by Karma Brown
She quickly scanned the therapist’s advice, which amounted
to: Doris should know her expensive dinners were only making
things worse for poor, worried Gordon, and therefore her as well; 18
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Gordon should not be expected to have to tell Doris how he’s
feeling . . . she should just know. The way any good wife would.
Nellie— who had been Mrs. Richard Murdoch for barely a
year— snorted, sympathetic to Doris and Gordon’s plight but
certain she would never have to write away for such advice. From
the moment Richard, eleven years her senior, plucked her from
the crowd at the supper club and declared she would be his wife,
Nellie had felt lucky. He might not have been the most attractive
compared to her friends’ husbands, nor the most doting, but he
certainly had his charm. Richard had swept her off her feet that
night— quite literally, as he picked her up in his arms and carried her to his table once he heard it was her twenty‑ first birthday,
plying her with expensive champagne and adoration until she was
tipsy and enchanted. In the two years since, Nellie had discovered
that Richard was not a flawless man (was there even such a thing?), but he was an excellent provider and would be an attentive father.
What more could a wife expect from her husband?
She stubbed out her cigarette and tapped the holder to release
the butt before pouring a glass of lemonade. It was getting on,
and she knew she should start dinner soon. Richard had asked for
something simple tonight, as he was ill with one of his bad
stomach spells. He’d suffered a terrible ulcer a couple of years
earlier and it continued to flare up now and again. There’d been
a great sale on ground hamburger this week and she’d bought
enough for a few meals. Richard kept telling her she didn’t need
to scrimp, but she had been raised to spend wisely. To be thrifty
wherever possible. Despite Richard’s family’s money— which was
now their money, since his mother Grace’s death only four weeks
after their wedding— Nellie still liked a deal.
She pulled her mother’s bible—
Cookbook for the Modern
Housewife— the spine soft thanks to years of use, its pages covered in the spots and stains of meals past, from the shelf. Singing along to Elvis Presley’s latest, “Hound Dog,” Nel ie sipped her lemonade, 19
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Karma Brown
thumbing the pages until she found the one she was looking for,
dog‑ eared and well used. Meat Loaf with Oatmeal, the note Good for digestion written in her mother’s pristine handwriting beside the ingredients list.
Setting the cookbook aside, she finished her glass of lem‑
onade and decided it was time to get to the garden before the day
got away from her entirely. It was scorching outside and a hat
would probably be wise, but Nellie liked the sun on her face. The
smattering of freckles she’d accumulated already this summer
would have horrified her mother‑ in‑ law, who valued unblemished
skin on a woman. But the impossible‑ to‑ please Grace Murdoch
was no longer around to offer her opinions, so Nellie headed
outside without a hat.
Nellie loved her garden, and her garden loved her. She was
the envy of the neighborhood, her flowers blooming earlier
than everyone else’s, staying full and bursting long after others
were forced to clip flower heads and admit no matter what they
did they would never have flower beds like Nellie Murdoch’s.
Though everyone was dying to know her secret, she claimed
there was no secret at all— merely time pruning and weeding,
and an understanding of which blooms liked full sun, which
thrived in wetter, shady spots. Nothing extraordinary about it,
she’d say. But that wasn’t entirely true. Nellie had from an early
age mucked about in the garden with her mother, Elsie Swann,
who spent more time among her plants than with human com‑
panions.
Through the warm months Nellie’s mother was gay, funny,
and ever present in her daughter’s life. But once the flowers died
with the end of the sunny season, turning to a mass of brown
mulch covering the garden soil, Nellie’s mother would retreat
inside where no one could reach her. Nellie grew to hate those
cold, dark months (she still did), her mother glassy‑ eyed at the
kitchen table, unaware how much her young daughter was trying
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to do to keep the household running. To keep her no‑ good father
from leaving them, the way her grandfather had left her mother
and grandmother years ago.
Elsie taught her daughter everything she knew about gar‑
dening and cooking during those swatches of light woven be‑
tween her dark moods. For a while things seemed good, Elsie
always coming back to herself after the snow melted and the
days grew long shadows. Nellie and her mother were an un‑
breakable team, especially after her father left, finding the cheer‑
fulness of a younger, less complicated woman more palatable to
his needs.
