A Reliable Wife Read online

  It was trim, the house, simple without being austere, and it was bright with lights, not at all the way she had imagined it. It sat foursquare in the center of a neat lawn, steps running up to a wide porch. She had imagined something more squalid, something grown greasy through years of neglect. She had imagined a house that was desolate, an unloved structure in a bleak terrain. This was a surprise, like a crisply wrapped package, all white tissue and blue ribbon trim.

  The moment ended and time began again, all in a rush. The face howled, vanished from the window and the door flew open. A woman stood dumbfounded inside.

  Ralph Truitt was bleeding badly and lay heavily against Catherine. His breath was easy, his eyes were open but staring ahead without direction or focus, and the porch, the glittering door, and safety seemed miles away.

  “Truitt?” the gray head thrust out, eyes peering into the swirl, voice carrying past Catherine’s ears. “Is that you Mr. Truitt?”

  “Help! We’re here!” Catherine yelled into the wind, hysteria suddenly seizing her. “Please come! We need help.”

  A man and a woman ran from the house, their hair, their clothes catching the wind and flying madly. The man went straight for the faltering, groaning gelding and began to check the extent of the injuries, speaking calmly, his hand on the horse’s flank as he shook his head at the pitiful leg. Catherine could see the broken bone thrust through the flesh, could feel the animal’s defeat in the way the ribcage shimmered with pain.

  The woman ran straight for Truitt. “Sweet Jesus,” she yelled. “What’s happened? What did you do?” Her brittle, bright eyes caught Catherine’s, held there, accusing.

  “The horses bolted. A deer . . . they bolted and threw him. I think his head hit the wheel. It wasn’t my fault,” she added uselessly. “It was a deer. So fast.”

  “Inside. Larsen!” The old man’s head jerked up from the animal, which was slowly sinking to the ground. “Truitt’s cut bad. Get him in the house.”

  So the three of them, each taking a part, carried Truitt’s body into the house. He was jerking around now, wild with the pain and the blood, and it took every muscle of all three of them to get him up the stairs and into the house. They laid him on a velvet sofa, put a pillow beneath his head.

  The woman said, “He’ll bleed to death.”

  “He needs a doctor. Surely . . .”

  Mrs. Larsen, she must have been, turned on Catherine. “In this weather? Not even for Ralph Truitt. It’s miles both ways, and too late by a long shot when the doctor gets here. If you can find him. Drunk. If he’ll come. Drunk and useless.”

  “Get my case, please,” Catherine said. She was completely calm. “From the wagon. A gray case. And hot water. And towels and iodine, if you’ve got it.”

  The old couple stared at her, not sure. Truitt lay on the sofa, eyes straight ahead.

  “Get her case,” the old lady said. “And get your gun. For that gelding.”

  Larsen suddenly moved, leaving the room. The old woman, his wife, Catherine supposed, moved as well. Truitt came suddenly awake, eyes red with pain, and Catherine and Ralph stared at one another in the sudden quiet.

  “You’re not going to die,” she said.

  “I have that hope.”

  A sharp gust of wind blew into the hall as Larsen went out into the night. Catherine and Truitt waited. She felt she might take his hand, but did not.

  They heard the gunshot from the yard. Catherine jumped, and ran to the window, pulling back heavy velvet curtains to see the single thrashing of the giant horse, its head a hollow of blood.

  After a long time, Larsen came back through the snow, carrying Catherine’s suitcase in one hand, the pistol loose in the other. He laid the suitcase at her feet. He looked at her with hatred as though all of it had been her fault, and all of it unforgivable.

  She clicked the rusted cheap clasps and opened the suitcase, rummaging around in her black clothes and plain underthings to find her sewing case. Turning, she stepped on the hem of her skirt, ripping again at the tear. . . . Jesus hell, she thought, the jewelry. She knelt quickly, felt at the hem. Nothing. Christ and hell.

  Mrs. Larsen came back, a bowl of steaming water in her hands, her arms filled with towels. She stared at Catherine, eyed her skirt.

  Catherine rose. “It’s . . . it’s nothing. It tore. I lost something. In the accident.”

