The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen (23)

I hate it when I can’t see.

Maggie, the shy seventeen-year-old pledge from Jacksonville, had said those exact words to me the night of our sorority initiation.

But I hadn’t listened to her. I was too fixated on how Daniel had brushed me off. Tomorrow isn’t good enough, I’d thought as my anger mounted.

Somehow I managed to participate in most of the evening’s rituals. I hovered behind Maggie as she stood in the circle of girls in our living room, their faces illuminated by candlelight. When all of the sisters had gathered together to vote after rush week, Maggie hadn’t been on our original list of the twenty selected. The other pledges were pretty, lively, and fun—the sort of girls who would be asked to fraternity formals and enhance the spirit of the house. But Maggie was different. When I’d talked to her during one of our social events, I’d learned that during high school, she had started a volunteer program aimed at helping animals in a shelter near her family’s home.

“I didn’t have a lot of friends when I was growing up,” Maggie had told me, shrugging. “I was kind of an outsider.” She’d grinned, but I’d seen vulnerability in her eyes. “I guess helping animals kept me from feeling alone.”

“That’s amazing. Can you explain how you started that program? I want to get our house more involved in service.”

Her face had lit up as she described the three-legged dachshund named Ike that had sparked her idea. I decided that no matter what the other girls in the house thought, Maggie needed to be one of our pledges.

But as I stood behind her, listening to the voices of my sorority sisters rise in song, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. Maggie was dressed in a childish white cotton top printed with a pattern of little cherries and matching shorts, and she had barely said a word all night. She’d told me she was looking forward to a fresh start in college, that she wanted to form connections with the other girls here. But she wasn’t putting forth any effort to bond with the sisters. She hadn’t memorized our anthem; I could see her pretending to mouth the words. She’d taken a sip of the Dirty Hunch Punch and spat it back into her cup. “Gross,” she’d said, leaving the cup on the table instead of throwing it out, then reaching for a Jell-O shot.

It was my job to watch over Maggie, to make sure she was completing her tasks—including the scavenger hunt through the house—and, especially, to track her during the ocean plunge. Even we college kids knew that drinking and swimming in the choppy waves at night could be treacherous.

I couldn’t focus on Maggie, though. I was too aware of the change in my body, the silent phone in my pocket. When she complained that she couldn’t locate the brass rooster we jokingly called our mascot and had hidden in the house, I shrugged and ticked it off her list anyway. “Just find what you can,” I said, then I checked my phone again. Daniel still hadn’t called.

It was nearly ten o’clock by the time our sorority president led the way down to the beach for our final initiation rite. The girls were blindfolded and holding on to one another, giggling drunkenly.

I saw Maggie peeking out from under her blindfold, violating another rule. “I hate it when I can’t see. It makes me feel claustrophobic.”

“Put it back on,” I instructed. “It’s only for another few minutes.”

As we passed by fraternity houses on Greek Row, guys clapped and cheered, “Go, Chi O!”

Jessica, the wildest girl in our sorority, lifted up her shirt and flashed her hot-pink bra, earning a standing ovation. I was pretty sure Jessica would end up sleeping out tonight; she’d been matching the pledges shot for shot.

Beside me was Leslie, one of my closest friends. Her arm was linked through mine, and she was singing along to “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” with all the other girls. Normally I would have been shouting the lyrics along with them, but I hadn’t had a sip of alcohol. How could I, knowing a little life was inside me?

I thought about the beach. The place where Daniel and I had likely conceived. I couldn’t go there.

“Hey,” I whispered. “I feel like crap. Can you do me a favor? Watch Maggie at the ocean?”

Leslie made a face. “She’s kind of a dud. Why’d we vote her in?”

“She’s just shy. She’ll be fine. And she’s a good swimmer, I already asked.”

“Whatever. Feel better. And you owe me.”

I found Maggie and told her I was ill. She lifted up her blindfold again, but this time I let it slide.

“Where are you going? You can’t leave me.”

“You’ll be okay.” I was annoyed at the whine in her tone. “Leslie will look out for you. Just tell her if you need anything.”

“Which skinny blonde is she?”

I rolled my eyes and pointed in Leslie’s direction. “She’s our vice president.”

