The Oleander Surprise

The Oleander Surprise

Nobody believed in me. That was their first mistake. Their second mistake was not to believe my words, to take my threat as a joke. I couldn’t be serious, right? No way would I murder my husband. Not Becky Graham, goody two-shoes, daughter of a Church of the Nazarene preacher. Baptized at ten, sanctified at sixteen, safely married at eighteen, mother of twin girls at twenty-two.

What they didn’t know, what they couldn’t see, was the fear I lived through daily. Living with Jim was like walking a tightrope over a flaming pit. Even when he was happy, I couldn’t relax. The slightest thing—laughing too loudly, paying too much attention to the babies—could set him off. Once he started raging, there was no stopping him.

I suppose I could consider myself lucky. Other wives in my situation would be wearing dark sunglasses to conceal black eyes, or enduring long-sleeved dresses in the heat of summer to cover up bruises. Jim never left bruises, except on my soul. His words left red welts on my ego. And occasionally he would push me onto the bed and rip off my clothes, shouting I was a whore for other men but cold as ice to him.

I endured this treatment for the first two years of the twins’ lives. I realized that as my precious baby girls got older, they would think it was normal for a husband to treat his wife as a plaything to be smashed. Even worse, I feared Jim might start mistreating them. Already he was making snide remarks about how stupid and useless they were. Didn’t he realize they were just two? What did he expect?

Before the twins were born, I tried to talk him into seeing a marriage counselor. That time, he pushed me to the floor and stood over me, threatening I might never walk again if I persisted down that road. Sobbing, I promised never to bring it up again. But I knew I had to do something.

My parents didn’t believe me. Around my father especially, Jim was an icon of holiness. He quoted scripture, prayed with my father, and offered to teach Sunday school for the first-graders. Maybe my father wondered if my descriptions of Jim’s behavior had a grain of truth in them, since he refused his offer to teach Sunday school. Jim accepted his refusal with grace, but later he accused me of poisoning my father against him. I put my hands in front of my face as he yelled at me, his spittle showering my palms.

I hoped my mother would believe what I told her. I so much wanted her to step in to help me, or at least give me the benefit of the doubt, but she was also won over by Jim’s charm. When I tried to tell her about his cruelty, she would shake her head and ask, “Do you have bruises? Does he hurt you?”

“No, he’s careful not to let anything show. But he’s mean to me and the girls, just about all of the time. It’s hell living with him.”

“Becky, hon, don’t use that word. It’s not becoming for a lady.”

Friends, you might ask? Wasn’t there someone I could confide in? No, Jim made sure I didn’t have friends of my own. We were occasionally invited to the homes of two or three other families, but he never gave me permission to talk privately with another woman. And yes, I do mean that word “permission.” Jim wanted to be in control of my every move. Just to make sure, he would take my phone and car keys whenever he was away. Since he worked as an accountant in his upstairs office, that was not often. But God forbid we would have an emergency in his absence.

I marked on the calendar the day the girls would turn three. I figured by then they would both be potty trained, and so when I fled with them, I wouldn’t need to worry about diapers. But then I started thinking. Why should I be the one to leave?

I told my parents Jim would be leaving soon, even though I had no idea how I would arrange his departure. I told them I wasn’t sure if, or when, he would return. My father was shocked, my mother heartbroken. Both of them suggested it was up to me to keep the marriage together, for the sake of the babies. I tried again to describe Jim’s cruelty, and my fear he would soon extend that cruelty to the girls. They didn’t believe me. Neither did they believe in my ability to survive without a husband. “You’ll be on the streets,” my mother said. “A woman without a man is like a tree without fruit,” my father added. “You’ll just blow over in the first high wind.”

Somehow it never occurred to either of them that as my parents, they could provide me with some level of security, of protection. No, they made it clear I was on my own and making a foolish mistake. I didn’t have what it takes to be independent. That’s why I had gone directly from the shelter of their house to Jim’s house. For everyone’s sake, but especially my own, I needed to stay there. I needed to be taken care of.

I even told them I was so desperate I was daydreaming of ways to kill Jim. They thought

I was joking. “Grow up,” my father said. “Good try,” my mother added. “You can’t be serious.”

I began reading murder mysteries to collect ideas about how I could do away with my husband. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to know Jim policed my reading as well, but it never crossed his mind I might be mining those plots for useful tips. I would sometimes think of the oldies song “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover” and replace the words with “Fifty Ways to Kill Your Husband”—trip wire on the stairs, poison in his food, hunting accident, no brakes on a winding road, overdose, allergic reaction, knife in the back. Problem was, I didn’t want anything too bloody, and I didn’t want to get caught.

In fact, what I really wanted was for Jim to change. For that to happen, though, I probably needed a fairy godmother. Jim put on a good show during the year we dated—polite, respectful, solicitous of my wants and needs—but even then I should have spotted signs of his true personality. The time I accidentally splattered his shirt with mud in my parents’ driveway and he flew into a five-minute rage, for which he never apologized; the moments he enjoyed watching me squirm as he held me briefly underwater in our neighborhood pool in Florida. He relished the sense of overpowering me, while I dismissed it then as just a bit of boyish fun. At our wedding, he deliberately arrived late, laughing when he saw the look of raw relief on my face. “Thought you were the jilted bride, eh?” he asked later. “I did consider it.”

