The Wife's Tale

by Lori Lansens

  Legs fast asleep, numb as they often went when she sat too long, she searched through the open sunroof. Still no rain. Slowly, because her fingers were stiff and cold, she inserted the key into the ignition, enjoying the sharp pins pricking her calves as blood streamed to her starving muscles.

  Setting the truck in reverse, glancing in the mirror to note the concrete light-stand to her rear, she didn’t immediately pull out of her spot. Gooch’s face before he left for work flashed before her, and the sound of his silky voice asking about her wardrobe for the anniversary dinner. The genuine way he said it was a hell of a thing to be married for twenty-five years. How he’d urged her to buy something nice. Her right foot heavy on the truck’s brake, riding the rapids of eternal hope, she didn’t notice the approach of the crow. When the bird dove through the sunroof to claim more of the nutty treasures he and his mates had been stealing while she was gone, the thief seemed as shocked by her presence as she was by his intrusion.

  Mary screamed. The startled bird cawed, flying not back through the open sunroof but straight into the windshield and then, flapping madly, at Mary, who in batting the bird, released her foot from the brake, inadvertently jamming on the gas, crashing the rear of the truck into the light-stand. Black. Feathers. Black.

  Lifting her head off the scalloped steering wheel, Mary expected to see blood. The bird was gone. The chocolate, she noticed now, picked and pecked and shredded on the seat beside her—had the birds done that? Or had she? There was an ache in her forehead but she couldn’t find a contusion, not even the smallest of bumps. She shifted her eyes when a shadow appeared in her periphery. The teenaged boy. She could tell by the look on his face that he’d witnessed the whole thing.

  “Fuck!” he breathed, opening the door and reaching over her gut to set the car in park, and to turn the key on the still humming motor. “Are you okay? That was unbelievable. The bird was like …” He gestured wildly with his arms. “And you were like”—he batted at the air in caricature—“fuckin’ unbelievable.”

  “I hit my head.”

  The boy drew his cellphone like a gun from his pocket. Mary stopped him. “No. I’m okay. How’s the truck?”

  He stepped back to survey the damaged Ford. “Built tough.” He grinned.

  Mary took a deep breath, feeling her head again. The space between her eyes. It hurt when she pressed down.

  “Sure you don’t want me to call an ambulance?”

  “I’m sure. I’m sorry.”

  He noticed for the first time the mess of Laura Secord strewn about the front seat. “Holy shit!” he said.

  “I’m okay.”

  Closing the door reluctantly, he remarked, “You don’t look okay.”

  Sweet androgynous boy. He didn’t know that she never looked okay. She cranked the window down. “Thank you. Really. Sorry.”

  The pounding rain, though expected, surprised them both. The boy tugged at his hood and hurried off as Mary turned the key in the ignition, charged by the sound of the motor and the compliance of the shifting gears. She waved, watching the scrawny boy resume his crouch in the shelter of the doorway, hoping that his wait wouldn’t be long or, like hers, in vain.

  There were no other cars on Leaford’s roads. No birds in Leaford’s trees. No humans with umbrellas on her sidewalks near the library or the mall. They’d all read the paper. It occurred to Mary, driving through the storm, her windshield wipers droning heavily, righteous rain battering her scalp, that Gooch might have had an accident. He could have slipped in Chung’s parking lot on his way to get his Combo Number 5—it had been wet last night. He could have fallen and hit his head and lost his memory, or his reason. She scanned the road for her phantom husband. Like the phantom pain she still felt around the time her period would have come. Like the phantom fat she’d carried around in senior year, even when she was at her most slender.

  Competing with the thunder and lightning, the rain pelted Mary’s face through the sunroof. Furnace repair. Sunroof. Anniversary dinner. Mother’s new meds. Address issue of twenty-five thousand dollars in the account. Gooch’s whereabouts? Forget the list—cry. Let it out. “It’d be good, Mare,” Gooch had often said, “if you could let it out.”

  She reached for the detritus of Laura Secord beside her, realizing that she’d eaten little more than chocolate the entire day and it was already well past noon. Bringing the square to her mouth, she was overcome by nausea and tossed the chocolate back onto the seat.

