The Doctor's Wife

  “I can’t imagine they got too far with Michael. As I recall, he wasn’t exactly open to other people’s opinions, especially when it came to medicine. Some people thought he was arrogant, but he didn’t care. He liked his power. He’d fucking earned it.”

  “Well, it didn’t get him very far, did it?”

  “I suppose not.”

  They don’t talk for the rest of the way. Annie looks out the window at the red sky, the black trees. They drive through dreary towns where the people on the streets hunker under hats and scarves, hiding from the wind. A gray despair wanders in their eyes, the landscape sketched in gritty haste across the sky. At the Stewart’s in Nassau, they turn onto High Meadow Road, leaving the rest of the world behind. They pass the Hubbles’ dairy farm, winding down into the hamlet and past the post office, where Warren Hicks, postmaster, is closing up for the night. His buddy, Rudy Caper, waits loyally in his sheepskin coat, a boy in a man’s body, slow as winter sun, his feeble yellow dog sniffing at his heels. The same things every day, she thinks, like landmarks. Only today is not the same. Nothing will ever be the same.

  They cross the old metal bridge into High Meadow, the wide creek purple with frost. The trees stand in solemn witness to the rushing cold. Annie directs Hannah down slippery unmarked roads, nothing but fields and trees and sprawling horse farms. “It’s the next one,” Annie tells her. “Turn here.” Halfway down the road their house appears, a strapping white Federal with black shutters. Over the wide black door, wrought-iron numbers declare its age: 1812. Their dream house, Annie thinks.

  “I believe there was a war that year,” she remembers Michael saying.

  “A war and an overture,” she’d replied.

  They’d come upon the house that first afternoon by mistake, having gotten lost in a labyrinth of dirt roads. When they finally pulled over to consult a map, which did them absolutely no good at all, they saw a For Sale sign hanging in a bramble of raspberry bushes. “A little spit and polish” is what the real estate agent, a woman in a fake leopard coat and gum boots, had said when they saw the house that afternoon. “Spit and polish and a pile of dough,” Michael had whispered to Annie, but they’d made an offer right away, and the owner, who was in a nursing home upstate, had accepted it immediately, which, of course, had made them curious— happy, but curious. When all the pipes started leaking, and all the lights started blinking, they were not the least bit surprised.

  Michael didn’t seem to mind. A true optimist, he always saw the bright side, the cup half full, and she was always the one to pour it out. Where she tended to be doubtful and suspicious, Michael had faith, he could wait things out. When they fought, he would avoid her for hours afterward, sometimes days, and the time would soften the harsh corners of their argument and suddenly there would be no more fighting and neither of them could even remember what had gotten them started in the first place. Thinking about it now, Annie starts to cry, and she wipes the tears hard and fast, not wanting the children to see. “Honey, you okay?” Hannah asks.

  Annie nods, but she is anything but okay. “Do you want to come in?”

  “Only if you want me to.”

  Annie shakes her head. “No, it’s okay, you’ve done enough already. Thanks for bringing me home.” She leans through the window and hugs Hannah good-bye.

  For a moment Annie stands in the driveway, watching Hannah pull away. She can hear the birds in the trees and a dog barking somewhere far away. It’s hard to even imagine walking through the door. It makes her body ache. But there is nowhere else to go, and she takes a deep breath and steps inside.

  It’s warm in the kitchen and smells of cookies the children have baked. Annie grabs hold of the counter, feeling like the victim of a hurricane, her life strewn to pieces. Everything seems to be floating. “Are you okay, Mrs. Knowles?” Christina asks. Before Annie can even think about what to say, the children have run into the room and are standing right before her, noticing at once her distorted expression, her skin bleached white. Without words, they seem to understand, they seem to know, that something has happened, something too awful to utter. Words only make it worse, she thinks, pulling them close, her arms going round them, thinking, ashes, ashes, all fall down.

  6

  IT ISN’T EASY leaving the doctor behind, when she has to go back to her life. She thought it would be easier, but now she’s trembling, praying he will survive. His face didn’t look right when she left, his skin like dull pewter and his blackened eye oozing pus. Without her, Knowles will die a desperate, tedious death, and she will have that on her hands. The responsibility of his care weighs heavy on her. It frightens her to death.

  She calculates that it has been just over eight hours since she’d left the scene of the accident. It had been sunrise when the sky rolled up its tawdry yellow shade. She hadn’t planned on killing Walter Ooms, but he’d left her no choice, and when it was over a new plan had come to her, one that would only help her situation.

  It is important to keep busy, she tells herself, to continue as if nothing has happened, nothing out of the ordinary. She doesn’t know what to do about her husband. He will ask questions; he will know something. Like a blind man, he knows things about her. He can smell her fear when they are together. The muscles in her belly grow tight. The reality of her marriage makes her weak.

