The Race Had Ended

The volunteer emergency services in Jenna’s semi-rural township took a while to arrive at her house as she expected but two cop cars showed up right away, strobe-lighting the neighborhood with sirens blazing. The light flurries of that afternoon settled into a depressing sleet as two state troopers arrived in separate cruisers, touching base for a moment before swiftly making their way to Jenna’s front door which she opened, standing back to let them in.

“Good Evenin,’ Ma’am; we got a report about a medical emergency at this address?” one of the cops said, a middle-aged and pudgy White man with kind eyes.

“Yes, it’s my husband. I think he had a heart attack upstairs.” Jenna was worried she didn’t sound upset enough for the occasion, “He went up to use the bathroom while we were watching the race, and a few minutes later I heard him fall; shook the whole house!”

Jenna thought she sounded fake; taking a deep breath with the hint of a quiver, she was glad she was naturally nervous around law enforcement, “…and I run upstairs, and he’s dead on the floor.” Jenna pressed her lips together and looked down at her handknit slippered feet.

The trooper that had greeted Jenna turned to the staircase and bounded to the second floor leaping two steps at a time, leaving behind the other trooper, a young black woman who pulled out her tablet and began taking notes.

“About what time did this happen, Ma’am?” Her voice was kind.

“Um,” Jenna stammered, looking at her watch; she hadn’t realized how much time had gone by, “I don’t know exactly; the race had just finished…”

This wasn’t the truth; Frank had had his smack down upstairs when there were still about ten laps left in the race. The Daytona 500 had been playing all afternoon but was over now; it was also Valentine’s Day and Jenna had made chili. She had made Frank his own pot of chili that day, and one for herself as well, though only hers was on the stove by then.

“I’m sorry; I…I wasn’t paying attention to the time,” Jenna forced out, trying to sound believably upset. “we’d eaten some chili ‘bout halfway through the race. The race ended, he went upstairs to take a crap, then boom!”

Trooper Tasha Bryant wrote a few words in her notebook.

“Did you try performing CPR on your husband, ma’am?” the trooper’s eyes were kind.

“I’m not certified, and anyway, it was too late; I could tell by the way he looked” Jenna told her. Trooper Bryant made another notation in her book. She thought it was odd at first that a Boomer woman, part of a generation that’s seen CPR frequently performed on TV and in the movies their whole lives wouldn’t at least try performing CPR on her husband, even if they were not actually certified; 911 operators were even trained to coach people over the phone on how to do it. Tasha made a note to be sure to listen to the dispatch call when she got back to the barracks.

Trooper Demko was coming down the stairs talking into his shoulder mic when the ambulance finally arrived; he met the pair of first responders outside. Tasha directed her attention back to Jenna, who also watched the interaction through the front door.

“C’mon hun, how ‘bout if we sit down,” Tasha gestured towards the couch in the next room; they both sat down, “is there someone we can call for you?”

Trooper Bryant wrote down Jenna’s answers to general questions such as Frank’s age, the condition of his health; he was a heavy-smoking obese man who hadn’t been to the doctor in years. They’d both retired the previous year, Jenna in January, a little over a year ago; he only since July.

During the first six months of her retirement, Jenna was the happiest she’d had been in a very long time; the peace and quiet of her home absent her husband during the day almost made it tolerable to be around him in the evenings.

Frank had wheedled his way into her good graces and moved into her home a decade earlier during the COVID pandemic of 2020, when many people didn’t have their heads on straight. She would remind herself of this when feeling down on herself for letting such an asshole move into and invade her space. Jenna had bought her two-story home from family friends in the neighborhood she grew up in when her daughter was a teen; Geena had moved three hours away to Pittsburgh for art school the summer after graduating and never looked back. Less than two years later, Jenna hooked up with Frank; the next thing she knew, she had a grown-man teenager imbedded into her home like a three-hundred-pound tick with no way to make him leave. Jenna had been a hostage to the situation for exactly ten years when she decided enough was enough.

She had spoken with a divorce attorney a few 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; 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 so Frank had refused to give her money towards the bills unless she shared his bed again, 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 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 deadbeat in her home.

Trooper Bryant was looking at Jenna expectantly, waiting for a response to a question.

“I’m sorry, what did you just ask me?”

“Where do you work, Ma’am?”

Jenna told her she had been working at a plastic container factory until retiring about a year previous, but now just cleaned a couple of banks a few nights a week. Frank had been a welder in a shop and had decided to also retire six months after her as a “surprise.”

Jenna hated surprises.

Trooper Demko appeared in the foyer with one of the First Responders who asked Jenna how she was doing, was she light-headed or anything.

Jenna shook her head. She noticed Trooper Demko had a camera with him; he must have retrieved it from his cruiser.

“The coroner is on his way, Ma’am,” he said, “I need to take some pictures before we move him. I also put a call in to Serv-Pro to clean and sanitize the room. Here’s their number; they’re expecting your call.” Trooper Demko handed Jenna a business card.

Jenna nodded to the man, took the card, then looked down at her feet again.

“Don’t worry, Ma’am,” he said gently, “the expenses to clean up after a death is usually covered under your homeowner’s policy.”

She nodded again. Jenna knew for a fact it was covered but could not have predicted the catastrophic mess upstairs where her husband lay face down on the bathroom floor, sweatpants to his ankles; chili-puke and feces everywhere. She had recently perused the hard copy of the policy, avoiding any activity online that could be misconstrued as planning her husband’s demise. Jenna had learned from binge-watching many hours of True Crime what not to do if you want to get away with murder. First and foremost: Don’t look anything up on your computer!

Trooper Demko went back up the stairs, this time at a normal pace; it only took a few minutes to take the pictures. He also took some pictures in the kitchen.

At Trooper Bryant’s suggestion, Jenna decided to pack a bag and stay at a hotel; she would meet the Serv-Pro people at her house in the morning.

The sleet had turned to snow again, fluffy and swirling around her as Jenna, overnight bag slung on her shoulder, headed towards her minivan in the driveway.