An Uninvited Mourner
CASEY GILBERT
Thank God I didn't have to eulogize that sonofabitch.
As I sat in the musty pews at Red Acres Baptist Church, watching plump old women and stoic young men alternating between blowing their noses and staring solemnly at the corpse in his casket, I kept asking myself what brought me to this place. I'm not especially religious, and the strong floral odors that come with funerals really put me off. Seriously, that gaudy pink and yellow wreath at the end of the coffin just about knocked me out when I walked past it. The stiff was even worse, because he looked less like the asshole I once knew and more like a sculpture of Orson Welles that was rejected by Madame Tussaud’s because it had melted a little bit. Pretty gnarly, for a man who was only forty two.
But asking myself why I was in this house of the holy was an exercise in crazy, because I already knew what brought me here. The nebbish-y guy who actually did deliver the eulogy spelled it out pretty nicely.
“Today, we are here to celebrate the life of Jimmy Lee Densmore. A wonderful husband, wonderful father, wonderful friend, and generous heart who was beloved by all who knew him.”
I was here because every single word of that statement was a heinous crock of bullshit, and somehow, I still felt bad that he was dead. He was dead, and nobody else here had a clue who I was. For all they knew, I was just some girl he knew from somewhere. I felt bad that I was more than that.
I felt bad for all those stolen nights at America's Best Value Inn especially. Not exactly a romantic getaway, that place. But for our purposes, it was perfect. I remember all too well the knowing looks the front desk clerk used to give us, the faint buzzing sound from the heater in whatever room we got assigned to, the stench of cheap marijuana wafting in every now and again since it was the fanciest place south of the Spearmint Rhino Gentleman's Club. A distinguished fortysomething with a neatly trimmed beard and a supervisor's job at a fast food chain doesn't seem like the sort of guy who would take a chubby geek like me for cheap thrills on a cheap queen sized mattress. Then again, even guys with supervisor's jobs like girls with hot librarian glasses; those gargantuan lenses are the one thing that could make a face like mine look decent. The best times were the ones when he washed my hair after a particularly rough go-around on the starchy linen sheets. I loved the feeling of his fingers in my hair, and the fact that he always brought a bottle of Suave from home so that we didn't have to use the cheap travel size shampoos that are always on the edge of the bathtub. Does anybody actually like those things? Sometimes, I wonder if his wife uses that Suave too.
I don't like talking about her, of course. But I felt bad for her, too. Based on the pictures on his Facebook, she was a homely woman, and I totally understood why he always called her his “little piglet”. How could somebody frown that much in every single photograph? Even when she was on vacation at Myrtle Beach, her lips were curled into the kind of scowl that's usually only reserved for obnoxious teenagers throwing rolls of Charmin at your house on Halloween. And how could anyone wear that much makeup? Nobody in their late twenties who doesn't have crow's feet and whose lips are that plump should look that much like a member of K.I.S.S. Still, she had the one thing I never could have – his children, and I'd be a right awful person if I didn't feel at least a little bit bad for those children. Sometimes at night, I used to lie awake and wonder what their family dinners were like, and if they read bedtime stories each night and went to PTA meetings and kissed under the mistletoe at Christmas. I've never had anyone kiss me under mistletoe before, and Jimmy always promised me that one day, I'd get his kisses. He promised me that he didn't truly love her and said that she was a lazy stupid slag and that on July 28th at 10 am, his divorce was going to be finalized and we wouldn't have to hide in a place that cost sixty bucks a night anymore.
On July 28th, his car was still in the driveway at 10 am. On July 29th, I asked him about it by way of a very angry voice mail. On July 30th, he lamented that he couldn't go through with it because he could not pay the outrageous fees his lawyer was charging, and how could a guy who makes fifteen bucks an hour afford such a thing?
“I can help you out. I have eight hundred dollars set aside from my grandma. You can always pay me back later.”
“No, baby. I can't take your money. I'll just have to wait 'till some other time. Fucking lawyers. They're so hungry for cash that they don't care about the people who go to them.”
I felt so bad for him getting stiffed by the lawyer that I insisted once again that he take the money, and he did. It would be awhile before I found out that he used that money to buy his wife a diamond ring and a spa day. Since her Facebook posts indicated that he could only afford to buy her drugstore cosmetics every week before that occasion, I guess fifteen bucks an hour really wasn't enough to afford life's necessities. But that's not important. What's important is that he wasn't “wonderful” as a husband, or a father, or a friend. And he certainly wasn't generous.
And now, I was going to tell the woman he'd lied to for the past four years all about our relationship. Because I was a complete bastard. And so was he.
I'd thought of telling her about our relationship too many times to count. Every time I saw her post pictures of her new cosmetics kits from Walgreens or of their family night at Applebee’s, every cell in my body wanted to show up at their doorstep and reveal to her what kind of liar he was. That urge passed pretty quickly once I remembered that he owned a gun, and wasn’t afraid to use it. Don’t you dare contact me at home, baby, he’d say. He was a damn good shot, and apparently, so was she. What a generous guy, indeed.
If he was generous, he might admit that there must be something really special about his wife. As I watched the skinny dork continue to prattle on about just what a fantastic human being Jimmy Densmore was, I looked to my left at Lybra Densmore and wished to God I could be in the wooden box instead of her husband. She was hardly a “little piglet” today, and had clearly laid off the bonbons in her distress over Jimmy kicking the bucket. In fact, I quite envied the way that black velvet looked on her hips. She looked as though she had died a little herself. Honestly, looking at her in person for the first time, I had to admit that she had a really nice complexion. A nice, rosy complexion, and the kind of pretty curls I wished I could have. I frowned slightly and turned my gaze back to the podium at the end of the altar. Strange how much I knew about this woman, and how precious little she knew about me.
