Andrew Shaw: $20 Lust

I found a few more objections and Strom found a few more answers for them. It was no contest — he knew what he was talking about and I didn’t, and the more we talked the more I started to realize it. When I left his office I headed for the Times Building, found Hanovan and told him I was leaving. He didn’t seem surprised; Strom must have filled him in. He told me he’d have a job for me anytime, shook my hand, and left me alone while I cleaned out my desk.

Then I found a relatively trustworthy real estate agent named Greg Cabot, listed my house with him, signed a bunch of papers without reading them, and went back to the house.

Inside it, I smelled her again. It made things just that much more difficult.

I packed a suitcase. I took along some clothes, a toothbrush, and nothing much else. The suitcase was a small one to begin with and I still couldn’t manage to fill it up.

So I took her picture along. It was the wrong thing to do, and I realized as I packed it that it was the wrong thing to do, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. I packed it, locked the suitcase, heaved it into the backseat of my car and drove to the railroad station where I checked the suitcase in a locker.

Then I drove to the nearest used car lot and sold them my car. It broke my heart to do it but I forced myself. I liked that car. It wasn’t much according to the Madison Avenue tastemakers — just a Plymouth convertible five years old with the paint job starting to go. But it was made when they were still trying to make cars that would last instead of playing idiotic games with horsepower and tailfins. The upholstery was good imitation leather and the pickup was impressive. I loved that car. Mona had liked it too — liked to ride in it with the top down and the wind tossing her long yellow hair to hell and gone.

The dealer gave me a lousy two-fifty for it.

I hiked back to the station, reclaimed my suitcase and caught the next train for New York. The train took a long time getting there, stopping at various whistle stops to pick up the milk and get rid of the mail. I chain-smoked, ate a half-million tasteless ham-and-Swiss sandwiches, and remembered things that Dr. Strom had told me to forget.

When the train shuddered to a stop in Penn Station I took a temporary room in a cheap hotel in the Times Square area and unpacked. While I was putting my clothes in the dresser with the cockroaches I found the picture of Mona. I stared at it for an hour, maybe longer.

It all came back, of course. Dr. Strom would have bawled hell out of me for it and he would have been right, but Dr. Strom was many hundred miles away and I didn’t have him to straighten me out. All I had was the hotel room with its four cold walls, the bed with squeaking springs that reminded me of a motel room where Mona and I had made the walls ring with bed-squeaking. And, of course, I had the picture of Mona. My Mona.

God knows how or when the rift started. My work demanded enough of my time and interest so that I probably never saw the gap begin. Then, when it started widening, I found other things to worry about. I attributed the tension to a batch of convenient scapegoats — job pressure, end of a two-year honeymoon, Mona’s desire for a child and our inability thus far to conceive one. More and more often we were staying on our own sides of the big double bed, talking less to each other and, evidently, loving each other less.

Then one night I came home to her and she was packing a suitcase. I looked at her, unable to think of anything clever to say, and she told me quite calmly that she was leaving me.

I don’t remember what I said.

She told me his name, which I have since forgotten, although it turned up in the newspaper articles later. The Times didn’t carry the story out of some obscure loyalty to me but the Courier plastered it all over page one. But that part comes later.

She was in our bedroom, stuffing the last piece of clothing into her little suitcase and fastening the lid. The big double bed was all neatly made and the unfunny hilarity of that fact struck me — it was just like Mona to make the bed carefully even though she never intended to sleep in it again. She was a meticulous housekeeper, a better-than-average cook, a tigress in bed with the lights out.

Now she was leaving me.

She was saying something but I wasn’t listening anymore. I was looking at her. I can still remember how she was dressed — stockings and high heels, a very plain brown skirt the color of good chocolate, a canary yellow sweater that buttoned up the back. Her hair was falling free and it looked longer and yellower than ever.

She was a big woman. I’m somewhat better than six feet tall and when she wore heels her nose was level with my mouth. And she had the shape to take care of her height.

She went on talking but I still wasn’t listening.

I grabbed her. She tried to twist away from me but I didn’t let go of her. I wasn’t thinking anymore, just acting in a combination of instinct and self-preservation.

I slapped her and she loosened up. I ripped her sweater and all those buttons popped down the back of it like a row of dud firecrackers. I broke the catch on the chocolate brown skirt and tore it off of her. I got rid of the bra and panties. I let her keep the stockings because they didn’t get in my way.

I shoved her right down on top of that perfectly made bed and got my own clothes off and tumbled on top of her. She wasn’t struggling any more. I think that stopped the minute I ripped her sweater. She was just lying on her back with no expression whatsoever on her beautiful face, lying prone like a sack of flour, a broken doll, a corpse.

I raped her. Coldly and furiously, quickly and savagely. It was not good for me and, of course, it was not at all good for her. It had a beginning and a middle and an ending and then all at once it was over and I had a sickening taste in my mouth.

I rolled away from her, unable to look at her, unable to think about anything at all. I tried to stand up but I didn’t make it and I had to sit back down on the bed again. She stood up and began dressing once again. She put on fresh clothes and put the ones I had torn off back into her suitcase. For a long time she didn’t say anything.

Then she said: “I hope you enjoyed yourself, Ted.”

I told her I was sorry. I meant it, too, but somehow it came out sounding sarcastic.

“I’m still leaving, Ted. You can’t stop me.”

And of course she was right. I couldn’t stop her, and so I didn’t try. I let her go and when she was gone I began to cry. I hadn’t cried in years but I cried now. It hurt.

I think I got drunk that night. It’s hard to remember now but that’s probably what I did. And I’m positive I cried some more, and shook, and swore an oath that I would find her and get her back where she belonged if it killed me.

That turned out to be impossible.

A car from the Sheriff’s Office found them the next day. The nameless, faceless bastard who took her away had one of those cute little foreign jobs, a sports model that could take hairpin curves at eighty, only either the car goofed or the nameless, faceless bastard wasn’t much of a driver. At any rate the cute little foreign job missed one of those hairpin curves and did an end-over-end off the side of a convenient cliff.

There was hardly enough left to bury.

And so my wife had left me, and all the oaths in the world would not reclaim her. She was gone, quite irretrievably gone, and there was certainly no way of getting her back.

This time I didn’t cry. This time I simply drank.

So I looked at the picture which I shouldn’t have lugged to New York to begin with, looked at it long and hard for perhaps an hour and thought all the thoughts that Dr. Strom would have disapproved of so violently. After the hour or so had passed I took the picture, kissed it somewhat melodramatically, tore it into a thousand little celluloid threads and flushed them down the ancient toilet in the bathroom down the hall.