The Wife Between Us

by Greer Hendricks

  The air slams into me as I head down the sidewalk: hot, muggy, rank with smells from the waffle vendor on the corner, the garbage that hasn’t been picked up, the wisp of cigarette smoke drifting toward my face. Eventually, I reach the entrance to the subway and descend the stairs.

  The sun is blotted out instantly and the humidity feels even thicker down here. I swipe my MetroCard and push through the turnstile, feeling the hard bar resisting against my waist.

  A subway car thunders into the station, but it’s not my line. The crowd presses forward, near the edge, but I remain by the wall, away from the lethal electric rail. Some people fall to their deaths here; some are shoved. Occasionally, police can’t determine which has occurred.

  A young woman comes to stand beside me by the wall. She is blond and petite, and very pregnant. Tenderly, she rubs her stomach, her hand moving in slow circles. I watch, mesmerized, and it is as if a centrifugal force commands my thoughts, spinning my mind back to the day I sat on the cold tile of my bathroom floor, wondering if one blue line or two would emerge on the pregnancy test.

  Richard and I wanted children. A baker’s dozen, he liked to joke, though privately we’d agreed on three. I’d stopped working. We had a maid come every week. This was my only job.

  At first I’d worried about the kind of mother I’d be, the unconscious lessons I’d absorbed from my own role model. Some days I’d come home from school to see my mother using a toothpick to excavate crumbs from the cracks in our dining room chairs. Other times, the mail would still be scattered on the floor beneath the slot in the door and dishes would be piled in the sink. I learned early on to not knock on my mother’s bedroom door on her lights-out days. When my mother forgot to pick me up from after-school art classes or playdates, I became adept at making excuses and suggesting that my father be called instead.

  I started packing my own lunches when I was in the third grade. I’d see other kids dip spoons into thermoses of homemade soup or Tupperware containers of pasta shaped like stars—some parents even included notes with jokes or loving messages—while I tried to gobble my daily sandwich fast, before anyone noticed the bread was torn because I’d spread the peanut butter on while it was still cold.

  But as the months passed, my yearning for a child surpassed my trepidation. I’d mothered myself; certainly I could care for a child. As I lay beside Richard at night, I would fantasize about reading Dr. Seuss books to a little boy with those long-lashed eyes, or clinking miniature teacups with a daughter who had his endearing lopsided smile.

  I’d watched, feeling numb, as a single blue line emerged on the pregnancy test, as vivid and straight as the slash of a knife. Richard had been in the bedroom that morning, easing one of his charcoal wool suits out of the dry-cleaning bag. Waiting for me to emerge. I knew he’d read the answer in my eyes and I’d see the echo of disappointment in his own. He’d stretch out his arms and whisper, “It’s okay, baby. I love you.”

  But with this negative test—my sixth in a row—my time was officially up. We had agreed if it didn’t happen after six months, Richard would go for a test. My ob-gyn had explained it was less invasive to count sperm. All Richard would have to do was stare at a Playboy and reach into his pants. He’d joked that his teenage years had prepared him well. I knew he was trying to make me feel better. If Richard didn’t have any issues—and I was certain he didn’t, the problem lay within me—then it would be my turn.

  “Sweetheart?” Richard had knocked on the bathroom door.

  I stood up and smoothed my sleeveless pale pink nightgown. I opened the door, my face wet.

  “I’m sorry.” I held the stick behind my back, as if it were something shameful to hide.

  He hugged me as tightly as ever and said all the right things, but I felt a subtle shift in the energy between us. I recalled how we took a walk in the park near our home shortly after our wedding and had seen a father playing catch with his son, who looked to be about eight or nine. They wore matching Yankees baseball caps.

  Richard had paused, staring at them. “I can’t wait to do that with my boy. Hope he has a better arm than I do.”

  I’d laughed, aware that my breasts were just the tiniest bit tender. It happened before my period, but it was also a sign of pregnancy, I’d read. Already, I was taking prenatal vitamins. I filled my mornings with long walks and I’d bought a beginner’s yoga video. I’d stopped eating unpasteurized cheeses and drinking more than a single glass of wine at dinner. I was doing everything the experts recommended.

