The Wife's Tale (39 page)

“That’s a screech owl,” Eden whispered. “But they don’t really screech at all. They sound like babies.” The owl flapped away,
insulted. “They’re the reason you don’t see stray cats around here. Them and the coyotes. You wouldn’t leave a small dog out
overnight, either.”

Mary moved to the pool, kicking off her shoe, setting her toe in the cool, clean water.

“You look better,” Eden said, gesturing at her new clothes. “You always did have such a pretty face. I remember thinking that
on your wedding day. You were such a beautiful bride.”

“I lost the baby,” Mary said, shaking the water from her foot.

Eden paused. “I know.”

Mary looked up. “I lost the baby the night before. I had a miscarriage the night before. Before the wedding.”

“I know.”

Mary was struck dumb.

“When Jack and I drove up to London to see you in the hospital, I asked the doctor, and he told me point-blank.”

“He told you?”

“He thought I was
your
mother. He asked me if you’d had any cramping in the night and he said you likely lost… well… he said you might not have
been aware it was happening, but it was likely that you’d lost the baby the night before.”

“I did.”

“Even then, I knew you knew.”

“Did you tell Gooch?”

“Of course.” Reeling at Eden’s confession, Mary hid her face in the sky. “He said it didn’t matter.”

“He did?”

“He said he loved you. He said no one knew you the way he did.”

Her secret had been no secret at all.
Gooch had known all along.

“When you lost the second baby I thought it was a blessing, Mary. I really did. I never expected the two of you to last. I
thought it would be harder if you had children. Maybe I was wrong about that.”

Mary nodded, turning away.

“One of the ladies from the church has invited me up to a retreat in Santa Barbara.”

“That’s good.”

“I’m leaving in a few days. I’ll be gone for a couple of weeks. I hope you’ll stay, Mary. I just can’t imagine coming back
to an empty house. And you want to be here when Jimmy calls. You still… you haven’t changed your mind about that, have you?
You haven’t been thinking about going back to Canada?”

Mary shook her head. She had forgotten Leaford’s face.

Eden gestured at the pool sparkling under the stars. “You’ve had a service come to clean the pool.”

“Don’t worry about the cost.”

“I saw someone out back this morning. If I had a suit, I’d get in right now.”

“It’s cold.”

“I like a cold pool. It’s bracing.”

“Let’s go in,” Mary said suddenly.

“I just said I don’t have a suit.”

“I don’t either.” Mary gestured at the trees and the high cedar fence. “No one can see.”

“Swim
nude?
I haven’t done that in forty years.” Eden glanced around.

The women stood apart, doffing their clothes, careful not to glance at each other as they escorted their fragile bodies to
the pool’s edge. Eden gasped when she felt the cold water on her crooked toes, and waded in slowly, squealing. Mary eased
her naked body down the ladder and fell into the deep end with a splash. She shrieked when she came up for air, and they laughed
like girls.

“Freezing!” Mary said.

“Feels good, though.” Eden stroked the water.

“It does.”

Weightless and fluid, their bodies were not forms of flesh and blood but charges, impulses, releasing bolts of fear and grief.
They swam silently, as grateful for each other’s company as they were for the magic of the stars, and the bracing cold water,
and for each inhalation of breath that reminded,
Ah, life
.

S
wimming in the mornings and walking in the evenings, Mary took note of her rapidly changing body, nodding to the muscles that
peered shyly from behind deflated pillows of adipose tissue. Her weight loss, she knew, was merely representative of other
losses, and gains. Her appetite, like Gooch, stayed away.

Gooch was making continued withdrawals from the bank. Another four hundred. Another four hundred. Standing at the instant
teller in the hot sun one morning, Mary had wondered suddenly if it was possible that the withdrawals were strategic. Could
he be back in Leaford, taking money from the account to draw her home as if
she
were the one in hiding? Not likely. And just as unlikely that he had left the state without at least telephoning Eden.

Mary read novels until her vision blurred, and throughout the days forced tiny bites of apple and toast down her gullet. She
offered further support to Ronni Reeves, making trips to the grocery store to stock the Sub-Zero with fruits and vegetables,
weaning the boys from their diet of fast and processed foods, including cooking parties with her crafting sessions so they
could concoct their own dips for carrot and celery sticks, and make muffins with mashed bananas and applesauce.

