Recipe for a Perfect Wife

by Karma Brown

  Alice puffed out her cheeks as she stood in the living room, hands on her hips. She released her breath in one long hiss, shaking out her shoulders. Trying to relax. The dim, cavernous room overwhelmed her, and the floorboards creaked under her feet as she walked, the sound rattling her nerves. Alice texted Nate to find out how much longer he would be. I’m freaked out being alone in the house, is what she wanted to write, but instead she typed out, Don’t forget the bleach.

  She should have gone with Nate, as he’d suggested. “To get the lay of the land,” he’d said, tapping the car fob against the grocery list in his palm. “Come Monday you’re going to be the one doing all this. Don’t you want to know how to get everywhere?” This was part of their deal—Nate was taking care of their expenses by commuting into work every day, and Alice would take care of things at home. The split sounded simple, even if Alice didn’t fully grasp what “take care of things at home” meant.

  In her mind, she remained the woman she used to be: alarm at 5:00 A.M., fully caffeinated and at her desk by seven. Managing clients and putting out fires, then picking up takeout and meeting Nate at home later in the evening. Never once worrying about whether the fridge was full or the bathroom clean or the bed made.

  Alice walked into the kitchen, which by comparison to the rest of the house was bright and cheerful and made her feel instantly better. She donned a pair of rubber gloves and started cleaning. Her efforts were halted by the discovery of two dead mice behind the rattling fridge, decomposed nearly to their skeletons. Shuddering, she lay the delicate remains on a paper towel and googled whether dead mice should go into the compost or garbage in Greenville.

  After disposing of the mice, Alice got to work on the kitchen surfaces, scrubbing off a year’s plus worth of grime. She’d only gotten as far as scouring the countertops and inside a few of the drawers—which were off-center and screeched when she opened them—by the time Nate returned.

  After setting the paper grocery bags on the table and giving her a kiss on the top of her head—the only part of her she said didn’t feel covered in kitchen grime—he opened the refrigerator door, then looked at her over his shoulder. “Didn’t get to this yet, huh?” It needed a good scrub, with soap and water (he had forgotten the bleach), but that wouldn’t happen before the perishables had to be unpacked.

  “I found some dead mice,” Alice replied, shrugging nonchalantly even though she felt deflated at his comment. The countertops were pristine and the kitchen smelled fresh and clean, lemon and lavender oils masking the previously stale air. Sure, she probably should have tackled the fridge first, knowing Nate was bringing home groceries to put in there. She sighed, frustrated with herself. In her work life results had been easy to identify and measure. What did one get for scrubbing the kitchen, aside from a (temporarily) gleaming countertop?

  “Don’t worry about it. We can do it later.” Nate shut the fridge door, reached into one of the bags. “Now, this can’t compare to the hammers, but I got you—well, us—a sort of housewarming present. Close your eyes.”

  Alice did, eager with the promise of an unexpected gift, and the paper crinkled as Nate dug around inside a bag. “Hold out your hands,” he said, and again, she did as he asked.

  He placed something in her palms, a rectangular object without much weight to it. She opened her eyes to find a pink-and-white box in her hands. Staring back at her was a smiling baby peeking out from under a white blanket, surrounded by the promises Identify your 2 most fertile days! No more guessing!

  “Oh . . . thanks.” Alice set the box aside and started unpacking one of the paper bags.

  “That’s it? ‘Oh, thanks’?” Nate crossed his arms, frowning as he watched her swivel from counter to fridge and back, making quick work of the unpacking. “What’s up?”

  She set the butter, then the milk on the one narrow shelf (old refrigerators were unbelievably limited on space) and hip checked the door closed. “Nothing. All good.”

  “Well, it doesn’t seem like all is good.” His forehead creased. “What’s wrong?”

  What was wrong was that Alice was disappointed. An ovulation kit as a housewarming present? She folded the paper bags and stuffed them into a bin under the sink before responding. “It’s just . . . it wasn’t what I was expecting. An ovulation kit seems presumptuous, or something.”

