The Wife Between Us

by Greer Hendricks

  “I need to get back to my client. Are you feeling better now?”

  “Much.”

  Then Richard spoke the words that would stay with her forever:

  “Even when I’m not there, I’m always with you.”

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  SHE LIVES ON an active street. New York City has dozens of blocks like hers—not ritzy, not poverty-stricken, but falling somewhere in the wide swath of the middle.

  It reminds me of the neighborhood I lived in when I first met Richard.

  Despite the torrential burst of rain that has just ended, enough people are around so I don’t stand out. A bus stop is on her corner, next to a deli, and two doors down from her building is a small hair salon. A father pushing a stroller crosses paths with a couple walking hand in hand. A woman juggles three bags of groceries. A Chinese-food delivery guy splashes through a puddle and splatters me with a few drops, the aroma of the meals stacked on the back of his bicycle wafting in his wake. In the past, my stomach would have been tempted by the succulent smells of chicken fried rice or sweet-and-sour shrimp.

  I wonder how well she knows her neighbors.

  She might’ve knocked on the door of the apartment above hers, handing over a UPS delivery box that was mistakenly left by her door. Maybe she picks up fruit and bagels at the deli, where the owner mans the cash register and greets her by name.

  Who will miss her when she disappears?

  I’m prepared to wait quite a while. My appetite is nonexistent. My body feels neither hot nor cold. There is nothing I need. But before long—at least I think I have not waited very long—I feel a quickening in my pulse, a hitch in my breath, as she rounds the corner.

  She is carrying a bag. I squint and make out the logo of Chop’t, the takeout salad place. It swings as she walks, matching the gentle sway of her high ponytail.

  A cocker spaniel darts in front of her and she pauses to avoid becoming entangled with the leash. The owner reels in the dog, and I see her nod and say something, then she bends down to stroke its head.

  Does she know how Richard feels about dogs?

  I’m holding my cell phone to my ear, my body half turned away from her, my umbrella tilted to cover my face. She continues walking toward me and I soak her in. She wears yoga capris and a loose white top, with a Windbreaker tied around her waist. Salad and exercise; she must want to look her best in her wedding gown. She pauses in front of her building, reaching into her purse, and a moment later, she vanishes inside.

  I let my umbrella drop and massage my forehead, trying to focus. I tell myself I’m acting crazy. Even if she were pregnant—which I don’t believe is a possibility—she probably wouldn’t be showing yet.

  So why did I come here?

  I stare at her closed door. What would I even say if I knocked and she answered? I could beg her to call off the wedding. I could warn her that she’ll regret it, that he cheated on me and he’ll do the same to her—but she’d probably just slam the door and phone Richard.

  I don’t want him to ever know I’ve followed her.

  She thinks she’s safe now. I imagine her rinsing her plastic salad bowl and putting it into the recycling bin, applying a mud mask, maybe calling her parents to talk about last-minute wedding details.

  There is still a little time. I cannot be impulsive.

  I have a long walk home. I round the corner, retracing her steps. A block later I pass Chop’t and I turn around to go in. I study the menu, trying to guess what she might have craved, so I can order the same thing.

  When the server hands me my salad—in a plastic bowl and tucked in a white paper bag alongside a fork and napkin—I smile and thank her. Her fingers brush mine and I wonder if she also waited on my replacement.

  Before I am even out the door, I’m suddenly overwhelmed by acute hunger pangs. All the dinners I’ve slept through, the breakfasts I’ve skipped, the lunches I’ve tossed in the trash—they converge upon me now, fueling a nearly savage desire to fill the emptiness inside me.

  I step to one side, where there is a counter and stools, but I can’t wait long enough to put down my things and settle into a seat.

  My fingers tremble as I open the container and begin to fork in mouthful after mouthful, holding the container close to my chin so I don’t spill any, devouring the tangy greens, chasing bits of egg and tomato around the slippery container with my fork.

  I’m queasy as I swallow the final bite, and my stomach feels distended. But I am as hollow as ever.

  I throw away the empty bowl and begin to walk home.

