The Wife's Tale (19 page)

“I’m not saying I’m giving up,” she said. “Are you giving up? Gooch?”

He nodded and she knew he wasn’t listening. Even though she was aware that Gooch wasn’t pushing her toward some scrawny notion
of perfection—that if she’d been merely fat, chubby, plump, round, not
morbidly obese
, he’d never have pushed at all—she felt abandoned at his silence. He’d stopped pushing, in all ways, after that.

Shortly after their rare and briefly honest conversation, Mary and Gooch had stopped having sexual relations, the days of
abstinence accumulating gradually. Unlike his peers, Gooch had not inherited a wandering eye from his father, at least not
when he was with his wife, though she knew he looked at other women—slender, naked women with titanic tits and groomed jinnies—in
the pages of the magazines he hid on the high shelf under the towels in the bathroom. Early in their marriage, having found
the magazines between the mattresses of their bed, she’d said, “I hate those magazines. The way they objectify women.”

“Men objectify women. Women objectify men. Women and men objectify
themselves
. There’s some natural order in it, Mary. You shouldn’t take it personally.” Her mother had advised the same about a husband’s
habit of masturbation.

Mary looked out the window as the plane explored the range of night. She recalled Sylvie Lafleur’s admission about her seduction
of Gooch, “I was afraid it might never happen for me again.” Mary wondered if it ever had happened again for Sylvie. Or if
it ever would for her.

To pass the time, she projected forward. In a few hours’ time she would arrive in California. It would be late, too late to
show up at Eden’s mansion in Golden Hills, which she knew was in the suburbs of Los Angeles, beyond the Santa Monica Mountains.
And it would take some time to find transportation to the place, which Eden had once said was an hour from the airport. She
would have to get a motel, get some sleep and freshen up before arriving at her final destination. Gooch would be there. Or
he would not.

She watched the baby breathe in her lap. The beginning of a life. Days and years stretched out before him, a path to follow
or to forge, concessions to statistics and likelihoods, hope for enduring love. Perhaps this child was extraordinary and would
make some mark on the world. Mary thought of her own path from birth to present. Her life was not half over, and thus far
had been half-lived.

The baby stirred, shuddering and yawning, before resuming his tender repose. Pondering his unwritten life, Mary realized that
the rest of her own story was no more determined than his. She had already left her deep, rutty path; this new road had taken
her on the sharpest of turns. She found hope in the miracle of second chances, and in the heat of the slumbering infant, and
in the rhythm of her heart, which was not thumping or thudding but beating quietly and purposefully. She could not say whose
God it was, so decided it didn’t matter, and felt as sure as she’d ever felt anything that in that moment she was not alone.

She did not shut her eyes, for fear she’d fall asleep and drop the baby, so sat still between the two sleeping strangers,
considering her life as a wife, until the wheels bounced on the tarmac on the other side of the continent. She’d left not
only her home and city and country and life but the weight of her old worry, having divined her singular purpose—to find Gooch.
Not the husband who’d left but the man who, she could see now, was lost.

The brown woman woke flustered, grasping at her empty lap, relieved to find her baby safe in the arms of the fat woman beside
her. Another wait as the pilot announced that there was no gate available for the late-arriving craft, but the passengers
were too tired to groan, and too busy drawing out cellphones and sending messages to loved ones.

Food. Sustenance. Mary ate the apple from her purse, wondering why it had no taste.

M
ore than just looking up, Mary found herself looking on the bright side, grateful not to have to wait for luggage like her
weary flightmates, and no external baggage to heft as she made her way out of the airport in Los Angeles. She also had hundreds
of dollars in her purse, and thousands in her bank account. There was comfort in currency.

Making her way out of the baggage area, she noticed a diminutive bald man, wearing a suit and suffering a badly sunburned
scalp, watching her pass with suspicion. When he called out after her, she assumed that he had mistaken her for someone else—or,
worse, that he was shouting an insult—and did not turn around. The bald man followed her, startling her with a gentle but
firm hand on her shoulder, looking into her eyes and mouthing as though she were deaf, “Miracle?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Miracle?”