  “Presumptuous?” Nate exclaimed, barking out a short laugh to cover his confusion. As a risk analyst he was hardwired to try to predict the future, and so using an ovulation test seemed perfectly logical—why wouldn’t you want to know your most fertile days if you are trying to get pregnant?

  Alice sat at the table and pulled the box toward her. “Don’t you think it sort of takes the fun out of it? Why can’t we do it the old-fashioned way?”

  Nate pursed his lips. “Ali, we agreed we’d start trying once we moved. You told me you were ready.” His tone was mildly accusatory, and fair enough, Alice had said pretty much exactly that. And she did think she was ready. She’d be thirty by year’s end, and now that they had the house, with its extra bedrooms and full-size laundry, it seemed time to start trying. However, it remained a novel idea Alice was still adjusting to. Six months earlier if talk of starting a family had come up, Alice would have replied, “Talk to me in five years.” It wasn’t that she didn’t want children; she simply wanted other things—like a “director of PR” title—first. At least until she screwed it all up. Now she wasn’t at all sure what she wanted.

  “I told you I was almost ready,” she said, quickly adding, “And I am! But there’s so much work to do. On the house.” She swept loose tendrils of hair into the elastic holding back her ponytail. “I don’t want to worry about my ovulation schedule, too.”

  “Fine, Alice. That’s just fine,” Nate grumbled. He banged around the kitchen, doing unnecessary things like shifting the loaf of bread from one end of the countertop to the other, opening and closing the cupboard doors without taking anything out. “Where the hell are the water glasses?”

  “Top right, above the sink.” She could have been more receptive to the gift, even if she would have preferred a nice bottle of wine or a stack of takeout menus to choose from for tonight’s dinner. Pushing back from the table, she stood behind him as he let the tap run, waiting for the water to get cold. “I am ready.”

  Nate filled the glass before turning. She smiled gently, wound her fingers through his when he set the glass on the counter. “But maybe first we can get rid of the god-awful wallpaper and hire an electrician and figure out how to warm this place up a bit? It’s so damn cold in here.” She shivered for dramatic effect, and Nate, conceding, pulled her into his chest and rubbed his hands across her back.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “Like, really, really sure? I mean, I thought this was the plan, but I don’t want to—”

  “I’m sure.” She took a step back so she could reach the ovulation kit on the table. “How many tests are in here?”

  “Twenty.” He pointed to the top corner. “A month’s worth, apparently.”

  Alice noticed the seal had already been broken. “It’s been opened.”

  “Yeah, that was me. I wanted to read the instructions.”

  “I should have known.” Alice laughed. “Okay. I’ll start peeing on these first thing tomorrow.”

  Nate shook his head. “Too soon. It’s only cycle day seven. We’re aiming for day twelve.”

  “How do you know it’s day seven?”

  He shrugged. “I pay attention.”

  “Huh.” If Alice was surprised her husband was monitoring her menstrual cycle with more accuracy than she was, she shouldn’t have been. He was a planner and a good partner—naturally he would take a team-effort approach.

  “Flowers probably would have been a better choice, huh?”

  “Nah, we have plenty of flowers in the garden,” Alice replied. “I look forward to putting this to g
ood use in five days.”

  “Which means . . . we have a few practice days, right?”

  “Mmm-hmm. I like where you’re going with this.” Alice allowed Nate to pull her into the living room. She felt dirty and would have liked to take a shower first, but she felt badly for her less-than-enthusiastic response. With all the flux in her life over the past few months, Nate had been her constant. She couldn’t allow her anxieties to come between them.

  Alice cast her eyes at the floral sofa, which had come with the house and was in surprisingly decent condition. “This looks like as good a place as any.”

  Nate nodded, not taking his eyes off her. A moment later Alice lay on the sofa in only her bra and jeans and Nate was on top of her, his weight resting on his elbows. Under him she was satisfied for the first time all day.

  “This certainly qualifies as the old-fashioned way.” Nate reached between them to unbutton Alice’s jeans and she pressed down into the firm cushions to give him more access. He traced a finger along the side of her face, down her jawline and neck, between her breasts.

