It was his sock that put me over the top. I'm not sure why. It was an ordinary sock – black, worn at the toe and heel, crumpled up and lying in the middle of the TV room floor – pulled off and tossed there in a frantic need to scratch flaming athlete's foot while the evening news showed the 14th rerun of a Cubs triple play. But I couldn't take it any longer; it was one discarded object too many. I resolved to kill him.
The next morning I smiled seductively at him over his coffee and newspaper. "Honey, how about a special romantic dinner, just the two of us, tonight? I've got something out of the ordinary planned for you."
He grunted, spilling soft-boiled egg on the crossword puzzle as he leered at Brenda Starr's form-fitting business suit. I didn't care; I was going to be too busy implementing my plan even to do the Jumble this morning, much less the puzzle.
That night, when he came home, he found the all the lights out, except for the gentle glow of the candles in the den. Softly, Barry White was doing his thing on the CD player. The air was perfumed with fresh cinnamon donuts placed strategically under the furniture. (I didn't think jasmine incense would be as effective; I know this guy.) Spread across the floor was a large blue tarp. On top of the tarp lay an inviting picnic.
"What the hell is this?" he growled.
"Remember? I promised you a special evening." I whispered low in my throat as I entered from the kitchen in a filmy red negligee, carrying a wooden board loaded down with cheese and sausage. "We are going to picnic right in here, romantically."
"Uh, shouldn't we use a picnic blanket?"
"Well," I prevaricated, "the picnic blanket is in the trunk of the car, all full of mud from that time you blew a tire and just threw the muddy flat in on top of it." I put down the cheese board. "Make yourself comfy right in the middle of the tarp while I get a butcher knife to carve the sausage. Would you like some watermelon? I have lots of cut-up watermelon." I tossed him the TV remote.
When I came back in the room, with the large knife I had sharpened that morning, I saw his shoes had flown in one direction, his shirt in another and his damned socks were on the cheese board, covering the sausage, probably to conceal teeth marks proving that he had not waited for the knife. He had opened a beer and was balancing can on his belly, which he was pensively scratching, totally engrossed in the roaring sounds of ESPN, poor Barry White's seductive allure going to waste.
I sat myself close to him as I could bear. "Come my dear, lay your tired head in my lap; it'll give you a much better view of the screen." He leaned up against me, head at the perfect angle. After a few endless minutes of baseball coverage, the babble broke for a commercial.
I was running my finger through his comb-over. "Put down the beer, I'll massage your neck, you're so tense, poor baby, close your eyes..."
He was so trusting. The sharp knife slit his throat just as easily as the watermelon I had been practicing on all afternoon.
The blood ran out and puddled up on the tarp. My negligee was synthetic, so it didn't absorb a drop. I reached under the sofa to pull out a roll of paper towels and a donut to nibble on as he drained. When the commercial ended and the sports reporter came back, I realized with a start I would never have to watch ESPN again. I switched channels to PBS. To the stirring theme of Masterpiece Theater I mopped up, stuffing the bloody towels into plastic bags.
When I was sure everything was clean – I am a housewife after all – I wrapped him in the tarp, tying it tightly, with all the messy details sealed inside with him, making sure no blood spilled over into the floor. All I had left to do was wait until the middle of the night.
The alarm went off at 2 AM – amazing how well you can sleep when the rasping sound of apnea isn't grating in your ear. I went out to the back yard. Adjacent to the house was his vegetable garden, his cursed, cursed garden, the source of the damned tomatoes and zucchinis and green beans that he was so proud of. The bounty of produce I had to figure out what to do with each summer. I mean, every day each summer there I am blanching beans and baking zucchini bread, and simmering sauce; how could the stupid patch be so fertile when he never rotated his crops? All my friends learned to fear me when they saw me coming with a shopping bag in late August. One homegrown zucchini is one thing, but ten or twelve is another.
Well, during the day, I had loosened the whole lettuce section, under the guise of cultivating. Now, by the flickering light of the bug zapper, I removed the plants, and started digging seriously, down about three feet, squared to out about six feet by two feet. Using the luggage carrier, I dragged him outside, threw the bright blue package of body and evidence in the grave, filled up the hole and replanted the vegetables. It didn't matter if the veggies all died from the trauma, it would be credited to general neglect in the tumult following his disappearance.
I had done a few other little things during the day. I had used his email account (I knew his password; he told it to me because he couldn't remember it, and I had to remind him all the time) to empty all our bank accounts and transfer the money to a numbered account in the Caribbean. Amazing skills you can learn on the Internet, and it's untraceable, too, if you do it at the library. I forged a note announcing he was running off to Nantucket with a cute little redhead he had met at the bowling alley, because he "couldn't stand one more minute of your constant harping about my failures, inadequacies, and disappointments that had ruined your life." (I thought that was a nice touch, blaming me.) I made sure to misspell a few words.
I packed a few of his cut-offs, baseball jerseys, girlie magazines, autographed baseballs, every last god-damn sock and bottles of Rogaine to add a touch of "verisimilitude to an otherwise unconvincing narrative". They were now residing in the Goodwill Box in the grocery store parking lot two towns over.
It was 4 AM. My back and arms ached, I was tired and dirty. I took a long, hot shower and climbed into bed, sprawling as much as I wanted, not having to duck head-on kicks from restless leg syndrome. I placed the note next to my head on the pillow, going to sleep a sock-free woman.
I awoke late the next morning. What's this next to my head? A note? Oh my God! No! This can't be! I wailed, I cried, I carried on. I called my mother, I called his mother. I called his boss. I called his best friend. I called all my friends.
Everybody was shocked. No one had an inkling. His best friend advised me to check the bank. Can you imagine my surprise when I found out our accounts were closed? What should I do? I asked the friend. Shut down the charge cards, he told me, that'll stop him. Sure, what the hell? I made the calls.
Every one was so kind. People brought over food, held my hand, told me what a jerk he was – like this was a hot news flash? It wasn't me, they assured me. It was him, his problem; did I understand that? Oh yeah, I knew that, I understood that; I bet he understood that now, too.
But I was brave, oh I was brave! I stuck out my chin and assure them he'd come back to me, he'd tire of the hussy; I swore that qualities like young and perky red hair and big boobs and tight ass could never top old and familiar! And they all looked at each other behind my back and shook their heads slowly. You could tell they were thinking, "Poor deluded girl; let's humor her."
"It's a good thing I had some money he didn't know about, isn't it?" I asked the best friend. "You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get ready for his return; I'm sure it won't be long. I going to get that new carpeting in the TV room he wanted, and build brick patio for the big fancy barbecue grill he's been drooling over at the hardware store! I'll have it waiting for him....I'm gonna tough this out. You'll see, he'll be back, and I'll be ready for him...."
And as I watch at the window, the contractors are pouring the cement for the new patio where they'll be installing the $5000 grill, right where the vegetable garden used to be. I pour myself a glass of white wine before I sit down to watch a Ken Burns documentary on the history of the cotton gin, even though NASCAR is on ESPN IV.
You know what they make out of cotton? Socks, and there aren't any socks anywhere in my house. Maybe there are some cinnamony donut crumbs lurking here and there, but I an assure you, there are not any evil, smelly, sweaty, nasty socks tossed thoughtlessly around my house anymore.