How to Be a Good Wife (15 page)

He rubs my arms.

‘You found me on the doorstep?’ I say.

Hector nods. ‘You were so thin and ill, like a ghost. Much easier to carry.’ He smiles. ‘But I couldn’t leave you out there then either. I could tell you were a good person. And I was right.’

As Hector takes my hand, I see a younger Hector’s face, leaning over the bath as he washed my body. Wrapping me in a towel, he sat me on the edge of the bed. He pulled through my hair with a comb, gently at first, and then harder, until he was holding it at the roots and brushing the ends roughly. He dried it with a new hairdryer which came from a packet: despite the warmth my teeth still chattered. Asking me to open my mouth, he checked my teeth, moving my head up and down, looking at the dark hole where one was missing. He told me we’d have to get that looked at, asked me if I could remember how it happened.

I look up at him now, trying to piece it together, but I’m so tired.

‘I don’t remember,’ I say.

‘Well, who knows what you’d been taking? You hadn’t eaten in a long time by the look of you. You couldn’t even feed yourself.’

He smiles. Again, I see a flash of Hector breaking biscuits between his hands and feeding them into my mouth, slowly. Then later, there was chocolate and cakes, anything to coerce me into eating. But my mouth doesn’t move: anything he puts in just rolls back out again. I hear him curse.

‘Let’s get you warm and back to bed,’ he says. ‘I’ll bring you a hot-water bottle. Like the old days.’

*

Hector turns on the shower and the steam starts filling the room, losing our reflections in the mirror. I am so cold. He helps me take my clothes off and then I step beneath the flow of the water. It’s warm, soothing, and I start to feel better.

When I step out, Hector is gone and I am alone. Standing on the bathmat, a towel wrapped around me, I watch the steam begin to fade. There is a dark shadow next to me in the mirror. Through the misted surface, I make out her bleary reflection, coming clearer. Her hair, lacking colour, grey from the lack of sunlight. A huge matted mess, broken ends catching the light like a halo. It is the worst I have seen her look. I can make out the shape of her skull: the thin skin pulled tight, the cavernous holes under her cheek bones, the deep purple marks underneath her eyes. She is standing next to me, a skeleton covered in thin white skin.

There’s someone else reflected in the mirror too, standing behind her. He is taller, wider, than her. His face is blurred, but I make out the dark hair, the broad shoulders. For a moment I think it is Kylan and I wonder what he is doing here.

‘You look dreadful,’ he says.

I look at her, at the colour of her skin, at how thin she is.

‘I want to take care of you,’ he says. ‘I want to make you better.’

She doesn’t smile, just stares straight ahead.

‘Would you like to stay here for a while?’

She looks around her, her face turning slowly. As she looks past me, I see her pupils are huge, her eyes dead, as she looks behind her into the bedroom: the big bed that waits there, with its enormous soft duvet cover.

She nods.

He smiles, puts his hands on her shoulders. ‘You must take your medicine,’ he says.

In his hand, he holds a small orange pot. He opens it, dropping something into his hand. ‘Open your mouth,’ he says.

I see her moist pink tongue. He puts a small pink pill into her mouth and she swallows it without any water.

‘Good girl,’ he says, putting his hand on her head.

I turn around, wanting to see his face, but I am too late – he’s gone.

I look back at the mirror. Marta stands there, alone, a towel wrapped around her body. Her lined face stares back at me, her grey eyes wide.

*

Once I am in bed, Hector comes up. I try to lift myself, but he is sitting on my legs. He has a tray on his knees and uses his long nails to flip open the top of the Tupper-ware box resting on it, condensation clouding the lid.

There is a sharp smell of fish. I watch Hector spoon the food out into a bowl. He ladles some of it onto a spoon, and lifts it towards my mouth.

‘I can do it, Hector,’ I say, trying to sit up again, but he fills my mouth with food so I can’t speak any more. He continues to feed me until the bowl is empty.

‘Now, I don’t mind taking care of you,’ he says. ‘But I think we should go and see someone next week when you’re feeling up to it. It looks like your pills have stopped working, and we might need to try something new.’

‘Hector, I’m fine—’

He holds his hand up.

‘Marta, we both know that isn’t true. You need to get some help. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’

I stare at him.