He seemed panicked, holding a sign out for her to read, and she realized it bore a name. “Missus…?”

She could not have pronounced the name. “Me?” Mary said. “No.”

His face fell. Without a parting word he shuffled away, extracting a cellphone, mumbling tones of contrition in an unfamiliar
tongue.

Mary strode through the arrivals hall, detecting, like a rattle in the dash, a shift in the rhythm of her step, an alteration
in the orchestration of her flesh. The earth’s pull seemed less, and although she didn’t care to guess at the pounds she’d
lost in the previous days, for the number seemed irrelevant, she felt herself smaller.

Long ago, when she was being whittled by her parasites, Mary hadn’t celebrated her reduction; now, again, she was more focused
on the reason for her diminishment. The larger absence. Hunger? She did not hunger for anything but Gooch.

Miracles—yes, she still believed in miracles. What were they but random occurrences that caused wonder instead of random occurrences
that brought grief? And the rule of three? Gooch had called it ridiculous, saying, “You can group your tragedies in threes
or thirties, Mare. If there are people there is tragedy. It doesn’t mean that, just because your gramma and Aunt Peg died,
our baby’s gonna die too.”

Even with the rising sun peering over the parking structure, the air was cooler than she’d expected and she shivered from
the chill. As she walked, she found that the pain in her heel had lessened.
It’s Tomorrow,
she thought, and she greeted the dawn like an old friend who’d recently waived a large debt.

Outside of the building, Mary followed the signs for ground transportation but decided she must have taken a wrong turn, since
she saw no waiting vehicles, no taxi or bus that might take her to Golden Hills and no stray people around to ask for help.
As her body was undernourished and she had not slept on the plane, she found a bench upon which to rest while she considered
her next course of action. She remembered her cellphone, and decided to dial directory assistance and ask for a number for
a taxi. She opened the phone, pressed the three numbers for assistance and held the phone to her ear. Nothing—no dial tone—and
anyway she was unsure which buttons to press to connect.

Her passport, which she’d meant to keep in a zippered compartment, was loose in her big vinyl purse, and she took it out to
look at the photograph she’d never seen before. Gooch had grabbed the photo before she had a chance to look—the bad lighting,
gray roots, full moon face—and laughed good-naturedly. “You look like a convict.” His own passport image was typically handsome,
but she’d said, “You do too.” He had chuckled in agreement. His excitement over the impending Caribbean cruise was not infectious
to her, but torturous, for she knew, even as they discussed travel needs and planned day excursions, that they would not be
sipping piña coladas on the Lido deck or enjoying a fun-filled day shopping the straw markets of Negril.

When a black stretch limousine pulled up to the curb, Mary naturally wondered, given her location, which of a thousand celebrities
sat concealed behind the darkened windows. She waited for the door to open, hoping whoever it was would be a sports star or
musician, news to share with Gooch, but the limousine door didn’t open and the car sat idling quietly. She suddenly realized
that the occupants were not leaving the vehicle because of
her
, because of the way she was staring. The window rolled down and the driver peered at her from beneath his cap. It seemed
he was waiting for her to leave, as she was the only human in the vicinity who might interrupt the privacy of the rich and
famous within his car, or snap an unflattering picture with a cellphone. She laughed out loud at the thought.

“Hello,” the driver called. She decided to object if he asked her to leave. “Hello,” he called again, to which she responded
in kind. “Where are you going?” he asked.

She thought he’d said,
When are you going?
, and planted her feet. “I’m not going.”

“Where?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she shot back. “I’m sitting right here until I figure out how to call a taxi to get me to Golden
Hills.”

The man climbed out of the limo, approaching Mary on the bench. Seeing the sunburn on his bald head when he tilted his cap,
she recognized him as the man with the accent who’d asked about the miracle. He opened the rear door of the car. The deep,
leather-upholstered seats were vacant.

“My passenger doesn’t make the flight,” he explained. “Come. I take you to Golden Hills.” When Mary did not immediately rise,
he added, “Charge is just for regular car service. Come.”

