The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman

Author:Andrew Kaufman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: [Côte d’Azur]
Published: 2010-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

∨ The Tiny Wife ∧

Eleven

On Friday 9th March, sixteen days after the robbery, I carried Stacey up the steps of St Matthew’s Church. Neither of us knew that this, the twelfth, would be the last meeting of the Branch #117 Support Group. Stacey had gone to each one, watching the attendance dwindle and dwindle.

She was 785 millimeters tall. If you picture the ruler you used all through high school, my wife was one and a half times as long. A list of things taller than my wife would include the seat of her chair, most television sets, and her two-and-a-half-year-old son.

“Jasper, be careful of your mother,” I said. He took a step back and I set Stacey down. She walked inside the church and Jasper reached up and took my hand. I squeezed too hard. Jasper shook his hand free, turned, and hopped down, his feet making a smacking sound as they hit each step. Inside the church, Stacey employed the same technique as she made her way down to the basement.

No folding chairs had been unfolded in the Sunday School room. There were no name tags or Sharpie pens. No smell of brewing coffee. Stacey sat on the bottom step and looked up at the light switch.

The meeting was scheduled to have started fifteen minutes earlier. Stacey was the only one in the room. After twenty more minutes Stacey heard loud commanding steps coming down the stairs. Turning her head, she saw Detective Phillips, whom she hadn’t seen since the ninth meeting of the Branch #117 Support Group, and whom she’d simply assumed was dead.

♦

On the day of the robbery, Detective William Phillips had handed the thief a large old-fashioned key, and decided not to play the hero. He was in the bank to pay his phone bill. The key was the original front door key of 152 Patrick Street, in Toronto, Ontario, the house where he’d always lived.

The decision not to play the hero haunted Detective Phillips for the next fourteen days. On the evening of the fifteenth day, shortly after 6.30 p.m, just as he was preparing to leave for the tenth meeting of the Branch #117 Support Group, Detective Phillips was wiping the kitchen table when a large piece of history fell from the ceiling and struck him on the back of the head. He looked up just as the rest of the history became solid and fell.

Two previous generations of Phillipses had lived in the house before him; there was much history to fall. If he had been in the front hallway his chances would have been better. The history there was relatively light, nothing but goodbyes and short-term reunions. But Detective Phillips was in the kitchen, the scene of countless late night desperations and early morning epiphanies, not to mention three conceptions. The most important moments that had happened in the house had occurred in that kitchen. The history that fell was numerous and weighty. It crashed down on Detective Phillips and buried him completely.

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