  The bank was quiet and empty with a lone teller in sight when Mary entered, shaking herself like a wet dog on the rubber mat. A young woman in a beige suit met her at the desk, frowning. “Nasty out there, hmmm?”

  Mary assumed that she meant the world in general, and agreed. As she was virtually a stranger to the bank, the teller studied her quietly, waiting. “I just need to know the balance on my account,” Mary said.

  The woman smiled, taking Mary’s bank card and processing it. She raised a brow when the machine answered her query, and handed the slip of paper to Mary. Twenty-five thousand dollars more than they had. Mary was afraid to call attention to the error, in case it wasn’t an error. If Gooch had put that money in the bank, those gains could only have been ill gotten and surely had something to do with his disappearance.

  Arriving home with no recollection of the drive from the bank to her house, Mary parked the truck and waded through the pouring rain toward the front door, disturbed by the mystery of the money, deciding that Gooch must have lost his mind and robbed a bank. Or The Greek.

  She smelled the dead furnace and felt the sting of cold air from the broken glass at the back door as she moved through the small living room, where Gooch liked to watch golf and black-and-white movies, and toward the bloodstained hallway. Her eyes fell upon the kitchen table, where she both feared and hoped to see a note from him.

  The refrigerator strummed her pain as she reached for the Aspirin in the cupboard above the stove, shaking two, then three tablets into her palm, wondering resentfully why she and Gooch continued to keep medication out of reach when they had no children and never would. She swallowed the tablets with her saliva rather than bothering to run the tap, shivering when she realized how drenched she was.

  She sloshed toward the telephone, wishing they’d bought that answering machine Gooch had suggested in case he’d been calling all day, in case someone had needed to leave an important message, though the fact that the telephone was not currently ringing off the hook gave her some perverse satisfaction. After testing for a dial tone, she punched Gooch’s number from the emergency card. “It’s Mary Gooch. At 3:35 p.m. I’m sorry to be a bother. I’m calling for my husband again. If you could tell Jimmy Gooch I’m home now. And could he please call me there. Thank you. Sorry.”

  If you think you’re not ready to let him go, her imagined Orin had said. She squeezed down the bloodstained hallway. Her unmade bed beckoned. A rest, she thought. To sleep. To dream. Regretting her harsh words with the furnace, she settled her weight down and pulled the bloodstained quilt up to her chin.

  DREAM SEQUENCE

  The ringing telephone drifted inside Mary Gooch’s troubled dreamscape and chased her like a stinging wasp over a barren Leaford horizon. She woke frightened, groggy, swatting at the receiver. It was Joyce from St. John’s with a reminder that her cheque was due, that Irma’s new meds needed a signature, and that the potluck had been changed to Tuesday night. Mary muttered some polite compliance and hung up the phone, shaking herself awake with dubious recollections—Gooch not home? Sylvie Lafleur not an evil whore? And had the accident in the parking lot actually happened? The surplus in the bank account? The previous hours felt like a dream sequence, and just as confounding in life as it would be in a movie.

  The telephone rang again and she drew it to her lap, answering, “Yes Joyce,” because Joyce always called back with some forgotten detail. “Yes. I’ll do the cake for the raffle.”

  Where are you, Gooch? And why is there twenty-five thousand do
llars in our account? Dialing Gooch’s cellphone number, which she had quickly learned by heart, she waited for the familiar stranger’s voice. The liquid sky suggested midnight but the clock read seven-fifteen p.m. She’d slept only a few hours. “It’s Mary Gooch calling. Again. I’m sorry. If you could tell my husband I’m very worried and would very much appreciate his call. It’s seven-fifteen.”

  On occasion, reading a celebrity questionnaire, Mary would attempt to distill her existence as addressed by questions like Happiest Moment? and Greatest Achievement? Under Most Used Phrase? she would answer unhesitatingly, “I’m sorry.” She apologized for the way she ate, with a disturbing lack of discrimination. Biggest Regret?—not telling Gooch about the miscarriage on the eve of their wedding. Greatest Love?—obvious. Greatest Extravagance?—obvious. Worst Habit?—obvious. Mary envied drinkers and gamblers, for whom addictions were not necessarily outerwear. Best Physical Trait? She’d have to say eyes. On the question Greatest Adventure? she had no adventures to describe, great or small. And she had yet to define her life’s goals, so also skipped the question Proudest Achievement? She shuddered to think how Gooch would answer the questions, if he dared to do so honestly.

