The Wife Tree

by Dorothy Speak

  “Were you happy then?” she pressed me, pointing at another photograph. “What were you feeling when this was taken? Who is the woman with you? Why are you both laughing? Where did this dress come from? This hat? What colour were they? How much did they cost? Which baby was this? Who is this man in the cashmere coat?”

  With both hands I pushed away the photographs, which had formed a pool in my lap, like a pile of brittle autumn leaves.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This is making me feel very depressed.”

  “Why? You were beautiful then.”

  “Yes.”

  Last night in bed, I heard footsteps descending the stairs. I haven’t slept well these past few nights. Is it because William is finally gone and now I know for certain that I’ll continue here in this house, forever alone? And why would this thought disturb me, for isn’t that exactly what I wanted? Or is it simply Merilee’s unsettling presence in the house that keeps me awake, her inner tumult, her private demons?

  The floors creaked as Merilee tiptoed into the room. She sat down on the edge of my bed — something I never allowed her to do when, as a child, she crept down to me night after night, trembling with nightmares. She had more bad dreams than the other six children put together. I was afraid back then that if she sat on my bed she’d then try to crawl in with us, though God knows a body installed between mine and William’s would have been a useful barrier to his desire. Now I felt her hip pressing against my thigh, the warmth of her flesh through the thin wool blanket. In the moonlight, I made out her silhouette, the curve of her cheek, the sharp thrust of her jaw. Her face looked scoured, old, exposed. Her figure sagged with fatigue. I realized with surprise that, like me, she was aging.

  “What is it, Merilee?” I asked.

  “There’s something on my mind, Mother,” she said, her voice wavery with emotion. “Something that’s been tormenting me for years. For decades. Since I was a kid. I’ve never been able to tell anyone.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Do you remember when Dad lost his fingers?” she began slowly. “How I was at home that day and Morris called me from the hospital? Remember that I’d been out the night before and Dad gave me a hiding when I came home with liquor on my breath? I was pretty upset about that. He was a drinker himself. I felt betrayed by the beating, and disappointed that he couldn’t see that I was — that I was just like him. Cut from the same cloth. I was angered that day by his blindness to me.”

  She took a deep breath. “Then, Morris called and told me about the accident and said the Indian doctor wanted the fingers. I had no choice but to get dressed and go out and look in the grass. I was still dizzy and faint and when I went staggering outside, believe me, the last thing I wanted was to start searching for human flesh. I saw the blood on the saw blade. The overturned stepladder. I looked in the grass and I found them. The fingers. Almost immediately. I found them, Mother, do you understand? There they were, gleaming — gleaming — in the dark grass, like the Easter eggs we used to hunt — you know?” Her voice wobbled. “Like that. Something magical or almost supernatural about them. Begging to be discovered.

  “I picked them up and, Mother, I swear they burned hot as coals in the palm of my hand. They felt powerful, like that old rabbit’s foot Morris used to carry around in his pocket. The knuckles were all scarred and the fingernails flashed like mother-of-pearl and the joints were still springy, as though alive. I remember the sheared-off bone. The nest of frayed nerves and veins.

  “And then I buried them, Mother.” Gripping my fingers, she began to cry.

  “It’s all right, Merilee.”

  “In the garden. I buried them in the garden. I got a trowel out of the shed and I knelt down and stabbed at the soil with the trowel point, imagining it was Dad’s heart. I dug a shallow hole and threw the burning fingers in. They glimmered like flower bulbs — you know? Against the dark soil? I covered them over with earth.

  “And then, of course, Dad found them weeks later when he was gardening. I looked at the bare bones in the palm of his hand and I slipped up to my room, feigning nausea. Knowing that if he looked at me, he’d see the guilt written all over my face. I was so relieved when he blamed Morris. I sat upstairs on my bed and listened to him beating Morris and I sweated and trembled with gratitude and relief that it was Morris getting the punishment and not me. Morris got blamed for everything back then. What was one more thing?”

