Recipe for a Perfect Wife Page 2

  “What’s this for?” Alice asked, pointing to a small rectangular metal insert beside the sink. She lifted the lid and peered inside.

  “Oh, that’s a garbage hatch,” Beverly said. “They were used to hold vegetable peelings or to scrape off dishes after meals.” She opened the cupboard directly below, where a shallow pan—rusting slightly in its corners—rested. “Then you would clean out this pan. It was really very handy, and every good kitchen used to have one.”

  “Smart,” Nate said, opening a few more drawers and cupboards, finding such things as a metal cookbook holder behind one door, hooks for pots and pans lining the back of another cupboard, and a pullout board that Beverly explained used to be a work surface for homemakers who wanted to sit while they prepared food.

  Nate was so engaged, so obviously excited, that Alice tried to look past the state of things and see what this house could become. Maybe it was exactly what they needed. Things had been tense these past few months, which Alice accepted was entirely her doing. So she was the one who had to make the sacrifice, even if it meant subscribing to a life that felt alien.

  Perhaps she could throw her restless energy into making the house a home, as Beverly kept saying. Strip away the “vintage” wallpaper, though the thought made her want to weep because there was so damn much of it. Knock down the walls separating the rooms. Create one big open space so the light from the windows could stretch from front to back. As she tried to imagine the positives, Nate whispered how great the front window would be for writing. “Picture a bookshelf beside the desk to hold all your novels, once they’re written.” Maybe. She could pivot. It had always been one of her greatest skills and why Alice was typically tasked with the most difficult clients at her firm. “All in, all the time” had been her mantra.

  “I bet it’s a great neighborhood for jogging,” Nate said, no doubt imagining the miles they could run together on the weekends. Tick, tick, tick, she could almost see the boxes in Nate’s mind. Maybe she could get serious about jogging again, covering miles on the quiet tree-lined streets, never worrying about getting hit by a car if she stepped off the sidewalk.

  Beverly nodded with fervor. “Oh, there goes someone now,” she said. They all looked out the living room’s front window at a woman jogging past the house. The timing was so precise it seemed the jogger might have been a Beverly plant.

  “You were just saying how much you want to get back to running,” Nate said. “At least until there’s a baby.” He placed a hand on Alice’s stomach and gave a rub.

  “Oh, are you expecting?” Beverly asked, a little gasp escaping. Nothing like a kid on the way to add urgency, to make the house seem better than it might have otherwise. “This is a lovely neighborhood for young families. And we haven’t been down there yet, but there’s a full-size washer and dryer in the basement, so when those mountains of baby laundry come you won’t have to leave the house.”

  “We are not expecting,” Alice replied. Quickly, firmly. She was not pleased Nate brought it up, to a perfect stranger no less. The state of her uterus was a private matter, and besides, they had only recently agreed to start trying.

  “Not yet,” Nate added by way of correction, giving one final rub and a tap before taking his hand off Alice’s stomach, where her T-shirt now clung to her middle in a most unflattering way. Alice used to be easily thin, the ability to drop a size as simple as drinking green juice and coffee and eating nothing but bone broth and watermelon for a week. Plus, work had been deliciously all-consuming, offering no time to ingest enough calories to soften her frame. But unemployment had done the trick. Nate loved her new curves, told her women who are too thin have trouble getting pregnant. When she’d asked where he’d heard that, Nate said he couldn’t recall exactly. Alice suspected he had a few pregnancy sites bookmarked—Nate Hale was nothing if not prepared.

  “Do you work, Alice? Outside the home, I mean?” Alice was offended by Beverly’s question, as though she appeared like someone who lacked industriousness. I’m twenty-nine years old, she wanted to say, haughtily. Yes, I work. But that wasn’t true, not anymore. Her stomach clenched again, this time with a longing like an itch she couldn’t scratch. She missed work; the pace, the challenges, the paycheck . . . even the too-high heels, which she sometimes slipped on to walk around the apartment after Nate left for work because they made her feel more like herself.

