The Wife Upstairs
What would it feel like to be the kind of woman who spent $250 on an ugly bag just because you could?
At my side, Adele trots along, her nails clicking on the sidewalk, and I’m just about to turn by the bookstore when I hear, “Jane?”
It’s Mrs. McLaren. I walk her dalmatian, Mary-Beth, every Wednesday, and now she’s standing in front of me, a Roasted cup in hand. Like Emily Clark, she wears fancy yoga clothes half the time, but she’s smaller and curvier than Emily or Mrs. Reed, her hair about four different shades of blond as it curls around her face.
“What are you two doing all the way down here?” She asks it with a smile, but my face suddenly flames hot, like I’ve been caught at something.
“Change of scenery,” I reply with a sheepish shrug, hoping Mrs. McLaren will just let this go, but now she’s stepping closer, her gaze falling to Adele.
“Sweetheart, it’s probably not safe to have the dogs out of the neighborhood.” The words are cooed, sugar-sweet, a cotton candy chastisement, and I hate her for them.
Like I’m a child. Or, worse, a servant who wandered out of her gated yard.
“We’re not far from home,” I say, and at my side, Adele whines, straining on her leash, her tail brushing back and forth.
Home.
There’s a shopping bag dangling from Mrs. McLaren’s wrist as she steps closer. It’s imprinted with the logo of one of those little boutiques I just passed, and I wonder what’s in it, wanting to catch a glimpse of the item inside, so that when I see it lying around her house later, I can take it. A stupid, petty reaction, lashing out, I know that, but there it is, an insistent pulse under my skin.
Whatever this bitch bought today, she’s not going to keep it, not after making me feel this small.
“Okay, well, maybe run on back there, then?” The uptick, making it a question. “And sweetie, please don’t ever take Mary-Beth out of the neighborhood, okay? She gets so excitable, and I’d hate for her to be out in all this …” she waves a hand, the bag still dangling from her wrist. “Rigmarole.”
I’ve seen maybe three cars this morning, and the only rigmarole currently happening is Mrs. McLaren stopping me like I’m some kind of criminal for daring to walk a dog outside Thornfield’s gates.
But I nod.
I smile.
I bite back the venom flooding my mouth because I have practice at that, and I walk back to Thornfield Estates and to Eddie’s house.
It’s cool and quiet as I let myself in, and I lean down to unclip Adele’s leash. Her claws skitter across the marble, then the hardwood as she makes her way to the sliding glass doors, and I follow, opening them to let her out into the yard.
This is the part where I’m supposed to hang up her leash on the hook by the front door, maybe leave a note for Eddie saying that I came by and that Adele is outside, and then leave. Go back to the concrete box on St. Pierre Street, think again about taking the GRE, maybe sort through the various treasures I’ve picked up on dressers, on bathroom counters, beside nightstands.
Instead, I walk back into the living room with that bright pinkishred couch and floral chairs, the shelves with all those books, and I look around.
For once, I’m not looking for something to take. I don’t know what it says about me, about Eddie, or how I might feel about Eddie that I don’t want to take anything from him, but I don’t. I just want to know him. To learn something.
Actually, if I’m being honest with myself, I want to see pictures of him with Bea.
There aren’t any in the living room, but I can see spaces on the wall where photographs must have hung. And the mantel is weirdly bare, which makes me think it once held more than just a pair of silver candlesticks.
I wander down the hall, sneakers squeaking, and there’s more emptiness.
Upstairs.
The hardwood is smooth underfoot, and there are no blank spaces here, only tasteful pieces of art.
On the landing, there’s a table with that glass bowl I recognize from Southern Manors, the one shaped like an apple, and I let my fingers drift over it before moving on, up the shorter flight of stairs to the second floor.
It’s dim up here, the lights off, and the morning sun not yet high enough to reach through the windows. There are doors on either side, but I don’t try to open any of them.
Instead, I make my way to a small wooden table under a round stained-glass window, there at the end of the hall.
There’s only one thing on it, a silver-framed photograph, and it’s both exactly what I wanted to see, and something I wish I’d never seen at all.
I had wondered what Bea and Eddie looked like together, and now I know.
