The Wife Upstairs

Sylvia finds Victoria’s diary entries about Adam charming but also sad, given the inevitable outcome of their lives. Sylvia feeds Victoria lunch and then offers to do her hair and nails. She finds hair products collecting dust in the bathroom. She puts product in Victoria’s hair and French braids it, but the braid highlights Victoria’s face/scalp scar. Sylvia unbraids Victoria’s hair, trims the ends to be even, and then begins to give her a manicure. As she works on Victoria, Sylvia tells her about her relationship with Freddy. She tells Victoria about how she met Freddy and fell in love with him in high school, but she omits the truth about how Freddy got her pregnant, she lost the baby, and the relationship fell apart. She instead lies to Victoria, telling her that she and Freddy are happy.

As Sylvia continues to paint Victoria’s short nails, Victoria begins to insistently say the word “nub” along with Adam’s name. Sylvia can’t understand what she means, which frustrates Victoria. Adam comes in and patronizingly compliments Victoria’s beauty, the way someone would a child, which slightly rubs Sylvia the wrong way. Sylvia leaves to read more of Victoria’s diary.

An entry in Victoria’s diary, dated October 10, 2016, reveals that she was frustrated that her friends didn’t like Adam. After she told Carol, her friend and fellow nurse, and Mack that she was moving in with Adam, Mack pulled her aside to express concern. He also told Victoria that he had broken up with his girlfriend, but he refused to say why. Victoria thanked him for his concern but continued with her plan to move in with Adam.

An entry from October 18, 2016, says that Mack called Victoria to apologize for criticizing Adam and offered to help her move, but Victoria refused his offer. The movers took her things and drove them and Victoria over to Adam’s apartment. Victoria rang the doorbell repeatedly until Adam answered. He was upset, telling Victoria that he had told her not to have the movers arrive before noon, as he had a deadline for his next book. Victoria knew for a fact that she had told Adam that she was coming in the morning, but she apologized anyway, hoping to avoid conflict. Adam calmed down after the apology and helped Victoria inside.

Victoria only brought her clothing, as well as a lamp and her favorite blue Papasan chair, which she tells her hypothetical children in her diary entry is their inheritance, illustrating its importance to her. Adam explained that he wanted them to split everything, giving Victoria her own shelf in the fridge where she could keep her own groceries. Victoria found that strange, but she acquiesced. When Adam saw the Papasan chair, he was disgusted and attempted to force Victoria to get rid of it, but Victoria held her ground. Adam agreed to keep the chair, and Victoria felt her slight doubts about moving in with Adam dissipate, happy with their ability to compromise.

Sylvia wonders if “nub” is a reference to the Papasan chair. She asks Maggie about the chair, but she doesn’t know where it is or if there is one. She then asks Adam, who claims not to know what a Papasan chair is, but he offers to get Sylvia one if she would like. Sylvia thinks about how generous Adam is and how unfair his and Victoria’s situation is.

Sylvia starts to understand Victoria’s routine in her second week of work. Her crush on Adam lingers, but she tries to ignore it. She feels that she’s bonding with Victoria, as she talks to Victoria constantly throughout the day, even though Victoria does not smile at her. One day, Sylvia asks Adam if she can take Victoria for a walk. Adam agrees, though he has to dress Victoria warmly and carry her downstairs. Before their walk, Victoria refuses to finish her lunch, so Sylvia has to use her feeding tube. As she lifts Victoria’s shirt, Victoria tries to say the word “baby.” Sylvia shares about her pregnancy loss, thinking back to when she told her parents.

Sylvia was in high school when she got pregnant with her and Freddy’s baby. She thought that Freddy would be upset, but he was excited to be a father. He offered to come with Sylvia to tell her parents, but Sylvia knew that her father hated Freddy, so she decided to tell them alone. When she told her father, he entered a fit of rage, calling her a litany of misogynistic slurs, and broke Sylvia’s wrist before violently kicking her in the abdomen, breaking her ribs. She managed to run to Freddy’s house afterward. That was the last time Sylvia ever saw her parents. She doesn’t miss them, but she does occasionally miss Freddy.

The weather is warm enough for their walk, so Adam carries Victoria downstairs and puts her in another wheelchair while instructing Sylvia to go to the closet in the master bedroom to find a sweater for Victoria. Sylvia sees tons of clothes and shoes and feels bad that Victoria, who must have loved fashion to have such a full closet, now lives in T-shirts and sweatpants. Adam enters the closet and shares Sylvia’s sentiments, grabbing a pair of skinny jeans that he wishes Victoria could still wear, but they’d give her a pressure sore. Sylvia gets a blue Ralph Lauren sweater for Victoria, hoping that she’ll recognize it and smile, but Victoria just stares blankly.

Sylvia pushes Victoria around the house, and though she gets tired of pushing the wheelchair, she can tell that Victoria enjoys the outdoors, so she continues their walk. Victoria says the phrase “Glen Head,” which Sylvia recognizes as a town. Victoria seems frustrated that Sylvia isn’t understanding her, so they continue walking. When they reach a tree, Victoria calls Sylvia’s name and starts saying “nub” again. Sylvia is also frustrated since “nub” is a word that Victoria frequently says that she can’t figure out. She approaches the tree and sees an imperfection in the bark. She sees a bullet embedded in the bark. When she turns to Victoria, she asks if “nub” means “gun.” Victoria then says “gun” clearly.

