Love, Lose, And Repeat

Trigger Finger

She put drain cleaner in his tomato soup. It was a recipe she had handed down from her great-grandmother in Italy, down to her grandmother in San Francisco, then to her mother in Tampa, and then her in California--San Jose, where her husband's work took them. The soup was special. Home grown tomatoes, Alaskan salt, celery seed from Sicily, drain cleaner from Walmart (on sale for 12.99). "Guaranteed to get rid of even the most stubborn houseguest" Her grandmother, half senile, said when Edith visited her at Shady Groves.
    Edith knew where her husband went on weekends and it wasn't to dance class or golf tournaments. It was to an off the highway, hourly motel called the Sleep-Easy. She knew about the hotel bills: he charged it carelessly to their shared credit card so she charged him with adultery and put drain cleaner in his soup. She still threw it out before she served it.
    Her husband, Herb, was actively against guns. So when Edith bought her metallic pistol from Riley's gun shop she hid it in her closet behind her moth eaten wedding dress. She almost shot it twice. The first to frighten off a raccoon, the second for an intruder lurking in the backyard. The next time she told herself she would really do it--she would finally fire it--and it would be for her husband.
    Everyone who knew Herb laughed off her suspicion, "You've been inside too much, honey. Get a hobby." That's what their neighbors said. She asked her sister and she assured.     "Herb wouldn't do nothing like that, he's a good guy. Come for dinner, we miss him." The plaques on the wall told her Herb was a first place, a winner, a value to a team, but when he came home smelling like name brand perfume she couldn't fight off the turning of her stomach.
    One night he came home drunk. Edith was doing dishes in long, yellow gloves.
    "I'm home, Dollface. What's for supper?"
    "Supper was hours ago, Herb. I'm cleaning up now."
    He got closer, behind her, and held his hands over her back. He kissed her neck. The skin was soft and wrinkled there, she pulled away. Edith's complexion was pale but when he touched her her cheeks flushed.
    "The Finkels were over. I told them you were held up at work."
    "I was. I couldn't make it, but I sure am hungry."
    She could smell the whiskey on him. His cuffs were rolled up and his mustache had pale, pink lipstick smeared under the trim hairs. He smelled like bars girls and their hairspray. She didn't mention she called his work. She didn't mention them telling her he left hours ago. When she was pushing dessert on her neighbors, Herb was out at the Sleep-Easy. The credit-card statement would probably agree.
    "You look beautiful in this light." He swayed slow behind her with his hands twisting on her hips.
    "The fluorescent light of the kitchen?" She laughed.
    He hummed their wedding song in her ear. An eighties power ballad. His mustache pressed against her soft flesh. "Remember how beautiful you looked. Your hair was so blonde and your eyes sparkled." He moved his hands higher and squeezed her waist. She felt herself falling into his arms.
    "Are you hungry? Ill fix you something."
    On nights when he was half-drunk and reminiscing, it reminded her of their early years, when the house was new and clean. When their air wasn't cluttered with memories. The kids were turning three and five and the pencil marks of their heights were on the wall. Now it was a fresh coat of slate gray paint.
    They were off at state colleges: one in New York, one in Utah. Timothy for fashion design and Madison majoring in Anthropology and minority in tequila shots and boys. Edith heard from them once a week when they decided to answer one of her fifteen phone calls. She sent them money with I love you notes in thin, white envelopes. They then torn into the money and threw away the rest.
    She took the gun out of her closet and smiled at the beading of her wedding dress in front of it. She took it off the hanger and held it to herself. She saw the weight gain and the wrinkles and the shriveled eyes that were not sparkling as they once did. Her hair was gray. Her nails were hard and yellowing, if she didn't paint them. She tossed the dress on the floor.
    Edith clutched her gun the whole drive to the Sleep-Easy. She parked in front of room 23. It wasn't hard to decide which room was Herb's, his red convertible, with the license plate: Herb's, was parked in front and his soft whispering was inside. She gripped the handle harder and forced herself to knock at the door. It was dark, maybe it was midnight and the lights of city that made the building glow into daylight. She squinted her eyes, when she looked up at the signs for all-night bars and dance clubs.
    Herb came to the door, shirtless. His mats of brown hair on his chest were heaving with sweat and his breathing was labored.
    "Edith put the gun away." He had his hand stretched out and she could feel the gun shaking in her hand. It was wobbling with every breath.
    "Who is inside, Herb?"
    "Give me the gun, Dollface." He reached out further and she pulled back. Edith cocked the gun and reinforced it with her free hand.
    "Who is in there?" She asked shifting her eyes to the blackness of the room behind them. The door was ajar so Herb swung it shut with a loud wooden clap. The blackness was gone and the lights of the city swallowed glowed onto them.
    He was wearing dark-stained jeans and his bare feet clung to the cement he stood on, "What do you want, Edith? Do you want me to come home? Ill grab my coat. You just had to ask, you didn't have to stalk us here."
    "Us? I don't want you to come home, Herb. I want you to stay here, but I want to know who?"