They’re beautiful.
But it’s more than just that. Lots of people are beautiful, especially in this neighborhood where everyone can afford the upkeep, so it’s not her perfect hair and flawless figure, her bright smile and designer bathing suit. It’s that they look like they fit. Both of them, standing on that gorgeous beach, her smiling at the camera, Eddie smiling at her.
They’d found the person for them. That thing most of us look for and never find, that thing I always assumed didn’t exist, because in this whole wide world, how could there ever be one person who was just right for you?
But Bea was right for Eddie, I can see that now, and I suddenly feel so stupid and small. Sure, he’d flirted with me, but he was probably one of those guys for whom it was second nature. He’d had this. He certainly didn’t want me.
“That was in Hawaii.”
I whirl around, the keys falling from my suddenly numb fingers.
Eddie is standing in the hallway, just at the top of the stairs, leaning against the wall with one ankle crossed in front of the other. He’s wearing jeans today and a blue button-down, the kind that looks casual, but probably costs more than I’d make in a couple of weeks at the coffee shop or walking dogs. I wonder what that’s like, to have so much money that spending someone’s rent on one shirt doesn’t even register.
His sunglasses dangle from his hand, and he nods at the table. “That picture,” he tells me, as if I hadn’t known what he was referring to. “That’s me and Bea in Hawaii last year. We met there, actually.”
I swallow hard, shoving my hands into the back pockets of my jeans, straightening my shoulders. “I was just looking for the bathroom,” I tell him, and he smiles a little.
“Of course you were,” he says, pushing off from the wall and walking closer. The hall is wide and bright, filled with light from the inset window above us, but it feels smaller, closer, as he moves nearer.
“It was the one picture I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of,” he says now, and I’m very aware of him standing right next to me, his elbow nearly brushing my side.
“The rest were mostly shots of our wedding, a few pictures of when we were building this house. But that one …” Trailing off, he picks up the frame, studying the image. “I don’t know. I just couldn’t throw it out.”
“You threw the rest of them away?” I ask. “Even your wedding pictures?”
He sets the frame back on the table with a soft clunk. “Burned them, actually. In the backyard three days after the accident.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say quietly, trying not to imagine Eddie standing in front of a fire as Bea’s face melted.
But then he looks at me, his blue eyes narrowing just a little bit. “I don’t think you are, Jane,” he says, and my mouth is dry, my heart hammering. I wish I’d never come upstairs into this hallway, and I am so glad I came into this hallway because if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be standing here right now, and he wouldn’t be looking at me like that.
“What happened was awful,” I try again, and he nods, but his hand is already coming up to cup my elbow. His fingers fold around the sharp point, and I stare down at where he’s touching me, at the sight of that hand on my skin.
“Awful,” he echoes. “But you’re not sorry, because her not being here means that you can be here. With me.”
I want to protest, because what a horrible thing to think about me. What a horrible thing for me to be.
But he’s right—I’m glad that Bea Rochester was on that boat with Blanche Ingraham that night. I’m glad because it means Eddie is alone.
Free.
The fact that he sees that in me should make me feel ashamed, but it only makes me giddy.
“I’m not with you,” I say to him, though, because that’s the truth. We may be standing here, his hand on my arm, but we’re not together. There’s still a big fucking canyon between the Eddie Rochesters of the world and me.
But then he smiles, that slow smile that only lifts one corner of his mouth and makes him look younger and more charming.
“Have dinner with me tonight,” he says.
I like that. How it’s not a question.
“Yes,” I hear myself say, and it’s that easy.
It’s like walking through a door.
I don’t let him pick me up.
I’d be insane to let Eddie see where I really live, and the thought of him and John crossing paths is enough to make me shudder. No, I want to exist only in Eddie’s world, like I’d sprung from somewhere else, fully formed, unknowable.
It’s true enough, really.
So, I meet him in English Village, a part of Mountain Brook I’ve never been to, although I’d heard Emily mention it. There are lots of “villages” in Mountain Brook: Cahaba Village, Overton Village, and Mountain Brook Village itself. It seemed silly to me, using a word like village to mean different part of the same community—just use neighborhood, you pretentious assholes, we don’t live in the English countryside—but what did I know?
