The Doctor's Wife (53 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Brundage

BOOK: The Doctor's Wife
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“Let me try.”
 
 
“You’re not ready. You need to rest. You need to heal.”
 
 
“Take me to a hospital.”
 
 
“That’s not an option. At least you’re alive. Try to be grateful.”
 
 
“Barely alive,” he grunts.
 
 
“You look better today. Much better. I can see a big difference.”
 
 
“I told you. I’m very sick. I’ll die here. My eye, for one—I can hardly see out of it. And my hand. If it’s not set properly, if it’s not put in a cast, I’ll never be able to practice again. I’ll never be able to deliver a baby. Is that what you want?”
 
 
She says nothing to this.
 
 
“Look how I’m sweating. I’m burning up! For Christ’s sake! Please! Out of human decency! Take me to a hospital!”
 
 
“I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to scare me.”
 
 
“I don’t want to die!”
 
 
“I have to go now.” She starts for the stairs.
 
 
“Please don’t go,” he begs her. “Don’t leave me here.”
 
 
“Try to eat. You need your strength.”
 
 
“I’ll never eat for you.” He hurls the bowl of oatmeal after her. “I’ll never fucking eat!”
 
 
He hears her upstairs, running across the squeaking wood planks out into the world beyond, a world he does not imagine he will ever see again. The hours twist and turn and his mind careens through a tunnel of desperation. She does not return for what seems like days, and he craves the drugs she’s been feeding him, craves them feverishly. His hatred of her taints his blood like a poison, yet she is his only way out of this awful place. His heart spins with dread. He must somehow convince her, he realizes, to let him out.
 
 
He wakes hours later in a cold sweat. On the tray next to his bed there are several Baggies full of pills—unlabeled—he cannot possibly identify them—and a large bottle of water. She must have bought them on the street, he surmises. Or stolen them from the pharmacy. Even in his pain, he knows better than to take the pills without knowing what they are. Better to be especially cautious now, he thinks. Better to be ready for her. Even with only one good hand, he is angry enough to rip her throat out the first chance he gets. Something on the tray catches his eye and he fishes out a large manila envelope. Inside the envelope is a pair of glasses, cheap drugstore bifocals. He puts them on, relieved that his vision is slightly improved. There’s more inside the envelope: photographs. Pulling them out with curiosity, he finds himself looking at pictures of his wife and Simon Haas. They are naked on a bed in a motel room. Gasping, his mouth watering with rage, he witnesses their lovemaking in black and white, noting the variety of positions, a sordid erotic display. How could this be? he thinks. How could she do this?
 
 
Examining the photographs, he feels light-headed. Weak. It’s not the sex that bothers him most, he realizes. It’s the expression on her face. The way her head is thrown back with her eyes closed and her mouth open as if a languorous sigh is coming out of it. An expression of utter joy, he decides, and one that he cannot recall ever seeing in his own bed.
 
 
63
 
 
ON MONDAY MORNING, Lydia unlocks the cellar door as if it were the cage of a wild animal. She sinks down each step, slowly, with trepidation, as if any moment the wild beast will break free of its chains and rip her to pieces with his teeth. Descending into the dampness, she can smell his awful smell. Like the stink of her dying father, he is not particularly fastidious when it comes to hygiene. It is deliberate, of course. He thinks it will keep her away from him. He doesn’t realize her level of tolerance. He doesn’t realize how important he is to her.
 
 
She hears the wind. The wind is great. The wind is magnificent. The wind has filled her with spirit. Driving here in the early evening she’d marveled at the trees moving their black limbs all at once against the copper sky.
 
 
“Our Father, who art in heaven,” she blurts out, going down the steps. “Hallowed be thy,” but she can’t seem to finish. He lies there in a fit of despair. He has not touched the water by his bed, nor has he eaten any of the food she’s left him. If things go on like this he will die, just as he has warned, and her plan will have been a failure. Lydia did not anticipate this kind of reaction. She does not know what to say to him; she does not know how to cheer him up. If only he would take the pills. They were very expensive and they are very good; she has sampled several of them herself. Scattered across the floor are the photographs of Annie and Simon, ripped to shreds. As she nears him, she sees that he is crying, his whole body shaking. It puts her in mind of her father, at the very end, when he would lie there and weep with the TV blinking and all the wild pussy willows clawing at the windows.
 
 
Lydia stands there holding the tray, and she is shaking, too; they are shaking together. They have both been spurned; they have both been betrayed. This is something they share, like a death, and they shake mournfully. They mourn together. The teacup rattles on its saucer. Without a thought, she lets it all go, just drops the tray to the cement floor without a care. It makes a loud noise when it hits and the plate breaks and the little cup rolls and they are both startled by it, by its deliberate intrusion. And in the moments that transpire he turns and looks at her and sees that she, too, is crying. And she thinks that perhaps he knows her with a perfect clarity, the keen song of a loon, perhaps, as it calls to its lover across the lake. The moment ends and he does not take his eyes from hers, and it is as if something new has been established between them and it makes her cry a little more as she kneels down and scoops up the broken china as quickly as she can. Trembling, she welcomes the small cuts and slivers, she deserves them.
I will not cry in front of you,
she thinks, clutching broken pieces of china in her bleeding hands, and runs upstairs.
 
