Prize-Winning Chili

Valentine’s Day had come on a Sunday; Jenna heard sleet spitting at her kitchen window as she coarsely chopped onions and green peppers, adding them to the cubed chuck roast browning in her big sauce pot. She gave everything a stir after adding a big spoonful of minced garlic from the jar from the fridge; the aroma drew her husband to the kitchen.

“Whatcha cookin’ Babe?” Frank drew up behind her to give Jenna a hug; she pulled away to put the minced garlic back in the fridge.

“Thought I’d get a chili started for the race.” The Daytona 500 would be starting that afternoon.

“Well don’t put any sugar in it!” he puffed himself up at her, instantly imposing for no reason as usual. Not once in ten years, since the first and only time he had ever tried her prize-winning chili did she ever put sugar in his chili after that. Or corn. Or any other bean besides dark red kidney beans.

She was using cubed chuck roast instead of ground beef in her chili that day; she knew Frank would complain about how the meat, though tender as pot roast that has simmered most of a day, would collect between his teeth. Jenna knew she would find used toothpicks stuck to her kitchen counter with dried tooth crud by the end of the day in protest. She had only made chili a handful of times in the ten years since Frank moved into her house, had made it the way he liked it: greasy and ordinary.

A few years earlier, Jenna had dared make herself a small pot the way she liked it, dividing out some meat base from the main pot to a smaller saucepan before adding seasonings.

“Makin’ some of your ‘Prize-Winning Recipe’?” Frank shook his shoulders back and forth as he said this in falsetto, a sneer on his face.

“I thought I’d make a little bit the way I like it for once,” she had replied without looking at him, reaching towards the spices she had set out.

“But then I’ll have less leftovers!” he whined.

Jenna had looked at her husband in disbelief. “I can add a can of crushed tomatoes if you like.”

“Well what good would that do? You’re stealing half the meat!”

“How ‘bout if I add some hamburger to yours, then?” Jenna pulled a tube of ground beef out of the fridge, adding half the roll to Frank’s portion of chili, grease puddling the pan almost immediately. Jenna would have to take an extra step to drain the grease before adding anything else to Frank’s chili, which would still end up greasy from the cheap ground beef he always bought.

Jenna wondered how many years had gone by since that day. Less than five years, more than two…those handful of years with Frank a blur since realizing he had to go; he had worn out his welcome at her house.

Once upon a time, Jenna had thought it was a cool thing she had won prizes at the annual cook-off, a fundraiser organized by the local volunteer fire department of her semi-rural township, winning not once but four years in a row with her Sweet and Sultry recipe. She won second prize in the People’s Choice Best New Entry the first year she entered, and honorable mentions each year after that until the year she hooked up with Frank when he, of course, had decided to crash her party.

They’d only been on one date prior to Jenna looking up to see Frank standing in front of her chili booth; she was excited and pleased he had shown up to see her! Frank had wished Jenna ‘Happy New Year’ on Facebook that year; she had remembered him from high school back in the Eighties, so started a message conversation that led to a date.

On their first (and only) date, Frank suggested they meet at the Hot Cocoa Hut at the winter festival and go sled riding. The day was sunny and magical; the sky was an unbelievable neon blue and the snow sparkled like sugar crystals everywhere she looked. After spending a few hours on the sled riding hill, they found themselves at the warming hut near the parking lot as dusk was seeping into the sky.

“I had so much fun today!” Jenna could feel herself glowing, “Thanks so much for getting me outta the house today!”

“I had fun, too!” Frank drew Jenna into his arms and kissed her on the lips, hugging her hard and quivering. It was a nice kiss, though Jen thought the hug was a little desperate feeling. They kissed again in the parking lot before going their separate ways.

And there he had been, Prince Charming handing her a ticket for a bowl of her Sweet and Sultry chili she had told him about on their date. It was supposed to be an endearing moment.

Frank waited a few minutes as his Styrofoam bowl of chili cooled down, then scooped a big mouthful which he loudly spat out on the floor of the fire hall.

“You put sugar in it!” he yelled as he hurled the rest of the bowl into the trash. “Why didn’t you tell me you put sugar in it?” All eyes in the fire hall were looking at them.

“Um, my sign does say it’s ‘Sweet and Sultry,’” Jenna had stammered.

“Whatever,” Frank said as he stormed out of the event, all eyes following him.

Jenna hadn’t won any prizes for Sweet and Sultry that year. She had regained her composure from Frank’s dramatic public display and exit rather quickly but could not help but notice as the day wore on her table was not that popular. People were not even sampling her product, even though au jus cup-filled samples from every booth had been included in the ten-dollar patron fee; only a few people had traded in one-dollar bowl tickets, too. Jenna’s eyes were stinging with tears when she packed up her chili booth at the end of that day, her big stock pot still more than half full. She had thought about pitching the chili into the dumpster but didn’t want to waste the food. It ended up going out with her trash two weeks later anyway.