Sometimes, I wondered if she ever suspected a thing about her husband’s mysterious disappearances on weeknights. I wondered if she even cared, which made me want to tell her the truth that much more. Thanks to her Facebook, I knew that she and I were the same age, and that she and Jimmy had been married for seven years. I knew that she used to attend Brookhaven College and majored in food science before she met Jimmy. I knew that she dropped out when she got pregnant with his child. And I knew that she posted often about wanting to go back and finish her degree, but was perhaps too distracted by the loveliness of the new Maybelline eye shadow that her amazing husband got her at the drugstore to take the steps she needed to make it happen. But that’s just what she posted about herself on the Internet; could I really trust the rose-tinted version of her story that she chose to share with the world at large on Facebook? All I could definitively say about Lybra Densmore was that she never smiled in photographs, apparently hated doing housework, and made Jimmy feel oh so put upon because how dare she expect help around the house when he had work all day and she didn’t? Surely, taking care of two kids and keeping up the house couldn’t possibly be as hard as making sure the fryers were clean after hours or that the pizza-faced high school kid who worked weekends remembered to restock the ketchup. What was it about her that made him stay with her, anyway? If I could only talk to her, if I could only find out what was so special about her….
“Baby, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s just been an incredibly long day at work.”
Amazing that he bought that line. Here I was, about to cry myself into a stupor in that nicotine-tinged pillow at America’s Best Value Inn, and I somehow managed to convince him that I was well enough to keep my clothes off. It was like if the general public actually bought it when President Nixon declared himself “not a crook”. I was a much bigger crook than Nixon ever was – I was stealing another woman’s husband and getting away with it. I had a bit more difficulty holding myself together when he was finished making me scream.
“One day, the world will be ours, baby. It’ll be Jimmy and Lybra’s place.”
At that point, the waterworks were running like Usain Bolt. He tried to apologize, but that wasn’t quite enough. He washed my hair again. That wasn’t quite enough. He promised to take me to the botanical gardens. That couldn’t have been further from enough. He shook me hard and slapped me across the face.
“What more do you want from me? I said I was sorry, baby! You’ve got to know it by now. I would do anything for you. I’m so used to saying that name. It doesn’t mean I love that little piglet. It’s just a name.”
Lybra. What kind of name is that, anyway? It's like that zodiac sign, only stupid. The fact that her birthday is in February makes it even stupider. I’m the one who’s an actual Libra.
His apology was just barely enough, and so with that, he left me for the night, because why put up with more theatrics from me when he had to go back to Jimmy and Lybra’s place? I wished I had the guts to leave. Then again, what other guy out there would be interested in a pudgy goofball like me?
Lybra may have been a “little piglet,” but she had a place in his life. Why else would I remember her birthday, or her Facebook information? Why do I remember a thing at all about her? Well, it's hard not to. She’s the reason I started wearing makeup. When I was a kid, putting on lipstick made me feel like I should be getting a call from Ringling Bros. any day. Now, with only a couple of years left in my twenties, I could only think of how much eye shadow she wore in all her pictures, and how if I could only master this whole “femininity” thing the way she had, maybe I could be a wife and not a mistress. Mistress really is a dirty word, isn’t it? I’ll never forget one particularly rough night at our usual haunt, when Jimmy was putting his socks back on after our shower, looking over at him with more than a little sadness at having to confront that word.
“If I am called your “mistress,” what do I call you?”
“Baby, don’t say that,” he said. “Mistress really is a dirty word.”
“It’s what I am.”
“Ridiculous. You’re the woman of my dreams. Stop calling yourself that.”
One argument in which chairs were slammed into the wall later, and I agreed to never call myself that again. I was the woman of his dreams, and he was totally going to pay me back for that pesky lawyer, even though he totally wasn’t.
After I gave Jimmy that eight hundred bucks, disaster struck, and I lost my job at Dairy Queen. I know being tired and oversleeping is an excuse so old and lame that it needs to be euthanized, but I’m sticking to it. After all, when I had spent the night before crying myself to sleep over cheap beer and Doritos, I had the right to sleep in just a little bit, I think. Why shouldn’t I cry? I was stuck in a nowhere job, in a nowhere town, and in love with a guy who would never think I was good enough. To be fair, he was a good supervisor, because anybody would have been fired for not bothering to call in, though I don’t think anybody else would have done unspeakable things with the boss in the supply closet after closing time. I begged and pleaded with him to reimburse me just a smidge since I didn’t really have anywhere else to go after this whole debacle, but he was so far in a hole financially since his food stamps got taken away that he just couldn't get it to me right now and oh, please forgive me baby.
“Can you pay me back when you get your tax return in February?”
“Sorry baby, but I have to pay off the loan I took out last February, for the little piglet's birthday. Dumb bitch. I spend so much money on her and she repays me by sitting around the house and watching Real Housewives all day. Have you seen that show? God, it's the stupidest thing on television. I'm gonna blow up the damn TV if I have to sit through another second of that crap.”
I had to admit that he was right about that, but also wondered why he spent so much money on her if he was totally divorcing her like he said he was. Still, once I got a new job at Walmart, I was so excited to be able to pay my bills again that I sort of let it slide. I had Chef Boyardee on the table, a working air conditioner, and a really nice fellow named Mike training me at work. Why shouldn’t I let it slide? At least, I let it slide until his car broke down two weeks later and he totally couldn't afford to fix his radiator.
“I only have fifty bucks left until Friday, but I'll give you forty if you really need it.”
