old winter boots to accommodate the sanitary napkin she’d taped to her bleeding heel, she turned to scan the distant road.
Inhaling the cold air, Mary wished idly, the way children do, that she could blink and Gooch would be on that road. The wind
whipped her face, blowing damp leaves against her legs. She had the sense that she was moving uphill when she was certainly
staggering down. She climbed into the pickup truck, a tight, crushing feeling in her chest, blood rushing to her cheeks. She
squinted, peering through her vascular tunnels. No lights at the other end. The massive coronary? The timing would be perfect.
The triangle could close. Orin. Mr. Barkley. Mary Gooch.
She wondered if Gooch, wherever he had gone, would return for her funeral. Then she realized, with familiar panic, that she
did not have a thing to wear. There was nothing to do but laugh out loud, which she did. Nothing to wear but her navy blue
scrubs. An image of a large woman in an oversized casket, hands crossed over her Raymond Russell Drugstore uniform, those
hideous silver roots. She hit the button on the radio, and cranked up the volume, encouraged by Aretha Franklin demanding
R-E-S-P-E-C-T as she urged the truck into gear and rolled out on the rain-slicked gravel.
She had underestimated the dampness of the truck’s upholstery, and realized too late that she hadn’t brought enough towels.
She planned to make some joke about her wet ass in the staff room, before Ray said something behind her thick, hunched back.
Acceptance. Denial. Anger. She couldn’t remember the order of emotions and so felt them all at once. She wondered if people
would be able to tell, just by looking, that her husband had not come home.
In the beginning, Mary’d thought often of the end. She envisioned stepping into the house one evening after work to find a
note written in Gooch’s scrawl saying he’d never meant to hurt her, reminding her they’d been too young to get married and
should have ended it a long time ago. His clothes would be gone from the closet. His tools from the garage. (She always imagined
he’d take his tools with him.) He would have given some thought to how they would divide their debt, and mentioned it in the
note. She had worried that Gooch would leave after the second miscarriage, then after the hysterectomy. She was certain he
would leave after their only vicious quarrel, when he stood firm in his opposition to adoption, arguing that his crazy, drug-addicted
sister had given three babies up, as if that were enough said.
She had shouted at him, in the only dramatic gesture she could honestly recall,
But I want to be a mother!
He’d turned on his heel and left, but returned three hours later, catching her with her nose in the Kenmore, tearing the
leftover roast beef out of her fingers, kissing her hard on the mouth and guiding her to their bed, where he held her gaze
and whispered, before his final thrust, “I love you.”
Anniversary after anniversary Gooch stayed. After a while she stopped expecting the note. She assumed that, like Orin, Gooch
was content to be where he was. Or maybe—like her with her food, Gooch’s father with the booze, Heather with her drugs—the
habit of their union had become, over time, an impossible one to break.
The phrase “neither here nor there” came to mind when Mary considered her present state. She wondered if she might find Irma
somewhere in this altered universe as she drove the path to work—the one of least resistance, a shortcut back through the
county instead of along the serene river road.
The maple trees shook their red and yellow leaves over Main Street Leaford. Hooper’s Hardware Store. Sprague’s Sporting Goods.
The upscale ladies’ clothing shop owned by the Lavals. Raymond Russell’s Drugstore, whose soda counter had been transformed
years ago into a more lucrative cosmetics department. In the parking lot behind the drugstore,
Inhaling the cold air, Mary wished idly, the way children do, that she could blink and Gooch would be on that road. The wind
whipped her face, blowing damp leaves against her legs. She had the sense that she was moving uphill when she was certainly
staggering down. She climbed into the pickup truck, a tight, crushing feeling in her chest, blood rushing to her cheeks. She
squinted, peering through her vascular tunnels. No lights at the other end. The massive coronary? The timing would be perfect.
The triangle could close. Orin. Mr. Barkley. Mary Gooch.
She wondered if Gooch, wherever he had gone, would return for her funeral. Then she realized, with familiar panic, that she
did not have a thing to wear. There was nothing to do but laugh out loud, which she did. Nothing to wear but her navy blue
scrubs. An image of a large woman in an oversized casket, hands crossed over her Raymond Russell Drugstore uniform, those
hideous silver roots. She hit the button on the radio, and cranked up the volume, encouraged by Aretha Franklin demanding
R-E-S-P-E-C-T as she urged the truck into gear and rolled out on the rain-slicked gravel.
She had underestimated the dampness of the truck’s upholstery, and realized too late that she hadn’t brought enough towels.
She planned to make some joke about her wet ass in the staff room, before Ray said something behind her thick, hunched back.
Acceptance. Denial. Anger. She couldn’t remember the order of emotions and so felt them all at once. She wondered if people
would be able to tell, just by looking, that her husband had not come home.
In the beginning, Mary’d thought often of the end. She envisioned stepping into the house one evening after work to find a
note written in Gooch’s scrawl saying he’d never meant to hurt her, reminding her they’d been too young to get married and
should have ended it a long time ago. His clothes would be gone from the closet. His tools from the garage. (She always imagined
he’d take his tools with him.) He would have given some thought to how they would divide their debt, and mentioned it in the
note. She had worried that Gooch would leave after the second miscarriage, then after the hysterectomy. She was certain he
would leave after their only vicious quarrel, when he stood firm in his opposition to adoption, arguing that his crazy, drug-addicted
sister had given three babies up, as if that were enough said.
She had shouted at him, in the only dramatic gesture she could honestly recall,
But I want to be a mother!
He’d turned on his heel and left, but returned three hours later, catching her with her nose in the Kenmore, tearing the
leftover roast beef out of her fingers, kissing her hard on the mouth and guiding her to their bed, where he held her gaze
and whispered, before his final thrust, “I love you.”
Anniversary after anniversary Gooch stayed. After a while she stopped expecting the note. She assumed that, like Orin, Gooch
was content to be where he was. Or maybe—like her with her food, Gooch’s father with the booze, Heather with her drugs—the
habit of their union had become, over time, an impossible one to break.
The phrase “neither here nor there” came to mind when Mary considered her present state. She wondered if she might find Irma
somewhere in this altered universe as she drove the path to work—the one of least resistance, a shortcut back through the
county instead of along the serene river road.
The maple trees shook their red and yellow leaves over Main Street Leaford. Hooper’s Hardware Store. Sprague’s Sporting Goods.
The upscale ladies’ clothing shop owned by the Lavals. Raymond Russell’s Drugstore, whose soda counter had been transformed
years ago into a more lucrative cosmetics department. In the parking lot behind the drugstore,
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