Sometimes, when Dwayne was passed out downstairs or out God knows where, looking to score, I would put on a diaphanous strappy gown that was one of Adrienne’s hand-me-downs and lie on the upstairs futon in our cramped little house, pretending I’d just gotten home from some sort of big, fancy party. A charity ball, an awards show, a dinner where you had six different silver forks, one for each course. The kind of events the Richardses used to attend, before they became pariahs. If I scrolled a couple years back in Adrienne’s social accounts, I could see pictures of her wearing it, smiling in a ballroom, her arm linked with Ethan’s. The dress was made of something silky, in a shade of green that reminded me of forest moss. Maybe it even was silk; I wouldn’t have known the difference. It swirled around my ankles when I walked, and slid deliciously up my thighs every time I swung my legs up to lie back on the sofa. Like an invitation, except that nobody was ever there to accept. I sometimes thought about creeping downstairs, waking Dwayne, letting him slide the dress up to my waist as I lowered my hips to meet his, but I never did. It had been ages since he touched me by then, but that wasn’t what stopped me. It was something worse: the awful feeling that he’d look at me and laugh. I wouldn’t even have blamed him. When I passed a mirror, the fantasy would fall away and I would see myself for what I was: a grown woman with premature lines on her face and bruises on her shins, playing dress-up.
Maybe that’s when I started to hate her. I didn’t even know yet that she would give me so many reasons to. That second summer, she came armed with a list of special requests that never stopped growing. Could I come to change out the sheets every other day, instead of once a week? Could I drive an hour downstate to buy some string lights for the deck? Could she have some packages delivered to our house in town? I didn’t mind bringing them over, did I? Of course I always did what she asked. Like I was goddamn delighted to be at her beck and call. I spent so much time smiling and nodding through clenched teeth that my jaw started to ache.
I should have been glad when she started asking for Dwayne instead. Suddenly, all the jobs that needed doing required his skills instead of mine. A dead branch was dangling over the roof and needed to be cut down. There were noises coming from the bedroom walls; she thought a bird or a bat might have gotten trapped inside. The drain in the bathtub was clogged again, something that only seemed to happen when Adrienne was staying in the house. She shed like a long-haired cat, all over everything; you always knew where she’d been. I wished she would wear a shower cap, and stop forcing someone to come by every three days to pull a big, nasty clump of her hair out of the plumbing.
This is the saddest part: there was some pathetic piece of me that still wanted to be that someone. Would you believe that instead of being relieved to be off the hook and happy to let my husband be the one at her beck and call, I was jealous? Not because she was getting Dwayne’s attention, but because he was getting hers. It made me feel crazy. The more I loathed Adrienne, the more I wanted to keep her all to myself. To remind her that I was the special one, the one who accepted her when nobody else did. After all, it was me, not Dwayne, who understood her, who she confided in, who knew her secrets. I was the one who did her shopping, anticipated her needs, who remembered to put her favorite chardonnay on ice so it would be perfectly chilled when she arrived. I was the one she handed her phone to when she wanted a picture taken, who didn’t even need to ask for her pass code because I knew it by heart, just like I knew exactly where to stand and how to tilt the camera to capture all her best angles.
And worst of all, I was the one who remembered that she once told me she’d love to see the lake after the season had ended, who had the bright idea to invite them back. “Peak fall is my favorite time of year up here,” I said. “It’s beautiful. You’d love it. Why don’t you come up then, stay another week? I’ll hold off on closing up the house. I’ll even give you a discount.”
She laughed at that. But then she said yes, they’d love to come back, and I felt a flush of triumph. Because the house was mine and that meant it was me, only me, who had the power to give Adrienne Richards what she wanted.
So you see, I have only myself to blame. That’s what kills me—and yes, that’s what killed me. I thought I was so fucking smart. But when I penciled Adrienne in for another week, it was my own dates I was marking.
Elizabeth Emma Ouellette, November 4, 1990–October 8, 2018.
And every terrible thing that happened that night, happened because of me.