Evil Stepmother, by Jemma Richardson
Image by Elīna Arāja
Wait in the entryway for the stepchildren to greet you. Observe them closely: such a charming little pair. Soft and delicate, their ruddy cheeks as red and round as poisoned apples. Observe their self-consciousness, their hunched shoulders and t-zone acne.
Wait for them to break into chorus like you’re in The Sound of Music; your new husband is The Captain (sexy and cold), his children are the Von Trapps (musical, darling), and you are Maria (hot, young, way out of your fucking depth).
Hide your disappointment when the kids don’t perform a welcome suite, but grunt behind their iPhones, faces sulky and bathed in blue light.
Accept that your honeymoon is officially over.
When Husband sulks, goes into the kitchen to pour a glass of wine, reassure him it’s fine, that these things take time.
Sip your wine. Stop thinking about The Sound of Music.
Stop thinking, specifically, about Christopher Plummer’s jawline in The Sound of Music when he dances the ländler with Julie Andrews on a moonlit patio.
Instead, think: A glass of pinot noir at the kitchen counter is just as romantic.
*
Be very beautiful. Be inappropriately young. Be haughty, have black hair, a widow’s peak, thin lips that curl down at the ends—resting stepmother face.
Be devoid of parenting skills; your heart is as cold as the frozen food aisle where you pick out microwave dinners for the children.
Burn the dinners, because you’re unfamiliar with the settings on their unfamiliar microwave.
Resent the appliance for setting you up for this failure.
Resent the ugly kitchen tiles, which you never would have chosen.
Resent your new husband’s house, in general, for its needling reminders of its former occupation; children’s heights on the wall, framed snapshots of holidays past, the ex-wife’s raincoat hooked on the back of a door. Wear it once, without thinking, when you dash out in a downpour to rescue the washing, the polyethylene sleeves cold against your skin. Shuck it off as soon as you’re inside. Scrunch it into a ball and stuff it into the rubbish bin.
When Husband gets home from work, tell him you want to go out for dinner.
Spend the drive to the restaurant describing apartment listings you’ve seen online.
*
Oversee the months-long renovation. Watch your world become a kaleidoscope of fabric samples and paint swatches and impatient emails to tradesmen whose work falls behind schedule, whose costs start to rival the GDP of some small Pacific nations.
Ask your husband about the kids’ favourite colours. Have his son’s room painted green, his daughter’s painted yellow. Have the rest of the house upholstered like a jewellery box with silver hardware and plush velvet drapes.
Invite the kids into their new home. Despair as they destroy it, spilling orange juice on the carpet, defacing walls with thumb pins and Blu Tack, smudging fingerprints all over the marble countertops like leopard spots. Watch them disobey rules, even basic ones, like to always lock the back door after leaving for school, like to never let your cat on the balcony.
Lose your temper, again and again, until one day Husband tells you to calm down. They’re just kids, he says.
Prepare yourself for a fraught relationship with the ex-wife. After all, you’re younger than her, and thinner, and more beautiful.
Imagine her farmer’s wife face, her winning but approachable smile as she cools a cherry pie in an open window. Imagine her blonde-gray Meryl Streep hair, a beige cashmere cardigan tied chicly around her pilates shoulders.
Try not to gape as the real-life ex-wife steps out of her beat-up Honda, tall, wearing fire-engine red reading glasses, a cheap blazer over a band tee. Her hair is black, like yours. The children crush into her sides like saddle bags as she ambles over to you, tail wagging, to introduce herself. She hopes her kids haven’t been too much of a nuisance, ha ha, hopes her ex-husband hasn’t been either! Her booming laugh shoots out of her like a cannon. She is chatty, overshare-y, impossible to hate. Start to question everything Husband has told you about Ex-wife. Start to wonder what he tells people about you.
When the children return the next day from their Mother’s Day trip to the beach, overhear their recap to their father about all the seashell gathering and fish and chip eating that took place. Wince as Husband mistakes your pangs of hunger for jealousy. Feel your heart collapse like a dying star as he tells them Melanie is your mother now too. Have you given her a Mother’s Day hug?
