The Wife Between Us Read online

  I stir my coffee and wonder if Richard is making his new love coffee and bringing it back to bed, where she’s drowsy and warm under the fluffy down comforter we used to share. I see her lips curve into a smile as she lifts the covers for him. Richard and I would often make love in the morning. “No matter what happens during the rest of the day, at least we had this,” he used to say. My stomach tightens and I push away my toast. I glance down at my Cartier Tank watch, a gift from Richard for our fifth anniversary, and trace a fingertip over the smooth gold.

  I can still feel him lifting my arm to slip it onto my wrist. Sometimes I’m certain I catch on my own clothes—even though they’ve been cleaned—a whiff of the citrus scent of the L’Occitane soap he washed himself with. He feels linked to me always, as close yet diaphanous as a shadow.

  “I think it would be good for you to join us tonight.”

  It takes a moment for me to reorient myself. “Maybe,” I say, knowing I won’t. Aunt Charlotte’s eyes are soft; she must realize I’m thinking about Richard. She isn’t privy to the real story of our marriage, though. She thinks he chased youth, casting me aside, following the pattern of so many men before him. She thinks I’m a victim; just another woman cut down by the approach of middle age.

  The compassion would be erased from her expression if she knew of my role in our demise.

  “I have to run,” I say. “But text me if you need anything else from the store.”

  I secured my sales job only a month ago, and already I’ve been given two warnings about my tardiness. I need a better way to fall asleep; the pills my doctor prescribed leave me sluggish in the morning. I haven’t worked in almost a decade. If I lose this job, who else will hire me?

  I sling my heavy bag over my shoulder with my nearly pristine Jimmy Choos peeking out of the top, lace up my battered Nikes, and put in my earbuds. I listen to psychology podcasts during my fifty-block walk to Saks; hearing about other people’s compulsions sometimes pulls me away from my own.

  The muted sun that greeted me when I awoke tricked me into thinking it was warming up outside. I brace myself against the slap of a sharp late-spring wind, then begin the trek from the Upper West Side to Midtown Manhattan.

  * * *

  My first customer is an investment banker who introduces herself as Nancy. Her work is consuming, she explains, but her morning meeting was unexpectedly canceled. She’s petite, with wide-set eyes and a pixie cut, and her boyish frame makes fitting her a challenge. I’m glad for the distraction.

  “I have to dress powerfully or they won’t take me seriously,” she says. “I mean, look at me. I still get carded!”

  As I gently nudge her away from a structured gray pantsuit, I notice her fingernails are bitten to the quick. She sees where my gaze has landed and she tucks her hands into the pockets of her blazer. I wonder how long she’ll last in her job. Maybe she’ll find another one—something service oriented, perhaps, involving the environment or children’s rights—before the field breaks her spirit.

  I reach for a pencil skirt and patterned silk blouse. “Maybe something brighter?” I suggest.

  As we walk the floor, she chatters about the five-borough bike race that she’s hoping to compete in next month, despite her lack of training, and the blind date her colleague wants to set her up on. I pull more items, sneaking glances at her to better gauge her shape and skin tone.

  Then I spot a stunning black-and-white floral Alexander McQueen knit and I stop walking. I lift a hand and run it gently down the fabric, my heart beginning to pound.

  “That’s pretty,” Nancy says.

  I close my eyes and remember an evening when I wore a dress nearly identical to this one.

  Richard coming home with a big white box tied with a red bow. “Wear it tonight,” he’d said as I modeled it. “You look gorgeous.” We’d sipped champagne at the Alvin Ailey gala and laughed with his colleagues. His hand had rested on my lower back. “Forget dinner,” he’d whispered in my ear. “Let’s head home.”

  “Are you okay?” Nancy asks.

  “Fine,” I reply, but my throat threatens to close up around the words. “That dress isn’t right for you.”

  Nancy looks surprised, and I realize my words came out too harshly.

  “This one.” I reach for a classic tomato-red sheath.

  I walk toward the fitting room, the garments weighing heavily in my arms. “I think we have enough to begin with.”

