The Wife's Tale (17 page)

“You’re both Marys?”

“Could you give us five? Five? Prep the coffee station for me.
Please
,” Heather purred.

Watching her sister-in-law bat her eyes and swivel her hips, Mary thought that Heather was twenty years too old for such coquetry.
She was several years older than Mary but looked easily a decade younger, and Mary hadn’t seen her in six years, which translated
to forty-three pounds. More complicated math.

“You’re using my maiden name?” Mary wasn’t angry, just surprised.

Heather checked to make sure the swinging door to the kitchen was closed before she bent to take a chair, her huge silver
pendant striking the glass on the table as she offered without apology, “It was the first name I thought of when I applied
for my last apartment. When did you go red?”

“But why?”

Heather shrugged. “I don’t want to be found. By certain old
associates
. Just easier to be somebody else. Why are you here, Mary?”

“Restaurant receipts,” Mary answered. “He’s been coming to see
you
. Why didn’t he tell me?”

This Heather was not the jonesing Heather. Not the tragic Heather. Not the disconnected Heather. This Heather was clear-eyed
and present. Mary watched her manicured fingers search the contents of her leather purse and pinch a nicotine gum from foil.
“He came here. He ate lunch. We talked. He’s my brother.” She reached out, touching Mary’s plump wrist. “At least you know
he wasn’t having an affair.”

“Did he give you money?” Mary asked, prepared to feel self-righteous.

“I gave
him
money. I’ve been paying him back. My boyfriend owns this place. He’s loaded.”

“When did Gooch loan you money?”

“Ancient debt.” Heather shifted in her chair, fiddling with her necklace. “Look, Mary, I’m sorry you came all this way, but
whatever’s going on between the two of you is between the two of you. You should really go home and work it out.”

“He’s gone, Heather.” Mary bit her lip to keep from sneering. “You
know
that.”

Heather looked at her blankly. “Gone
where?
”

Mary waited for the tell, but Heather’s lovely eyes shone with such genuine concern that instead of catching her in a lie,
Mary found herself the bearer of her own bad news. “He’s left. He’s left me. He won on the scratch-and-win lottery. A million,
for all I know. He didn’t say. And he left me.”

“He won money?” Heather blinked rapidly.

“He sent a letter in the mail. He said he won on the lottery. He said he needed time to think. He said he’d
be in touch
.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“I found the restaurant receipts and I thought… I didn’t know.”

“Wow. Have you called my mother?” Heather asked.

“I don’t want her to worry.”

“You don’t want her to
know
,” Heather corrected her. “Besides, he wouldn’t have gone there. He
hates
Jack.”

“So where do I go?”

“Home. Go home.”

Mary shook her head. “He talked about a place in Myrtle Beach. This golf resort he always wanted to go to. He wanted to see
the White House. The monuments in Washington. Las Vegas? You know how he likes to gamble.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“He could be in Las Vegas blowing it all right now. Or that big casino on the reserve near Montreal.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Or a Caribbean cruise. He really wanted to go on that cruise I won last year.”

“Why didn’t you go?”

Out of habit Mary cast her eyes down, but told herself to look up. “If you can think of anything he might have said? A clue
about where he might have gone?”

“If he said he needed time, why don’t you just give him time?” Heather checked the hands on the wall clock above their heads.
“I’m sure it’ll work out, Mary. Or if it doesn’t, maybe it’s for the best.”

For the best.
The doctors had said the same thing about her babies. She was equally offended by the suggestion that her marriage was better
off dead.

“I like the red,” Heather said. “Plays up your green eyes.”

Mary nodded, looking out the window. A sharply dressed old man, whom she might have described as
toady
had she been of a different nature, let himself into the restaurant, and Heather excused herself to go to him even before
he snapped his fingers. She allowed the old man to kiss her neck before she whispered something into his misshapen ear. The
old man glanced at Mary dismissively, then headed back through the swinging doors to the kitchen. A cost. To everything.

Heather returned, flushed and guilty, not explaining. She didn’t sit down, making it clear they were done. “Well,” she said.

Wheezing with the effort of untangling her legs from the cage of bistro chair and table, Mary stood.

“God, Mary! What
happened
to you?” Heather asked, as if whatever had happened had just occurred.

