The Doctor's Wife

by Elizabeth Brundage

  “Please don’t,” she begs, but it is only a whisper and she doubts he has heard it.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he says, his voice garbled and slippery. I’m going to have to kill you is all.

  Her eyes burn and tear, and sweat sprouts from her body like fresh clover, and soon she is a whole wet field of it and it is running out of her, it is running down her back, down her legs to her feet. Everything seems to be moving at once and it is very loud inside her head. It is the volume turned up to maximum on a television game show. It is the sound of her dead mother screaming.

  Her hand aches and she remembers that she is holding the gun. Her hand has gone brittle and stiff around the pistol, and it is heavy, impossibly heavy. He has reached the bottom of the staircase and he is moving toward her and she knows that he is going to grab her, he is going to grab her and it is going to hurt and then he is going to kill her. Please, don’t! Please stop!

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, but his voice is strange and distant and she does not believe him. Daddy? Is it you?

  “She has a gun,” Michael shouts.

  “You tricked me,” she says.

  “I just want to talk.”

  “You lied to me. You tricked me.”

  “She has a fucking gun!”

  The gun is heavier now and her muscles strain to hold it up. “Shut up!” she screams. “Don’t come any closer! Don’t!”

  “Put down the gun, Lydia.”

  “You lied to me. You . . . you took . . . you took advantage of me. I was just . . . I was just a stupid girl. I was stupid . . . I didn’t know any better . . . and you put a spell on me. . . . I trusted you. . . . I believed in you.” Her head throbs and the little slippery worms begin to dance. He comes upon her, his swarming bulk. “Don’t come any closer,” she warns. “I’ve asked you nicely. Please.” But he refuses to listen to her even now, in the moment of his death, and it insults her profoundly, and she cannot forgive him. “You’re not listening!” she shouts. “You’ve never listened to me.”

  Wait!

  No more waiting!

  The blast of the gunshot is deafening. The cellar fills with smoke and a hazy, stifling heat. He makes a sound—pop—and the air runs out of him. He falls down on the floor.

  Everything finally stops. The world stops. The gun simmers in her hand. Pulling the trigger had felt good, and now the gun is clean and hollow, like her heart. Death crowds the room with ghosts and a strange cold glow spreads like mist across the floor. There is her father with his five o’clock stubble. And there. There is Mama. She shall have music wherever she goes.

  “I think you killed him,” Michael says.

  “He tricked me,” she explains.

  “You’d better put on the lamp.”

  She gropes her way to the oil lamp and lights it, waiting for her eyes to adjust. She looks down at the body on the floor. It quivers a little. An odor rises up to her nostrils. Urine, she thinks, wondering distantly if she has wet her pants. His blood makes a stream across the floor. It collects in a puddle and wets the soles of her boots.

  “I think he’s dead, Lydia,” the doctor informs her.

  “My feet,” she says softly. “My feet are all wet.”

  “Michael?” a voice shouts down the stairs. It’s a woman. “Michael, are you all right?”

  “Annie? Down here!”

  Annie Knowles stumbles down the stairs. How she has gotten herself free escapes Lydia. She is holding up Lydia’s daddy’s ax, the one he always kept on the back porch, and it looks as though she is more than prepared to use it. “Thank God you’re all right,” she says to her husband, but then she comes upon the puddle of blood, the body on the ground, and lets out a whimper, like she’s been hit from behind.

  “Check his pulse,” Michael says. “I think she killed him.”

  Lydia blinks and blinks, unable to comprehend how Annie has gotten free. It’s a conspiracy, she realizes. Another trick. They’ve been tricking her all along.

  “Look what you’ve done,” Annie says to her, cradling the rusty ax in her arms like a baby.

  “What?” Lydia gasps, confused, suddenly terrified.

  Annie drops to her knees by the body and sobs, a foul groan curling out of her mouth. “You killed him. You killed your husband!”

  Perplexed, Lydia reels unsteadily. “What? I can’t hear. . . . I have worms . . . my ears.”

