The Killer's Wife (8 page)
Authors: Bill Floyd
A
t first, Mom didn’t seem overwhelmed at the joyous news. I asked her, “Did you hear what I said? You’re going to be a grandmother.”
t first, Mom didn’t seem overwhelmed at the joyous news. I asked her, “Did you hear what I said? You’re going to be a grandmother.”
“Yes, yes. I’m delighted for the both of you,” she said, her distraction coming through clearly, even over the phone. “Tell Randy I said so. But I thought you were planning on waiting a few years. Have you told your people at work?”
“Mom, I just found out for sure yesterday.” I was standing in the kitchen of our new home, a three-thousands-quare-foot colonial with full basement and two-car garage;
except for its being the last house in the cul-de-sac (which added on another twenty grand to the asking price) it was more or less identical to the other homes in the neighborhood, located only a ten-minute drive across town from the house where we’d lived for the past couple of years in what we now referred to as our “starter home.” The place was huge, with vaulted ceilings and a severely modernistic stairway leading off the entry hall to the basement and the upstairs. The kitchen was spacious enough that I thought I might get lost in it, the pantry closer in size to that of a bedroom than a closet. We’d both grown tired of the old house, feeling cramped and restless. As soon as Randy was offered a promotion to district chief, he said he wanted to go all out. I thought he was probably suffering some sort of intimidation factor from the higher strata. All his new coworkers had families, as opposed to the class of swashbuckling, fresh out of business school, wannabe players who’d made up much of his last team. I’d secretly hoped he wasn’t feeling pressure from that angle yet; I figured I still had a while before the Mosley family expanded to fit our new space.
except for its being the last house in the cul-de-sac (which added on another twenty grand to the asking price) it was more or less identical to the other homes in the neighborhood, located only a ten-minute drive across town from the house where we’d lived for the past couple of years in what we now referred to as our “starter home.” The place was huge, with vaulted ceilings and a severely modernistic stairway leading off the entry hall to the basement and the upstairs. The kitchen was spacious enough that I thought I might get lost in it, the pantry closer in size to that of a bedroom than a closet. We’d both grown tired of the old house, feeling cramped and restless. As soon as Randy was offered a promotion to district chief, he said he wanted to go all out. I thought he was probably suffering some sort of intimidation factor from the higher strata. All his new coworkers had families, as opposed to the class of swashbuckling, fresh out of business school, wannabe players who’d made up much of his last team. I’d secretly hoped he wasn’t feeling pressure from that angle yet; I figured I still had a while before the Mosley family expanded to fit our new space.
But I’d been feeling rotten for the past couple of weeks and, deep down, I knew why. My feelings were ambivalent, the shock of what the doctor had told me that morning still sinking in, as were about a million other corollary issues: the lifestyle changes that would soon be demanded of us, the financial restrictions we’d have to impose on ourselves, the baby-proofing of the new house, and on and on. The whole notion threatened a mental overload.
Mom, as usual, was being a great help.
“Honey, I don’t mean to sound unimpressed,” she said now. “I do think it’s wonderful. As you well know, I’ve been cheering for this since the day you got married. You’re the one who kept raving about how much you loved the work you were doing and how you thought you could really accomplish some things before you had a child, and I guess I just got used to thinking that way, too.”
She’d been cataloguing it, and now she was having the last laugh. I was being shifted into a matronly role quite before I was ready, and of course I’d been quite vocal about my feelings on the subject for the past few years. I never hesitated to tell Randy or anyone else who asked, “Not quite yet.” Randy always said, “Before we’re forty, maybe?” and I ignored his sarcasm and agreed that was fine. Before this morning, forty still seemed like an abstract concept. Now I was realizing that I’d be that age about the time my child got his or her driver’s license. I felt sick all over.
Mom went on gloating, describing at length the troubles she’d experienced while she was pregnant with me. The sore feet, the aching back, the stray spasms and sudden fits of weeping. “You know, they say that you’ll have the same sort of pregnancy your mother did, so I can’t say I envy you the next eight months.”
Ever since Dad died, she’d come out of her shell, to put it mildly. She bloomed, and became something of a maven around Tapersville, volunteering at the youth center and teaching Sunday school and writing op-eds for the
Tapersville Dispatch
. To be honest, I only thought of her as having “bloomed” when she wasn’t pissing me off; the rest
of the time I thought of her as hypercompulsive. She called several times a week. She critiqued and demeaned pretty much every facet of our lives, which I found baffling, since, as far as I could tell, we were living a version of the American Dream so damned near perfect that it was almost cloying. Right now I was feeling the emotional nerve memories of every crack she’d taken at me from puberty onward.
Hormones
, I thought, trying to make excuses for her.
She was always like this with you because she knew Dad loved you better.
