Dear Wife

by Kimberly Belle

  Timmy looks up from his bed and smiles. “That sounds awesome.”

  “Now get up here and gimme a hug so I can go.”

  It’s the fastest hug on record, as is my trek down the stairs. Bryn is waiting for me at the bottom, her expression hopeful and disappointed at the same time. I’m not staying. That much is clear from the way I hit the floor and keep going, heading in long strides to the door.

  “Talk to Timmy. He promised to explain.” My phone buzzes. Rick again, with a possible sighting of Sabine’s car. Shit.

  “Are you sure you can’t stay?” Bryn says.

  “Call you later,” I say, and then I’m off like a shot, jogging across the front yard to my car.

  BETH

  I roll up at a two-story cottage on the Westside and double-check the address—1071 English Street. I take in the salmon-painted siding, white picket fencing, the neat, manicured front lawn lined with a cheerful border of impatiens. On the outside at least, Morgan House is a dream. A hundred times better than the shithole on Wylie Street, and that’s without even taking into account the hooker.

  I park at the curb, sling my bag over my shoulder and head for the door.

  The woman who pulls it open is large. Amazonian large, with a stretched-out frame and limbs like a panther, lean and miles and miles long. The tallest woman I’ve ever seen, though... My gaze lands on her throat. Not even a shadow of Adam’s apple.

  She steps onto the porch in four-inch heels, and I have to tip my head all the way back to look at her.

  “Can I help you?” Her voice is round and resonant, like she’s talking into an empty jug.

  I clear my throat and smile. “Yes. I’m looking for whoever’s in charge of this place.”

  “Well, then, you’re in luck, ’cause you found her.” She sticks out a hand the size of a skillet. Her nails are pointy and sharp, painted a shiny hot pink. “My name’s Miss Sally. And you are?”

  Her makeup is immaculate, if a little heavy. Fuchsia lips, lined and shaded lids, a pinkish bronze lining her cheekbones. I search her chin for tiny pinpricks of whiskers—it’s too early to have a shadow, but still—and find nothing. Her foundation looks spray painted on, dense but flawless.

  “Beth Murphy,” I say, shaking her hand. “A friend gave me this address because I’m looking for—”

  “You don’t look like a Beth.” She leans back and studies me, her gaze exploring my face, my hair, my suspiciously dark eyebrows, which I didn’t think to color until it was too late. “You look more like a Haley, or maybe a Madeline.”

  I go ice cold and overheated all at once. I don’t look like a Beth. I don’t feel like one, either. My baggy clothes, my dollar-store hair are all wrong. I’ve only been Beth for a day, and already I can feel her slipping away.

  Miss Sally laughs, slapping me playfully on an arm. “I’m just playing around with you, sugar. In my house you can be whoever you want to be. Now come on in and I’ll show you around.”

  I step inside the tiny foyer, and she shuts the door behind me. A TV blares from the room to my left, a square space crammed with mismatched couches and chairs, a table, some bookshelves. The only occupant is a man, in dusty jeans and a yellow hard hat. He looks over from his perch on the couch and lifts his chin in a greeting.

  “Living room, TV room and study, all in one,” Miss Sally says. “Those books there are loaners, meaning don’t go leaving them all over town or selling them off to Goodwill. There’s cards, darts and board games in the cupboard. The Wi-Fi is free, but the vending machines aren’t. Parking is out back.”

  “Looks great,” I say, but I’m talking to air. Miss Sally is already halfway down a long, narrow hallway. I hustle to catch up, peeking into the bedrooms as we pass. Tiny but neat—a single bed, a dresser and not much else.

  “So, Beth,” she says, stopping, turning on the hallway runner to face me. “Did you just get to town?”

  “Yes. Today, in fact.”

  “How are you liking Atlanta so far?”

  “It’s okay. There’s a lot of traffic.”

  She laughs, though it’s not even remotely funny. “It’s also jungle-hot, sprawled halfway to Tennessee and has entirely too many Republicans. But it’s not all that bad, you’ll see. You on your own?”

  “Very.”

  “Where from?”

  “Out west.”