  I hang the clothes on the rod lining one wall, trying to focus on the order in which I feel she should try them, beginning with a lilac jacket that will complement her olive skin. Jackets are the best place to start, I’ve learned, because a customer doesn’t need to get undressed to evaluate them.

  I locate a pair of stockings and heels so she can better assess the skirts and dresses, then swap out a few 0s for 2s. In the end, Nancy chooses the jacket, two dresses—including the red one—and a navy suit. I call a fitter to hem the suit skirt and excuse myself, telling Nancy I’ll ring up her purchases.

  Instead I’m drawn back to the black-and-white dress. Three are on the rack. I scoop them into my arms and take them to the stockroom, hiding them behind a row of damaged clothes.

  I return with Nancy’s credit card and receipt by the time she is slipping into her work clothes.

  “Thank you,” Nancy says. “I never would have picked these, but I’m actually excited to wear them.”

  This is the part of my job I actually enjoy—making my customers feel good. Trying on clothes and spending money causes most women to question themselves: Do I look heavy? Do I deserve this? Is it me? I know those doubts well because I have been on the inside of the dressing room many times, trying to figure out who I should be.

  I slip a hanging bag over Nancy’s new clothes and hand her the garments, and for a moment I wonder if Aunt Charlotte is right. If I keep moving forward, maybe my mind will eventually follow my body’s propulsion.

  After Nancy leaves, I help a few more customers, then head back to the dressing rooms to restock unwanted items. As I smooth clothing on hangers, I overhear two women chatting in adjoining booths.

  “Ugh, this Alaïa looks awful. I’m so bloated. I knew that waitress was lying when she said the soy sauce was low sodium.”

  I recognize the Southern lilt immediately: Hillary Searles, the wife of George Searles, one of Richard’s colleagues. Hillary and I attended numerous dinner parties and business events over the years together. I have listened to her opine on public versus private schools, Atkins versus the Zone, and St. Barts versus the Amalfi Coast. I can’t bear to listen to her today.

  “Yoo-hoo! Is there a salesgirl out there? We need some other sizes,” a voice calls.

  A fitting-room door flies open and a woman emerges. She looks so much like Hillary, down to the matching ginger locks, that she can only be her sister. “Miss. Can you help us? Our other salesgirl seems to have completely vanished.”

  Before I can answer, I see a flash of orange and the offending Alaïa is flung over the top of the fitting-room door. “Do you have this in a forty-two?”

  If Hillary spends $3,100 on a dress, the commission is worth enduring the questions she’ll throw at me.

  “Let me check,” I reply. “But Alaïa isn’t the most forgiving brand, no matter what you’ve eaten for lunch.… I can bring you a forty-four in case it runs small.”

  “Your voice sounds so familiar.” Hillary peeks out, hiding her sodium-bloated body behind the door. She shrieks and it’s an effort to keep standing there as she gapes at me. “What are you doing here?”

  Her sister chimes in, “Hill, who are you talking to?”

  “Vanessa is an old friend. She’s married—uh, she used to be married—to one of George’s partners. Hang on a sec, girl! Let me just throw on some clothes.” When she reappears, she smothers me in a hug, simultaneously engulfing me in her floral perfume.

  “You look different! What’s changed?” She puts her hands on her hips and I force myself
to endure her scrutiny. “For starters, you little wench, you’ve gotten so thin. You would have no trouble wearing the Alaïa. So, you’re working here now?”

  “I am. It’s good to see you—”

  I’ve never been so thankful to be interrupted by the ring of a cell phone. “Hello,” Hillary trills. “What? A fever? Are you sure? Remember the last time when she tricked you by— Okay, okay. I’ll be there right away.” She turns to her sister. “That was the school nurse. She thinks Madison is sick. Honestly, they send a kid home if they so much as sniffle.”

  She leans in to give me another hug and her diamond earring scrapes across my cheek. “Let’s make a lunch date and properly catch up. Call me!”

