The Wife's Tale

by Lori Lansens

  Mary nodded, turning away.

  “One of the ladies from the church has invited me up to a retreat in Santa Barbara.”

  “That’s good.”

  “I’m leaving in a few days. I’ll be gone for a couple of weeks. I hope you’ll stay, Mary. I just can’t imagine coming back to an empty house. And you want to be here when Jimmy calls. You still … you haven’t changed your mind about that, have you? You haven’t been thinking about going back to Canada?”

  Mary shook her head. She had forgotten Leaford’s face.

  Eden gestured at the pool sparkling under the stars. “You’ve had a service come to clean the pool.”

  “Don’t worry about the cost.”

  “I saw someone out back this morning. If I had a suit, I’d get in right now.”

  “It’s cold.”

  “I like a cold pool. It’s bracing.”

  “Let’s go in,” Mary said suddenly.

  “I just said I don’t have a suit.”

  “I don’t either.” Mary gestured at the trees and the high cedar fence. “No one can see.”

  “Swim nude? I haven’t done that in forty years.” Eden glanced around.

  The women stood apart, doffing their clothes, careful not to glance at each other as they escorted their fragile bodies to the pool’s edge. Eden gasped when she felt the cold water on her crooked toes, and waded in slowly, squealing. Mary eased her naked body down the ladder and fell into the deep end with a splash. She shrieked when she came up for air, and they laughed like girls.

  “Freezing!” Mary said.

  “Feels good, though.” Eden stroked the water.

  “It does.”

  Weightless and fluid, their bodies were not forms of flesh and blood but charges, impulses, releasing bolts of fear and grief. They swam silently, as grateful for each other’s company as they were for the magic of the stars, and the bracing cold water, and for each inhalation of breath that reminded, Ah, life.

  LOST CALLS

  Swimming in the mornings and walking in the evenings, Mary took note of her rapidly changing body, nodding to the muscles that peered shyly from behind deflated pillows of adipose tissue. Her weight loss, she knew, was merely representative of other losses, and gains. Her appetite, like Gooch, stayed away.

  Gooch was making continued withdrawals from the bank. Another four hundred. Another four hundred. Standing at the instant teller in the hot sun one morning, Mary had wondered suddenly if it was possible that the withdrawals were strategic. Could he be back in Leaford, taking money from the account to draw her home as if she were the one in hiding? Not likely. And just as unlikely that he had left the state without at least telephoning Eden.

  Mary read novels until her vision blurred, and throughout the days forced tiny bites of apple and toast down her gullet. She offered further support to Ronni Reeves, making trips to the grocery store to stock the Sub-Zero with fruits and vegetables, weaning the boys from their diet of fast and processed foods, including cooking parties with her crafting sessions so they could concoct their own dips for carrot and celery sticks, and make muffins with mashed bananas and applesauce.

  My boys, she took to calling the triplets, who barrelled into her arms when she arrived and clung to her legs when she left. Their father had not been seen since the day he’d come to steal them away for ice cream, but had informed Ronni that he was moving to Florida with his new girlfriend. Ronni had sobbed on Mary’s shoulder, because she’d hoped to reconcile and now saw they never would. Mary had stroked her friend’s back and stopped herself from saying that it was for the best.

  Cued by the passing of Thanksgiving, Christmas lights had gone up all around the neighbourhood, and the Willow Highlands shone as bright as the pictures of Las Vegas Mary’d seen on TV. Twinkling pixie lights creeping up thick palm tree trunks. Multicoloured cone lights netting the towering evergreens. Dripping icicle lights hanging from leafless eavestroughs and fences. Massive, electronically generated, air-filled Santa Clauses and reindeer obliterating bay windows. Sparkling angels watching from rooftops. Enormous synthetic snowmen staked in fresh-cut green lawns. Christmas was still a few weeks away.

  “He can’t stay away forever,” Eden had said, zipping her suitcase on the morning she left for Santa Barbara. “He’s sure to make it back for Christmas. You know how Jimmy loves Christmas.”

