My mother should have known it was coming – I had.  My father was always complaining about the state of our house, and so I tried to fill in the holes her domestic neglect left, but little girls can’t make casseroles, reach the high shelves to dust, or stop their fathers from walking out.  Even towards the end of her life, she wouldn’t clean up.  It took me days to empty out her house after she died; you’d think you’d want your departure from the world to be at least a little tidy.  I promised myself after my father left that I’d never drive a man away like she did. 
I made a list of rules for how to be the best kind of wife.  I based it off faint remembrances of the shows my father and I would watch when he was still around.  They were always those old black and white ones that featured women who wore dresses that twirled as effortlessly as their perfect curls bounced.  He used to stare out at them from his leather armchair as I sat upright with my back straight, the way he instructed me to, on the couch beside him and listen to him mumble to himself, “That’s what a real wife is.”  The actual paper disappeared a while ago, but my rules were too engrained by then for that to matter, and, in my head, I continued to add more.    
#1 Always have a meal ready when he comes home from work.
#2 Laugh at his jokes (even if you don’t find them funny).
#3 Don’t interrupt his stories.
#4 Never bring up money. 
#5 For him, you’re always in the mood.
••••
I pressed my ear against the door.  I was relieved when I didn’t hear anything; I wanted some time alone before we met.  I had no trouble getting in – it was so like Rose to leave her apartment door open.  I stepped inside and immediately almost tripped on the several pairs of shoes strewn across the foyer.  I picked up some of the trinkets she kept on the table by her doorway, one of them a little wooden music box.  When opened, two swans with their necks entwined turned around and around on a little disk in the middle until the song stopped.  On the bottom side of the lid, it read, “A flower blossoms for its own joy.” I tucked it into my coat pocket.  I made my way to her bedroom, took off my coat, and laid it down nicely onto the bed.  As I picked up her perfume I heard the door slam.  I ducked under the bed; as I said, I wanted to fix myself up before.  I waited among her discarded paperbacks, shoeboxes, and a baseball bat she probably kept for safety, and held my breath, waiting to see her feet.
••••
I, of course, remember the day I found the photo.  I was cleaning Lawrence’s office, and as I was neatening up his desk, I saw the its corner peeking out under his blotter.  I normally would never violate Lawrence’s privacy especially since it might have to do with an important business matter but the tail of what looked like a signature made me, without thinking, pull it out.  It was the backside of a photo, and it had a short note written on it.
To Lawrence,
All my love. 
Rose
Rose.  A flower like me.
I clutched it tightly so nobody would be able to steal it away from me, and I didn’t look at the actual photo itself until I was in the backyard; I even shut my eyes and held it facedown as I walked through the house.  It needed to be seen in natural light and fresh air.  Despite the winter chill I stayed out there staring at it until it was obscured entirely by darkness.
The photo was of a man with his arm snaked around the waist of a woman about my size.  She was pale like me with hair the same shade of blonde as my own.  Even the color of her eyes, although I couldn’t see them closely, had a slight tint of the green my mother had told me would help get me a good husband.  I don’t believe anyone would disagree with me when I say that I’m far more beautiful than her.  But looking at this photo, I saw that, even two-dimensional, she possessed a radiance that eclipsed the one quality I owed my entire life to.  I suddenly felt so silly and sick of myself and, in my absurdity, completely alone.  Looking more intently at her, I saw that she was wearing my dress.  The same exact white short-sleeved linen one with the buttons down the front that I had bought at that store Shelley had taken me to.  Perhaps she had been wearing it when they met. 
She was probably walking down the street and recognizing the dress, he had tapped her on the shoulder, thinking it was me.  They would have both been surprised, and she most likely said, “Hello?” and he would have replied, slightly dazed, “Hello.”  And then realizing her confusion he had say, “Sorry, I thought you were someone I knew.”  She would smile, assure him that it wasn’t a problem and begin to walk away.  He would stop her,
“I must have really startled you.  Let me buy you a cup of coffee as a proper apology.”
It would have been much too straightforward a thing for a man without Lawrence’s charm to say. 
“You don’t have to do that,” she would protest weakly. 
Perhaps she saw his ring before he had a chance to slip it into his pocket.  Eventually though, she would give in, especially after he added,
“It’d make me feel much better” with a wink and a smile. 
