The Wife's Tale

by Lori Lansens

  Mary’d often imagined a lonely death. A heart attack in her bed while Gooch was working late. In a dark ditch on a country road. Seated on the toilet.

  “Why don’t you go lie down. I’ll finish this up and you can rest before your company comes.”

  Eden didn’t need persuasion. She disappeared down the hall, leaving Mary to prepare the feast. As Mary pitted and husked and rolled and spread, she recalled a thousand recipe suggestions from the pages of her magazines that she’d promised Tomorrow she would make, but her eager mouth had always been too impatient. Eating from bags or sacks or tins. Her choices were more of the “empty contents into pot and stir over medium heat” or “microwave on high for eleven minutes” variety than the cutting, chopping, caramelizing kind. Perhaps she was more like Irma than she knew. Maybe Gooch had been right, and all these years she hadn’t loved food at all.

  Hours later, after she’d prepared the food and washed the dishes, Eden appeared, casting a critical eye over the kitchen. “We use the blue plates,” she said. “But that’s fine.”

  The sound of Jack’s hacking from behind the closed door of his bedroom made Mary shiver. Eden winced and said, “It’s better if he doesn’t see you, Mary. You have the number now. You really should call first.”

  “Yes. I’ll call.”

  “We could be right in the middle of something.”

  “Of course.”

  “And the mornings are the worst. A terrible time for company. Terrible.”

  The telephone rang, shattering the silence. Eden picked up the phone. “Hello? Yes? Hello? I can’t hear you. Hello?” She hung up, explaining to Mary, “Lost call.”

  “Lost call?”

  “It happens all the time.”

  Mary left the house thinking of the lost caller. It could have been Gooch. She checked her watch, realizing that she had only an hour before the Canadian banks closed for the day. She begged her feet to walk faster, grateful for the mercy of the snug black loafers.

  A DISCONNECTED STATE

  Mary started back up the hill, playing with suspicion, unable to shake the feeling that her hunch had been right about Eden protecting Gooch. Why had she told Mary not to come because they could be in the middle of something when Eden and her dying husband were so clearly at the end of it all? And why would she say the mornings were the worst when it appeared from her face that all times were awful? Mary suddenly felt sure that the telephone call was from Gooch, and had not been lost at all.

  Reaching the fountain halfway up the hill, she paused but did not sit down on its rocky ledge. There were no cyclists on the roads. No people marching on the sidewalks. It was mid-afternoon, and much too hot for such bodily endeavours. That was why the people here were all out jogging and cycling and marching in the mornings. They had active times, like animals in a zoo. She could hear the whir of leaf blowers and lawn mowers in the distance—the workers. Not too hot for them? She inched farther up the hill and thanked gravity for helping her down, and when she reached the bottom she could only cede to her body, which swore it could not walk one more step.

  She found a tall palm to lean against, glad to share her weight with the scratchy trunk. But the tree offered no relief from the sun’s boring rays, and she felt dizzy from the heat. Perhaps this was another dream—a nightmare of an uninhabited dystopia. If there had been any cars around, she might have thrown herself in front of one. A coma, she thought hopefully, a short coma from which she might awake to the crack in her ceiling and Gooch beside her. “Someone else do it,” she heard herself say. “I can’t. I can’t go on.”

  Glancing up at the perpetual blue, Mary cued God. This is where you send the reluctant saviour. The answer to my prayer. But there was no miracle. No little Big Avi in his black limousine. No Mexican man in a dusty red truck. No Gooch shouting out from behind her, “I’ve been calling all over for you!”

  So where was God when you needed her? Last rites in the Third World? Attending Asquiths’ prayer circle? Celebrating the divine victory of some sports team? Mary pushed herself away from the palm and started back down the road toward the bank. She had to. So she did. And there was God—not in the wings but in the act. Or it was heatstroke. She massaged the spot between her eyes.

  Nearing the shopping plaza, she realized that she’d walked the remainder of the distance in a disconnected state. She was nothing but the exhalation of her breath and the momentum of her muscles, a ruminant meditation. Only now did she feel the blisters from the too-tight loafers.