  Mary had nodded and waved goodbye from the porch, thinking, Yes, Eden, he could stay away forever, and realizing how precious little her mother-in-law knew about her only son. Gooch hated Christmas.

  On that point she and Gooch had found common ground. He saw the Christian holiday primarily as a commercial venture, and Mary’d been disturbed by all the tempting food and forced gaiety. Over the years they’d spent Christmas afternoons at Pete and Wendy’s or Kim and François’s, watching their badly behaved children guzzle soda pop and baked goods, obnoxious as drunks. For dinner they’d gone to St. John’s to keep company with Orin and Irma, partaking of the tragic turkey and gluey potatoes prepared in advance by the cook. At home alone in the evening, they’d opened the gifts they’d chosen for themselves and instructed the other to buy. For Gooch it had always been hardcover best-sellers from the bookshop in Ridgetown. For Mary it had been perfume and hand lotion because she couldn’t think of anything else.

  Mary woke, alone for the second week in Eden’s little house, suffering that familiar pain between her eyes. She thought of the pain pills in her blue purse but did not rise from the bed to retrieve them. She was startled by movement in the backyard and remembered it was Pool’s Gold’s day to clean. She waited, watching the figure of a man straining to skim leaves from the water. Jesús García.

  Ignoring her impulse to run out into the backyard, she snatched her new jeans and blouse from beside the bed and dove into the hallway and out of sight so she could dress. She had combed her hair and brushed her teeth by the time the buzzer sounded. “Hay-su,” she said, when she opened the door.

  He seemed surprised to see her. “Hi Mary,” he said, passing her an invoice.

  “Come in and I’ll get my purse.”

  Jesús García stepped inside the house, waiting as she went to the living room. “Do you want some water?” she asked.

  “No thank you,” he said.

  “Are you hungry? The freezer is stuffed with leftovers from the funeral.”

  “The funeral?”

  “My father-in-law passed away. He’d been sick a long time.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I thought you’d left your job,” she said, laughing to hide her embarrassment that she’d noticed his absence.

  “They changed my route. They’ve changed it back.”

  “I could defrost a muffin? Some cake?” Her stomach turned at the thought, as she’d hardly ingested a bite of solid food since the fast food in the parking lot.

  “No thank you, Mary,” he said pleasantly, preparing to leave.

  “Please don’t be sorry you told me,” she said. “About what happened to your family.”

  He cleared his throat. “I don’t talk about it.”

  “I know. But don’t be sorry you told me.” He nodded shortly. “I thought maybe, when you didn’t come to clean the pool …”

  “I thought you’d be back in Canada by now.”

  “I haven’t heard from my husband yet.”

  He glanced away.

  “You were right about the ocean, Hay-su.”

  “You went to the ocean?”

  “It is the best place to see the stars.”

  “I haven’t been in years.”

  “I saw you steal the shoes,” she blurted suddenly. He looked at her blankly. “From the plaza. The yellow sandals.”

  He shifted in his workboots. “Ernesto used to garden for the owner.”

  “Oh.”

  “He cheated him out of a month’s pay.”

  “Oh.”

  “One more pair and we’re even.”

  Mary considered the way pe
ople stole from each other. Rationally. With impunity. “How is Ernesto?”

  “Good. But still not back to work. What about you, Mary? Don’t you have a job you have to get back to?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve got the money Gooch left me. Listen to me, I’m saying that like he’s dead.” They were interrupted by the appearance of the vintage blue Chevy in the driveway, and the bony old man climbing out with a plate wrapped in tinfoil. All Mary needed was more food.

  “Hello, Berton,” she said, taking the plate.

  The old man eyed Jesús García, noticing the pool cleaning uniform, deciding he was not a threat.

  Jesús smiled at Mary. “See you next week.”

  She watched him stride out to his van, and barely heard Berton ask, “I know Eden’s gone to Santa Barbara, but will you join us at Shawn’s house this afternoon, Mary?”

  She was assaulted by that pain between her eyes when she shook her head no, explaining that she had a babysitting job. Once the van and the Chevy were gone, she took off her clothes and went out to the clean pool to swim in the nude.

