The Goode Wife

The Goode Wife

You never kill a person on purpose, at least never, the first time. It is always an accident. An unbelievable, atrocious accident. The first time, of course. Yet maybe it is their eyes, how the dark iris contracts and expands in their final moments. Those eyes that visit you at night. There is no good night’s sleep after the first time you kill a person. Your body — which is tired —exhausted really from the dose of adrenaline that courses through each cell. The immeasurable strength that you suddenly gain. The man who once commented upon your bird-like arms, now lifted from his own weight by your strength. The knife, which he obviously fell into a dozen times, so easily forced behind your bird-like wings, as they accidentally plunged deep within his belly. Even deeper into his left shoulder blade. Bone requires much more strength to penetrate than liver. You now have the strength of an ox with horns shaped like kitchen knives.

You see, it was an accident when I killed my husband. Yet, you know, soaked in a man’s blood, with his dozen knife wounds, no one could ever believe such an accident to occur. You know what you did was an accident, atrocious and unbelievable as it was. He simply fell into it. A person could not say such a thing about a man with a dozen knife wounds. No one could ever believe you.

The man before us, yes, that one on the floor in the kitchen, soaked in a red like gelatin, its viscosity sticking and drying in the summer heat, had accidentally just gone too far. It is legal to hit your wife so many times as you please. It is legal to take a lover of only 18 who you knew as a child. It is all so legal to bend your wife across the dining table, even when she fights and cries and screams for help. It is legal that my arm so accidentally broke while my husband fucked me mercilessly, his eyes bulging as he somehow prevented himself from killing me that evening. I was a flirt, and embarrassment. Unfortunately, the legality of a man slipping and falling into the kitchen knife held in his wife’s hands would be questioned. The knife that still had potato residue licked across its gleaming edges before it sliced into her husband’s internal organs would be tucked away into evidence, and no one would ever believe her. That it was just a slip.

So, the only thing you can do is sit and think after such a trivial accident. As I said, one cannot sleep after their first murder. My formerly oxen arms turned back into their bird-like structure, with hollowed bones; adrenaline faded, and I knew I had to take flight. Obviously, you could never leave a dead man in your kitchen. You cannot see the starch residue that pierced his skin, fat, muscle, and bone, but it is there. Someone, surely a cop, would be able to notice; such a man was killed with a knife that had only moments before been slicing into potatoes. A preparation for dinner and death in the same evening.

No one knows when they are going to die, but I would like to think that in his last moments, Tom Goode, who was no good, knew he was going to die, but of course, by falling into the knife I had held in my hands. He fell about a dozen times. It was tragic.

Thankfully, the man only gurgled. There was not a scream to be heard by our neighbors in our perfect neighborhood. A place where each home was the same, but also different in its own way. The suburbs in the 1950s were the place to be. A place where children rode bikes, and people actually whistled as they walked. Who needed birds when men could whistle while walking along the rows of homes that all looked so the same but yet different. He made a choking sound, really. A choking, gurgling moan as his liver was sliced and his bone marrow leaked, mingling with his blood.

The process of cleaning up a body is long and arduous. The hardest part is digging a grave in your own backyard. It is 1958, and in Bloomfield, Connecticut, everyone was watching. Especially Dorothy, who preferred Gossip over any sleep. Since she sold Mary Kay, she had a tremendous amount of concealer on hand. Dorothy always said that blending it was the most important step.

The front door was not an option. Not for dragging a body, at any time, day or night. Blood would stain the crisp poured concrete, and heavens forbid a blade of grass was ever turned, smushed, or in any way out of order. Bloomfield did not tolerate such things; everything was in uniform, as always. Who wouldn’t want to live here?