  As Hillary and her sister click-clack off toward the elevator, I spot a platinum bangle on the chair in the dressing room. I scoop it up and hurry to catch Hillary. I’m about to call her name when I hear her voice wafting back toward me. “Poor thing,” she says to her sister, and I detect real pity in her tone. “He got the house, the cars, everything…”

  “Really? She didn’t lawyer up?”

  “She turned into a disaster.” Hillary shrugs.

  It’s as if I’ve slammed into an invisible wall.

  I watch as she recedes in the distance. When she presses the button to summon the elevator, I head back to clean her discarded silks and linens off the dressing-room floor. But first, I slip the platinum bracelet onto my wrist.

  * * *

  Shortly before our marriage ended, Richard and I hosted a cocktail party at our home. That was the last time I saw Hillary. The evening began on a stressful note when the caterers and their staff failed to show up on time. Richard was irritated—with them, with me for not booking them an hour earlier, with the situation—but he gamely stepped behind a makeshift bar in our living room, mixing martinis and gin and tonics, throwing back his head and laughing as one of his partners tipped him a twenty. I circulated among the guests, murmuring apologies for the inadequate wheel of Brie and triangle of sharp cheddar I’d set out, promising the real food would soon arrive.

  “Honey? Can you grab a few bottles of the ’09 Raveneau from the cellar?” Richard had called to me from across the room. “I ordered a case last week. They’re on the middle shelf of the wine fridge.”

  I’d frozen, feeling as if everyone’s eyes were on me. Hillary had been at the bar. It was probably she who’d requested that vintage; it was her favorite.

  I remember moving in what felt like slow motion toward the basement, delaying the moment when I’d have to tell Richard, in front of all of his friends and business associates, what I already knew: There was no Raveneau in our cellar.

  * * *

  I pass the next hour or so waiting on a grandmother who requires a new outfit for the christening of her namesake and putting together a wardrobe for a woman who is taking a cruise to Alaska. My body feels like wet sand; the flicker of hope I’d experienced after helping Nancy has been extinguished.

  This time, I see Hillary before I hear her voice.

  She approaches as I’m hanging a skirt on a rack.

  “Vanessa!” she calls. “I’m so glad you’re still here. Please tell me you found—”

  Her sentence is severed as her eyes land on my wrist.

  I quickly slip off the bangle. “I didn’t … I—I was worried about leaving it in the lost and found.… I figured you’d return for it, or I was going to call you.”

  The shadow clears from Hillary’s eyes. She believes me. Or at least she wants to.

  “Is your daughter all right?”

  Hillary nods. “I think the little faker just wanted to skip math class.” She giggles and twists the heavy band of platinum onto her wrist. “You saved my life. George only gave it to me a week ago for my birthday. Can you imagine if I had to tell him I lost it? He’d divor—”

  A flush blooms on her cheeks as she averts her eyes. Hillary was never unkind, I remember. Early on, she even used to make me laugh sometimes.

  “How is George?”

  “Busy, busy! You know how it is.”

  Another tiny pause.

  “Have you seen Richard lately?” I aim for a lighthearted tone, but I fail. My hunger for information about him is transparent.

  “Oh, now and then.”

  I wait, but it’s clear she doesn’t want to reveal more.

  “Well! Did you want to try on that Alaïa?”

  “I should get going. I’ll come back another time, darling.” But I sense Hillary won’t. What she sees before her—the dented button on the Chanel that is two years old, the hairstyle that could benefit from a professional blowout—is a vision Hillary desperately hopes isn’t contagious.

  She gives me the briefest of hugs, then begins to leave. But she turns back.

  “If it were me…” Her brow furrows; she is working through something. Making a decision. “Well, I guess I’d want to know.”

  What is coming has the feel of an onrushing train.

  “Richard is engaged.” Her voice seems to float toward me from a great distance away. “I’m sorry.… I just thought you might not have heard, and it seemed like…”

  The roaring in my head suffocates the rest of her words. I nod and back away.

  Richard is engaged. My husband is actually going to marry her.

