The Wedding Band of Peggy Clay

by Anahita Ayasoufi

part 1

Peggy Clay was washing her hands at the bathroom sink, getting ready to brush and go to bed. She rotated her wedding band to get soap underneath. A wrong move. At seventy-two, Peggy’s fingers were skin-and-bone. The fit was nowhere near as snug as it used to be. The ring slipped off. Outside, the Ohio wind made the wooden planks of the ranch house sing. Peggy jerked her hand up to stop the ring but failed. Then she stumbled backwards and caught herself.

“Oh no!” she uttered. The old sink had a drain hole the size of a walnut. The ring would fall right through. This could not be happening. Her heartbeat sounded in her ear, an internal thump, thump, thump. Her ring was not just any ring. It was the wedding band, the only item that still stirred Gerald’s fading memory.

The ring made Gerald go on and on about the time they had bought the gold band at a second-hand store; 1976, the time Gerald got his first bonus and had the ring fitted with the shimmering pearl; 1982, the melee of diamonds he had added, four of them, one for each of their children, all grown up and gone. There was the time... there were many times over their forty-six years of marriage all the way to five years ago when she slipped on the icy driveway and broke her arm. He added a fifth melee then, a healing present, in 2017. This flashed faster than light in the chaos of her thoughts.

The ring covered a wide curve, cleared the drain, and hit the edge of the sink. Peggy leaped to catch it in the air but missed. Chink! The ring hit the floor tiles and bounced. Chink!

Peggy went down on all fours. The wind howled, and the light wavered, like the light of a bulb hanging from a wire. She searched, rubbing her soapy palms haphazardly over the tiles and along the cracks between the tiles. Then she stopped and brought her head down to the level of the floor. She scanned around. The ring was nowhere to be seen.

Her bare finger felt too light, and a lost wedding band sounded too much like an omen. Nonsense. She breathed to calm herself down. The ring must be on the floor. Rings do not disappear into thin air. She thought of what children did when a marble went lost. They got a similar marble and threw it the same way as they had thrown the lost one, watching closely. Often, the new marble landed near the other one, and they were both found. This was not an option, so Peggy straightened and rinsed her hands. She grabbed a cotton towel and began to mop the soapy trail of her hands on the tiles. This time she moved methodically from the sink outward. The ring would turn up.

It did not turn up. What did turn up made her gasp. At the corner of the bathroom, where the tiles met the wooden baseboard, gaped a hole. It was as big as her palm, almost like a mouse hole, except with rugged edges. She could not remember ever seeing it before. But the hole was there, and the ring was not. There was only one thing that could have happened.

Peggy tiptoed to the hallway, careful not to wake up Gerald and, from a mantlepiece drawer, she extracted a flashlight. When she shone the light on the mouse hole, her heart sank. This was no shallow crack in rotten wood. This was a full labyrinth of cracks falling all the way into the long-forgotten basement. Cobwebs shimmered in the sharp light, spiders scurrying along them. When she gingerly placed her hand inside the hole, she felt a breeze. It was cold. When she took out her hand it smelled of musty dust.

Then she saw the ring, a faint glimmer of gold caught on a branch of cracked wood that extended like a bony finger. She held her breath. The ring was way down, much closer to the basement level than her level. There was no way she could reach it from up here, but if she went to the basement...

Peggy tried to remember the basement’s plot. For many years, neither of them had ventured there. After her icy accident, they decided to leave the creaking basement stairs off-limits to them both. Even before that, the basement was never in real use. The most use they got out of it was the storage of potatoes and onions on the stairs.

It was not a finished space. With four children to send to college, there never was a large chunk of money to spare on renovation. Gerald had always been more into cooking than hands-on repair, and she, the now-retired teacher of mythology, had always wanted to leave the basement as it was. Built in 1950, it was bound to have secrets. She had seen a trash burner in there. She had meant to dust the area, uncover its secrets one day when she got a chance, which she never did. First, she had too much to do and then too little energy to do much.

All that considered, the basement was hardly a place she could venture into alone at night. It would be cold, dark, dangerous. The best way, she thought, is to call the handy man in the morning to get the ring and repair the hole, too. She would do that. She nodded to herself, threw the soapy towel in the hamper, and headed for the bedroom.

In the night light, Gerald’s face seemed younger, childlike even. She walked to his side of the bed to cover his shoulders with the dawn blanket. As she did that, he stirred.

“Hon, don’t fall asleep in the kitchen!” Gerald said.

“When have I ever?” Peggy began, only to realize that Gerald had spoken in his sleep.

She turned to walk to her side of the bed and caught sight of her own face in the mirror. The night light had the opposite effect on her. She was ten years younger than Gerald but, in the faint light, she looked gaunt and elderly; her face very much unlike that of her younger ages. No wonder Gerald sometimes struggled to remember who she was. This did not happen often but happened enough to scare her cold. The aged face was a new memory, not as strong as the younger face that Gerald remembered. The last time that he had not recognized her, the wedding band came to the rescue. He always remembered the wedding band and all the stories that were woven with it.

An image invaded Peggy’s mind: the image of a rat with wide black eyes reaching up on its hind legs and taking the ring. Were there rats in the basement? If there were more of those holes, even racoons could get in. She pictured a racoon disappearing into the old corn fields with her wedding band. She could not lose that ring, not now, not ever. She tightened the belt of the night robe around her waist and tiptoed out of the bedroom into the kitchen, where the basement door was.

Before taking the stairs to the lower level, she checked the stove. It was off. This had been a good day. Gerald had not forgotten much. He had turned off the burners after use. He had even remembered to put the jug back in the fridge after having his nightly glass of milk. Everything was in order. Gerald was fast asleep, and she would be back up in a jiffy.