“You are a doll, baby. I'll pay you back as soon as I can, really I will.”
He never paid me that forty back.
Once the dorky guy was done talking about Jimmy, some fat woman in a navy blue dress that resembled a Hefty bag walked down the aisle toward his box and started belting out “Amazing Grace” while the organ sounded from some mythical place behind me. I had to admit, my eyes were more than a little damp by this point. I knew that his family knew nothing of me or of the money he had stiffed me, and in their eyes, he really was the awesome guy that Buddy Holly had been talking about. But Buddy Holly had known Jimmy since kindergarten and rode bikes with him and played pranks on the gym teacher with him after the homecoming dance and gone streaking by the lake in the early hours of morning. I had only known him for the past four years, ever since he was just a fry cook who flirted with me over French fries and grease stains and cracked jokes about all the weirdos who came in at closing time. He never wore a wedding band to work, and it was not until we had already done things that went against company policy on the counter after hours that I was aware of Lybra's existence. And we had never shared any great tender moments together, save for the time that he took me to the Japanese flower gardens and watched the bright orange koi shuddering across their special pond. I couldn't help but laugh when he tried in vain to catch one of the butterflies while we were walking down the cobblestone path, past the bamboo. It was a moment more suited for Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal than for people like us.
Too bad it didn't last, and I had to pay for our dinner that night because he was broke again.
My twenty-ninth birthday was not long after that. I was starting to get a little nauseated, and my ankles were swelling and I needed pickles and ice cream like no other, so it was the party of a lifetime for little old me. My biological clock was damn near broken up until this point, so the knowledge that I would no longer have to listen to it tick filled me with optimism I never realized could exist. I was overjoyed about the changes I was going through, but couldn’t stop thinking about Jimmy’s two boys. Would they have the chance to meet their little brother or sister? What about Lybra? Would she shoot me for this?
Jimmy clearly thought about these questions too, since in spite of not being able to pay for anything else in our relationship, he conveniently was able to pay what it cost to take me to the dilapidated clinic located on the part of Sixth Avenue where street walkers and meth heads barely dissuade people from going into the Pho Rocious Vietnamese restaurant on the corner. As the organ music swelled, my fists clenched so tight that I hoped for a moment that this entire thing was just some crazy nightmare. I had lost more than I ever knew I could lose.
I still can’t bring myself to talk openly about the dreadful noises and the baby that might have been. I still can’t believe it even happened to me. I still have nightmares about a child who looks like Jimmy looking sullen and asking me why, and I don't want to cry ten times harder in telling this story than I did while Susan Boyle up there was singing about how precious that grace appeared the hour she first believed.
I’m not sure what made me believe, but I think it may have been Jimmy’s threatening to shoot me if I let something as small as an embryo keep us from being together. I didn’t really take it seriously at the time – I mean, it’s not like he ever hit me or anything. Mostly, he just screamed in my face a lot and held me down on my armchair and said that if he really wanted to deal with that kind of bullshit, he’d just stay home and listen to his little piglet nagging him about Junior’s grades or troubles with Eric’s teacher.
“You’re not like that, baby. Quit being like that, or you’ll have real reasons to cry.”
He wasn’t wrong. I had plenty of reasons to cry today, as the finest singer ever rejected from American Idol warbled along. I wanted so badly to just bolt, to forget Jimmy altogether and keep the secrets to myself. But how could I? This was my last chance to confess what I had done, my last chance to make his wife aware of my pain. Just looking at her, that last chance didn’t seem to matter anymore, because she looked like she had more than enough pain of her own.
I lost it when I looked over at Lybra hugging Jimmy's oldest boy at that moment, because I wished I could have a son or daughter to cry with me too. She may have been a “little piglet” in the eyes of that dead sonofabitch, but right then and there, I was a little piglet too. I was a little piglet who continued eating the slop even when it became apparent that I was headed for the slaughter. When I met someone else and seriously thought of leaving, I was next in line for the chopping block.
I'm not gonna lie to you and tell you that working at Dairy Queen was just amazing and the most fun job I could ever have taken on. After all, rude customers, bathrooms more toxic than Chernobyl, and getting to go home every night reeking of steak fingers and shame is not exactly the American dream, unless you are the sort of person who needs melatonin supplements to fall asleep. So, maybe it was destiny that Jimmy fired me over a day spent under my comforter, and I wound up going to a slightly more dignified place to make my money. It had to have been destined somehow, right? It’s not every day that somebody with slightly crooked bicuspids laughs hysterically at all the stupid shit I say, or cares about me doing well at my job. I think I could get used to that sort of thing.
In light of that, I think it’s understandable that me and Mike Swafford went on a date. When he told me that a mutual friend heard that Jimmy spent my birthday wining and dining his wife at The Dorsia while I was lying in bed feeling sick after losing my would-be son or daughter, I wanted the date like a zoologist wants panda bears to bone each other. I still didn't dump Jimmy, but I did decide that this was the sweetest and easiest revenge in the history of sentient life. I took Mike out for dinner and we had a wonderful time and a lot of laughs, but I felt conflicted about the whole enterprise. His pressed suit looked nice and the gap between his teeth was really cute, but he still wasn't Jimmy, and Jimmy was going to kill me if he knew I was here. Besides, Mike Swafford didn’t play the guitar like Jimmy did.