  At three P.M. Reverend Tim pages her. Lydia stops at a truck stop and uses the pay phone, her fingers shaking as she punches the numbers. When she hears his voice, she bursts into tears. Reverend Tim is patient and kind and understanding. He suggests she meet him in the hospital cafeteria. He wants to look at her, he says. He wants to see her face.

  For a moment she considers getting into the car and driving away forever. Sifting through locations like a game of solitaire, she can’t imagine which to pick, where she’d go. It doesn’t matter, she realizes, because Reverend Tim could find her anywhere. He’s got people all over the country who are willing to help him. Just name a state, he’d told her once, and I can find somebody who’s ready to demonstrate his commitment to Jesus.

  The cafeteria is empty at this hour. There is a table with three nurses drinking coffee, another where a couple of orderlies are sitting. She buys a cup of tea and sits by the picture window. Reverend Tim appears at her side as if out of thin air, and she tries to hide the fact that he has startled her. He joins her at the table with his glass of tomato juice. The juice spills a little on account of his limp. They sit for a moment.

  “You all right?” he asks. He reaches across the table and takes her hand. “You’re cold.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “You don’t have to be scared, beauty.”

  She has always liked him calling her that, just the sound of it, plush and exotic as a kumquat. Beauty. Like horses dancing. Like the sudden miraculous flash of a deer. But now it makes her stomach flip. The first time she met him she felt it: a jolt, like a cattle prod. The whisper in his eyes that said trust me. A kind of power; otherworldly. Like a saint. She’d seen an open door in Reverend Tim and walked right through it.

  “When I start questioning my life,” he tells her, “all I have to do is picture all those innocent babies. That’s all I do. And I feel justified.” He drinks the juice in one gulp and sets the glass soundlessly on the table. “I suggest you stay home for a while. Be a good wife.”

  Lydia drives home on empty back roads, speeding. The snow has stopped and the roads are clear. She warms to the thrill of speed, the rushing wind, the shadows of heavy trees whispering across the glass. It is almost unbearably beautiful to see the heavy longing of the wet brown hills. Longing to be green and swollen and fragrant with wildflowers. Longing to be trampled by children. Oh, to be a child. To run breathlessly up a great hill with the sweat spilling down your back and the smell of raw black earth and dirty sunlight. To be a child at the top of the hill where the sky spreads itself out behind you like a great blue banner.

  Someone pounding on the window. A black leather fist. A cop.
I’m caught, she thinks, dreamily, not without relief. Like a wriggling fish. Caught.

  “You all right, ma’am?”

  Lydia rolls down her window, sits back. She feels as if she’s suffocating. I can’t breathe, she thinks, but she smiles and tells the cop she’s fine.

  “Looks to me you drove off the road for some reason.”

  “I must have fallen asleep.”

  He glances around inside the car. Her black wig sits beside her on the seat, curled up like a sleeping cat. “I’m gonna have to ask you to get out.”

  She wonders if her shoes are still on, she can’t remember, and has suddenly lost all feeling in her legs. Wondering if she will fall, she gets out and steps on the hard ground, her toes spreading out inside her black boots. She is wearing galoshes she has owned since high school, there is a hole in the bottom of one of them and she can feel the wet ground seeping into her sock. I am dressed for the weather, she reminds herself, even though the snow is gone and the sun hisses down. The cop holds up a finger, making her follow it with her eyes. It gives her a headache, but she has no trouble impressing him with her abilities. She can walk the straight line, too.

  “What happened, ma’am? Any idea?”

  “The sun got in my eyes. There’s a glare.”

  “Let me take a look at your license.”

  She picks up her purse and hands him her wallet, noticing for the first time her trembling filthy hands, her fingernails caked with mud or blood, she can’t tell which. “I’m sorry, but I’m feeling somewhat dizzy now. Would you be kind enough to drive me home?” The cop hesitates. “You can handcuff me if you’re afraid,” she says with a smile, and he just looks confused.

  “That won’t be necessary,” he says, forgetting about her license, handing her back her wallet. He grins generously and helps her into the backseat. She turns, watching her car fall away in the distance. It is nice in the cop car. Blue seats. The smell of horses. He drives and asks her where she lives and when she tells him she sees it register in his eyes. Now he eyes her through the cage like she’s an exotic animal. The road is long and evening spreads its cruel blue paint across the sky. Soon it will be winter. She thinks of the doctor in the dark cellar and her stomach churns; she should be back there with him, she should be tending him. The cop is almost handsome, with blue eyes and dark black hair. He scratches the back of his head and she sees a wedding band. He is a cop. And she is just somebody who lost track of things on the road. And he will tell his wife about her later, shoveling the woman’s warm food into his mouth. He didn’t even give her a ticket and this makes her think that he is a good man, with a good heart. He is impressed, the cop, pulling up to the house, and doesn’t seem to notice that it’s falling apart. That there are pieces of this house scattered and strewn in the dead leaves but now he doesn’t see, he doesn’t choose to see because it would depress him. She catches her husband at the window, pulling aside the curtain, already in a rage over whatever it is she’s done. Then the front door opens and he’s out on the porch, wearing an unruly grin of distaste. “What is it this time?” he shouts over the clanging chimes.