  I lay there listening to her weep.

  “You made a mistake, Merilee. Forget about it. Put it behind you. Don’t look back.”

  Together we heard the distant train whistle calling across town, that thin, lonely, haunting cry that used to tear Merilee out of her sleep in the middle of the night, fill her with fear. As though she knew way back then that she was destined to venture far from home, knew she’d have to run.

  January 2

  Dear girls,

  …Your father had a stroke in October and, following a long struggle, died two days after Christmas. You may well ask why you are receiving this news only now. It’s so hard in such circumstances to know at what moment to call the family home. From day to day I couldn’t decide whether to hope or to despair. Finally, the decline occurred very quickly and it was too late for anyone but Morris to be with me at the deathbed. Over the autumn, I did in fact attempt many times to write to you, but was continually diverted by the past. Somehow, it was all too big to scribble down and try to send around the world on a flimsy sheet of airmail paper. Had your father been able to express himself after the stroke, I’m sure he would have sent messages of his love for you. He didn’t wonder at your absence. If anyone understood the need for independence and adventure, it was he. I’m sure you will all be thinking now about unfinished business. I hear people talking today about something called closure, but I think this is just a foolish, modern word, a wishful notion. When it comes to affairs of the heart, there is no such thing as closure.

  We buried your father on the last day of the year. I think he would have been pleased. It would have appealed to his sense of history. Merilee came home for the funeral and so the daughters were represented. There was a small crowd at the church: many parishioners and a few people I didn’t know, who turned out to be your father’s friends from the malls. They said they’ve missed his passion for politics.

  Don’t worry about me. Though your father is gone, I don’t feel the least bit alone. Every week I seem to meet someone new to talk to. Morris is nearby. I realize I’ve never really known him and I hope that we’ll be able to get acquainted now that there are few distractions in my life.

  The best advice I can give you is to choose your happiest memory of your father and hold that close to your heart. When we came out of the church after the funeral, the blazing sun reminded me of the West and I knew I must remember him the way he looked when I met him on that blinding prairie day…

  Dear Mrs. Hazzard,

  By letter dated November 25 we advised you that we as solicitors for Mrs. Goodie Hodnet were instructed to recover certain damages incurred by our client as a result of your actions. (Copy enclosed.) We have received no reply from you with respect to that correspondence and accordingly please be advised that unless a proposal for settlement acceptable to our client is received by our office we are instructed to proceed to effect a judicial recovery.

  Please govern yourself accordingly…

  January 5

  “What will you do with all your time, Mother?” Merilee asked me.

  We’d come outside to the green yard, on a soft afternoon, a snowless January. We wanted to look at William’s gardens, his trees. Spring was still toying with us. The weather had turned balmy again, the thawing ground wet and spongy beneath our feet. We crossed the lawn and looked down at the black flower beds, smelled their funky perfume, saw the tulips beginning to poke through the fruity earth.

  “They’re confused,” I said. “If we get much more warm weather, they’ll shoot up high, then be zapp
ed by frost.”

  “You’re showing your Canadian optimism, Mother.”

  Merilee had put on her southern clothes, a royal blue suit with large gold buttons and a very short skirt. The heavy linen jacket disguised a little the painful thinness of her shoulders, the brittle look of her bones. The day of the funeral, I’d noticed her flirting with the undertaker’s assistant, one of that breed of young men who seem to work in funeral parlours: handsome, eternally youthful because what runs in their veins may be formaldehyde. This boy’s eyes were filled with mercenary sympathy, his hair slicked down to withstand the wind that always blows on cemetery hills. The effects of death seemed to slide like ash off his smooth cheeks, his slender limbs.

  “What will you do with your time, Mother?”

  “I’ve always had time, Merilee.”

  “But you should try to fill it. With Dad gone, without the hospital visits, there’ll be a lot more time on your hands. What will you do?”

