How to Be a Good Wife

by Emma Chapman

  Opening the bin to scrape in the leftover broccoli, I step backwards: it’s filled with wet hair. I think I see something move: for a moment I think it is an animal, and I am about to call to Hector. But when I look back, there is nothing there. The edge of the cigarette packet is visible, underneath a pile of envelopes. I slam the bin lid down, hard.

  Reaching into the cupboard above my head, I pull out the small orange pot of pills. I hold it in my hands, touching the peeling edge of the label. Marta Bjornstad. Take three daily with food. No, I think. I won’t.

  The pills go back into their place. Opening a new bottle of wine, I pour myself a glass and go through to the living room.

  The clock above the mantelpiece reads 8:15. Hector has turned on the lamps and the room glows warmly. The thick cream curtains are drawn at the bay window facing the lane.

  He is lying on the sofa, propped up on one of the ivory cushions, his arms bent behind his head. One slipper hangs off his foot. His face is soft: his eyes are shut, his chest moving slowly and rhythmically. The creases on his brow have disappeared and he almost looks happy. Like a boy. I look at the grey hairs around his temples, his thinning hairline. He isn’t a boy, I think; he’s getting to be an old man now. As I watch him, listening to his laboured breathing, I feel a familiar rush of pity for him. There are twenty years between us.

  His eyes open, and I am caught.

  Hector sits up, rubs his eyes.

  We sit in silence, watching the television.

  ‘Kylan called earlier,’ Hector says. ‘While you were out. He’s coming for dinner tomorrow night.’

  I feel myself breathe in sharply. ‘He’s coming home?’

  ‘They’re coming for dinner and the night,’ he says. ‘They have work on Monday.’

  ‘Katya’s coming too, then?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘You can meet her at last. They have some news.’

  ‘It’s about time he brought her home,’ I say. ‘It almost feels like she doesn’t exist.’

  Hector watches me. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It’s a shame going to the city upsets you.’

  I pause. ‘It must be getting serious.’

  ‘They live together,’ Hector says. ‘I’d say that’s pretty serious.’

  ‘But she hasn’t met his mother,’ I say.

  Hector doesn’t reply. We both look at the television screen.

  ‘Did he want me to call him?’ I say.

  ‘He said there’s no need.’ I feel a sharp stab then, of being left out again. I remember the sounds of laughter from Hector’s study, the gaps of contented thought, then the horrible click of the chess pieces.

  ‘I’ll go to the market in the morning, then,’ I say.

  ‘I’m sure we have enough food in the fridge,’ Hector says.

  I glance at him. ‘I want to make halibut stew,’ I say. ‘It’s Kylan’s first time home in three months and I want to make his favourite.’ It almost sounds like I am pleading.

  I wait. Finally, Hector nods.

  ‘I’ve invited my mother,’ he says.

  I sigh. ‘But where is everyone going to sleep?’ I ask.

  ‘Put Kylan and Katya in the guest room and my mother in Kylan’s room.’

  ‘Kylan can’t sleep in the guest room,’ I say.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s not his room.’

  Hector half smiles. ‘I doubt he’ll mind.’

  I mind.

  ‘I better go and get the rooms ready,’ I say, moving to get up.

  ‘Can’t you do that tomorrow?’

  I sit back down.

  Hector turns back to the television, his jaw tight. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch for the signs: the drooping eyelids, the slowing of his breathing. He is drifting off. When I am sure he is asleep, I leave the room.

  I walk upstairs and along the corridor to Kylan’s room. My watch says eight thirty. Through the crack in the door, I think I see his small body curled under the dinosaur duvet cover. Though the light still glows at the edges of the curtains, it’s bedtime. On the chest of drawers a small golden trophy stands: one he recently won in a handball tournament at school. His sandy hair rests on the pillow and I step forward, longing to stroke it until he falls asleep. Then I see a younger Hector, leaning over the bed, and I take a step back.

  ‘What’s the matter, Kylan?’ Hector is saying.

  At first, Kylan doesn’t answer, and I see his head shake on the pillow; he covers his face with his hands.

