The Wife Between Us

by Greer Hendricks

  Lonely and gossipy, Nellie thought. The elevator arrived and Nellie held the door open with her forearm until Mrs. Keene and her dog were safely inside.

  “I’m actually going to work, too. I teach at a preschool and I need to clean out my classroom for the end of the year.”

  Graduation was tomorrow, and though traditionally teachers sorted through the rooms a few days after the students left, making it something of a party, complete with smuggled-in wine, Nellie needed to do it now because she was leaving for Florida at the end of the week.

  Mrs. Keene nodded approvingly. “How lovely. I’m glad Richard found himself a nice young lady. That last one wasn’t very friendly.”

  “Oh?”

  Mrs. Keene leaned closer. “I saw her talking to Mike, the doorman, just last week. She was quite agitated.”

  “She was here?” Richard hadn’t mentioned this.

  A glint in Mrs. Keene’s eyes told Nellie how much she was enjoying being the conveyer of such news. “Oh, yes. And she handed Mike a bag—Tiffany’s, I recognized that distinctive blue—and said he should give it back to Richard.”

  The elevator doors opened again and Mrs. Keene’s dog lunged toward another neighbor who’d just walked into the building with her pug.

  Nellie stepped out into the lobby, which resembled a small art gallery: A large orchid graced the glass table between two low-backed sofas, and the cream-colored walls were enlivened by abstract paintings. Frank, the Sunday doorman with a thick Bronx accent, greeted her. He was her favorite of the white-gloved men who kept watch over the residents of this Upper East Side building.

  “Hi, Frank,” Nellie said, grateful to see his wide, gap-toothed smile. She glanced back at Mrs. Keene, who was in animated conversation with another neighbor. It sounded as if Richard’s ex had simply returned something he’d once given her, and that he hadn’t even seen her. Who even knew what was in the bag? Obviously their split had been acrimonious.

  Many were, Nellie told herself. Yet she still felt unsettled.

  Frank winked at her, then pointed outside. “Looks like it’s gonna rain. Do you have an umbrella, hon?”

  “Three of them. Back at my apartment.”

  He laughed. “Here, borrow one.” He reached into the brass stand by the door.

  “You’re the best.” She extended her left hand to accept it. “Promise I’ll bring it back.”

  She noticed him glance at her ring and do a quick double take before he caught himself and looked away. He’d known of their engagement, but Nellie usually twisted the diamond to the inside of her hand so it would be hidden when she walked around the city. Richard had suggested it, reminding her that one couldn’t be too careful.

  “Thanks,” she said to Frank, feeling a flush creep over her cheeks. It felt a little ostentatious wearing something that probably cost as much as Frank earned in a year—that cost as much as she made in a year, too.

  Did Richard’s ex live nearby? Nellie wondered. Perhaps she’d even passed her on the street.

  She didn’t realize she was fidgeting with the release button on the umbrella until it sprang open. Her father’s voice rang through her mind: Don’t ever open an umbrella inside. It’s bad luck.

  “Stay dry,” Frank said as Nellie stepped outside into the swollen gray air.

  * * *

  Sam wore her long sleep shirt—the one with WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MESS written in script across the front.

  Nellie rustled the paper bag containing poppy-seed bagels with egg, cheddar, bacon, and ketchup—their favorite hangover remedy—in the air. “Good afternoon, sunshine.”

  Sam’s sandals from last night were kicked off just inside the front door, followed by her purse, then, a few feet later, her miniskirt. “The trail of Sam,” Nellie joked.

  “Hey.” Sam poured coffee into a mug but didn’t turn around to look at her. “What happened to you last night?”

  “I went to Richard’s. Too much tequila.”

  “Yeah, Marnie said he showed up.” Sam’s tone was curt. “Nice of you to say good-bye.”

  “I—” Nellie burst into tears. She’d managed to upset Sam, too.

  Sam spun around. “Whoa. What’s going on?”

  Nellie shook her head. “Everything.” She choked back a sob. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you I was leaving.…”

  “Thank you for saying that. I have to admit I was pissed, especially since you showed up late to dinner.”

