The Wife's Tale (32 page)

“Mary Gooch. I don’t have a car.”

“You don’t have a
car?
”

“No.”

“Are you a nurse?”

“No,” Mary said, glancing down at her damp navy scrubs.

Throwing a glance at the back seat, Ronni said, “You remember the nice lady, Joshua. The one who found you in the parking
lot before? Say, ‘Hi Mrs. Gooch.’ ”

The little boy squinted at Mary. “You stink,” he said, hurling an orange Cheeto at her head.

“
Joshua!
” his mother shouted, twisting to yank the bag of Cheetos from the boy’s hands. “Say you’re sorry and I’ll give them back,”
she told him.

Mary thought of the English nanny show she had watched on television. And the movie she’d seen with that wonderful British
actress whom Mary admired for her graciousness, and always thought looked just right in award-show photographs. Those nannies
with the British accents would not return the Cheetos to the naughty boy, even if he did apologize. Mary thought they must
raise lovely children on the other side of the ocean.

“How’s Jack?” Mary shook her head fatally, stung by a tug at the back of her scalp. “
Joshua!
” Ronni bellowed. “Get your filthy fingers away from her head.” Mary untangled the orange fingers from her hair.

“My husband left us six weeks ago.” Ronni paused to find her breath, as if the shock of it was upon her again. “The boys have
really been acting out.”

“How was the new babysitter?” Mary asked, when she couldn’t think what else to say.

Ronni Reeves, the wife left with triplets, shook her head darkly as she raced down the street toward the stop sign, relieved
that her son had become distracted by painting the car window with his licked-orange fingers, until he began kicking the back
of Mary’s seat. “Stop that,” she hissed. She glanced at Mary, saying, “He should be napping right now. But I had to shift
their karate class. Jacob had an eye appointment. And I still have to meet with the lawyer. We were supposed to look at preschools.”

The list. Mary could see Ronni’s list of things not getting done, and caught the whiff of her abstract malaise. Even her bounty
was a burden.

The young mother’s purse rang. Mary watched the pretty woman drive with one hand, catching the gist of the conversation as
she spoke. Ronni was being asked to cover another Lydia Lee home jewelry party tonight, and had to decline because she could
not get a babysitter on such short notice.

“I could babysit for you,” Mary interrupted, uncertain of her impulse.

“No. I couldn’t ask you to.”

“You didn’t ask. I’m offering.”

“Are you good with kids?”

“I’m good with old people.”

“I hardly know you, though.”

“You know Jack,” Mary said, realizing how profoundly she was dreading the long night in the hotel room.

“That’s true. You’re practically a family friend. And I don’t exactly
know
the women the agency sends,” she reminded herself. “It would only be for a few hours. Are you sure?”

Stopped by the curb at the bank, the women exchanged telephone numbers and arranged a time for Mary to be at the house. Six
o’clock. Ronni thanked her profusely but Mary just waved her off, watching the big SUV with its license plate promising
RoNTom
pull out of sight.

She headed into the bank with her brown vinyl purse under her arm, the passport safely zipped inside. With the proof of the
passport and the help of Cooper and Lucille and the Golden Hills bank manager, the Canadian bank sorted out her situation
and promised to send a new access card in care of the Golden Hills bank.

She made a withdrawal of a few hundred dollars, to see her through until the card arrived, and waited breathlessly to see
the bank balance on the receipt that Cooper Ross handed her. It was unchanged from the last time she had checked. So that
was that. Whatever that was. Gooch had not taken money from the account. But what if he did? He could, she realized. He could
take it all.

Mary thought of the suspense novels she’d read in her youth, the thrillers she’d enjoyed on television. She wondered if her
own mystery would be solved with small puzzle pieces or revealed in a tragic surprise ending. Like Heather’s death.

After thanking the bank staff and stuffing the bills into the zippered compartment of her purse, she set off across the parking
lot toward the shoe store. There was a sale rack outside but nothing to fit her extra-wide feet. Inside the store she found
a pair of sneakers in her size, a package of six white socks and, on a display of handbags by the window, a sporty blue canvas
tote bag with silver detail. She paid for the items, wearing the sneakers out of the store, and transferred the other things
from the old purse to the new one, taking care to remember her passport, before ceremoniously tossing the brown vinyl purse
into the trash.