 
64
 
 
THE HOURS DRIFT and sigh. He spins like a meteor through space, dreaming of Annie. Her fingertips, like raindrops. There is the sound in his head of his children laughing. Upstairs, he hears the radio. Now and then, the weather report comes on, the man with the sensible voice:
Expect snowfall today, reaching over six feet in the higher elevations, two or three inches in the Capital District.
He thinks he can hear the snow. The sound of it falls like the whispering of children. The whispering of children in a dying man’s room. He wonders what time it is. What the day is. He has lost track.
 
 
Michael hears the locks and rouses himself to a sitting position. His mouth is dry. When the door opens, the yellow light in the hall quivers behind her. Big blue hydrangeas on the wallpaper like the backdrop in a play and he is deep in an audience, watching a madwoman. Her boots are rubber, caked with mud, and they descend one after the other slowly, feebly, like a person in pain. She wears her pathology like a heavy coat.
 
 
“We need to talk,” she says. Like the steps to some bizarre primal dance, her body guides him: the white drifting smoke from her cigarette, her eyeglasses swinging on a string around her neck. The apron she wears, tied in a bow around her waist. The gun jammed in the right pocket. She lights the oil lamp and he blinks. She takes her gun and sets it down. “I realize what you’re doing,” she says, lighting a cigarette. “The fact that you’re not eating or drinking will get us nowhere. I’m sorry about the photographs. I felt you should see them.”
 
 
He nods. “It’s not just her fault,” he manages. “It’s all of ours. You can’t just blame Annie.”
 
 
“Oh, yes I can,” she says. “I can blame her all I want.” She rifles through her bag and pulls out some whiskey and a bottle of pills. “You can talk yourself into thinking it’s your fault, Michael. You can talk yourself into it all you want. But we both know it’s not true. We both know your wife is a whore.” She swallows a glassful of whiskey. “I’ll have to kill her if she doesn’t leave him alone. I’m just telling you now. I’m just telling you so you’re prepared.”
 
 
It is only now that Michael fully understands the extent of his dilemma. “That won’t be necessary. I promise you that.”
 
 
“How can you be so sure?” She laughs, filling up her glass.
 
 
“Because she’s my wife. I know her better than you do.”
 
 
“I hope you’re right. Because I’m very angry with her.”
 
 
“I know you’re angry. I’m angry with her, too.”
 
 
“I’ve had to work very hard to control myself. It makes me sick to think about all the things they’ve done together. Like animals. Nasty, nasty, nasty. It’s amazing what people do when they get between the sheets, isn’t it? You of all people should know that, Dr. Knowles. Perfectly respectable people by day, but in bed—I can’t even talk about it without feeling like I’m going to puke. He’s all I have! I don’t have anyone else! He’s all I have! And she stole him from me! She stole him. And I want him back! Do you hear me?”
 
 
“Lydia, please try to stay calm.”
 
 
“I’ve thought of killing her. I’ve thought about it many times. When I first found out. I went through all of the steps in my head. Just how I’d do it. It’s not that difficult. It’s not as hard as you think. I’d go into your house when she’s at work. I’d poison the wine she drinks at night, the cream she dumps in her coffee. Splat, there she goes!
Splat! Splat! Splat!”
 
 
“You touch her and I swear I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking rip you apart!”
 
 
“I think the back field will do nicely,” she says lightly, like a woman planning a garden party. “I’ll need help, of course, with the body. Dead bodies are awfully heavy! But you’ll be here for that. We’ll dig a nice cozy grave and put poor Annie into it. I’ll even plant flowers all over it in spring. All kinds of lovely flowers.”
 
 
“You’re fucking twisted, you know that?”
 
 
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
 
 
He shakes his head. If only he could wrap his hands around her throat. He’d throttle the air right out of her. “One of these days someone’s going to figure this out, Mrs. Haas, and when they do, when they find you, and they
will
find you, they’re going to wrap you up in one of those straitjackets and cart you off to the state hospital. You ever spend any time in a straitjacket? It’s not a whole lot of fun. Of course the drugs aren’t too bad, if you don’t mind drooling all over yourself, shitting your pants.”
 
 
She raises her gun, swift as a bird, and takes aim at his head.
 
 
“Go ahead. Shoot. I dare you.”
 
 
“I will if you don’t shut up.”
 
 
But he can see she’s bluffing. The drugs she’s given him are starting to kick in. They make him brawny, shameless. He spreads his arms, rattles the chains on his feet. “Shoot me, goddamn it! Come on,
Mrs.
Haas, put me out of my misery! You fucking insane woman! You fucking lunatic!”
 
 
The blast comes louder than he ever imagined, like a wrecking ball making impact in the cinder block behind his head. His whole body quivers with the aftershock, his ears rendered useless. The woman rises like a ghost in the drifting smoke. “Drooling and shitting your pants,” she says softly. “I guess you know something about that now.”
 
 
And then she’s gone.
 
 
65
 
 
BOILING MAD, Lydia drives to the doctor’s house in the rental car. The rental car is good, she thinks, popping a few more pills into her mouth. The rental car is very good. Roomy. American. Driving it, she feels like another sort of woman, not a woman with a husband who betrays her. No. Not that sort of woman. Someone clean. Someone with an orderly life. Someone who moves quickly through life and offends no one. Someone pure.
 
 
Lydia finds the street easily and creeps up slowly, as if she is uncertain of an address, as if she is lost. A squall of black crows crosses the field. Annie’s Volvo sits in the driveway. Lydia passes the house and parks down the street behind a witch hazel bush. She dials Annie from her cell phone. Annie’s voice comes hollow and tentative, like the other end of an echo. “Who is this? Who
is
this?”

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