It was true that I was volunteering at juvie when Dr. Don called me to tell me that, ding dong, the Witch was dead. However, it was not true that this was the first time I learned she was dead. I had already known that fact for a solid hour before he called.
After the lamp debacle, the Witch came back for therapy, since she had no shame and she needed to finish her court-ordered hours. Dr. Don had no choice but to finish up her sessions. He couldn’t tell me about them, but I was certain she was still arriving as usual, screaming at someone on her cell phone, and storming out as usual, screaming at someone else on her cell phone. I knew her usual therapy schedule and how many mandated hours she had left. So on the day of her last session, I decided to drive over, park in the lot across the street, briefly linger, and watch the Witch’s skeletal frame march out of Dr. Don’s building. I saw her staring at her phone and heard her mumbling “Stupid bitch” to someone in her orbit who had to endure her abuse. I followed her to the crosswalk. At any moment she could have lifted her face from her phone screen and noticed that I was standing near her, but she didn’t. It was pouring rain, so fewer people were out. But a smattering of folks huddled under umbrellas waiting for the light to change. The Witch flipped up the hood of her raincoat to keep her already limp hair dry.
A large grocery store chain delivery truck clanged toward us. I had no desire to push her in front of the eighteen-wheeler. That would have been murder. With witnesses everywhere. I wanted something more subtle. I wanted her own behavior to be her demise. If my plan worked, wonderful. If it didn’t, I would let it go, hoping to never see the Witch again. But I had to at least try to fully remove her rotten soul from this planet. I had to try and give karma a push in the right direction.
The timing had to be just right. A few seconds before the truck was going to drive past us, I stood shoulder to shoulder with the Witch. I then stepped off the curb, into the street. She sensed the movement forward and stepped off the curb as well, never once taking her eyes off her cell phone. I quickly stepped back, onto the safety of the curb. It wasn’t until she heard a deafening honk and screeching of overtaxed brakes that she looked up. Horror on her face as she saw she was standing in the middle of the street, the truck’s shiny wet metal grille just inches from her witchy nose. Evelyn W. was truly present for maybe the first time in her life. Present in the moment right before she got hit, broken, smushed, dragged, and killed. I looked away. I didn’t need to see the final carnage. I walked back to my parked car, contented, feeling as though I had done a good deed, and went to my internship bettering the lives of juvenile delinquents.
The truck driver was cleared of all wrongdoing. Witnesses stated that the woman just stepped right into oncoming traffic, not paying attention at all. There was no way the driver could have stopped in time. Especially with the streets being slick from the rain.
“Do you know this woman?” Detective Jackson asked.
To deny I did would have been asinine. “Yes. And to say anything further would break doctor-patient confidentiality.”
Detective Jackson accepted this response way too easily. He moved his gaze away from Evelyn W.’s photo and placed his massive hand again on Jason’s photo. Thump, thump. Tap, tap. I realized then that like a game show, the wheel spun with possibilities, but there was really only one place for it to land and actually matter. The Witch was merely a distraction. The tactic of ending on her was to make me dizzy, then loop back to the real prize, which was Jason.
The detective said, “I’ve been married over twenty years. Not to the same woman, but it all adds up. So I know it can be a frustrating institution. Day in and day out.” He looked right at me, eyeballs to eyeballs. I often do this when I’m in a session. To connect and to filter out the white lies and self-sabotage and self-aggrandizing. So I looked right back, sure not to glance away or flutter my lashes too much.
He continued, “I’m sure you had a nice wedding. They always feel so optimistic.”
“Yes, we did.”
“Why was your mother-in-law not invited?”
“Jason did not want her there.”
“Fair enough. She was also not welcome at his funeral, is that right?”
I couldn’t piece together why any of this was of consequence. And then I remembered his tactics. These were all fake questions. More meaningless, prizeless stops on the wheel. I looked at the detective calmly. Hiding the fury behind my auburn eyes.
And then he said, “Tell me, Ruby Simon, did you ever wish your husband was dead?”
Roman spoke again, crisp and clear. “We are happy to cooperate, but I don’t think that is an appropriate question for my client. We’ll be going now.”
What an idiotic question. Of course I had wished for Jason to be dead. Every now and again. What wife hasn’t had that fantasy creep in? I liked the countertops of the kitchen to be totally free of clutter, but he liked to have the blender, the toaster, his protein powder, various water bottles, a canister of cooking utensils, the spice rack, everything and anything we might possibly use at some point in our lives out all the time. I knew this about him from the minute I first stepped into his condo and looked at his kitchen. So it wasn’t a surprise to me, but it was grating. Clutter, clutter everywhere.
In the time between Jason immediately falling asleep at night and the twenty minutes to an hour it would take me to drift off, my mind raced with scenarios. I would sometimes imagine him dying, in some vague way, painlessly and quickly, of course, and how I would immediately clean the kitchen counters and clear out his side of the closet and have so much more space and I would keep things perfectly tidy. And no more shoes by the door. The thought of that alone soothed me like mint tea with honey.
The antique marble-topped dresser on my side of the bedroom had exactly nothing on it. The sparseness pleased me, knowing everything was put away. In its place. The dresser on Jason’s side of the bedroom had important items on it like test strips and packets of sugar goo. But it was also cluttered with books he pretended to want to read, baseball caps, random quarters, single socks, and old paper receipts dredged out of jean pockets. He was a grown man; he had the right to have his side of the bedroom just as he wanted it. I knew this. Because of years of therapy, because of practicing being rational, and because Ellie told me in no uncertain terms not to micromanage him. Alisha too encouraged me not to oversee and control Jason’s space. My way was not right, and his way was not wrong. We were merely different. Which is what makes marriage so beautiful. Loving another person not for their sameness, but for the oppositeness.
At times Jason and I compromised to the point that we were both unhappy. That is marriage. He wanted black square tiles for the kitchen backsplash. I wanted lavender mosaic tiles. So we got white subway tiles. And we both vaguely didn’t like them. I always thought the Julia Tuttle Causeway was fastest. He liked MacArthur. So we often found ourselves taking Venetian.