I park far away from the French bistro where Eddie made a reservation, praying he won’t ask to walk me to my car later, and meet him under the gold-and-black-striped awning of the restaurant.
He’s wearing charcoal slacks and a white shirt, a nice complement to the deep eggplant of my dress, and his hand is warm on my lower back when the maître d’ shows us to our table.
Low lights, white tablecloths, a bottle of wine. That’s the part that stands out to me most, how casually he orders an entire bottle of wine while I was still looking at the by-the-glass prices, wondering what would sound sophisticated, but wouldn’t be too expensive.
The bottle he selects is over a hundred dollars, and my cheeks flush at knowing I’m worth an expensive bottle of wine to him. After that, I put the menu away entirely, happy to let him order for me.
“What if I pick something you don’t like?” he asks, but he’s smiling, His skin doesn’t seem as pale as it did that first day. His blue eyes are no longer rimmed with red, and I wonder if I’ve made him happy. It’s a heady thought, even more intoxicating than the wine.
“I like everything,” I reply. I don’t mean for the words to sound sexy, but they do, and when the dimple in his cheek deepens, I wonder what else I can say that will make him look at me like that.
Then his eyes drop lower.
At first, I think he’s looking at the low neckline of my dress, but then he says, “That necklace.”
Fuck.
It had been stupid to wear it. Reckless, something I very rarely was, but when I’d looked in the mirror before leaving, I’d looked so plain with no jewelry. The chain I’d taken from Mrs. McLaren wasn’t anything fancy, no diamonds or jewels, just a simple silver chain with a little gold-and-silver charm on it.
A bee, I now realize, and my stomach sinks, fingers twisting in my napkin.
“A friend gave it to me,” I say, striving for lightness, but I’m already touching the charm, feeling it warm against my chest.
“It’s pretty,” he says, then glances down. “My late wife’s company makes one similar, so …”
Eddie trails off, and his fingers start that drumming on the table again.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I … I heard about Southern Manors, and it’s—”
“Let’s not talk about it. Her.” His head shoots up, his smile fixed in place, but it’s not real, and I want to reach across the table and take his hands, but we’re not there yet, are we? I want to ask him everything about Bea, and forget she existed, all at the same time.
I want.
I want.
As the waiter approaches with our expensive wine, I smile at Eddie. “Then let’s talk about you.”
He raises his eyebrows, leaning back in his seat. “What do you want to know?” he asks.
I wait until the server has finished pouring a sample of the wine into Eddie’s glass, then wait for Eddie to take a sip, nod, and gesture for our glasses to be filled, a thing I’ve only ever seen happen in movies or on reality shows about rich housewives. And now it’s happening to me. Now I’m one of the people who has those kinds of dinners.
Once we have full glasses, I mimic Eddie’s posture, sitting back. “Where did you grow up?”
“Maine,” he answers easily, “little town called Searsport. My mom still lives there; so does my brother. I got out as soon as I could, though. Went to college in Bangor.” Eddie sips his wine, looking at me. “Have you ever been to Maine?”
I shake my head. “No. But I read a lot of Stephen King as a teenager, so I feel like I have a good idea of what it’s like.”
That makes him laugh, like I’d hoped it would. “Well, fewer pet cemeteries and killer clowns, but yeah, basically.”
Leaning forward, I fold my arms on the table, not missing the way his gaze drifts from my face to the neckline of my dress. It’s a fleeting glance, one I’m used to getting from men, but coming from him, it doesn’t feel creepy or unwanted. I actually like him looking at me.
Another novelty. “Living here must be a big change,” I say, and he shrugs.
“I moved around a lot after college. Worked with a friend flipping houses all over the Midwest. Settled in California for a bit. That’s where I first got my contractor’s license. Thought I’d stay there forever, but then I went on vacation, and …”
He trails off, and I jump in, not wanting another loaded silence.
“Have you ever thought of going back?”
Surprised, he pours himself a little more wine. “To Maine?”
I shrug. “Or California.” I wonder why he stays in a place that must have so many bad memories for him, a place in which he seems to stick out, just the slightest bit, to be set apart, even with all his money and nice clothes.