My boys,
she took to calling the triplets, who barreled into her arms when she arrived and clung to her legs when she left. Their
father had not been seen since the day he’d come to steal them away for ice cream, but had informed Ronni that he was moving
to Florida with his new girlfriend. Ronni had sobbed on Mary’s shoulder, because she’d hoped to reconcile and now saw they
never would. Mary had stroked her friend’s back and stopped herself from saying that it was for the best.

Cued by the passing of Thanksgiving, Christmas lights had gone up all around the neighborhood, and the Willow Highlands shone
as bright as the pictures of Las Vegas Mary’d seen on TV. Twinkling pixie lights creeping up thick palm tree trunks. Multicolored
cone lights netting the towering evergreens. Dripping icicle lights hanging from leafless eavestroughs and fences. Massive,
electronically generated, air-filled Santa Clauses and reindeer obliterating bay windows. Sparkling angels watching from rooftops.
Enormous synthetic snowmen staked in fresh-cut green lawns. Christmas was still a few weeks away.

“He can’t stay away forever,” Eden had said, zipping her suitcase on the morning she left for Santa Barbara. “He’s sure to
make it back for Christmas. You know how Jimmy loves Christmas.”

Mary had nodded and waved goodbye from the porch, thinking,
Yes, Eden, he could stay away forever
, and realizing how precious little her mother-in-law knew about her only son. Gooch hated Christmas.

On that point she and Gooch had found common ground. He saw the Christian holiday primarily as a commercial venture, and Mary’d
been disturbed by all the tempting food and forced gaiety. Over the years they’d spent Christmas afternoons at Pete and Wendy’s
or Kim and François’s, watching their badly behaved children guzzle soda pop and baked goods, obnoxious as drunks. For dinner
they’d gone to St. John’s to keep company with Orin and Irma, partaking of the tragic turkey and gluey potatoes prepared in
advance by the cook. At home alone in the evening, they’d opened the gifts they’d chosen for themselves and instructed the
other to buy. For Gooch it had always been hardcover best-sellers from the bookshop in Ridgetown. For Mary it had been perfume
and hand lotion because she couldn’t think of anything else.

Mary woke, alone for the second week in Eden’s little house, suffering that familiar pain between her eyes. She thought of
the pain pills in her blue purse but did not rise from the bed to retrieve them. She was startled by movement in the backyard
and remembered it was Pool’s Gold’s day to clean. She waited, watching the figure of a man straining to skim leaves from the
water. Jesús García.

Ignoring her impulse to run out into the backyard, she snatched her new jeans and blouse from beside the bed and dove into
the hallway and out of sight so she could dress. She had combed her hair and brushed her teeth by the time the buzzer sounded.
“Hay-su,” she said, when she opened the door.

He seemed surprised to see her. “Hi Mary,” he said, passing her an invoice.

“Come in and I’ll get my purse.”

Jesús García stepped inside the house, waiting as she went to the living room. “Do you want some water?” she asked.

“No thank you,” he said.

“Are you hungry? The freezer is stuffed with leftovers from the funeral.”

“The funeral?”

“My father-in-law passed away. He’d been sick a long time.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I thought you’d left your job,” she said, laughing to hide her embarrassment that she’d noticed his absence.

“They changed my route. They’ve changed it back.”

“I could defrost a muffin? Some cake?” Her stomach turned at the thought, as she’d hardly ingested a bite of solid food since
the fast food in the parking lot.

“No thank you, Mary,” he said pleasantly, preparing to leave.

“Please don’t be sorry you told me,” she said. “About what happened to your family.”

He cleared his throat. “I don’t talk about it.”

“I know. But don’t be sorry you told me.” He nodded shortly. “I thought maybe, when you didn’t come to clean the pool…”

“I thought you’d be back in Canada by now.”

“I haven’t heard from my husband yet.”

He glanced away.

“You were right about the ocean, Hay-su.”

“You went to the ocean?”

“It is the best place to see the stars.”

“I haven’t been in years.”

“I saw you steal the shoes,” she blurted suddenly. He looked at her blankly. “From the plaza. The yellow sandals.”