‘Kylan’s really worried about you,’ he says.

‘I think I might just be remembering things,’ I say, ‘from when I first came to live with you. I don’t think I need any more medication.’

‘I don’t understand why you want to remember those things, Marta,’ he says, putting his hand on the crown of my head. ‘You weren’t yourself back then.’

‘I think I need to.’

‘It’s much better if you just take your pills,’ he says. ‘We’ll find you some new ones that work better. You’ve got past all that.’

‘Maybe I haven’t,’ I say. ‘Maybe that’s why I need to remember.’

I still can’t sit up properly, so I can’t look him in the eye. He squeezes my hand.

‘I’m your husband, Marta,’ he says. ‘I know what’s best for you. It can’t do you any good to put yourself through all this. It’s not rational. We’ll go and see Thomas again. See if he can’t prescribe something new.’

And then it flashes before my eyes: shivering in the draughty waiting room, Hector’s hand over mine. The man from the pub with the beery breath, leaning over me. The doctor. The rumble of Hector’s voice.
I found her, Thomas. She hasn’t been eating.
Thomas nods.
She hasn’t spoken, but she cries in her sleep about her parents.
The doctor’s hands are cold.

I can tell he is never going to understand, so I nod.

‘Good girl,’ he says. ‘Now get some rest.’

‘Are you going to stay here?’ I ask.

‘I might pop out and see Mother later,’ he says. ‘But you don’t need to come. Stay here, where it’s safe.’ He strokes my cheek. ‘I hope you feel better soon, darling.’ He bends down, kisses me on the forehead, and then leaves the room.

I lie awake, listening for him in the house. I don’t want to be in bed: I want to get up, to walk around the house and think. The stories Hector has told me about what happened before we got married don’t quite feel right. Now that the darker side of things has shown itself, it’s not easy to forget.

Eventually, after what feels like hours, I hear the front door slam. Going to the window, I watch Hector, in his big coat and gloves: putting on the snow chains, de-icing the windscreen. He looks up at the house and I duck down behind the curtain. I listen to the engine start up, peering out again, watching the grey car move slowly down the lane and out of sight.

I go straight to Hector’s study, lifting paper after paper on his desk. I read all the postcards on the notice board, and then I start on the drawers. Stationery supplies, folders, paperclips: nothing is amiss. Examining the bookshelf, the books are boring, with titles I don’t understand, and when I pull them down the pages inside are written in symbols, utterly incomprehensible.

Then I see it, on the second shelf:
How To Be a Good Wife.
I pull it down, and flick through the pages, but it is all familiar: crude drawings and photos of grinning women doing domestic tasks, and the accompanying tips. There is nothing here I haven’t seen a million times before.

I sink back into the desk chair. Perhaps Hector is right. Perhaps the girl is only in my imagination, a part of the old me that I am better off forgetting. I have a good life here, with a loving husband and son, and there are lots of things to look forward to. There is the wedding, and watching Kylan’s life unfold. Grandchildren. Perhaps we could even move closer to the city.

When I look up, I see her feet, clad in ballet shoes, the ribbons trailing across the floor. Pink legs, tights, muscular thighs, and her leotard. She has her hands on her hips, her hair scraped into a bun. Her face is made up, and she wears black eyeliner underneath her wide grey eyes. She reaches out for my hand. I take it and pull myself to my feet.

On unsteady legs, I follow her along the corridor, down the stairs, through the hallway. She opens the front door and steps out, pulling me after her. It is cold; the valley is still and white. She lets go of my hand, kneels down next to the huge slab of stone that is the porch step, and begins to push at it, motioning for me to help her. We push and push until it begins to move. That sound: of stone on stone, of the earth shifting. I feel my teeth clench, my muscles ache. I let out a noise of frustration, but it’s moving now, out of the way. I keep pushing. A dark space emerges, as long as the porch step and just wide enough to fit through. I peer into a low crawl space, running underneath the house, about a metre high. The daylight reveals the ends of two poles, like broomsticks, jammed horizontally into the space that must run underneath the hole. I pull and the edge of a ladder emerges.

I sit up and look at her. She nods. Getting up, I go back into the house and get the torch we keep under the kitchen sink, for emergencies. When I return to the hole, she is gone.

