The Wife's Tale (24 page)

There were so many affronts in the article that Mary’d hardly known where to begin when she sat down to write a letter to
the editor. The first offense was Gooch’s, leaving the article for her—as if she hadn’t read a thousand like it, and a million
testimonials from women describing their various inspirations for weight loss—but she didn’t mention that in her letter.

The second offense, as Mary saw it, lay in the author’s simplistic and aggressively unsympathetic approach to the epidemic.
In the way unfeeling people said of lung cancer,
Shouldn’t have smoked
, and of HIV,
Should have used a condom
, the writer seemed to be admonishing Mary’s ilk,
Just eat less and get off your fat ass
. But the implications of morbid obesity, like anorexia (
Eat more and you won’t starve to death, dimwit
), were vastly more complicated. Nowhere in the article had the author mentioned heartbreak. At no time had she conceded that
food was a panacea for loss. There was not a single mention of the pain of loneliness.

In a color-blocked addendum to the article, beneath the caption
Getting Started
, the woman had suggested that the extremely large might begin exercising in the weightlessness of water, where muscles could
gain tone for the challenge of more strenuous earthly pursuits. As if everyone had a swimming pool. As if the extremely overweight
were just itching to squeeze into a bathing suit to show their wares in a public place. Mary’d chortled but had turned the
page to finish the piece, so she could tell Gooch that she’d read it if he asked what she thought.

And there it was, the final insult—a photograph of the writer, nutritional expert and author of the soon-to-be released
Mama Cocoa—Why Chicks Love Chocolate.
The woman, who appeared to be in her early forties, was a tall, willowy blonde in snug jeans and cowboy boots, pert breasts
straining a fresh white T-shirt, and a grin that was not so much winning as boasting that she’d won. Not beautiful the way
Heather was but pretty, wife of a cardiologist, mother of two teenagers, living in a converted church in Vermont where she
enjoyed baking pies with the fruits of their orchards and whence she dispatched a popular weekly blog.
Livin’ the dream.

Mary scoured the biographical information but there was no mention of the writer’s former obesity, no indication that she
had ever been more than the skinny bitch staring back at Mary from the white picket fence on which she was perched. The author
might
bake
pies, but didn’t
eat
them. How dare she?

The letter to the editor began with a reproach to the writer, Mary reminding her that there were varied and complex explanations
for weight gain, and many medical reasons that could make weight difficult to lose. But she could not compose the second part,
scratching and editing as she wrote, for in each vitriolic line her loathing for the author’s form, those languid legs, those
sculpted arms, diluted her rationale. It was not so much that she disagreed with the contents of the article, which was hardly
original and staggeringly uncontroversial, but that she felt the author, given her lack of personal experience, had not the
right to write it at all. The woman had clearly never met the obeast.

Head up, target clear. Plan in place. Check balance at bank. Go to motel. Recharge phone. Wait for call—from Heather, from
Eden, from Gooch, from Joyce. Wait, like those Mexican men on the side of the road. Wait.
And sleep.
This she thought with no degree of anxiety or uncertainty, for she knew that, with a plan instead of a list, sleep would
come and free her.

Daydreams had been, for her, mostly nightmares—imaginings about her food, visions of her secret stash, fear of getting caught.
But she found herself striding the length of the parking lot in the blazing sun, pushing her shopping cart like a stroller,
lost in a fantasy of Gooch. She imagined her husband’s massive body bent over the instant teller machine, thought of wrapping
her arms around his thick torso and whispering into his back,
I’m here, Gooch. I’m right here.
Of him turning and uttering,
Mare. Oh Mare.

She stopped at the edge of the parking lot, dragging the plastic bags from the cart, and nearly fell backward over a tow-headed
preschooler who appeared behind her. The child looked into her startled eyes and howled as if she’d struck him with a backhand.

“Oh,” she breathed, looking around for a frantic mother.

The child howled louder and Mary smiled. “No, no, honey. That’s okay. We’ll find Mommy.” She set down her plastic bags and
offered a hand, somewhat disturbed that the child took it so readily. She walked out from behind the parked cars and saw the
mother, tall and blonde and reed-thin, with two more towheads in hand, steaming forward, shrieking, “Joshua!”

