The Wife's Tale (28 page)

The woman, younger than Mary had first thought, answered, “Like, this is, like, my dad’s car, right? Like, I’m not, like,
allowed to have, like, passengers. Especially not, like, strangers.”

Of course, Mary thought. She was a stranger and caution was appropriate. Then again, this was Golden Hills, one of America’s
safest cities, where purses did not get stolen and strangers gave strangers rides.

An older woman dressed in a pressed black track suit, loading groceries into her trunk, felt Mary’s approach but didn’t turn.
“Excuse me?” Mary called to her. “I’m sorry to trouble you. I need to get to the Pleasant Inn and—”

The woman turned, unsmiling. “The drugstore has a phone if you need to call a taxi.”

“The taxis around here take a long time,” Mary explained. “This isn’t New York.”

“Well, I can’t give you a ride. I’ve got frozens,” the woman said, offering her groceries as proof. “I think there’s a bus
somewhere. Over there somewhere. I’ve seen the Mexicans waiting.”

A pregnant woman pushing a stroller approached but Mary did not try to catch her eye. She’d long ago learned to avoid pregnant
women, who smiled at her round stomach in that conspiratorial way and pleasantly asked about her due date. Two sharp arrows
in a single sisterly gesture.

Another woman, middle-aged with a bleached blonde ponytail and a stern expression, was striding toward a beat-up hatchback
whose trunk was loaded with cleaning supplies, dust mops, a compact vacuum. Mary approached her. “Excuse me?” The woman turned,
smiling, as she launched her request for a ride.

“I can take you,” the woman said, in a thick accent of whose origin Mary was uncertain. Before she could express her gratitude,
three more women, all fair of hair and hard of face, appeared beside the old car. The first woman explained to the others
in her native tongue—Russian? They appraised Mary briefly, shrugging their acceptance as they crammed themselves into the
compact back seat.

In traffic on the main road, Mary had a sense of déjà vu. The kindness of strangers. The women spoke loudly in their native
language, laughed and slapped each other’s thighs. Armenian? She wished she understood what they were saying, and longed to
be part of their glorious sisterhood. The trip toward the highway was faster than the one she’d taken with Emery Carr. She
could see by the sun listing over the distant hills that it was earlier, before rush hour.

When the woman driving pulled up at the curbside near the intersection where the three roads met, Mary didn’t understand at
first that she was meant to walk the rest of the way. The woman smiled apologetically. “It’s okay you walk? If I go this way,
is only one-way street. I have to come back and wait again at the light.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t want to miss the traffic.”

“Of course. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Mary waved to the women as the little car pulled away, and pressed the pedestrian button at the roadside. She stepped out
when the walk light turned green. Measuring the wide expanse of roadway, she worried that she could not get across before
the red hand began to flash.
Faster,
she told herself, wiping her brow. So focused was she on the changing of the light that she didn’t hear the running footsteps
behind her. She was startled when a small, dark man blew past her into the intersection.

What happened next was quick as rifle fire—snapshot images. An angle of the man in front of her, red plaid shirt, belt cinching
the waist of too-large blue jeans, workboots scuffed and soiled. A wider shot of a white van making a reckless right turn
on a red light. The moment of impact—the van’s grille hitting the man’s torso. His body launched into the air. Falling with
a thud. The brown man sprawled, inert and bleeding from the mouth, on the green carpet of a roadside oasis.

Mary was the first to reach the man. He was older than he’d appeared from behind. She fell to her knees, touching his shoulder
gently. “Sir? Sir?”

He opened his eyes, confused, grabbing her hand as he strove to focus on her face. “Angelica,” he sputtered, splattering blood
on her arm.

“Mary,” she whispered. “I’m Mary.”

The suspension of time. Freeze-frame seconds that held like minutes as she gazed into the man’s frightened eyes. “It’s okay,”
she said. “You’ll be just fine.” She wondered if it was possible that no one else had seen what had happened, as the traffic
roared on behind her. All was as it had been, but for the man on the grass and his grip on her hand.

