The Wife Between Us

by Greer Hendricks

  “But—Paul bought a table. Our seats will be empty. I promise I’ll stick to water.”

  “I think it would be better if we left,” Richard said quietly. “Paul will understand.”

  I went to get my wrap. While I was waiting, I saw Richard approach Paul and say something, then clap him on the shoulder. Richard was making excuses for me, I thought, but Paul would perceive the subtext: Richard needed to get me home because I was far too tipsy to stay for dinner.

  But I wasn’t drunk. Richard only wanted everyone to think I was.

  “All set,” Richard said to me when he returned. He’d already called for our car, which was waiting just outside the building.

  The snow was coming down more heavily now. Even though our driver proceeded slowly through the mostly empty streets, I felt nauseated. I closed my eyes and leaned as far back against the door as my seat belt would allow. I feigned sleep, but I’m pretty sure Richard knew I didn’t want to face him.

  He might’ve let it go—let me walk upstairs and fall into our bed.

  But as I climbed the steps toward our front door, I stumbled and had to catch myself on the railing.

  “It’s these new heels,” I said desperately. “I’m not used to them.”

  “Of course it is,” he said sarcastically. “It couldn’t be all those drinks on an empty stomach. This was a work event, Nellie. It was an important night for me.”

  I stood silently behind him as he unlocked the front door. Once inside, I sat on the tufted bench in our entranceway and removed my shoes. I placed them side by side on the bottom stair, aligning the heels precisely, then I removed my wrap and hung it in the closet.

  Richard was still there when I turned around. “You need to eat something. Come on.”

  I followed him into the kitchen, where he pulled a bottle of mineral water out of the refrigerator and silently handed it to me. He opened a cabinet and took out a box of Carr’s water crackers.

  I ate one quickly. “I feel better. You were right to bring me home.… You must be hungry, too. Do you want me to cut you up some Brie? I just bought it today at the farmers’ market.”

  “I’m fine.” I could tell Richard was about to disappear as he had done during other arguments that I’d tried to forget; he was struggling to keep his anger from surfacing. From swallowing him.

  “About the job,” I said quickly, trying to defuse it. “Paul just offered to introduce me to people at the charter school. It could be part-time or it might not even happen.”

  Richard nodded slowly. “Is there a special reason you want to be in the city more frequently?”

  I stared at him; of all the things he could say, I didn’t expect this. “What do you mean?”

  “One of the neighbors mentioned seeing you at the train station the other day. All dressed up, he said. Funny, but when I called you that morning, you said you’d been swimming laps at the club and that’s why you hadn’t answered the phone.”

  I couldn’t deny it; Richard, with his laser-quick mind, would trip me up if I tried to lie. Which neighbor? I wondered. The station had been nearly empty at that time of day.

  “I did swim that morning. But then I went to see Aunt Charlotte. Just for a short visit.”

  Richard nodded. “Of course. Another cracker? No?” He slid the cardboard tab back into the slot of the box. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t visit your aunt. How was she?”

  “Good,” I blurted as the pounding of my heart softened. He was going to let this go. He believed me. “We had tea at her apartment.”

  Richard opened the cabinet to return the crackers, the wood door swinging between us and momentarily hiding his face.

  When he closed it, he was looking at me. He was very near. His narrowed eyes seemed to sear through mine. “What I can’t figure out is why you waited until I left for work, got all dressed up, took the train into the city, came home in time to cook dinner, and sat there eating lasagna with me but never once thought to mention that you’d visited your aunt.” He paused for a moment. “Where did you really go? Who were you with?”

  I heard a sound like a bird’s cry and realized I’d made it. Richard was gripping my wrist. Twisting it as he spoke.

  He looked down and instantly let go, but white ovals from his fingertips remained, like a burn.

  “I’m sorry.” He took a step back. Ran a hand through his hair. Exhaled slowly. “But why the fuck did you lie to me?”