“I cut my foot.”

“
Look
at you. You can barely get up off the
chair
.”

“I’ve put on a few since the last time I saw you.”

“My God, Mary. How could you just
let yourself go
like that?”

The first thought that came to Mary’s mind was
Don’t take any moral high ground with me, Heather Gooch. You’re a drug addict.
But she said the second thing, which was “I know.”

Heather glanced at the kitchen’s swinging door, lowering her volume. She softened, ushering Mary to the door. “If I hear from
him, I’ll let you know.”

Mary stopped her. “Take my cellphone number.”

Heather keyed the digits into the tiny phone she kept in her purse as Mary recited the numbers. “Don’t worry. He said he’d
be in touch, didn’t he?”

“What if it’s too late?”

“For what?”

For me,
Mary thought.

Heather stood silent, watching the massive form of Mary Gooch disappear through the restaurant door. Outside, buffeted by
the crowds on the sidewalk, Mary made her way back to the Ford, discomfited by her unnatural state of awareness but sure that
if she wanted to find Gooch, she had to look up from now on. She felt she’d been walking for hours, and worried that she’d
gone the wrong way.

Heather’s shouting was swallowed by the hubbub of the street. The silver pendant bounced on her breasts as she jogged through
the crowds. Impeded by her killer heels and her history of smoking, she was completely out of breath when, within earshot,
she called, “Mary! Stop!”

Mary did, grateful for the order, and the sisters-in-law stood apart in the crowd, each with lovely long hair and pretty eyes.
Heather much taller with her heels, Mary the span of three people. Drug addict. Fat lady. Mary blamed science, brain chemistry,
anabolic hormones, ghrelin, leptin, genetic weakness, the media, but stopped when she felt her ancestors, those Baldoon County
pioneers whose very survival had depended on personal responsibility, roll in their graves.

“Jimmy went to Golden Hills,” Heather breathed. “He wanted to see Mum.”

Blotting out the street noise, focusing on Heather’s blue eyes, Mary took the information in. “He’s in California?”

“I don’t know if he’s still there but that’s where he was going. I haven’t heard from him since he hitchhiked up here last
week to get his check from the Lotto office.”

“He put twenty-five thousand dollars in the account,” Mary said. “How much did he win?”

Heather shrugged. “He wouldn’t tell me. All he would say was
enough.
”

Enough,
Mary repeated to herself.

“He had the ten grand I paid him back, too.”

“Gooch loaned you ten thousand dollars?”

“It was a long time ago, Mary. The inheritance money from Dad.”

“Have you talked to your mother?”

“You know I don’t talk to my mother.”

“Should I call her?”

“She’d just lie for him. Like I did.”

“I
need
to see him.”

“If you want to see Jimmy, then go. Just go.”

“Just go to California? Show up on Eden’s doorstep? ‘I’m here. Where’s Gooch?’ ”

“Unless you’ve got something better. I heard they moved a few years ago. Have you got the new address?”

Mary nodded. “Twenty-four Willow Drive, Golden Hills. I still send Christmas cards.”

“You’ve got money. Go get on a plane.”

“I’ve never been on an airplane.”

“That speaks for itself.”

“It does,” Mary agreed, unsure what her sister-in-law meant.

Heather glanced around the street, possibly to ensure that she was not being watched by one of her old associates, before
she said, “I want to show you something.” She lifted the silver pendant, which Mary saw now was a locket, opening it with
her long, polished nails, tilting it toward the street light to reveal the picture inside. It was Gooch, at sixteen, Mary
guessed—cruelly handsome, that wavy hair, that cocky grin.

“My son,” Heather said. “He found me last summer through one of those agencies. His name is James. He’s nearly tall as Jimmy.
Can you believe that?”

The boy was his uncle’s spitting image. “I’m happy for you, Heather. Does Gooch know?”

Heather nodded. “He met him.”

Mary felt sparks, some ancient thing resurrected.

“They’ve shot hoops at the park down the street a few times. He’s in medical school. He lives two blocks from me, Mary. What
are the odds?”

That stabbing feeling. Not hunger. It was Mary’s turn to say, “Wow.”

“I’ve got your number if I hear from him.” Heather lingered, appraising Mary’s face in the blue street light. “I hope you
get what you want, Mary.”