Strange how 12 years ago, a blue-eyed boy lured me from California to Connecticut. We were children really. Life was just a game we were playing in, all pretend it was. We pretended very well. This place, where real music could not even venture too, too devilish for the ears of the wives here, portrayed itself like a magazine cover. It was new, and the air of its newness tickled the edges of your nose like cotton candy at the spring fair. Eventually you realize it’s just sugar in disguise. Each house, each flower, so perfectly upright, dancing joyously in the summer sun. Everyone moves to the suburbs of the Northeast in the summer. No one warns you of the bitter darkness of winter. It comes every year.

But alas, the day my blue-eyed boy, now a red-faced man, who once gently touched the bottom of my lip with the tip of his thumb, now lay wide-eyed, irises expanded forever, looking out to the back door where he would soon be buried.

“You are right,” I tell him. “It must be the backyard. You did love it out there, but you know, it’s so sad you never did a day’s work in that yard.” I sipped the scotch I was never allowed. It was good, and I liked scotch. Never really knew the difference from whiskey, but I liked whiskey too. Terrible a woman must be omitted from such pleasures.

“It was all me, all the gardening and mowing. I did all that. And your friends admired you for that garden, as you drank your scotch, looking out at the peonies in the corner. I’m glad you enjoyed it so, because it’s the only place I can take you now.” Another sip, another moment with my husband. “Wow, this scotch really is good. You really do have such taste.”

He did not move, did not breathe, just was there in his silence of death. No longer Tom Goode, just a body of a man, mangled like trash on a busy city street. The crimson hue of his blood now tinted an almost brown color at its edges as it dried across his face. How quickly blood dries. His deadness still such a strange thing to admire, and I admired it so.

“Nothing to say? No comment to add? Hmpf. That is unusual for you. Do you happen to have any cigarettes?” I could always smell them on him. I tapped his pants pockets until I found a silver case. It was brimming full of them. He must have just acquired a new pack on his way home.

I never knew why he tried to hide it. Tom, it was the smell of her sex and the cigarettes in your mouth, and you always thought the pop of a mint would just make it all go away? Silly man. Silly silly boy. Shame you never wanted to share a cigarette in bed with me. Shame you never wanted to share a life with me, only the appearance of one. Built us up like children’s playdough. Funny thing is, playdough eventually hardens if you leave it out too long.

I had to start digging around midnight. Digging a grave while mildly drunk on scotch is the only way to do it, really. It was no good either; I am not a professional gravedigger and frankly do not intend on putting it on my resume either.

There would be no ads saying: Looking for a secretary who can type, has good longhand, a pleasing smile, oh, and can dig perfectly edged graves? Not me, no sir. So, Tom, I am sorry your grave was the oddest of shapes. But your eyes no longer work and I no longer care. It also mostly coned in the middle. I was unprepared for the old tree roots. They were harder to crack than your now middle-aged bones.

By God, you were heavy. My arms, which shook from exhaustion, had to drag your body with your own arms stiffened across your chest. Drag you is what I did, small tugs at times, longer pulls when I could. Ruined my new white sheets for it too. I had only purchased them two weeks ago. Just another thing Tom Goode ruined for me. My life, my resume, my pure cotton sheets. There is nothing glamorous about burying a 6’1 body of lean muscle. All that swimming in the community rec center served you so much that you end up getting killed by a little 5’4 bird with hollow bones and deeply unresolved anger.

I dragged you straight into that hole that looked nothing like a grave, because there was nowhere else to put you. The sheet fluttered around you as you landed, face down. Part of me, in that moment, wished you were alive. Just so you could taste dirt for your final moments. Just so you could feel the earthworms as they ventured across your skin, ready to embrace you into the only fulfilling thing you could ever do, which is turn into dirt. Maybe then, your bones would help become something useful to this earth.

I felt like Mother Nature herself. I felt like a tornado, a hurricane, a force that humans have no business trying to live alongside. I was born again in your death, Tom. I was alive, for the first time in 12 years, since the day you placed your thumb on my bottom lip and tricked me into believing you were a man of your name.