  ‘What’s up? You can tell me.’

  Still nothing. Inwardly, I smile. Hector thinks he’s so good at this.

  ‘I won’t tell your mother.’

  Kylan lifts his head up from the pillow, takes his hands away from his face, and looks at his father. He speaks softly, but I still hear him.

  ‘She won’t tell me about them,’ he says.

  I remember, then, Kylan’s upturned face with his father’s blue eyes and the smattering of freckles. I was silent at first, pretending I hadn’t heard him, but he kept pushing and pushing me, as he did when he wanted something from the supermarket. Please, Mum, please, Mum, please, Mum. I snapped and told him to shut up. I didn’t want to lie to him, my son. He was silent then, staring out of the window at the green fields. His silence continued through teatime, and bedtime, and he refused to say good night to me when I came to tuck him in. I pleaded with him, my voice full of trapped tears, but he still didn’t speak a word to me.

  ‘She won’t tell you about who?’ Hector asks.

  ‘She won’t tell me about her mummy and daddy,’ Kylan says.

  Hector is silent.

  ‘Everyone else at school has two sets,’ he says. ‘I only have Granny. It’s not fair.’

  I sigh. It can’t be true that everyone has four grandparents.

  ‘Mummy’s parents are dead,’ Hector says finally. ‘They died when she was younger, before I met her. She doesn’t like to talk about it because it makes her sad.’

  Hector sits on the edge of the bed, his arm snaked over Kylan’s side.

  ‘How did they die?’ Kylan asks.

  ‘They were in a car accident,’ he says. ‘Don’t ask Mummy about it any more. We don’t want her to be upset.’

  I rest my head against the wall, my eyes burning. I know I can’t let myself think about that: it’s somewhere I am not allowed to go.

  Kylan is silent. Then he nods, sinking back down under the covers.

  When I open the door, the room is empty and dim. Without turning the light on, I sit down on the edge of the bed. I don’t come in here often. The walls are bare, and I know that in the wardrobe only a few misshapen hangers are left in the darkness. I lean back, turning over and burying my face into the duvet, breathing through the thickness of the material. Only the sweetness of fabric softener fills my nose. I long for the smell of baby Kylan’s dim beige room: a harmless smell, of something familiar, like biscuits dipped in tea. His hands on the solid white bars of the cot; his feet sinking into the thin mattress; his legs stiff, defiant. His vertical blond hair, and his eyes watching for any movement. An excited smile, and then his face against the cotton of my shoulder as I carry him to the changing table. I know he can’t remember these things, so I will have to, for both of us.

  After he left in the summer, I would find my way here in the middle of the night. I would slide under the duvet and wake up crying, knowing he wasn’t coming back. As he packed his room into boxes, I told him it would be best to leave some things here, that it was all too sudden, but he shrugged me off, excited about moving in with Katya and his new job at the bank. I wanted to tell him it was too soon: he didn’t know her well enough. I thought he was being selfish. He couldn’t see that if he moved to the city I would never see him. He knows I don’t like the city: I haven’t been there in twenty-five years. I wanted to shout at him, grab his arms, and tell him not to leave me.

  But I had told him all that before, when he wanted to go to university in the city. I begged h
im to stay, to go to college locally. I told him he would break my heart. One night, we sat again at the kitchen table to discuss it, Hector and Kylan on one side, me on the other. My argument was that the local college was good, that he could get his qualifications and work at the farm up the road. Hector thought he should go to the city, live his own life. I have never forgiven him for that.

  I started to cry then, slow deliberate tears. Kylan sat on the other side of the table and watched me for a long time. Hector sighed. I put my head in my hands, heard Kylan’s chair scraping on the kitchen tiles, and felt him put his arms around me. It’s OK, Mum, he whispered. I’ll stay.

  I smile to myself, a warmth moving through my chest. He’s coming home. Tomorrow, Kylan will be here and everything will be all right again. I’ll show him everything he has left behind. And I’ll do it all without my pills. There’s so much to do, I can barely wait to get started. I tell myself he won’t leave me again.