“Thanks.”

“But if you don’t, you know, you have to push on.”

Mary felt thirsty, and thought of Orin’s pragmatic suggestion: “Get a drink from the hose and push on.”

Pressing down the sidewalk, processing the new data, Mary was startled by the ringing of her cellphone in her purse. Proud
Mary indeed, she thought, trembling.

“Mrs. Gooch?” the voice on the other end inquired.

“Yes.”

“It’s Joyce. From St. John’s.”

Mary glanced around for a bench, sure she should be sitting to hear the rest of the call; finding none, she leaned against
an antiques shop window. “My mother?” she asked quietly.

“Mrs. Gooch, I thought you should know that Mrs. Shrewsbury passed away tonight.”

“Mrs. Shrewsbury?”

“Roberta Shrewsbury?” The other old woman. “Why are you calling me?”

“Our new receptionist saw you talking with her earlier in the common room, and since we can’t reach her next of kin… I didn’t
know you knew Mrs. Shrewsbury.”

“I don’t.”

“But she asked for you.”

“For me?”

“She asked for you before she died. Her final words were ‘Tell Mary I love her.’ I assumed that meant you.”

“No.”

“There’s no Mary listed in her relations.”

“Some other Mary.” Thinking of Heather’s renting of her name, she added, “We’re everywhere.”

Roberta Shrewsbury was part of someone else’s rule of three, like The Greek with his mother in Athens—a distinctly separate
triangle of grief—but Mary felt sorrow at her loss.

As the mystery of Gooch’s disappearance had been somewhat unraveled, Mary knew, or at least felt hopeful, that she might find
her husband of twenty-five years in California.
Livin’ the dream.
It would not be Gooch who completed the trio. She and Irma were running neck and neck.

Forgiveness. The old woman, Mrs. Shrewsbury, had forgiven
her
Mary, whoever she was—daughter or sister, Mary guessed—and had seemed lifted even as she’d mourned the wasted time. Was that
all anyone really wanted before they died? To forgive? To be forgiven? She was gratified to think that the stranger at St.
John’s had had a chance to say goodbye. To someone.

Relieved to see the parking lot in view, she stopped to catch her breath, hoping the hairy man, whom she could see watching
her through the window of his tiny shelter, would deliver the keys to her instead of making her walk the remaining steps.
Approaching the shelter, she could see him rifling through the huge pegboard on which dozens of car key sets were hung. He
turned to face her, pulling open the window.

“You give me your keys?” he asked suspiciously.

“Yes,” she answered. “I’m the red Ford pickup.” She pointed.

“I don’t have. You don’t give to me.” He threw up his hands, suggesting that the problem was hers.

“You said, ‘No keys no park,’ and I gave them to you.”

“I don’t remember,” he sniffed. “You look.” He turned the pegboard so that she could look, but she did not see her distinctive
flashlight key chain among the shiny objects.

“Not there,” she said.

“You don’t give to me.”

“I
did
give to you,” she insisted.

He threw up his hands again. Mary heaved a sigh.

“You have more key?” he asked.

“No.”

“Someone can bring?”

“No one can bring.”

The man smiled sympathetically. “You go home, get keys. I am nice guy. I don’t charge parking. Come.” Not merely generous
but gallant, he took Mary’s heavy arm and escorted her like a bride back toward the street, where he whistled for a taxi and
helped her ease her load into the cracked back seat.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

M
ary Gooch had never in her forty-three years set foot inside an airport, and had no context for the shifting tone of air travel.
She knew from television news, which was background noise when Gooch was home, about the tighter security and longer waits,
rising jet fuel costs, diminished service. She did not know that purchasing an economy ticket to Los Angeles, California,
would deplete the bank account by nearly seven hundred dollars. And she did not know she’d have to take off her boots.

She’d always considered the prospect of air travel, like any travel, with fear and reluctance, but she was too preoccupied
by thoughts of Gooch—what she would say to him and how she would say it when, or if, she found him—to focus on anything but
their reunion. Looking up as she passed through the security checkpoint, she was vividly aware of people’s predictable expressions
but felt disconnected from the source, and was not mortified when the scowling officer looked at her passport picture and
remarked, “You should get a new photo if you’re going to keep the red hair.”