I certainly wouldn’t have been able to resist either.  He would start to lead her to Joe’s where he and I usually get our coffee but then he would steer her into Zabar’s instead.  At that point her suspicions would have been confirmed. I’m sure they sat there, talking for hours, something admittedly Lawrence and I were never able to do, and her number was in his pocket when he came into the house.     
I made pot roast the night I found the photo, which I could tell pleased Lawrence; he really does love my pot roast.  He was in an unusually good mood that evening and had even held my hand as we said grace.  We started to eat, and everything was fine and normal although he did keep on hitting the leg of the table, and as I was trying very hard not to look at him, I jumped a bit each time.  I was also very tired because I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before.  I had had a dream, a nightmare really, that I was mistaken for a bird and was made to sing a song that I didn’t know and not knowing the lyrics, I wasn’t able to sing the song well.  The dream ended just as the crowd rushed in to pluck all of my feathers out.  After we had finished eating, I got up to get dessert ready.  I had baked the loveliest pie that afternoon, lemon meringue, and I went in to the kitchen to get it.  As I carried it out, I almost dropped it, but I stopped myself.  It was too lovely of a pie to drop, and I had the oddest sensation that it and I were inextricably linked, and if I did let it go, I would collapse along with it.
I continued to study the photo for days after, committing every detail to memory.  Eventually I didn’t even need to look at it.  I started to try to imagine, throughout the day, what she was doing at that exact moment.  I knew what her smile looked like from the photo, but I had to decide on what her laugh would sound like, the pitch of her voice, her various mannerisms, her favorite things.  Her opinions began to echo every move I made:
Buying lipstick,
“Get the red, you always get pink.”
Getting lunch with Marie,
“Why did you agree to this?  You hate her.”
Looking at Lawrence,
“He’s mine,”
She was my sounding board, my conscience, my gut, and my soul.
••••
I figured out where she lived from the return address on the envelope I found in Lawrence’s trashcan.  I thought my heart would burst as I walked over to her building.  It was pumping out nerves that then circulated throughout my entire body making me electric.  I wore my mink fur coat and diamond chandelier earrings so I had no problem with the doorman.  My heels clicked like pincers as I walked down the lobby’s marble hallway.  As I rode up the elevator, I stared at my hazy reflection in the brass doors, and felt my excitement extinguish any residual doubt.  Filled with it, I teeter-tottered balancing on my stiletto at the prospect of seeing her so soon and finally having a chance to understand and attain what it was that made her so unique.     
••••
It became harder and harder to run my errands on time.  From the minute I woke up till something like the phone ringing forced me to move, I’d sit at my vanity and stare at myself in the mirror, looking for what made me and Rose different.  I started parting my hair the same way she did, smiling with my teeth like her, wearing dangling earrings the way she was in the photo.  As I became increasingly better at becoming her, I began to feel Lawrence watch me, eyeing me narrowly as if I were some sort of feral animal newly placed in captivity.  He almost said something a few times.  I would look up, hearing his breath stop as he started to speak, but the moment we made eye contact, he’d close his mouth and shake his head.  He started coming home later and later, often smelling of alcohol and smoke.  I figured it was stress from work. 
Sometimes I could sense how close I was to naming what it was that divided me and Rose but that nearness would somehow make me feel even more distant from it.  At those times, I would have to lock the bathroom door just in case Lawrence walked in on me, lying in the bathtub, screaming underwater.
••••
I was working at a diner on his college campus when Lawrence and I met.  He had first come in with some friends, and I was their waitress.  It was autumn, and they were returning from a football game that I had heard from the open side window.  The sounds of a marching band and fans cheering had mixed in with the music playing in the diner creating a song that kindled my envy of all those students together in their big stadium.  But it didn’t see to matter to him that I hadn’t been a part of it all.  From the minute he first saw me, he couldn’t take his eyes off of me.  I could feel them as I walked back to the counter, and I saw him continue to look through the glass even after he had left, his friend tugging at his arm. 
He came in the next evening as I was getting ready to leave and said to me,
“Hello.  My name is Lawrence Bushnell, and I’d like to take you out on a date sometime.”
I was so surprised, I didn’t say anything or a minute, and he said,
“It’s okay if you say no today because I’m just going to keep on coming back until you say yes.”
All I could do was nod my head.  He was so incredibly handsome.  He smiled at me and said,
“Good.  I’ll pick you up here tomorrow at 7.  Wear something nice.”