Jimmy's guitar. Maybe that's the one thing that kept me holding on. Whenever he would play me “Summer Breeze” or “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” it's like we were in another world. I had never known anyone before who liked the same old school songs that I liked, much less someone who could play them while we sang together. Right behind the Suave shampoo, I'd say those were our best times together at America's Best Value Inn. I wanted him ten times more when I heard him sing about how the time to hesitate was through, no time to wallow in the mire. I thought of that as I nibbled my mostly warm quiche lorraine, and felt a twinge nervous about looking into the gorgeous blue eyes of Mike Swafford. But then, even if Mike was no guitarist, he was certainly an awesome artist. He knew about all the great paintings in the Louvre, and with all the weird blues and greens and oranges in his own paintings, he had clearly studied what made them great while he was at the Art Institute. Jimmy was self-taught on his guitar, though. I respect a man who's self-taught.
Then again, I also respect a man who ends our date with a romantic stroll through Sandy Lake park and a discussion of Impressionist art before giving me a single kiss. Somehow, that one kiss turned me on infinitely more than any secret moment of hair pulling and neck biting at America's Best Value Inn ever had. Which is why I asked Mike if we could do this again sooner rather than later, because I figured he'd probably be pretty awesome at hair pulling and neck biting too.
Maybe Mike being the type of guy who wasn't self-taught was also part of why Jimmy hated Mike so much, or maybe it was just sheer jealousy. Either way, when he barged into my apartment the next morning and shoved me on the couch and screamed at me and called me a “filthy fucking whore” and said I didn't care about his feelings, I instantly felt regret for betraying him by having dinner with my nice, single coworker. I promised I wouldn't do that again, and once again, he threatened to shoot me if I did.
“I’m not saying I’m gonna use this. I’m just saying, baby, it’s bad to give me reasons. Nobody needs reasons.”
Up until that moment, I had never actually seen the gun he told me he owned. It was a pretty amazing one, I gotta say, and its silver barrel seemed pretty solid, pressed against my temple. I wasn’t sure whether to look at it in awe, or whether to fall out of the chair in sheer terror. I wondered if he’d ever done a thing like this to Lybra. She looked like a Raggedy Ann doll, collapsed in Junior’s arms, so I doubt she would have handled being a potential front page news story any differently than I did. I slid just a little closer to her on the bench, so close to telling her, and yet so far....
“Why? Why? I can’t go on…. why….” she sobbed.
I bit my lip and turned back to the fat lady.
I'm not sure if it's poetic justice that the car wreck that claimed his life occurred three days after our fight over Mike Swafford, but whatever. At least in death, he was unarmed. Almost literally, actually. The frat boy who T-boned him was too drunk to notice that the speed limit was not, in fact, seventy miles an hour, so I do have to give some credit to the makeup artists at the funeral home for managing to make Jimmy look more like a dummy and less like a horror movie prop. Since Jimmy was obsessed with the Nightmare on Elm Street series, I think leaving him in that state and having a closed casket service might have been more fitting. But that’s just me.
As the song ended and we all filed past Jimmy Densmore one last time, Lybra collapsed in tears on her husband's shiny mahogany resting place. She was no little piglet. She was a scared child without a teddy bear, a flower without a watering can. Instinctively, I ran up to her and embraced her. She felt much softer and smelled much better than I could ever have imagined. I was shocked at how many gray hairs were in her head because nobody who's a month shy of thirty should have that many gray hairs. Her face was like a squished fruit from crying so hard, but somehow that face was still beautiful. That face had such gratitude in that moment that I wished more than ever that I could be lying in the casket instead. I was the one who deserved it.
“I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Poor, sweet lady, I am so sorry. Forgive me.”
Her eyes were such a stunning shade of blue that they looked amazing when she cried. How could he have possibly thought this woman was anything but beautiful? As I studied her crumpled features, I realized to my dismay that before she met Jimmy, she must have been supermodel quality.
“It's OK. Thank you. I needed it. I can't take this. First Mama, now Jimmy. I'm lost. I'm so lost. My boys....”
My shoulder was wet with her tears, and my cheeks were wet with my own. At this precise moment, I could have given Jimmy Densmore the same eulogy that Buddy Holly did.
“They have a wonderful mother. Jimmy was so blessed to have you.”
She finally lifted her head up and dried her eyes with her emerald green handkerchief. She clearly had character. I'd never seen a handkerchief that color before.
“Thank you. I was the blessed one. How did you know my Jimmy?”
“We worked together. He was a wonderful boss, he really was.” I wasn't lying.
“I'm glad he had such a good team at the Dairy Queen.” She wiped away a few more tears.
I couldn't help but smile at this, and had to tell her in return that I was glad that he had such a good mother for his two boys. If she ever needed a friend, I was here. She at long last collected herself when I said this, and said that I could stop by and visit anytime because dear God, did she miss having friends. She said she'd not really had any friends since she had been married. I wondered how that was even possible, though I had to admit that I hadn't really been overloaded with friends since I'd known her husband either. As I glanced at her mascara stained cheeks, I saw for the first time what looked like a bruise on the side of her face, concealed with special care and Cover Girl. I wanted so badly to ask, but I knew that in all likelihood, it wouldn’t mean anything. I watched his two boys shuffling around at her feet and sighed. Thank God they had a good mother.
Thank God she really didn’t know who I was, or I might be dead too. Looking at her now, I felt a strange sense of relief. Jimmy was dead, and so was my dirty little secret.
She asked my name as we walked out of the Red Acres Baptist Church and prepared for the procession down the gravel road towards the old cemetery hiding behind the oak trees.
“Samantha. Samantha Prouty.”
“I'm glad I met you, Samantha. Come on boys, we have to get in the car. Eric, don't touch that.”
Eric didn't stop touching the crushed Pepsi can in the parking lot, and her words didn't stop touching my soul. I decided I could not handle the burial, so I turned left at the end of the road.