  She twitches a brow that says she wants more.

  You’re a great liar. For years I’ve watched you tell the truth whenever possible, and not embellish with too much detail you’ll only forget later. Lies multiply, contradict, proliferate. Sticking to something close to the truth is the only way for you to keep track of all your lies, to keep them from piling up and you from stumbling over the simplest answers.

  I follow your example now. “I’m not really from anywhere. Not anymore, anyway. I move around a lot.”

  It’s enough for Miss Sally. She turns on her heels, raps on a door with a knuckle. “We’ve got three bathrooms,” she says, shoving the door open, “one for every four bedrooms, and they pretty much all look like this one.”

  She steps aside so I can see. Two pedestal sinks, a toilet and at the far end, a glass-enclosed shower, utilitarian and blinding white. The room smells clean, like Old Spice and bleach.

  “Shower time is three minutes. Seems short, I know, but you can get everything you need to get done in that time if you’re efficient, and if you’re not...well, we know what you’re doing in there. And you do not want to be going over. People start pounding on the door at two minutes, fifty-nine seconds, and they won’t be polite about it, either. Bitches who hog the hot water aren’t so popular around here, I can promise you that.”

  “It’s very neat.” No toothbrushes, no sticky tubes of cream or paste, no forgotten towels on the floor. The place is spotless.

  Miss Sally gives me a nod that says she’s pleased I noticed. “That’s because anything you leave behind gets confiscated, if not by me, then by whoever goes in after you. Don’t leave your shit lying around—that’s one of the house rules.”

  “What are the others?”

  She ticks them off on Jolly Green Giant fingers. “No smoking, no drugs, no sleepovers, and if you’re not in the door by midnight you’ll be sleeping on the lawn. Other than that, just don’t be an asshole and you’ll do fine.”

  “Does that mean I’m in?”

  In lieu of an answer, she turns and moves farther down the hall. “Kitchen’s down there, and the laundry room is in the basement. A buck a load, drop it in the lockbox on the wall. We live by the honor code here, and don’t even think of stiffing me. I’m not saying I have cameras everywhere, but it’s best to assume I have cameras everywhere.”

  I start at the word cameras, and my gaze wanders to the ceiling, searching out the corners.

  Miss Sally laughs, a big sound that fills the hallway like a cello chorus. “Well, I’m not going to be that obvious about it, now, am I?”

  I can’t tell if she’s fucking with me or not.

  “And the price?”

  “Single rooms are twenty-four dollars a night. Rent is due in cash on Sundays at noon. No exceptions. Come to me either short or late, and you’re out.”

  A few bucks more than Wylie Street, but also a million times nicer. I nod.

  She looks down her nose at me, and the silence that fills the hallway tightens the skin of my stomach. She’s waiting for something, and so am I—for her to pose the question I’ve been dreading since I walked through the door: Can you prove you are who you say you are?

  She opens her mouth, and my heart gives a sudden kick. “Who is this friend you mentioned earlier?”

  I shake my head, confused. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “When you knocked on my door, you said a friend gave you the address. Who? Tell me his or her name.”

  I think about how Beth should answer, if she’s the type of person to lie easily and effortlessly, like you. The opposite of Old Me, who’s never been a natural liar,
though I’ve certainly sharpened my skills some. Don’t change your voice. Don’t fidget or become too still. Hold a steady, confident gaze, and whatever you do, don’t look up and to the left.

  But now I’ve waited too long to answer—the dreaded, too-telling pause. It’s too late to blurt out a name and hope for the best, and my gut tells me this is some kind of test. That Miss Sally, with her third-degree tone and squinty eyes, would see straight through me.

  “So maybe ‘friend’ was too big a word,” I say, lifting an apologetic shoulder. “Maybe it was more like some random person I met at Best Buy.”

  Miss Sally’s shiny lips spread in a grin. “Girl, welcome to Morgan House.”