  Reaching the bank, she pulled the doors open and surrendered herself to the care of handsome, sandy-haired Cooper Ross, who helped her to the chrome and leather sofa and plugged the phone into the jack beside her and even dialed the number of her bank in Leaford.

  As the manager on the other end of the line had not been briefed on her situation, she was required to repeat the sad tale, including the tedious details of name and address and contact number. Her brain suffering from lack of nutrition, she could not remember Gooch’s first elementary school. Saint Something. And husband’s mother’s maiden name “Gustoff” was incorrect, though she was positive that was what Eden had said. The manager insisted that he could not release funds to her, or divulge any details of her account, until she had proper identification and could fax those documents to his attention. She thought of the number Emery Carr had written down for her, someone at the Canadian embassy.

  She begged one more favour before rising from the sofa, the call of a taxi back to the hotel. “It could take up to an hour,” Lucy said. “This isn’t New York.”

  She couldn’t wait an hour. As much as she dreaded the evening alone in the hotel, she knew she could not sit on the black leather sofa in the sterile bank a moment longer. She thanked the bank employees and started for the door.

  Outside the bank, her feet aching in the too-tight loafers, Mary could barely heft her legs down the ramp toward the parking lot. The laser sun assaulted her eyes. The parking lot. The purse. Surely it was here. Must be here. Hidden before by some parked car. It must be here. Done with tears for the time being, she wanted to laugh when she realized that she was jonesing for her purse.

  Nearby a cellphone rang, reminding her that someone might be calling the hotel with information about her lost identification. Heather. What if Heather had heard from Gooch? Heather had no way to contact her either. She’d have to remember to call the bistro in Toronto. And Gooch? What if the lost call had not been Gooch? Maybe he didn’t even have a phone. What if he’d had an accident while hiking? What if he was lost and had no way to call for help? She felt the familiar force of centrifugal fear. A memory of skating on the Thames River. Crack the whip—it’s Mary’s turn to be at the end. Divot in the ice—gash on the fore-head—Irma appearing in rubber boots. An embarrassment of blood. Scar still there.

  She might have stood in the parking lot reminiscing with despair, but for the sun’s glare on her shiny pink cheeks and the certainty that she had sweated off her layers of sun protection. It was not possible to stand still, she saw, and remembered that she needed a plan. Go back to hotel. Call man who knows Emery Carr. Call Heather. Wait. Rest. A ride to the hotel.

  Other than inquiring of customers at the drugstore whether they needed help to locate a product, Mary was not in the habit of approaching strangers, of which there were precious few in small-town Leaford anyway. Seeing a pleasant-looking young woman opening the door to her Subaru, Mary cleared her throat. “Excuse me? I need to get to the Pleasant Inn, down near the highway, and I wonder if I could trouble you for a ride?”

  The woman, younger than Mary had first thought, answered, “Like, this is, like, my dad’s car, right? Like, I’m not, like, allowed to have, like, passengers. Especially not, like, strangers.”

  Of course, Mary thought. She was a stranger and caution was appropriate. Then again, this was Golden Hills, one of America’s safest cities, where purses did not get stolen and strangers gave strangers rides.

  An older woman dresse
d in a pressed black track suit, loading groceries into her trunk, felt Mary’s approach but didn’t turn. “Excuse me?” Mary called to her. “I’m sorry to trouble you. I need to get to the Pleasant Inn and—”

  The woman turned, unsmiling. “The drugstore has a phone if you need to call a taxi.”

  “The taxis around here take a long time,” Mary explained. “This isn’t New York.”

  “Well, I can’t give you a ride. I’ve got frozens,” the woman said, offering her groceries as proof. “I think there’s a bus somewhere. Over there somewhere. I’ve seen the Mexicans waiting.”

  A pregnant woman pushing a stroller approached but Mary did not try to catch her eye. She’d long ago learned to avoid pregnant women, who smiled at her round stomach in that conspiratorial way and pleasantly asked about her due date. Two sharp arrows in a single sisterly gesture.