  * * *

  When I enter the apartment, I see Aunt Charlotte splayed on the couch, her head angled against a cushion, a washcloth draped over her eyes. Usually on Sunday nights she teaches an art-therapy class at Bellevue; I haven’t known her to ever miss one.

  I’ve also never seen her nap before.

  Worry pierces me.

  She lifts her head at the thump of the door closing and the washcloth slips off, into her hand. Without her glasses, her features seem softer.

  “Are you okay?” I recognize the irony: It’s an echo of the words she has repeated to me ever since a cab deposited me on the curb outside her building with three suitcases stacked behind me.

  “Just a killer headache.” She grips the edge of the sofa and stands. “I overdid it today. Check out the living room. I think I cleared away twenty years of clutter after my subject left.”

  She is still wearing her painting uniform—jeans topped by one of her late husband’s blue oxford shirts. By now the shirt is soft and worn, decorated with layers of drips and splatters. It’s a work of art in itself; a visual history of her creative life.

  “You’re sick.” The words seem to propel themselves out of me. My voice is high and panicky.

  Aunt Charlotte walks over and puts her hands on my shoulders. We are nearly the same height and she looks directly into my eyes. Her hazel eyes are faded by age, but they are as alert as ever.

  “I am not ill.”

  Aunt Charlotte has never shied away from difficult conversations. When I was younger, she explained my mother’s mental-health issues to me in simple, honest terms, ones I could understand.

  Even though I believe my aunt, I ask, “Promise?” My throat thickens with tears. I cannot lose Aunt Charlotte. Not her, too.

  “I promise. I’m not going anywhere, Vanessa.”

  She hugs me and I inhale the scents that grounded me as a girl: linseed oil from her paints, the lavender she dabs on her pulse points.

  “Have you eaten? I was going to throw something together.…”

  “I haven’t,” I lie. “But let me make dinner. I’m in the mood to cook.”

  Maybe it’s my fault she is exhausted; maybe I’ve taken too much from her.

  She rubs her eyes. “That would be great.”

  She follows me to the kitchen and sits on a stool. I find chicken and butter and mushrooms in the refrigerator and begin to pan-sear the meat.

  “How did the portrait go?” I pour us each a glass of sparkling water.

  “She fell asleep during our session.”

  “Really? Naked?”

  “You’d be surprised. Overprogrammed New Yorkers often find the process relaxing.”

  As I whisk together a simple lemon sauce, Aunt Charlotte leans over and inhales. “It smells delicious. You’re a much neater cook than your mother.”

  I pause in rinsing off the chopping board.

  I am so used to masking what I feel that it’s easy to slip on a smile and chat with Aunt Charlotte. But the reminders are everywhere, as always—in the white wine I dash into my sauce, and the salad greens I push aside to reach the mushrooms in the refrigerator’s vegetable bin. I fall into light conversation with my aunt, gliding above the thoughts roiling through my mind, like a swan whose churning feet are hidden as he floats across the water.

  “Mom was a tornado,” I say, even conjuring a smile. “Remember how the sink was always overflo
wing with pots and pans, the counters coated with olive oil or bread crumbs? And the floor! My socks would practically stick to it. She didn’t exactly subscribe to the belief that you should tidy up as you went along.” I reach into the big ceramic bowl on the counter and pull out a Vidalia onion. “Her food was great, though.”

  On her good days, my mother would create elaborate three-course meals. Worn volumes by Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, and Pierre Franey lined our bookshelves, and I would often find her reading one the same way that I might devour Judy Blume.

  “You were probably the only fifth grader who would get homemade beef bourguignonne and a lemon torte on an ordinary Tuesday night,” Aunt Charlotte says.

  I flip the chicken breasts, the uncooked side crackling against the hot pan. I can see my mother now, her hair wild from the heat seeping from the oven, clattering pots onto burners and mincing garlic, and singing loudly. “Come on, Vanessa!” she’d say when she caught sight of me. She’d twirl me around, then shake salt into her hand and throw it into a pot. “Never follow a recipe exactly,” my mother always said. “Give it your own flair.”