Mary’s attention was caught by a reflection in the glass of the pool company’s window. A creature inching toward her, frail
and stooped, balancing a spun nest of golden hair on her half-cocked head. She reminded Mary of an elderly customer she’d
had at Raymond Russell’s, the one who’d cried over the discontinuance of her Elizabeth Arden lipstick. The woman had such
severe bone loss that her spine had curled inward to form her body into a lower-case
r
. This woman had a similar curvature, though not so dramatic. But more striking than her posture and the shuffling gait it
imposed was the woman’s face: the skin so stretched that she risked a fissure if she tried to blink or close her mouth; the
eyes so wide that she appeared on the threshold of terror. She was wearing snug blue jeans that pinched the loose skin around
her waist, and a tight, long-sleeved T-shirt that gave the impression of tattoos. Mary was unaware that she was staring, and
didn’t realize she was blocking the path until the woman was upon her, saying, “Excuse me.”

Stepping back to allow her to pass, Mary saw from the back the old woman’s flat rear end in the snug blue jeans, and a bulge
that she recognized as adult wetness protection. When the woman turned and caught her staring she felt ashamed, but she could
not stop herself from marveling at the woman’s body, like a piece of damaged art, wondering what it had once been and what
journey had transformed it.

Turning, she caught sight of a sign in a window that read,
Pool’s Gold Cleaning Service. Great Deals for New Customers.
Following an impulse, she went inside the shop to make arrangements for the company to attend to her mother-in-law’s neglected
swimming pool. Even if Eden could no longer swim a hundred laps, she might be able to swim one or two, she thought, aspiring
to lessen the woman’s misery.

When she emerged from the pool place a short time later, she noticed a man looking at the discount shoe rack outside the shoe
store a few doors down. There was something familiar about him, but with the sun in her eyes, she couldn’t tell right off
who it was standing there, holding a pair of yellow ladies’ sandals in his big brown hands. Her sight adjusted and she saw
that it was Jesús García. She was set to call out his name when he suddenly shoved the yellow sandals under his coat jacket
and loped away.

Mary flashed on a memory of Klik’s Variety Store. She’d purchased so much candy from the couple that they’d never guessed
she was stealing it too. Snatching, scoffing, lifting, hiding candy bars deep within her pockets when they were ringing up
another sale, trying to appear innocent, awaiting her engorgement.

Stunned by the swift and strange nature of the theft, she watched Jesús García recede down the mall’s promenade. Eager to
know the fate of Ernesto, she started to follow but stopped, worried that he would guess she’d witnessed his crime. She feared
that she might embarrass him or, worse, anger him. She would never have taken him for a thief, but there it was. All people
had secrets.

No one was who they appeared to be.

W
alking had become easier in the days since Gooch’s departure, and Mary found further redemption in her new white sneakers.
She hardly noticed the distance she’d covered before pressing the traffic button at the intersection. She scanned the dusty
lot on the corner, surprised to see diminutive brown-skinned women gathered around the utility pole, and a dozen more wildflower
bouquets scattered on the ground. Had the women brought the flowers? She’d never seen women at the lot before.

She crossed the street, drawn to the flowers, convincing herself that the tribute could not be for Ernesto, since surely Jesús
García would not be out stealing shoes if his dear friend had just died. Still, she was curious about the roadside memorial
and the women standing beneath it. Not caring about the fine dust on her new sneakers, she walked toward them.

There was a sign pinned to the pole, decorated with a single wreath of faded plastic flowers. Spanish writing. “What is this
for?” she asked.

They spoke at once, rapidly, in Spanish.

“Not Ernesto?” she asked, suddenly unsure.

The women, most of whom appeared to be around her age, did not understand. She pointed to the sign. “Is this about a man called
Ernesto?”

But the women’s attention was caught by a silver van turning into the dusty lot. The driver, a slender man with cropped hair
and pockmarked cheeks, pulled to a stop. His eyes fell briefly on Mary as he rolled down the window and called out to the
heaviest of the Mexican women, who was also the oldest and the grayest and the weariest, “We gotta move, Rosa. We got one
hour.”

