The Wife Tree (30 page)

“Morris says he caught you — that you were intimate.”

“We weren’t intimate.”

“He actually found you kissing.”

“It was — accidental.”

“Oh, come on, now, Mother! You never believed me when I gave you that kind of line as a teenager, did you? Why would I swallow your story now that the shoe’s on the other foot? How long has this been going on between you and him? Does it go back years? Were you and Mr. McTavish fooling around when we were kids, for God’s sake?”

“He says he’s always loved me,” I told her with some pride.

“They all say that, Mother.”

It’s begun to rain again here in Canada, though it’s not the icy torrent that shut down Christmas. The temperatures have risen to
a springlike warmth. This afternoon on the trip to The Cedars in the Red Cross car, I saw that the ice on the roads had softened and water was running in the deep car tracks.

“Don’t look too much like Christmas out there now, does it?” chuckled an old man sitting up beside the driver. We rode along, safe and dry, enjoying a sense of asylum, looking out through the rain-streaked windows at the cold, wet farms, the dissolving snow exposing patches of chocolate earth, rich and fertile and yearning for spring.

“Mrs. Hazzard?” said a voice when I arrived on William’s floor. I looked over and saw the head nurse behind the counter. “Mrs. Hazzard, let’s go somewhere quiet and sit down together.” She led me to a sunny alcove. “Coffee?” she asked. “Would you like to take your coat off?”

“No,” I said, suspiciously eyeing the manila envelope in her hand.

She drew a thick stack of papers from the envelope. “Mrs. Hazzard,” she explained gently, “your son followed through with his threats. He went to a judge. I have here an
ex parte
order served to us yesterday evening by a bailiff. Would you like to look it over?”

“I can’t read that small print. What does it say?”

It seemed that Morris had described me to the judge as rebellious, unfaithful, godless, on the brink of madness. All the behaviours that, had they been true, would have made my life far more interesting.

“He also says you’ve neglected the household finances,” said the nurse. “He mentions for example a bill somehow forwarded to him as next of kin because it had gone unpaid. Is this true?”

“Yes. There was a property tax payment I missed.”

“Well, this sort of thing, he says, shows that you can’t attend reliably to your husband’s financial matters and if you can’t accomplish that technical task, how can you possibly make more serious
decisions about his physical well-being, his health? Especially in a life-or-death situation. This was the case your son presented and the judge was persuaded by it. He’s handed power of attorney over to Morris and your daughter Merilee, jointly. They’ve ordered the operation. Legally, we have to comply.”

“Does it take so many papers to say only that?” I asked the nurse.

“Well,” she hesitated, “there are a number of affidavits here.”

“Affidavits?”

“Sworn statements. There’s one from someone named Goodie Hodnet.”

“Oh.”

“Another from an Olive Hazzard.”

“My daughter-in-law.”

“You must feel quite betrayed.”

“Not really. Nothing my children do surprises me any more. I seem to have become impervious. I find I no longer care about the judgments of others.”

I didn’t catch the Red Cross car home. Down the hall from William’s room, I found a ward with four empty beds — vacated I supposed by patients without the power to keep pace with the rehabilitative agenda of The Cedars’ staff — and there I hid in the small washroom, consulting my watch every hour, formulating my plan, biding my time until all the sounds on the wing had died out.

At midnight I emerged into the hallway, its lights dimmed now for the night shift. They stretched away above my head, following
the curve of the hall, guiding me like a flare path. I crept forward, hugging the wall like a burglar in fear of detection by a wandering nurse, my fingers feeling along the glazed tiles, until I found William’s room. Like his companions there, he was sound asleep. Above each of the beds, a fluorescent tube glimmered, an aid to the nurses in their comings and goings, their nocturnal checks. I lifted William’s IV bag down off its hook and placed it beside him. Feeling along the frame of the bed, I found a lever engineered to release the brakes with the slightest pressure of the hand. I slipped behind the bed, grasped the rungs of the headboard and pushed. Thanks to my new physical fitness, my renewed heart and renovated constitution, I was able to propel the bed forward with little difficulty.