  The Kenmore sang down the channel of bloodstained hall and, like the doomed sailor, Mary sought to answer the siren call, lifting her feet off the bed and swinging them to the carpet with a thud. The refrigerator hummed more loudly, tone pitched high, but she could not persuade the rest of her freight to couple with her waiting legs. She paused, her wheezy breath drowning the call from the kitchen. The phone rang and she reached for it, answering, “Yes Joyce.”

  There was silence. Breathing. “Gooch?” she blurted. She felt his ear on the other end of the line, the weight of his sadness, the depth of his love. She thought of the hundreds of things she’d saved up to say, but could not shift one from her brain to her lips. “Please come home, Gooch,” she finally managed. “Whatever it is, we’ll work it out.”

  There was a pause, shallow breathing, and then a familiar voice, feminine and sly. “Mary?”

  Wendy. Calling from the restaurant at the lake. “Mary?”

  It was Mary’s turn to pause now. She cleared her throat. “We won’t be making it tonight, Wendy. We can’t make it.”

  “Can’t make it?” Wendy repeated. “It’s your anniversary, Mary. We’re all here for you. What’s going on with Gooch? Did you two have a fight? Is this serious? I think you owe us an—”

  Wendy had a good deal more to say, and was still saying it as Mary hung up. She pictured the six of them gathered at the table she’d reserved months ago, with a view of the wide, choppy lake. After the initial “Oh my Gods” and “Holy shits” and whatever other profanities exclaimed the news, she guessed they would decide to stay at the restaurant and go on with the meal. Wendy would dine on the Gooches’ misfortune, and bore the others with her bitterness over the time wasted on the anniversary scrap-book. Pete would wonder why Gooch hadn’t said anything to him, besides asking idly one day, “Are you happy?” to which his oldest friend had responded, “Are you high?” By dessert Kim would be glaring at François, who’d inherited a wandering eye. No one would be surprised by the fracture of Jimmy and Mary Gooch. It had only ever been a matter of time.

  Mary watched the telephone, wondering if she should call the police. But what would she tell them? Twenty-five thousand dollars had appeared mysteriously in her account and her husband had not come home. The scenario was incriminating. She exercised her sporadic belief in God, appealing for a new preemptive miracle. Just please let Gooch come home, she begged.

  The ringing telephone. An answered prayer. Her heart leapt. Then she heard The Greek’s baritone on the other end of the line and braced herself for news. But he hadn’t heard from Gooch either, and was, like Mary, increasingly worried and confused. His questions took the tone of interrogation, and Mary felt accused. When The Greek asked again if she’d checked the bank account, she denied that she had, realizing how fully she’d made her bed and lied in it.

  In the bedroom, she threw open the closet door. Nothing was missing. Gooch’s lean wardrobe from the tall man’s shop in Windsor was on one side and her own mess of plus-sized discount disasters on the other. Mary had never searched for clues of infidelity before, but had read enough advice columns and watched enough prime-time to know what she was looking for. Lipstick stains on his collars. No. The smell of perfume? She couldn’t smell anything, nothing at all. Rogue blonde hairs. No. Love notes or telephone numbers folded into squares in the pockets of his jeans. No. She rooted behind the winter coats, where they kept the boxes of cards and photos and VCR tapes, but nothing was amiss. She shut the closet and glanced around the room, spying on the dresser a shoebox labelled Business Info. It was open, the lid tossed aside, piled high with crumpled receipts. She looked at the various chits for gas and dining that Gooch submitted for reimbursement from The Greek.

  She found a bill for a restaurant with a Toronto address, noting the date, which was the previous month, and the time, early afternoon. Card member James Gooch had lunched on the dly sp and grll chk snd accompanied by two draft beers at a place on Queen Street. She didn’t know Gooch had gone to Toronto.