  “I was in public relations, but I quit my job recently. To focus on other things,” Alice replied.

  “Ali’s writing a novel,” Nate said, and Alice resisted the urge to shush him. If only he knew she hadn’t actually started the novel. Or about what really happened with work.

  Beverly’s eyebrows rose at the mention of a novel, her mouth forming a firm and round O. Alice imagined that Mr. Dixon, if there was one, probably enjoyed that mouth quite a bit. “Well, isn’t that fantastic,” Beverly said. “I wish I could write. But grocery lists and real estate listings are about as far as my skills go.” She smiled wide—pink tooth on full display—and Nate said he was exactly the same, would stick with his numbers and charts.

  “What’s it about? Your novel?” Beverly asked.

  “It’s, uh, about a young woman in public relations. Sort of Devil Wears Prada–ish.”

  “Oh, I loved that movie!” Beverly exclaimed.

  “Anyway, I’m just in the beginning stages. We’ll see.” Alice tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear, wanting desperately to change the subject.

  “Ali doesn’t like to give too much away.” Nate rested his hands on her shoulders and gave a gentle squeeze. “Writers need to keep some secrets, right, babe?”

  “Oh, of course,” Beverly said, head nodding emphatically. “Now, should we head upstairs?”

  “After you, ladies,” Nate replied, gesturing with his hand up the staircase.

  “So, a writer . . . how exciting, Alice. I for one love to read.” The stairs creaked as Beverly stepped onto the first tread. She looked back over her shoulder, holding tight to the railing. The staircase was narrow and steep, requiring them to climb single file.

  “What do you like to read?” Alice asked.

  “All sorts of books. Anything, really. Though police procedurals are my favorite.”

  Police procedurals. Huh. That was unexpected. Alice looked out the window in the first bedroom they walked into and at the house next door, which from this angle was partially obscured by the branches of a large tree. It seemed in decent shape by comparison to the one they were considering making their own.

  “What can you tell us about the previous owner?” Alice asked. They moved into the larger bedroom, where two single beds were made, though only for show, it seemed. Slices of bare mattress poked out from where the simple coverlets hadn’t been pulled down far enough. And the closets were empty when Alice opened them, the night tables free of clutter, and the washroom without toilet paper.

  “The house has been empty for just over a year,” Beverly replied.

  “A year?” That further explained the lawn, the peeling front door, the layers of dust, and the tomb-like feeling of the rooms, with their dark corners and long shadows and musty smells that tickled Alice’s nose. The house felt abandoned, like someone had gone out for milk decades ago and then simply decided not to come back. “So why is it just now on the market?”

  Beverly jangled her bracelets, cleared her throat. “The owner passed away and left the house and her estate to her lawyer to handle. She had no family, apparently.” She frowned, then brightened. “That’s why it’s priced so well. It had been listed a bit higher earlier in the year, but no nibbles. So, back on the market and in your price point. Which is fantastic!”

  Even Alice, with zero knowledge of home improvements, understood this house was in their price point because it would be a major project. Probably new wiring, and likely plumbing, too, along with asbestos removal if they did any significant reno
vations, like taking down walls. Maybe they’d replace windows when they could budget for it, to reduce the electricity bill. And every square inch needed a facelift.

  “Is there anything else we should know?” Alice asked.

  Nate bounced on one leg and the floor creaked under him. “Floors are good,” he said. Alice glanced at the hardwood under her feet as Nate continued to bounce. “Are they original?”

  “I believe they were redone some years ago,” Beverly said, opening her folder and running a finger down a sheet of paper on the top of the pile. “Yes, here we go. New floors in 1985.”

  “Still retro!” Nate said.

  “So, anything else about the house, Beverly?” Alice asked, ignoring Nate’s eagerness for the moment. “I would really hate a surprise, especially with how much work we’re looking at.”

  Nate, all smiles, looked at Beverly, certain there was nothing more. He loved the house, wanted the house.