I look around me at the long empty stretch of our driveway. The sky spreads out above me, and I can hear the sounds of birdsong nearby. The sun shines: it is a crisp cold day full of air that feels brand new. The lane is empty, the valley deserted. No one can see me here.

Lowering myself into the space, there is a narrow earthy area, only about a metre across, in which I can just crouch. As my eyes adjust to the light, I make it out: a metal door in a metal frame dug into the earth at my feet. I push on the door, expecting it to be locked, but it opens a fraction. All is dark below. Pushing again, the metal jarring, it moves a bit further, then more, until it is fully open.

I clap my hand over my mouth: the smell coming from the hole is strong and I can’t bear it. Mildew, mould and something else, some sad smell that makes my toes curl.

Shining the torch, I make out a small room, two metres square, two metres deep. The narrow beam of white light flashes over the shadowed frame of an old bed, not big enough, with a thin mattress. There is a duvet cover, bunched into a pile. A table, grimy with dust after all these years, blotches rising from the surface. A toilet with no lid, its dark mouth disappearing into the shadows. There is a sponge in the sink in the corner, a nub of soap. The yellow clock with its grinning black face is on the wall, long stopped, the hands marking ten minutes past three.

I move the light back to the bed and see her sitting there, on the pillow, with her back against the concrete wall and her legs crossed. She holds a fan of cards in her hands, jiggling her legs, and reaches forward to pick up a card from the pile.

He is sitting opposite her with his back to me. His hair is brown. I watch him reach his hand forward and pick up a card, his nails long for a man.

‘Gin rummy,’ he says.

She tuts. ‘I only need one more card.’

He lays out his cards into two piles on the duvet cover. ‘Sorry,’ he says. He scoops them up.

She keeps her cards in her hand.

He reaches for them.

She moves them out of the way. ‘Are you going now?’ she says.

‘In a minute.’

‘We haven’t played chess yet,’ she says.

‘We’ll have to play another day.’

He tries to hand the cards to her, but she won’t take them so he puts them on the duvet. ‘I’ll try and come back soon,’ he says, still sitting.

He watches as she picks up the cards and starts to lay them out.

‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ he says.

She looks up.

He pulls out a piece of paper from his pocket and hands it to her.

I watch the colour drain from her face, her mouth drop open.

‘Where did you get this picture?’ she says, her voice breathy, thick, like fog.

‘The newspaper,’ he says.

I watch her run the tip of her finger over the small square of paper, murmur something inaudible under her breath. She looks up at him.

‘How did you know that they are my—’

‘I’m afraid they’re dead,’ he says, speaking over her.

Her face changes, wiped blank. Her eyes turn black.

‘There was a car accident.’

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she says.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘But it’s true. I thought you should know.’

She still stares. He stands up and I can see the top of his head. Quickly, she folds the picture up and slides it under the mattress.

He props the ladder into place.

‘I’ll try and come back soon,’ he says.

He puts one foot on the bottom rung, and I switch off the torch and sink further into the crawl space. When he reaches the top, he pauses, as if he has heard something. He turns and looks right at me, his clear blue eyes all I can make out in the darkness. I look back at him, but his eyes register nothing.

It’s Hector, as I knew it would be. It has been Hector all along.

I lean forward, ready to push him back into the darkness, to pull the heavy door shut and lock him down there, but when I switch on the torch again, they are gone. The bed is empty, the duvet a messy pile again, the smell still overwhelming. Quickly, I lift the ladder back into place, and holding my breath, climb down into the room. I reach down to the bed frame, feeling under the mattress. The edge of the newspaper cutting meets my fingers. I lift it out, clambering back up the ladder. Slamming the door down, I climb out of the crawl space. I blink in the sunshine, try to dust some of the dirt off the front of my nightgown.

In the kitchen, I lean over the sink. A mess of hot brown emerges from my mouth; my stomach burns. I stare at the smear in the glancing silver of the sink bowl: it begins to swim before my eyes. My heart is thumping hard, sending shooting pains through my chest. I clutch the edge of the kitchen surface. I can’t breathe: my breaths trip over each other, coming faster, each one shallower than the last. Finding my way to a kitchen chair, I sit down and put my head in my hands. I can feel the blood in my temples. I try to count the beats, but they slip past me, faster and faster.