We began to slide along smoothly like a ship floating in the night, the bed riding on the finest of ball bearings, the newest, most buoyant of inflated rubber tires. Out through the door we swung and into the corridor, which, broad as a highway, accommodated a wide turn. William continued to sleep, his breath wheezing through his paralyzed throat. Silently I pushed on. Along the entirely deserted hallway, sweating a little now with apprehension, exhilarated, thrilled by the excited pounding of my heart, the vibration in my chest making me feel very much alive.

We came to the room where I’d hidden until the stroke of twelve. It was to be our haven. Shutting us in, I installed William out of harm’s way in a far corner and hung his IV sac on a spare pole. Then I pushed the empty beds tight against the closed door.

I heard nothing until three a.m., when excited voices broke out in the hallway.

“Have you seen Mr. Hazzard? Mr. Hazzard’s gone. Where is he? Has he been taken away for tests? Has he died? His bed, even, has disappeared.”

“There’s nothing on his chart. He can’t have gone anywhere on his own. Anyone see him pass the nurses’ station? We’ll have to check every room.”

“Call security.”

“Call the other floors. Tell them to make a thorough search.”

“Get some extra staff up here to cover off our duties while we deal with this.”

I heard them hastening up and down the halls, entering one room after another.

“Call the director.”

“We should get hold of the son. Is the son’s number handy?”

“What’s this?” a voice soon said, just outside the room in which we were holed up. “This one won’t open. There’s something blocking the door.”

“Do you suppose this is it?”

“Hello? Who’s in there?”

“Is Mr. Hazzard in this room? Hello?”

“He can’t be in there alone.”

“Mr. Hazzard? Are you in there? Who is with him?”

“Could it be the wife?”

“That meek woman?”

“Not
her
!”

“What possible motive would she have?”

“I heard she opposed the operation.”

“I don’t think she’s capable of this.”

“She’s not strong enough to move a hospital bed.”

“Didn’t she go home hours ago?”

“She takes the Red Cross car.”

“Is that you, Mrs. Hazzard? Whoever’s in there, please identify yourself.”

“Yes, it’s me,” I admitted at last.

“Mrs. Hazzard, what on earth are you trying to accomplish? You’ve kidnapped your husband. That’s against the law. Do you understand how serious this is? Mr. Hazzard has been placed in our care. He’s the hospital’s responsibility. You’re endangering his life.”

“Mrs. Hazzard? Mrs. Hazzard, talk to us.”

I went and stood beside William’s bed. Still sleeping. I felt his IV sac and judged it to be down to a third. Should I try to obtain more IV? Negotiate an exchange of some kind? But what had I to bargain with? Why hadn’t I thought about these details? If William were to awaken now, if he could speak, what would he say?
You’re no good, Morgan, in an emergency. You’re no good in a crisis
.

“We have your son here with us, Mrs. Hazzard,” someone called through the door an hour later.

“Mom! Mom, what is this?”

“It’s a sit-in, Morris,” I called. “I’ve seen them on television. Haven’t you noticed them on the news? It’s a protest.”

“Mom, you’ve thrown the whole hospital into an uproar. I got a phone call in the middle of the night. They dragged me out of my bed.”

“You’re not needed here, Morris. Go home and get some sleep.”

“I’m calling the police,” I heard him warn the nurses.

“That’s not necessary, Mr. Hazzard. We can deal with this on our own.”

“Do something, then.”

“Call maintenance,” someone suggested. “Get the house mechanic up here.”

“Get an engineer.”

“It’s Christmas. There’s nobody around.”

“Mom,” Morris warned. “It’s no use. You can’t stop the operation. I have power of attorney now. The judge has spoken.”

“The judge can go to hell.”

“You could be sent to jail for this, Mom. You’re in violation of the law.”

“I don’t believe in the law any more, Morris.”

Silence beyond the door. In a little while, there was a
boom
that made me leap back. The whole room seemed to shake. Another
boom
and another. I saw the door shiver and heave. I broke out in a cold sweat. My hands began to tremble.

“This won’t work,” said a voice. “These metal doors will withstand anything.”

“Whatever she’s pushed against the door is too heavy.”

“Furniture.”

“Spare beds.”

