Michael’s Wife Read online

  … The dancing colored lights … dimming then brightening … soothing her tingling nerves … slowing her breathing … dulling the pounding in her head … her body all but weightless as it sagged against the wall … slipping toward the ground … her back sliding down the wall.

  “Doe Eyes?” The voice jerked her back to her feet. Harley stood in front of the gate.

  “Harley. Over here,” she whispered as loud as she dared and motioned him into the shadow of the wall.

  “This is got to be crazy. You know that.”

  “Oh, Harley. I thought you weren’t coming and something awful was happening to me.…” She held onto his arm, unable to stop the tears or the trembling. “I can’t take any more … I just can’t.”

  “You don’t know how close I came to not showing. Hey, come on now. What are they doing to you?” He put an arm around her shoulders, and she could smell his spicy aftershave.

  “It’s just that they think I’m Laurel … and I’m afraid of Michael … and Laurel deserted her own baby in the hospital … and Harley, something’s happening to me … in my mind. Take me away from here, please.”

  “Wait now, who’s this Laurel?”

  “They think I am.”

  “But you’re not?” He held her away from him and looked into her face.

  “I don’t know. Let’s get out of here. I’ll explain it all in the truck.”

  “Wait a minute, for all I know you’re the family nut and running away from the headshrinker and.…”

  They both stiffened as a creaking noise came from the front of the wall. One half of the massive gate was opening slowly. Laurel crouched in the shadows against the wall, Harley standing behind her and watching over her head. A car engine rumbled somewhere on the road below.

  A dark shape moved stealthily through the gate—Consuela with a black shawl over her head. Something long and white in her hand glistened in the moonlight. She reached through the gap in the gate and pulled out a sleepy Jimmy and then closed the gate carefully. He was wearing a heavy sweater over his pajamas and clutching the Teddy bear. Rubbing his eyes, he looked up at Consuela and she put a warning finger to her lips and shook her head as a car came around the bend in the road with its lights out.

  It was an ancient coupe, its engine coughing as it came to a stop in front of the gate. The driver reached across the seat to open the door, and Consuela lifted Jimmy in and sat beside him. The coupe made a U-turn almost going off the road and moved back down the hill. Just before it reached the bend the headlights were turned on.

  “What’s that all about? Who’s the kid?”

  “You don’t suppose she’s kidnapping Jimmy? Harley, let’s get your truck and follow them. Hurry.” And she started down the road before he could stop her.

  “I thought you just wanted to get away.”

  “Not till I find out where she’s taking Jimmy. Hurry!”

  “The truck’s parked just around the curve. But before I take you anywhere I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Harley, you follow that car and I’ll explain, I promise.” She couldn’t believe Consuela would join in a plot to kidnap Jimmy, but the Devereaux’ did have money.

  Harley’s truck sat on the shoulder, and as he started it down the road, he said, “Okay, talk.”

  She began with the morning she’d found herself on the desert and told him everything. As she talked the car came into view ahead of them. It wasn’t speeding as though escaping the scene of a crime. There was little traffic, and they could keep a safe distance behind it as they wound through the outskirts of the city and came to the downtown area.

  This was the first time she had talked it out and she realized how unreal it all sounded. Harley hadn’t interrupted her, and when she’d finished, he whistled softly.

  “I’ve been in two wars and been around and met a lot of ding-a-lings in my time, but Doe Eyes, you are it. Wow! You really don’t remember anything before last week?”

  “No. What am I going to do, Harley?”

  “Well, I’m not a doctoring man myself. But I think you need one. In a hurry.”

  “You think I’m crazy?”

  “Let’s face it, kid, you’re not too right. And from what you told me, I can’t see any reason for Devereaux to bring you to Tucson unless you’re Laurel. I don’t think much of Devereaux in general but just because a man works out in a gym doesn’t mean he’s going to hurt you. And he’s got a right to be mad. How do I get mixed up in these things, will ya tell me that?”