Sharply, say: that’s okay, they really don’t have to.
Glare at Husband as he ignores you, tapping his foot at his children.
Go on, he tells them, give your mum a hug.
The children step forward and complete their mandatory embrace. Their arms loop tepidly around your waist, limp as overcooked noodles.
The hug feels like wearing someone else’s raincoat.
Take Stepdaughter to her Saturday soccer game, at Husband’s (last minute) request, while he jumps on a Zoom call. He lets you drive there in his new Tesla as “a special treat” but doesn’t let you know to bring a Ziplock bag of orange slices for the team.
Shiver on the sidelines, both from the icy morning breeze and from the cold shoulder of the displeased biological parents, accessorised with thermoses and gilets and hungry orange slice-less children.
Applaud when Stepdaughter is awarded player of the day. The coach stares at your silicone chest, says to make sure she returns the trophy before the next match, so every player can get a turn.
Connive with Stepdaughter on the drive home. Tell her to keep the trophy, that you’ll lie to Coach that it got lost. Stepdaughter doesn’t hear you, too busy unlacing her soccer boots, clapping them together, raining clumps of grass into the footwell. Open your mouth to scold her, then remember how Husband spoke to you this morning and think fuck it. Let her muck fly. Rejoice as her sweaty back kisses the leather car seat, as the artificial smell of neon blue Powerade chokes the air. Send up a prayer that she’ll get her period right here, right now, her blood seeping through her uniform and onto the leather car seat.
*
Swear under your breath when Ex-wife slides into the chair beside you at the parent-teacher interview. Wonder why she can’t be an invisible, background character of an ex-wife like in a Gothic novel: the first Mrs de Winter, or Bertha Mason—who Mr Rochester at least had the decency to stuff in his attic like a gaudy vase he received several Christmases ago. Jane Eyre never had to put up with this shit; you and Ex-wife stumble through small talk with Stepson’s teacher, a conversation as dignified as a three-legged sack race.
*
Assign the children chores: take out the trash, vacuum the house, wipe down the bathroom.
Make them pasta for dinner, for the millionth time. Make them eat everything on their plates. Make them stack the dishwasher afterwards.
Tell them to clean their rooms. When Stepson refuses, think what Ex-wife would do, and have him hand over his phone. Ground him. Forbid him from going to his girlfriend’s party. Rejoice when he calls you a cunt under his breath. A triumph! You’re part of the family now! Clutch your heart like Cruella DeVil clutches the gaping front of her fur coat. Parade about the house wearing the insult proudly, your shoulders high.
Get annoyed when Husband comes home and accuses you of being too hard on the boy. He thinks this is a first offence. He didn’t believe you when you told him Stepson sneaks out at night and steals cash from your purse. Nor did he believe that you can smell smoke on his clothes, that you found pills in the pockets of his school uniform when doing laundry.
So you ignore Husband’s reproach. Stay hunched over the pot of pasta you reheat for him. Stir it like a witch’s cauldron. Lean into the performance.
Christ, is that a wart on your nose?
Is that coarse, whiskery hair sprouting from your chin?
*
Over time, learn that Stepdaughter’s favourite colour is blue, not yellow. Learn that Stepson’s favourite colour is red, not green.
Think about this every morning when you pop your head into their wrongly coloured bedrooms to rouse them for school.
*
Pack the children off to their mother. Watch their pink hands waving half-heartedly from the backseat of her car like ceramic cats at the front of Chinese restaurants.
Return to your empty, quiet, childfree home. Engage in an afternoon of overdue lovemaking with Husband, your sweat-slicked bodies twisting in bedsheets. Afterwards, adopt the post-coital pose of a femme fatale. Balance an ashtray on your bare stomach. Light up one of Stepson’s confiscated cigarettes.
Blanch when Husband floats the idea of having a child of your own. Explain how your hands are plenty full with the children you’ve inherited.