  “I love you, Mrs. Hale,” he murmured as he bent to follow his finger’s trail with his lips.

  Alice leaned her head back against the sofa’s padded arm. “I love you more, Mr. Hale.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Alice was up too early on Monday, sun streaming through the drapeless windows before seven. She tried to go back to sleep but instead ruminated on her to-do list: We need curtains. And maybe a white-noise machine because it’s too quiet. And this ugly wallpaper has to go. Along with the miniature, loud fridge, and rusty bathtub, and the drafts, she thought. But I don’t mind the sofa. Even with the gaudy flowers. The sofa can stay. Nate sighed beside her.

  At his sigh she rolled onto her back and discovered she was alone in their bed. Remembered Nate had probably already left for the office, now that his commute was so much longer. Alice stared up at the ceiling at a long crack she hadn’t noticed before, considered maybe the house had sighed through the crack, discontent that its new owners knew little about how to care for it and didn’t appreciate its many charms.

  A loud bang shattered the quiet, and Alice sat straight up, clutching the duvet to her chest, heart pounding as she stared at the bedroom door, which had slammed shut. She didn’t have long to come up with a rational explanation (a strong breeze from the open window?) before the second bang. The bedroom door’s heavy brass handle fell off and hit the hardwood floor, rolling noisily across the wood until it was stopped by the baseboard.

  With a groan Alice sank back into her pillow and crossed her arms over her face, adding yet one more item to her growing to-do list.

  9

  Harbor pleasant thoughts while working. It will make every task lighter and pleasanter.

  —Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book, revised and enlarged (1956)

  Alice

  JUNE 2, 2018

  I’ve forgotten how cold it is out east.” Alice’s mom pulled her wrap sweater, which looked like it could double as an area rug, tighter and tucked her chin deep inside its cowl neck. “Aren’t you chilly?” She frowned at her daughter’s outfit: jeans and a thin long-sleeved T-shirt, bare feet.

  “Mom, it’s seventy-eight degrees.” But that was outside. Inside it did feel colder, as though the air-conditioning was on full blast, except that the old house didn’t have air-conditioning.

  “No wonder I’m cold. It was eighty-six when we left.”

  Alice swilled her coffee and murmured, “Yes, California’s weather is different from New York’s.” Her mom, Jaclyn, and stepfather, Steve, had been staying with them for exactly eighteen hours, nine of which they spent sleeping, and Alice was already mentally crossing off the days until they headed back to San Diego. She had tried to dissuade them from coming (“a nearly thirty-year-old married woman does not need her parents to help her move”), but her mother had been insistent and Alice had given up when her mother’s email arrived with their already-booked flight details.

  Her mom placed her steaming mug of tea, her third—matcha, which she brought with her despite Alice’s assurances she could get it for her in New York—on the nightstand and settled into a deep lunge in the guest bedroom, her legs and arms like spindles that bent and straightened with surprising ease despite the sweater-rug.

  “So how was your first week of vacation?” her mom asked, moving through a series of stretches on the yoga mat she’d rolled out on the floor.

  “I’m not on vacation, Mom. I quit, remember?” Alice frowned, thinking about work. Missing it desperately. Wishing she’d had the good sense to keep her mouth shut that night with Bronwyn, rather than torpedoing her career.

  “Oh, you know what I meant, honey.” Her mom flowed into a downward dog. “When I was your age I would have given anything to quit my job, bang around a big, beautiful house all day, puttering and fixing and whatnot.”

  A couple of her friends had essentially said the same—Alice was lucky to have Nate and his salary—though if pressed, they wouldn’t have been able to say what one does with an extra fifty hours a week of unscheduled time. Everyone Alice knew worked, had to work.

  “You could always try out a few hobbies while you’re figuring things out,” Jaclyn said. “Like painting or gardening. Or maybe cooking?”

  “Hmm. Maybe . . .”