  “Oh my God! He’s dead!” Annie whines, doubling over as if she were in pain. “Oh my God! Simon! Simon!”

  Lydia looks down at the dead man. “Simon?” she says, bewildered. “What are you doing down there?”

  But he has fallen asleep, and she sees no point in waiting around for him to wake up.

  84

  “HURRY UP and give me that ax,” Michael tells Annie.

  “Oh, Michael!” She hands him the ax. “Hurry. She’s got a can of gasoline up there.”

  “Move away.” He swings the ax, smacking the chain with its blade. With each strike, the floor vibrates up through his legs. The briny smell of battered cement fills his lungs. After several tries, he feels the chain snap and release. He is free.

  Gasoline drips through the floorboards. Michael takes Annie’s hand and they climb the stairs. “Lydia!” He searches the first floor and finds the minister out cold on the living room floor. “Lydia!”

  The box of matches drops. He finds her in the kitchen on her hands and knees, trying to scoop them up.

  “It’s over now,” he coaxes. “Put the matches down.”

  “I don’t want to go.” Lydia shakes her head, an adamant child. “I don’t like it there.”

  Sirens scream up the driveway. There is the sound of feet trampling across the lawn.

  “Lydia. Put the matches down.”

  “Nobody understands me.” She picks up a single match. “I’m all alone now,” she says.

  Just as she is about to strike the match, the room floods with cops. One of them grabs her from behind, but she bites his arm and runs out the door. The cop goes after her. From the window, Michael watches the cops surround her from all directions. He does not want to watch it. He doesn’t want to see her being caught. For some reason, he cannot bear it.

  “You folks all right?”

  “Detective Bascombe,” Annie says, tears coming up her throat. “She shot Simon Haas. He’s in the cellar. He’s dead.”

  85

  SIMON HAAS IS BURIED in the Union Cemetery on Shaker Road. Annie attends the funeral on her own. Lydia Haas is there, handcuffed to Detective Bascombe. She is wearing a black suit and a veil, but Annie can still see her face, her eyes, which are drained of color and dart cautiously about, as though she is in the presence of her enemies.

  After the service, people float toward their cars. Annie watches Bascombe lead the widow away. He is exceedingly gentle with her, Annie observes, removing the handcuff from his own wrist and replacing it on hers. Noticing that she is crying, he pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and offers it to her, and she nods and takes it and dabs at her eyes. The gesture seems to comfort her, and Annie finds herself wondering if it is the same handkerchief Bascombe had offered to her, and if he had ever washed it. The idea of their tears mingling on that square of cloth fills her with a strange remorse. Bascombe helps Lydia into the back of his car, then gets in behind the wheel. Annie continues across the grass, but her eyes remain on Lydia in the backseat. She knows that neither of them will fully recover from Simon’s death. Lydia takes off her veil, and then as if sensing Annie’s gaze, meets her eyes. For a long moment, neither of them moves. Bascombe starts the car and slowly pulls out as Lydia’s hand rises up like a flag of surrender and touches the glass.

  In the afternoon, Annie and some of the people from the college drive over to Simon’s house to take care of the dogs. Over tea in his kitchen, they have a discussion about what to do with them. Annie volunteers to take one, a female named Grace. The remaining Danes will go to other willing faculty membe
rs. Outside, the wind comes in gusts. The chimes jangle and spin. The dishes in the cupboard tremble slightly. The door opens suddenly, as if someone has entered. It commands their attention, allows them each a brief and contemplative glimpse of the lake. The door slams shut with finality, and Annie knows—perhaps they all know—that it is Simon’s way of saying good-bye.

  86

  MICHAEL IS KEPT in the hospital for a week and Annie stays with him there, sleeping on a pullout chair in the room. They spend the hours together playing cards, listening to music. She is grateful for this time with him, this time to recover, to reckon somehow with all that’s gone on.

  The new year promises change, and on a cold winter morning in January the moving truck arrives on schedule. It’s hard for Annie to believe the day has finally come. Packing the house has been oddly therapeutic, organizing all of the pieces of their history into boxes, each thing a small token of the life they’ve shared, both good and bad.