  How could I tell him the truth? That I wasn’t happy—that everything he’d given me wasn’t enough? I’d wanted to meet someone to discuss my concerns about my marriage. The woman I’d sought out had listened intently to me and asked a few thought-provoking questions, but I knew one session with her wouldn’t be enough. I was planning to sneak back into the city to see her again next month.

  But it was too late to conjure a plausible excuse for my deception. Richard had caught me.

  I didn’t even see his open palm coming until it connected with my cheek with a loud crack.

  * * *

  For the next two nights, I hardly slept. My head throbbed and my throat felt raw from crying. I covered the scattering of bruises on my wrist with long sleeves and dotted extra concealer over the dark half-moons under my eyes. All I could think of was whether I should stay with Richard or try to leave him.

  Then, while I was attempting to read in bed but not absorbing any of the words on the page, Richard gently tapped on the open guest-room door. I looked up to tell him to come in, but at the expression on his face, my words dissolved.

  He was cradling the cordless house phone. “It’s your mother.” His face creased. “It’s Aunt Charlotte, I mean. She’s calling because…”

  It was eleven o’clock at night, past the hour my aunt usually retired. The last time I’d talked to my mother, she’d said she’d been doing well—but she hadn’t returned my most recent calls.

  “I’m so sorry, baby.” Richard held out the phone.

  Reaching for it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

  RICHARD WAS EVERYTHING I needed him to be after my mother died.

  We flew to Florida with Aunt Charlotte for the burial, and he rented a hotel suite with adjoining rooms so we could all stay together. I remembered how my mom had looked when she was happiest—in the kitchen, clattering pans and tossing spices into a dish, or on her good mornings, singing me a goofy song to wake me up, or laughing as she wiped away the water Duke had splashed on her face after we’d bathed him. I tried to picture her on the night of my wedding, walking barefoot in the sand, her face turned toward the setting sun, as I said that final good-bye. But another image kept intruding: my mother as she’d died—alone, on the couch, with an empty bottle of pills by her side and the television blaring.

  There was no note, so we were left with questions that could never be answered.

  When Aunt Charlotte broke down at the gravesite, blaming herself for not knowing that my mother had taken a bad turn, Richard comforted her: “None of this is your fault; it isn’t anyone’s fault. She was doing so well. You were always there for your sister, and she felt your love.”

  Richard also sorted through the paperwork and arranged for the sale of the little brick rambler where I’d grown up, while Aunt Charlotte and I went through my mother’s personal belongings.

  The rest of the house was relatively neat, but my mother’s room was a mess, with books and clothes piled on every surface. Crumbs on her bed told me she’d recently been taking most of her meals there. Old coffee mugs and water glasses crowded her nightstand. I saw Richard’s eyebrows lift in surprise when he noticed the disorder, but the only thing he said was “I’ll have a cleaning service come.”

  I didn’t take many of my mother’s belongings: Aunt Charlotte suggested we each select a few of my mother’s scarves, and I chose a few pieces of her costume jewelry as well. The only other possessions I wanted were our old family photographs, and tw
o of my mother’s battered, beloved cookbooks.

  I also knew I needed to clear out a few things from my old bedroom, which had been turned into the guest room. I’d deliberately left some items on the shelf in the back of my closet. While Aunt Charlotte wiped down the refrigerator and Richard was on the phone with a real-estate agent, I brought in a step stool and reached onto the dusty ledge. I tossed a sorority pin in a trash bag, then threw in my college yearbook and my final transcripts. I put my early-childhood-development honors paper into the trash bag as well. I reached to the very back of the shelf for my diploma, still rolled into a cylinder and tied with a faded bow.

  I threw it away without even looking at it.

  I wondered why I’d even saved any of it, after all these years.

  I couldn’t look at the pin or yearbook without thinking of Maggie. I couldn’t look at the diploma without thinking about what had happened on the day I graduated.

  I was knotting the top of the bag when Richard entered my old bedroom. “I thought I’d run out and pick up some dinner.” He looked at the bag. “Want me to toss that for you?”

