IRIS BLUM

Iris watched how quickly Gloria removed the fabric and cardboard from the car windows, explaining she couldn’t risk being stopped for driving with an obstructed view. She insisted that Iris hide, nestled in the rumpled bedding in the back of the station wagon. Cocooned by old quilts and comforters, Iris felt safe for the first time in weeks. A mix of pine and sweat scented the pillow, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It was part of the homey feeling.

The best thing, aside from being away from Asher and his cruel secrets, was the cat curled against her chest and vibrating. Was that still considered purring, that deep silent shuddering? She had long wanted a cat, but Asher said animals brought dirt and disease into a home. If she and Asher survived this, he was going to have to change his mind about that. For starters.

That was the thing she didn’t know. Did she want her marriage to survive? She’d been stewing for a month about what she’d learned about Asher’s actions. But she hadn’t thought things out well, hadn’t planned, and she wasn’t proud of herself for that. When she left early that morning, she just couldn’t stay another second in that house with him.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Gloria called from the front seat.

“I’m afraid they’re too confused to be worth even a penny, dear,” Iris said. “Thank you so much for rescuing me.”

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on? Why you ran away?”

Gloria’s voice floated over Iris’s makeshift bed, her words hovering near the ceiling. It might be easy to have a conversation this way, not having to look at Gloria, to see her response to Iris’s awkward story reflected in her eyes. Maybe not easy enough.

Iris considered avoiding the truth. In sixty-plus years with Asher, she had become pretty good at that. She could tell this kind woman, who probably did not need to get involved in her domestic problems, that she had exaggerated when she said running away. Maybe she could tell her a little bitty piece of the truth. She could say that she had always liked walking these trails, even though she now needed a cane for balance. She loved walking through the Community Gardens, especially after she learned that they once served as the kitchen garden for the state hospital. She loved walking along the Mill River, watching the seasonal transformations from water to ice and back again.

That was certainly part of the truth of her walk this morning. She had been out of breath by the time she reached the stone bench at the edge of the burial ground. The bench was cold on her butt. Asher would have corrected her word choice. Derrière, he would have said. Sometimes his English sounded impossibly stilted, reflecting that it wasn’t his first language, even though he had scoured his mouth of any trace of a Yiddish accent. She had leaned forward on her cane, looking out at the burial ground. The November frost had melted in the midday sun and the Canada geese were making a racket in the next field over, thick with winter-cut corn stalks.

She had stopped at the bench to catch her breath and enjoy the view. To reread the plaque honoring those state hospital patients, known and unknown, buried in the field. She repeated that phrase out loud: known and unknown. Ironic how it mirrored her husband’s profession. Asher liked to pretend they knew how to treat mental illness, but she listened between the lines and had long understood how deeply the experts were floundering, no matter what he wrote in that book of his.

Now she was the one floundering, since the afternoon a few weeks ago when she discovered Asher’s papers about Harriet. But how much of this could she share with this kind woman, who had problems of her own?

“I don’t know what to tell you,” she said into the air. And she realized that the warmth, the gentle movement of the car, and how much stress she had been feeling, were making her very, very tired. “I’m so sleepy, dear. Would you mind if I took a little nap back here and told you all about it later?”

Iris closed her eyes and drifted. She didn’t hear Gloria’s response.