Recipe for Enemies

by P T Winger

  It would be easy, though, if she could stomach the notion. Flattened and mauled critters abounded on the country roads near her home. Perhaps she could find something fairly fresh that had been hit during the night and not yet begun to stiffen or rot.

  Her ordering complete, Erin sat back in the chair, then shivered as a cold thrill washed through her.

  She really was going to do this.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  On Monday, Erin had dinner on the table at 6:30 sharp, as usual. She allowed Ryan to light the candles and reminded David to turn off the television before coming into the dining room. Aromas of meat and garlic filled the air. Erin had poured herself a glass of white wine and sipped it as she watched everyone dig into spaghetti and meatballs – a Monday tradition.

  Andrew hadn’t said anything about whether he’d spoken with Coach Dumcas on Friday, and he’d remained silent about it since then.

  Alyssa did seem a bit more buoyant. “I don’t care,” she said to the table at large.

  “Don’t care about what?” Andrew asked.

  “I don’t care about anything.” Alyssa twirled spaghetti around her fork. “I’m so over wanting to be a cheerleader.”

  For once, David spoke up. “But that’s all you talked about. You said you’d die if you weren’t a cheerleader.”

  “I don’t feel that way anymore,” Alyssa said, and plunged the forkful of spaghetti into her mouth.

  “Why not?” Ryan asked.

  Alyssa chewed and swallowed. “It’s just not worth it. You’re under a spotlight. Today I was in a bathroom stall and I heard some girls at the sink talking about Barbie and how fat her butt looked in her cheerleading uniform.”

  Ryan laughed. “Her name is Barbie?”

  Alyssa rolled her eyes. “Yes, Ryan, her name is Barbie. Anyway, I decided right then that being a cheerleader is a pain in the ass.”

  “Especially a fat ass,” Andrew added.

  Ryan laughed and so did David.

  Erin admonished the twins to watch their mouths, but inside, she smiled. Maybe this Barbie girl would be kicked off the team for being overweight. To Alyssa she said, “You should keep your eye on the prize. You worked hard to make the team and you never know if something will happen—”

  “Mom, just stop, okay?” Alyssa said.

  Erin put her hands in the air. “Okay. I’m just reminding you.”

  Alyssa’s expression had turned to annoyance. “I’m over it, okay? I’m done with cheerleading.”

  Erin took a bite of garlic bread. No, Alyssa wasn’t done. She’d jump at the chance if an opening came up. Erin turned her attention to Andrew. “Did you have a chance to talk to the coach?”

  Andrew lowered his head and wrapped his forearm around his plate. He twirled spaghetti onto his fork. “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “He said no.”

  Erin had lifted her wine glass, but set it back on the table with a thump. “What? Did you explain—”

  “Yes, I explained,” Andrew said. “He said he was setting an example and if he let me back on the team, it would look like he condoned my actions. Whatever that means.”

  David said, “It means you need to be a better player.”

  “No it doesn’t, Dad,” Alyssa said. “I learned that word in English class. Condone means he’d have to let everybody else do the same thing without punishment.”

  “But if you were a better player, you’d never be kicked off the team,” David said. “You’d be too valuable.”

  “That has nothing to do with it,” Erin said, seething. “The coach should have let you back on the team. It will be his fault if you don’t get a football scholarship for college. And I have no doubt it took a lot of courage for you to speak to him.”

  “I tried and it’s done,” Andrew said, straightening in his chair. “I signed up for wrestling today anyway, so it doesn’t matter. Tryouts are next week.”

  David nodded in approval. “You have a good body for wrestling. Better than football.”

  Erin picked up her wine glass and gulped down the contents. Her children were wrong. None of this was done.

  In the bedroom that night, Erin donned her nightgown and slid into bed beside David. The house had chilled; while the days were still warm, the nights had grown colder and the old furnace was having trouble keeping the house warm. She snuggled into David’s warmth. In the early days of their marriage, he would have turned and kissed her. They would have made love and become so entangled and sweaty that the cold wouldn’t matter.

  Now, he grunted something and moved away. He’d gone to bed only minutes before she did, but he appeared to be asleep.

  “David?” she whispered. “Want to play?” She’d tried this over the weekend, but he’d said he was tired. At his silence, she pressed her body against him again and began stroking him. He reacted briefly and then went flaccid. “David?”

  No response.

  Sighing, Erin pulled up the blanket and curled into a ball. The bitch he was screwing must wear him out; either that or David simply no longer wanted to have a physical relationship with Erin at all. Neither did he seem interested in talking to her or spending any time together.

  Things had escalated to such a point that it might spell the end of their marriage. She’d decided to confront him about his affair, but now reconsidered. If the recipe worked on his mistress, she wouldn’t need to confront him at all.

  A sleepy smile touched her lips. She couldn’t wait to get started.

  ◆◆◆

  The packages arrived in the mail the next day. She was glad they did because things had escalated with the boy who was bothering Ryan.

  Erin had gone to the school to speak with the principal, this time with no other stops to distract her. As she suspected, there was little the school could do regarding Jake’s actions outside the school grounds, and the principal assured Erin that any bullying that happened at his school would be dealt with appropriately.

  Later, when Ryan got home from school, she followed him into the kitchen. “Did he bother you today?” she asked.

  “Kind of,” Ryan said. “He tripped me when I was coming out of the bathroom and I fell down, and he laughed.” Ryan stuck his hands in his pockets. “And then everybody else laughed.”