  I hesitated, then handed it to him. “Sure.”

  I watched him cart away the last remnants of my college days, then I looked around the empty room. The water stain still marred the ceiling; if I closed my eyes, I could almost picture my black cat curled up beside me on my pink-and-purple-striped comforter while I read a Judy Blume book.

  I knew I would never see this house again.

  * * *

  That night back in our hotel, as I soaked in a hot bath, Richard brought me a cup of chamomile tea. I took it gratefully. Despite the heat of the Florida day, I couldn’t seem to get warm.

  “How are you holding up, sweetheart?” I knew he wasn’t just referring to my mother’s death.

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  “I worry you haven’t been happy lately.” Richard knelt beside the tub and reached for a washcloth. “All I want is to be a good husband to you. But I know I haven’t always been. You’re lonely because I work such long hours. And my temper…” Richard’s voice grew husky. He cleared his throat and began to gently clean my back. “I’m sorry, Nellie. I’ve been stressed.… The market’s been crazy, but nothing is as important as you. As us. I’m going to make it up to you.”

  I could tell how hard he was trying to reach me, to bring me back. But I still felt so chilled and alone.

  I stared at the water dripping slowly from the bath tap as he whispered, “I want you to be happy, Nellie. Your mother wasn’t always happy. Well, mine wasn’t, either. She tried to act like she was, for me and Maureen, but we knew.… I don’t want that to happen to you.”

  I looked at him then, but his gaze was distant, his eyes cloudy, so I stared at the silvery scar above his right eye.

  Richard never talked about his parents. This admission meant more than all of his promises.

  “My dad wasn’t always good to my mom.” His palm kept moving in circles on my back, in a gesture a parent would make to soothe a child who was upset. “I could live with anything except being a bad husband to you.… I have been, though.”

  It was the most honest conversation we’d ever had. I wondered why it had taken my mother’s death to bring us to this place. But maybe it hadn’t been her overdose. Maybe it had been what happened two days before we’d learned about it, when we’d come home from the Alvin Ailey gala.

  “I love you,” he said.

  I reached out for him then. His shirt grew damp from the bathwater transferred to it by my wet arms.

  “We’re both orphans now,” he said. “So we’ll always be each other’s family.”

  I held on to him tightly. I held on to hope.

  * * *

  That night we made love for the first time in a long while. He cupped my cheeks between his palms and stared into my eyes with such tenderness and yearning that I felt something inside me, something that felt like a tight, hard knot, release. As he held me afterward, I thought about Richard’s gentle side.

  I recalled how he’d paid for my mother’s medical bills, how he’d attended Aunt Charlotte’s gallery openings, even if it meant skipping a client dinner, and how he always came home early each year on the anniversary of my father’s death with a pint of rum raisin ice cream in a white paper bag. It was my father’s favorite flavor, the one he ordered when we went for drives together on my mother’s lights-out days. Richard would serve us each a scoop, and I’d tell him details about my father that would otherwise grow dusty and forgotten, such as how despite his superstitions, he’d let me adopt the black cat I’d fallen in love with as a little girl. The ice cream would melt on my tongue, filling my mouth with sweetness, on those nights. I thought about how Richard had generously tipped waiters and taxi drivers and donated to a variety of charities.

  It wasn’t hard to focus on the goodness in Richard. My mind fell easily into those reminiscences, like a wheel latching comfortably into the grooves of a track designed for its rotations.

  As I lay in his arms, I looked over at him. His features were barely perceptible. “Promise me something,” I whispered.

  “Anything, my love.”

  “Promise things won’t get bad for us again.”

  “They won’t.”

  It was the first promise to me he’d ever broken. Because things got even worse.

  * * *

  As our plane lifted off and began to head toward New York the next morning, I stared out the window at the topography that grew ever smaller and shuddered. I was so grateful to be leaving Florida. Death surrounded me here like concentric rings. My mother. My father. Maggie.

