American Wife

“Are you sure?”

“Both our meals shouldn’t go to waste. I’m so sorry.” I hurried through the restaurant and retrieved my coat from the coat-check man, who spoke as he passed it to me, but I walked outside without replying. I was dizzy and scalding hot, focused only on not letting the horrible churning inside me erupt into something public and visible. If I could just get back to Dr. Wycomb’s empty apartment, I could sit on the bathroom floor next to the toilet, and it would all emerge in an orderly fashion; this moment would pass with no one watching.

Walk forward over the sidewalk, I thought, and as I repeated the phrase in my head, it seemed, in my unsteadiness and desperation, to be a palindrome I was inside of, a purgatory of nausea. It was brutally cold outside, which at first was an improvement over the restaurant but quickly became its own misery. Then, miraculously, I’d reached Dr. Wycomb’s building. The doorman nodded as I went in, and the elevator attendant also seemed to recognize me. “Happy New Year,” he said, and I did not respond, again aware of the rudeness of my silence yet afraid to open my mouth.

The gold silk wallpaper then, the hallway, the door to Dr. Wycomb’s apartment, my hands shaking as I turned the key she’d given me. There was music playing when I entered the apartment—it was jazz and it was loud—and this was why, in spite of my nausea, I did not immediately step from the foyer into the hall leading to the bedrooms. Having believed the apartment would be vacant on my return, I was surprised and curious (could Myra be playing this noisy music? But no, she’d gone home late that afternoon), so I stepped instead into the living room, and just before I crossed the threshold, I heard my grandmother’s laughter, and just after I heard her laughter, I saw her sitting on Dr. Wycomb’s lap, kissing Dr. Wycomb on the lips.

Dr. Wycomb was dressed in a burgundy silk bathrobe; my grandmother was wearing a beige bra and a beige half-slip trimmed with lace. She was facing Dr. Wycomb, and their mouths were open a little and their eyes were closed, and the kiss went on for several seconds and had not yet stopped when I backed out, so stunned that briefly, my shock outweighed my queasiness. I had to leave the apartment; there was no alternative. And so I did, handling the door as carefully and quietly as possible. In the hall, my nausea came roaring back, and by the time I knew what I was doing, I’d already done it. On either side of the elevator were large metallic vases, almost three feet high, with red bows tied around them and Christmas greens emerging artfully from their centers. Approaching the nearer vase, I pushed aside the greens and then I vomited—hideously, pungently, gloriously—into the vase’s depths.

FOR A LONG time, I remained crumpled on the carpeted floor, spent. I knew I ought to move, to either go downstairs to the lobby or knock on the door and wait for my grandmother or Dr. Wycomb to let me back in the apartment, but neither of these options was appealing. Instead, curled up in my kilt and coat by the elevator, I began to doze. I think about an hour had passed, though it could have been much shorter or longer, by the time the elevator attendant found me. He was the one who knocked on the apartment door, and when Dr. Wycomb answered, I felt like a truant. “She got sick out here,” the attendant said. “Now, I don’t know who’s cleaning it up, but I’ve got an elevator to run tonight.”

Dr. Wycomb’s gaze had jumped to my face.

“Maybe I ate something bad,” I murmured.

“Thank you, Teddy,” Dr. Wycomb said to the attendant. “I’ll take care of the situation.” She guided me inside, calling, “Emilie, Alice has come back early.”

“Was he that objectionable?” My grandmother’s voice grew louder as she approached us. “Alice, you really ought to give—” Then she saw me and said, “Good Lord, you look ghastly.” She was fully dressed, I noted, wearing her brown suit.

“She’s vomited, and I suspect she also has a fever and is dehydrated,” Dr. Wycomb said. Together, they tucked me into bed and took my temperature—102, apparently—and Dr. Wycomb said, “It’s important for you to have fluids. Emilie, get her some ginger ale from the pantry.”

When my grandmother brought the glass to me, I took a few sips—it was sweet and fizzy—and promptly fell asleep, this time far more deeply than I had in the hallway. When I next awakened, it was close to four in the morning, according to the small round clock on the marble table, and my grandmother was sleeping in the other bed. The third time I awakened, it was light out, I was the only one in the room, and I could smell coffee. I rose to use the toilet, and when I returned from the bathroom, my grandmother was waiting for me, smoking a cigarette. “You certainly know how to bring in the new year in style,” she said.

“I’m sorry if I made you miss going to that hotel last night.”

“If Marvin’s parents are anything like their offspring, you spared us. I must say that for a sick girl, you chose the best place to be in all of Chicago. You have the city’s finest physician at your beck and call.”

I climbed back into bed, and for the rest of the day, I emerged only when I needed to go to the bathroom; I didn’t even bathe. Beneath the covers, I alternately shivered and sweated, my body aching, and they took my temperature at intervals. “This just needs to run its course,” Dr. Wycomb said. “You’ll feel like yourself in another day or two.”

“Oh, I bet she’ll be well by tomorrow,” my grandmother said. “Don’t you suppose, Alice?” We were scheduled to take the train back to Riley late the next morning.

“Let’s not decide now,” Dr. Wycomb said.

Around eight that night, when my grandmother brought me two aspirin and a fresh glass of water, she said, “I’m sure your parents would rather have you home slightly under the weather than late. If we stay another night here, there’ll be calls back and forth. We’ll have to change the tickets, and your father will get out of sorts.”

More like there would be explanations required. There’d be shuttling between Dr. Wycomb’s apartment and the Pelham, the pretense of extending a reservation for a room where we’d never slept. This chain of lies enabling my grandmother to press her lips against the lips of another woman, an old woman, a not even attractive woman—and then I couldn’t stand to think about it anymore, the fragment of a moment, that weird disturbing glimpse.

I said nothing, and my grandmother said, “Get some rest. Our train isn’t until eleven, so we’ll have plenty of time to pack in the morning.”

After I’d closed my eyes, I heard her stand, and I was not sure whether I was dreaming or actually speaking when I mumbled, “I don’t even know why you brought me.”

“Brought you where?” my grandmother said, and then I knew I’d spoken aloud. “To Chicago?”

I rolled over. “What?”

My grandmother’s expression was shrewd and alert. She watched me for a few seconds. “You were talking in