  I thought: I should buy a wagon-wheel hat. I should get on a train.

  “Maybe I’ll publish my letters,” I said.

  “What letters? Are there letters?”

  “It was just a joke, Merilee.”

  I felt her watching me closely.

  “Mother, why didn’t you tell me about your eyes?”

  “I must have forgotten.”

  “Macular degeneration?”

  “One in three adults over seventy.”

  It was four o’clock. In a few minutes, a taxi would arrive, carrying Merilee to the bus depot. She’d ride the two hours to the airport. Her flight was to depart at eight o’clock. I felt the emptiness of the house behind me and suddenly longed to hold her there. But when she opened her mouth to speak, I almost cried: No! Stop! Please. It’s too late. Don’t talk to me about the past. Because, truly. Truly, I think Im not only beyond understanding but beyond caring.

  “Did you love Dad, Mother? Did you? Do you love him now?”

  “I can’t answer that question. I just don’t know. I don’t think I remember. But what is love, Merilee? I’m not sure I know any more.”

  She expelled an impatient breath, air hissing through her nostrils. “That’s not an answer. Aren’t mothers supposed to have answers?”

  Pulling out a cigarette, she lit it, blew a ring of smoke. She consulted her watch, glanced out at the road, tapped her toe nervously. “If that cab doesn’t come soon, I’ll miss the bus out of town. If I don’t catch that bus, I’ll die.”

  “I’m thinking of putting in that patio door your father talked about,” I told her.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “It would go there,” I said, pointing at the blank wall of the living room.

  “Are you serious?”

  “And then I’d have a nice cedar deck built, stretching out to about here,” I indicated with the toe of my shoe. “With railings and built-in flower boxes. A table with a colourful umbrella. Deck chairs. I could step outside on a summer evening and enjoy your father’s gardens.”

  Merilee considered me for a moment, her eyes filled with irony. “I don’t believe this,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re talking about the patio door Dad wanted? The deck you resisted? If he heard you talking now, he’d turn over in his grave. If he had a grave.”

  “I know,” I said, weeping softly into a handkerchief, the first tears I’d shed since William died. “I know.”

  March 21

  “This is the vernal equinox, Morgan,” William said to me a year ago today. “The twenty-first of March. Night and day are of equal lengths. Everything in Creation is in perfect balance.”

  This afternoon there was a knock at my front door and when I went to answer it I found Anna Six standing on the porch in a whirl of snow, looking distressed.

  “Morgan, it’s Anna.”

  “You said it was bad luck for you to be in contact with me.”

  “Morgan, I need to talk to you about something. Will you let me come in?”

  It seemed strange to have her in the house without the other bridge women around. We’d never been alone before. I realized that after ten years of weekly games, I didn’t know this woman at all.

  “Take off your coat,” I urged her.

  “Oh, I couldn’t. I couldn’t impose. I feel — awkward — coming here in the first place.”

  “Would you like a cup of tea? You look cold.”

  “Thank you, no. I won’t stay long.” She sat on the couch twisting the fingers of a pair of grey wool gloves. “I wanted to apologize about the bridge, Morgan. I never meant to cut you out. It was Goodie who wanted it. Goodie was always so intense about the game. She said you were boring her. Your delayed reactions. She threatened to leave the group if we didn’t get rid of you. Your pace never bothered Muriel and me as much, but we went along with Goodie because she was the strongest of all our personalities. We didn’t resist. Maybe we’re all a little frightened of Goodie? It’s as though we’re all children again, at this age, full of fears, don’t you find? Anyway, it must have hurt you deeply.”

  “I got over it. It doesn’t seem important any more.”

  “But there’s something else on my mind. A secret I’ve been keeping — we’ve all been keeping from you. For years.”

  “A secret?”

  “I can’t hold it in any longer. It’s about Goodie. Goodie and William.”

  “William?”

  “They were lovers, Morgan.”

  “Oh.”