  I go to our bathroom and wash my face. Leaning close to the mirror, I see the lines around my eyes, the traces of grey in my hair. Smiling, I watch the furrows deepen. My skin is paler than most of the women in the valley, those who help out on the farms. My hands are paler too, less marked, though the undersides have hardened from all the cleaning products. My wedding ring is so much a part of my hand now, I don’t see it any more. I never had an engagement ring: I suppose we were never really engaged.

  In my bedroom, I pull on my woollen nightgown and slip beneath the covers. Touching my stomach, I push it out, imagining I am pregnant again. That feeling, of your body no longer being yours but the property of someone else, someone more important. I remember the sickness too. Before I knew I was pregnant, I thought there was something really wrong with me.

  One day, on my way to the market, I had to pull the car over and vomit onto the grassy verge. I drove myself straight to the doctor’s surgery on the other side of the water. Asking for an appointment, I felt ashamed, as if I was betraying Hector, by admitting there was something wrong in the new life he had worked so hard to build for us. I read the posters on the walls of the waiting room, my hands quivering against my green skirt, not making eye contact with anyone in case I knew them or they knew Hector.

  The receptionist had to call my name three times before I recognized it. Marta Bjornstad. Blushing, I made my way along the draughty corridor.

  ‘You’re expecting a baby,’ the doctor said once she had run her tests, looking up from behind a desk cluttered with paperclipped documents and family memorabilia.

  I felt my mouth fall open. ‘But I’m ill,’ I said. ‘I’ve been dreadfully sick.’

  The doctor smiled, writing something. ‘That’s perfectly normal. I’m prescribing folic acid.’

  ‘But I don’t feel right,’ I said.

  She didn’t look up. ‘It’s all worth it in the end,’ she said. ‘When the baby arrives.’

  It felt so strange that something had been happening in my body which I was unaware of. I put my hands on my tummy but it didn’t feel any different. As I walked out of the doctor’s surgery into the sunshine, I smiled, imagining someone to talk to, to look after. I held onto the knowledge as if it was something precious. Hector could tell something was different: I hummed to myself making the dinner, smiling more than usual. I waited until we were in bed that night, sitting side by side, before I told him. He shifted his position, leaning over me and searching my face. Then he pulled me towards him into a hug, squeezing me gently, and I knew then that this was what he wanted, that he was as happy as I was.

  Leaving the light on for Hector, I turn onto my side and shut my eyes.

  6

  In the middle of the night, I jerk awake, my eyes wet. The illuminated alarm clock by the side of the bed reads 02:13. Moonlight shines dimly through the crack in the curtains, and I can just make out a white disc in the night sky. A full moon.

  I was dreaming of a forest. A figure was running, as fast as she could, the green of the trees rushing darkly past. I remember a flash of white-blonde hair, a shriek of laughter, her muscular limbs pushing forward. The ballet shoes she wore on her feet. Ribbons trailed behind her, skimming the dirt.

  I breathe out. I am in my own bed, warm and safe. Hector is on my side, his arms around me. I imagine him, lying awake in the darkness, watching the outline of my body, working up the courage to move closer. I can feel his warm belly against my back; the looseness of the skin like silk; the flesh soft, harmless. I listen to the rise and fall of his breathing: the slight wheeze in his lungs, the rattle of his throat. I put my hands over his: the skin feels dry.

  There is no sound in the room except for our breathing, my heartbeat in my chest. I feel a twisting anxiety begin in my stomach. I try to make myself calm, to go back to sleep, but the darkness is heavy, the silence oppressive. I long for the sound of the outside nighttime: an owl in the forest, a fox wailing.

  When I can’t bear it any more, I slip away from Hector and out of bed, pulling myself up. Walking towards the hallway, I wince at the creak of the hinges.

  Away from the warm bedroom, the air is sharp. I long for my dressing gown, hanging on the other side of the door. Over the banisters of the staircase is one of Hector’s ironed shirts and my black trousers, ready to be put away. I pull off my nightgown and slip them on. The shirt is made of thick wool and reminds me of Wellington boots, chopping wood, and the smell of pastry. Warm, wholesome things.