Everything shut down after that due to COVID, and Jenna somehow ended up married to Frank the following year. He had shown up at her house with pizza, flowers and apologies for being rude; she let him in instead of slamming the door in his face.

Jenna had planned on dividing her meat base mixture between two pans once browned and caramelized but at the last minute, she decided to make an entirely separate chili for Frank and turned off the flame beneath what was to become “her” chili.

She plopped a pound of ground beef into another big saucepan, chopping the log roll into little pieces with a flat wooden spatula; the layer of crumbled meat pooled up with grease and began simmering. She peeled and chopped another onion, adding it to Frank’s chili with a few handfuls of frozen chopped green pepper; Jenna had used both fresh ones in the other chili.

Twenty minutes later, it was ready to be strained of its grease and finished. Jenna added cans of rinsed dark red kidney beans and tomato puree, followed by a packet of chili seasoning. Once everything was warmed through, it was finished; Jenna lidded the pan and put it in her warmed oven.

She had turned the heat back on under her meat base mixture, adding crushed tomatoes that hissed when they hit the pan; fragrant steam kissed her face. She smiled to herself as she tapped in a small can of drained corn after that.

Rinsing pinto beans in a colander in her sink, Jenna turned around to see Frank standing there with a scowl on his face.

“Why’d you put corn in the chili? You know I don’t like it that way!”

“Oh my God, will you calm down. Look…” Jenna opened the oven door with flourish, “I made you a whole pot of chili just for you! Nice and greasy and ordinary, just like you like it!” She finished the sentence in her own falsetto (with fake southern dialect) and batted her eyes at him.

“Why do you gotta be such a bitch?”

“Why do you gotta be such a big baby?” Jenna calmly replied, piercing him with eye contact. He stomped away with a retort, something about how she always puts him down.

She gently folded the pinto beans into the chili pot just starting to bubble and noticed out her kitchen window the sleet had become swirling snowflakes. Jenna had not planned on murdering her husband in the beginning; it was more like she was open to the idea of letting him die of natural causes. Frank was a middle aged, heavy-smoking obese man who never went to the doctor; the odds were good, she had thought, she’d simply be widowed sooner than later.

She had spoken with a divorce attorney five years into their marriage, spent a hundred dollars to discover it would have cost thousands of dollars to get rid of Frank the “right” way; attorney fees would be at least five thousand and she would have to give Frank at least ten thousand dollars outright, his “share” of half the value of the improvements since he moved in over what she had paid for the house, which Jenna felt was surely debatable as she had gotten a really good deal on the purchase. Frank did everything half-ass with the cheapest materials he could find; if anything, he had devalued the property since moving in.

And he knew the marriage had been over for years but refused to leave; Jenna had moved out of the bedroom after talking to that divorce attorney. Frank had refused to give her money towards the bills unless she moved back in, living all the years since like a belligerent teenager in her home, only buying food for himself and spending the rest of his money on who knows what; he had a pretty good paying job, too, as a welder at one of the factories in town.

He would leave “voluntarily” if she paid him twenty thousand dollars, he had told her once during an argument. She replied she’d rather hand the money over to an attorney and take her chances in front of a judge that might not think he deserved anything.

That had shut him up for a while.

But none of that mattered anyway, Jenna thought. She had no way to pull the money together to divorce Frank; her credit was shot from barely keeping up with the bills.

Because Frank wouldn’t help her with the bills.

Jenna had only decided that morning the day had come she was going to finally set herself free from the squatter in her home.

She turned her attention back to her pot on the stove; the first thing she did was empty a packet of chili seasonings into her brew; it would give her chili hints of cumin and the right amount of salt she never got right on her own. She added a tablespoon of cocoa then a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, a trick she learned back in the Eighties from the Frugal Gourmet cooking show, the “Aztec Chili” episode. Her brown sugar had hardened solid as a rock so she broke off about a cup of pieces, swirling them into her cauldron of goodness.

Now to finish Frank’s chili, she thought to herself; it was missing its last ingredient which was on a shelf downstairs. Jenna quietly opened the door outside her kitchen that led to the basement where a canning kitchen buried under layers of dust waited quietly to be resurrected.

She had discovered the little red and white bottle of Black Leaf 40 at an estate sale the previous summer; the forty percent nicotine pesticide had been off the market for many years, but Jenna knew all about it from gardening with her grandmother when she was a teen.