  “Where can she be taking Jimmy?” They were in an older section of Tucson, the streets dark, flat-roofed adobe buildings with their unlighted fronts jutting right to the sidewalks.

  “You’re walking out on the kid for the second time. What the hell do you care?”

  “But what if I’m not Laurel?”

  The coupe parked in the next block. Harley pulled over and shut off the lights and motor. “What if you are Laurel?”

  A small man in baggy trousers got out of the car, and Consuela lifted her heavy bulk out the other side, reaching in to get Jimmy. She carried him across the street and they disappeared.

  The bright desert night seemed darker here. During the day the streets around would be bustling, for they were near the city’s core. But there was a ghostly hush about the street at this late hour, the occasional sounds of traffic, distant, a world apart.

  “Have we lost them?”

  “No, I think I know where they’re goin’ now.” Harley shuffled along beside her, both hands stuffed in his tight pockets.

  It wasn’t until she glanced through a glassless window frame that she realized there’d been a sudden change in the neighborhood. All that remained of the building was its front, and behind it a giant crane with a wrecking ball on the end of a chain loomed like some monster of the night. The next building wasn’t there at all, just piles of brick and rubble.

  “What are they doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Probably going to build a parking lot or something.”

  Harley stopped at an open lot between two decaying buildings that were empty but still standing. Toward the back of the lot a mantellike altar was built against an adobe wall, the wall forming a shallow semicircle and topped by a small metal cross. In front of the altar and to each side of it candles burned in metal racks that were encrusted with wax drippings. Patches of the adobe brick behind them had blackened through the years.

  A faint breeze fluttered the tiny flames and made dancing lights on Jimmy’s blond head as he knelt before the altar, the Teddy bear propped in a sitting position at his side, both looking small and defenseless in this dark place with Consuela’s huge black-draped figure kneeling beside them. Another old woman knelt just in front of them, she too wearing a black shawl over her head.

  Jimmy, wide awake now, turned to grin over his shoulder at the man in baggy pants who stood a little behind them.

  Laurel whispered in Harley’s ear, “What is this place?”

  “The Wishing Shrine. A Mexican kid was supposed to have been murdered and buried here by his father-in-law because he was making time with his mother-in-law … a long time ago. He didn’t get the regular Catholic burying. For some reason there’s a story that says if you can make a candle burn all night your wish’ll come true.”

  The driver of the ancient coupe turned to look at them. He was Mexican with a shaggy mustache over an uncertain smile.

  Jimmy caught sight of them at about the same time. “Hi!” He stood up and the Teddy bear toppled.

  For just a second a startled look replaced Consuela’s usual stony expression and she rose from her knees to confront Laurel, a protective hand on Jimmy’s shoulder.

  “Consuela, why did you bring Jimmy here in the middle of the night? He should be in bed,” Laurel whispered.

  “He has been here many times before, Mrs. Michael.”

  “But why?”

  “To make a wish. I used to come and wish for him, but nothin
g happened. So I bring him here many times to make the wish. But things happen. The candle must burn to the base, but the wind would blow it out or it would burn too fast or too slow. So many things can happen.”

  “To wish for what?”

  “To wish for the return of his mother. And one night everything goes well and it burns down and the next day you come. Tonight we come for the last time. We come to say thank you, Mrs. Michael, that is all.”

  It was silly superstition, of course. But in this stillness, with the candles flickering on the weathered adobe, with the reverent figure in the black shawl who had looked up only momentarily from her vigil, where even the breeze seemed hushed and everyone spoke in whispers, it was almost believable.

  “We go home now. Come, Jimmy.” The old woman took Jimmy’s hand and stooped to retrieve the Teddy bear. She gave Harley a searching look as she passed them, and then without turning she said softly, “The little one needs his mother, Mrs. Michael.”

  Laurel, feeling depressed and defeated, walked slowly back to the truck, a silent Harley beside her. Once in the truck, she looked at the street ahead. The car with Jimmy and Consuela was gone.