  Shafts of moonlight trespass across the hallway, casting shadows behind the picture frames. I rub my finger over the light switch on the wall. I don’t press it: Hector is sleeping, but I imagine the light spreading down the dark corridor. I am good at this. Soon, the black square of the window is white.

  I walk to Kylan’s bedroom, opening the cupboard doors to look for traces of him. At the back, I find a pair of balled-up socks and an old magazine about stamp collecting, yellowed at the edges. Holding the socks to my nose, I breathe them in, but there is nothing. Eventually, I put the things back where I found them.

  Turning around, I see a girl, sitting on the floor with her back against the bed. I let out a gasp, but she doesn’t seem to see me. She stares without blinking, her grey eyes wide and glossy. Her hair is very messy: dirty, almost grey, though the broken ends are blonde. She is wearing grimy white pyjamas, her thin arms wrapped loosely around her bony knees. The bed is different: low with a metal frame, and a thin foam mattress covered with a white sheet.

  A strand of hair falls forward into her face. She doesn’t notice; I long to reach forward and brush it out of her eyes. Then she looks straight up at me.

  ‘Help me,’ she says.

  As I step towards her, she disappears. The bed is as it was. I go and stand in front of where she was sitting, lean down and look under the bed, but there is nothing there. I tell myself I must have imagined it. It isn’t real, I say. But I can still hear the desperation in her voice, and see her huge grey eyes. I try to remember if this is what happened last time I stopped taking my pills, but I can’t. The part of me that watches from the outside is intrigued. Something is happening at last.

  I walk quickly back down the corridor, thinking with every step that I see something in the corner of my eye. In our bedroom, I pull back the covers and crawl into bed. It is so warm. I lean in to Hector, pulling his arms around me. I feel him stir.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he says sleepily.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ I say, drawing him even closer. ‘I had a bad dream.’

  I feel him wrap his body around mine. I think then of telling him what I saw, but I know he will ask me if I have been taking my pills.

  ‘You’re so cold,’ he says, his breath warm on my neck.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ he says, and I shut my eyes.

  Lying in the darkness, I hear his breaths slow, and I match mine with his.

  * * *

  I wake again at seven to the sound of the alarm. Hector is on his side of the bed and I
am on mine.

  He switches off the sound and I turn over, watching the blue edge of the curtains. It makes me think of the early days, before we were married, when I spent so much time in this bed. I wasn’t well then: I could barely sit up, but waking in the night and seeing the orange summer light around the curtains made me feel a little better. I would lie awake, listening to Hector breathing, thinking of nothing but the light-filled valley above the dim bedroom, and listening to the alien sounds of birds in the trees. My fingers trembled under the duvet cover, stretching towards the window.

  Hector was so good to me in those days. He took time off work, sat with me while we watched old movies, and wiped the tears from my cheeks. I was ill, grieving, and he took care of me, with food and cups of tea and hot-water bottles. He knew I didn’t want to see anyone, so he kept me a secret, didn’t force me to get up, to pull myself together. He made sure I took my medicine, and slowly I began to put on weight, to get better. I owe him so much.

  I get out of bed, creeping towards the bedroom door so as not to wake Hector. He likes to sleep in on Saturdays, and I have a lot to do for this evening. He’ll be down at about nine for his eggs, and I will have them ready.

  Downstairs, I clear the mess in the living room: scooping up the newspaper, putting Hector’s shoes into the hall cupboard, straightening the cushions, drawing the curtains.

  Clear away any untidiness. Catering to his comfort will give you an immense sense of personal satisfaction.

  Setting up the ironing board, I put on my 20 Romantic Classical Favourites CD and work to the ‘Moonlight Sonata’. Everything gets ironed, including Hector’s underpants.

  Find little jobs that will make his life easier and more pleasant.

  Listening to the rise and swell of the music, the muscles in my legs begin to twitch, as if I have trapped a nerve. They long to be stretched. Putting the iron down, I place my hands face down on the ironing board. As I point my toes, my legs lengthen and the gentle hairs catch the light. The music reaches a crescendo and I pull my leg up further, ignoring a tremor of pain.