  “I didn’t want to leave, but Sam … I kissed Nick.”

  “I know. I saw.”

  “Yeah, Richard saw, too.” Nellie dried her eyes with a paper napkin. “He was really upset.…”

  “Did you work it out?”

  “Sort of. He had to go to Atlanta this morning, so we didn’t get to talk much.… But Sam, this woman called his apartment this morning when I was there alone. She wouldn’t give her name. And then Richard’s neighbor told me his ex came by last week.”

  “What? He’s still seeing her?”

  “No,” Nellie said quickly. “She just came to return something. She left it with the doorman.”

  Sam shrugged. “That sounds innocent enough.”

  Nellie hesitated. “But it ended between them months ago. Why is she returning it now?” She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t revealed to Sam that she suspected the item was actually a gift Richard had given his ex when they were together. And if it was from Tiffany’s, it was likely expensive.

  Sam took a sip of coffee, then handed the mug to Nellie, who also took a sip. “Why don’t you ask Richard about it?”

  “I guess … I feel like it shouldn’t bother me.”

  “Huh.” Sam took a bite of bagel and chewed. Nellie’s stomach clenched when she began to unwrap her own sandwich. Her appetite had vanished.

  “I thought she was completely out of the picture. This is totally random, okay? But those weird phone calls I’ve been getting…”

  “It’s her?”

  “I don’t know,” Nellie whispered. “But isn’t it a coincidence that they started right after I got engaged to Richard?”

  Sam didn’t seem to have an answer for that.

  “And there was this moment this morning after I said hello when all I could hear was breathing. It was just like those other calls. Then this woman asked for Richard, so … I sound sort of crazy when I say it aloud.”

  Sam put down her bagel and gave Nellie a quick, hard hug. “You’re not crazy, but you need to talk to Richard. They were together a long time, right? Don’t you deserve to know about that part of his life?”

  “I’ve tried.”

  “It isn’t fair that he shuts you down like that.”

  “He’s a guy, Sam. He doesn’t feel the need to talk things to death like we do.” Like you do, Nellie thought.

  “Sounds like you haven’t talked about it at all.”

  Nellie let that go. She and Sam rarely argued. Nellie didn’t want to dig into this. “He told me they just grew apart. It happens, right?”

  But Richard had said one more thing. It seemed especially significant now.

  She wasn’t who I thought she was.

  Those had been his exact words. Nellie had been taken aback by the disgust twisting Richard’s face when he’d uttered them.

  Her roommate would certainly have some thoughts on that.

  But Sam was wearing the same inscrutable expression that had come over her features when Nellie told her about the house Richard had bought. She’d worn that look the day Nellie came home wearing the engagement ring, too.

  “You’re right,” Nellie said lightly. “I’ll ask him again.”

  She could tell Sam wasn’t through with the conversation, but Nellie felt protective of Richard. She’d wanted Sam to reassure her about Richard’s ex, not point out the flaws in Nellie’s relationship with him.

  Nellie grabbed a few shopping bags that were wedged into the narrow slot between the refrigerator and the wall. “I need to run to the school. I’ve got to start pac
king up my classroom. Want to come?”

  “I’m wiped out. Think I’ll nap.”

  Things still weren’t right between them.

  “Sorry again I bailed on you. It was a really great party.” Nellie nudged her best friend with her shoulder. “Hey, are you around tonight? We can do face masks and watch Notting Hill. Order in Chinese. My treat…”

  Sam still wore that look, but she accepted the unspoken truce. “Sure. Sounds fun.”

  * * *

  What was Richard’s ex like?

  Slim and glamorous, Nellie thought as she approached the Learning Ladder. Maybe his ex enjoyed classical music and could identify the top notes in a bottle of wine. And Nellie bet his ex was confident about the pronunciation of charcuterie, unlike Nellie, who’d had to point at it on her menu once.