  Catching sight of herself in the mirror as she passed, Mary thought of the hundreds of television shows she’d watched about criminal investigations, the search for evidence, the thrill of justice. She settled down on the bed to examine the receipts more closely. Nothing alarming. No motel slips or invoices from jewellers or lingerie shops. The most shocking chits were for gas. She had had no idea it cost that much to fill the delivery truck’s tank. No wonder the planet was in peril! There was a receipt from an auto body shop in Leamington—Gooch had mentioned trouble with the delivery truck. There was an unfilled sleeping pill prescription from Dr. Ruttle, which was surprising, since Gooch slept like a baby. The rest were restaurant bills that confirmed Gooch’s habit of healthy eating and his penchant for a cool draft with his midday meal.

  Mary was nearly through the box when she found another receipt from a Toronto restaurant. The same restaurant, dated the week before—egg-white omelet and draft beer. And then another dated the week before that—fish special with salad and beer. And another, and another, twice in the same week. And another. Gooch hadn’t mentioned that he’d been to Toronto six times the past few months, but then again, she’d never asked. Still, evidence of nothing. He’d driven there numerous times over the years to various manufacturers from whom The Greek ordered specialty items for the store. She had not a scrap to confront him with when he finally made it home. So what if he enjoyed dining at a place called Bistro 555?

  The refrigerator hummed, but Mary didn’t hear it over the ticking of the clock. Please. Call. Please. Call. She looked up at the ceiling, as she’d done a thousand times before, noticing a wide crack stretching directly over the bed. The fissure had been there all the time, grown from thin to thick, short to long, and she’d never noticed it. Or it had appeared mysteriously in the night, the way Gooch had disappeared.

  She reached for the phone once more and dialed Gooch’s number. When it was her turn to speak she said, “It’s Jimmy’s wife again.” Then, after a pause, “Will you tell him … Happy Anniversary.”

  Focused on the crack, she recalled the moment when she had left her body on the wet leaves. But in the recollection it was not her own body over which her spirit hovered but Gooch’s. With that image, Mary left her conscious chaos for the clarity of dreams.

  NOTHING NEFARIOUS

  Trips to the toilet and to drink water from the tap. Aspirin for that pain between her eyes. Experimental dreams. Glimpses of light. Weight of dark. Tap water. Urine. Flush. Gooch’s face. Light. Dark. Water. Pee. Flush. Gooch. Mary. The night clock. Screaming at Wendy to please go away. Endlessly ticking, then ticking no more, the batteries dislodged and thrown to the floor. Heat—the furnace hadn’t died after all.

  In the hallway an amber lamp switched on in a marvel of timed circuitry, stea
ling into the room like a secret lover. Mary eased her legs as the light adored her dunes, licked her licorice nipples, and sucked her frosted toes. She pulled her lids apart and looked around the room. With the drapes drawn, she was unable to guess between day and night.

  Mary rose, her foot aching where she’d been cut, confused by the sequence of her stories and their relation to her dreams. The digital clock on Gooch’s side was blinking, which suggested that power had been lost and restored sometime in the night. Her own thumping clock was dead. That hadn’t been a dream—she’d taken the batteries out at two o’clock, a.m. or p.m., she couldn’t be sure. The dense grey clouds she could see through the slit in the drapes failed to disclose the sun’s position. She had the panicky feeling that she was late. Too late. For whatever it was.

  As she pulled back the drapes, her eyes were stung by the sharp white snow laid out over the landscape, so that she couldn’t find the border of the yard or the site of Mr. Barkley’s grave. A thick layer weighting the willow and drifting over the frozen towels in the truck. This much snow in October? Something of a miracle.

  Instinctively she looked at the telephone at the bedside, noticing that the receiver had fallen off. She returned it, waited for a dial tone and dialed her husband’s number. It was the voice who made the apology this time: “We’re sorry. This number is no longer in service.”

  Mary set the phone back down and bought several deep breaths before she dialed The Greek, who was also listed among the emergency numbers. When Fotopolis didn’t answer that line she called the store directly and was surprised to learn that The Greek was gone too, flown off to Athens last week to be with his dying mother. Mary cleared her throat before asking, “Did Mr. Fotopolis speak to my husband before he left?”

  The receptionist’s answer was polite and professional; she appeared to be following instructions regarding questions about Jimmy Gooch’s disappearance. “I really don’t know anything about that,” she apologized, and then spoiled her discretion by adding, “I have his cellphone here. Mr. Fotopolis found it in the truck. Do you want to pick it up, Mrs. Gooch? Mrs. Gooch?”