“Well, Southern Manors is based here,” he replies. “I could run the contracting business from somewhere else, but Bea was really set on Southern Manors being an Alabama company. It would feel … I don’t know. Like a betrayal, I guess. Moving it somewhere else. Or selling it.”
His expression softens a little. “It’s her legacy, and I feel a responsibility to protect it.”
I nod, glad our food arrives just at that moment so that this conversation can die a natural death. I already know how important Southern Manors is to him. In my Google stalking, I found several articles about how just a few months after Bea went missing, Eddie fought for a court order to have her declared legally dead. It had something to do with Southern Manors, and there was a lot of business and legal jargon in it I hadn’t understood, but I’d gotten the gist—Bea had to be dead on paper for Eddie to take over and run the company the way she would’ve wanted it to be run.
I wondered how that had made him feel, declaring his wife’s death in such a formal, final way.
As he cuts into his steak, he looks up at me, smiling a little. “Enough about me. I want to hear about you.”
I provide a few charming anecdotes, painting Jane’s life in a flattering light. Some of the stories are real (high school in Arizona), some are half-truths, and some are stolen from friends.
But he seems to enjoy them, smiling and nodding throughout the meal, and by the time the check comes, I’m more relaxed and confident than I’d ever thought I’d be on this date.
And when we leave, he takes my hand, slipping it into the crook of his elbow as we exit the restaurant.
It’s ridiculous, I know that. Me, here with him. Me, with my arm linked through his.
Me, in his life.
But here I am, and as we make our way to the sidewalk, I hold my head up higher, stepping closer to him, the edge of my skirt brushing his thighs.
The night is warm and damp, my hair curling around my face, streetlights reflecting in puddles and potholes, and I wonder if he’ll kiss me.
If he’ll ask me to stay the night.
I’m going to.
He’d ordered a piece of pie to go, and I think about eating it with him in his gorgeous kitchen. Or in his bed. Is that why he’d ordered it?
I think about walking into that house at night, how pretty the recessed lighting will be in the darkness. What the backyard will look like when the sun comes up. What his sheets feel and smell like, what it’s like to wake up in that house.
“You’re quiet,” Eddie says, tucking me closer to his side as we wander, and I tilt my head up to smile at him.
“Can I be honest?”
“Can I stop you?”
I nudge him slightly at that, feeling how solid and warm he is beside me. “I was thinking that it’s been a long time since I’ve been on a date.”
“Me, too,” he replies.
In the streetlights, he’s so handsome it makes my chest ache, and my fingers rub against the softness of his jacket, the material expensive and well-made. Nicer than anything I own.
“I’m—” I start, and he turns his head. I think he might kiss me there, right there on the street in English Village where anyone might see us, but before he can, there’s a voice.
“Eddie!”
We turn at almost the same time, facing a man on the sidewalk who looks like Tripp Ingraham or Matt McLaren or Saul Clark or any of the other pastel guys in Thornfield Estates.
He’s got his face screwed up, that expression of sympathy that twists mouths down and eyebrows together. His thinning blond hair looks orange in the streetlights, and when he lifts a hand to shake Eddie’s, I catch the glint of a wedding ring.
“Good to see you, man,” he says. “And so sorry about Bea.”
Eddie’s body is stiff against me. “Chris,” he says, shaking the man’s hand. “Nice to see you, too. And thank you. I really appreciated the flowers.”
Chris only shakes his head. He’s wearing a light gray suit, and there’s a Mercedes parked against the curb just behind him. A woman is still sitting in the passenger seat, watching us, and I feel like her eyes land on me.
I don’t tug at the skirt of my dress, the only nice one I have, but my fingers itch at my side.
“Awful thing, just awful,” Chris goes on, like Eddie doesn’t know that his wife drowning is a bad thing, but Eddie just grimaces and nods.
“Thanks again,” he says, because what can you say, I guess, but then Chris’s eyes flick briefly to me.
“She was a helluva woman,” he adds, and I can feel the questions that are clearly burning a hole in the roof of his mouth.