Tapersville Dispatch
. To be honest, I only thought of her as having “bloomed” when she wasn’t pissing me off; the rest
of the time I thought of her as hypercompulsive. She called several times a week. She critiqued and demeaned pretty much every facet of our lives, which I found baffling, since, as far as I could tell, we were living a version of the American Dream so damned near perfect that it was almost cloying. Right now I was feeling the emotional nerve memories of every crack she’d taken at me from puberty onward.
Hormones
, I thought, trying to make excuses for her.
She was always like this with you because she knew Dad loved you better.
I was pregnant and she was menopausal. Yes, it looked to be a fine period we were embarking upon.
“I’ll have to move down there for a few months after the delivery,” Mom continued. I had a vision of her spazzing around in the house where I grew up, the phone cradled between chin and shoulder, watering plants with one hand and typing on her computer with the other. In the background, I could hear something that sounded very much like keys tapping. “Randy will just have to suffer through it. He’ll be thankful that I’m there after the first few days. What do you want to bet?”
“I know he will.”
Randy was unfailingly polite with Mom, but outside of her presence he made no secret of the fact that he couldn’t stand her. His defense was that he was only derisive toward her because he knew how self-conscious she made me feel, how all my shortcomings, real or imaginary, came to the surface after a few minutes in her company. The truth of it was that the two of them simply had oppositional personalities.
Mom was possessed by too much flurry, not enough focus; she drove him to distraction if he was in her presence for more than a few hours at a time. He was a laser, concentrated, and she scattered his attention. I used to try and referee, but they didn’t need me, so now I was mostly just an interested observer.
Mom was possessed by too much flurry, not enough focus; she drove him to distraction if he was in her presence for more than a few hours at a time. He was a laser, concentrated, and she scattered his attention. I used to try and referee, but they didn’t need me, so now I was mostly just an interested observer.
I got up off the stool where I’d been sitting, and paced the hardwood floor while Mom jabbered on. Randy had erected a spice rack in the door of the pantry. I opened it and admired the polish. I turned the jars of cinnamon and parsley and tarragon until they were all facing the same way, their labels nicely lined up. I never used these flavorings; most of our dinners were premade, which I didn’t mind a bit. Catching myself, I turned the paprika so that it faced backward.
See, there
—
I’m not OCD
.
See, there
—
I’m not OCD
.
“Are you going to keep working all the way up to your due date?” Mom asked. “I mean, I’d just begun to think of you as a careerist, and I know how you like to have things planned out in advance. This seems like an awful big one to just spring on yourself.”
She’d been into her thesaurus again; ever since she’d started writing her little “Heard Around Town”-type column, she’d developed an annoying habit of slipping what she considered fifty-cent words into her conversations, most often awkwardly. No way, during all the time I’d lived at home, would she ever have used a word like “careerist.” Next thing I knew, she would be advising “synergy.” I toyed with the idea of bringing up Dad, which was the only guaranteed way to cut the conversation short. But that would be a cheap shot,
and I considered myself above it, even if Mom wasn’t. “We were planning on waiting, Mom. But the Pill is only ninety-nine percent effective, and I guess I’m one of the exceptions that proves the rule.”
and I considered myself above it, even if Mom wasn’t. “We were planning on waiting, Mom. But the Pill is only ninety-nine percent effective, and I guess I’m one of the exceptions that proves the rule.”
Quietly, my husband’s voice surfaced from the next room. “It’s time. It’s time for you to have our baby.”
Mom was saying, only half jokingly, “Well, maybe you should think about suing those Ortho Tri-Cyclen people. The pharmaceutical companies, they always settle, they only want to keep themselves out of court and avoid bad press.”
“Yes, Mom, a married woman conceiving is bad press.” I belatedly registered my husband’s comment, and looked around the corner into the den. Randy was reclined in his leather chair, one of the treats he’d bought for himself with his most recent bonus. I thought he would be staring at me, willing me to get off the phone before he got exasperated simply from hearing my end of the conversation. It had happened before. But his face was buried behind a newspaper, not the local one, but a copy of the
Chicago Tribune
. I froze in place and my mind stuttered to a halt. He’d been in Chicago for business last week, and I’d found that same issue of the newspaper among the items in his suitcase when I was collecting the dirty clothes from it. Some awful carnage was splashed across the front of the section that he was reading now: FAMILY BUTCHERED IN CALUMET CITY, SURVIVOR HID IN SPARE ROOM. The piece had caught my eye when I was going through his suitcase, and I shuddered to remember
the details that leaped out when I’d read it. A father, mother, and daughter had been killed during a home invasion in the suburbs. The paper speculated that the crime may have been the work of a “ritualistic murderer,” because of certain nonspecified mutilations that had occurred. The younger child, a boy whose name the paper had declined to print because of his minor status, had survived by hiding in a guest room during the attack. He’d briefly been hospitalized for shock, but had then been released to the custody of some family relatives. Unimaginable.
