Scrap Paper Review
Issue #55
June 10, 2010
Infidelity
They say it all catches up with you,
The bent rimmed wheel of Karma
Pounding on your brain as you ride
Down the long road of life
I keep thinking of the warnings
Nuns gave me in Catholic school
And feel nails poking my ankles and wrists
A twisted passion play of fate
It always comes back at you
But not in appropriate doses
And never quite the way
You might expect
God or fate loves to spice things up
Add a little frost to the dew,
Taking perverse pleasure in
Making a man like me squirm
Isn’t it enough that I spent
A whole month’s pay check
On the coke the bar fly snorted up
For a ten minute fling in my car?
She wouldn’t even let me kiss her
Or linger over the matter
Just in and out and then out of
The car for another snort
I didn’t even get the ceiling mirrors
The motel advertises
Or the chocolates on the pillow
Only a bad case of clap
And when I decide to confess it all
To my wife, tell her how sorry I am
I pull into the driveway to find another man’s car
And that other man in bed with my wife.
The perfect woman
I stagger off the bar stool the minute the powder room door closes and she is gone.
The woman will be a little shocked to find me gone when she gets back.
But I dread the alternative.
If I stay I’ll go to the motel with the pretty tanned blonde from Florida, and though I think that’s what I want, I know it isn’t.
My wife’s face floats into my vision the moment I’m outside: brown hair, brown eyes and a look that stole my heart the first time I saw her.
How can I do anything to hurt her and seeing her in my mind’s eye sears me with guilt.
I stare at the mannequins in the So Ho fashion shop windows, trying to replace Peggy’s face on my retinas with their blank expressions.
But her face fills the place where their faces should be and I’m doomed.
A beat cop stops me and asks if I’m all right.
I lie and say I’m only drunk when he knows better. He nods when I explain about the woman I left in the bar, and how I need to get home before I do anything foolish.
He laughs and suggests a divorce.
I tell him I can’t because I married he perfect woman.
I’m the one who’s not perfect and that’s the problem.
Changing season
Her laugh was always seasonal,
A narrow, twisting brook in Spring
Gushing forth fully,
A trickle by mid-summer
Beaten downed and pressed flat
By dog day suns
Refurbished
As if by the multi-colored leaves of fall,
Floating with each gush and gust
But by winter,
Each laugh turning to a chuck of ice
Upon which I am
Always cut
Why I have to kill my wife
To say my wife Brenda intimidates me would be a gross understatement. This is not because she nags me or scolds me or berates me in any way, it is because she is too perfect.
She’s so perfect that in a small town like ours, it is impossible for to go anywhere or see anyone without someone stopping to ask about her or to introduce me to strangers as “Brenda’s husband.”
Even when I’m in New York coming or going from work, someone inevitable stops to ask about her and why she still isn’t in advertising, calling her “one hell of an advertising lady.”
When I tell them she quit to have babies, they back away, looking as me as if I made her get out of the field. Seeing that expression on their faces, I assure them, this was her idea and that she really wants to have babies, and then say, “Sure, sure, Steve, we understand.”
Not that we have been too successful in that area, either, Despite solid efforts over two years, nothing has come of it.
And even though neither of us tells anyone, I see the look in people’s eyes on the street filled with accusations “I’m the man who can’t even manage to give Brenda a child.”
Brenda is understanding enough, telling me that it isn’t my fault, which only enrages me more since I get the same talk from my bosses about my mediocre advertising campaigns.
“We know you’re doing your best, Steve,” my bosses say, with more than enough overtone to suggest I could never – even at my best – match anything my wife ever did.
Brenda doesn’t pressure me. She says nothing about going back to Madison Avenue. She just keeps herself busy doing local projects, bazaars, carnivals, church projects – even some small business proposals such as Avon and Tupperware – and from these brings home nearly as much as I do each month.
Sometimes, I become invisible entirely. Often when I say hello to people, they call me “Mr. Otis.”
Otis is my wife’s maiden name, not mine.
So during the morning commute to Manhattan, I tell my life long best friend, Carl, that I intend to kill my wife.
He thinks I’m joking, and I get ticked off at him because he won’t take me seriously, mocking me about his robbing Chase Manhattan Bank.
For me this is not joke because I know he has troubles at home – and possibly over deep money problems.
“Isn’t divorce less drastic?” he asks.
“I can’t divorce her,” I said. “Everybody would look at me as if it was a good thing for her, and that I’m not good enough for her anyway. No, death is the only answer.”
“What’s wrong with her?” he asks. “I’d give my eye teeth for a wife like her.”
“You want her, she’s yours.”
Carl laughs even harder, calls me “a joker” and goes back to reading his Wall Street Journal for the rest of the ride into the city.
So I don’t bother bringing up my idea of having him help me and decide I have to do it myself.
But how?
I think: some kind of household accident. After all, Brenda is always doing things around the house. A bit of wiring done in the kitchen sets the trap perfectly for this evening.
I wire the electric exhaust fan above the stove to a metal plate just under foot so that the minute she flips the switch, she gets fried.
Then, I sit in the den like I usually do and wait, listening to the sound of her preparing diner, the bang of the post and pans, the squeak of the cabinets. But as time drags on and I smell the scent of supper, I get puzzled as to why she isn’t dead since she always uses the exhaust fan.
When she serves dinner, she is quite a live.