In her periphery, Mary saw a millipede of faded blue jeans advancing in a cloud of dust. A pair of legs broke free from the
pack and dropped to the ground beside her to look into the broken man’s face. The voice was bass and weighty. “Ernesto.
Ernesto?
” Responding as if to a command, the injured man lifted himself by the elbows, expectorating blood over Mary’s paisley ensemble.

She looked up to see that the white van had pulled to the side of the road and the driver was climbing out. He was in his
early sixties, she guessed, tufts of gray hair crowning a plump red face, slender appendages, a tight, round belly that she
wanted to thump like a melon. He was wearing a work shirt, and as he drew nearer she made out the name embroidered on the
front pocket.
Guy.

Guy stood over them, wringing his hands. “We gotta get him to the hospital,” he said, eyes scanning the busy road.

Mary gently shifted the man’s scraped cheek and showed the deep gash in the side of his tongue. “It’s his tongue,” she said.
“He’s bitten his tongue.” She gathered the fabric of her skirt and held it to his mouth.

“Angelica,” he said again, smiling into her green eyes.

Impatient, the driver tapped the shoulder of the other man. “We should get him to the hospital.
Now.
Get him in the back of my van. It’ll be faster than calling an ambulance.
Come on.
”

His urgent tone made Mary shudder. “We shouldn’t move him,” she cautioned, when the fallen man winced and held his gut.

But the other man stood quickly, lifting his injured friend to his feet. “Come on,” he said, offering his free hand to help
Mary rise when it was clear that Ernesto would not release his grip. As she struggled to lift herself, Mary looked into the
stranger’s molten brown eyes. It was the man she’d seen before, at the dusty lot. The broad shoulders. The trimmed moustache
and beard. He returned Mary’s stare curiously, with something like recognition.

Guy strode ahead, yanking open the back doors and disappearing into the front seat of his van, whose bumper sticker read,
Gun control means using BOTH hands.
Ernesto held fast to Mary, imploring in Spanish as he dragged her toward the waiting vehicle. His friend translated: “He
wants you to come.”

“Why?”

“He thinks you’re an angel,” the man answered, with the barest hint of ridicule, and no trace of an accent.

“He hit his head,” she said in his defense, as she climbed into the back of the van and settled down on a rear-facing back
seat, still clutched by the car-struck stranger. She was set to protest her participation when she heard a prayer whispered
by the frightened man, and saw herself the answer in his wide black eyes. Apparition or not, she was ensnared by his need.
A mother to an infant. A bride to a groom.

The white van tore over the gravel and eased onto the road. Mary watched the men in blue jeans return to the dusty corner
lot. Four minutes could not have passed since she started across the crosswalk, and now she was in the back seat of a stranger’s
van holding the hand of a bleeding Mexican. This was what happened when people left their comfortable ruts.

The driver called out from the front, “How’s he doing?”

Ernesto gestured at his corrugated ribcage, speaking rapidly in Spanish to his friend. Mary turned to see the driver’s worried
expression in the rearview mirror. “He might have a broken rib,” she said.

The driver watched the road, wiping perspiration from his brow, smoothing the tuft of gray hair from his forehead. “Either
of you boys speak English? Anglaysay?”

“No Anglaysay,” Ernesto said.

“No Anglaysay,” the other man repeated, his eyes piercing Mary.

“They’re gonna ask a lot of questions at the hospital,” the driver cautioned.

“Wouldn’t there be someone who could translate?” Mary asked.

“Not those kinda questions.”

She swiveled in her seat to watch the road signs. There was the familiar symbol for “Hospital”—next exit. The man drove past.
Perhaps he knew a faster way. “I’m afraid he might have internal injuries,” she called to him.

“If we go to the hospital, they’re gonna involve the police,” he said. “
Policio,
Julio.
Policio,
Juan.” They did not respond. Mary did not remember either of them telling the driver their names.

“You’re my witness, lady. He was crossing against a red light.”

“But it was still
green
. I was crossing too. You made that right turn without even looking,” Mary said, thinking,
and if I could have moved faster, I would have been the one you hit.
There but for the grace of God.

He blinked, calculating his risks. “Can he move his neck? How’s his breathing?”

