The Mutual UFO Network by Lee Martin

Author:Lee Martin [Martin, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781945814686
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2018-08-16T07:00:00+00:00

WHITE DWARFS

ONE SATURDAY IN JUNE, FRANK’S WIFE DISAPPEARED. THE POLICE found her car along Route 71, the hood up as if there had been some sort of mechanical breakdown, but a detective told Frank there wasn’t “jack-stump” wrong with the car. It ran like a dream.

The detective wanted to know whether there had been any difficulty between Frank and his wife. Had she been depressed or upset in recent days? Would Frank mind if he had a look around the house? Sorry, but sometimes it happens, the detective told him. One day someone decides she’s had enough—Frank’s wife, maybe—and bingo, she walks away.

The detective’s insinuations embarrassed Frank, because indeed he had been considering, just before his wife’s disappearance, how different his life might be without her. From time to time, he would catch sight of some woman. A stylish hairdo, a bold shade of eye shadow, a daring skirt or blouse would attract his attention, and he might even strike up a conversation, harmless chit-chat. Later, he might allow himself to wonder what it would be like to be married to someone else. He had never felt guilty about his speculations, considered them par for the course after a couple had been together as many years as he and his wife—just a natural curiosity he suspected she herself indulged from time to time. The theory that she had run from him, perhaps escaped with a lover, would make good gossip, he knew, but seriously, he doubted she had been planning such a move. She had even asked him to go with her that morning, he told the detective, pleased that he could offer up this small piece of evidence that he and his wife had enjoyed each other’s company.

“But you didn’t,” the detective said. “Go with her, that is.”

“No, I didn’t,” Frank told him, ashamed.

He knew his wife’s invitation to accompany her out into the country to pick strawberries had been an offer of reconciliation. A few days before, they had argued. He had taken her to a boutique downtown, one of those trendy shops, The Ozone, and he had encouraged her to buy something, anything she wanted—“Just pick it out, kiddo, something with a little pizzazz, and it’s yours.” She hadn’t been able to find anything to suit her. She had been shy around the sales clerk, a girl with a gold loop pierced through her eyebrow, and refused to take anything into the fitting room. She preferred corduroy trousers in winter and twill skirts in summer, and blouses made from broadcloth that Frank thought made her look too severe.

On Sunday, one of his wife’s credit cards showed up in Rocco, found there in the parking lot of the Free Methodist Church. That afternoon, a farmer came upon one of her shoes at the end of his lane. It was the shoe, a Keds tennis shoe, that undid Frank, the streak of mud across the white canvas, and he grieved, a deep, honest grief that left him raw with weeping.

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