  “I don’t need to disclose this, but you’re a lovely couple and I can tell you’re keen, and, well . . . the previous owner, she . . .” Beverly’s voice trailed as she tapped a glossy fingernail against the folder, her brows knitting together. “Apparently she passed . . . in the house.” Beverly’s mouth turned down further; she wished to get back to discussing vintage wallpaper and newish floors and good bones and down payment options.

  “Oh. In the house . . . What happened?” Alice asked.

  “Cancer, I believe.” Beverly looked stricken, now worried the Hales might be the type who would never buy a house with that sort of history.

  And that was exactly who they would be. Greenville, and this house, didn’t suit Alice or Nate. She needed to get them back to Manhattan—even if these days the city made her feel like a failure. “I see.” Alice rubbed her hands up and down her arms as though to dispel a chill. “That’s interesting.” Her tone implying that by “interesting” she meant “concerning.”

  “Again, it was some time ago now,” Beverly said, seeing her commission flying out the leaded glass window in front of her.

  “I’m not sure I’d call a year ‘some time ago,’ Beverly.” Alice frowned at their Realtor, her own lips turned down in mirrored response.

  “Well, to be honest, these days it would be hard to find one of these old houses that didn’t have a similar history.”

  Alice turned to Nate and gave another little shiver, lowering her voice. “I don’t know, babe. It’s sort of creepy.”

  “Is it?” Nate asked, looking from Alice to Beverly. “Creepy, I mean? We’re not exactly superstitious. And like Beverly said, it was over a year ago, so any ghost living here has likely upgraded its accommodations.”

  Beverly tittered and Nate chuckled and Alice knew her moment was over.

  Nate gave his wife a hopeful, questioning look, his expectation obvious. After Alice nodded (it was slight, but it counted), he turned to Beverly. “I think we’re interested. Very interested.”

  4

  Nellie

  JULY 19, 1955

  Meat Loaf with Oatmeal

  1 pound ground steak (round, flank, or hamburg)

  1 cup Purity Rolled Oats

  1 medium onion

  1½ teaspoons salt

  ⅛ teaspoon pepper

  1 cup milk or water

  1 egg, slightly beaten

  Mix all ingredients, place in greased loaf tin, and bake in slow oven (300°F) for 45 minutes. Serve hot or cold. One tin of concentrated tomato soup is a pleasant addition to any meat loaf.

  Nellie Murdoch buttoned her dungarees—which she wore only to garden because her husband, Richard, preferred her in skirts— and tapped the Lucky’s white-and-red-foil cigarette package on the table against her hand. Sliding the slender cigarette into her mother-of-pearl holder and lighting it, she sat in one of her new chairs—robin’s-egg blue, like cloudless summer skies—at the kitchen table and smoked, flipping through the latest Ladies’ Home Journal. Richard kept trying to get her to switch to gum (he’d inherited a chewing gum business from his father, the original Richard Murdoch), or at least to a filtered cigarette, suggesting they were healthier. But Nellie hated all the lip smacking that came with chewing gum and loved her Lucky cigarettes. She liked how smoking changed her voice, made it a little huskier and certainly more interesting when she sang. Nellie had a beautiful voice, though sadly the only time she used her gift was at church, or in the bath, or to coax out flower petals. Filters promised to remove throat irritation, as her doctor and the magazine advertisements told her, and Nellie wanted no part of that.

  Picking a piece of errant tobacco off her tongue, Nellie stopped at the “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” column in the magazine and scanned the three points of view: the husband’s, the wife’s, and the therapist’s. The husband, Gordon, was overwhelmed with his financial responsibilities and irritated that his wife continued spending money on things like expensive steak for dinner, clearly not aware of his stress. The wife, Doris, felt ignored by her husband and his silent treatment and would cook him this expensive steak to try to make him happy. Nellie shifted in her chair, crossed her legs, and drew deeply on her cigarette, imagining what advice she would offer this couple who had been marinating in marriage for more than a decade. One, she’d tell the wife to quit cooking for a week and see how that helped her husband’s stress. Two, she’d suggest to the husband he might try talking to his wife rather than expect her to read his mind.