  “Well, where to?”

  “I guess … I’m going back, Harley.”

  And they started back the way they had come, overtaking the old coupe as the road started winding through the low hill outside of town.

  “You think I’m Laurel, don’t you?”

  “It looks that way. If you really don’t remember anything, see a doctor, Doe Eyes. Explain it to this Michael. Things’ll work out.”

  “No one will believe it. You don’t. I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing. I have some money, Harley. I’ll pay you for your wasted time.” They pulled up behind the car in front of the wooden gates.

  “Keep your money. I’ll take this and we’ll call it even.” He pulled her over against him and kissed her … a long smothering kiss that set something in her middle trembling.

  “I don’t suppose I’ll ever see you again,” she said.

  “You know where to get in touch with me. But no more midnight errands, huh?”

  Her last glimpse was of his grinning face through the windshield as he turned the truck around and followed the car down the hill.

  Consuela and Jimmy waited for her at the gate and they went in together, Consuela locking it behind them. As they crossed the graveled courtyard a light came on over the front door.

  “Take Jimmy and hide by the wall, Consuela, quick.”

  Consuela and Jimmy had just reached the protective shadow of the wall when Janet appeared. Laurel walked up to her.

  “Well, I wondered what was going on out here. Seems to be a lot of traffic out on the road tonight.” Janet wore a smudged artist’s smock over the dress she’d worn to dinner.

  “I couldn’t sleep; I was just out for a walk.” Laurel could still feel the warmth of Harley’s kiss and she was sure she looked as guilty as she felt.

  “Of course you were, dear.”

  She passed Janet and started up the stairs to her room, knowing that Janet would report this to Michael.

  As the key turned in the lock behind her it made an echoing click in the quiet entry hall, and Laurel wondered if this is how she would feel if she went to prison.

  7

  “I do hope now that you’re here, Laurel, some of the baby-sitting chores can be taken off Claire’s shoulders. It took me two years to train her and I do miss her in my work. Evan is only temporary, you know.”

  They were in Paul’s outdoor laboratory. Laurel leaned against the chain link fence, watching Paul as he poked about the base of a low bush aglow with yellow flowers. There was a clipboard on the ground beside him and he would take the pencil from behind his ear and scribble notes to himself occasionally as he puttered about.

  “In fact, I had hoped that when Michael returned from Vietnam he would give up this military nonsense and make a home for Jimmy somewhere. But then I suppose there will always be a need for men like Michael to drop bombs on things and destroy what beauty is left in this world.” And he glanced at the sky as if he’d heard the roar of bombers and then back at his garden with a hopeless look as if it were too late to save the things he loved.

  Laurel wondered why the soliloquy. Paul had ignored her all week and now this morning had invited her to his retreat. She’d taken little part in the conversation but had let him talk on, waiting for him to reveal his reason for asking her here.

  It had been a wild week of sleepless nights and headaches, of days filled with blinding sun and people she could neither understand nor endure for long periods. She’d decided to stay and come to grips with Laurel’s world and in a week she hadn’t been able to figure out where or how to start.

  “Encelia farinosa.” He brushed a yellow blossom with the back of his index finger as if he were caressing the cheek of a baby. “Or flowering brittlebush, a hardy plant. But then I suppose you can blame my father.”

  “For the bush?”

  “No, Michael’s obsession with the he-man life. That swimming pool was once a reflecting pond. Shortly after Michael was born father had it enlarged and deepened. Later he built a gymnasium.”

  A bee darted through the chain link of the fence at her shoulder and busied itself about the yellow blossoms of the brittlebush.

  “As soon as Michael was big enough to carry a gun father took him hunting. Michael learned to kill at an early age. I suppose he had to make up for his weakling brother.” Paul looked up at her through his thick glasses with a resigned half-smile and shrugged.

  She felt embarrassed for this quaint, stuffy little man. Was he trying to make friends? Was this an opening for her to make amends with this world of Laurel’s?