    "What do you mean who?"
    "I want to know who is inside with you--give me that respect. I know where you go, I know when you come here, I know what you do, I even know why. Now tell me who."
    Edith didn't notice a noise coming from inside until it stopped. There was shower that running inside the room.
    "Edith, Lets go home." Herb said frantically about to put his large hands on his wife's small shoulders.
    "No, lets go in." Edith leaned forward to touch the knob, but as she did a girl with long tanned legs, in a cotton towel, blonde hair dripping down her bare skin, opened the door.
    "Herby, I heard you slam the door is everything--" The girl saw Edith and screamed.
    "She won't shoot you, Claire." Herb said releasing his hands from the air and laying one on her shoulder. The girl wrapped her arms around him and he kissed the top of her wet hair.
    Edith held the gun higher and squinted one eye shut. She shot upwards towards a lamp
light above the door. The shattered pieces of lightbulb fell on Herb and Claire like they were caught in a thunderstorm.
    "Christ, Edith!" Herb huddled Claire's wet head into his chest.  He covered her with long hairy arms, "What the hell are you doing?"
    "Her eyes sparkle, don't they Herb." She let the gun slip to her side.
    "Lets go home, Edith, okay? Drop the gun, I'll go with you."
    "Imagine what she would look like in my dress." Edith grinned, her teeth stretched out behind red lipstick, "How do you know each other?"
    The girl just held harder to Herb's side. He whispered in her ear and she went inside.
    "What do you want? Do you want to go home? Do you want me to stay--a divorce? What can I do for you right now, Edith?"
    She looked up at Herb. She remembered Madison tugging at his mustache when she was a baby.  She remembered tugging at his chest hair in the middle of a kiss. Every memory they had was tainted with who he was now. Every kiss they shared smelled like another woman. Every moment she remembered, he had lipstick stains on his clothes. But he was still, Herb, wasn't he?He was still her husband.
    "I'm a little hungry. Lets go home, Edith. what's for dinner?" He smiled with his veneers, that in another ten years would be dentures. He itched his mustache with one hand and moved closer as he did. He wrapped Edith in a sat hug. Her face was pale and pouting and emotions didn't urge her in any direction.
    "Claire? Is that your name?"
    "Yes." She pulled away from Herb with trembling limbs like wind-blown branches.
    "How long have you been with my husband?"
    "This is the first time." Claire swallowed dry and tilted her eyes back to Herb.
    "So it wasn't an affair?" Edith's eyes followed Herb as he uncomfortably shifted in his skin. "They were one night stands."
    "Does it make a difference?" Herb said scratching the back of his head. He looked down at the pavement.
    "It's taking all I have no to shoot you so you could never do this to me again." Edith's eyes were watering. She took her free hand to her face and cleaned lines of streaking mascara, "I've had to tell neighbors, family, friends, hundreds of excuses as to why you are never at home. He is at work, golfing, drinking. When its always been the same thing. You've always been here."
    "You can't do it, Edith. You won't shoot me. You love me too much." Herb's hands waved in front of his face. He was dropping drips of sweat from forehead to chin.
    "I don't love me anymore." She dropped the gun to her side again and sighed. She thought of all the times she made tomato soup with her secret ingredient then just threw it away, all the times the gun sat in a closet and she pictured herself killings him. It was a disease. It was a game of how many ways she could think of killing him with a vacuum cleaner, but she could never do it. "I'm done wanting you more then you want me, and everyone telling me how wrong I am about you." She swung the pistol to her forehead and cocked the gun. "Good luck explaining this one without me."
    Herb grabbed the gun as she pulled the trigger. He swung it away in time for it miss her. Edith was a pile of sobs and screams, rolling around on the pavement on hands and knees trying to find out where the gun fell when Herb threw it. Herb helped her to her feet.his hands were shaking as he pulled her into a violent hug.
    "Will you let me come home with you?" Herb begged eyes like a faucet, blinking back tears.
    Edith nodded and turned her head to the closed hotel room. Claire was leaned against the white door. Blood from her chest seeped through towel onto hands. She was struggling to hold herself up against the slippery wood door.
    Herb ran to Claire to check the wound. Edith picked up the gun again and shot twice at Claire's head until she slid down on the wall and onto cold concrete. Herb was sobbing still, picking her up in both arms and kissing her still warm check, "What the fuck did you do?
    "What did I do? You shot her the first time; I was putting the poor girl out of her misery."
    "Ill take the blame for this, Edith. It is all my fault."
    "Yes, it is." Edith said.
    "I love you" He said. His hands stained red from holding Claire.
    "Clean up your mess, Herb." She gave the gun to him and walked slowly away.
    "Can I come home?" Herb was begging. He was pleading. His eyes were windows, panes of glass, he was shaking. She smiled small.
    He called her name but she kept walking. Her posture was more erect and when she got to the car, she was grinning. He screamed her name again and she laughed. She pulled up alongside him outside room 23, "No, Herb. You can't come home."