  She is ready to move on.

  The empty rooms of the house sing with light. It really is a beautiful old place, she thinks, feeling a little sorry now that they have to leave it behind. She walks into her bedroom and takes a last look around. Through the window she sees Henry and Rosie chasing Simon’s dog across the field. They are laughing, their breath white as smoke in the cold air. Standing there, she has the strangest feeling that Simon is in the room with her. She imagines his hand flat on the rise of her belly, weightless as a cloud.

  The horn of the moving truck blares and she goes downstairs. Outside, the men are closing up the truck. Michael hands the driver a map. The men get into the truck and the truck pulls away. They stand there with the sun in their eyes, watching it vanish.

  “You okay?” Michael asks.

  She nods, but she is suddenly choked up. It’s harder to leave than she thought.

  “Look on the bright side,” he says. “We’ll have a Blockbuster and a Starbucks.”

  This makes her laugh. She takes a last look around, her eyes sweeping across the open landscape. And then he holds out his hand, and she takes it.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am profoundly grateful to my editor, Carole DeSanti, for her incisive nurturing of this book and for her generous spirit and patience. Thank you to Karen Murphy, for her clarity and inspiration and kindness. Thank you also to Patty Bozza, Bonnie Thompson, Lexy Bloom, Nancy Sheppard, Carolyn Coleburn, Gretchen Koss, and all of the others at Viking who had a hand in bringing this book into the world. I am indebted to my agent, Linda Chester, for believing in this novel and for fearlessly pushing for it, and also for her friendship and her faith in my work. Thank you also to Gary Jaffe and Laurie Fox of Linda Chester & Associates, for their warmth and assurance whenever needed, and to Kyra Ryan for her excellent advice on early drafts of the book. Thank you to Joe Veltre, Kathy Green, and Michael Carlisle at Carlisle & Co., and Laurie Horowitz at CAA, for their enthusiasm and support.

  A very heartfelt thank-you goes to James Michener and the Copernicus Society of America, for granting me a fellowship; and thank you to Frank Conroy, for selecting me. Thanks also to Connie Brothers, for her unflagging compassion and guidance. I’d also like to thank the following editors who have published my work in the past: Constance Warloe, Jim Clark (at The Greensboro Review), Peter Stine (at Witness magazine), and James McKinley (at New Letters).

  I owe the following people my deepest gratitude for their unrelenting encouragement: my parents, Joan and Lyle Brundage, for never giving up on me, no matter what; Dorothy Silverherz Rosenberg, for her continued inspiration; Paula Lippman, my soul mate; Beth Abrahms, my surrogate sister; and to all my friends and family who have shown an interest in my career, in particular: Florence and Karel Sokoloff; Millie and Martin Shapiro; Paul Scott; Amy Diamond; Phyllis Abrahms; Sally Abrahms; Betty Sigoloff; Helen Beck and Arnold Abramowitz; Sue Turconi; Richard Morris; John and Lori Rosenberg; Dan and Meg Milsky; Nancy Stone; Maxine Glassman; Karen Cohen; Joanie Gruen; Pat DuMark and Jamie Grace.

  Thank you, Marc and Christine Heller, for sharing your stories. Thank you to all the doctors out there in the world who never stop doing what’s necessary, who never stop taking care of strangers.

  A PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER OF SECRETS,

  DARK MOTIVES, AND AN ADOPTION BURIED

  IN THE PAST...

  Somebody Else’s Daughter

  BY ELIZABETH BRUNDAGE

  COMING IN JULY 2008

  978-0-670-01900-7

  TURN THE PAGE FOR A SNEAK PEEK...