  “Well, it’s gone then. Gone till spring.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Lost, yes, thought Catherine. Lost my jewelry, and lost any way out of this place.

  Catherine stared at Truitt. “This will hurt.”

  “It hurts now.” He managed a weak smile.

  “Is there anything to drink?”

  “I don’t touch liquor.”

  “It’ll hurt worse.”

  “I know.”

  “Can you sit up? A little?”

  He groaned as they raised him up from the sofa, enough for Catherine to sit and settle his head on her lap. The blood dripped steadily onto her skirt. She could feel it wetting her legs almost immediately.

  As Mrs. Larsen held the bowl, Catherine dipped a towel in the steaming water, began gently to clean his wound. She knew it hurt, but beneath her hand his face calmed, his breathing slowed. He never closed his eyes, never made a sound, although tears streamed down his cheeks.

  “I cry,” he said. “I’m like a baby.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so. Ma’am? The iodine.” She took the bottle Mrs. Larsen produced from the pocket of her apron, tipped it enough to pour a tiny stream, just along the wound that ran from his eyebrow to his hairline. She dabbed at the trickle, and Truitt closed his eyes, then winced as the sharp sting hit the bone, which Catherine could see, as the sharp smell brought to each of them a sense of the urgency of what she was doing.

  That poor horse, she thought, dragging us all this way, lying now in the snow. Tomorrow, she supposed, whenever this stopped, Larsen would use the living horse to drag the dead one out of sight.

  “My sewing kit, and I need you, Mrs. . . .”

  “Larsen, Miss.”

  “Mrs. Larsen. I need you, very gently, to press the edges together, like this.”

  Catherine showed her, like pressing pie dough to the edges of the pan, her thumbs smoothing, smoothing the skin until the edges almost met. The cut was not clean. There would be a scar, no matter what.

  Catherine found her strongest thread, dipped her needle in the iodine, and blew gently on the needle, and on the cut, bleeding harder now.

  She threaded the needle. She saw how Larsen turned away, busied himself elsewhere as she took the first stitch.

  “I’ll get the wagon put away now. Unless . . .”

  “No. We’re fine.” The needle pricking into and through the flesh, Catherine’s hand steady and calm. The door opened and closed again as Larsen went out into the night.

  Slowly the wound began to close, the flow of blood to lessen. “Are you a nurse, Miss?”

  “My father was a doctor. I watched him.”

  It was a lie, however lightly she said it. Her father was a drunk and a liar. He had no profession. Catherine knew no more than the simple fact that she had not come all this way to watch Ralph Truitt die in her arms. If you were going to sew a wound shut, she figured, there were only so many ways to do it.

  “So you never . . .”

  “Never. But I watched him many times. There’s no other way.”

  At some point she felt Truitt slip away from her, lose consciousness. His pale eyes, fixed and white with pain, finally closed, and she saw for the first time, darting her eyes from his wound, the expanse of his skin, so close it was as though she were looking through a magnifying glass. His beard was like black wheat stubble on a dry field. His skin was pale, and while from a distance he looked younger than she knew him to be, up close she could see the thousands of tiny lines across his skin. She could see the future of her own face, and she could see something else in him as his muscles went slack and his skin
sagged away from his strong big bones. She could see the effort it cost him to keep his face composed, hopeful, and she could see the sadness that lay beneath the steely composure, the lack of life in him.

  Her tiny fingers worked swiftly, following Mrs. Larsen’s hands along the length of the cut, and finally she was done. Not too bad.

  He opened his eyes.

  “All done.” She smiled at him, her hands still on his face, his head in her lap.

  “Thank you.”

  “We have to get you to bed. Could you . . . it would be better if you tried to stay awake for a while. Your head may be hurt. As long as you can.” She shyly reached to touch his face, but Larsen appeared, stamping, to interrupt her.

  “We’ll take him from here, Miss. I’ll get him upstairs. Walk with him. There’s no need for you, and Mrs. has your dinner. I’ll take him.”

  Larsen reached under and pulled Ralph to his feet. Ralph swayed, but held upright, and Catherine sat as she watched the two of them clumping upstairs, Mrs. Larsen following with useless flutter.

