'Til Death

It was a clear, crisp, fall day and Robert Childs was preparing to murder his wife. Of course, the actual killing would not take place at his hands. Not literally. He wasn't deranged or anything. It would look like an accident. It would be an accident. He would simply engineer the accident and in this way absolve himself of enough guilt that he could feel all right about the whole thing in a sensible two to three months. "It could have happened to anyone." He would move on with his life.

It was her spirit that had attracted him in the first place. She was nothing like the other girls at school. They were quiet, coy, meek and easy to impress. He tired of this easily and when, in his third year, she arrived on campus as a first-year student, she caught his attention immediately. He first saw her in a tree near the edge of campus. She had climbed up fifteen feet to where she had seen a cicada land and was attempting to photograph it with a large, very old camera. He watched her at first, amused, as she struggled to maintain a steady position at various angles and soon, unable to contain his curiousity, shouted out to her. She was thoroughly startled and as she whirled to see who had called, snapped several branches and nearly tumbled from her perch. The cicada buzzed off, and as soon as her senses returned she was hauling down the tree trunk, enraged at this senseless character who had scared off her subject. He watched her, mouth agape, as she descended, and was soon alarmed to find himself at the receiving end of a barrage of open-handed fury, her palms beating his arms and chest as she shouted and swore about god knew what. He laughed heartily. And fell immediately.

He was furious when she refused to drop school early to marry him once he had graduated. He told her she was being foolish, that she would never have anything to worry about. He would fully support her and she could spend her days in any way she pleased. She told him how awful it all sounded. She would feel confined, caged, and bound to some Victorian idea of subservient housewifery. That was the moment he knew she had him. She would never be what he wanted her to be and that was exactly what he wanted. So he waited, and then married her and allowed her to work two days a week, insisting that he was deeply concerned with her health, both mental and physical, should she overextend herself. He was concerned with his health, both mental and physical, should she overextend herself. He was concerned that she would begin to outshine him, garner more attention with her outgoing and magnetic character, emasculate him. These were legitimate worries, weren't they? How could a modern man be seen as less interesting, less ambitious, less successful than his wife? As it was, she was starting to irritate him at dinner parties and he became reluctant to entertain guests at all. She was quicker to think of key words during games, she proposed thought-provoking questions at the dinner table, and presented thoroughly sensible opinions on a range of local and global matters. She would flirt. Slowly and steadily his irritation grew into jealousy, and he knew it. Still, he enjoyed her company when they were alone. When her attention was focused on him, and he remembered the day they met and how comical and ineffectual her raging assault had been. The corners of his mouth turned up involuntarily each time he thought of it, and his usual resentment was temporarily suspended.

The plan was simple, and with enough room to fall through that if it did, there would be no suspicion of foul play. It was inspired by an unfortunate event from his childhood. In summers he had worked as a teenager at a filling station at the top of a large hill, over which ran the only load-bearing road through the Green Mountains and into Pittsfield. The road wound down the mountainside, making sharp turns on sometimes impossibly steep inclines. There were occasional automobile mishaps on those curves and once, a boy he knew slid on the gravel and tumbled himself into the ravine below. The filling station was also a weigh station for trucks carrying goods, fuel, lumber, and farm supplies to the towns in the valley, and young Robert would sometimes take bribes from drivers whose brakes didn’t pass the inspection, which was mandatory, before they embarked on their harrowing descent. He kept the memory of these bribes from so many years ago and consistently remembered them as the worst thing he had ever done. Endangering human life for quick cash. Soon he had bought himself the nicest bicycle of any of his friends and he enjoyed the attention it brought him and the fact that it was an object of great envy. He had consented to let the bicycle be borrowed only under the pressure of some older boys. They were placing bets on a race down the hill into town and their chosen rider had a flat tire. Robert suspected that the boy had purposely let the air out, necessitating a reason to borrow his bike, a five-speed cruiser, with thin hard wheels and handbrakes. The boy, proud and self-assured, quickly took the lead and was far enough ahead that no one saw him plunge, bicycle and all, to his death on the rocks below. When the other racers reached town, he was nowhere to be found. They assumed he had ridden home and it was only after a town-wide three-day search that the two bodies were found, mangled and lifeless, joined in a grotesque final embrace. Robert was mostly upset about the bicycle, and that no one found his loss important enough to reimburse him for it. He hadn’t known the boy well. But he knew his wife well, and he was counting on her competitive spirit to bring her to the same end as the older boy, who he often pictured suspended in the air, standing on the pedals for an impossibly long time before falling out of sight.