Ernesto looked up at his friend but said nothing. Mary answered hesitantly, “He’s breathing better. His eyes are clear. I
really think he’s got a broken rib, though.”

The friend called to the driver, in a thick Spanish accent, “No ’ospital.”

“But he should see a doctor,” Mary argued.

“No ’ospital,” he repeated, silencing her with his look.

“No ’ospital,” Ernesto agreed.

“
No policio. No hospitalay
,” the driver said, relieved. “Wise decision, boys.”

“He should have X-rays,” Mary pointed out.

The driver laughed heartily. “You have health insurance, Miguel?”

The two men appeared not to understand, and did not answer.

“Near Avenida de los Árboles. Hundred Oaks,” the friend said, in that same thick accent. “Home.
Por favor
.”

The driver nodded. “Hundred Oaks. We’re headed right that way.”

They were silent as they pulled off the highway and crawled through traffic to the main thoroughfare of a town whose backdrop
of mountains was more rugged, whose shriveled medians paid the price of civic neglect. After journeying down a wide road flanked
by box stores, they arrived at a neighborhood of tiny clapboard houses where bicycles chained to fences stood in for landscaped
fronds, and plastic toys for rose gardens. The narrow streets held no canopy of the boasted hundred oaks. A few maples were
all Mary could see, some tall conifers, the odd sycamore. As the van moved slowly down the street, mastiff creatures snarled
from behind rusted iron gates.

Ernesto’s friend pointed at a small, square house on the corner of the street where a collection of children were jumping
though a waving sprinkler on a patch of stiff brown grass. Mary saw a throng of bodies moving inside, behind the open windows,
and a group of men gathered around a smoking charcoal barbecue, through the slats of the backyard fence.

When the van pulled into the driveway, the children vanished and the group of men Mary’d seen in the yard streamed into the
house. Movement stilled behind the windows as the driver went around to the back of the van to open the door. Ernesto finally
surrendered his grip on Mary’s hand. She climbed out of the vehicle, watching the strong younger man drag his injured friend
into the house. He stopped before opening the door, casting a backward glance at Mary, a wan smile that she returned before
turning to confront the driver. “He should go to the hospital.”

“He should go back to Tijuana,” the driver snorted. “Now, since Pancho and Raul have turned me into a taxi service, just where
is it
you
need to go? And don’t say Reseda because I’m not driving back into that traffic.”

“You can’t just leave him like this. You didn’t even give your information,” Mary reminded him.

“Look, lady.” The way he said
lady
. “If they’da picked him off at the border like they shoulda I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now. Look at that.” He
gestured at the tiny house, the dozen bicycles chained to the gate. “I bet they got twenty of ’em in there.”

“Twenty of ’em?”

“Those sons-a-bitches aren’t gonna be giving me trouble.” He planted his feet, intimidating. “Are
you?
”

“You should give him money,” she blurted. “In case he has to see a doctor after all.”

“I should call Immigration.”

“You should give
me
money, then,” she said, trembling as her voice rose. “I have your license plate number,
Guy
.”

He looked at her for a long beat, the acrid odor of righteousness leaking from his pores. He tore a wallet from his pocket
and peeled off a wad of dollars. “I got two hundred dollars here. And we’re done. This never happened.”

With that, he marched to the front of the van, climbed into the driver’s seat and, before speeding away, concluded, “
You
are a fat fucking hog.”

The insult struck her like a grain of sand. She was fat. True. But she was neither fucking nor a hog. She was Mary Gooch,
who, on her way home to an uncommon existence, found herself under surveillance by a group of Mexican children behind an open
window in a town called Hundred Oaks. Counting the money, she walked the short steps to the house and rang the doorbell. She
rang the bell again but no one came to answer. The children were silent behind the drapes. She knocked hard on the door, impatient
with her predicament. She’d still have an hour to wait for a taxi and could only guess at the expense of such a long ride.

She took a breath, knocking again, the length of her body tingling with tiny convulsive cramps from her blistered toes to
her torched red scalp. Finally, the strong man with the beard cracked the door. She didn’t wait for him to speak but thrust
the money at him, saying, “He left that for you. In case your friend needs something.”