Michael’s Wife

by Marlys Millhiser

The truck pulled into the SUNNY REST MOTEL, AIR-CONDITIONED, TV, PHONES, CAFÉ, VACANCY. It squatted in shabby pink stucco between two magnificent glass and brick motels that sported two stories, balconies, pools, and palms. The Sunny Rest sat like an embarrassed poor relation in unaccustomed surroundings.

  “Does your brother live here?”

  “He owns it. Be back in a minute.” Harley got out of the truck and went into the door marked CAFE, OFFICE.

  The Sunny Rest was U-shaped, one story. The café sat at one end of the U, Venetian blinds drawn against the sun and a small handwritten sign, WAITRESS WANTED, stuck in the window. She sat looking at the sign seconds before she really listened to her thoughts. What she needed was a little more time to face her problem before she faced Michael Devereaux. She knew Phoenix was in Arizona, and she was almost sure she was seeing it for the first time. She hadn’t really forced her mind to cope with reality, and given a little time, she might be able to solve her problem herself. She still could remember nothing. Was it because she didn’t want to or really couldn’t?

  Following Harley into the café, she was relieved to find there were no customers, only Harley and the heavy sweating man in a smeared apron behind the counter.

  “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

  “She’s with me, Ray.” Harley perched on a stool at one end of the counter.

  “Look, Harley, you ain’t shackin’ up with none of your dames in this place. I told you before.”

  “Raymond! Raymond! Now this gal got lost picking flowers in the desert and I just gave her a ride into town. Right, Doe Eyes? This is my nasty big brother. Sit down, might as well get a hamburger out of old Ray before we go to Luke.”

  “Not unless you’re paying, you don’t.”

  “Come on, Ray. Two hamburgers and two cups of coffee ain’t going to break you. Looks like you could use the practice.”

  Raymond McBride started to answer but then shrugged and disappeared into the kitchen. When he returned with the hamburgers, a small fleet of flies came with him. Quickly, before she lost her nerve, she asked if she might have the waitress job for a room instead of wages for a day or two until he could find someone.

  Raymond looked from his brother to her, his eyes interested but suspicious. “Harley, if this is one of your schemes to get bedded in town tonight.…”

  “This is her idea, Ray. I’m leaving, honest. Thought she wanted to go to Luke.”

  “Well, I could use someone. What’s your name?”

  “Her name’s Maggie, Maggie Freehope.” Harley supplied this with a grin he tried to hide behind a napkin. “Now that’s a good waitress name if I ever heard one.”

  “I got somebody coming in for dinner, but you can have a room tonight and start in the morning. We’ll see how you work out tomorrow … but no men, understand?” Tiny red veins stood out on the bulb at the end of his nose.

  “Men?”

  “He means you shouldn’t share your room with one. You see, Ray? She’s all innocence. You don’t have any worries.”

  “She’s with you, ain’t she? And you better mean what you say about leaving.”

  “I’m going now. What room does she get? I’ll put her bag in.”

  “Number Fourteen, right across from here.” He handed Harley a key from the board behind the cash register. “And, Maggie, bring your Social Security card with you in the morning.”

  Harley walked her to the truck and slammed the door on the far side. Keeping the truck between them and the café, they walked to Number 14, and he unlocked the door for her. “You wouldn’t have got in without a bag. What made you change your mind anyway?”

  “I wanted some time to think. Maybe I can call this Michael from here. Thanks for everything, Harley. Now if I only had a social security card.”

  “Can’t help you there.”

  “At least I have a room for tonight. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come along when you did,” she said, wishing he’d leave, afraid that he might.

  They stood in the open doorway, Harley leaning against the frame, looking down at her. “You’d have latched onto the first male in sight with that helpless look and had him feedin’ you steak instead of hamburger. Women like you manage to get along real well in this world.” And he leaned closer.

  His closeness made her shiver. “Harley, I’m sorry if I took advantage of you. I didn’t have any choice.”

  “Harley!” Raymond McBride yelled from the steps of the café.