  * * *

  I celebrate securing a new room by falling onto the bed fully clothed and conking out for five hours straight. It’s still light when I awaken, but the sun has dipped below the trees, giant pines that sway in the air above my window. My few belongings are tucked in the drawer to my right, an easy arm’s reach from my bed. When Miss Sally shoved open my door, she handed me two keys—one for the door and the second for the drawer—but if she’s the type to spy with secret, hidden cameras, then she’s also the type to have a master key. My dwindling wad of cash is strapped to a belt inside my shirt.

  Somewhere below me, people are starting to trickle in. The front door opens and closes, opens and closes, and voices worm up through the floor like distant waves. I wonder about the proper etiquette here. Do I go down and say hello? Stay in my room? I hear a sudden burst of laughter, and I am overcome with uncertainty. Venturing downstairs means talking to people. Introducing myself as Beth. Answering questions like the ones Miss Sally asked. Up here in my room, behind my closed door, I am invisible.

  My stomach growls, and I unlock the drawer and dig out a small bag of peanuts, the last one. I rip off the corner and think what I really want is a burger, dripping in grease and draped in bacon, smothered in mayonnaise and ketchup and a thick layer of pickles. My mouth waters, and I remember all those times I ate pickles at the fair, giant, foil-wrapped mammoths my sister and I had to hold in both hands. We’d wander among the bumper cars and farm stalls, eating them until our stomachs ached. You say pickles make my breath stink. Tomorrow I’m going to buy a jar of Vlasics and eat every single one.

  For someone who is trying to shed herself of a husband, I sure do think of you a lot. Part of it is habit—all those years of tiptoeing around your moods and catering to your every whim are hard to unlearn, like a Charles Manson brainwashing. And it’s still a necessary measure to keep myself safe. I have to think of you, to imagine the steps you’re taking to find me in order to stay one step in front of you.

  But I can’t stay up here, hiding in my room forever.

  I reach for my phone, pull up the calculator. At twenty-four dollars a night, my two-thousand-dollar stash will last me only a couple of months, and that’s assuming the pile of crap car Dill sold me doesn’t blow a fuse or a tire. And Beth has to eat, which means Beth needs to do some seriously creative thinking. Even a job slinging burgers requires some sort of identification.

  I turn the peanut bag upside down over my mouth, but all I get is crumbs. I toss the bag on the bed. Groceries and a job, that’s on the agenda for tomorrow.

  I think about what you’re doing now, some thirty hours into my disappearing trick. I wonder if you’ve found my car, my cell phone, the clues that will lead you to Tulsa—the opposite direction of here. I picture you searching through my things, calling my sister and my friends, combing through the files on my computer, and my senses go on high alert. I listen for the rumble of your car, the scrape of your key in the door, the tremor of your heavy shoes coming down the hallway floor. I shoot a glance to the window, half expecting to see the pale moon of your face peering in, the flash of your gotcha smile before you point your gun at my head. My heart taps a double time, and I take deep, belly breaths, trying to calm my nervous system. Post-traumatic stress is no joke—flashbacks and nightmares and anxiety attacks like this one are the product of years of abuse. It’ll take more than a couple days of freedom for my body to uncoil.

  Freedom.

  I’m not there yet, not even close. I’m more in danger now than that time the waiter accidentally brushed his fingers against mine when refilling my water, or any one of the times you came home after a particularly bad day at work. Leaving does not stop the violence, and it doesn’t guarantee freedom. Why doesn’t she just leave? gets asked in living rooms and courtrooms across the country, when a better question would be, Why doesn’t he let her go?

  It took me a while, but I’ve finally figured out the answer.

  You’d sooner kill me than let me go.

  JEFFREY

  On a long stretch of stick-straight road, 1600 Country Club Lane is tucked behind a thick tuft of trees and bushes. I don’t see it until I’ve already blown past, and then I slam the brakes and screech to a stop in the middle of the road, because what the hell. Nobody’s on this street but me, and with any luck, the squealing of my tires lets them know I’m here, that I’m coming in.

  I throw the car into Reverse, pulling into the driveway in a sloppy arc, my gaze lighting on an upstairs window. I picture the two of them popping up in bed behind the shiny glass, sheets pressed to their naked, panting chests. I’m here, bitches. Just in case, I lean on the horn.