  Then they were gone, and for the first time, Catherine looked at the room in which she sat, and was startled by it. It was nice, not at all what she had imagined: very plain, very clean, and spotless. It was an ordinary square room, and yet here and there sat pieces of furniture that seemed strangely incongruous, as though they had come from some other house in some other place. Bright color. Rich fabrics. Graceful and finely made furniture, only a few pieces, standing alongside the more mundane farm things, the china press, the plain pine grandfather clock.

  The sofa she sat on was one of these odd pieces, all gilded arms and carved swans and sunset colored damask, now stained with Truitt’s blood. From her view, it looked like the kind of room where nobody would know where to sit, the kind of place maintained in perfect order, even though it was never used.

  There was one chair, plain, strong oak, which was clearly where Truitt sat in the evenings, smoking a cigar, an ashtray and humidor on the low plain table next to it, the table covered also with farm journals and almanacs and ledgers. Next to it, a lamp that glowed with brilliant colors from a stained-glass shade, crimsons and purples, grapes and autumn leaves and delicate birds in flight. It was the kind of lamp she’d seen only in hotels. She had never imagined an ordinary person would own one, but Ralph Truitt did.

  He must be very rich, she thought. The thought warmed her, and brought a smile to her face. He’s not going to die. Now it’s beginning. Her heart raced as though she were about to steal a pair of kid gloves from a shop.

  She could hear the heavy sounds of the three moving upstairs, one boot falling on the floor, then another. Ah, they were undressing him, she realized. She had thought she had been shut out because they had not wanted her to see his weakness, but it was, in fact, his body they were denying her.

  The clock ticked steadily. The wind howled without peace. Catherine sat alone, wondering if anybody on the face of the earth knew where she was, could picture how she sat, her hands quietly in her lap, her fingers touched with blood, her torn hem, her lost jewels.

  She wanted a cigarette. A cigarette in her little silver holder. And a glass of whiskey, one glass to take away the chill. But that was another life in another place, and here, in Ralph Truitt’s house, Catherine simply sat, her hands in her lap.

  Here they were, four people, each one moving separately through the rooms of the same house. She had held his head in her lap and her clothes were wet with his blood, yet she was alone. Alone as she had always been.

  Sometimes she sat and let her mind go blank and her eyes go out of focus, so that she watched the slow jerky movements of the motes that floated across her pupils. They had amazed her, as a child. Now she saw them as a reflection of how she moved, floating listlessly through the world, occasionally bumping into another body without acknowledgment, and then floating on, free and alone.

  She knew no other way to be. Her schemes, she saw now, were listless fantasies, poorly imagined, languidly acted, and so doomed to failure, again and again.

  She rose to her feet and wandered through the rooms of Truitt’s house. There were not many of them, and they were all alike, equally immaculate, furnished with the same odd blend of the rustic and the magnificent. The dining room was tiny, but the table was elaborately set for dinner for two. She picked an ornate fork from the table; it was almost as long as her forearm and astonishing in its weight. The brilliant polish caught the light as she turned it over to read the maker: Tiffany & Co., New York City. She felt she had never seen anything so beautiful in her life.

  “Larsen’s with him.” Catherine dropped the fork as Mrs. Larsen came into the room. “I’ve made supper. It’s maybe not spoilt too bad, and you might as well eat.” She adjusted the fork Catherine had dropped, so that it was in perfect alignment with the other, equally massive utensils.

  “I was just . . .”

  “Looking. I saw. Sit. It’ll just be a minute. You must be starved.”

  Catherine sat at the table. She felt she was about to cry, for no reason except that it was a long way back and she was alone. She tried to fix her hair, then let it go.

  The soup was clear and hot, the lamb cooked in a sauce that was both delicious and exotic, all of it accomplished and fine in a way that would have been admired in any restaurant in any city she had ever been to, and Mrs. Larsen served it with a simplicity and finesse that surprised and pleased her. She had thought she wasn’t hungry, but she ate everything, including a dessert made of light meringues floating in glistening, silky custard.