Sweat trickled between Nellie’s breasts, well encased in her
brassiere, and pooled in her belly button and in the creases
behind her knees. Perhaps she should have worn shorts, and she
considered going upstairs to change out of her dungarees. Never mind, she thought. This heat is good for me. She sang softly to the plants, stopping to caress the tubular magenta petals of the
newly sprung bee balm, a favorite of hummingbirds. “Even a
plant needs a gentle touch, a gentle song, Nell‑ girl,” her mother would say. Nellie wasn’t as green‑ fingered as Elsie, but she did
learn to love her flowers as much.
Once the garden was weeded and the blooms lullabied,
Nellie trimmed a few herb sprigs, macerating a flat parsley leaf
with her gloved fingers and holding it to her nose, the smell
green and bright and satisfying.
Back in the kitchen Nellie washed and chopped the parsley
and added it to the meat mixture, along with a sprinkle of the
dried herbs she cultivated in her garden and kept in a cheese
shaker in the cupboard. She glanced occasionally at the meat
loaf recipe to ensure she hadn’t missed anything. Despite having
made this recipe dozens of times, she liked following the steps
precisely. Knew it would result in a meat loaf perfectly browned
on top yet still juicy inside, the way Richard liked it.
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Karma Brown
Nellie hoped his stomach had improved as the day wore on;
he’d barely been able to get his breakfast down. Perhaps a batch
of fennel and peppermint tea with dinner might help— iced,
because he
didn’t enjoy warm beverages. She hummed to the
radio as she trimmed a few mint leaves, hoping Richard wouldn’t
be late for dinner again tonight. She was bursting with won‑
derful news and couldn’t wait to tell him.
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5
q
To be a successful wife is a career in itself, requiring among other things, the qualities of a diplomat, a businesswoman, a good cook,
a trained nurse, a schoolteacher, a politician and a glamour girl.
— Emily Mudd, “Woman’s Finest Role,” Reader’s Digest, 1959
Alice
MAy 26, 2018
A lice’s head screamed with the shrill beeping of the moving truck as it backed into the driveway. Their driveway. Long enough to fit two cars, three if they went bumper to bumper. Only a
couple of hours earlier she and Nate had made multiple trips from
their eighth‑ floor apartment to the truck, filling it with their
worldly
possessions—
which had been scrunched into their
Murray Hill apartment like Tetris blocks but easily fit into the
truck’s cavity, with room to spare.
The night before, their last in Manhattan, Alice’s best friend,
Bronwyn, had thrown them a moving‑ out party to which she
wore all black, including a lace‑ veiled funeral hat she’d picked up at a consignment shop. “What? I’m in mourning,” she’d said,
pouting when Alice raised her eyebrows at the hat. Bronwyn was
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Karma Brown
at times melodramatic— when she and Alice were roommates
she’d once called 911 when a mouse ran out from behind the
oven— but she knew Alice better than anyone, and Alice under‑
stood that while the hat was a bit much, the sentiment was fair.
A year earlier Alice would have scoffed at leaving the city for the
“country,” but things, and people, change. Or, as in Alice’s case,
people make one tiny error in judgment and completely fuck up
their lives and then have no choice but to change.
Putting her hands to the sides of Bronwyn’s face, Alice had
said, “I’m not dead. It’s only Greenville, okay? Change is good.”
She held back hot tears, hoping her wide smile hid her worry.
Bronwyn, seeing right through her, repeated, “Change is
good. This city is overrated anyway,” then suggested they get
drunk, which they did. Around midnight they escaped Bron‑
wyn’s crowded living room— their friends shoulder to shoulder
in the cramped, humid space— and shared the last of a bottle of
tequila on the fire escape, until Alice’s words grew slurry and
Bronwyn fell asleep, head in her best friend’s lap.
So after a very early alarm and some dry heaving and not
enough coffee, Alice was cotton‑ mouthed and in a foul mood
and she wanted the truck to stop beeping. Or maybe what she
really wanted was to lie down on the overgrown and weedy
driveway and let the truck run her over, ending her hangover.
Alice chuckled, imagining how Beverly would spin that story for
the next potential home buyers.
“What’s so funny?” Nate asked, nudging Alice.
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe we’re here.”
Nate glanced her way. “All good?”
“Fine. Except my head feels like it’s going to explode.”
“Poor baby.” Nate cradled an arm around her shoulders and
kissed her temple. He rubbed his free hand over his face, squinting in the bright sunshine. His sunglasses were on top of his head,
but he didn’t seem to remember. “I’m seriously hungover too.”
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The truck had mercifully stopped, the backup alarm finally
quieted.
Alice tipped his sunglasses onto his face. “Think we can pay
them to unpack everything so we can go to bed?”