CASEY GILBERT
Thank God I didn't have to eulogize that sonofabitch.
As I sat in the musty pews at Red Acres Baptist Church, watching plump old women and stoic young men alternating between blowing their noses and staring solemnly at the corpse in his casket, I kept asking myself what brought me to this place. I'm not especially religious, and the strong floral odors that come with funerals really put me off. Seriously, that gaudy pink and yellow wreath at the end of the coffin just about knocked me out when I walked past it. The stiff was even worse, because he looked less like the asshole I once knew and more like a sculpture of Orson Welles that was rejected by Madame Tussaud’s because it had melted a little bit. Pretty gnarly, for a man who was only forty two.
But asking myself why I was in this house of the holy was an exercise in crazy, because I already knew what brought me here. The nebbish-y guy who actually did deliver the eulogy spelled it out pretty nicely.
“Today, we are here to celebrate the life of Jimmy Lee Densmore. A wonderful husband, wonderful father, wonderful friend, and generous heart who was beloved by all who knew him.”
I was here because every single word of that statement was a heinous crock of bullshit, and somehow, I still felt bad that he was dead. He was dead, and nobody else here had a clue who I was. For all they knew, I was just some girl he knew from somewhere. I felt bad that I was more than that.
I felt bad for all those stolen nights at America's Best Value Inn especially. Not exactly a romantic getaway, that place. But for our purposes, it was perfect. I remember all too well the knowing looks the front desk clerk used to give us, the faint buzzing sound from the heater in whatever room we got assigned to, the stench of cheap marijuana wafting in every now and again since it was the fanciest place south of the Spearmint Rhino Gentleman's Club. A distinguished fortysomething with a neatly trimmed beard and a supervisor's job at a fast food chain doesn't seem like the sort of guy who would take a chubby geek like me for cheap thrills on a cheap queen sized mattress. Then again, even guys with supervisor's jobs like girls with hot librarian glasses; those gargantuan lenses are the one thing that could make a face like mine look decent. The best times were the ones when he washed my hair after a particularly rough go-around on the starchy linen sheets. I loved the feeling of his fingers in my hair, and the fact that he always brought a bottle of Suave from home so that we didn't have to use the cheap travel size shampoos that are always on the edge of the bathtub. Does anybody actually like those things? Sometimes, I wonder if his wife uses that Suave too.
I don't like talking about her, of course. But I felt bad for her, too. Based on the pictures on his Facebook, she was a homely woman, and I totally understood why he always called her his “little piglet”. How could somebody frown that much in every single photograph? Even when she was on vacation at Myrtle Beach, her lips were curled into the kind of scowl that's usually only reserved for obnoxious teenagers throwing rolls of Charmin at your house on Halloween. And how could anyone wear that much makeup? Nobody in their late twenties who doesn't have crow's feet and whose lips are that plump should look that much like a member of K.I.S.S. Still, she had the one thing I never could have – his children, and I'd be a right awful person if I didn't feel at least a little bit bad for those children. Sometimes at night, I used to lie awake and wonder what their family dinners were like, and if they read bedtime stories each night and went to PTA meetings and kissed under the mistletoe at Christmas. I've never had anyone kiss me under mistletoe before, and Jimmy always promised me that one day, I'd get his kisses. He promised me that he didn't truly love her and said that she was a lazy stupid slag and that on July 28th at 10 am, his divorce was going to be finalized and we wouldn't have to hide in a place that cost sixty bucks a night anymore.
On July 28th, his car was still in the driveway at 10 am. On July 29th, I asked him about it by way of a very angry voice mail. On July 30th, he lamented that he couldn't go through with it because he could not pay the outrageous fees his lawyer was charging, and how could a guy who makes fifteen bucks an hour afford such a thing?
“I can help you out. I have eight hundred dollars set aside from my grandma. You can always pay me back later.”
“No, baby. I can't take your money. I'll just have to wait 'till some other time. Fucking lawyers. They're so hungry for cash that they don't care about the people who go to them.”
I felt so bad for him getting stiffed by the lawyer that I insisted once again that he take the money, and he did. It would be awhile before I found out that he used that money to buy his wife a diamond ring and a spa day. Since her Facebook posts indicated that he could only afford to buy her drugstore cosmetics every week before that occasion, I guess fifteen bucks an hour really wasn't enough to afford life's necessities. But that's not important. What's important is that he wasn't “wonderful” as a husband, or a father, or a friend. And he certainly wasn't generous.
And now, I was going to tell the woman he'd lied to for the past four years all about our relationship. Because I was a complete bastard. And so was he.
I'd thought of telling her about our relationship too many times to count. Every time I saw her post pictures of her new cosmetics kits from Walgreens or of their family night at Applebee’s, every cell in my body wanted to show up at their doorstep and reveal to her what kind of liar he was. That urge passed pretty quickly once I remembered that he owned a gun, and wasn’t afraid to use it. Don’t you dare contact me at home, baby, he’d say. He was a damn good shot, and apparently, so was she. What a generous guy, indeed.
If he was generous, he might admit that there must be something really special about his wife. As I watched the skinny dork continue to prattle on about just what a fantastic human being Jimmy Densmore was, I looked to my left at Lybra Densmore and wished to God I could be in the wooden box instead of her husband. She was hardly a “little piglet” today, and had clearly laid off the bonbons in her distress over Jimmy kicking the bucket. In fact, I quite envied the way that black velvet looked on her hips. She looked as though she had died a little herself. Honestly, looking at her in person for the first time, I had to admit that she had a really nice complexion. A nice, rosy complexion, and the kind of pretty curls I wished I could have. I frowned slightly and turned my gaze back to the podium at the end of the altar. Strange how much I knew about this woman, and how precious little she knew about me.
