rambles past her, heading back to its firehouse. Coming upon the scene, she sees orange cones lining the road. Patrol cars are parked in hasty diagonals. Several cops in high black boots, watching the tow truck pull up the burned-out Saab. Annie pulls over to the side of the road and parks. She gets out of the car and surveys the scene. Smoke haunts the air, and there’s the stink of burning rubber. Immediately, a cop comes up to her. “Sorry, ma’am, you can’t stop here.”

  “I’m Annie Knowles,” she says, her chest heaving. “That’s my husband’s car.”

  The young cop looks sorry for her. “You sure you want to see this?”

  She nods, and he takes her arm and leads her over to the other side of the road, where together they watch the car come up out of the dense ravine.

  10

  MICHAEL WAKES in a cold sweat, a black shape swooping over his head. He thinks wildly that it is a bird of some sort, a bat perhaps, and he can feel the wind of its flapping wings. But it is not a bat, he sees now, it is a gun. It is a gun in the woman’s hand.

  The cellar is dark and cold. It stinks of mildew. His body quakes and shivers and somewhere inside his head he understands that he needs to drink, he needs to get warm, but he cannot tell her. She lights a match, the wick of an oil lamp, and shadows swarm the room. I’m cold, his eyes rush at her, but she is not even looking at him. Her face is intensely familiar to him and he wonders if perhaps she is one of his patients; he cannot possibly remember now. His brain is too weary to make such connections. But still, her face. The way she has her hair pulled back, her gray eyes, the high Slavic cheekbones. The smoke billows and spreads across the ceiling and he watches it, like a net, enveloping him. For an instant he catches her profile, the way she concentrates on the cigarette, the orange glow brightening with each drag she takes.

  “You were dreaming,” she says. “Was it a nightmare?”

  He doesn’t answer her.

  “You had a dream about Annie, didn’t you?”

  The sound of his wife’s name in this woman’s mouth frightens him. “Do you know my wife?”

  “Of course.”

  She sits down and continues to smoke. He does not want her sitting there. He does not want her anywhere near him. He watches her, all the colors smearing together. The drugs she gives him, making him sick. He wants to ask her how she knows Ann
ie, but he is too tired now. He does not have enough energy to make words out of air. It is better if he lies perfectly still. It is better if he pretends he is dead. I’m dead, can’t you see? “I’m sick,” he mutters.