  Another woman, middle-aged with a bleached blonde pony-tail and a stern expression, was striding toward a beat-up hatchback whose trunk was loaded with cleaning supplies, dust mops, a compact vacuum. Mary approached her. “Excuse me?” The woman turned, smiling, as she launched her request for a ride.

  “I can take you,” the woman said, in a thick accent of whose origin Mary was uncertain. Before she could express her gratitude, three more women, all fair of hair and hard of face, appeared beside the old car. The first woman explained to the others in her native tongue—Russian? They appraised Mary briefly, shrugging their acceptance as they crammed themselves into the compact back seat.

  In traffic on the main road, Mary had a sense of déjà vu. The kindness of strangers. The women spoke loudly in their native language, laughed and slapped each other’s thighs. Armenian? She wished she understood what they were saying, and longed to be part of their glorious sisterhood. The trip toward the highway was faster than the one she’d taken with Emery Carr. She could see by the sun listing over the distant hills that it was earlier, before rush hour.

  When the woman driving pulled up at the curbside near the intersection where the three roads met, Mary didn’t understand at first that she was meant to walk the rest of the way. The woman smiled apologetically. “It’s okay you walk? If I go this way, is only one-way street. I have to come back and wait again at the light.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t want to miss the traffic.”

  “Of course. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  Mary waved to the women as the little car pulled away, and pressed the pedestrian button at the roadside. She stepped out when the walk light turned green. Measuring the wide expanse of roadway, she worried that she could not get across before the red hand began to flash. Faster, she told herself, wiping her brow. So focused was she on the changing of the light that she didn’t hear the running footsteps behind her. She was startled when a small, dark man blew past her into the intersection.

  What happened next was quick as rifle fire—snapshot images. An angle of the man in front of her, red plaid shirt, belt cinching the waist of too-large blue jeans, workboots scuffed and soiled. A wider shot of a white van making a reckless right turn on a red light. The moment of impact—the van’s grille hitting the man’s torso. His body launched into the air. Falling with a thud. The brown man sprawled, inert and bleeding from the mouth, on the green carpet of a roadside oasis.

  Mary was the first to reach the man. He was older than he’d appeared from behind. She fell to her knees, touching his shoulder gently. “Sir? Sir?”

  He opened his eyes, confused, grabbing her hand as he strove to focus on her face. “Angelica,” he sputtered, splattering blood on her arm.

  “Mary,” she whispered. “I’m Mary.”

  The suspension of time. Freeze-frame seconds that held like minutes as she gazed into the man’s frightened eyes. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’ll be just fine.” She wondered if it was possible that no one else had seen what had happened, as the traffic roared on behind her. All was as it had been, but for the man on the grass and his grip on her hand.

  In her periphery, Mary saw a millipede of faded blue jeans advancing in a cloud of dust. A pair of legs broke free from the pack and dropped to the ground beside her to look into the broken man’s face. The voice was bass and weighty. “Ernesto. Ernesto?” Responding as if to a command, the injured man lifted himself by the elbows, expectorating blood over Mary’s paisley ensemble.

  She looked up to see that the white van had pulled to the side of the road and the driver was climbing out. He was in his early sixties, she guessed, tufts of grey hair crowning a plump red face, slender appendages, a tight, round belly that she wanted to thump like a melon. He was wearing a work shirt, and as he drew nearer she made out the name embroidered on the front pocket. Guy.

  Guy stood over them, wringing his hands. “We gotta get him to the hospital,” he said, eyes scanning the busy road.

  Mary gently shifted the man’s scraped cheek and showed the deep gash in the side of his tongue. “It’s his tongue,” she said. “He’s bitten his tongue.” She gathered the fabric of her skirt and held it to his mouth.

  “Angelica,” he said again, smiling into her green eyes.

  Impatient, the driver tapped the shoulder of the other man. “We should get him to the hospital. Now. Get him in the back of my van. It’ll be faster than calling an ambulance. Come on.”

  His urgent tone made Mary shudder. “We shouldn’t move him,” she cautioned, when the fallen man winced and held his gut.