  But nothing worked.

  “We’ll just have to keep trying,” Richard had said early on, back when we were still optimistic. “That’s not so bad, is it?”

  I’d thrown the sixth pregnancy test into the bathroom trash can, covering it with a tissue, so I wouldn’t have to see it.

  “I was thinking,” Richard had said. He moved away from me to look in the mirror above the dresser as he knotted his tie. On the bed behind him was an open suitcase. Richard traveled frequently, but usually just short trips, for a night or two. Suddenly I knew what he was going to say: He was going to invite me to come with him. I felt the darkness start to lift as I imagined escaping our beautiful, empty home, in a charming neighborhood where I had no friends. Of putting distance between me and my latest failure.

  But what Richard said was “Maybe you should stop drinking altogether?”

  * * *

  The pregnant woman moves away from me and I blink hard, reorienting myself. I watch as she heads toward the tracks and the roar of the approaching subway car. The wheels screech to a halt and the doors slide open with a weary exhale. I wait until the crowds have pushed inside, then I walk forward, feeling a tinge of unease.

  I step over the threshold and hear the warning chime signaling the doors are closing. “Excuse me,” I say to the guy in front of me, but he doesn’t move. His head bobs in time to the music blasting over his headphones; I can feel the vibrations of the bass. The doors close, but the train remains still. It is so hot I can feel my trousers sticking to my legs.

  “Seat?” someone offers, and an older man stands up to give his to the pregnant woman. She flashes a smile as she accepts. She’s wearing a plaid dress; it’s simple and cheap looking, and her full breasts strain against the thin fabric as she reaches up to lift her hair off the back of her neck and fan herself with one hand. Her skin is flushed and dewy; she is radiant.

  Richard’s new love can’t be pregnant, can she?

  I don’t think it’s possible, but suddenly I imagine Richard standing behind her, his hands reaching around to cup her full belly.

  I suck in shallow breaths. A man in a white undershirt with yellowed armholes is holding on to the pole by my head. I tilt my face away but I can still smell his pungent sweat.

  The car lurches and I fall against a woman reading the Times. She doesn’t even look up from her paper. A few more stops, I tell myself. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.

  The train rumbles along the tracks, sounding angry, threading through the dark tunnel. I feel a body press against mine. Too close; everyone is too close. My sweaty hand slips off the pole as my knees buckle. I collapse against the doors, crouching with my head close to my knees.

  “Are you okay?” someone asks.

  The guy in the undershirt leans close to me.

  “I think I’m sick,” I gasp.

  I begin to rock, counting the rhythmic whirring of the wheels along the track. One, two … ten.… twenty …

  “Conductor!” a woman calls out.

  “Yo! Is anyone here a doctor?”

  … fifty … sixty-four …

  The train stops at Seventy-ninth and I feel arms around my waist, helping me up. Then I am half carried through the doors, onto the solid platform. Someone leads me to a bench a dozen yards away.

  “Can I call anyone?” asks a voice.

  “No. The flu … I just need to get home.…”

  I sit there until I can breathe again.

  Then I
walk fourteen blocks back to the apartment, counting all 1,848 steps aloud, until I can crawl into bed.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  NELLIE WAS LATE, again.

  She felt perpetually a beat behind these days, groggy from her relentless insomnia and jittery from the extra coffee she drank to offset it. It seemed as if she was always trying to cram in one more thing. Take this afternoon: Richard had suggested they drive back to their new home as soon as preschool ended to meet the contractor who was building a patio off the English basement.

  “You can pick the color of the stones,” Richard had said.

  “They come in shades other than gray?”

  He laughed, not realizing she was serious.

  She agreed, feeling guilty about cutting short their first trip to see the house. That meant canceling the blowout she’d been planning to splurge on with Samantha in preparation for the bachelorette party Sam was throwing her that evening, though. Her friends from both the Learning Ladder and Gibson’s were attending—one of the few times Nellie’s divergent worlds would collide. Sorry! Nellie had texted Sam, hesitated, then added, Last minute wedding errand …

  She couldn’t think of a way to explain it that wouldn’t make it look as if she was choosing her fiancé over her best friend.