  She quickly scanned the therapist’s advice, which amounted to: Doris should know her expensive dinners were only making things worse for poor, worried Gordon, and therefore her as well; Gordon should not be expected to have to tell Doris how he’s feeling . . . she should just know. The way any good wife would.

  Nellie—who had been Mrs. Richard Murdoch for barely a year—snorted, sympathetic to Doris and Gordon’s plight but certain she would never have to write away for such advice. From the moment Richard, eleven years her senior, plucked her from the crowd at the supper club and declared she would be his wife, Nellie had felt lucky. He might not have been the most attractive compared to her friends’ husbands, nor the most doting, but he certainly had his charm. Richard had swept her off her feet that night—quite literally, as he picked her up in his arms and carried her to his table once he heard it was her twenty-first birthday, plying her with expensive champagne and adoration until she was tipsy and enchanted. In the two years since, Nellie had discovered that Richard was not a flawless man (was there even such a thing?), but he was an excellent provider and would be an attentive father. What more could a wife expect from her husband?

  She stubbed out her cigarette and tapped the holder to release the butt before pouring a glass of lemonade. It was getting on, and she knew she should start dinner soon. Richard had asked for something simple tonight, as he was ill with one of his bad stomach spells. He’d suffered a terrible ulcer a couple of years earlier and it continued to flare up now and again. There’d been a great sale on ground hamburger this week and she’d bought enough for a few meals. Richard kept telling her she didn’t need to scrimp, but she had been raised to spend wisely. To be thrifty wherever possible. Despite Richard’s family’s money—which was now their money, since his mother Grace’s death only four weeks after their wedding—Nellie still liked a deal.

  She pulled her mother’s bible—Cookbook for the Modern Housewife—the spine soft thanks to years of use, its pages covered in the spots and stains of meals past, from the shelf. Singing along to Elvis Presley’s latest, “Hound Dog,” Nellie sipped her lemonade, thumbing the pages until she found the one she was looking for, dog-eared and well used. Meat Loaf with Oatmeal, the note Good for digestion written in her mother’s pristine handwriting beside the ingredients list.

  Setting the cookbook aside, she finished her glass of lemonade and decided it was time to get to the garden before the day got away from her entirely. It was scorching o
utside and a hat would probably be wise, but Nellie liked the sun on her face. The smattering of freckles she’d accumulated already this summer would have horrified her mother-in-law, who valued unblemished skin on a woman. But the impossible-to-please Grace Murdoch was no longer around to offer her opinions, so Nellie headed outside without a hat.

  Nellie loved her garden, and her garden loved her. She was the envy of the neighborhood, her flowers blooming earlier than everyone else’s, staying full and bursting long after others were forced to clip flower heads and admit no matter what they did they would never have flower beds like Nellie Murdoch’s.

  Though everyone was dying to know her secret, she claimed there was no secret at all—merely time pruning and weeding, and an understanding of which blooms liked full sun, which thrived in wetter, shady spots. Nothing extraordinary about it, she’d say. But that wasn’t entirely true. Nellie had from an early age mucked about in the garden with her mother, Elsie Swann, who spent more time among her plants than with human companions.

  Through the warm months Nellie’s mother was gay, funny, and ever present in her daughter’s life. But once the flowers died with the end of the sunny season, turning to a mass of brown mulch covering the garden soil, Nellie’s mother would retreat inside where no one could reach her. Nellie grew to hate those cold, dark months (she still did), her mother glassy-eyed at the kitchen table, unaware how much her young daughter was trying to do to keep the household running. To keep her no-good father from leaving them, the way her grandfather had left her mother and grandmother years ago.

  Elsie taught her daughter everything she knew about gardening and cooking during those swatches of light woven between her dark moods. For a while things seemed good, Elsie always coming back to herself after the snow melted and the days grew long shadows. Nellie and her mother were an unbreakable team, especially after her father left, finding the cheerfulness of a younger, less complicated woman more palatable to his needs.