Sylvia reads Victoria’s diary entry dated December 16, 2016, two months after Victoria moved in with Adam. Adam finished the draft of his book and sent it to his publisher, so he wanted to take Victoria to dinner after work to celebrate. Victoria had a long day at work, losing some patients from a horrible car accident. A man confronted her about his wife, who had been waiting many hours with a low-grade fever, but Mack defended her. She left work late and returned home to find the entire apartment lit with candles and Adam on one knee. He proposed to her, and Victoria accepted, shaking in his arms afterward. She noticed that her Papasan chair was gone, and Adam admitted to throwing it out. Victoria was upset, but Adam promised to buy her any new chair she wanted, which Victoria thought was incredibly sweet. Victoria was happy, and in the diary, she again reminds her future children what a great father they have.

Sylvia finds the proposal romantic but is troubled by Adam throwing out a chair that clearly meant so much to Victoria. She justifies the action by thinking that perhaps the chair was very disgusting, like a bookcase that Freddy once found on the street that was rotting, which Sylvia insisted on throwing away. She thinks that Victoria had a perfect life before her accident. Though the presence of the gun slightly troubles Sylvia, she again tries to justify it, thinking that there’s nothing wrong with a man choosing to shoot a gun in his own yard.

The first big storm of the season looms over Montauk. Maggie offers to let Sylvia stay with her and her boyfriend, Steve, as their apartment doesn’t lose power like the house does. Sylvia wants to stay with Victoria. Sylvia asks Maggie about Glen Head, and Maggie says that the old gardener and cook, Irina, used to live there. Maggie then asks Sylvia who Freddy is, as she sees texts from Freddy flash across Sylvia’s phone begging her to talk to him. Sylvia tells Freddy to leave her alone and blocks his number before explaining their past to Maggie.

After Sylvia’s father beat her and broke her ribs, causing her to lose the baby, she went into medical debt because her father also kicked her off his insurance. The debt was crushing, so she and Freddy took minimum-wage jobs to make ends meet. They struggled to survive, and one night, Freddy was working his janitorial job and didn’t get home until two o’clock in the morning. Sylvia had to get up early for her job walking kids to school, and she was frustrated with how loud Freddy was when he got back into the apartment. She complained, and she and Freddy fought about their money troubles. Realizing that she was miserable, Sylvia asked Freddy to leave. Sylvia didn’t feel the relief she expected when Freddy left, and she thought he’d come back. He didn’t, and now, a year later, he wants to be back in her life, but Sylvia is still angry.

The rain picks up as the storm starts to hit. Sylvia feeds Victoria her dinner, and then Adam arrives to put her to bed early. He readies her medicine, and Sylvia questions whether Victoria truly needs it, given how much she hates it. Adam tells Sylvia that the medication prevents Victoria from having seizures like she did in the hospital after her injury. Adam plans to give Victoria her medicine and then have dinner with Sylvia. Sylvia feels guilty for having dinner with Adam, which they do a number of times per week, while Victoria sits in the dark alone. She asks Victoria about Glen Head, which her research taught her is a small part of the town of Oyster Bay, a two-hour drive away. Victoria says something that Sylvia can’t make out before she falls asleep.

When Sylvia finishes putting Victoria to bed, she goes downstairs and finds Adam making spaghetti while talking on the phone. She asks who he was talking to, and he explains that his mother lives on the island and that he calls and checks on her during big storms. As he plates the spaghetti, the power goes out. He goes to light candles and tells Sylvia to go get a sweater from Victoria’s closet. She’s hesitant, but she goes and takes an old, gray sweater and puts it on. She goes back to the living room and sits with Adam, who pours them both wine. Sylvia asks him when he began running, and he says that he has had pent-up energy since Victoria’s accident, referring to his inability to have sex with Victoria or anyone else. Sylvia expresses sympathy for him, and they nearly kiss before they hear a crash from Victoria’s room. Sylvia goes to check on her and sees that her water cup spilled. When Victoria sees Sylvia, she says “mine.” Sylvia takes off Victoria’s sweater and picks up the water cup, but she wonders if Victoria was referring to the sweater or to Adam. Sylvia goes back to her room and reads the diary until the laptop dies.

Sylvia reads Victoria’s diary dated January 5, 2017. Victoria had a lovely dinner with Adam, discussing plans for their wedding. Adam admitted that he wanted a small wedding, as he didn’t speak to his family anymore after they accused him of basing his characters in his novel All in the Family on them; they also were unsupportive of his dream to become a writer. He told Victoria that he wanted to have children with her and make their own family. Victoria had lost both of her parents in high school and college, so she was ecstatic about the idea. However, when they returned home, Adam angrily berated Victoria for using his tube of toothpaste. He demanded that they keep separate toothpastes, as Victoria tended to squeeze the tube in the middle. Victoria apologized, but she reminded Adam that if they had kids, keeping things separate wouldn’t be easy. Adam cruelly criticized Victoria, reminding her that she couldn’t afford to live in the apartment on her own. He then left the apartment to buy new toothpaste. In her diary, Victoria tries to justify the fight, writing that couples fight over silly things sometimes and that she loves him enough to accept his eccentricities.