Three weeks later, Brandon signed his contract with Metro General. His starting salary was two hundred thousand dollars a year.
When he told me the number, I sat down on our thrift-store sofa and cried out of pure, exhausting relief. The marathon was finally over. I could quit the night-shift cleaning route. I could drop my hours at the grocery store. I could finally re-enroll at the university and finish the degree I had abandoned for him.
But Brandon had already started drawing up a different blueprint.
He came home a few evenings later and dropped a stack of glossy, heavy-cardstock leasing brochures onto our scratched kitchen table.
“We need to move,” he said, tapping his index finger against a rendering of a high-rise building with floor-to-ceiling windows. “This neighborhood isn’t appropriate for a surgeon. My colleagues are all leasing in the River District. It’s expected.”
I opened one of the brochures. The floor plans were massive. Then I looked at the pricing sheet tucked into the back pocket. The rent on the smallest unit was four thousand dollars a month. It was more money than I made working all three of my jobs combined over an entire quarter.
“Brandon, this is completely out of our range,” I said, sliding the brochure back toward him. “We could find something nice for half this price. If we keep our overhead low, I can quit the diner and go back to school.”
He looked at me as if I had just suggested we live in a tent.
“Grace, image is a currency in my field,” he said, using the patient, condescending tone of a parent explaining basic math to a child. “Where we live, the car we pull up in, how we present ourselves to the board—it all factors into fellowships and promotions. Besides, it’s good for you to keep working. Independence is an important trait.”
Independence. That was the word he used to package his refusal to support me.
We moved into a high-rise in the River District. Brandon financed a brand-new BMW. He bought tailored suits and joined an executive athletic club that charged three hundred dollars a month just for the locker room privileges. I quit my midnight cleaning route, but I kept my shifts at the grocery store and the diner. The cost of our new life was suffocating, and Brandon made it clear that I was still expected to carry my own weight.
As he transformed into a man I barely recognized, the evaluations of my character became constant.
“Grace, you should really do something with your hair,” he would say, frowning at my ponytail as I laced up my work shoes. “Grace, that sweater is pilling at the elbows. It looks careless.” “Grace, I can’t bring you to the hospital charity gala. The administrators will be there, and you wouldn’t be comfortable making that kind of conversation.”
He didn’t need to yell. The quiet, clinical dismissals did the work perfectly. I was the same woman who had worked herself to the bone to put his name on a medical degree, but I was no longer an asset. I was a liability. I was too plain, too quiet, too retail.
The only time he spoke with any real enthusiasm was when he brought up his new circle. Specifically, Veronica.
Veronica coordinated the donor auction. Veronica recommended the best tailor downtown. Veronica summers in the Hamptons and understands the politics of the hospital board.
I tried to address it once while I was washing dishes in our new, stainless-steel sink. “Brandon, you mention Veronica in almost every conversation we have.”
His face hardened instantly. He set his coffee mug down with a sharp clack against the granite counter. “She is a colleague, Grace. A high-level professional contact. This right here is exactly why I can’t integrate you into my work life. You’re insecure, and you don’t understand how networking functions at this level. It’s incredibly small-minded.”
Small-minded. I dried my cracked hands on a dish towel and stayed silent.
Our eighth wedding anniversary landed on a Tuesday in October. I had been planning the evening for a month, hoarding five-dollar bills from my diner tips in a jar in my closet. I wanted one perfect night to bridge the gap between us. I wanted to sit across from my husband and remember who we used to be before the BMW, the luxury apartment, and Veronica Ashford.
I asked my manager to let me leave my cashier shift four hours early, sacrificing half a day’s pay. I went to the market and bought the ingredients for chicken parmesan—the first meal I had ever cooked for him in our old apartment. I stopped at a dollar store for a pack of white taper candles.
When I got to the apartment, I spent an hour in the bathroom, carefully applying my makeup and putting on the navy dress I had worn to his graduation. I set the dining table. It looked simple, but it looked beautiful.