To be honest, the rest of it was easy. Scrubbing floors was something that was of a second nature to me. Like the time you got angry that I made a pot roast twice in one week, and you threw the steaming pot towards me. Hurled it and its boiling contents across 400 square feet of tile. Guts of the roast spilled out across our floor, and I cleaned them up just like I now cleaned up yours. Poetic really.

I used the same sponge, same towels, same bleach mixture, with, of course, added lemon to give it the fresh scent. You had a lot of blood, Tom. So much of it and not one ounce of it possessed any kindness to me. How could you have so much blood and so little heart?

After my shower, I looked at my face in the bathroom mirror. I inspected its every line and dip. I saw how the pores upon the tip of my nose were now larger than they used to be. I squeezed them, wiping away the little white pillage that squirmed from their tiny holes. Reminded me how the worms will soon be squirming into you.

The faint blue bruise that used to be a knot—only a week ago—on my left cheek was still there. I didn’t mind it so much, knowing it would be the last bruise my face would see. The last time I would fake a sickness, or a run-in with the door, the oven, a slip in my favorite heels that were just a bit too tall, and I was a bit too clumsy.

I recited to myself, “Oh yes, you see Tom is away, a last-minute funeral. Oh yes, so sad to hear about his father. A terrible accident it was. I heard he fell.”

I recited over and over to myself until it became true. Then I recited after that, “Sweet Tom is so worried about his mother; he told me to pack everything up and join them. Tom, such a smart man he is, he found a job nearby, and we would be moving in to take care of her. Yes, I know, such a good man. Just like his name.” I touched the edge of my hair, now cleaned and perfected with only a slight curl right at the ends, and I tucked that curl behind my ear. Just a subtle movement, like a warm breeze; I was no longer a storm.

My smile, my tilt of the chin downward, my perpetual shyness that made me seem like the sweet doting housewife I had always been. In my head I played each part. Each word and movement of purpose. They all had value for the finale, the riding into the sunset, for the final goodbyes; I bowed and bowed graciously — Thank you! Thank you! Stage lights out.

Oh, the new flowers? You like them? I just planted them a few days ago. Yes, I wish Tom was here to see them, but he is taking care of his now-lonely mother. And yes, they will soon be someone else’s to love, because I am leaving too. Where too? Oh, yes, she lives in Indiana. Yes, so far, I know. But you know, Tom and I met out west; it’s so beautiful out there. Have you ever travelled to California?

Every question had an answer, every eyelash and dimple had a job to complete. Just one last time, just a few days was all that was needed to pull act two into position. I had to leave quickly, yes, for the sake of Tom Goode’s mother in Indiana. She needed us. She needed Tom, and he was there. Yes, he was there so quickly; we only found out in the middle of the night, and I rushed him to the bus station, because I was a good wife, the Goode wife. From there, he went to the airport. I know, such a lovely man to worry about his mother. Such a good man. So much heart, and so much blood.

I packed the car with all that I could. Everything leftover would be for the new homeowners, as we now did not need so much. They would pronounce oh, how she scrubbed it clean; such a good woman. More women should be like that. Clean and meticulous — not a stone out of place. A woman like that belongs in Bloomfield, Connecticut.

The garden looks more beautiful than ever; it does. The new flower bed I planted in the back — yes, just a few days ago. I garden when I am upset, and boy, I was just so upset to hear about his father’s accident. Tom doesn’t know it, but he helped me with it, in his own way, I suppose. Such a good man to help me with my garden. He sure did love the peonies. Such a tragedy that we had to leave so quickly. I am sure Tom will miss this place, and I? Well, I will be okay. Oh, I will be just fine, you see. Accidents happen; I understand that they are just so unfortunate.

So, after the first time you kill someone, an accident of course, everything becomes more aligned. You start to believe in accidents even if no one would ever believe you that an accident of such proportions could occur. That one man, such a good man, could ever accidentally die by the hand of his good wife.