The Wife Upstairs(65)

The first day is so hot she can feel sweat pooling in her bra, slipping in a slimy trail down her back. Already, she can smell the powdery scent of her deodorant, and she suddenly has the horrible image of wet, yellowed spots under the arms of her brand-new white blouse.

She wants to check, but then what if someone sees her? And then she’s not only carrying the heavy weight of being named Bertha, she’s also the Bertha Who Looks at Her Own Armpits.

No, better to be sweaty than to be that freak.

The campus is gorgeous: brick buildings, violently green lawn, and even though her room isn’t quite as fancy—lots of linoleum, plain twin beds with scarred wooden frames—it still feels like paradise, being away from home, being away from them, and she never wants to leave.

She meets Blanche that first day. They’re not roommates—that comes later—but they live in the same dorm building, and Blanche has assigned herself as the unofficial greeter.

Blanche has the softest hair, and it falls down her back in a perfect smooth and shiny river, the color of coffee. Bertha’s own hair is brown, too, but not this kind of brown, not this deep shade that makes you want to reach out and touch it.

“Bertha?” she asks, wrinkling her nose, and Bertha feels herself curl inward, shoulders rolling in, spine folding. It’s a pose she’s taken a thousand times. If she could just shrink into herself enough, her parents wouldn’t notice her at all.

But Blanche puts a hand on her shoulder, keeping her from cringing. “No,” she says. “That’s not gonna fly. Don’t you have a nickname?”

Bertha has never had a nickname because she’s never had the kind of friends in her life who would give her one, and her parents barely call her anything at all.

Blanche smiles, teeth blindingly white in her tan face. “Bea,” she proclaims. “That sounds better.”

Bea.

It does sound better. It fits.

Bea. She sits up a little straighter, tries tucking her hair behind her ear with the same casual gesture she’d seen Blanche use earlier.

“Perfect.”

And it is.

That spring break, Blanche invites Bea to her family’s house in Orange Beach. Bea had actually never been to the beach before, but as soon as she sinks her toes into the sugar-white sands, she is in love, and this is the only place she ever wants to be, wind in her hair, salt water brushing her ankles.

Blanche laughs at her, wrapping an arm around Bea’s waist. “Okay, it’s pretty here, but it’s just Orange Beach,” she says, and suddenly Bea worries that she’s been too effusive, gushing too much. Country come to town and all that.

But then Blanche splashes her and dashes off into the surf, leaving Bea standing alone.



* * *



Her father dies her junior year.

She doesn’t go back for the funeral.

Later, there’s a voice mail from her mother, and it’s the most lucid she’s ever sounded. Bea had braced herself for screaming, for slurred recriminations, but instead, her mother is kind. Sweet, even. Calls her “Bertha-Bear,” a nickname Bea hates, but hasn’t heard since she was a little girl. Wants her to come home for the summer. Wants to try to fix things now that Daddy is gone.

And she’s shockingly tempted.

It’s Blanche, though, who reminds her she doesn’t owe Mama anything.

Bea hasn’t told Blanche everything about her past, not wanting her friend to know just how shameful it all is, how dark. But Blanche isn’t stupid, and Bea knows she’s picked up some things. “You don’t have to go,” she tells Bea, and Bea sits on her bed, absentmindedly pulling at the loose plastic on her phone case.

“I have to go somewhere for the summer,” Bea replies, and Blanche smiles, plucking the phone out of Bea’s hand.

“Come home with me, then. We have the space, and it’ll be fun!”

It’s amazing to Bea that Blanche can make that offer, that she doesn’t see it as the huge thing that it so clearly is. For Blanche, it’s that easy. She can take Bea under her wing for an entire summer, and no one will mind, no one will think Bea takes up too much space.

So Bea says yes, and it’s the best summer of her life.

Later, when her mother leaves her a voice mail, drunk and screeching about ungrateful daughters, Bea knows she made the right choice.

And if she hadn’t known it then, she would have at the end of the summer, sitting on Blanche’s massive canopy bed, the one with the lace trim and the pillows in all different shades of green.

Blanche is smiling as she fastens the necklace around Bea’s neck. It’s a sterling silver initial, a B on a delicate chain, and Blanche holds up her own identical charm to Bea’s face.

“We match,” she says, and Bea doesn’t know why she suddenly feels like crying.

They’re together their entire high school career, Bea and Blanche, Blanche and Bea.

Even “the Bs” occasionally. Bea loves that.

She sometimes thinks Blanche doesn’t.



* * *



Bea’s acceptance letter comes just a few days after Blanche’s, and she’s so excited that she can’t help but leap off her bed as soon as Blanche comes in after class, squealing, “I got in!”

Blanche smiles at her, but her expression is a little confused and she asks, “Got in where?”