  I make it to a dressing room. I lean against a wall and slide down onto the floor, the carpet burning my thighs as my dress rides up. Then I drop my head into my hands and sob.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  ON ONE SIDE of the old steepled church that housed the Learning Ladder stood three turn-of-the-century grave markers, worn by age and hidden amid a canopy of trees. The other side contained a small playground with a sandbox and a blue-and-yellow climbing structure. Symbols of life and death bookending the church, which had witnessed countless ceremonies honoring both occasions.

  One of the headstones was inscribed with the name Elizabeth Knapp. She’d died in her twenties and her grave was set a bit apart from the others. Nellie took the long way around the block, as she always did, to avoid passing the tiny cemetery. Still, she wondered about the young woman.

  Her life could have been cut short by disease, or childbirth. Or an accident.

  Had she been married? Did she have children?

  Nellie set down her bag to unlock the childproof latch on the fence encircling the playground as the wind rustled through the trees. Elizabeth had been twenty-six or twenty-seven; Nellie couldn’t remember which. The detail suddenly nagged at her.

  She began to walk toward the cemetery to check, but the church’s bell rang eight times, the deep, somber chords vibrating through the air and reminding her that her conferences would start in fifteen minutes. A cloud drifted in front of the sun, and the temperature abruptly dropped.

  Nellie turned and stepped through the gate, pulling it closed behind her, then rolled back the protective tarp covering the sandbox so it would be ready when the children came out to play. A sharp gust threatened to yank one end away. She fought back against it, then dragged over a heavy flowerpot to secure the edge.

  She hurried into the building and down the stairs to the basement, where the preschool was. The earthy, rich scent of coffee announced that Linda, the director, had already arrived. Ordinarily, Nellie would have settled her things in her classroom before greeting Linda. But today she bypassed her empty room and continued down the hall, toward the yellow light spilling out of Linda’s office, feeling the need to see a familiar face.

  Nellie stepped in and discovered not just coffee but a platter of pastries. Fanning paper napkins beside a stack of Styrofoam cups was Linda, whose shiny dark bob and taupe pantsuit cinched by a crocodile belt wouldn’t have been out of place at a board meeting. Linda didn’t just dress like this for the parents—even on field day, she looked camera ready.

  “Tell me those aren’t chocolate croissants.”

  “From Dean and DeLuca,” Linda confirmed. “Help yourself.”


  Nellie groaned. Just this morning the scale had revealed she still had five—okay, eight—pounds to lose before her wedding.

  “Come on,” Linda urged. “I got plenty to sweeten up the parents.”

  “These are Upper East Side parents,” Nellie joked. “No one’s going to eat sugary carbs.” Nellie looked at the platter again. “Maybe just half.” She divided one with a plastic knife.

  She took a bite as she walked back to her classroom. The space wasn’t fancy, but it was roomy, and high windows allowed in some natural light. The soft rug with an alphabet-train pattern running around the edges was where her Cubs sat crisscross—applesauce for story time; in the kitchen area, they donned tiny chef’s hats and clattered pots and pans; and the dress-up corner held everything from doctor’s coats to ballerina tutus to an astronaut’s helmet.

  Her mother had once asked Nellie why she didn’t want to become a “real” teacher and hadn’t understood why Nellie took offense at the question.

  The feel of those pudgy, trusting hands in hers; that moment when a child deciphered letters on a page to sound out a word for the first time and looked up at Nellie in wonder; the freshness with which children interpreted the world—how could she explain how precious it all felt?

  She’d always just known she wanted to teach, the way some kids feel destined to become writers, or artists.

  Nellie licked a buttery flake off her fingertip, then took her planner out of her purse along with a stack of “report cards” she’d be distributing. Parents paid $32,000 a year to send their kids here for a few hours a day; the tepee-link-sending Porters weren’t alone in wanting things done a certain way. Every week, Nellie received emails, such as a recent one from the Levines requesting supplemental worksheets for gifted little Reese. Teachers’ cell phone numbers were printed in the school directory in case of emergency, but some parents applied loose definitions to the word. Once Nellie fielded a call at five A.M. because Bennett had thrown up during the night and his mother was curious about what he’d eaten at school the previous day.