She was wrong.

The stairs were as creaking as she remembered them. The light bulb had expired years ago. No one felt a need to replace it. The light pouring in from the kitchen was enough to let her see her steps. She made it down without falling. At the bottom of the stairs, she let out the breath she had been holding and switched on her flashlight. Its beam reflected on a cobweb lattice that almost filled the side of the room. This area was about forty feet by forty feet. It had to span under part of the kitchen, the hallway, and the master bedroom. The trash incinerator stood heavy in the middle, immortal yet forgotten. She moved forward, taking care not to stub her toes on the pipes or the incinerator. Near the very back, three arched doors faced her. She had no memory of the doors, then again, she never remembered venturing that deep into the basement.

The middle door had to go beneath the living room, the right one under the study, and the left one should be approximately under the master bathroom, where the ring was. Her heart skipped a beat. What if the basement did not extend far enough under the bathroom? What if the chamber with the ring was a closed area with no access? She breathed. There was only one way to find out.

She first felt something out of place when she brushed the cobwebs off the knob of the left arched door. It was a faint warning, mostly subconscious. She had expected a cold metallic touch, but the doorknob was warm in a subtle way, as if someone had touched it right before she did. Except it was silly. If anyone had touched the knob, the cobwebs would be gone. She did not analyze this any further, just filed away the odd sensation to think about some other time.

Then she heard it. Behind the arched door, water was running, drip, drip, swish. Great! Rotten floorboards and a busted pipe. They needed the handyman for sure. She turned the knob, but the door resisted. She leaned one shoulder on the door and threw her weight at it. The door screeched, and she stepped through.

She shone the flashlight on the walls of the space that she had entered, from one corner to the other where her mind-map told her the ring should be. She did not find the ring, not immediately, but what she did find made her freeze in place.

The room was not a room at all. The walls and the concrete foundation merged into an organic structure with rough curves and — she shone the light on the ceiling — stalactites. The belly of a cavern. A drop of water dripped from one of the stalactites on her nose. She aimed her light down and saw the creek, running along the edges of the cavern. She followed the water with her light and screamed, or tried to scream, because the sound caught in her throat. At the far end, about twenty feet away, facing her, stood a person.

A statue, she thought. Then the statue grinned. Wide and toothless. Not a statue. An old, woman, much older than Peggy, with a face covered with so many wrinkles it resembled a mountain-dense topographic map. Clad in rags from head to toe, leaning on a shepherd’s staff, the woman figure raised her hand, perhaps to cover her eyes.

Peggy lowered the flashlight. She realized she did not need it, not really. There was a kind of phosphorescence from the dripping walls of the cavern, and it was enough to let her see the ghostly shape. Not a ghost. Not a myth, she repeated to her frantic brain that was searching the myths she used to teach for a figure like this. A person, most probably homeless, who had taken refuge in their basement, if this was indeed an extension of their basement. It could be a cavern with a mouth gaping somewhere in the planes, which was odd. She had never heard of caverns in the area.

The woman figure remained silent and grinning. Peggy tried to decide what to do or say. Should she run? Close the door behind her and call the police? Or should she offer shelter and food? Should she ask, “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my basement?” Or...

“Can I help you?” is what tumbled out of her mouth.

“I am Mother Tabitha, and the question should be can I help you?” the woman said.

When Peggy remained stupefied, Mother Tabitha pointed a bony finger at a piece of wood bobbing on the creek. It was a rugged piece, perhaps freshly broken from the wooden panels where the house met the cavern. On the piece of wood sat her ring, like a fairy on a boat. She leaped toward it, but a fresh wave of water welled out of nowhere and took the wooden piece past Mother Tabitha into the darkness beyond.

Peggy tried to get past her, but Mother Tabitha blocked the way with her staff.

“How far are you willing to go to get your precious wedding band?”

Mother Tabitha’s enunciation seemed ancient. The scent of herbs emanating from her was disorienting. Together, they made Peggy’s head spin, made her feel like she was falling away from her house, from Ohio. She wanted to fight the sensation, but a rustling sound startled her. She cocked her head to see what the sound was.

“How far?” Mother Tabitha repeated, her voice raspier, more urgent.

What kind of a question is that? “As far as it takes,” Peggy uttered.

Mother Tabitha stepped aside. Peggy began to move.

“Wait!”

Peggy halted, one eye on the wood piece that was bobbing again, somewhere ahead.

“It is a long journey and a dangerous one, very dangerous. I will give you two gifts to help you along.”

“Why?” Peggy asked. A cold breeze had iced her cheeks and the cavern air felt suffocating. All she wanted was her ring and to go back to Gerald.

“Because I am Mother Tabitha,” the ancient woman said, which was no answer. Peggy heard the rustling sound again, and from under Tabitha’s rag cape, appeared a cat, a majestic ragdoll breed, perfectly white.

“This is Winter. He will help you. And here, take this.” Mother Tabitha extended a rag-wrapped parcel the size of her palm. Peggy took it. The enchantment of the moment left her no other choice.

“What’s in this?”

“Food. Long journey, as I said.”

Peggy looked at the bobbing wood piece. Not such a long journey, she thought. That was when another gurgling wave bubbled under the tiny boat. Peggy began to run after it. She ran until she was out of breath and her ankles ached. The tiny boat always remained just a step out of reach. She stopped to catch her breath, bent forward, hands on her knees. She turned to seek Mother Tabitha. No one was in sight. Behind her was nothing but darkness, no cavern, no house. Above her loomed a purple moon, oblate, not round, and a starless sky.

“Meow,” Winter said by her side.

Proceed to part 2...