Before long, I heard a siren screaming in the street below. I went to the window and looked down, saw the flashing red lights. I scanned the black sky. Would I soon hear the sound of choppers, see a helicopter swing past, paratroopers ready to fly out on ropes, come through the hospital window feet-first?

“You’re surrounded, Mom. You’ve got to come out.”

“Mrs. Hazzard, this is the police. You’ve taken a very serious action. Please open the door. If you open the door of your own volition, the law will go easier on you.”

“Mom, you’d better hope that we get in there to save Dad, because if we don’t rescue him, if he dies, you’ll be held responsible. You know that, don’t you?”

Once again I stood beside William. What had brought us here? How had we arrived? The two of us, fled to this shelter, the rest of the world on the other side of the door, clamouring to batter it
down, when for twenty years we’d lived alone, forgotten, unnoticed, with scarcely a ring of the telephone or a knock on the door to remind us we were alive.

“Is the patient in immediate danger?” someone — a policeman? — out in the hallway asked.

“The IV will be running out soon. Replenishing it immediately isn’t vital but the longer he goes without it, the more dehydrated he’ll become. I wouldn’t want to leave him in there for hours. He’s already in an extremely fragile condition.”

“It doesn’t sound like she’s going to co-operate.”

“If she has no intention of opening up, just as well to do something sooner than later.”

“We’ll have to resort to greater force. Damage to the door.”

“Is there an electric saw handy?” someone inquired. “That might be just the thing.”

Soon I heard an engine roar to life, the ear-splitting scream of metal on metal. A spinning disc sliced through the door, sparks flew as it cut a large circle. Arms came through the hole, then a body in overalls. On his knees behind the beds, a man pushed them aside and opened the door. Facing me were Morris, the nurses, a second mechanic holding a tool box, two police officers, a sleepy-looking man in a suit and tie — the hospital director? They all gaped at me as though I were mad. Perhaps I was.

I was in defiance of the judge’s order. They handcuffed me and took me downstairs and out into the luminous night and put me
in the back seat of a patrol car. Smoothly we rode along the parkway, curving beneath William’s window, beside the black and shining river. I’d so often longed to experience. At the police station, I was instructed to sit in an anteroom, where there was a great deal of excitement and criminal traffic: vandals, drunks, prostitutes, drug pushers, burglars dragged in out of the night. Finally someone came and got me, unlocked the handcuffs, led me into a small interrogation room, where a female sergeant asked me to sit down across a table from her. I had an impression of fine cheekbones, large owlish glasses, a soft mass of body, a woman, I sensed, too human to rigidly believe in the letter of the law. She consulted the arresting officer’s briefing notes, then discreetly looked me over.

“You are an unusual visitor for us,” she began in a voice so quiet I had to strain to hear her.

“I’m sorry to trouble you. I can see you’re very busy here.”

“Can you tell me what you were trying to do, Mrs. Hazzard?”

“I wanted to protect my husband from harm.”

“But you realize that, had the professionals not broken into the room, Mr. Hazzard would, in your care, eventually have died?”

“Sometimes life itself is a threat to happiness.”

“Does your husband himself want to live?”

“I wouldn’t think so. I know William. He was — is —a proud and independent man. A pragmatist. In his present condition, he can’t eat or speak or walk. He doesn’t know a pencil from a razor blade. He’d thank me for saving him from the medical system and from his own misguided children.”

“Are you quite certain of your motives?”

“Why do you ask?”

“There are women who, in your circumstances, might have wished the husband dead. Is it possible that’s how you felt?”

“I have embarked on a new life.”

“And your husband’s survival is a threat to this new life?”

“I can’t turn back. I don’t think my family understands that.”

“Your marriage to Mr. Hazzard — would you say it’s been a good one?”

“We gave seven children to the world.”

She paused for a moment, scrutinizing me. “I see,” she said, and made a few notes in the file. “If Mr. Hazzard were to survive, could you not simply cease to visit him? Live your own life to the fullest, in whatever manner you choose?”

“I don’t think society would accept that.”

“And your children? Is Mr. Hazzard important to them?”

“Only to my son, who thinks he wants to save William’s soul, when it’s really his father’s love he’s after. As for his daughters, I should point out that they haven’t been home to visit in years. They have the whole world to distract them. Why should they think about us?”