Don’t explain that you’re hoping Stepson will move out in a year or two, with Stepdaughter soon to follow, that you count down the days like a secret advent calendar in your heart, that you long to be an empty nester, to have Husband back to yourself.
Ask what’s the matter, when Husband sits up abruptly, yanking his trousers on one leg at a time.
*
Pick up the kids from Ex-wife’s house, her driveway choked with minivans. She meets you at the front door with a glass of cheap plonk and an invitation to stay for book club. It doesn't matter if you haven’t read it, neither have we! Another sonic boom of a laugh, punctuated with an endearingly shoddy wink. Feel a shard of ice slide off your heart and break against her hardwood floors.
Nevertheless, decline the invitation. Lie that Husband is waiting for you at home.
Ex-wife says are you sure, Mel? making her the first person in the family to call you that. The kids call you Melanie, or if they’re feeling insolent, Smellanie. Husband calls you Angel, or sometimes Muffin. Look at Ex-wife and wonder if Husband ever called her Angel or Muffin. Immediately puncture such an absurd thought bubble, floating above your head as fanciful as a balloon animal. Ex-wife is self-assured, self-possessed—she would never tolerate such infantilising pet names.
Steal a glance into her living room window as you walk back to your car. Watch Ex-wife and her friends wheezing together in fits of laughter, tears springing from their gentle eyes, bonding over exquisite trash and boxed wine, going ham on the cheese platter.
*
Quit your job. Become a full-time Evil Stepmother, which includes part-time work as a party planner, a prison warden. Let life wash over you in small, overlapping ripples of sleepovers, sweet sixteens, alternating Christmases.
Fantasise about the days before you were Evil Stepmother, before you were Wife, when you were simply Mistress. Twirl your hair as fond memories slide through your head like a company-wide PowerPoint presentation; recollect the hotel rooms, weekend getaways, flower deliveries. The beforetimes, when pillow talk with Husband hadn’t yet morphed into negotiating schedules; we can’t, we’ve got the kids this weekend, remember?
Remember! As if you could forget!
You are his bride, but you are also his assistant. You pick up the kids, the groceries, the dry cleaning. Today he asks you to pick up Stepson’s 18th birthday cake.
Elbow your way into the frigid, fluorescent shop. Ask the woman in a hairnet to please check again when she tells you there’s no order under Husband’s name. She shakes her head kindly, shooting you a knowing smile that says whadda ya gonna do? men!
She recommends another store that sells anniversary cakes. Tell her that it’s not an anniversary cake; it’s for my son. It’s the first time you’ve said that to a stranger, and the words feel new and strange in your mouth, like trying sake for the first time.
Return home empty-handed. Accept the cake fuck-up as another in a long line of fuck ups, black marks on your stepmother record, a trail of sad, squashed ants.
Cross your arms in the driveway watching Stepson load his bags into his new housemate’s car. Stepson gives his sister a hug. His dad gives him some cash. Stepson gives you a small head nod. Give him a small head nod back. You are two generals staring at each other across a foggy, limb-strewn battlefield, eyes brimming with acceptance and recognition.
You both did your best.
*
Smile when Stepdaughter comes home after school with a stud in her nose. It suits her.
Drop the smile when her father has finished yelling at her and starts yelling at you.
And where were you? Why didn’t you stop her? …? Don’t just bloody sit there! Aren’t you going to say anything?
Stare at him like a stranger, this man who once looked at you like you were Cleopatra, who now looks at you like you’re a shrill fishwife waggling a rolling pin.
Push your chair away from the table. Retreat to your bedroom. Slip under the covers with your laptop and re-watch The Sound of Music on an overpriced streaming service.
Think: You were never Maria. Maybe you are the Baroness.
*
Be very ugly. Have black hair, a widow’s peak that’s thinning, fading to grey. Develop bulges that won’t budge around your waist, your thighs. Count wrinkles. Count calories. Hate that your Husband’s new assistant does pole dancing “for fitness.” Hate that you found this out after searching her name on Facebook. Envy her youth, her wrists as thin as kindling, her skin as smooth as a saucer of milk.