And then he walked out.  He didn’t even ask what my name was. 
We got married five years later, after he had finished business school.  It was a beautiful ceremony, and people still tell me that they had never seen a bride look as stunning as I did that day.  It was dreamy and wonderful the first couple of months of our marriage; he’d come home from work and kiss me, and then later on he’d brush the hair out of my eyes as he stared at me in bed.  But after some time, for no apparent reason, that all began to fade.  His touches became briefer and colder, he began to turn his body away from me at night, and his eyes would glaze over as he ate dinner, always looking across the table towards my direction but slightly askew as if something stood behind me.  I heard him talking to his mother, a pig of a woman, on the phone once,
“I can’t take it anymore Mom.  All she does is cook and clean.  She just agrees with everything I say when we talk….I know, I know.  But I thought I loved her….Yes, her looks definitely had something to do with it…I do want it to work, but it’s like I’m married to someone who’s not real, like a fictional character who doesn’t exist after the scene’s over.” 
  I tried harder, but his complaints weren’t like those of my father.  He’d ask me questions like,
“Why do you never seem to really laugh?”
“Why can’t you talk more when we go out to dinner with friends?”
“Why are you always so stiff?”
Not knowing how to answer, I’d always just say sorry and smile back and only when he’d storm out of the house, not even bothering to grab his jacket, would I let myself cry.
••••
One night I found Rose and my dress in my summer clothing box, and I put it on to greet Lawrence as he came home from work.
“What do you think?” I asked as I tried to kiss him.
“Of what?” He asked as he put his briefcase down.
I spun around for him.
“You’ve had that for a while.”
“Yes.  But –“
He began walking towards the dining room.  I followed him.  He didn’t look at me until he sat down.
“Dinner?”
“I’ll go bring it.”
I came back into the room with his plate.
“Li-“ he began, his head burrowed in his newspaper.
I inhaled deeply.
“Rose.”
His head jerked up from the newspaper.
“What?”
“It’s Rose.”
He stared at me for a moment.  He looked so dense with disbelief plastered onto his face.  He finally gathered himself up enough to say,
“You’re sick.  I’ve known for while that you found the photo, but I didn’t think you’d bring it up like this.”
“Like what?”
“Fine, you win.  I’m having an affair.  I’m cheating on you.  But don’t think this is all on me.”
“What’s all on you?” 
“Why do you want to be this Stepford kind of wife?  Or is it that you just can’t help it?  I don’t think, in our ten years of marriage, I’ve ever seen you display a single authentic emotion.” 
The volume of his voice made me wince.
“I’m done, and I have been for a while.  It’s not even about Rose.  It’s about you.  I can’t look at you for another second.  I can’t stand to be in this house, this giant fucking icebox for another second.”
He jabbed his finger at me like a weapon.
“I’m leaving, Lily.”
••••
She was barefoot.  If I hadn’t been staring at them, I wouldn’t have known she had come in.  She barely made a sound, floating more than walking.  She continued coming closer and closer, and I had to restrain myself from reaching out and touching her ankle, almost translucent revealing fine streaks of blue.  She stopped abruptly when she got to her bed and stood there.  It took me a minute to remember that I had left my coat out.  She sat down, her feet still dangling in front of me, and I heard her dialing. 
“Hi, I think that someone broken into my house.  There’s a coat here that’s not mine, and I’m sure it’s not anybody’s that I know….No, I haven’t checked yet if anything is stolen…Okay…Okay…I will.  Thank you.  Goodbye.”
I knew I didn’t have much time.  I slipped out from the other side of the bed, sat down on the bed, and rested my hand on her shoulder.  She didn’t scream, not right away at least.   
••••
I didn’t move until Lawrence’s car was completely out of earshot.  I went back into the kitchen and packed up the leftovers and put them in the fridge with a note telling Lawrence how to heat them up.  Then I washed the dishes, slowly and carefully making concentric circles with the sponge.  I turned off all the lights on the first floor, except for in the kitchen and walked up to my bedroom and into my closet.  I pulled the photo out from under the sweater I had hidden it underneath.  I walked back downstairs, turned on the oven, and placed the photo face-up onto it.  I watched as it curled, the flame crawling from the middle outwards, eating up Rose and my husband, chewing them up and spitting them back out as black, disgusting, ash.