Lulu’s Perfect Suburban Life Begins to Crack

In late 1954, Lulu Mayfield, whose legal name is Lucy, appears to have achieved the life expected of a respectable suburban wife. She lives on Twyckenham Court in Greenwood Estates with her ambitious architect husband, Henry Mayfield, and their four-year-old son, Wesley, who charmingly pronounces his L sounds as Ys.

Yet Lulu’s picture-perfect home has never felt entirely like her own. Her controlling mother-in-law, Marian Mayfield, helped finance the house and then selected much of its furniture, so Lulu secretly collects S&H Green Stamps to replace Marian’s choices piece by piece. Even these small decorating decisions give her a sense of independence.

Her closest friend is next-door neighbor Nora Gray, a sharp, loyal woman devoted to Good Housekeeping and its cleaning schedules. The neighborhood also includes cheerful Hatti Brooks and her husband Eddie, competitive Mr. and Mrs. Reilly, and Nora’s wandering-eyed husband Dennis. Across the street sits an empty ranch house formerly occupied by Lulu’s friend Emily Donahue.

Lulu is also keeping a much bigger secret: she is pregnant. She has not even told Henry because she wants the knowledge to belong solely to her for a little while. That choice is taken away from her at their New Year’s Eve party, when a drunken Henry publicly announces that their family is growing.

As the pregnancy progresses, Lulu’s mother and younger brother, Georgie Oscuro, visit for Wesley’s fifth birthday. Georgie walks with crutches because he contracted polio as a child after Lulu disobeyed their mother and took him to a crowded swimming hole. Lulu has carried enormous guilt ever since, believing what happened to him was her fault.

During the birthday party, potential buyers tour the vacant house across the street. Soon, Lulu will have new neighbors—and another mystery to occupy her increasingly troubled mind.

The Betsers Arrive as Lulu Begins to Unravel

On the summer solstice, Lulu endures an agonizing, complicated labor and gives birth to a daughter, Esther Mayfield.

Not long afterward, the empty house across the street is purchased by Gary and Bitsy Betser. Gary is an ambitious commercial project manager, while Bitsy, whose full name is Elizabeth, is tiny, reserved, and unsettlingly rigid. Her smile seems permanently fixed on her face without ever reaching her eyes.

Living with them is five-year-old Katherine, whom Bitsy constantly grips by the wrist and refuses to allow to run freely. The Betsers also have two teenage sons, Jake and Larry, who are away at a disciplinary academy.

When Lulu brings Bitsy a homemade peach pie as a welcome gift, she notices the house’s gold-butterfly wallpaper—and watches one of the butterfly wings seemingly flutter on the wall.

It is only one of several disturbing experiences. Lulu is exhausted beyond anything she considers normal. Her joints ache, headaches plague her, and a lacy red rash appears on her skin. She begins slipping into “dormiveglia,” a strange state between sleeping and waking. A smoky-gray stray cat, whom she names Luna, begins appearing on her patio, while a disembodied voice whispers that something was her fault.

Even more frightening are the gaps in Lulu’s memory. On one occasion, she suddenly finds herself inside Mr. Perry’s camera shop with no recollection of driving there.

When Wesley catches a cold from Katherine, family doctor Dr. Collins visits. Lulu tries to explain everything that has been happening to her, but he dismisses her symptoms as “hysteria” or “housewife syndrome.” His solution is Miltown, a tranquilizer nicknamed “emotional aspirin.”

Henry is little help. Increasingly preoccupied with his job and his new secretary, Alice, he assumes Lulu is simply overwhelmed by housework. He buys her a Mobile Maid dishwasher, believing a modern appliance will solve her exhaustion. Instead, the bulky machine becomes another obstacle sitting in the middle of the kitchen.

Lulu Discovers What Happened to Bitsy

Lulu’s suspicions about the Betsers deepen when Nora invites Bitsy to their weekly card game. During one gathering, the women discuss lobotomies and the disturbing story of Ellen Craske, a woman from Knollwood who died by suicide after sealing herself inside her kitchen and turning on the gas.

Lulu eventually searches the Betser house. In Bitsy’s bathroom, she finds phenobarbital prescribed in Bitsy’s name. In another room, she discovers newspaper clippings about Ellen’s death.

The articles reveal that Ellen’s surviving relatives included her sister, Elizabeth Betser—Bitsy—and her young daughter, Katherine. Katherine is not Bitsy’s daughter at all. She is Ellen’s daughter, whom Bitsy and Gary took in after Ellen died.

Then Lulu finds something even worse: hospital paperwork showing that Bitsy underwent a lobotomy with Gary’s consent.

Another small mystery falls into place during a card game when Bitsy finds a gray animal hair in her Jell-O salad. Everyone else assumes it is human hair, but Lulu and Bitsy understand immediately. Luna is Bitsy’s missing cat.

Gary soon comes to the Mayfield house with Henry, supposedly looking for the animal. Lulu overhears him telling Henry that if his wife is becoming “fragile” or “out of sorts,” he knows someone who can help.

The warning becomes more frightening after Henry’s boss, Jack Ellis, comes for dinner with Gary. Lulu, completely exhausted, serves reheated frozen TV dinners and a failed gelatin dessert. When Gary makes a smug comment about home cooking, Lulu openly challenges him.

Afterward, Gary corners her alone in the kitchen. He warns her that stray cats do not last long and tells her he will do almost anything to keep his family, neighborhood, and life “calm.”