Book a Botox consultation with your dermatologist. Fan through magazines in reception while the woman beside you hisses into her phone.
Sorry about that, she says as she ends the call. Eighteen-year-olds think they know everything.
Tell her you understand, you have a teenage daughter too.
Good luck! says the woman. It’s hardest when they’re this age. Hard, but so worth it.
*
Don’t tell Husband when the school office rings to report Stepdaughter’s absence. Don’t tell Husband when Stepdaughter asks you out of the blue one night if you’ve ever wanted children of your own, if you’ve ever been pregnant.
When her voice quivers, let understanding unfurl around you like a hall of mirrors.
Ask if she needs someone to take her to the clinic.
Feel relief when she tells you she already went.
Feel guilt when she tells you not to say anything to her mum and dad, to promise, to swear on your life.
Do it; swear on your life.
Let her arms slide around you, firm and tight. Tell her it’s going to be okay.
Betray her trust.
Drive to Ex-wife’s house the next morning. Watch her hand fly to her mouth as you recount the conversation. Let her arms slide around you too, firm and tight. Tell her it’s going to be okay.
Thank you for telling me, Mel, she whispers in your ear.
Feel another shard of ice slide off your heart and shatter on her hardwood floors.
Now it’s your turn: slide your arms around her, firm and tight.
She tells you it’s going to be okay.
*
Nag Stepdaughter to pack for university. Spend all summer that way, nagging her to clean out her room, pack her boxes, create a donate pile. After she finally does it, she asks if she can go out tonight with her friends one last time. Say yes but remind her of the curfew. It’s a long drive tomorrow.
Thanks Smellanie, you’re the best.
Get in an argument with Ex-wife an hour later when she comes by, wanting to spend Stepdaughter’s last night together as a family.
Ex-wife yells at you, Ex-wife yells at Husband.
Husband looks like he wants to yell at you, too, but doesn’t have the energy.
When Stepdaughter comes home, Ex-wife yells at her. Stepdaughter then yells at you, for not covering for her like you said you would.
Don’t yell back at any of them. Drink your wine serenely. Resting Stepmother face.
Spend the next day together, the four of you ferrying laundry hampers and mini fridges from the car to Stepdaughter’s dorm. Stop to side-eye the RA who talks about curfews and quiet hours, all while reeking of weed and losing his battle with a hangover. Steal a glance with Ex-wife that says Did we make a mistake sending her here? Ex-wife smiles, shrugs, then shoots her own glance back at you that says we were young once too, remember?
Husband is too concerned about the parking meter ticking away in his head to notice any of this, barking instructions at everyone to keep moving, struggling with two small boxes tucked under each of his arms.
In the corridor, overhear Stepdaughter talking to her new roommate. Smile as they bond over the classes they’re taking, making plans for a party tonight.
Also, the girl whispers, your mum is so young!
Oh, that’s not my mum, Stepdaughter says. She’s just my dad’s girlfriend.
Let your heart break a little. Feel it crack and splinter, as brittle as the cheap MDF bedframe bolted to the floor of Stepdaughter’s new room.
Is that everything? says Ex-wife, depositing an oversized tote bag at her feet, overflowing with soft new towels and unopened toiletries.
The meter! your husband’s panicked eyes say.
He and Ex-wife shower Stepdaughter in kisses and final reminders to call if she needs anything.
When Stepdaughter leans in to hug you goodbye, tepidly hug her back. When she whispers bye Mel into your ear, smile weakly, like it’s fine, like your feelings aren’t hurt at all. Be aloof. Be detached. Lean into the performance.
##
Author note: This story was inspired by Lorrie Moore’s ‘How to Be an Other Woman’ from her collection Self-Help.
Jemma Richardson is a writer from Aotearoa | New Zealand. Her work has been published in a number of online journals including takahē, Turbine, circular and At the Bay. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters.