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Maria, The Wife
Mrs Miller awakes with a start.
She briefly glances over at her husband, who’s still fast asleep in bed, not having heard the pounding on the front door. Carefully, quietly, she slides back the covers and steps onto the bedroom floor, the carpet mercifully absorbing the sound of her bare feet, then opens the door and steps out onto the landing.
Tiptoeing down the stairs to the hallway, she suppresses a shiver as her soles touch the cold hardwood floor, the chill running up from her legs to her shoulders. Behind the frosted glass of the front door there’s a red shape – it could be a hat, it could be a hood. Or it could be hair. Mrs Miller figures she might as well find out.
Quietly, she opens the door.
“Hi, uh - sorry to disturb you this late,” says the flame-haired girl on the doorstep, chuckling awkwardly. “Can I come in?”
Mrs Miller returns her smile. “Of course, sweetie! It’s no problem at all,” she chirps. “My husband’s asleep upstairs, so you might have to keep your voice down.”
The girl smiles gratefully, then steps over the threshold, following Mrs Miller into the kitchen. She takes a seat at the breakfast bar, placing some papers onto the countertop from a battered old messenger bag.
“Can I get you anything?” Mrs Miller offers. “Coffee, maybe? I know it’s a little late for caffeine, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.”
“No thanks, I’m kind of in a hurry,” the girl replies, almost regretfully. “You’re Andrew Miller’s wife, right? Maria?”
In recognition of her name, Mrs Miller turns away from the stove to face the girl. “Why, yes, honey, of course!” she grins. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
“Probably the supermarket,” says the girl. “I’m Rachel. Rachel Martinez. Listen, Maria, I… there’s something you should probably know.”
Mrs Miller’s curiosity is piqued. “Oh? What is it, Rachel, sweetheart?” she asks.
Rachel doesn’t waste any more time, handing over a piece of paper to Mrs Miller. “How long have you guys been living in Stepford?” she asks, as Mrs Miller carefully plucks the paper from between her fingers.
“I think, um… about five years or so, why?” Mrs Miller begins, just before she casts her glance to the page.
And then she begins to read.
In the darkened theater, Maria Schiavone stifles a gasp. A missing persons report? But… surely her friends knew she and Andrew were moving to Connecticut, right?
That fucking asshole.
She’d noticed a change in Andrew’s behaviour almost immediately after his first Men’s Association meeting. He’d become boorish, lazy, controlling, overly critical. Everything Maria did, he somehow had a problem with: the way she walked, the clothes she wore, the shape of her body, the sound of her voice, her laugh, her smile… all those things she could have sworn made him fall for her in the first place. She played along at first, not wanting to waste her breath arguing with him about it, and slowly, gradually, she found herself tiptoeing around him anxiously. The goofy, fun-loving, easy-going guy she married was now long gone. It was like he’d transformed into Al Bundy overnight.
When Maria unzipped her cosmetic bag to find that every single one of her birth control pills had been removed from the blister pack, that was the last fucking straw.
“God fucking dammit, Andrew, what the hell did you do with my pills?!” she yelled as she confronted him in the living room.
Andrew had just shrugged, told her he had no idea what she was talking about. He was slumped in an armchair, watching the Yankees playing off against the Red Sox in London. He hadn’t looked at her once.
She moved to stand in front of the TV. “I don’t know what’s happened to you, Andrew,” she cried. “Ever since you started hanging out with those Men’s Association dicks you’ve turned into a fucking pig! I can’t keep walking on eggshells around you just to get yelled at because you think my ass jiggles too much—”
“Babe, can you move?” Andrew cut in, leaning to one side to get a glimpse of the screen. “Freddie Mercury’s about to win the mascot race.”
And before Maria knew it, a chloroform-soaked rag was clamped over her mouth from behind, and her vision started to swim before going black.
The paper falls from her shaking hands.
Maria grabs the edge of the countertop, her legs giving way beneath her.
Rachel’s voice sounds far away, even though she’s right in front of her. “Holy shit, Maria, are you okay?” she cries out as Maria falls to her knees to the tiled floor.
She pulls herself upright, catching her breath, her hands curling into tight fists.
“That bastard,” she spits. “I’ll fuckin’ kill him, I swear.”
Rachel reaches, almost nervously, for Maria’s hand. “I know, Maria,” she exhales sadly. “Listen, you do what you need to do, just make sure to pack your bags and get out of here. Head to the train station. You’re not the only one this has happened to.”
Maria can only gaze back at Rachel in amazement, at her oversized coat, plain white t-shirt and mens’ pyjama pants, before it truly sinks in that they share one thing in common. She’s seen Rachel before, but only as William Everett’s wife, blonde and buxom, tied to his side in the grocery store and smiling vacantly, even as he reprimanded her like an errant child. God, that poor girl, she’d thought as she watched them from her seat in the theater. It reminded her of when her little sister was ‘dating’ that guy in his thirties who sold dope outside the ball court on Houston and 6th.
“I had a feeling,” Maria finally says, her breath still trembling. “Somehow, I just knew it…”
Rachel’s face softens, her green eyes glistening with unshed tears. Then she gets to her feet and hugs Maria tightly, and Maria can’t help but pull the girl close enough to absorb her into herself, desperately wanting to gain some of her courage.
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After Rachel leaves, Maria Schiavone douses Andrew Miller’s sleeping form in the last remaining drops of gasoline from a can she found in the garage, and lights a match.
She watches the house burn from across the street, the suitcase sitting by her side, and listens to the glorious sound of her husband’s screams as he’s engulfed by the flames.
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