  Later that afternoon, after reading to the Reeves boys and after playing duck duck goose and after cleaning up spills and receiving the tenderest of kisses from Jeremy, who was typically the most reserved, Mary declined Ronni’s offer of iced tea on the patio. The spot between her eyes ached and, although she’d planned a drive to the ocean at sunset, she headed back to Eden’s, dizzy from lack of food.

  The telephone was ringing when she entered the house. She picked up the receiver to find the crackle of static. “Hello?” There was no response. Another lost call. She didn’t wonder any more if the lost calls were Gooch.

  She found her way to the kitchen but could not bring herself to open the refrigerator, none of whose bounty would appeal, she knew, and most of which would repulse. She sat at the table, promising the cupboards, I’ll eat something in the morning. But she realized she was still deceiving her old friend Tomorrow. Tomorrow, to whom she’d promised balance. Tomorrow, where she would struggle to find grace. Were she not so tired, she would have stayed awake till sunrise, to beg for one last chance.

  A CERTAIN KIND OF FREEDOM

  The following morning Mary busied herself with housework until she was expected at the Reeveses’ to babysit. At the doorway she bent to embrace the boys, and laughed good-naturedly when Ronni chided her about “those awful grey roots.” Ronni suggested a trip to the hairdresser for some new colour but Mary was disinclined. Even if the red had become brassy from the chemicals in the pool, she would not give up swimming for the sake of her hair. She did submit to her friend’s insistence on a cosmetic makeover, though.

  In the huge master bathroom, the boys watched her transformation slack-jawed and silent. When their mother was finished rouging Mary’s cheeks and darkening her lashes and shadowing her lids and staining her lips, Jeremy pronounced her beautiful. Joshua said she looked like a clown. And Jacob said simply, “I don’t like them colours on your face.” Mary didn’t like the colours either.

  As Ronni was fishing through a bathroom drawer, Mary spotted a pair of barber scissors. “Cut my hair, Ronni,” she said impulsively.

  “No!”

  “Yes. Please. Just cut it off. I want to cut it right back to the silver roots.”

  “Yes!” Joshua said. “Silver’s pretty.”

  “Oh Mare,” Ronni protested. “It’ll make you look, you know …”

  “What?”

  “Dykey.”

  “I don’t mind. Dykey is fine with me.” She thought of Ms. Bolt. “I’m sick of the roots. I’m tired of the red.” She closed her eyes. “Cut it. Please.”

  The boys clapped their hands, watching in the mirror as their reluctant mother held the blades poised at the nape of Mary’s neck.

  “All the way,” Mary reminded her, not peeking.

  Ronni inhaled, closing the scissors at Mary’s scalp and snipping a hank of her pool-damaged hair. It was too late to ask if Mary was sure.

  The triplets collected the strands as they fell, Mary suggesting that they keep the hair to put in the craft box. She’d never felt beauty in her hair. The consistency of its length had just been more inertia, and the loss of it felt like a certain kind of freedom. Finally, feeling the air on her scalp and the weight of the final few locks shorn from her head, she opened her eyes.

  “Okay,” Ronni inhaled.

  In the mirror, Mary saw a large woman with a shallow cap of thick, soft, silvery hair hugging a nicely shaped skull and framing a pretty face with expressive green eyes, full pink lips, a deep cleft chin. “Well,” she said, thinking, That is me.

  Even Ronni had to admit that the severe cut suited her. “It’s chic.”

  “It really is,” Mary agreed.

  Ronni found a pair of large silver hoops and a choker-style necklace from her Lydia Lee supply box to complete the look. The boys unanimously decided, because they did not know what chic or dykey meant, that Mary looked like a man wearing jewellery, which made both women cackle. The mouths of babes. When Mary announced that she wanted to take them all out for dinner as payment for hairdressing services, Ronni shook her head. “You’ve done enough. I’m cooking dinner for you.”

  Watching Mary pick at her salad and nibble her grilled chicken, she frowned. “You don’t like it?”

  “I do,” Mary said. “Remember I told you before? I’ve completely lost my appetite.”