Henry dismisses Lulu’s fears as more dramatics. But after he falls asleep, Lulu searches his jacket and finds a piece of paper bearing a name and telephone number: Dr. Ruthledge. Knowing Gary has already encouraged Henry to seek psychiatric help for her, Lulu becomes convinced her husband is preparing to have her silenced just as Gary silenced Bitsy.

The Truth About Esther

Terrified, Lulu decides her best defense is to become the perfect wife. If she behaves normally enough, perhaps Henry will have no reason to send her away.

But the illusion she has been living inside is about to collapse.

Henry enters Esther’s nursery and finds Lulu sitting in the rocking chair with Luna tucked beneath a pink crib blanket. He removes the cat, lets the empty blanket fall, and asks Lulu whether she truly does not remember.

Esther is dead. She was never brought home from the hospital.

The baby was stillborn after an umbilical cord complication during Lulu’s traumatic labor. For months, Lulu has been living inside a profound grief delusion in which Esther survived. She has imagined nursing her, holding her, rocking her, and caring for her.

Desperate to prove that Esther was real and alive, Lulu orders Wesley to bring her camera. Instead, the frightened child accidentally exposes the film to light and drops the camera, smashing its lens and destroying what Lulu believes is her evidence.

Lulu breaks completely. Barefoot and wearing only a sheer nightgown, she runs into the street carrying Esther’s empty pink blanket. Henry and Gary chase after her as neighbors emerge from their houses.

Lulu publicly accuses Gary of having Bitsy lobotomized. Then the wind blows Bitsy’s bangs away from her forehead, revealing perfectly smooth skin without a scar.

Convinced she has been wrong about everything, Lulu finally stops resisting. Henry carries her to the car.

Lulu Is Committed—but She Was Right About Bitsy

Henry takes Lulu to a stone sanatorium, the same facility where Georgie once received treatment for polio. There she comes under the care of psychiatrist Dr. Ruthledge, who subjects her to psychoanalysis and heavy medication.

Eventually, Lulu is able to say aloud what she has refused to accept: her baby is dead.

Yet another discovery complicates Lulu’s belief that everything she saw was imagined. A nurse explains that modern transorbital lobotomies are performed through the eye socket. They do not necessarily leave visible scars on the forehead.

Lulu’s delusion about Esther was real, but that does not mean she was wrong about Bitsy.

When Lulu fails to improve quickly enough, Dr. Ruthledge and Henry approve electroconvulsive therapy. Lulu pleads with Henry to stop them, but he releases her hand and allows the procedure to continue. The first treatment leaves her confused and terrified that the doctors will erase the memories she still possesses.

Then Nora visits.

As she calmly repairs the satin binding Lulu tore from Esther’s blanket, Nora confirms the truth. Bitsy really was lobotomized after Ellen’s suicide, and Katherine really is Ellen’s daughter. Lulu’s investigation had been correct all along.

Nora refuses to let Lulu surrender. She tells her that she is not Bitsy—and if she does not want to become like her, she has to save herself.

Lulu Escapes and Finally Learns What Is Wrong With Her

The next morning, Lulu makes herself look as composed as possible. She fixes her hair, puts on a dress, and hides her medication so she can remain alert.

Then Dr. Ruthledge announces that Lulu needs another five to ten ECT treatments.

Lulu realizes she has to leave.

Pretending she needs the restroom, she slips out of the building, finds the keys hidden behind the sun visor of Henry’s frost-blue sedan, takes Esther’s blanket and Wesley’s drawing, and drives across the state to the farm where she grew up.

She barely makes it to the porch before collapsing into Mama’s arms.

Mama looks closely at the distinctive lacy red rash spreading across Lulu’s cheeks and nose and immediately understands what the doctors missed.

“The wolf’s got you, too,” she tells her.

Lulu has lupus.

Her father suffered from systemic lupus as well, and the disease eventually killed him. Lulu’s illness helps explain the physical symptoms doctors repeatedly dismissed: her severe fatigue, aching joints, sun sensitivity, headaches, and butterfly-shaped facial rash. It also gives an explanation to the neurological and psychiatric symptoms that helped convince everyone she was simply losing her mind, including hallucinations, memory lapses, time-slips, and strange sensory experiences in which she smells colors and tastes sounds.

Lulu and Henry Finally Mourn Esther

Henry arrives at the farm the next morning looking disheveled and apologetic. He explains that he did not receive Dr. Ruthledge’s name from Gary after all. His mother Marian gave him the referral because one of her women’s club friends is married to the psychiatrist.

He also tells Lulu that Gary and Bitsy are leaving Greenwood Estates to make a fresh start. Henry himself has finally received the promotion he wanted.

But the most important thing that happens at the farm has nothing to do with the Betsers or Henry’s career.

Sitting together beneath a tree, Henry holds Lulu, and for the first time they truly grieve together for Esther. Rather than pretending their daughter survived or burying the reality of her death, they allow themselves to mourn the baby they lost.

Lulu eventually returns to Twyckenham Court. She stops taking the tranquilizers that kept her mentally dulled and instead manages her lupus with cortisone injections. Henry begins his new job, Wesley continues growing up, and another family eventually moves into the Betsers’ former home.

Lulu also buys herself a new camera.

When she develops the last photograph she took of Esther’s nursery, there is no baby in the picture. There is only a rocking chair and an empty blanket.

Lulu can finally see that emptiness for what it is. She no longer needs to imagine Esther alive in order to keep her daughter with her. In the quiet space between waking and sleeping, Lulu can remember Esther while remaining fully aware that she died.

She has not forgotten her daughter. She has simply stopped running from the truth of losing her.