  The beautiful plates came and went, the utensils were used until none were left, and finally, Mrs. Larsen stood in the kitchen doorway and they both listened to the clumping of Larsen’s boots as Truitt and Larsen walked back and forth, back and forth in an upstairs bedroom, first across a rug and then on the floor and then back to the rug.

  “That was a fine dinner.”

  “Well, I’d hoped for more of a celebration, but . . .”

  The footsteps continued.

  “But there’ll be other nights, I guess. Miss?”

  “Yes?”

  “I hope you’ll be happy here. I truly do. It wasn’t much of a welcome, but I do, we do, welcome you.”

  Catherine blushed, embarrassed. “You’re a wonderful cook.”

  “Some people have one gift, some another.” She made rough sewing gestures with her hands. “Me, I was always a mess with a needle. But put me in a kitchen, I know where I am. Even after a long while, and it’s been a while, I know what to do.”

  Catherine stood, and they stared awkwardly at each other. Catherine was suddenly exhausted. She looked at the ceiling, the clodding boots.

  “Will they be all right?”

  “Larsen’ll look after him. They’ve known each other since they were boys. Truitt’s safe enough.”

  Mrs. Larsen began to clear away the dishes.

  “I’ll help you. I’m used to keeping myself.”

  “You should rest. Go to bed if you want.”

  “Where do I . . .”

  “Sleep? I’ll show you.” Wiping her hands on a dishtowel, then licking her fingers to put out the sputtering candles, extinguishing the sparkle on the silver, she led Catherine out of the dining room, picked up her case and started up the stairs. “It’s a nice room. You can see the river, and you can see over to the little house where Larsen and I live.”

  She opened the door to a graceful bedroom, the simple bed laid with good linens, the tester of the delicate four-poster hung with lace.

  She put the suitcase on the bed, went to the dressing table and poured water from a pitcher into a porcelain bowl. She went to the bathroom and brought back a beautiful cut crystal glass of cold water, which she set neatly by the bed.

  “The facilities is down the hall. Indoors. First in the county. I’ve tried to make it nice. I know you come from the city.”

  “Nothing so grand.”

  “You’d be surprised the number of p
eople don’t know the first thing about how to use all those forks. You can tell the places a person’s been by the way he eats. You’ve been some fancy places.”

  Mrs. Larsen left her. Catherine unpacked her things, hanging her pathetic, ugly dresses in the small closet, laying away her underclothes in a bureau. This would be home, she thought. These are my things and I am putting them away in my new home. The last thing in her suitcase was a small blue medicine bottle, and she sat for a long time in a chair by the window looking at it, before she put it back in a silk pocket inside the suitcase and slid the whole thing under the bed.

  She opened the heavy curtains and immediately felt the pressing cold of the air outside. Tired as she was, it was a pleasant sensation, bracing, reminding her of her own flesh. The few lights from the house lit up the constant swirl of the snow outside. She sat in a small blue velvet chair and watched the storm, and drifted in and out of a light sleep accompanied by the clumping of Larsen’s boots in the room next door. Her own life was like that of a stranger to her.

  Finally, the footsteps stopped. She waited until the house was completely quiet, and then she stood, and stepped out of her ruined skirt, undid the thirteen buttons of her awful dress. She could smell the hard iron smell of Truitt’s blood on her clothes, on her skin, and she used a linen cloth and the warm water in the nightstand washbasin to bathe as best she could.

  She stepped into a plain nightgown she had sewn only two days before, and stood, as she so often did, looking at her face in the oval mirror.

  This was not an illusion, here in this house in this storm. This was not a game. This was real. Her heart felt, all at once, that it was breaking, and tears stung her eyes.

  It could have been different, she thought. She might have been the woman who dandled a child on her knee, or took food to a neighbor whose house had been visited by illness or fire or death. She might have smocked dresses for her daughters, read to them on nights like this. Worlds of fantasy and wonder on a night when you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. She couldn’t exactly imagine the circumstances under which any of this might have come to pass, but, like an actress who sees a role she might have played go to someone with less talent, Catherine felt somehow the loss of a role more graceful, more suited to the landscape of her heart.