  The sorority pin I’d thrown away hadn’t belonged to me. I was supposed to give it to Maggie after she was officially initiated into our house. But instead of the celebratory brunch we’d planned to throw for the end of pledge week, my sisters and I attended her funeral.

  I’d never told my mother what happened after Maggie’s service; her reaction would have been too unpredictable. I’d called Aunt Charlotte instead, but I hadn’t confided that I’d been pregnant. Richard only knew part of the story, too. Once when I woke up in his bed after a nightmare, I explained why I wouldn’t walk home alone at night; why I carried pepper spray and slept with a bat by my side.

  As I’d lain in Richard’s arms, I described how I’d gone to offer condolences to Maggie’s family. Her parents had merely nodded, so dazed they appeared incapable of forming speech. But her older brother, Jason, who was a senior at Grant University like me, had gripped my outstretched hand. Not to shake it. To pin me in place.

  “It’s you,” he breathed. I smelled stale liquor on his breath; the whites of his eyes were streaked through with crimson. He had Maggie’s pale skin, Maggie’s freckles, Maggie’s red hair.

  “I’m so sor—” I began, but he squeezed my hand more tightly. It felt as if he were grinding the bones together. Someone had reached out to hug Maggie’s brother, and he released his grip, but I felt his eyes following me. My sorority sisters stayed on for the reception in the church’s community room, but I slipped away after a few minutes and stepped outside.

  As I walked through the door, I encountered exactly what I’d sought to avoid: Jason.

  He stood alone on the front steps, tapping a pack of Marlboro Reds against his palm. They made a steady smacking sound. I tried to duck my head and move past him, but his voice stopped me.

  “She told me about you.” He flicked a lighter and inhaled deeply as he lit his cigarette. He exhaled a stream of smoke. “She was scared to go through pledge week, but you said you’d help her. You were her only friend in the sorority. Where were you when she died? Why weren’t you there?”

  I remember stepping back and feeling Jason’s eyes hold me, just as his grip had done.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again, but it didn’t douse the rage in his expression. If anything, my words seemed to fuel it.

  I began to retreat slowly, clutching the railing so I woul
dn’t fall as I edged down the stairs. Maggie’s brother kept his eyes on me. Just before I reached the sidewalk, he called out to me, his voice harsh and raw.

  “You will never forget what you did to my sister.” His words landed with as much force as fists. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  I didn’t need his threat to hold on to Maggie, though. I thought about her constantly. I never went back to that beach again. Our sorority had been put on probation for the rest of the year, but that wasn’t why I took a job waitressing at a campus pub on Thursday and Saturday nights. Fraternity parties and dances held no more appeal for me. I set aside part of my tips, and when I had a few hundred dollars, I tracked down the animal shelter, Furry Paws, where Maggie had volunteered and started anonymously donating in Maggie’s honor. I promised to keep sending money every month.

  I didn’t expect my small donations to absolve me of my culpability, my role in Maggie’s death. I knew I would always carry it with me, would always wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t veered away from the group of girls walking to the ocean. If I’d waited even just one more hour to confront Daniel.

  Exactly a month after Maggie’s death, I awoke to hear one of my sorority sisters shrieking. I ran downstairs in my boxers and T-shirt and saw the overturned chairs, the shattered lamp, the obscenities spray-painted in black across our living room wall. Bitches. Whores.

  And the message I knew was meant for me only: You killed her.

  I sucked in my breath and stared at the three words proclaiming my guilt for everyone to see.

  More girls came downstairs as our chapter president called campus security. One of the freshmen burst into tears; I saw two other girls pull away from our group and whisper to each other. I thought they were sneaking glances at me.

  The smell of stale cigarette smoke permeated the room. I saw a butt on the floor and I knelt down to look at it. Marlboro Red.

  When the guard arrived, he asked us if we had any guesses as to who might have vandalized our house. He knew about Maggie’s death—by then most people in Florida did.