The Wife's Tale (16 page)

Joints stiff from driving, she caught her breath beside the truck before making her way into the service center, her left
foot numb to her ankle. Looking at the sky, she wondered if the snow would really come, or if it needed time to think.

Considering the line at the coffee place and impatient to get back on the highway, she bought a protein bar from the vending
machine and chewed it slowly, catching sight of the automated teller nearby. In Gooch’s lying note he’d written,
Spend the money
. But she suddenly did not trust—as how
could
she trust Gooch?—that the money would still be there. Joining the long line for the machine, she waited, and when it was
finally her turn she flipped her bank card from her wallet and went through the motions, wondering if Gooch had meant
Spend it but on the credit card
. He hated when she used the credit card for the way it unbalanced his books. And how much of the money should she spend?
All of it? Half of it? And on what? For a man who liked to be in control, his lack of direction was maddening. She asked the
machine for one hundred more dollars, which she added to the thick wad of cash, and waited for it to spit out the receipt.
The money was all still there.

Being in the habit of looking down, Mary hadn’t noticed the scruffy young man standing in the middle of the instant teller
line behind her. Before exiting, she turned to find him watching her, with a
look
on his face. She was familiar with the looks. There were a variety of them, and curiously independent of age, race or gender.
The look that said,
That lady is bi-ig.
Or the one that said,
What a waste of skin.
Or
Wonder what she’d have to eat to get that big?
Over the years she had noticed a new expression, one that suggested a comparative study, as in
She’s as fat as my cousin, uncle, mother, best friend.
With the North American epidemic of obesity, it appeared increasingly that many loved someone fat as she.

Out in the parking lot, her sluggish steps were no match for the man’s wiry sprint, and he was already upon her by the time
she heard his running feet. It was the man from the instant teller line. He struck out with a small silver blade he had hidden
in the cuff of his shirt. Mary closed her eyes as he thrust his arm. Violent death. The rule of three.

Feeling no sear of metal in her gut, she thanked her poundage for its protection and opened her eyes, confused to find the
man holding not a knife but her silver bank card. Silently he urged her to take the card, gesturing back at the building,
though it was clear now what had transpired.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

The man nodded shortly and turned to go. Mary watched him skip over the slick pavement and into the roadway as a transport
truck rounded the curve. The truck driver blasted his horn. The shouting of bystanders did not startle the man, who managed
to reach the sidewalk just as the transport bore down. He stopped, not because he heard the truck or noticed the commotion
he’d caused, but to wave at Mary, unsmiling, before disappearing back into the building. She watched through the large window
as he, having lost his place, joined the end of the automated teller line, and considered all the stranger had risked in his
gesture of kindness.

“Thank you!” she called out, though she knew he couldn’t hear.

New math complicated the continuum of Mary’s drive as she attempted to calculate the date of her husband’s return. If he’d
won fifty thousand, which was what she supposed, it would eventually run out. A few weeks? Months? Depended on where he was
and how he was spending it. What if it was a hundred thousand and he’d gone off on some binge and wasn’t remotely the man
she thought he was? Or maybe it was a million, in which case, she conceded, she would likely never see him again. Working
out the odds of Gooch’s coming home on his own was a distraction, she knew, keeping her from reasoning out the odds of finding
him at all.

Nearing the big city, the number of lanes increased, along with the speed and need of the other drivers to get wherever the
hell they were going. She eased around a bend, awed by the dazzling silver skyline. She’d only ever seen the cityscape in
pictures and TV, yet she had the strongest sense of déjà vu. Not as though she’d been here before, but as though she’d felt
the same feeling, the exact same feeling, when she had turned the aisle from pain medications to dental needs and seen Jimmy
Gooch on his crutches with that look in his eye, more than twenty-five years before.

The traffic on the expressway leading into the downtown core was slow but Mary decided not to mind. She watched the people
strolling on the path near the choppy gray lake, bundled up against the autumn cold, the sinking sun basking families in wholesome
golden light. She watched teenaged lovers stream over bridges, and in-line skaters trick down sidewalks. So many people. Not
one she knew. Not one knew her. She felt pleasantly small.