After dinner and before she can do the dishes, I take a broom handle and flip the switch without standing on the metal plate. Sparks fly. The stove catches on fire. My wife comes in at the sound of the commotion and nods, saying she had tried the switch earlier that afternoon and noticed the fan wasn’t working. This apparently happened during that brief interval when I turned off the electricity from the box in the basement so I could do the rewiring.
So I decide I should use poison.
But I can’t buy the stuff in the village and the best I can get in New York City is anti-roach powder – which won’t due at all.
I wander down to the park where I saw mushrooms growing since I heard how poisonous some of these can be, and offer to make dinner so I can mix them into the salad.
To keep Brenda from getting too suspicious, I dress the whole thing up as a romantic affair, as if I am setting the stage for another attempt to give her a child -- candles, wine, a fine quarter of lamb – with the hope that this romantic evening would end with her death.
People will feel sorry for me, and maybe I will get some of the affection they reserve for her.
When I put the plate in front of her and sit down across the table, she notices the mushrooms.
“These aren’t mushrooms, are they, Sweetie?” she asks.
“Yes, they are, Darling,” I said, feeling a lump of fear rising in my throat. Will she suspect the plot? Will she call the police?
“Have you forgotten that I’m allergic to mushrooms?” she asks.
I nod.
“I suppose that ruins dinner,” I say.
“Nonsense,” she says. “I can enjoy myself just sitting here watching you. Go ahead and eat.”
But by this time, I’ve lost my appetite.
If not poison, then I have to use a gun, which I purchase on the street in New York and hide in my brief case until I get home.
I feel like there is a time limit and that if I don’t kill her soon, my life will be completely absorbed by hers and I’ll cease to exist.
But to shoot her outright will not work. I need an excuse. I needed to catch her in the arms of another man.
Unless I can find another man, no one will believe I am justified.
People will have to witness her adulterous behavior.
But who can I get to play the role of lover?
Carl comes to mind. Didn’t he say he would give his teeth for a woman like Brenda? I figure he’ll give a lot more if my plan works.
Carl is perfect since he is well known for his womanizing and other marital problems.
I invite Carl to dinner one night when I know his wife is at her mother’s in New Jersey for the week.
Then, I ask if he can take my wife shopping in the village the next day and after that, I tell them both I have to work at the office over the weekend, but wouldn’t want Brenda to miss the village dance, and ask Carl to take her, which he reluctantly does.
That night I am outside the house when the lights go on and I know Carl has brought her home. I charge in, with my pistol, and yell “Now I’ve caught you two…” but stutter to a stop when I see Carl, Brenda in the company of the local sheriff and his wife.
Six months later when the divorce comes through, I meet Carl on the train to Manhattan again.
He looks puzzled, and asks me, “I don’t understand how you found out about me and Brenda, Steve.”
When I saw jump
So you got ants in your pants, jigging around,
Thinking nothing will move you,
But an old car rumbling down dark roads
Dangling panty hose
There’s always a girl in your back seat
Or on the street, as your cruise by
You slow, window down, until they come around
You polish that car six days a week
To shimmer on the seventh,
Thinking they think good of you
Sitting as you do
Yet, you have ants in your pants
Sweat on your brow
And this consistent idea
That someone might have a bigger
Brighter, more beautiful car
And it’s true!
It’s true!
AD’s Journal:
The letter I always waited for
March 24, 1985 – Passaic
I got her letter in my hand but it isn’t for me.
I suppose stupidity made me long for it for so long, hope against hope that she might want me back when I knew she really wanted another.
I can’t escape the attraction.
Perhaps I know too much about the circle of life she leads, how she always turns to old lovers like a criminal returning to the scene of a crime.
Yet to have her hand me this letter to deliver to Pauly for her hurts more than it has any right to.
We parted over the same issue that New Year’s Eve when I refused to take her to see the band because I knew she wanted to be with him, and I took too much pleasure in seeing the frustration in her eyes when we sat out the passing of the decade in her parent’s living room, watching the ball fall on Times Square on TV.
My status changed by Easter from lover to ex-lover, and I still ache for her, even if what we had back then was an illusion, she needing me to become something other than what I was.
She wears a mask of career woman when it is not her, another face showing through when she makes love, soft, vulnerable, and it is this face I crave most to see.
She is very conflicted, wanting on one hand to be like her mother, a giving housewife, while hating her mother for being so little in the larger world, a world that undervalues housewives.
She wants one way of life, but is meant for another, and this somehow screws her up inside when she is seeking a mate.
But at this time of year, when Spring springs upon us, she might fall in love with anyone, even me.
Yet the letter she gave to me to give to Pauly says more than she ever said before, more than just the merely flirting she did when we broke up.
Now I am just “one of the boys,” who must live with the idea of what might have been.
Unsealed, the letter allowed me to get an idea of what she wants, and how she still won’t simply come and say it too openly.
She suggested to Pauly that she would be available today and that the three of us might get together somewhere for a chat.
I should have delivered the letter days ago so that he or I could call her to make the arrangements.
But I’ve kept the letter from him and now it is too late to deliver it without having to explain.
Two’s company, three’s a crowd, and I still ponder how she planned to dump me so she might be alone with him.
I want to call her and say “Pauly can’t make it,” and to see if she will see me alone instead.
And though this is the right time of year, it is the wrong season of my life
I’m not willing to endure the pain she when she tells me – ever so politely, “No.”