  The house is a renovated bungalow, sprawling and ivy-covered, the kind of place Sabine would go gaga over. A pompous thing that belongs in the rolling hills of Tuscany, not pressed up against the faded greens of the Pine Bluff Country Club. An easy sale, a house she’d already be in love with before Trevor walked through the door.

  I climb out of the car and slam my door with a sharp clap that echoes down the street. Inside the house, a little dog barks, high-pitched and frantic. Good, at least somebody knows I’m here.

  I stomp up the walkway and bang on the front door with a fist. “Sabine! I know you’re in there so open up. Open this door right goddamn now!”

  The fury fills me like a furnace, bathing my body in a thin layer of sweat. Somewhere inside this stupid, pretentious house, my wife’s body is wrapped around her lover’s, and if one of them doesn’t open this door right fucking now, I’m going to bust it down with my bare hands. I cup my hands around my face and lean into the glass, searching for movement, but all I see is an empty foyer. I haul back a fist and bang some more. On either side of me, two gas-fueled porch lights flicker in the fading light.

  Two feet appear at the top of the stairs—male feet, sticking out from under blue scrubs. The man comes down trailed by a tiny white dog that is losing its shit. Each frantic bark pops all four of his paws off the ground, a fluffy jumping bean bouncing down the stairs.

  But it’s Trevor, all right. A shirtless Trevor. I recognize him from his headshot—full head of hair, strong shoulders that taper down into the abs of a movie star, not an ounce of fat or love handles on him. Not that I would normally notice such a thing, but Sabine would. She’d notice, and then she’d want to trace all those sculpted muscles with her fingertips, and maybe her tongue.

  “It’s you,” he says, studying me through the door’s paned windows. All those years of hospital training, of on-call shifts and middle-of-the-night births are working now like a Xanax, making him look almost bored at the prospect of his lover’s husband banging on his front door.

  I beat on the wood hard enough to crack it. “Where’s Sabine? Tell that little bitch to stop hiding and get her ass down here!”

  On the other side of the glass, the dog is going ballistic. Trevor scoops it up and cradles it to his chest like a football. His mouth is moving, but I can’t hear his words over the barking and the doorbell, which I’m mashing over and over and over again with a thumb.

  He opens the door with a whoosh of cool air and moneyed manliness. “I’m sorry, Jeffrey, but Sabine’s not here.”

  Jeffrey. I’ve known about this motherfucker’s existence for less than half an hour, and now he
’s calling me by my first name. Did Sabine show him my picture? Did they laugh about poor, clueless Jeffrey and talk about the best way to make me look like a fool?

  I shove him out of the way, marching to the stairs and hollering up them. “Sabine! You can come out now. I saw the emails. I know.”

  “Jeffrey.” A hand lands on my shoulder. “Calm down. She’s not here.”

  I shrug him off, swinging my arm through the air. “You touch me again, Trevor, and I will shove my fist down your throat hard enough to come out the other side. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  The dog kicks things up a notch or ten, barking so hard he’s starting to foam at the mouth. Jeffrey holds a chill-out hand in my direction, then wraps his fingers around the dog’s snoot like a muzzle. Finally, thankfully, the beast stops barking.

  “Where is she?” I’m not looking at him, but beyond him into the foyer. A family’s foyer. Kids’ shoes, a soccer ball, forgotten jackets and book bags. I wonder if Sabine has met them yet, if they hate her for blowing their happy home to bits.

  Trevor shuts the door. “I already told you. She’s not here.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “You shouldn’t. But I’m telling you the God’s honest truth that she’s not upstairs. I’d let you look, but my kids are up there.” He winces. “Jesus, I’m going to have to explain this to them, aren’t I? They’re only six and four. They’re never going to understand.”

  If that was an attempt to make me feel sorry for him, it gets him nowhere. I don’t give a shit about his kids, or the fissure in his family. I only care about mine.

  “You fucked my wife.”

  A normal person would deny it, especially one who’s just been threatened with a fist down his throat, but not Trevor. His shoulders slump and he sighs, and his body language just lays it all out there. Yes. Yes, now that you mention it, I did fuck your wife. He even has the balls to look apologetic.