I peeled away from the group as they turned the corner and began to march the last two blocks to the ocean. The faculty housing was on the other side of campus, a fifteen-minute walk if I cut across the quad. I tried Daniel a final time. Straight to voice mail, again. I wondered if he’d turned off his phone.

I thought back to the girl who’d approached him after class this afternoon. I’d been so focused on Daniel that I hadn’t paid attention to her. But now, as if I were watching a movie and the camera was panning back to encompass her, I saw her anew. She was quite attractive. How close had she stood to him?

Daniel had told me I was the first student he’d ever slept with. I’d never doubted that until this moment.

He could be out with her for all I knew.

I didn’t realize I’d quickened my step until I began to breathe more heavily from exertion.

The faculty homes were all in a row, just like the Greek houses. They lined the very edge of campus, back behind the Agriculture Department’s greenhouse. The two-story redbrick structures weren’t fancy, but they were rent-free—a great perk for a college professor.

His Alfa Romeo was parked in the driveway of house number nine.

My plan had been to knock on a door and ask where Daniel—no, Professor Barton—lived. I was going to say I had a paper I had to turn in, that I’d given him the wrong draft in class. But the car eliminated that need. Now I knew exactly where he lived. And he was home.

I pressed the buzzer, and one of Daniel’s professor roommates answered. “Can I help you?” She tucked her wheat-colored hair behind an ear. A calico cat sauntered into the room and rubbed its head against her ankle.

“It’s the stupidest thing. Is Professor Barton here? I just realized I, um, gave him the wrong—”

The woman was turning around to look at someone descending the stairs. “Honey? One of your students is here.”

He almost ran down the final steps. “Vanessa! What brings you to my home so late at night?”

“I—I gave you the wrong paper.” I knew my eyes were wild as they flicked between Daniel and the woman who’d called him “honey.”

“Oh, no problem,” Daniel said quickly. He was smiling too brightly. “Just submit a new version tomorrow.”

“But I—” I blinked hard against tears as he began to shut the door on me.

“Wait a minute.” The woman reached out to stop the door’s movement, and that’s when I saw the gold band wrapped around her finger. “You came all the way out here to talk about a paper?”

I nodded. “You’re his wife?” I was still hoping it was a roommate, that this was some kind of misunderstanding. I tried to keep my voice even and casual. But it broke.

“I am. I’m Nicole.”

She looked at my face more carefully. “Daniel, what is going on?”

“Nothing.” Daniel’s blue eyes widened. “I guess she turned in the wrong paper.”

“Which class is this?” his wife asked.

“Family Sociology,” I said quickly. It was the class I took last semester. I didn’t lie to protect Daniel. I did it for the woman standing in front of me. She was barefoot and wore no makeup. She looked tired.

I think she wanted to believe me. Maybe she would have. She might have closed the door and heated up oil for popcorn and cuddled with Daniel on the couch while they watched Arrested Development. Daniel could have explained me away, as if I were a mosquito to be batted aside. “These kids are so stressed about grades,” he might’ve said. “Remind me, how long until I can retire?”

Except for one thing.

At the exact same moment that I said, “Family Sociology,” Daniel said, “Senior Seminar.”

His wife didn’t react immediately.

“That’s right!” Daniel snapped his fingers theatrically. Overcompensating. “I’m teaching five classes this semester. It’s nutty! Anyway, it’s late. Let’s let this poor girl go home. We’ll sort it out tomorrow. Don’t worry about the paper, it happens all the time.”

“Daniel!”

At his wife’s shout, he fell silent.

She jabbed a finger at me. “Stay away from my husband.” Her lower lip quivered.

“Sweetie,” Daniel pleaded. He wasn’t looking at me; he didn’t see me at all. Two broken women stood in front of him. But he only cared about one.

“I am so sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t know.”

The door slammed and I could hear her yell something. As I walked down the front steps, I had to grip the railing to keep from stumbling when I saw a yellow tricycle in the grass. A tree had hidden it from my view when I approached the house. Near it was a pink jump rope.

Daniel already had children.