  “I’m leavin’, I’m leavin’. Well, so long, Doe Eyes. Hope you get away from whatever you’re running from.”

  She watched the truck pull into traffic and wanted to run after it. The panic that had been following closed in … whatever you’re running from. She had the clothes on her back and a slip of paper with a man’s name on it. Was she looking for him or running from him? But you didn’t write down someone’s name and address if you didn’t want to find him.

  The room had a bare floor of dark green tile with some of the tiles chipped at the corners. Bedspread, walls, and curtains were a grim beige and there was hardly enough room to walk between the bed and a desk.

  I’m alone. I’m safe. Now what do I do? I could call the police. Instead she turned on the TV that sat on the desk. There was a picture, but the volume dial brought no sound. A newscaster mouthed words from some notes in his hand, the clock behind him reading 12:05. And then a grisly picture of wounded soldiers on stretchers … the men, their clothes, the ground they lay on, everything in varying shades of dreary. She switched it off and lay back on the bed.

  Her mind was very clear. It didn’t seem empty but full of images. Images of Harley’s stubby blond hair and teasing eyes in a tanned face, of Raymond and his dirty apron, the truck with a dent running along its side, a vast desert with mountains in the distance. She would have looked but a speck from an airplane. She could see the pleasant park in Florence; even the deer Harley had spoken of seemed clear and real. But her own face was not clear, and anything that had happened before that morning was not there at all.

  In her mind the picture of the gray men on gray stretchers fought with the image of the black telephone that sat on the bedside table just before she fell asleep.

  She awakened more tired than before with her head aching again and an intense desire to soak forever in a hot tub. But there was no tub, only a shower stall with a curtain that wouldn’t quite reach across. She showered, letting the water get as hot as she could endure it, and worked on her hair until the little bar of Ivory disintegrated. Wrapping herself in one towel and her hair in another, she washed her clothes and hung them around the little room to dry.

  She must have slept most of the afternoon for it was growing dark when she stepped out of the bathroom. She pulled the curtains and switched on the lamp. In the large mirror over the desk she could see herself from the knees up, a very slender woman—girl? She couldn’t guess her age, somewhere between twenty and thirty? There was a mole on the side of her neck.

  She found it embarrassing to stare at this stranger so intimately, and frightening not to recognize her. Rewrapping the towel, she turned from the mirror with the same depressed feeling she’d had that morning watching her reflection in the whitewashed building in Florence. She could be in terrible trouble and not know it or running from something she wouldn’t recognize until it caught up with her.

  Then her eyes rested on the telephone. Why do I keep putting it off? There was a phone book in the drawer of the little bedside table and in it the number of Luke Air Force Base. Dialing quickly before she could change her mind, she half hoped the phone wouldn’t work. But the call went through.

  It took some time to locate Captain Devereaux and she considered hanging up. She didn’t know what she’d say. She really should rehearse something before she talked to him.…

  “Hello.”

  “… Captain Devereaux?”

  “Yes.”

  “Captain Devereaux … I need your help. I wonder if you k
now of anyone … anyone who is missing.…” Her heart was pounding blood past her ears so hard she could barely hear herself.

  “Who is this?”

  “Would … would it be possible to meet you somewhere?” She sounded silly to herself; what must she sound like to him?

  “What the.…” The voice was deep, resonant, impatient.

  “Captain Devereaux, it’s urgent that I see you. I know it sounds strange, but … I was given your name and I … have to see you. Please, I won’t take much of your time.”

  The voice on the other end of the phone was silent.

  “Captain Devereaux, are you there?”

  His answer came after a long pause and was barely audible, as if he were choked with astonishment or disbelief. “Laurel?”

  “Do you know me? Oh. thank God, you see I’m lost and I don’t know who.…”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at the Sunny Rest Motel, Room Fourteen. I don’t know the street. I can look it up; there’s a phone book right here.”

  “Never mind, I’ll find it. Give me half an hour. And Laurel?”

  “Yes?”

  “Stay there. Stay right there.” And he hung up.