The little boy held onto Mary’s plump hand even as his mother and brothers approached, and tighter when the mother stuck out
her own arm, threatening, “You don’t run away! You do not run away from Mommy!”

Mary felt flustered and guilty, like the time she had left the grocery store with a tray of brownies which she’d hidden from
the eyes of other shoppers on the bottom of the cart, then neglected to put on the conveyor belt when she paid for the rest.
“I just turned around and he was here,” she explained.

The woman did not look at her, so focused was she on the penalty to her offspring. “You just talked yourself out of a Happy
Meal, mister,” she said through clenched teeth.

The small boy shouted, “You
said!
”

“I
said
if you were
good
,” she corrected him, severing his grip on Mary and yanking him along without another word.

Mary returned to the parcels she’d left on the ground and collected them with some effort, realizing that, although she didn’t
have to bend all the way down to find the plastic handles, she’d lowered herself considerably, and more than she had in recent
memory.

She stopped, as she had promised herself she would, on the bench in the shade outside the bank, and found one of the health
bars in the bag. She tore at the wrapping and ate the bar slowly, draining half a large bottle of water and resting awhile
longer in the gentle breeze as the sun shifted over the landscape, until she felt strong enough to rise again. She hefted
her bags and made her way to the instant teller on the other side of the building, but when she reached for the bank card
in the wallet, she suddenly realized that she had the plastic shopping bags with her navy scrubs, and the ones with the water
and health bars, and the one with the sunscreen and aspirin, but she did not have the purse. The big brown vinyl purse. It
was still in the shopping cart, the last thing she’d been about to remove when the child had torn her attention away.

Charged with adrenalin, she made her way back around the building to the parking lot where she’d left the cart. The cart was
still there. The purse was not.

Back to the drugstore. Perspiring in paisley, she opened the door with a whoosh, her frantic energy attracting attention even
before she called out over the customers, “My purse. I left it in a shopping cart. Has anyone returned it?”

The cashier shook her head and shrugged. A few customers looked at her pityingly, the men because she was pitiful and the
women because they knew what it was to lose a purse.
Everything was in that purse.
Travel needs. Unread novels. The bank card. The passport. Identity as defined by identification. Her driver’s license, her
credit card, her health card. Her
phone
.

Hobbling out the door after the cashier had consulted with a few other shrugging employees, Mary made her way back to the
parking lot, to the place she was certain she’d left her purse. There. The cart. There. No purse. And no savior squeezing
through the parked cars holding it by the hand, as she had the missing child, looking for its frantic owner.

Lost purse. Vanished husband. Displaced wife. Mary stood motionless in the parking lot, letting the sun beat down on her head.

M
ary had little experience with banks, as Gooch had been the one to do their personal accounting, and it was only occasionally,
when he’d forgotten to withdraw sufficient grocery money, that she would enter the Leaford bank to fill out a withdrawal slip
with an amount she unfailingly disclosed to Gooch with a lie. “I got a little extra out today,” she would explain, “for Candace’s
birthday gift,” or “for that charity thing Ray’s doing.” When really it was to pay for the cut of prime rib she’d eaten herself,
or the special order of Laura Secord chocolate.

Opening the bank door, she was relieved not only at the sharp, conditioned air but at the sight of the empty teller queues.
There were a mere five employees visible in the entire open-design bank—two men on high stools clacking away at their respective
computers behind the tellers’ desks, and the other three confounded by a computer screen at the manager’s desk toward the
back. All eyes turned to Mary as she swooned inside. Except for briefly appraising the newcomer and making their respective
mental notes—
Large lady walks into bank
—the managers returned to whatever numerical mystery they’d been assigned.

Mary started for the tellers, each of whom looked up from his screen blinking strangely, as if she were an apparition and
they were waiting for her to fade.

In the seconds it took to pass the chrome and leather coffee area where no customers lounged, Mary’s brain rose to the challenge
of deciding which of the tellers to approach, and also noted the striking physical beauty of the two men, for they looked
like models or actors or star athletes, groomed above their collars and toned beneath their dark, tailored suits.