Sometimes, I wondered if she ever suspected a thing about her husband’s mysterious disappearances on weeknights. I wondered if she even cared, which made me want to tell her the truth that much more. Thanks to her Facebook, I knew that she and I were the same age, and that she and Jimmy had been married for seven years. I knew that she used to attend Brookhaven College and majored in food science before she met Jimmy. I knew that she dropped out when she got pregnant with his child. And I knew that she posted often about wanting to go back and finish her degree, but was perhaps too distracted by the loveliness of the new Maybelline eye shadow that her amazing husband got her at the drugstore to take the steps she needed to make it happen. But that’s just what she posted about herself on the Internet; could I really trust the rose-tinted version of her story that she chose to share with the world at large on Facebook? All I could definitively say about Lybra Densmore was that she never smiled in photographs, apparently hated doing housework, and made Jimmy feel oh so put upon because how dare she expect help around the house when he had work all day and she didn’t? Surely, taking care of two kids and keeping up the house couldn’t possibly be as hard as making sure the fryers were clean after hours or that the pizza-faced high school kid who worked weekends remembered to restock the ketchup. What was it about her that made him stay with her, anyway? If I could only talk to her, if I could only find out what was so special about her….
“Baby, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s just been an incredibly long day at work.”
Amazing that he bought that line. Here I was, about to cry myself into a stupor in that nicotine-tinged pillow at America’s Best Value Inn, and I somehow managed to convince him that I was well enough to keep my clothes off. It was like if the general public actually bought it when President Nixon declared himself “not a crook”. I was a much bigger crook than Nixon ever was – I was stealing another woman’s husband and getting away with it. I had a bit more difficulty holding myself together when he was finished making me scream.
“One day, the world will be ours, baby. It’ll be Jimmy and Lybra’s place.”
At that point, the waterworks were running like Usain Bolt. He tried to apologize, but that wasn’t quite enough. He washed my hair again. That wasn’t quite enough. He promised to take me to the botanical gardens. That couldn’t have been further from enough. He shook me hard and slapped me across the face.
“What more do you want from me? I said I was sorry, baby! You’ve got to know it by now. I would do anything for you. I’m so used to saying that name. It doesn’t mean I love that little piglet. It’s just a name.”
Lybra. What kind of name is that, anyway? It's like that zodiac sign, only stupid. The fact that her birthday is in February makes it even stupider. I’m the one who’s an actual Libra.
His apology was just barely enough, and so with that, he left me for the night, because why put up with more theatrics from me when he had to go back to Jimmy and Lybra’s place? I wished I had the guts to leave. Then again, what other guy out there would be interested in a pudgy goofball like me?
Lybra may have been a “little piglet,” but she had a place in his life. Why else would I remember her birthday, or her Facebook information? Why do I remember a thing at all about her? Well, it's hard not to. She’s the reason I started wearing makeup. When I was a kid, putting on lipstick made me feel like I should be getting a call from Ringling Bros. any day. Now, with only a couple of years left in my twenties, I could only think of how much eye shadow she wore in all her pictures, and how if I could only master this whole “femininity” thing the way she had, maybe I could be a wife and not a mistress. Mistress really is a dirty word, isn’t it? I’ll never forget one particularly rough night at our usual haunt, when Jimmy was putting his socks back on after our shower, looking over at him with more than a little sadness at having to confront that word.
“If I am called your “mistress,” what do I call you?”
“Baby, don’t say that,” he said. “Mistress really is a dirty word.”
“It’s what I am.”
“Ridiculous. You’re the woman of my dreams. Stop calling yourself that.”
One argument in which chairs were slammed into the wall later, and I agreed to never call myself that again. I was the woman of his dreams, and he was totally going to pay me back for that pesky lawyer, even though he totally wasn’t.
After I gave Jimmy that eight hundred bucks, disaster struck, and I lost my job at Dairy Queen. I know being tired and oversleeping is an excuse so old and lame that it needs to be euthanized, but I’m sticking to it. After all, when I had spent the night before crying myself to sleep over cheap beer and Doritos, I had the right to sleep in just a little bit, I think. Why shouldn’t I cry? I was stuck in a nowhere job, in a nowhere town, and in love with a guy who would never think I was good enough. To be fair, he was a good supervisor, because anybody would have been fired for not bothering to call in, though I don’t think anybody else would have done unspeakable things with the boss in the supply closet after closing time. I begged and pleaded with him to reimburse me just a smidge since I didn’t really have anywhere else to go after this whole debacle, but he was so far in a hole financially since his food stamps got taken away that he just couldn't get it to me right now and oh, please forgive me baby.
“Can you pay me back when you get your tax return in February?”
“Sorry baby, but I have to pay off the loan I took out last February, for the little piglet's birthday. Dumb bitch. I spend so much money on her and she repays me by sitting around the house and watching Real Housewives all day. Have you seen that show? God, it's the stupidest thing on television. I'm gonna blow up the damn TV if I have to sit through another second of that crap.”
I had to admit that he was right about that, but also wondered why he spent so much money on her if he was totally divorcing her like he said he was. Still, once I got a new job at Walmart, I was so excited to be able to pay my bills again that I sort of let it slide. I had Chef Boyardee on the table, a working air conditioner, and a really nice fellow named Mike training me at work. Why shouldn’t I let it slide? At least, I let it slide until his car broke down two weeks later and he totally couldn't afford to fix his radiator.
“I only have fifty bucks left until Friday, but I'll give you forty if you really need it.”