As the traffic was virtually stalled and the light lost its romantic cast and gray sprayed the cold families and the mean
runners and the showy skaters and careless cyclists, she saw what Gooch had been talking about when he had described an editorial
from a Toronto newspaper about the continued debate over the lakeside expressways, which were always choked with traffic,
and blocked people’s access to the water. She remembered being irritated by Gooch’s habit of reading articles out loud to
her, and wishing he’d just get on with breakfast and leave so she could ravish that leftover peach pie. Enlightened by the
encroaching darkness, Mary realized she’d gotten her wish. Gooch was gone and now she could eat peach pie till she bled Crisco.

Finding the restaurant was easy. Queen Street was a stone’s throw from the expressway, and she followed the numbers on the
narrow shops until she arrived at a small, square storefront with mosaic tile bearing the sign
Bistro 555
. Gooch preferred restaurants that had
grill
somewhere in the name, and Mary, had she been a gambler, would have laid odds that her husband would not choose to eat in
this establishment. But she’d have been wrong. And it was not just the one time but six, according to the receipts.

She looked for a place to park and, finding no space on the road, drove on. And on. And on, snaking up narrow streets past
skinny Victorian houses with postage-stamp front lawns, and soaring apartment buildings, and ethnic shops and chain stores,
only to encounter a confounding maze of one-way streets that led her back to the same one-way streets, and still no parking
to be found.

With her sketchy grasp of time, she could only guess that she’d driven in circles for nearly thirty minutes. She had decided,
driving through the tight, lively streets, that she could understand why people loved Toronto—and hated it. Finally, several
blocks from Queen Street, she saw a sign for public parking. She pulled the Ford into the lot and found an empty spot, startled
when a hirsute man appeared beside the truck. “Twenty dollars,” he demanded.

She had not seen the sign. “To
park?
” she asked, astonished, and handed him a bill.

“Keys, please,” he said, holding out an oil-stained palm.

“My car keys?” she asked, bewildered.

“Please,” he said ungraciously.

“I have to leave my
keys?
”

“No keys, no park.”

She passed him the keys reluctantly and set off in the direction of the restaurant. On the street, she found that she could
not, as was her habit, keep her eyes down, with so many hazards on the sidewalk—joggers and shoppers and pets and skaters
and the sprawling legs of ragged beggars. She had never seen so many humans of so many different colors and ethnicities, and
bet she couldn’t guess half their countries of origin. With her eyes raised, though, she was confronted in every shop and
restaurant window by her reflection. She’d forgotten to bring a jacket but she wasn’t cold. In fact, there were dark sweat
stains spotting her navy scrubs, and a shine of perspiration on her face and neck. Realizing that it was at least
possible
she might find Gooch in Bistro 555, she stopped to catch her breath. She pictured him drinking beer at the bar, and tried
not to wonder who might be sitting beside him, running a slender hand up his rigid thigh.

Reaching into her purse, she found a tube of coral lipstick, and swiped it over her lips. Then she found the second set of
navy scrubs, and used the smock to blot her glossy face. She started back down the crowded street, watching people scramble
past her onto the old-fashioned streetcar with their bags of this and sacks of that. The homeless accosting the hurried. A
trio of prostitutes in the shadow of an alley swarming a maroon Grand Marquis.

Finding the mosaic tile above the draped windows. Bistro 555, she steeled herself and reached for the door handle. She pulled
but it was locked. She checked the sign in the window. The restaurant didn’t open until six.
Six?

There were easily a dozen people within earshot, but not one of whom she might ask the time. They were moving too fast. Too
busy to bother. No one making eye contact. She turned to find a wiry young man with soulful brown eyes, olive skin and a sparse
goatee staring at her. She was in his way.

“You have to wait for the streetcar over there,” he told her, gesturing at the crowded bus shelter.