Chicago Tribune
. I froze in place and my mind stuttered to a halt. He’d been in Chicago for business last week, and I’d found that same issue of the newspaper among the items in his suitcase when I was collecting the dirty clothes from it. Some awful carnage was splashed across the front of the section that he was reading now: FAMILY BUTCHERED IN CALUMET CITY, SURVIVOR HID IN SPARE ROOM. The piece had caught my eye when I was going through his suitcase, and I shuddered to remember
the details that leaped out when I’d read it. A father, mother, and daughter had been killed during a home invasion in the suburbs. The paper speculated that the crime may have been the work of a “ritualistic murderer,” because of certain nonspecified mutilations that had occurred. The younger child, a boy whose name the paper had declined to print because of his minor status, had survived by hiding in a guest room during the attack. He’d briefly been hospitalized for shock, but had then been released to the custody of some family relatives. Unimaginable.
I saw the headline now and it struck me that my husband was holding on to last week’s paper from another town and I distractedly wondered why he was rereading an issue he must’ve picked up at the airport on his arrival or departure.
Ripples crossed the surface down there; currents eddied. Something sunk quickly into the dark, heavily weighted.
“Did you tell Randy they offered you the promotion?” Mom was asking.
Shaw Associates was going to make me head of the entire marketing division, which was nearly unheard of for someone who’d been working there less than a decade, and especially for a woman. I’d nailed a couple of important projects and made the company some money and cracked the fabled glass ceiling. It was a small-time advertising operation, only thirty salaried employees and a couple of commissioned salespeople, but things were going well. I hadn’t told Randy about the promotion yet. I only got the offer
last week, and by then I’d already scheduled an appointment with my doctor.
last week, and by then I’d already scheduled an appointment with my doctor.
“I know you hate me to follow in your footsteps,” I told my mother, “but I’m going to have to be thinking about more than my own best interests from now on.”
“Plenty of women work full-time and are full-time mothers. I think I did a fine job with you, naturally, but I could’ve done it and held down a nine-to-five.”
“I know you could have, Mom.” Trying to head off the lecture, and suddenly I felt exhausted. Bone-deep weary. Her banter wore on me quickly in those days, as did a whole lot of things, actually. My patience felt just about spent, even though there was nothing really taxing it. I went to the window and stared out at our backyard. It wasn’t huge, but a considerable upgrade over the postage stamp we had at our old place across town. Randy had bought a riding lawn mower to keep it trim. There were two oak saplings that, given a decade or so, might become quite lovely. For now, their shade barely crossed the cement birdbath. Then, at the back of our property line (complete with gray slat fencing), Randy’s toolshed. At our old house, he had a room downstairs in the unfinished basement that was strictly offlimits to me, his “man room,” as he called it, where he worked out with his free weights or gambled online or whatever. I’d only asked him about his solitary pursuits a couple of times, and when I’d teased him about his ambiguous responses, it was enough to bring on a tirade about personal space and how essential it was to someone like him,
who spent much of his time among people whose company he didn’t necessarily enjoy, but was obliged to tolerate as part of his job. So I quit inquiring and now he had the toolshed, which he proudly claimed to have converted into a tidy, fulfilling workout space. It was a ten-by-ten prefab outbuilding, basically, and I wasn’t the least bit jealous or interested in what he did out there. That’s what I’d told him.
who spent much of his time among people whose company he didn’t necessarily enjoy, but was obliged to tolerate as part of his job. So I quit inquiring and now he had the toolshed, which he proudly claimed to have converted into a tidy, fulfilling workout space. It was a ten-by-ten prefab outbuilding, basically, and I wasn’t the least bit jealous or interested in what he did out there. That’s what I’d told him.
He installed a padlock on the door anyway.
“We talked about it before we got married,” I said into the phone. “Randy always said he wanted me to stay home and raise the kids, and there are more than a few studies out now that confirm that what you and Dad did was right. It’s the best way to give your child a chance to be happy and successful.” I caught myself talking like a brochure. “Anyway, it’s only a few years. I’ll go back to work after the kid is old enough for school.”
“Unless you have another one.”
I had some rather sharp thoughts on that subject at the moment, but then I sensed someone behind me. When I turned around, Randy was standing there, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed. He made a snide little wave.
“Mom, I need to go. Randy says hi.”
“Well I really, really am very happy for both of you. You know I can’t wait to spoil that child, and I look forward to many years of doing exactly that. Neither of you will be able to stop me.” She was trying to be cute, and even though it only made me more tired, it was finally worth an unforced smile. I told her I loved her and hung up.
Randy spread his arms wide and beckoned. “Come here, Mama.”
I knew how much it meant to him. His own childhood was such a wreck, by any standards; from what little I’d been able to piece together from his reticent remembrances, his own biological mother was a drunk who abandoned him at an early age. He grew up in a series of foster homes and state-supported boarding schools, until he’d been able to struggle his way clear at sixteen. He worked shit jobs until he earned an academic scholarship. I felt a lancing, familiar slash of guilt at how annoyed I’d been with my own mother just now, when all she’d ever shown me was devotion. Even if that dedication was warped behind the veneer of her plasticine rage at my father, at least neither of them had ever left me on my own.
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