  “Have you heard about this sous vide trend?” Alice’s mother described a particularly moist flank steak she’d had prepared this way a couple of weeks earlier.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of it.” Alice yanked a stray thread from her T-shirt’s hem, sighed.

  “Trust me, honey, take advantage of this time before the kids come.” Jaclyn made the comment briskly, as though offering advice to a friend rather than her daughter, who knew it was pointless to take offense. Her mother was not one to see things from Alice’s perspective.

  “And give yourself a break. Change is hard.” Jaclyn moved into a headstand, forcing Alice to look at her upside down. “Are you taking your vitamins?”

  Her mother liked to remind her how as a child she was always catching sore throats and stomach bugs with the changing seasons, or when beginning something new, like starting middle school. “Vitamins are for kids, Mom.” She wasn’t in the mood to be mothered, particularly by Jaclyn.

  Jaclyn breathed deeply as she stretched. Alice closed her own eyes and counted to ten in time to her mother’s loud nostril breathing. “Not true, honey. Vitamin D is a must in this sun-starved climate.”

  Alice’s answer to “Are you close with your mom?” was always, “It’s complicated.” The two women were so physically different that if Alice hadn’t seen the pictures of her mom holding her moments after her birth she might not have believed they shared DNA. Where her mother was fair, Alice was dark. Where Alice was small-bodied but had a tendency toward thickness without calorie deprivation, her mom was long and angular and lean. In the sun Alice went lobster red, her mother golden brown.

  People often asked if Alice took after her father. She did, physically, but her dad had been absent so long she couldn’t say if they shared any other characteristics.

  During the ten years Alice’s parents were together, her father floated between a variety of jobs—mechanic, farmhand, insurance salesman, yoga instructor—and one day when Alice was nine years old, he floated right out the door on his way to his landscaping job. He didn’t come home for supper, nor was he there by the time Alice was ushered up to her room for bedtime. She remembered creeping back downstairs hours later and sitting in the chair by the living room window, where she waited until she fell asleep. But the sun rose, and still, her dad hadn’t come home. Her mother cooked them breakfast—eggs, sunny-side up, and slightly fermenting orange juice bought on sale.

  “When will Dad be home?” Alice had asked.

  “I have no idea,” Jaclyn replied matter-of-
factly, busying herself with plating the eggs. “When he’s ready, I suppose.”

  Alice, confused and upset by her mother’s impassive statement and indifferent tone, had started to cry. Despite his fickle nature, Alice loved her father. She was still innocent enough to see only the good in him: he had a handlebar mustache and would wiggle the ends one at a time like a cartoon character to make her laugh; he let her have a whole doughnut rather than having to share it; he taught her to swim at the community pool near their apartment, leaving time for the underwater tea party Alice typically requested.

  “Stop crying.” Jaclyn had slid the plate of jiggly eggs toward Alice. “And eat your breakfast. You’re going to be late for school.” Alice had gulped down her sadness along with those runny eggs, and Jaclyn had said nothing further to comfort her young daughter. That was the first time Alice distinctly remembered being disappointed in her mother.

  A year after Alice’s father left, her mom met Steve Daikan at a fitness convention. She had been an aerobics instructor for years and Steve ran a successful string of fitness centers in California. Six months later she packed them up and moved them across the country to Steve’s sprawling ranch-style house in San Diego. Alice found California too hot, too predictable without the change of seasons, and so when she turned seventeen she hopped on a plane back to New York for college. Alice loved her mother but longed for a more straightforward relationship, like the one Nate had with his parents. It wasn’t easy being a single mother, Alice understood, but it also wasn’t easy being raised by someone juggling so many priorities.

  “Jaclyn, where’s the charger?” Steve popped his head into the bedroom.

  “In my carry-on. Side pocket.”

  “Okeydokey.” Steve turned to Alice. “Morning, kiddo. How was your sleep?” Like her mom, Steve was superfit, especially for sixty, his tanned biceps bulging in his T-shirt.

  “Good, thanks,” Alice replied, getting up to hug him. “How about you?”