  “Your w-wife.” The cop stutters a little. “She seems to have passed out at the wheel. Dizzy spell or something to that effect. She’s all right. The car’s all right. It’s over on 66, near the post office. You won’t have any trouble getting it out.”

  “Thank you, Officer, I appreciate your bringing her home.” But he won’t look at her.

  “Take care now.” The cop waves and gets into his cruiser. Lydia feels Simon’s arm going around her tight. He is smiling after the cop as if to say Thank the Lord my wife has come home safe and sound. Behind them the dogs whimper and scratch at the door. They watch the cop’s car pull slowly down the long driveway. The moment he turns out of sight, Lydia frees herself and runs into the house, ignoring the panting, restless Danes, and up the stairs into the bedroom, where she shuts the door. The bed is rumpled, an empty whiskey bottle on the nightstand, cigarette butts in the ashtray. The TV blinks silently. All the curtains are drawn except for one, where he’d looked out to see the cop coming up the hill. Lydia takes off her clothes and shoves them into her drawer, she will deal with them later, and gets into the shower and scrubs herself hard, turning the skin on her body a bitter pink. Surveying the cuts and scrapes, the bruises up her arms, around her neck, up inside her womb, she feels a fierce darkness envelop her. She sits on the floor of the shower, feeling the hard water rain on her back. What have you done, what have you done, what have you done?

  She hears Simon’s feet climbing the stairs, ice tinkling in his glass. Out of the shower and into her robe, yanking open her drawers, searching for clean underwear and finding none. When was the last time you did any laundry? She can’t remember now.

  He comes in and sits down heavily in the chair, staring into his glass. She can tell he’s a little drunk. “I’d like to know where you’ve been.”

  “A party,” she mutters, “with people from church.” She is almost too tired to lie. “Look, look”—her hair in her face—“I don’t want to get into it right now.” Searching for her brush. Tossing things off the bureau. Him standing there watching her with distaste.

  “I’m getting tired of this, Lydia. This group you’re in. This fundamentalist crap.”

  “I believe in what we do,” she says. “You can’t understand that because you don’t believe in anything.”

  “I used to believe in you.”

  “You don’t even know me, Simon. You made me up in a painting once.”

  His eyes widen and he smirks at her, but he says nothing.

  She does not want him to see her body, and she fumbles hurriedly with her clothes, pulling on an old T-shirt, a pair of sweats. He sits there, a disgruntled lump, and finishes his drink, sighs. “I think I’ve finally had enough.”

  She shakes her head, the room a blur.

  “Enough,” he repeats, the word rolling off his tongue like an obscenity.

  She stumbles to the bed, climbs in, pulls the covers up over her. I will not cry, her brain screams. I will not! I will not!

  “I thought, perhaps, that you’d grow up.”

  “Please, Simon, I’m sick, I have to sleep now.”

  He grabs her, shakes her hard. “You will not sleep. You will not sleep until you tell me the truth.”

  “I told you.” Tears dripping. “I swear.”

  Her husband tilts his head, his eyes cold with doubt. “I don’t believe you for a fucking minute.” He grabs her arms, examining her scratches. “What happened here? What’s this?”

  “There was a party. A crowd. I got pushed down.”

  “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

  “Please, Simon, let me alone. I’m sick.”

  He stands up and watches her for a moment, then leaves her alone, his footsteps echoing dully on the staircase. A moment later she can hear him on the phone. She does not know who he is talking to and she does not care. Sleep comes on hard and fast, trampling her like a thief, and she gives herself up to it, and it takes and takes until there is nothing left.

  7

  THE CHILDREN EAT very little at dinner. Annie leaves the dishes on the table and brings them upstairs. She ushers them into her room and all three of them climb onto the bed and for a long time, nearly an hour, they just lie there in silence. Wondering, Annie supposes, what will happen next. Rosie puts her face up close to Annie and whispers into her neck, “I miss Daddy.”

  “Me, too, sweetie.”

  “What are we going to do now, Mom?” Henry asks.

  “I don’t know yet, Henry, but I promise you I’ll figure it out.”

  “What about Thanksgiving?”

  “We’ll go to Grandma’s just like always.”

  “When?”

  “Soon. Next week. I promise you we’re going to be okay.” She says it, hoping it will make them feel better, knowing it won’t.