She stared out the foggy window expecting time to reverse.
He was gone. He left her there to collect the imploded remains of what was
left. I sat across from her wondering what I did as her friend. Do I go over
there and hug her? It’s not like she was sulking; although her sullen demeanor
did suggest a broken inner Sheila, I didn’t find a reason to hug.
“What do I do now?” she asked. Why was she asking me?
She continued to peer out the window as the rain began. My mind wandered as I
watched each droplet cascade down the window pane in a wicked tango.
I raised my shoulders and smacked my lips. I clasped my
fingers together over my knee while I scrambled through my brain attempting to
determine the “right” things to say. I responded, “You’re better off without
him.” I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling and squinted. “Now you can live a
normal life.”
“How do you define normal?” she questioned. There she
goes, asking me those odd questions that weren’t meant for me to answer. Her
head now followed the dance of the rain droplets, her eyes glazed over as if
entranced by its wild movement.
She was waiting on my answer. I opened my mouth to say
something but I didn’t have the answer. “Do you wanna talk about your feelings?”
I leaned forward in my seat, “I’m all ears.”
She snapped out of her trance. She finally turned to
face me. The light peeked in through the dark clouds illuminating the purple
bruise beneath her left eye. She sat
back into the pale darkness and pushed her right foot under her thigh. I
assumed she was attempting to hide the swollen gash down her shin. She smirked,
“Should I be crying right now?” She gazed into the wall behind me. Finally, a
rhetorical question. “I mean, he left me. What’s a wife to do?”
“We can break into the liquor cabinet. I remember seeing
a nice and slender whiskey bottle sitting on the top shelf.”
Her smirk faded. “I remember the night he cracked a
bottle whiskey across my skull.” She closed her eyes tightly as she squeezed
her fists. I could hear her heart beating through her chest almost. “I hate
whiskey,” she whispered.
“We don’t have to drink whisky…”
“No…”she paused, “That’s what I said right before he did
it. We were just about to sit down for dinner and he wanted a glass. “I hate
whiskey,” I said. His pleasant expression melted from his face like hot wax.”
Her body slightly trembled as a few strands of hair fell from her scalp. She
shed more strands in an hour then a shaggy dog sheds in a week.
“We don’t have to talk about—
“Next thing you know, I woke up in a puddle of dried
blood. I looked up at the empty dinner table. At least he finished his dinner, I thought. “
“He’s not coming back y’know. You buried him.”
She shrugged her shoulders. I could tell she half
expected him to walk through her front door. Even death couldn’t stop him from
prying into her brain clinging onto her thoughts like a desperate lover. Although
I saw with my own eyes her as she emptied his Smith and Wesson in his chest, he never left.
“Wanna hear a dirty joke?” I didn’t wait for her to
answer. I sat up and smiled with my hands gripping the chair arms. “A white
horse fell in the mud.” The silence that
leapt after was deafening.
She looked up at me and smiled. She placed both feet on
the ground and took a deep breath. That’s when the tears fell.