  She replaced the receiver and drew her feet up onto the bed and off the dingy tiles. Laurel, Laurel. The name didn’t make the face in the mirror any more familiar.

  Michael Devereaux. She closed her eyes, waiting for a picture. None came. The voice on the telephone had sounded neither old nor young nor familiar. It had sounded surprised. No, stunned. And then angry.

  Michael Devereaux. Father? Uncle? Brother? Husband? No, no ring. Casual acquaintance? No matter, he was her only tie to a world she’d temporarily lost. He is coming to take me back to somewhere. Somewhere safe and familiar. She shivered in a damp towel, still unable to convince herself that she was relieved, that this was all real.

  He could be an enemy. She would have to chance it; there was no one else. Why should she have an enemy? Why was she left alone on the desert without food, money, memory?

  There was only one door into this room and out of it.

  Lying back on the bed, she pictured an angry faceless man standing in the doorway. He reached for her with one hand, a knife in the other. She ran to the bathroom—her movements sluggish, dreamlike—and managed to get in and lock it at the last agonizing second and the man pounded on the door yelling, “Laurel, Laurel, Laurel.” She pushed the dream away.

  A sharp knocking awakened her. She moved from the bed with dizzying suddenness, tugging off the grim bedspread to wrap around the bath towel that was all that covered her nakedness. Only the dim light of the desk lamp lit the room, and she opened the door just enough to peer into darkness relieved by a white shirt collar and V-shaped front, divided by a black tie and enclosed in a dark uniform.

  Improbable metallic eyes glinted in a swarthy face and widened as they looked down at her.

  “Laurel.” It was a statement spoken quietly, not a question.

  So she was Laurel. How could anyone forget eyes like his?

  Captain Devereaux yanked the door from her hand and stepped in, slamming it behind him, his movements forceful, deliberate. And with his entrance the little room changed, became overfull, suffocating.

  There was no look of welcome for her, no smile of relief that she had been found. The veins in his neck bulged against the skin and he held himself still, rigid.

  She stood clutching the coarse spread against her as if for protection. Under it her hair lay damp against her back, a sickening cramp tightened her lower abdomen, the breaths she took refused to fill her lungs, and she knew what that deer had felt staring back at Harley McBride. She couldn’t turn and run. Those strange eyes held her. Like an animal, she felt the danger instinctively.

  “You’ve got a goddamned nerve!” He spoke so quietly that she heard him only because of the deep resonance in his voice.

  “I’d better explain. I called you because I didn’t know.…”

  The blow came so fast there was no time to dodge. It caught her full on the side of the head, the face of his wristwatch catching her cheek. She grabbed for the bed on her way down but missed and hit the floor on her chest and stomach.

  She prayed that she’d pass out so she wouldn’t feel the next blow. But it didn’t come. He picked her up roughly and set her on the bed, tucking the towel back into place. The beige bedspread lay crumpled and useless at his feet. Holding her shoulders so that her head would tilt back to face his, he leaned above her and spoke slowly, distinctly.

  “Laurel, I once promised myself that if I ever saw you again I would kill you. Don’t tell me where you’ve been all this time or what you’ve been doing. At least not yet. Because if you do I might keep that promise. Now get some clothes on.”

  She saw him through tears jarred loose by the blow. It was an arresting face that told her he meant what he said. She felt weak and sick, beyond panic. If he killed me now, she thought, I would never have to know fear like this again.

  2

  He drove violently, crashing to a stop for a red light and jerking to a start as it changed, sitting tense over the wheel, his lips compressed and silent.

  They were soon out of the city and racing over open desert, the car a sleek blue missile rushing her toward some terror she couldn’t even guess at. Even at night there was an eerie glow on the desert, every cactus and tree with its own still shadow, distant mountains dark against the lighter sky. Her clothes clung to her with a chilly dampness and she clutched the armrest, pressing her feet against the thick carpeting as if to brake their frantic speed.

  “Where are we going?” She had visions of his smashing them into the ditch in anger at the very sound of her voice.