  I knew a crash would come soon after those nights, when my mother’s energy had burned itself out. But something in her freedom was glorious—her unfiltered, stormlike joy—even though it frightened me as a child.

  “She was something else,” Aunt Charlotte says. She leans an elbow on the blue tile countertop and rests her chin in her hand.

  “She was.” I’m glad my mother was still alive when I married, and in a way, I’m grateful she isn’t around to see how I’ve ended up.

  “Do you like cooking now, too?” Aunt Charlotte is watching me carefully. Almost studying me, it seems. “You look so much like her, and your voice is so similar sometimes I think it’s her in the other room.…”

  I wonder if another, unspoken question is in her mind. My mother’s episodes grew more severe in her thirties. Around the same age I am now.

  I lost touch with Aunt Charlotte during my marriage. That was my fault. I was even more of a mess than my mother, and I knew Aunt Charlotte couldn’t just swoop in to help me. I was too far gone for that. The hopeful, buoyant young woman I was when I married Richard is almost unrecognizable to me now.

  She turned into a disaster, Hillary had said. She was right.

  I wonder if my mother also suffered from obsessive thoughts during her episodes. I’d always imagined her mind was blank—numb—when she took to her bed. But I’ll never know.

  I choose to answer the simpler question. “I don’t mind cooking.”

  I hate it, I think as my knife comes down and severs the onion cleanly.

  When Richard and I first married, I didn’t know my way around a kitchen at all. My single-girl dinners consisted of Chinese takeout or, if the scale was mistreating me, a microwaved Lean Cuisine. Some nights I skipped dinner altogether and munched on Wheat Thins and cheese as I sipped a glass of wine.

  Still, the unspoken arrangement was that once Richard and I married, I would cook for him every weeknight. I’d quit working, so it seemed more than reasonable. I rotated between chicken, steak, lamb, and fish. They weren’t fancy meals—a protein, a carb, and a vegetable—but Richard seemed appreciative of my efforts.

  The day we first visited Dr. Hoffman—the day Richard learned I’d been pregnant in college—was my first attempt at making something special for him.

  I wanted to try to ease the tension between us, and I knew Richard loved Indian food. So after I left Dr. Hoffman’s office, I looked up a recipe for lamb vindaloo, searching for the one that seemed the least complicated.

  It’s funny how certain details stick in the memory, such as how the wheel of my shopping cart needed to be adjusted, causing it to squeak every time I turned down a new aisle. I wandered through the market, searching for cumin and coriander, trying to forget how Richard’s face had looked when he learned I’d gotten pregnant by another man.

  I’d called Richard to tell him I loved him, but he hadn’t replied. His disappointment—worse, the thought of his disillusionment—upset me more than any argument could. Richard didn’t yell. When angry, he seemed to coil into himself until he regained control over his emotions. It didn’t usually take him long, but I worried I’d pushed him too far this time.

  I remember driving home on the quiet streets, the new Mercedes sedan Richard had purchased for me purring past the stately colonials constructed by the same builder who’d sold Richard our house. Occasionally I saw a nanny out with a young child, but I’d yet to make a friend in our neighborhood.

  I was hopeful when I began to cook dinner. I cut the lamb into even chunks, following the recipe carefully. I remember how sunlight glowed through the large bay windows in our living room, as it did toward the end of every day. I’d found my iPod and scrolled down to the Beatles. “Back in the U.S.S.R.” twanged through the speakers. The Beatles always lifted my spirits because my father used to blast John, Paul, George, and Ringo in our old sedan when he took me out for ice cream or to the movies during my mom’s lighter episodes, the ones that only lasted a day or two and didn’t require Aunt Charlotte’s assistance.

  I’d allowed myself to imagine that after I served Richard his favorite meal, we would cuddle in bed and talk. I wouldn’t tell him everything, but I could admit a few of the details. Maybe my revelation would even bring us closer. I’d let him know how terribly sorry I was, how I wished I could erase what had happened and start again.