  But the other man stood quickly, lifting his injured friend to his feet. “Come on,” he said, offering his free hand to help Mary rise when it was clear that Ernesto would not release his grip. As she struggled to lift herself, Mary looked into the stranger’s molten brown eyes. It was the man she’d seen before, at the dusty lot. The broad shoulders. The trimmed moustache and beard. He returned Mary’s stare curiously, with something like recognition.

  Guy strode ahead, yanking open the back doors and disappearing into the front seat of his van, whose bumper sticker read, Gun control means using BOTH hands. Ernesto held fast to Mary, imploring in Spanish as he dragged her toward the waiting vehicle. His friend translated: “He wants you to come.”

  “Why?”

  “He thinks you’re an angel,” the man answered, with the barest hint of ridicule, and no trace of an accent.

  “He hit his head,” she said in his defence, as she climbed into the back of the van and settled down on a rear-facing back seat, still clutched by the car-struck stranger. She was set to protest her participation when she heard a prayer whispered by the frightened man, and saw herself the answer in his wide black eyes. Apparition or not, she was ensnared by his need. A mother to an infant. A bride to a groom.

  The white van tore over the gravel and eased onto the road. Mary watched the men in blue jeans return to the dusty corner lot. Four minutes could not have passed since she started across the crosswalk, and now she was in the back seat of a stranger’s van holding the hand of a bleeding Mexican. This was what happened when people left their comfortable ruts.

  The driver called out from the front, “How’s he doing?”

  Ernesto gestured at his corrugated ribcage, speaking rapidly in Spanish to his friend. Mary turned to see the driver’s worried expression in the rearview mirror. “He might have a broken rib,” she said.

  The driver watched the road, wiping perspiration from his brow, smoothing the tuft of grey hair from his forehead. “Either of you boys speak English? Anglaysay?”

  “No Anglaysay,” Ernesto said.

  “No Anglaysay,” the other man repeated, his eyes piercing Mary.

  “They’re gonna ask a lot of questions at the hospital,” the driver cautioned.

  “Wouldn’t there be someone who could translate?” Mary asked.

  “Not those kinda questions.”

  She swivelled in her seat to watch the road signs. There was the familiar symbol for “Hospital”—next exit. The man drove past. Perhaps he knew a faster way. “I’m afraid he m
ight have internal injuries,” she called to the him.

  “If we go to the hospital, they’re gonna involve the police,” he said. “Policio, Julio. Policio, Juan.” They did not respond. Mary did not remember either of them telling the driver their names.

  “You’re my witness, lady. He was crossing against a red light.”

  “But it was still green. I was crossing too. You made that right turn without even looking,” Mary said, thinking, and if I could have moved faster, I would have been the one you hit. There but for the grace of God.

  He blinked, calculating his risks. “Can he move his neck? How’s his breathing?”

  Ernesto looked up at his friend but said nothing. Mary answered hesitantly, “He’s breathing better. His eyes are clear. I really think he’s got a broken rib, though.”

  The friend called to the driver, in a thick Spanish accent, “No ’ospital.”

  “But he should see a doctor,” Mary argued.

  “No ’ospital,” he repeated, silencing her with his look.

  “No ’ospital,” Ernesto agreed.

  “No policio. No hospitalay,” the driver said, relieved. “Wise decision, boys.”

  “He should have X-rays,” Mary pointed out.

  The driver laughed heartily. “You have health insurance, Miguel?”

  The two men appeared not to understand, and did not answer.

  “Near Avenida de los Árboles. Hundred Oaks,” the friend said, in that same thick accent. “Home. Por favor.”

  The driver nodded. “Hundred Oaks. We’re headed right that way.”

  They were silent as they pulled off the highway and crawled through traffic to the main thoroughfare of a town whose backdrop of mountains was more rugged, whose shrivelled medians paid the price of civic neglect. After journeying down a wide road flanked by box stores, they arrived at a neighbourhood of tiny clapboard houses where bicycles chained to fences stood in for landscaped fronds, and plastic toys for rose gardens. The narrow streets held no canopy of the boasted hundred oaks. A few maples were all Mary could see, some tall conifers, the odd sycamore. As the van moved slowly down the street, mastiff creatures snarled from behind rusted iron gates.