Who the hell am I, is this a date, is Eddie seriously going to replace Bea with me, this pale-faced plain girl in a dress that’s one size too big?
“She was,” Eddie replies, and I wait for it, the moment he’s going to introduce me.
Chris is waiting for it, too, but it passes with an awkward smile from Eddie and a firm pat on Chris’s shoulder. “See you around,” he says. “Tell Beth I said hello.”
Then we’re moving down the sidewalk, and Eddie has not looked at me since Chris appeared, since Bea’s name rose up like a ghost between us.
He doesn’t ask to walk me to my car.
And he doesn’t kiss me good night.
Everything in the Ingraham house feels like it’s waiting for Blanche to return.
I walk in the next morning, feeling heavy and slow, last night’s failed date with Eddie sitting like a rock low in my stomach. It somehow seems fitting that this should be the day I’d agreed to go over and start packing up some of Blanche’s stuff for Tripp.
Bea’s ghost last night, Blanche’s today.
It’s been months since she went missing, but one of her handbags is still sitting on the table in the foyer. There’s a pile of jewelry there, too, a coiled necklace, a careless pile of rings. I imagine her coming home from a dinner out, taking off all that stuff, tossing it casually against the wide glass base of the lamp, kicking her shoes just under the table.
The pair of pink gingham flats is still lying there, too. It was July when she went missing, and I imagine her wearing them with a matching pink blouse, a pair of white capris. Women here always dress like flowers in the summer, bright splashes of color against the violently green lawns, the blindingly blue sky. It’s so different from how things were back East, where I grew up. There, black was always the chicest color. Here, I think people would wear lavender to a funeral. Poppy-red to a wedding.
I’ve never tried to take anything from Tripp. Trust me, he’d notice.
Unlike Eddie, Tripp has kept all the pictures of Blanche up and in plain sight. I think he might have actually added some. Every available surface seems overcrowded with framed photos.
There are at least five of their wedding day, Blanche smiling and very blond, Tripp looking vaguely like her brother, and nowhere near as paunchy and deflated as he looks now.
He’s sitting in the living room when I come in, a plastic tumbler full of ice and an amber-colored liquid that I’m sure is not iced tea.
It’s 9:23 A.M.
“Hi, Mr. Ingraham,” I call, rattling my keys in my hand just in case he’s forgotten that he gave me a key so that I could let myself in. That was back when he still pretended like he might go into work. I’m not even sure what he does, if I’m honest. I thought he was a lawyer, but maybe I just assumed that because he looked like the type. He doesn’t seem to own any other clothes besides polo shirts and khakis, and there’s golf detritus all over the house—a bag of clubs leaning by the front door, multiple pairs of golfing shoes jumbled in a rattan basket just inside the front door, tees dropped as carelessly as his wife’s jewelry.
Even the cup he’s currently drinking his sad breakfast booze in has some kind of golf club insignia on it.
There’s a photo album spread across his lap and as I step farther into the dim living room, Tripp finally looks up at me, his eyes bleary behind designer glasses.
“Jan,” he says, and I don’t bother to remind him it’s Jane. I’ve already done that a few times, and it never seems to actually penetrate the muck of Woodford Reserve his brain is permanently steeped in.
“You asked me to start on the second guest room today,” I tell him, pointing upstairs, and after a beat, he nods.
I head up there, but my mind isn’t on Tripp and Blanche.
It’s still on Eddie, on our dinner last night. The way he’d just nodded when I had said I’d walk to my car on my own. How we’d hugged awkwardly on the sidewalk, and how quickly he’d walked away from me.
I’d thought—
Fuck, it doesn’t matter. Maybe I’d thought something was happening there, but clearly, I’d been wrong, and the only thing currently happening was that I was heading into the “second guest room” at the Ingrahams’ house to pack up … who knew what.
The bedroom was on the second floor, and it was relatively small, done all in shades of blue and semi-tropical floral patterns. There were boxes and plastic storage containers on the floor, but I had the feeling Tripp hadn’t put them there. He had sisters. Maybe they had come to prepare the room for me to pick up, a sort of pre-cleaning to maintain the fiction that Tripp had his shit together.