Now it was my turn to get the upper hand, not just for my sake but for the safety and sanity of our daughters. I finally came up with a solution. I joined the local Gardening Club. Jim was not happy about this, as the meetings and the work involved took me out of his orbit, but he allowed me to join because my mother was also a member.

Inspired by Agatha Christie, at my first club meeting I suggested we plant oleander, making sure to insist we locate the plants far away from children and pets. My mother, also an Agatha Christie fan, went even further and suggested the club plant a “Christie garden” to include plants like foxglove and hemlock as well. The club’s president realized we had come up with a fundraiser idea, especially if we joined forces with local book clubs and libraries.

It took time, but in the Treasure Beach area of Florida where we lived, plants grow quickly. Several months after our planting and landscaping, we presented to the public an acre of fenced private land as the Christie garden. We designed metal signs to identify poisonous species, with larger plaques explaining their dangers and mentioning novels or true court cases involving their use. Children were allowed in under strict supervision, but our primary guests were members of various book clubs and writing groups. Sisters in Crime, a national organization for mystery writers, even featured us in a podcast.

What no one knew, of course, is that I was working in the garden to slip trace amounts of oleander into Jim’s morning coffee. To counteract the bitter taste, I added more of his favorite Starbucks creamer. Once or twice he complained his coffee didn’t taste right, and then I would back off for a while. On those mornings, he not only complained but went on to list all my deficiencies as a cook and a wife. That made me feel justified to continue with my experiment.

As time went on, I increased the amount of oleander ever so slightly. Jim began to feel dizzy and nauseated. A few mornings, he vomited after breakfast. I teased him that perhaps he was pregnant. His symptoms were the same as mine during my first trimester with the twins, when he had shown me scant sympathy. Surprisingly, he didn’t snap at me. Instead, he conserved his energy and worried about what might be happening in his body.

I suggested we consult a doctor. Dr. Long, our primary doctor, couldn’t detect a cause but ordered blood work. I, of course, backed off on the oleander until Jim’s blood work came back. The doctor was mystified and suggested we take a conservative approach, just wait to see if his symptoms changed or worsened.

I could see that for once, Jim was the anxious one in our marriage. Since I now had the upper hand, it was easier for me to be kind. I asked him every morning how he felt, made sure he was hydrated and eating healthily, and in general became a more caring wife. I’ve heard that the opposite of love is fear. I realized my marital experience was proving that observation—when I was afraid of Jim, I couldn’t love him. Now that I knew he should be afraid of me, I could relax, open my heart a tiny bit.

My parents sensed a change in me, too. My mother was proud of my initiative with the Christie garden; my father had to admit I was holding up well taking care of Jim’s health and the twins’ constant needs. They quit worrying about whether my marriage was breaking apart and instead helped me to keep it together by coming by more often, babysitting, and talking to me (finally) like an adult.

I continued to put traces of oleander in Jim’s coffee, but intermittently now rather than every day. The space between doses grew gradually larger, until finally I conceded I was no longer invested in killing Jim. He had turned into a keeper.

At Christmas that year, Jim seemed like a different person. He believed God had healed him from a mysterious illness, and he was thankful for his health and his family. He still had some rough edges—I walked on eggshells whenever something didn’t go as it should—but I escaped his constant belittling. He played with the girls, he no longer took away my phone and car keys, and life was good.

Then on Christmas Eve, we had a showdown. The girls were asleep, or pretending to be asleep so that Santa Claus would not skip our house. Jim was in our finished attic, putting together a dollhouse to put under the tree for Christmas morning. I was in the kitchen icing cookies, unaware that upstairs, Jim had happened upon the diary where I kept track of his oleander doses.

I heard his footsteps thundering downstairs. Thankfully, he remembered to keep his voice down so the girls wouldn’t wake up. He held the open book in front of my face and demanded, “What is this? You were poisoning me!”

The “old me” would have melted at his feet and begged for understanding. But the new me stood up to him.

“No, you have it backwards, Jim. You were poisoning me with your criticisms and your threats.”

“I never hurt you,” he said.

“No, not physically, or at least not much. But you hurt me so much, more than you’ll ever know, in my spirit, where no one could see the bruises but I felt them every day. I didn’t know what to do.”

“So you decided to poison me?”

“Just a bit.” I realized how ridiculous that sounded. “I mean—I just wanted to slow you down a bit. The oleander relaxed you. You have to admit our lives have improved since then.”

“You could have killed me!”

“I could have, but I didn’t. You poisoned our life together. I put us back in balance.”

He glared at me. “I could report you to the police.”

I stayed calm. “You could, but what would that accomplish?”

He stared at me silently. I could see he was thinking about what I had said and reflecting on his various paths of action. At last he took a deep breath and spoke quietly. “Okay, let’s make a deal. You won’t work at the Christie garden any more, no more oleander or whatever else you have access to there, and I won’t turn you in. But I’m keeping this book. If you try anything like this again, you’ll be talking to the police.”

I nodded. “But let’s also make a deal not to hurt each other anymore, all right? We’ve had a good life during the past year. And our babies deserve a happy home to grow up in.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.” He put down the book, reached for me, and said, “Merry Christmas, Becky.” As he leaned in for a kiss, he whispered, “I do love you. And if I have to pick my poison, I prefer mistletoe to oleander.”