The back seat of the limousine, which faced an identical back seat, was more spacious and luxurious than any couch Mary’d
ever played potato to. There were small tables with chilled bottles of water, and a crystal glass full of individually wrapped
breath mints, and a mini refrigerator, not a Kenmore, with a glass front showcasing a selection of alcoholic beverages.

As he pulled away from the curb, the driver checked his rearview mirror. “What is your name?”

“Mary,” she answered. “Mary Gooch.”

“Drink if you like, Mary Gooch. In the basket there is food.”

She noticed a wicker basket on the floor filled with a variety of snacks—macadamia nuts, which she’d never tasted, and tidy
plastic trays with packaged cheese and crackers, premium chocolate, fresh fruit. She opened one of the chilled waters and
drank gratefully, looking out the window, astonished by the sheer volume of traffic on the roadways. It was barely six o’clock
in the morning.

“I’m Big Avi,” the driver said, grinning.

Avi with the bald sunburned head was not big but small. Half Mary’s weight and several inches shorter. He laughed at her confusion.
“My son is Little Avi,” he explained. “My card is there.”

It was, in a tiny silver holder—a business card with the name Big Avi and the company’s name. “Miracle Limousine Service,”
Mary read out loud.

“When my father-in-law started the company the miracle was to get his bank loan. Now, the miracle is to drive in Los Angeles
traffic.”

Mary nodded, absently slipping the business card into her pocket since her purse was out of reach, thinking of the stalled
traffic in Toronto days ago, hours ago. A lifetime ago. “You know how to get to Golden Hills?”

“Of course,” he answered. “I’m in the valley also. My shift is done. I’m going home. Now I don’t go empty. Good for you. Good
for me.”

When his cellphone rang he fished it out of his pocket and spoke rapidly in his foreign tongue. When he had finished his conversation
he returned to Mary in his rearview mirror. “It’s your first time in Los Angeles?” he asked.

She nodded, dizzy from the cars and lack of food. She looked into the basket on the floor. “How much does the banana cost?”

Big Avi waved his hand. “Don’t cost. Just eat.”

As she peeled the banana, her mouth did not water in anticipation. The aroma of the fruit, freshly eaten, baked into a cream
pie, blended into a parfait or boiled into a pudding, had once been bliss to Mary. An ecstasy in whose throes she could not
resist a third and fourth slice, or the whole batch, or the whole bunch. But now she realized that the fragrance was only
faint, and the taste not a flavor but a notion. She thought of the Oakwood, the apple, the granola bar and reasoned that a
sensual deficit of smell and taste, along with the stress of her situation, was behind her lack of appetite.

“Next time you take Pacific Coast. It’s more longer but more beautiful. Today we take the freeway,” the man explained. She
nodded again, watching the scenery blur.

“The airline loses your luggage?”

“No. No. I don’t have any luggage. My trip wasn’t exactly planned.”

He raised a brow, intrigued. “You leave your work and say, ‘Okay, now I go to California.’ ”

“Something like that.”

“You are brave. You are, what is this word,
spontaneous?
”

“Spontaneous? Me? No.” But brave? Maybe.

Lost in impressions of the world flashing by, Mary found nothing quite as she had imagined it except for the thickets of white
oleander and crimson bougainvillea, and the soaring palm trees listing in the wind. Flanking the dozens of lanes of traffic
were thick blocks of concrete that seemed to give foundation to the rising hills whose surface was spotted with homes, small
and bunched in places, massive and solitary and jutting out from the hillside in others.

“Is beautiful the weather here,” Big Avi remarked. “Hot in the valley. It’s lucky you miss the fires.”

Mary nodded, unsure of what fires he meant. Or where the valley was.

Sensitive to his customer’s moods, he offered, “If you like the privacy I can put the glass.”

At this he pressed a button and a sliver of dark window began to rise up behind him.

Mary shouted, “No! Please. I don’t want privacy.”

He grinned. “Most of my passenger want the glass. Mostly I carry the showbizzness.”

Mary was surprised that she didn’t really care whose celebrity ass she could claim to have shared the upholstery with, or
what tidbit of gossip he might have overheard. “I never imagined it quite like this. So many cars,” she said.