“You are a doll, baby. I'll pay you back as soon as I can, really I will.”
He never paid me that forty back.
Once the dorky guy was done talking about Jimmy, some fat woman in a navy blue dress that resembled a Hefty bag walked down the aisle toward his box and started belting out “Amazing Grace” while the organ sounded from some mythical place behind me. I had to admit, my eyes were more than a little damp by this point. I knew that his family knew nothing of me or of the money he had stiffed me, and in their eyes, he really was the awesome guy that Buddy Holly had been talking about. But Buddy Holly had known Jimmy since kindergarten and rode bikes with him and played pranks on the gym teacher with him after the homecoming dance and gone streaking by the lake in the early hours of morning. I had only known him for the past four years, ever since he was just a fry cook who flirted with me over French fries and grease stains and cracked jokes about all the weirdos who came in at closing time. He never wore a wedding band to work, and it was not until we had already done things that went against company policy on the counter after hours that I was aware of Lybra's existence. And we had never shared any great tender moments together, save for the time that he took me to the Japanese flower gardens and watched the bright orange koi shuddering across their special pond. I couldn't help but laugh when he tried in vain to catch one of the butterflies while we were walking down the cobblestone path, past the bamboo. It was a moment more suited for Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal than for people like us.
Too bad it didn't last, and I had to pay for our dinner that night because he was broke again.
My twenty-ninth birthday was not long after that. I was starting to get a little nauseated, and my ankles were swelling and I needed pickles and ice cream like no other, so it was the party of a lifetime for little old me. My biological clock was damn near broken up until this point, so the knowledge that I would no longer have to listen to it tick filled me with optimism I never realized could exist. I was overjoyed about the changes I was going through, but couldn’t stop thinking about Jimmy’s two boys. Would they have the chance to meet their little brother or sister? What about Lybra? Would she shoot me for this?
Jimmy clearly thought about these questions too, since in spite of not being able to pay for anything else in our relationship, he conveniently was able to pay what it cost to take me to the dilapidated clinic located on the part of Sixth Avenue where street walkers and meth heads barely dissuade people from going into the Pho Rocious Vietnamese restaurant on the corner. As the organ music swelled, my fists clenched so tight that I hoped for a moment that this entire thing was just some crazy nightmare. I had lost more than I ever knew I could lose.
I still can’t bring myself to talk openly about the dreadful noises and the baby that might have been. I still can’t believe it even happened to me. I still have nightmares about a child who looks like Jimmy looking sullen and asking me why, and I don't want to cry ten times harder in telling this story than I did while Susan Boyle up there was singing about how precious that grace appeared the hour she first believed.
I’m not sure what made me believe, but I think it may have been Jimmy’s threatening to shoot me if I let something as small as an embryo keep us from being together. I didn’t really take it seriously at the time – I mean, it’s not like he ever hit me or anything. Mostly, he just screamed in my face a lot and held me down on my armchair and said that if he really wanted to deal with that kind of bullshit, he’d just stay home and listen to his little piglet nagging him about Junior’s grades or troubles with Eric’s teacher.
“You’re not like that, baby. Quit being like that, or you’ll have real reasons to cry.”
He wasn’t wrong. I had plenty of reasons to cry today, as the finest singer ever rejected from American Idol warbled along. I wanted so badly to just bolt, to forget Jimmy altogether and keep the secrets to myself. But how could I? This was my last chance to confess what I had done, my last chance to make his wife aware of my pain. Just looking at her, that last chance didn’t seem to matter anymore, because she looked like she had more than enough pain of her own.
I lost it when I looked over at Lybra hugging Jimmy's oldest boy at that moment, because I wished I could have a son or daughter to cry with me too. She may have been a “little piglet” in the eyes of that dead sonofabitch, but right then and there, I was a little piglet too. I was a little piglet who continued eating the slop even when it became apparent that I was headed for the slaughter. When I met someone else and seriously thought of leaving, I was next in line for the chopping block.
I'm not gonna lie to you and tell you that working at Dairy Queen was just amazing and the most fun job I could ever have taken on. After all, rude customers, bathrooms more toxic than Chernobyl, and getting to go home every night reeking of steak fingers and shame is not exactly the American dream, unless you are the sort of person who needs melatonin supplements to fall asleep. So, maybe it was destiny that Jimmy fired me over a day spent under my comforter, and I wound up going to a slightly more dignified place to make my money. It had to have been destined somehow, right? It’s not every day that somebody with slightly crooked bicuspids laughs hysterically at all the stupid shit I say, or cares about me doing well at my job. I think I could get used to that sort of thing.
In light of that, I think it’s understandable that me and Mike Swafford went on a date. When he told me that a mutual friend heard that Jimmy spent my birthday wining and dining his wife at The Dorsia while I was lying in bed feeling sick after losing my would-be son or daughter, I wanted the date like a zoologist wants panda bears to bone each other. I still didn't dump Jimmy, but I did decide that this was the sweetest and easiest revenge in the history of sentient life. I took Mike out for dinner and we had a wonderful time and a lot of laughs, but I felt conflicted about the whole enterprise. His pressed suit looked nice and the gap between his teeth was really cute, but he still wasn't Jimmy, and Jimmy was going to kill me if he knew I was here. Besides, Mike Swafford didn’t play the guitar like Jimmy did.