He shifted in his workboots. “Ernesto used to garden for the owner.”

“Oh.”

“He cheated him out of a month’s pay.”

“Oh.”

“One more pair and we’re even.”

Mary considered the way people stole from each other. Rationally. With impunity. “How is Ernesto?”

“Good. But still not back to work. What about you, Mary? Don’t you have a job you have to get back to?”

She shook her head. “I’ve got the money Gooch left me. Listen to me, I’m saying that like he’s dead.” They were interrupted
by the appearance of the vintage blue Chevy in the driveway, and the bony old man climbing out with a plate wrapped in tinfoil.
All Mary needed was more food.

“Hello, Berton,” she said, taking the plate.

The old man eyed Jesús García, noticing the pool cleaning uniform, deciding he was not a threat.

Jesús smiled at Mary. “See you next week.”

She watched him stride out to his van, and barely heard Berton ask, “I know Eden’s gone to Santa Barbara, but will you join
us at Shawn’s house this afternoon, Mary?”

She was assaulted by that pain between her eyes when she shook her head
no,
explaining that she had a babysitting job. Once the van and the Chevy were gone, she took off her clothes and went out to
the clean pool to swim in the nude.

Later that afternoon, after reading to the Reeves boys and after playing duck duck goose and after cleaning up spills and
receiving the tenderest of kisses from Jeremy, who was typically the most reserved, Mary declined Ronni’s offer of iced tea
on the patio. The spot between her eyes ached and, although she’d planned a drive to the ocean at sunset, she headed back
to Eden’s, dizzy from lack of food.

The telephone was ringing when she entered the house. She picked up the receiver to find the crackle of static. “Hello?” There
was no response. Another lost call. She didn’t wonder any more if the lost calls were Gooch.

She found her way to the kitchen but could not bring herself to open the refrigerator, none of whose bounty would appeal,
she knew, and most of which would repulse. She sat at the table, promising the cupboards,
I’ll eat something in the morning.
But she realized she was still deceiving her old friend Tomorrow. Tomorrow, to whom she’d promised balance. Tomorrow, where
she would struggle to find grace. Were she not so tired, she would have stayed awake till sunrise, to beg for one last chance.

T
he following morning Mary busied herself with housework until she was expected at the Reeveses’ to babysit. At the doorway
she bent to embrace the boys, and laughed good-naturedly when Ronni chided her about “those awful gray roots.” Ronni suggested
a trip to the hairdresser for some new color but Mary was disinclined. Even if the red had become brassy from the chemicals
in the pool, she would not give up swimming for the sake of her hair. She did submit to her friend’s insistence on a cosmetic
makeover, though.

In the huge master bathroom, the boys watched her transformation slack-jawed and silent. When their mother was finished rouging
Mary’s cheeks and darkening her lashes and shadowing her lids and staining her lips, Jeremy pronounced her beautiful. Joshua
said she looked like a clown. And Jacob said simply, “I don’t like them colors on your face.” Mary didn’t like the colors
either.

As Ronni was fishing through a bathroom drawer, Mary spotted a pair of barber scissors. “Cut my hair, Ronni,” she said impulsively.

“No!”

“Yes. Please. Just cut it off. I want to cut it right back to the silver roots.”

“Yes!” Joshua said. “Silver’s pretty.”

“Oh Mare,” Ronni protested. “It’ll make you look, you know…”

“What?”

“
Dykey.
”

“I don’t mind. Dykey is fine with me.” She thought of Ms. Bolt. “I’m sick of the roots. I’m tired of the red.” She closed
her eyes. “Cut it.
Please.
”

The boys clapped their hands, watching in the mirror as their reluctant mother held the blades poised at the nape of Mary’s
neck.

“All the way,” Mary reminded her, not peeking.

Ronni inhaled, closing the scissors at Mary’s scalp and snipping a hank of her pool-damaged hair. It was too late to ask if
Mary was sure.

The triplets collected the strands as they fell, Mary suggesting that they keep the hair to put in the craft box. She’d never
felt beauty in her hair. The consistency of its length had just been more inertia, and the loss of it felt like a certain
kind of freedom. Finally, feeling the air on her scalp and the weight of the final few locks shorn from her head, she opened
her eyes.