  “I just have to be home by six to get ready for the party,” she’d told Richard. “We’re meeting everyone at the restaurant at seven.”

  “Always with the curfew, Cinderella,” he’d said, lightly kissing the tip of her nose. “Don’t worry, you won’t be late.”

  But they had been. Traffic was awful, and Nellie didn’t walk into her apartment until close to six-thirty. She knocked on Sam’s door, but her roommate had already left.

  She stood there for a moment, taking in the white Christmas lights Samantha had wound through the slats of her bed’s headboard, and the fuzzy green-and-blue rug the two of them had found rolled up by the curb of a posh apartment building on Fifth Avenue. “Is someone actually throwing this out?” Samantha had asked. “Rich people are nuts. It still has a price tag on it!” They’d lifted it onto their shoulders and carried it home, and when they passed a cute guy waiting to cross the street, Sam winked at Nellie, then deliberately turned so the end of the carpet swung into his chest. Sam ended up dating him for two months; it was one of her longer relationships.

  Nellie had thirty minutes to make it to the restaurant, which meant she’d have to skip a shower. Still, she poured a half glass of wine to sip while she got ready—not the expensive stuff Richard always ordered for her, but she couldn’t really taste the difference anyway—and cranked up Beyoncé.

  She splashed cold water on her face, then smoothed on tinted moisturizer and began to line her green eyes with a smoky-gray pencil. Their bathroom was so small that Nellie was forever banging into the sink or the edge of the door, and every time she opened the medicine cabinet, a tube of Crest or can of hair spray tumbled out. She hadn’t taken a bath in years; the apartment had only a tiny shower stall that barely afforded her enough room to bend over to shave her legs.

  In the new home, the master bath’s shower featured a bench and a rain-forest spray nozzle. Plus, that Jacuzzi.

  Nellie tried to imagine soaking in it, after a long day spent … doing what? Gardening in the backyard, maybe, and putting together dinner for Richard.

  Did Richard realize that she’d drowned the only houseplant she’d ever owned, and that her cooking repertoire was limited to heating up Lean Cuisines?

  As they headed back to the city, she’d stared out the window of the car, taking in the scenery. There was no denying her new neighborhood’s beauty: the grand houses, the blossoming trees, the pristine sidewalks. Not a single piece of litter marred the smoothly paved roads. Even the grass seemed greener than in the city.

  As they’d exited and passed the guard’s station, Richard had given the uniformed man a little wave. Nellie had seen the name of the development on an arched sign, the letters thick and ornate: CROSSWINDS.

  Of course, she’d still commute into Manhattan every day with Richard. She’d have the best of both worlds. She’d meet Sam for happy hours and drop by Gibson’s to grab a burger at the bar and see how Chris’s novel was progressing.

  She’d turned around to peer through the rear windshield. She hadn’t seen even one person walking down the sidewalk. No cars had been in motion. She could have been staring at a photograph.

  But if she got pregnant soon after the wedding, she probably wouldn’t return to the Learning Ladder in the fall, she’d thought as she watched her new neighborhood recede in the distance. It would be irresponsible to leave the children mid-year. With Richard traveling every week or two, she’d be alone in the house so much of the time.

  Maybe it would make sense to wait a few months before she went off her birth control pills. She could teach for another year.

  She’d looked at Richard’s profile, taking in his straight nose, his strong chin, the slim, silvery scar above his right eye. He’d gotten it when he was eight and tumbled over the handlebars of his bike, he’d told her. Richard had one hand low on the wheel and the other reaching for the radio’s button.

  “So, I—” she began, just as he turned on WQXR, his favorite classical station.

  “This piece by Ravel is wonderful,” he said, increasing the volume. “You know, he composed a smaller body of work than most of his contemporaries, but many regard him as one of France’s greatest.”

  She nodded. Her words were lost in the opening notes of the music, but maybe it was just as well. It wasn’t the time for this conversation.