  Nellie had brought her up soon after she met Richard, curious about the woman he’d shared his life with before her. They’d been trading sections of the Times on a lazy Sunday morning after they’d made love and showered together. Nellie had used the extra toothbrush Richard had bought for her, and she was wearing a T-shirt she’d left behind on an earlier visit. It had made her wonder why there weren’t any traces of Richard’s ex left in the apartment. They’d been together for years, yet no lone elastic hair band had been forgotten in the cabinet under the bathroom sink, or tin of herbal tea languished in the back of the pantry, or pretty throw cushion softened the severe lines of Richard’s suede couch.

  The apartment was completely masculine. It was as if his ex had never spent time in it at all.

  “I was thinking.… We haven’t talked much about your ex.… Why did it end?”

  “It wasn’t any one thing.” Richard had shrugged and turned a page of the business section. “We grew apart.…”

  That’s when he’d spoken the line that Nellie couldn’t get out of her head now: She wasn’t who I thought she was.

  “Well, how did you guys meet?” Nellie playfully batted down the newspaper he was reading.

  “Come on, sweetheart. I’m with you. The last thing I want to talk about is her.” His words were gentle, but his tone wasn’t.

  “Sorry … I was just wondering.”

  She’d never brought her up again. After all, Nellie had topics from her past she didn’t want to talk about with him, either.

  Richard would have landed in Atlanta by now, Nellie thought as she unlatched the gate encircling the playground and walked toward the preschool. He might be in a meeting or alone in his hotel room. Was he consumed by images of Nellie’s ex, just as she was fixating on his?

  She couldn’t imagine how wrenching it would feel to see Richard kiss another woman. She wondered if Richard thought Nellie might turn out to be a different person from what he thought she was, too.

  She reached for her cell phone to call him, then stopped. She’d already left a message. And she wasn’t going to question him about his ex’s visit. He’d earned her trust, but she’d shaken his.

  “Hey there!”

  Nellie looked up to see the church’s youth leader holding open the door for her. “Thanks,” she said, hurrying toward him. She gave him a big smile to compensate for not remembering his name.

  “I was about to lock up. Didn’t think anyone from the school would be here on a Sunday.”

  “I was going to start cleaning out my classroom.”

  He nodded, then glanced up at the sky. Thick, shifting clouds blotted out the sun. “Looks like you just beat the rain,” he said cheerfully.

  Nellie headed into the basement, flicking on the overhead light as she descended the stairs. She wished she’d come here straight from Richard’s, when the church would’ve been full of parishioners. She hadn’t expected it to be empty.

  As she entered her classroom, she nearly stepped on a lone paper crown. She bent over and picked it up, smoothing out the creases. Brianna’s name was on the inside, written in the shaky letters Nellie had taught her to form. “Remember, the B has two big bellies that stick out,” Nellie had told her when the little girl kept reversing the direction. Brianna had been so proud when she’d mastered it.

  The Cubs had made the crowns to wear during the graduation ceremony. They’d stand in a wiggling line behind a curtain until Nellie put her hand on their little shoulders one by one and whispered, “Go!” Then they’d march down a makeshift aisle while their parents stood up and cheered and snapped photos.

  Brianna would be upset she’d lost hers; she’d spent a long time affixing stickers to it and had used a half bottle of glue to attach a different-colored pom-pom to each point. Nellie would call Brianna’s parents to let them know she’d found it.

  She tucked the crown in one of her shopping bags, then stood in the atypical quiet.

  Her classroom was modest, and the toys were basic compared to the ones most of the children had at home, but her students still bounded in every morning, tucking their lunches into cubbies and hanging their little jackets and sweaters on hooks. Nellie’s favorite part of the day was show-and-tell, which was predictably unpredictable. Once Annie had brought in a miniature Frisbee she’d found in the medicine cabinet. Nellie had returned the diaphragm to Annie’s mother at pickup. “At least it wasn’t my vibrator,” the mother had joked, instantly endearing her to Nellie. Another time Lucas had opened his lunchbox, revealing a live hamster, which had immediately seized its chance at freedom and leaped out. Nellie hadn’t been able to find it for two days.