  “Tucson.” He glanced at her as if to appraise her reaction. The car didn’t swerve from its course.

  Tucson was where Harley’s Devereaux’ lived. She longed suddenly for the safety of Harley’s truck, his good-natured grin. She’d walked into trouble the moment she was left on her own, probably the very trouble she was running from. There was no doubt that this man was an enemy, and if she got the slightest chance to escape she’d take it. That’s what she should have done when he went into the café to pay the bill; instead she’d waited in the car numb with shock.

  “Captain Devereaux, will … will you tell me what this is all about?”

  “Cut the Captain Devereaux bit. Look, Laurel, I don’t know what your masquerade is but just drop it. It won’t work.”

  “What should I call you then?”

  “Try Michael,” he said, his voice steely with sarcasm. “If you’re worried it’ll create any intimacy, forget it. You may be my wife but I could damn you to hell for coming back!”

  “Wife?”

  “The church may mean nothing to you, but I was born in it, remember? I’m stuck with you.” And the car did the impossible—it went faster.

  Relaxing her hold on the armrest, she lay back against the seat, her ears ringing. It’s not possible! I’ve been mistaken for someone else. I’m not Laurel. Her relief was mixed with disappointment; Laurel had at least been a name.

  The dials on the dashboard glowed green and added an exotic tinge to his profile. His face was angular with the black hair starting well back at the temple and coming forward over a high forehead. A shadow of a beard showed around a thin but expressive mouth. No woman could forget a man like this, not so completely. But then she hadn’t known herself in the mirror. He was the normal one with a memory. I’m not normal. A man would know his own wife … he certainly saw enough of me. Her plans for escape began to fade.

  They drove through sparse traffic, the lights of an occasional town sparkling in the desert night. This man would not believe her if she told him she didn’t know him.

  Finally they came to the outskirts of a city that spread out on a broad valley floor, and the car turned onto a road that wound among the low mountains at the city’s edge. It stopped in front of a high masonry wall set close again
st the road and showing a mellowed white in the moonlight. When Michael left the car to open the gigantic wooden gates, she made no attempt to bolt as she had planned but allowed herself to be driven through the gate to the graveled courtyard beyond.

  Facing her was the front of a large building the same mellow color as the wall, rectangular but for the wide arch-shaped bell wall that rose above the roof. Within the bell wall three arched niches were open to the moonlight beyond. The center niche held a bell. Great carved wooden doors were built low to the ground without steps, and intricate iron grillwork protected the narrow two-story windows.

  Fine hairs prickled at the back of her neck. It looked more like a well-endowed private institution than a home. Of course, if she’d escaped from an institution he would bring her back. So that’s why she couldn’t remember. Insanity was the one thing she hadn’t thought of.

  In the center of the courtyard stood a low circular fountain, and they drove around it to approach the door from the side. When the car stopped, Michael made no move to get out but sat gazing at the windshield as if he too wanted to put off what must come.

  “What is this place?”

  “This, little wife, is the family home. I’d once dreamed of bringing you here, of showing you off. And now look at us.”

  “Then it isn’t … an institution?”

  “A loony bin? Let’s say it’s a private one. Come and meet the Devereaux loonies. They’ll be overjoyed to see you.” Taking her wrist, he pulled her across the seat and out of the car.

  They entered the house through a smaller door set within the great paneled doors. The barnlike entry hall was lit by wrought-iron sconces and by moonlight at its far end. A staircase led up one wall to a balcony that ran the width of the hall.

  Across from the staircase light poured through an open doorway and they could hear a woman’s voice, low and husky. “When we have guests, Paul, I want you to be here. It was embarrassing to make excuses to the Johnstons. I won’t have this happen again.”

  A man answered, a fussy feminine quality in the way he spoke. “My dear, you knew I had this lecture. You insist upon arranging your little social events without consulting my schedule, and if you hadn’t stolen my secretary I’d have more time for such things. Now, will you kindly leave and allow me to get to my work?”