  “I thought you were just saying that because you like to eat alone. Look at me. I’ve gained nine and a half pounds since Tom left,” Ronni confessed. “Potato chips, ice cream and really bad sitcoms.”

  Mary nodded, remembering her old friends. “Gooch took out another four hundred.”

  Ronni shook her head. “How much is left?”

  “Fifteen and some.”

  “You could sue him.”

  “I could never sue Gooch.”

  “You check with all his friends back home again?”

  “They said they’d call.”

  “You believe them?” Mary shrugged. “But you still think he’s coming back?”

  “I don’t know any more.”

  “I’ll bet he’s in Vegas. I bet he’s been in Vegas this whole time.”

  “I’m done guessing.”

  “Take it all out!” Ronni said suddenly. “Take it all out and leave him with nothing.”

  “What if he needs it?”

  “Fuck him,” Ronni mouthed, so the children couldn’t hear.

  “I couldn’t leave Gooch stranded like that.”

  “Like he left you?” Ronni asked pointedly.

  Later, after the two women had taken turns reading stories to the sleepy boys, Mary kissed the triplets good night and accepted Ronni’s invitation to a glass of wine on the patio. As she had been a cheap drunk at her highest weight, she felt the warmth of the alcohol after only a few sips. She sighed deeply, looking into the starry sky, and mused, “Two months ago I was working at a drugstore in Leaford, Ontario, thinking about new winter boots.”

  “Tom and I were planning a vacation to Aruba. He never had any intention of going on that trip.”

  Mary thought of the Caribbean cruise she’d denied Gooch. “You’re so … so beautiful, Ronni. You’ll meet somebody else.”

  Ronni laughed and poured herself more wine. “I have three three-year-old boys, Mary. Down here that’s called baggage. For all the trouble, I’d rather date my vibrator.”

  Feeling loose from the alcohol, Mary offered with a giggle, “Gooch …?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Has a large penis.”

  Ronni threw back her head. “Mary Gooch!”

  “A very large penis.”

  “You said he was your only lover! How could you possibly know?”

  “I looked around,” Mary assured her. “Plus, we got cable TV a while back.”

  “You naughty little thing!”

  Mary’d never been called naughty or little. She drank a gulp of wine. “I haven�
�t had sex in six years.”

  Ronni stopped laughing. “Why?”

  Mary grew sombre. “My body … I …”

  “I can’t imagine living without sex forever. Really. I mean, not for a relationship, but just for the exercise.”

  “I never thought of sex as exercise.”

  “Could you see yourself with someone else?”

  “No,” Mary said. “There’s only Gooch. There’s only ever been Gooch.”

  TREADING WATER

  The balance in Mary’s account, which she was still checking daily, was her sole connection to Gooch. Just to keep in touch, she’d continued to withdraw money in increments of one hundred dollars. One afternoon when Ronni had taken the boys to meet their father, who’d blown into town for an urgent business appointment, Mary’d driven herself to the big mall in Hundred Oaks to shop for toys to put under the triplets’ tree. She and Ronni had agreed not to exchange gifts. Their friendship was enough.

  At the toy store she’d chosen preschool board games and art sets and storybooks, avoiding a display of foam-dart semi-automatics that she knew the boys would love. Boys and their guns. Pete and Wendy had had a strict “no weapons” policy when they were raising their two boys, but brooms had become rifles in their grimy little fists, and fly swatters swords, and when the oldest boy consistently bit his sandwiches into the shape of a pistol, they’d finally surrendered. Americans had an infamous relationship with guns, Mary knew, but the right to bear arms was a foreign concept to her, and she did not understand the legacy. Ronni had admitted to keeping a weapon in a shoebox in her closet, but Mary understood from her reading that her friend was statistically more likely to use it on her cheating husband than on any home invader.

  Lugging the shopping bag through the mall’s corridors, she was drawn to a shop window displaying curvaceous plus-sized mannequins. She needed some new clothes, since even the elastic-waist pants that Ronni had bought for her were now too large. With the current retail slump, the sales staff were delighted to see Mary Gooch appear in their midst.