  She hadn’t thought it would hurt this much to leave.

  She began to pull off the walls the construction-paper butterflies the children had made and tuck them into folders that she would send home with each child. She winced as the edge of one cut into the soft tip of her index finger.

  “Fudge.” She hadn’t sworn properly in years, ever since she’d shocked little David Connelly and had to scramble to convince him she’d merely been pointing out a toy truck. She put her finger in her mouth and reached into her supply closet, taking out an Elmo Band-Aid.

  She was wrapping it around her finger when she heard a noise in the hallway.

  “Hello?” she called.

  No answer.

  She walked to the doorway and peeked out. The narrow corridor was empty, the linoleum floors reflecting the gleam of the overhead lights. The other classrooms were dark, and their doors were pulled shut. The church’s old bones creaked sometimes; it must have been a floorboard settling.

  In the absence of the laughter and chaos, the school felt off-kilter.

  Nellie reached into her purse and pulled out her cell. Richard hadn’t phoned yet. She hesitated, then texted him: I’m at the Learning Ladder.… Call if you can. I’m here alone.

  Sam knew where she was, but Sam was napping. Nellie would just feel better if Richard knew, too.

  She started to put her cell back in her bag but tucked it in the waistband of her Lycra pants instead. She peeked out into the hallway again and listened for a long moment.

  Then Nellie resumed pulling artwork off the walls, working quickly, until they were bare. She took down from an easel the activity schedule printed in big letters. She reached up to strip a large calendar from a bulletin board. Velcro cards attached to it listed the day of the week and a symbol for the weather. A smiling sun was still affixed to Friday.

  Nellie glanced out the window. The first drops of rain had started to softly patter down.

  She almost didn’t notice the woman standing just behind the gate.

  A tall climbing structure partially obstructed her view. Nellie could only make out a tan raincoat and a green umbrella blocking the person’s face. And long brown hair whipping in the wind.

  Maybe it was someone out walking her dog.

  Nellie craned her head to see at a different angle. There was no dog.

  Could it be a prospective parent checking out the school?

  But it wouldn’t make sense for someone to come on a Sunday, when the Learning Ladder was closed.

  It could be a paris
hioner … although the service had ended hours ago.

  Nellie pulled her phone out of her pocket, then pressed her face close to the window. The woman suddenly moved, hurrying away, blending in with the trees. Nellie spotted the woman round the corner by the three gravestones.

  Toward the entrance on the opposite side of the church.

  Sometimes that door was propped open by a heavy brick when nighttime activities, such as an AA meeting, were scheduled.

  Something about the way the person abruptly turned away—that quick, jerky motion—reminded Nellie of the woman who’d caused her to drop her purse in the bathroom on parent-conference day.

  Nellie couldn’t be there for another minute. She grabbed her bags, leaving papers still scattered across her desk, and headed for the door. Her cell phone buzzed in her hand and she flinched. It was Richard.

  “I’m so glad it’s you,” she gasped.

  “Are you okay? You sound upset.”

  “I’m just alone at the school.”

  “Yeah, you told me in your text. Are the church doors locked?”

  “I’m not sure, but I’m leaving now.” Nellie hurried up the stairs. “It feels sort of creepy for some reason.”

  “Don’t be scared, baby. I’ll stay with you on the phone.”

  She glanced behind her as she exited the building, then slowed down and caught her breath. She reached the end of the block, opened her umbrella, and began to walk toward the busier cross street. Now that she was outside, she knew she’d overreacted.

  “I miss you so much. And I feel horrible about last night.”

  “Look, I’ve been thinking about it, and I saw you push him away. I know you love me.” He really was too good to be true.

  “I wish I could’ve been with you today.” She didn’t want Richard to know she’d forgotten about his trip. “After graduation, I’m all yours.”

  “You have no idea how happy that makes me.” His voice felt like safety.

  In that moment, she decided she didn’t want to continue teaching. She’d travel with Richard in the fall. She’d still be around children—their children.