Jimmy's guitar. Maybe that's the one thing that kept me holding on. Whenever he would play me “Summer Breeze” or “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” it's like we were in another world. I had never known anyone before who liked the same old school songs that I liked, much less someone who could play them while we sang together. Right behind the Suave shampoo, I'd say those were our best times together at America's Best Value Inn. I wanted him ten times more when I heard him sing about how the time to hesitate was through, no time to wallow in the mire. I thought of that as I nibbled my mostly warm quiche lorraine, and felt a twinge nervous about looking into the gorgeous blue eyes of Mike Swafford. But then, even if Mike was no guitarist, he was certainly an awesome artist. He knew about all the great paintings in the Louvre, and with all the weird blues and greens and oranges in his own paintings, he had clearly studied what made them great while he was at the Art Institute. Jimmy was self-taught on his guitar, though. I respect a man who's self-taught.
Then again, I also respect a man who ends our date with a romantic stroll through Sandy Lake park and a discussion of Impressionist art before giving me a single kiss. Somehow, that one kiss turned me on infinitely more than any secret moment of hair pulling and neck biting at America's Best Value Inn ever had. Which is why I asked Mike if we could do this again sooner rather than later, because I figured he'd probably be pretty awesome at hair pulling and neck biting too.
Maybe Mike being the type of guy who wasn't self-taught was also part of why Jimmy hated Mike so much, or maybe it was just sheer jealousy. Either way, when he barged into my apartment the next morning and shoved me on the couch and screamed at me and called me a “filthy fucking whore” and said I didn't care about his feelings, I instantly felt regret for betraying him by having dinner with my nice, single coworker. I promised I wouldn't do that again, and once again, he threatened to shoot me if I did.
“I’m not saying I’m gonna use this. I’m just saying, baby, it’s bad to give me reasons. Nobody needs reasons.”
Up until that moment, I had never actually seen the gun he told me he owned. It was a pretty amazing one, I gotta say, and its silver barrel seemed pretty solid, pressed against my temple. I wasn’t sure whether to look at it in awe, or whether to fall out of the chair in sheer terror. I wondered if he’d ever done a thing like this to Lybra. She looked like a Raggedy Ann doll, collapsed in Junior’s arms, so I doubt she would have handled being a potential front page news story any differently than I did. I slid just a little closer to her on the bench, so close to telling her, and yet so far....
“Why? Why? I can’t go on…. why….” she sobbed.
I bit my lip and turned back to the fat lady.
I'm not sure if it's poetic justice that the car wreck that claimed his life occurred three days after our fight over Mike Swafford, but whatever. At least in death, he was unarmed. Almost literally, actually. The frat boy who T-boned him was too drunk to notice that the speed limit was not, in fact, seventy miles an hour, so I do have to give some credit to the makeup artists at the funeral home for managing to make Jimmy look more like a dummy and less like a horror movie prop. Since Jimmy was obsessed with the Nightmare on Elm Street series, I think leaving him in that state and having a closed casket service might have been more fitting. But that’s just me.
As the song ended and we all filed past Jimmy Densmore one last time, Lybra collapsed in tears on her husband's shiny mahogany resting place. She was no little piglet. She was a scared child without a teddy bear, a flower without a watering can. Instinctively, I ran up to her and embraced her. She felt much softer and smelled much better than I could ever have imagined. I was shocked at how many gray hairs were in her head because nobody who's a month shy of thirty should have that many gray hairs. Her face was like a squished fruit from crying so hard, but somehow that face was still beautiful. That face had such gratitude in that moment that I wished more than ever that I could be lying in the casket instead. I was the one who deserved it.
“I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Poor, sweet lady, I am so sorry. Forgive me.”
Her eyes were such a stunning shade of blue that they looked amazing when she cried. How could he have possibly thought this woman was anything but beautiful? As I studied her crumpled features, I realized to my dismay that before she met Jimmy, she must have been supermodel quality.
“It's OK. Thank you. I needed it. I can't take this. First Mama, now Jimmy. I'm lost. I'm so lost. My boys....”
My shoulder was wet with her tears, and my cheeks were wet with my own. At this precise moment, I could have given Jimmy Densmore the same eulogy that Buddy Holly did.
“They have a wonderful mother. Jimmy was so blessed to have you.”
She finally lifted her head up and dried her eyes with her emerald green handkerchief. She clearly had character. I'd never seen a handkerchief that color before.
“Thank you. I was the blessed one. How did you know my Jimmy?”
“We worked together. He was a wonderful boss, he really was.” I wasn't lying.
“I'm glad he had such a good team at the Dairy Queen.” She wiped away a few more tears.
I couldn't help but smile at this, and had to tell her in return that I was glad that he had such a good mother for his two boys. If she ever needed a friend, I was here. She at long last collected herself when I said this, and said that I could stop by and visit anytime because dear God, did she miss having friends. She said she'd not really had any friends since she had been married. I wondered how that was even possible, though I had to admit that I hadn't really been overloaded with friends since I'd known her husband either. As I glanced at her mascara stained cheeks, I saw for the first time what looked like a bruise on the side of her face, concealed with special care and Cover Girl. I wanted so badly to ask, but I knew that in all likelihood, it wouldn’t mean anything. I watched his two boys shuffling around at her feet and sighed. Thank God they had a good mother.
Thank God she really didn’t know who I was, or I might be dead too. Looking at her now, I felt a strange sense of relief. Jimmy was dead, and so was my dirty little secret.
She asked my name as we walked out of the Red Acres Baptist Church and prepared for the procession down the gravel road towards the old cemetery hiding behind the oak trees.
“Samantha. Samantha Prouty.”
“I'm glad I met you, Samantha. Come on boys, we have to get in the car. Eric, don't touch that.”
Eric didn't stop touching the crushed Pepsi can in the parking lot, and her words didn't stop touching my soul. I decided I could not handle the burial, so I turned left at the end of the road.