“I think we should save our pennies,” Nate replied, and a
spike of guilt hit Alice despite his mild‑ mannered tone. His salary was good— much bigger than Alice’s ever was, maybe ever would
have been— and would jump significantly after his next, and final, actuarial exam in a few months. Plus, he was a responsible in‑
vestor and saver, but it was his paycheck alone that would have to
float them, at least for now.
“You’re right,” Alice said, rising on her toes to kiss him. “Did
I mention how much I love you, even though you forgot to brush
your teeth this morning?”
Nate clamped a hand over his mouth, laughing softly, and
Alice pried it away.
“I don’t care.”
She squealed as he dipped her, both of them fumbling as her
hand, looking for something to grasp, caught the arm of his
sunglasses and ripped them from his face. Nate shifted to catch
the glasses, dropping Alice to the sidewalk in the process. They
lay side by side, Alice laughing so hard she couldn’t make a
sound.
“Are you okay?” he asked, cradling her head so it wasn’t resting
on the cement. He grinned when he saw she was writhing in
laughter, not pain.
“Mostly,” Alice murmured, then smiled and placed his sun‑
glasses back on his face. Nate pulled her to her feet, both of them brushing bits of gravel from their jeans when Beverly’s Lexus
pulled into the driveway.
She stepped out of the car, this time with jingling silver
bracelets adorning her mostly bare arm. The skin under her
biceps flapped as she waved, and Alice clutched her own arms,
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surreptitiously seeing how much skin she could squeeze. She
made a note to do push‑ ups later.
“Ali! Nate! Hello!” Beverly was carrying a package in her
other hand, the excess of clear cellophane wrapping jutting out
in all directions from a pale yellow ribbon tied around it. “To‑
day’s the big day. You must be excited!”
Beverly beamed as she thrust the basket toward Alice, who
was unprepared for how heavy it was and nearly dropped it.
“Oh, careful there,” Beverly said, putting a supportive hand
underneath Alice’s. “There’s a lovely bottle of wine you won’t
want to waste on these flowers.” Patches of dandelions sprouted
up from the cracks in the pavement. Beverly might be equally
useless in the garden if she qualified these weeds as “flowers.”
“Thanks, Beverly.” Alice tightened her grip on the gift. A
sprig of cellophane scratched her chin, and she shifted the basket
into the crook of her elbow. “You didn’t have to do this.”
Beverly waved away the words. “Don’t be silly. This is an
exciting day.” She handed Nate the keys for the front door. “I
think you’re going to be very happy here. Very happy indeed.”
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q
It is up to you to earn the proposal— by waging a dignified, common- sense campaign designed to help him see for himself
that matrimony rather than bachelorhood is the keystone of a
full and happy life.
— Ellis Michael, “How to Make Him Propose,” Coronet (1951)
Alice
A lice and Nate were in bed in the unfamiliar master bedroom, mildly tipsy after finishing Beverly’s gifted bottle of wine. They
lay under a duvet on their mattress, which they’d plopped on the
floor, too tired to put the frame together. The only light came
from a bedside table lamp plugged into the far wall. Alice’s body
ached; every muscle from scalp to feet begged for a massage, or
at the minimum a hot bath. She thought about the rust‑ ringed,
almond‑ colored tub and decided a shower would probably be
good enough tonight, if she could muster the energy. There
were no blinds on the windows yet, and without the glow of
traffic or the hundreds of lit window squares from neighboring
buildings, it was unbelievably black skied outside the house. And
quiet. So quiet.
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Remembering the box she’d placed by the bedroom door
earlier, she reluctantly shimmied out of the bed’s warmth and
padded over to it. “I have something for you,” Alice said. “It’s
just a little thing, so don’t get too excited.” She pulled an oblong parcel, wrapped and tied with a gold bow, out of the larger card‑
board box. Settling on top of the duvet, her legs tucked up under
her so her nightshirt covered her knees to stem the chill, she
handed it to Nate with a smile. “Happy housewarming, my love.”
He looked surprised and shifted to sit beside her as he took
the box. “What? I didn’t get you anything.”
She gave him an incredulous look. “You bought me a house.”
“We bought this house.” Nate nuzzled his chin, which with
a shadow of a beard was like fine sandpaper, into Alice’s neck
and planted a soft kiss. She didn’t correct him, didn’t remind
him it had been mostly his savings that had gone into the down
payment.
“Open it,” she said.
Nate shook the parcel and something heavy shifted inside.