Driving up that same hill the previous week, he had noticed that runoff from a summer rainfall had eroded several feet of asphalt on the outer edge of the curve, and simultaneously deposited a swath of loose gravel, effectively creating a funnel for reckless travellers. It would efficiently suck them cleanly off the edge in the same manner as he knew had happened in the past. He would suggest a picnic at a spot on top of the hill, walk their bicycles up an alternate route and then suggest a race back to town. He would let her take the lead, and if she survived, he could always formulate a new plan and try another day. But he knew she wouldn’t. He knew it would work, and he would finally have outwitted her. For once. For all.

He had always assumed that he would be the first to cheat. He had counted on having mistresses as a matter of pride, a mark of social import and the respect of his colleagues. But one day, on returning from a half-day at the office, he heard through the bedroom window the unmistakable sounds of a passionate coupling. Creeping closer he could see that what he hoped was not, was. His reaction was not violent or even, to his own surprise, particularly strong at first. He walked coolly back to his car and in his calm, the decision was made. This was the final insult, the final display of superiority that he would accept from her. He barely cared that she had been unfaithful. Barely cared that she had been so subersive. But that she had beaten him to it! That was the nail that pierced his wrists, the spear that opened his side. But he would not confront her, or give her the satisfaction of seeing him humiliated, or angry, or indignant. He would not give her the option to leave him, or explain herself, or apologize. No, he would quietly plan and enact revenge. The only revenge that would keep both their dignities in tact. Because dignity was important.

The day arrived and he felt more nervous than he had expected to. Until now his loathing has continued to fester and intensify, but now he felt unsure. Like he might not be able to go through with it. Go through with what? He kept reminding himself that he wasn't really going to do anything. He was just going to make a suggestion and if she decided to follow it then so be it. What would happen would happen. It could happen to anyone. But it would happen. And it would happen to her. He was sure of it. He told himself that backing out now would be the surest sign that all his fears were true. He was weaker than her, and she would be getting away with the unforgivable. If he didn't go through with this now, he would live the rest of his life in humiliation and the crushing knowledge of his own cowardice. If not now, he would never stand up to her. She hated him. She hated him. She hated him. This became his mantra as they packed up the empty lunch basket. She hated him and he was standing up for what was right and true and proper. She hated him. She hated him. They passed the filling station and he stared fixedly at the trucks undergoing their inspections, lumbering in and out of the station. She hated him and he was doing the only thing he could to prevent himself becoming nothing, a speck of insignificance in her superior existence. She hated him. She hated him. She hated him. She cheerfully mimicked the stance of a motorcyclist as she prepared to race him down the hill. She had taken the bait, as he knew she would. She looked back impatiently as he momentarily pretended to fuss with his brake line.

And then the race was underway.

He had planned to fumble in his initial mount, letting her take a false lead and head first down the hill. But he was so involved in his mantra and the blind focus he had created that it took him several seconds to realize she had begun, and wasn't looking back. He ground slowly forward on his bicycle, time stretching out before and behind him. She hated him. She hated him. She hated him. She hated him. And then something snapped. He had said it one too many times and suddenly, inexplicably, he knew it wasn't true. That no one had ever loved him before she had. Not really. He knew that he had to stop her, that he couldn't lose her. Not like this. Anything she had ever done that had hurt him, he had driven her to. He had only been hurt by her because he was selfish, and arrogant, and small. He could repent, and start again with her and this time appreciate all the unimportant things that he had taken offense to. He leaned low over his handlebars and dug into the pedals. He could still catch her and make her stop before she reached the fatal curve. His body was filled with terror and his eyes searched ahead as he rounded each bend, but he couldn't see her and soon he realized that the next curve was the curve. She had been riding the outside of the road, where the eroded lip of pavement lay gaping. He moved his bicycle to the inside and scanned the far side as he approached, looking for any sign of her, or her bicycle, or of the accident he had envisioned and by now was sure must have occurred. He turned the apex of the corner and there she was. Stopped dead in front of him on his side of the road, turned and half facing him. She was too close and he was careening too fast to stop. His mind blurred and in a single instant his senses were filled to bursting. He heard the jarring rush of an air horn. He felt his body jerk sideways as his instincts took over and he swerved his bicycle hard into the road to avoid plowing into hers. His eyes met hers and for a suspended moment in time he had the strangest glimmer of recognition for the expression he saw there. He thought he saw into her very soul. And in the next instant his skull and the grill of the truck were joined in holy matrimony. In want and in wealth. In sickness and in health. 'Til death do us part.