Much later, after I’d returned to the sorority house and cursed Daniel and sobbed and raged; after Daniel had brought me a bouquet of inexpensive carnations and an equally cheap apology, saying he loved his family and that he couldn’t start a new one with me; after I’d gone alone to a clinic an hour away, an experience so wrenching I was never able to talk about it with anyone; after I’d completed my senior year with honors and had set out for New York, desperate to put Florida behind me—even after all that, whenever my mind returns to that warm October night, the moment I always remember the most vividly is this:

When the pledges returned from the ocean, Maggie was missing.

Maggie and Emma have nothing in common. Except for me. These two young women have forever changed the course of my existence. But one is now gone from my life, and the other is ever present.

I used to spend as much time thinking about Maggie as I now do Emma. Maybe that is why they are beginning to blur together in my mind.

But Emma is not like Maggie, I remind myself.

My replacement is stunning and confident. Her radiance draws the eye.

The first time I saw her, she rose from behind her desk to greet me in a fluid, elegant motion. “Mrs. Thompson! I’m so happy to finally meet you!”

We’d spoken on the phone, but her throaty voice hadn’t prepared me for her youth and beauty.

“Oh, call me Vanessa.” I felt ancient even though I was only in my mid-thirties.

It was December, the night of Richard’s office holiday party. We’d been married seven years by then. I wore a black A-line dress in an attempt to hide my extra pounds. It looked funereal next to Emma’s poppy-red jumpsuit.

Richard came out of his office and kissed me on the cheek.

“Are you heading upstairs?” he asked Emma.

“If my boss says it’s okay!”

“Your boss says it’s an order,” Richard joked. So the three of us rode the elevator together to the forty-fifth floor.

“I love your dress, Mrs.—I mean Vanessa.” Emma gave me a toothpaste-ad smile.

I looked down at my plain outfit. “Thank you.”

A lot of women might have been threatened by the possibilities of an Emma: those late nights at the office when Chinese food was ordered in and bottles of vodka pulled from a partner’s bar, the overnight trips to see clients, her daily proximity to my husband’s corner office.

But I never was. Not even when Richard called me to say he was working late and would crash in the city apartment.

Back when we were first dating—back when I was Richard’s Nellie—I remember wondering about the sterile quality of that apartment. Another woman had lived there with Richard before he met me. All he told me about her was that she still resided in the city and was perpetually late. I stopped worrying she was somehow a threat to me once Richard and I were married; she was never an intrusion in our lives, even though I became more curious about her as the years went by.

But I never made a mark on the apartment, either. It remained much as it had during Richard’s bachelor days, with the brown suede sofa and complicated lighting system and tidy row of family photographs lining the hallway, plus one of me and Richard on our wedding day, in a simple black frame that matched those of the other images.

During those months when Richard and Emma thought they were having a secret affair—when he took her to the apartment or visited hers—I actually relished his being gone. It meant I didn’t have to change out of my sweats. I could empty a bottle of wine and not worry about where to hide the evidence. I didn’t have to concoct a story about what I’d done that day or come up with a new way to avoid having sex with my husband.

His affair was a reprieve. A vacation, really.

If only it had remained just that—an affair.

I’ve spent most of the morning talking with Aunt Charlotte. She has agreed to allow me to accompany her to the doctor to learn more about how I can help her, but she insisted on going to meet a friend for a lecture at MoMA, as she’d planned.

“My life isn’t going to stop,” Aunt Charlotte had said, brushing off my offer to skip work and go with her or, at the very least, call her a cab.

After I clean the kitchen, I open my laptop and type in the words macular degeneration. I read, The condition is caused by the deterioration of the central portion of the retina. If the eye is a camera, the macula is the central and most sensitive area of the so-called film, the website explains. A working macula collects highly detailed images at the center of the field of vision and sends them up the optic nerve to the brain. When the cells of the macula deteriorate, images are not received correctly.

It sounds so clinical. So sterile. As if these words have no connection to how my aunt will no longer be able to blend together blues and reds and yellows and browns to replicate the skin on a hand, the veins and creases, the gentle dips and swells of the knuckles.

I close my laptop and retrieve two things from my room: Richard’s check, which I put into my wallet to cash later this week. He’d told me to use it to get help, and I will. Help for Aunt Charlotte. Her medical bills, audiobooks and other supplies, and whatever else she needs.

I also pull Emma’s letter from the desk drawer and read it a final time.

I fold up the letter again, then go to look for an envelope.