“I’m waiting for the restaurant to open,” Mary said politely, as she saw the young man had a key to the place and was letting
himself in.

“Half an hour,” he said, and slipped inside.

Deflated, Mary could hardly imagine walking the remaining paces into the restaurant, let alone wandering the murky, unfamiliar
streets for half an hour. She stood at the entrance to Bistro 555 replacing passing strangers’ faces with Gooch’s, and recapping
for herself, the way TV series did at the start of each show, her previous episode and the highlights of what had brought
her to this place.

Why would a restaurant not open its doors until six? A big-city pretension, she decided. Among the many pretensions and affectations
that folks in Leaford talked about. The big-city people with their big-city ways, looking down on rural communities because
they didn’t have museums or amusement parks or government buildings or repertory theater.

Open at six. Surely people in the city got hungry before
six
. But then Mary realized that
she
was not hungry. Still not hungry. Her world had been inverted by Gooch’s disappearance, and it made some simple sense that
her body would cope in this contrary way. She remembered checking every box in a magazine quiz asking,
Are you a stress eater?
She’d envied the stress starvers, like her mother.

Dinner in the Brody house was served at five o’clock sharp when Mary was growing up—at least, until Irma started working only
mornings and dinner had been moved up an hour, to four, which was when Orin got home from his afternoon shift. After Orin
retired, dinner was on the table when Mary arrived home from high school, and her parents, with their meager appetites, had
their dishes cleared and washed before she had tucked into seconds. Irma didn’t call it
having dinner
. She called it
getting dinner over with
. In some ways, Mary thought, Irma lived her whole life anxious to get things over with, as if she knew the end of her story
all along, and didn’t feel the middle pages worth the effort of a read.

Time. No thump, no thud. No ritual, no routine. No trips to the kitchen and back. Time sequenced by nothing. No Raymond Russell.
No Gooch. Mary felt surprising relief in her release from time, and didn’t wonder how long she’d been standing in front of
the restaurant when the door banged open against her rear end and the man with the goatee appeared. “You can wait inside if
you want.”

She thanked him, wondering if he’d invited her in because of the poor advertising she gave the chic boîte—a huge woman with
flaming red hair wearing sweaty navy scrubs and old winter boots.
If you eat here, this could be you.

Adjusting to the light, she found only tiny bistro chairs available, and took care easing her big, tired body down. She caught
her breath, watching the young man tackle chores behind the bar, deciding to be direct. “I’m looking for someone. He’s come
in here a few times recently, and I thought someone might remember him. Jimmy Gooch?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“He’s tall. Very tall. Six foot six with wavy hair. Little grey at the temple. Broad. Handsome. People remember him.”

The man shrugged. “I’ve cut way back on my shifts.”

“Oh.”

“I’m really an actor.”

“Oh.”

“I look like a young Al Pacino,” he said, casting a profile.

“You do,” she agreed.

“I get that a lot.”

“Is there anyone else I can ask?”

“This guy you’re looking for, is he in trouble?” She shook her head. “You could ask Mary.” He grinned to himself. “She’ll
be here any second.”

“Mary?” Mary said, feeling cagey.

“Our hostess. Mary Brody. Sounds like a guy Mary would remember.”

Just as she heard her own maiden name from the lips of the Al Pacino look-alike, the front door opened to the figure of a
woman dressed in a clingy red knit and killer black heels. Her dark blonde hair fell in waves, framing her beautiful face,
teasing her bony shoulders. She stepped forward into the light, blue eyes rimmed in thick black mascara, hint of gloss on
full pink lips. Dangerous cheekbones. Around her swan’s neck she wore a large silver pendant that fell well past her deep
cleavage. She looked at Mary and Mary looked at her and together they chimed, “Mary? Heather?”

The actor looked up from behind the bar. “Heather?”

Heather Gooch flashed a grin at him. “Hey, superstar,” she flirted. “Where you been?”

“Who’s Heather?”

“Nickname.” She winked, making a covert face of despair. “Mary and I know each other from the
old days
.”