The man on the right, whose name tag read
Cooper Ross
, was the lighter version. Sandy hair falling over his tanned forehead, square jaw, white teeth. The man on the left,
Emery Carr
, wore his black hair gelled back, his complexion pleasantly pallid. She saw herself in his eyes and distinctly read his thoughts:
Go to Cooper. Not me! Go to Cooper!

Her shuddering legs had ideas of their own, or were divinely guided, and drove her directly to the black-haired man, where
she set down the plastic bags and began, “I’ve just lost my purse. Over there,” she added, pointing through the window. “My
purse. Big brown vinyl. In a shopping cart. Did anyone turn it in here?”

Emery Carr shook his head, distracted when the computer beeped beside him. Cooper Ross, overhearing, offered, “Are you a customer?
We can access your account with—”

“I’m Canadian,” she said, stopping him. “I’m from Ontario. I’m here alone. Everything was in my purse.” She stopped, waiting
to see her reflection again in the eyes of Emery Carr, as if to remind herself that she was standing in the bank, and not
lost somewhere in the sum of the contents of her big vinyl purse. He looked up at her when she repeated, “Everything.”

“We could call your bank in Canada. Are you east coast or west?” Cooper Ross asked, reaching for the phone.

“Ontario,” she reminded him, remembering that she was in a different time zone. “Closed. It’ll be closed,” she said.

“Maybe your purse has been turned in to the sheriff,” Cooper Ross suggested.

“Oh.” Mary was relieved that someone had said anything remotely encouraging, and struck by how American the word
sheriff
sounded. Cooper Ross found a number and dialed—waited—then, after introducing the situation, handed the phone to Mary, who
explained, “Big brown vinyl. My passport. My wallet… That’s right… You can’t contact me. I don’t have a
phone
.”

The tellers returned to their chores, Emery Carr adroitly signing off his computer and standing to organize his work station
while Cooper Ross’s long fingers tickled the squares of his keyboard.

“Mary Gooch,” she began again, after a pause, “Rural Route 5. Leaford, Ontario. Canada.” She paused. “I don’t know where I’ll
be staying.” She thought briefly of Eden and Jack Asquith. Tears rising in her throat, she reached into her paisley skirt
pocket but remembered that it was the pocket of her navy scrubs into which she’d shoved the tissues given her by the limousine
driver. It felt like a miracle, albeit a small one, to find the wad of Canadian money, left over from what she’d given the
driver of the little red truck, instead. She pulled out the colorful bills and set the pile on the counter as she finished
with the voice on the other end of the phone. “The Pleasant Inn,” she said. “If my purse turns up, you can reach me there.”

Big Avi had said that Golden Hills was one of the top safest cities in America, and as he had relied on the kindness of strangers
in his immigration from another world, so did Mary. After she changed her Canadian money to American and found herself with
more than five hundred dollars, Cooper Ross said, “Let’s get your credit cards canceled, at the very least,” and went on to
help her with the necessary calls.

That done, Mary gave her thanks and begged one more favor, a call for a taxi, to which Cooper Ross responded graciously, “Emery
can give you a ride to the hotel. He’s off in five.”

Emery Carr smiled brightly and crowed, “Yes. Of course I can give you a ride. It’s on my way.” But Mary caught the withering
look he shot his colleague, and the slight grin beneath the other man’s sandy bangs.

Even with a reluctant Samaritan, a ride was a ride. “Thank you. Thank you,” she said, as they made their way outside. The
falling sun crested artfully over a rocky hill in the distance, and Mary paused to look. Having left nature, like so many
things, unconsidered, she felt a sudden rush of pleasure from the rugged beauty of the fading hills, a visual parfait, and
was relieved to notice that a slight chill seemed to have crept over the parking lot during the time she’d been in the bank.

Emery Carr, whom Mary guessed to be anywhere between thirty-five and forty-five, drove a Mazda, a tiny, immaculately groomed
sports car with stowage instead of a back seat, where he set her collection of plastic bags. Opening the door, she prepared
for the chore of setting herself down in the small, squat seat. When she hesitated, he grinned tightly and moved around the
vehicle, holding the weight of his disgust with the elbow of her arm. Perhaps he loved no one as fat as she.