  So there I was, in my exquisite kitchen, stocked with Wüsthof knives and Calphalon pots and pans, cooking dinner for my new husband. I was happy, I think, but I wonder now if my memory is playing tricks on me. If it is giving me the gift of an illusion. We all layer them over our remembrances; the filters through which we want to see our lives.

  I’d tried to follow the recipe exactly, but I’d neglected to buy the fenugreek because I had no idea what it was. And when it came time to add the fennel, I couldn’t find it, even though I swore I’d put it in the cart. The fragile emotional peace I’d tried to build began to crumble. I, who had been given everything, couldn’t even manage to make a proper meal.

  When I opened the refrigerator door to put back the coconut milk and saw a half-full bottle of Chablis, I hesitated, staring at it.

  Richard and I had agreed that I’d stopped drinking, but surely a few sips wouldn’t hurt. I poured myself a half glass. I’d forgotten how good the crisp minerality tasted on my tongue.

  I retrieved our pressed blue linen place mats and matching napkins from the big oak armoire in the dining room. I laid out the nice china Hillary and George had given us as a wedding gift. When we first got married, I’d had to consult an online etiquette site to learn how to set a formal table. Despite my mother’s extravagant meals, she was uninterested in the dining ambience; sometimes when all the dishes were dirty, we’d eat off paper plates.

  I set candlesticks in the middle of the table and switched the music to classical, selecting Wagner, one of Richard’s favorite composers. Then I retreated to the couch, wineglass by my side. By now our house had more furniture—sofas in the living room, splashes of artwork on the walls, including the portrait Aunt Charlotte had done of me as a child, and an Oriental rug in vivid blues and reds in front of the fireplace—but the rooms still felt a bit characterless to me. If only we’d had a high chair in the dining room, a few soft toys scattered on the rug … I stilled my hand when I realized I was tapping my fingernails against my glass and making little chiming sounds.

  Richard usually arrived home around eight-thirty, but it wasn’t until after nine that I finally heard his key turn in the lock and the thunk of his briefcase on the floor.

  “Honey,” I called. No answer. “Sweetie?”

  “Give me a second.”

  I listened to his footsteps climbing the stairs. I didn’t know if I should follow him, so I stayed on the couch. When I heard him begin to descend, I caught sight of my wineglass. I ran to the sink, rinsing it out quickly and
putting it back in the cabinet still wet, before he could see.

  It was impossible to decipher his mood. He could have been upset with me, or he could have just had a tough day at work. Richard had seemed tense all week; I knew he was dealing with a difficult client. During dinner I tried to make conversation, my lighthearted tone masking the worry underneath.

  “This is good.”

  “I remembered you told me once lamb vindaloo was your favorite dish.”

  “I said that?” Richard bent his head to take a forkful of rice.

  I’d felt puzzled. Hadn’t he?

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my…” My voice trailed off. I couldn’t say the word.

  Richard nodded. “It’s forgotten,” he said quietly.

  I’d steeled myself for questions. His words came almost as a letdown. Maybe I’d wanted to share that part of my life with him, after all.

  “Okay” was all I said.

  As I cleared the table, I noticed half his plate was still full. By the time I’d finished cleaning, Richard was already asleep. I curled up next to him, listening to his steady breaths, until I drifted off, too.

  The next morning, Richard left early for the office. Midway through the day, as I was at the hair salon getting highlights, my phone pinged with an incoming email from the local French culinary institute.

  The note read, Ma cherie. Je t’aime. Richard. When I opened the attachment, I saw a gift certificate for ten cooking lessons.

  “Honey?” Aunt Charlotte’s voice is concerned.

  I wipe my eyes and gesture to the cutting board. “Just the onion.” I can’t tell if she believes me.

  After dinner, Aunt Charlotte goes to bed early and I clean the kitchen. Then I retreat to my room and listen to the sounds of the old apartment settling in for the night—the sudden hum of the refrigerator, a door slamming in the unit below. Sleep is elusive now, as if I’ve stockpiled enough of it over my lost months to suppress my natural circadian rhythm.

  My mind wanders to the topic of a recent podcast: obsession.

  “Our genes are not our destiny,” insisted the speaker. But he acknowledged that addiction is hereditary.