  As the piano reached a crescendo, Richard pulled up at a stoplight and turned to her. “Do you like it?”

  “I do. It’s … lovely.” She needed to learn about classical music and wine, she decided. Richard had strong opinions on both, and she wanted to be able to discuss the subjects knowledgeably with him.

  “Ravel believed that music should be emotional first and intellectual second,” he’d said. “What do you think?”

  That was the problem, she realized now as she dug through her purse, searching for her favorite Clinique soft-pink lip gloss. She gave up—she hadn’t been able to find it the last time she’d looked, either—and put on a peachy shade instead. Intellectually, she knew the changes ahead were wonderful. Enviable, even. But emotionally, it all felt a little overwhelming.

  She thought of the dollhouse in her classroom, the one Jonah’s parents wanted to replace with a tepee. Her students loved to rearrange the furniture in the darling little home, then move the dolls from room to room, positioning them in front of the fake fireplace, folding them into chairs around the table, and laying them down to sleep in their narrow wooden beds.

  The idea invaded her mind like a school-yard taunt from a bully: Dollhouse Nellie.

  Nellie took a gulp of wine and opened her closet door, pushing aside the wrap dress she’d been planning to wear and pulling out a pair of fitted black leather pants she’d bought on sale at Bloomingdale’s when she’d first come to New York. She winced as she sucked in her stomach to pull up the zipper. They’ll stretch, she assured herself. Still she partnered the pants with a low-cut, loose-fitting tank in case she needed to release the top button later.

  She wondered if she would wear either of the items ever again. She imagined Dollhouse Nellie with a sensible bob dressed in khakis, a cashmere cable-knit sweater, and brown suede loafers as she held out a tray of cupcakes.

  Never, she promised herself, digging around for her black high heels and finally finding them under her bed. She and Richard would have a houseful of children, and the elegant rooms would be softened by laughter and pillow forts and little shoes piled in baskets by the front door. They’d play Candy Land and Monopoly by the fire. They’d take family ski trips—Nellie had never skied, but Richard had promised to teach her. A few decades from now, she and Richard would sit side by side on the porch swing, linked by their happy memories.


  In the meantime, she’d definitely bring along her own artwork to adorn the walls. She had several original commissions by her preschoolers, including Jonah’s marshmallow-woman portrait of her and Tyler’s cerebral painting aptly titled Blue on White.

  She finished getting ready ten minutes after she should have left. She started to exit the apartment, then turned back and grabbed two ropes of colorful beads hanging on a hook by the front door. She and Samantha had each bought a strand at a Village street fair a few years ago. They called them their happy beads.

  She slipped one of them around her neck, then scanned the street for a cab.

  * * *

  “Sorry, sorry,” Nellie called as she hurried toward the women sitting at the long rectangular table. Her Learning Ladder colleagues lined one side, and her Gibson’s coworkers the other. But Nellie could see a cluster of shot glasses, as well as glasses of wine in front of everyone, and all of the women seemed comfortable. She circled the table, giving each of her friends a hug.

  When she reached Sam, she looped the beads around her roommate’s neck. Sam looked gorgeous; she must have gone for the blowout alone.

  “Drink first, talk second,” instructed Josie, one of her waitress pals, handing Nellie a shot of tequila.

  She tossed it back neatly, earning cheers.

  “And now it’s my turn to give you something to put on.” Samantha glided a comb fixed to a giant glitter-and-tulle veil through the crown of Nellie’s hair.

  Nellie laughed. “Subtle.”

  “What do you expect when you ask a preschool teacher to be in charge of the veil?” asked Marnie.

  “So what did you have to do today?” asked Samantha

  Nellie opened her mouth to speak, then looked around. The other women all worked at low-paying jobs, yet they were splurging at a restaurant famous for its wood-burning-stove pizzas. Nellie could also see a pile of gifts on the empty chair at the end of the table. She knew Sam was searching for a new roommate because she couldn’t afford the rent on her own. Suddenly, the last thing Nellie felt like talking about was her showplace of a house. Besides, it hadn’t technically been a wedding errand. Maybe Sam wouldn’t understand.