  Viking

  A member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  www.penguin.com

  Summer, 1989

  We left San Francisco that morning even though your mother was sick. It was a pretty day, the sun shimmering like a gypsy girl’s tambourine. I thought it would be good for her to get out into the sunshine because it had been a long few weeks of rain and her skin had gone gray as oatmeal and she had this dull look flaming up in her eyes. You were sleeping in your little rocking seat and I had your things all packed. We didn’t have much. It was time to go, but Cat wanted me to wash her hair first, said she couldn’t go out looking like that. Holding her head in my hands I could feel her bright with fever. From behind, she looked like a healthy schoolgirl, just her sweet body and that long yellow hair. Then she’d turn around and you’d get pins in your heart. I wrapped her head in a towel and said, you take your meds today, Kitty Cat, and she nodded with her long face, the kind of woman you see in the museum up on the old canvases, a woman washing clothes or out in the fields, a strong body with large capable hands and this wisdom in her eyes because she knows more than you. She hated the idea that she was sick, and even with you so small she was still shooting drugs. Dope kept her comfortable. It had always been her favorite thing to do and that’s the truth. You could see it just after she’d put the needle in, like an angel her face would go hazy and beautiful like so much fog. She dreamed of horses, she said. She told me she’d come into the world wanting to ride, wanting to be near the big dark creatures. Horses understood her, people made her nervous. This was your mother; this was the woman I loved.

  We made you one night in a broken house, your mother riding my hips and howling with pleasure, and then six weeks later she’s throwing up and wanting strange foods from the Iranian down on Willard Avenue. Months passed and her belly went round and tight. At the clinic they said she had a weak heart and HIV. Maybe her baby wouldn’t get it. They didn’t know. They gave her some pills and told her to come back every three weeks. She quit dope that afternoon, and took the pills and started going to church. She told me she had begged Jesus for a miracle. She believed in miracles, she said; she believed in Jesus. She liked to light the candles and sit in the darkness and think and then she’d get down on her knees and press her palms together. I’d watch her sometimes in the trembling blue light, among the other whispering strangers.

  This one day we were walking through the park, leaning and kissing, that smell at the nape of her neck, the nape, like vanilla, like I don’t know what, heaven, and then she’s down on all fours in labor and this crowd comes around and she’s white as fucking God and the next thing I know we’re in a taxi with this Pakistani barking orders and I’m just wondering how we’re going to pay for it. At the hospital they gave Cat a C-section on account of the HIV. They let me stand there and hold her hand and when I saw you for the first time I started to cry, I couldn’t help it. You were bundled in a little blanket and you had on a little hat and you were the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I handed you to your mother and she was trembling and a little frightened and it made me want to crawl up next to her and hide my face in her heart. The nurse explained that there was a chance you’d be all right; they wouldn’t know for a few months, we’d just have to be patient. I promised Cat that everything would be okay, I’d make sure of it, but she shook her head. “I’m sick,” she said.

  They made her talk to a shrink. I waited out in the hall and I could hear her crying. I didn�
�t know what to do. I went down to the waiting room and bought a candy bar and sat there. There were some old books on the table, old paperbacks. One had a girl on the cover who looked like your mother. The book was My Antonia and I vaguely remembered reading it in high school. Later, I gave it to her, and she snapped it out of my hands and told me to leave her alone. We had this thing between us; she didn’t think she was smart enough for me, which of course wasn’t true; she was the smartest person I ever knew, the kind of smart you don’t get in school. I’d gone to a fancy prep school where my father was a teacher. I’d grown up in a crummy faculty house with people coming and going, writers mostly, nasty drunken poets who always ended up sleeping on the couch. It was one of those poets who turned me onto dope, among other things. “We’re calling her Willa,” your mother declared when I walked in that night. She was sitting up in bed, her eyes shining, holding the book in her shaking hand. I could tell she’d liked it, and we named you after its author. We brought you home and the very next day they sent someone over from Child Services and it was that same woman who suggested we give you up. She brought two cases of formula and some diapers. She looked around our apartment, her eyes grim. Cat served the woman tea in one of her mother’s old china teacups; it had little rosebuds on it, and your mother had saved it for a long time, keeping it carefully wrapped in newspaper so it wouldn’t get broken, but the woman wouldn’t even touch it. She kept on us, trying to persuade us to let you go, to give you a better life, but we put her off.