The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens

Author:Lori Lansens [LANSENS, LORI]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780316122023
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2010-02-09T16:00:00+00:00

Target Clear

The sun inched higher as Mary paused on the sidewalk, waiting in case, like Heather, Eden had been lying and would race out any moment, breathless and regretful, shouting, “You can find him at the such-and-such!” Or “He’s staying at a place over in so-and-so!”

When the door didn’t open, she realized that she could not walk a full mile to the Pleasant Inn. Neither could she stand still as the sun burned her fair skin and torched her red hair and seared her white scalp. She’d never used sunscreen, having never sunbathed, and rarely allowed her flesh the attention of solar rays. A few more minutes on high and she’d be crisp around the edges.

Laughter and tears, such as were promised by the novels in her heavy purse, fought in Mary’s throat as she started down the sidewalk toward Willow Highlands. On the other side of the hill was the main road, where she remembered seeing a shopping plaza. There was a bank there where she could check the balance on her funds before heading for the hotel. One half mile. Over the hill. Go.

The hill was less a slope than a vertical ascent and, climbing the white sidewalk, struggling for breath, her feet sweltering in her winter boots, she wondered idly how children ever learned to ride bicycles in Golden Hills. Up ahead, she saw a middle-aged Mexican man hefting a lawn mower from the back of a small red truck near an empty children’s play park. She waved to him, ignoring his look of confusion, and called inanely over the clanking, “Hot, eh?”

The spare strength she possessed carried her halfway up the steep hill before she stopped to rest on the edge of a sparkling rock fountain in the shade of a monster garage. Willow Highlands, she thought, catching her breath and looking around. The splendid abundance to which the universe aspired. Ah, beauty. What would Gooch have made of this foreign landscape? Gooch had once repeated to Mary a conversation he’d had with an immigrant from West Africa at a roadside diner on one of his deliveries north of London. The man had told Gooch that it was his dream to raise his children in America, so they could grow up to take things for granted.

Though Gooch coveted Corvettes and longed for Lincolns, he was not by nature—or perhaps it was because of circumstances—a materialist. It was not new things but new experiences that he described craving, in candid moments, in those early years when Mary still played along. “We should take a driving trip to British Columbia,” he’d say, or “Someday we should go up the St. Lawrence to see the migrating whales.” And “I want to take you skating on the Rideau Canal.” He’d never mentioned the redwoods or Big Sur as dream destinations, but they could have been. So could Washington, D.C. Or Yellowknife. Or New York. Or Istanbul. Come with me, Mary. Come with me.

Sitting on the fountain’s edge with a spray

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