  We’d had weeks of spring thaw but today the snow was blowing so hard that I couldn’t see the Langs’ house. I felt winter penetrating the walls of the living room, a chill entering my heart.

  “For years. Decades, actually. Evidently they met in Toronto after the war. It was when William had come back to Canada and disappeared from sight. You were looking for him, weren’t you? Well, I guess he intended after the war to buy a business, a farm most likely. He met Goodie at a farmers’ rally in Toronto. She’d gone down there with Noah for the meeting. One of the few women present at such a gathering, back then. She insisted on being an equal partner in the farm decisions. Are you surprised? My view is that she always wore the pants in that marriage, but that’s water under the bridge now that Noah is dead.

  “Anyway, she and William met. Goodie says they fell in love. It’s the only reason, she says, that William ever came back to you. Back here to the London area. Because he wanted to be close to Goodie. She says they were an intellectual match right from the start. They shared things — an interest in history, a love of the land, a rural courage, maybe — if you can call Goodie’s pushiness and determination courage. Of course they were both married and we all know divorce was out of the question back then. They used to get together once a week. They found ways. It was much easier of course after Noah was dead and William retired. Apparently they drove out into the countryside. They were both so rooted in the country. And they parked and God knows what all they got up to. Nothing more than could be done comfortably in a car, but that could be extensive, couldn’t it? Oh, I don’t mean to torture you with all this, Morgan.”

  I pictured William and Goodie in a car backed into a farmer’s field. William unbuttoning her olive coat, peeling back her earthy clothes, her dark dresses, exposing her quantity of flesh, her farmwife’s bounty, meaty thighs, proud fruity bosom.

  “But we knew. All of us. The group. We’ve known for years. Goodie confided and then made us promise not to breathe a word. All those bridge games we played with you. Knowing. I feel so ashamed.”

  “I understand.”

  “Goodie says William put her in his will. Has the will been read yet?”

  “I haven’t even looked for it. I suppose it’s in the safety deposit box. William didn’t want to leave a copy with the lawyer. He never trusted lawyers.”

  “Well, she’s in the will, she says. I’m surprised she hasn’t called you to find out what her share is. We didn’t come to the funeral. I intended to but Goodie said none of us could go. We ha
d to show a solid front, she said. The day of William’s funeral, I sat in my house and wept, wondering what kind of person I’d become. I’ve quit the bridge group now. I was never comfortable with it after you were replaced. I don’t know what I’ll do now. I seem to have so much time on my hands.”

  March 25

  I went down to the bank and got William’s will out of the safety deposit box. I took it to the bank manager and asked him to read it to me. He opened the lawyer’s envelope, slipped the papers out, took some time to look them over.

  “There are two wills, actually, Mrs. Hazzard. There’s a signed will naming you as sole beneficiary. Then there’s also this draft will, unsigned, which gives fifty thousand dollars to a Goodie Hodnet. Are you acquainted with this woman?”

  “Unbeknownst to me, she and William were lifelong lovers.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Could you have a money order prepared for me and made out to Goodie Hodnet for five thousand dollars?”

  “Are you sure you want to do that? The unsigned draft will isn’t in any way valid. She could, of course, contest the signed will, but her chances of winning would be weakened by the fact of the affair.”

  “It’s the best way I can think of to get rid of her.”

  March 27

  Goodie sat on my sofa, dressed in her dark wools, her rusts and mustards. I thought about her and William in the countryside. I thought about the bridge women, smirking behind their fanned cards, struggling to keep the secret from me for so many years, when at times their faces were sweating with the knowledge of it, with the desire to tell me, to witness my reaction.

  “He was always bored with you,” Goodie said in her own defence. Down her temple ran a purple scar, the result of the fall she took when I threw the paperweight. In a few years, I thought, it will fade to a silvery worm track, like the wound on William’s hand. “William needed another outlet,” said Goodie. “Someone he could talk to on his own level.”