Quiet, Lateral Violence

I found it in a magazine. It would perhaps enliven the party, and if not, it would certainly draw interest. I clipped a few sprigs of rosemary, took the tops off a few marigolds, and carefully placed the vodka bottle inside the empty milk carton. I slowly filled the carton with water, pausing now and again to place the flowers and herbs in the channel between the bottle and the milk carton's thin waxy cardboard. Gently, gently, I placed the assembly in the freezer. In several hours' time, I would peel the milk carton away, and the vodka would be perfectly chilled, dressed up with flowers and greenery. I would have to keep it in a crystal ice bucket to capture the melting water, but the visual affect would be lovely. Elevated.

"Don't you think tea roses would have been better?" Robert asked. I looked into the garden. The tea roses had faded, and what I now saw were the darkening rosehips.

"I believe the tea roses are past peak," I answered in a monotone. "The marigolds seem to be quite hardy this year, and I'm sure they will be perfect."

I couldn't resist adding. It seemed I always felt the need to have the last word, but so did Robert.

"Have it your way," he said. I didn't rejoin but left the room.

After he left the breakfast table, I went back to the kitchen to begin to prepare dinner. It was early yet, but I made the decision to create an individual dessert for each guest. The space around me filled with the scent of orange, then lemon, then lime as I zested each fruit. I found joyful use in my hands as I rolled fresh cranberries in caster sugar and prepared to roast them on low heat just to the point before the berries would burst. The oven wouldn't get hot enough to caramelize the sugar, and there would be the sweet juxtaposed against the tart. I envisioned the taste and texture on my tongue. Momentarily, I thought about the textbook diagrams of the tongue and which areas of the tongue registered types of taste. Perhaps Robert would taste bitter tonight.

I tempered chocolate in tiny pots, readying everything for a magical pot de creme. I had time to decide. I found a small bit of arsenic. I looked under the sink to find rat poison. I looked in the medicine cabinet and found warfarin, the same active ingredient found in rat poison. It didn't have to be enough to be lethal, but it would promise to make Robert very ill. He would bruise for several days, his gums would bleed, his bloody noses would be bloodier. He would invariably blame it on the changing season and the decreased humidity.

Perhaps I could add something extra to his salad. In the past, I added tiny bits of ground glass, and he found the texture mesmerizing. About a year or two ago, I had taken straight pins from my sewing room and cut them to two millimeters in length, quite small and worked them into a rosehip jelly.

Robert commented, "Dear, I do not think you were successful in removing all the seeds from the rosehips. The experience is quite irritating and itchy."

He was, of course, correct. I did not remove the seeds in order to hide the tips of the straight pins.

Someday, though, I would find the courage to create his perfect, final meal.

***

Sherry had been trying to kill me for years. Her cooking was on another level, and her creativity in lethal food creation made me hard. I never understood why she didn't leave me after the kids left home. Sherry had her own money, much more money than I had. She came from horse people. I met her through the horses.

On a clear Spring day, the air had not yet started to carry the heft of midwestern humidity. The air was still clean and crisp, and the scent of hay and horse manure floated along the edges of sensation. Colleagues and I were touring Kentucky Horse Farm and would follow the visit with a tour of a bourbon distillery. As far as work trips went, this was a trip I was thrilled to have been assigned.

Sherry was brushing her horse when I met her. She was in jeans, turtleneck, loden green barn jacket, Hunter boots, and a corduroy baseball hat. Her long honey hair was secured in a ponytail with what looked like an Hermes scarf. She wasn't in breeches yet, so it was a safe assumption she may not be competing today, but I didn't know so much about her sport to be confident enough to wager I was right.

"Beautiful horse," I said, leaning over the stall railing to get a closer look. "Do you ride her yourself, or are you an owner or trainer?"

She stopped for a moment to look me in the eye, her Southern accent betraying her roots, "I am all things to this horse."

She was all things to her horse. I didn't think I could ever be all things to any thing or any one. What monumental responsibility. What commitment. What pressure. And I had to wonder what it felt like to have that kind of power over another being.