Nicotine was a good pick to poison Frank with; he was a heavy smoker after all and it would be easy to believe a fat, middle-aged man who never went to the doctor would suffer a heart attack. There would not be an autopsy. Probably not, Jenna thought, they would not have any reason to. There was no evidence whatsoever she had been planning his demise for many years and was careful not to ever look anything up on her computer that would reveal any bad intentions towards Frank; she just gleaned as much as she could from binge watching true crime shows. Even if they did run some blood tests or something, she thought, all they’re going to find is nicotine that’s already there.

Jenna caught her breath at the top of the stairs; Frank was standing there.

“Whatcha got there, Babe?” Jenna really hated it when he called her that.

“Um,” she stammered, “just some vanilla extract from the canning kitchen.”

“Adding that to your ‘Prize-Winning Chili’?” No taunts in falsetto this time, no mocking shoulder swings, just a smirk on his face.

He had turned out to be such an asshole.

“Hey, your chili’s ready; want some? Mine still needs to cook a few hours.” Jenna shoved the pesticide bottle with the clutter on her counter, grabbing a stoneware bowl.

“Sure, Babe!” Frank grabbed her, kissing Jenna on the lips and she let him, even kissed him back, a deep, passionate kiss she knew would give him an erection, and give him hope she might move back into the bedroom where he could pressure her for sex on a frequent basis, having temper tantrums if he’s turned down.

Jenna ladled Frank some chili, handing it to him with a spoon and a napkin. He disappeared back to the living room after grabbing the parmesan cheese and a tube of Ritz crackers; the race had begun sometime earlier, but Jenna had not been paying attention.

She emptied the pesticide bottle into his chili, gently stirring and blending, then rolled up the bottle in a plastic grocery bag. She did not throw it into her trash can but shoved it under her sink amidst the floor cleaners and bug sprays. Jenna hoped the flavor of Frank’s chili would not change too much, she had thought as she washed her hands, but Frank didn’t seem to notice after he had made his way to the kitchen for another serving.

Less than an hour after eating his second bowl of (now tainted) chili, but before Frank finished a third, Jenna noticed him making his way to the upstairs bathroom; he preferred the second-floor commode for bowel movements because it was taller.

The house was quiet except for the race playing to an empty room. Too quiet, Jenna thought; he must be sitting on the toilet. She didn’t think Frank would succumb to her efforts right away; she figured he would just get sick with mild flu symptoms but would keep eating the chili anyway, and the heart attack would come within a few days. Jenna did not expect almost immediate results and jumped at a sound she first thought was an explosion but was her husband’s three-hundred-pound body smacking down to the bathroom floor.

“Frank?” Jenna called up the stairs but did not go running to him. She heard him yelling expletives, then bumping, and thumping around for a few minutes, then quiet. Creeping up the stairs, a smell hit her at the landing. Shit? Puke? Both?

There was Frank splayed face down on the bathroom floor, sweatpants around his ankles. Vomited chili was all around his head and chunks had stuck to his hair; red and pimpled butt cheeks covered in feces crowned the mess. Jenna was pretty sure he was dead but waited a few minutes to see if Frank would take a breath but he didn’t; she went back down to her kitchen after closing the bathroom door to contain the stench.

Her chili was finally ready; the cubed chuck was tender as pot roast simmered most of a day. Jenna grabbed a clean ladle, serving herself a generous portion of her ‘Prize-Winning Sweet and Sultry’ chili, setting the stoneware soup bowl on the counter to cool.

She turned to Frank’s chili; a puddle of grease had collected in the center. She wouldn’t normally dump such a mess down her disposer but decided to make an exception; she would be sure to give the disposer a white vinegar and boiling water treatment later.

The pan from Frank’s chili, the ladle, bowl and spoon that he had used that day were washed, dried and put away. As an afterthought, Jenna filled another clean bowl with her chili, dumped the chili back into the pot, and put the bowl in the sink without rinsing it off, just like Frank would have done with his finished bowl.

If he were alive.

Satisfied, Jenna took her bowl and spoon to the living room, shaking parmesan from the coffee table lightly on her chili. She had sampled the chili in the kitchen of course, but actually sinking her spoon into a bowl of it that moment gave her a happiness and contentment she hadn’t felt in a long time.

She got up to get herself a second helping, almost forgetting she needed to call emergency services for her dead husband upstairs. The race was in its final leg; only twenty laps left to go out of the two hundred laps of the race. Perfect timing, she thought. Jenna figured most of the volunteer emergency service people had also been watching the race all day; they would take forever to get to her house.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Jenna!” she said aloud to herself.

She filled her bowl to let it cool.