The sullen man climbed out of the vehicle and came around to release the side door. The women piled in. He paused to look
at Mary.

“I’m not with them,” she explained.

When he laughed Mary turned to walk away, vaguely insulted, but all at once she felt pain like a bullet, a burning sensation
in the spot between her eyes, that launched to her chest to cue the hammering of her heart. She grasped for the utility pole.

The man stopped laughing. “Are you okay? Should I call an ambulance?”

“No,” Mary said. “I just need to catch my breath.”

He smiled and shrugged as if to say,
I tried
, and was set to close the door when he counted the women within the van. “I said meet me here with
four
girls, Rosa.
Cuatro chicas.
”

“
Sí
,” the weary woman said from the back seat. “
Cuatro chicas.
” She counted the women in the van as proof. “
Cuatro.
”

“Four
counting
you. Not four
plus
you. My boss said four. I can’t bring five.”

“It’s okay,” she promised. “We share the money.”

“I can’t bring five. I can’t bring five when he said four. One of you has to get out.”

The women were silent at the indignity. Mary squinted through her pain, watching them as they turned to Rosa within the van
and began a quiet conference of wide eyes and shifting brows and pursed lips until the matter was decided. Eight brown eyes
turned on the smallest woman, who was also the youngest and, Mary saw as she stepped down from the vehicle, in the later stages
of pregnancy.

Coughing from the dust of the departing van, the young woman took a cellphone from her bag and attempted unsuccessfully to
make a call. Cursing in her mother tongue, she turned to Mary, her smile towing the deep scar on her right upper lip. She
looked too pregnant to be working as a house cleaner. And too young to be pregnant. “You have the cellphone?” she asked.

“I don’t have a cellphone,” Mary apologized.

The pregnant girl counted the bags in her hands, then looked up, ashen, to find the van disappearing down the road. She cursed
in Spanish.

Mary knew that look too well. “Did you lose something? Did you forget something?”

“My lunch,” the girl said in careful English, before cursing in Spanish again. She rubbed her cumbersome belly and looked
toward the street. “There is a bus?” she asked.

Mary swiveled to look for the transit shelter and felt once again the calamitous pain in her head.

“You are sick?” the young woman asked, recoiling slightly.

“No,” Mary said, swaying. She closed her eyes and could almost hear the night clock in the roar of the traffic. She waited
but the feeling did not pass, as she stood at the wreath-bedecked memorial on the dusty lot in Golden Hills, California, and
saw that this was the end. She had never imagined such a death scene, and felt some strange thrill in the unexpected. So her
final view would be of the blue sky and healing sun. Her last sound, horns on the 101 freeway. And the last person she would
lay eyes upon would be a petite, pregnant Mexican girl with a scar on her upper lip. Maybe this girl was God. And had the
power to forgive.

Mary pried open her eyes, hoping to catch a glimpse of the divine. The girl was gone. No sign of her on the road. Perhaps
she’d never been there at all. Counting heartbeats, Mary waited for the final sting, but the tightness eased in her chest
and she breathed deeply, drawing the golden dust into her lungs. The pain in her head grew quiet too. Not now. Not here. Not
yet. In the stillness, she prayed.

If any of the passing drivers found the sight of a large white woman propping up the utility pole at the Mexicans’ dusty corner
lot a surprising one, no one stopped to investigate. Grasping the pole, Mary had a sense of déjà vu, remembering her brave
young self holding a metal mop handle during an electrical storm, attempting then, as now, to do the extraordinary.

Pushing off from the pole, she started toward the hotel, tentative steps at first, then longer strides.
Not me. Not here. Not now.
She wished she were a writer like Gooch, that she might make a poem of her gratitude for the gift of second chances.

Breathless, glistening with the sheen of victory, she entered the hotel lobby, remembering her promise to babysit. She wondered
if the warmth washing over her was endorphins from her labor or if the feeling was anticipation of the night ahead, as she
recognized that the little boys might be something like the tribe she had longed for. She glanced toward the window of the
hotel restaurant as she passed, and was surprised to see the pregnant Mexican girl from the corner lot nursing an iced tea
in one of the back booths.