"Are you competing today?" I asked.

"Not today. Tomorrow afternoon," she answered. She stopped brushing the horse to wipe her forearm against her brow. "What time is it?" she asked. "I don't wear a watch when I'm with the horses because the ticking sometimes agitates them."

I didn't mention she could look at her cell phone, however. She asked me a question, which indicated she wanted to continue to converse with me.

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and held it out for her to see,

"2:12 pm," she read from the phone screen. "I guess I'm done for today." She patted the horse's hind quarters, which shone like the darkest winter's night lit with the faintest glimmers of impossibly far away stars.

"I don't mean to keep you," I said. "I just wanted to tell you how beautiful your horse is."

"Thank you," she answered. "Are you here to watch the competition tomorrow?"

"No. Just a work trip. We're going to a distillery in just a bit," I said.

"Do you like bourbon?" she asked, and her right brow raised to match the inflection in her voice.

"Truth be told, I don't know much about bourbon," I answered her, and I let my ignorance show, which was not something I did ever. My intelligence and awareness gave me the upper hand in most things, but here, I acquiesced.

"Let me get cleaned up. I'll take you on a better bourbon tour. You will return to work with more knowledge than you thought possible. What do you say?" she asked. Before I could answer she began speaking again. "I never do this, you understand. I don't talk to strangers, and I certainly don't invite them to come with me to visit one of the best distillers of Kentucky bourbon in the world, but you seem to have a nice way about you."

I nodded.

"Don't prove my instincts wrong," she whispered.

***

Robert came from behind, cinching his arms around my waist and hips. I raised a mug of mulled cider to my lips. I looked out to the white fences that kept the horses contained, kept me contained, kept Robert contained or restrained, kept me retrained. He rested his chin on my shoulder, and I could feel his chest expanding and contracting against my back with each breath he took.

"It's getting cold out," he said.

"It is," I answered. "I can't smell the damp or the decay of the fallen leaves anymore."

I put my mug down on the porch railing and turned in Robert's arms, wrapping mine around his neck. "I do love you, you know."

"I know," he said. "I do love you, too. What will you do, though, one of these days when you successfully kill me?"

"I will mourn you, and I will mourn my success," I said. "Our children will mourn you, and I will mourn their loss, too."

"Can you stop?" Robert asked.

"I can no more stop than you can stop fact-checking and correcting the world. I can no more stop than I can remain hypervigilant that somehow I have gotten something wrong, and you're waiting, gleefully, to tell me what it is. I wait for your commentary either in private or in a public airing. For those reasons, I do not think I can stop myself," I answered.

We looked at each other. Robert tugged at my ponytail gently.

"Do you think you can stop?" I asked.

"Stop what?" he returned.

I gave him a small, sad smile and turned away.

"Look there," he said, pointing out toward the barns. "There's a car pulling up. Are we expecting the kids for dinner tonight, too?"

"No," I said. "I think Charlotte wanted to bring Steffie to see one of the foals while they're still little."

There were flurries in the air that afternoon. Our daughter and grand-daughter came to the house, and I poured each of them a mug of cider and placed one of my special cherry almond sugar cookies on a napkin for each of them.

When they left, larger, thicker flakes began to make touchdown. I returned to the windows periodically to watch the accumulation while I readied the dining room for our dinner party.

With the table laid out, I returned to the kitchen to find Robert taking vitamin K. He must have suspected warfarin or rat poison. Probably for the best. We stood side by side in front of the sink, watching the snow fall and the wind blowing it around in the air, causing it to dance like so many small spirits. We watched the snow for a while longer, watched it hiding the grass, the dirt, the horse dung, the gravel drive leading to our door. The ground wasn't yet cold enough for this snowfall to stick, but while it was coming down, there was grace and violence, and we watched.

After a time Robert said, "You left your pill bottle next to the mortar and pestle."

I patted his hand and leaned into him, "I know. I wanted you to see it."