  “What is this thing called?” She walked over to the giant cactus that had impressed her so the night of her ill-fated escape. It seemed less intimidating in the daylight.

  “It’s pronounced sa-war-o but spelled s-a-g-u-a-r-o, the grand old man of the desert. They can grow to fifty feet or more and live to be two hundred years old. This one’s over a hundred and fifty.” He climbed to the top of the ladder, standing next to it to show her how it still towered above him.

  Laurel stuck a tentative finger into the crevice between vertical barbed ridges and was surprised to find the green surface cool and waxy.

  “This saguaro was here before that house was built, before you or I were born and it will be here after I am dead and perhaps you. And that is only just. You see, Laurel, you are no more important in the eyes of nature than this cactus or that bush. Not particularly important at all.”

  He climbed down the ladder and removed his sweater, one side of his salt and pepper mustache quivering slightly as it often did when he was excited or disturbed. “In fact, man was nature’s one great error. The most destructive of her predators and a most unnecessary creation. It’s as though she created a beautifully ordered world and then as a strange afterthought added a timed, built-in, self-destruct mechanism. A curious thing to do.”

  “Your philosophy sounds very un-Catholic.”

  “Oh, yes, the church. I’m a very good Catholic, you know.” And again the little half-smile.

  “I thought the religious way of thinking was that God created the world for man to enjoy.” A breeze stirred her hair and the desert air came alive with the subtle fragrance of desert flowers and a faint smell like that of dried herbs.

  “God created nature which created the life forms of the universe, including man, but man created the church, you see. And I am just a man,” he said with a sadness she couldn’t understand.

  Light wisps and then soft puffs of clouds glided over the nearby mountaintops. The sky that had been so empty and washed pale and flat by sunlight seemed to deepen, to gain dimension and color as the little puffs touched and then combined to form larger clouds. More followed them over the ragged brown peaks.

  Leaning against the fence again she watched as Paul brought pot after pot of tiny cacti
from the laboratory and set them in the sun in long rows against the house. She began to relax in the warmth of the sun. It was peaceful here and lonely. Paul, nursing his plant life with such tenderness while he spoke degradingly of human life, seemed lonely too. It must have been hard for him when his father brought a young bride into the household.

  “Paul, tell me about Michael’s mother. Did you hate her?”

  He looked up from the plant in his hand as though surprised by her question. “Hate Maria? Well, at first I suppose I did. She was very different from Mother. My mother was stern, practical, ugly. She had brought me up to think that Mexicans were dirty and lazy. She and Father never got along that I can remember.”

  He put down the plant and picked up the clipboard, holding it, gazing out at the desert beyond the fence. “But Maria was everything different—gentle, kind. He married her only a year after Mother died. Maria and I were both nineteen and she was a Mexican. It was all very embarrassing, but we soon became friends. She would come out here often and talk to me while I worked, ask questions. In fact, you remind me of her now, standing there by the fence with the wind blowing your hair.”

  “Do I look like Maria?”

  “Not really. But she did have long dark hair and dark eyes like yours and the same timid, startled expression. I used to get the impression that she was always poised for flight, that if I would frighten her she’d just disappear.”

  “Did he love her?”

  “Father? He had two loves—money and beautiful women. Maria was beautiful, so I suppose he loved her. But he had a way of destroying beautiful things, tearing up the desert for shopping centers, overgrazing it, leaving a scarred earth behind when a mine closed. I have seen him lasso a saguaro from a horse and topple it over just for sport. Do you realize, the chances of one saguaro reproducing itself, let alone a tiny plant ever reaching maturity? They are a priceless and dwindling treasure of the desert.” Paul lowered his voice and looked away from her. “And then he killed Maria, too.”

  “That was an accident.”

  “When a man crashes through life the way my father did many innocent victims suffer, human and otherwise. And it’s always an accident!” He put the pencil back behind his ear and hurried into the laboratory, slamming the screen door behind him.