  Erin’s chest tightened in anger and dismay. The little prick. She couldn’t wait to stop him.

  “I’ll take care of it,” she said, reaching out to hug her son.

  “Mom, it’s okay,” he said. “I can deal with it. Dad said I just need to beat him up.”

  She took him by his shoulders and stooped to his level. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “There are other ways.”

  His eyes widened. Perhaps her expression was too intense. She stood, gave his shoulders a gentle squeeze, and said, “Grab a snack and then go do your homework.”

  He blinked. “Okay. What’s for dinner?”

  “Hamburgers and French fries. Your favorite.”

  Ryan whooped, then went to the pantry and got a snack-sized bag of chips.

  Erin spoke with a relaxed smile. “Does this boy ride your bus?”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t do anything to anyone on the bus. Our bus driver is mean. She yells at us all the time to sit still and shut up.”

  Good for her. “Okay. Does he get on the bus before or after it stops here in the mornings?”

  “After. He lives way down on another block.” Ryan opened the bag of chips. “Can I have a glass of milk?”

  “Help yourself,” Erin said.

  That was what she’d say to Jake’s mother when she gave her a chocolate treat. Yes, she’d pay the woman a visit this week.

  Help yourself.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The next morning, as soon as the children left through the front door to wait for the school bus, Erin went out the kitchen back door. The car was parked near the back of the house and couldn’t be seen from the driveway where the kids stood. She let the engine idle until the bus came and picke
d the children up, then set off to follow the bus.

  She stayed far behind since the bus was easy to spot, but caught up when it stopped to pick up children. Two girls got on further up, and then a small boy who looked to be in elementary school. His father, who had been standing at the bus stop with him, waved after he got on. The man’s gaze met Erin’s as the bus rumbled forward, and he gave her a casual nod. She nodded back, offering a friendly smile. The child appeared to be far too young to be Jake.

  The bus turned right, then stopped halfway along the next block. A boy, who looked like he might be a sixth or seventh grader, emerged from a brick Colonial with a red door. He wore a green striped shirt under a brown jacket that hung open. This might be Jake. He lived close enough to have easily ridden his bicycle down the street to bother Ryan.

  But then more boys boarded the bus over the next few blocks, several who looked to be Ryan’s age. Any of them might be Jake.

  Erin returned home. She stood in her kitchen sipping coffee in the mid-morning sunlight that blazed through sparkling clean windows. She drained her cup, set it on the counter, and took a deep breath.

  The recipe for enemies waited.

  The kitchen counters needed to be covered to avoid contamination from the concoction’s ingredients. Erin brought in yesterday’s newspaper from the coffee table in the den and spread it open on the kitchen counter. Over this she placed plastic wrap. Then, she set out her supplies.

  The dried salvia was a dull green color and looked like any other dried herb. She set it next to the box of paraffin wax and the bag of dried blood, then got out the chocolate and the small spice jar of mustard seed.

  Nibbling on a fingernail, she gazed at the salvia and mustard seed. To blend well with the chocolate, the two herbs should be pulverized into a powder. She pulled her mortar and pestle from a cabinet and crushed some of each, unsure how much she should use in the recipe. Probably not too much since she wanted the taste of chocolate to be the most prominent.

  Now to gather the rest. Gathering oak wood wouldn’t be a problem, but picking up a dead animal from the road would not be so easy or pleasant.

  Out in the dilapidated shed, Erin located a pair of garden gloves on a shelf alongside unused clay pots and gardening tools. She shook them out in case any spiders dwelt inside, something her grandfather had taught her to do, then slipped them on. She picked up a rusty hand saw that hadn’t seen use in years.

  The huge oak tree and the maples were just beginning to show their fall colors, improving the look of the back yard as a whole and distracting attention from the overgrown shrubs and weedy perennials that lined the rotting picket fence. A small fire pit, surrounded by stones, sat in the middle of the yard. The yard was littered with evidence of the presence of growing children: a rickety tree house constructed years ago by her grandfather, a small square area lined with bricks that had been Erin’s sandbox as a child, and the old tire swing swaying gently in the breeze. A clothesline drooped between two sagging wooden poles. The yard needed an overhaul, but David would rather spend his time indoors than do yard work.

  There were plenty of low branches on the oak tree. Erin grasped one and set to running the saw back and forth.

  The blade was surprisingly sharp considering how beat up it appeared, and Erin had barely broken a sweat by the time she cut off three small branches, each about the thickness of her arm. This should be enough. She carried them over to the fire pit and dropped them on the ground beside it.

  After returning the saw to its hook in the shed, Erin looked around for the tarp. There it was, rolled up and tucked on a shelf in the corner. She grabbed it, along with a shovel, and laid these in the trunk of her car.

  She’d meant to slip out of the house this morning at dawn to scrape up some freshly flattened road kill, but the family would ask her questions, plus she didn’t want the dead animal around any longer than necessary. And there was always the chance that David would see that she’d gotten dressed and left the house at sunrise. Not that he really cared or would even notice, but miracles could happen and he’d inquire as to what she’d been up to. And if he did, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to refrain from telling him she was picking up a carcass to perhaps put together a little treat for his lover.

  So now here she was on a mid-morning, driving along the two-lane highway looking for a dead critter.

  On any other day she’d pass road kill and pay scant attention unless the creature lay on the road itself and she had to maneuver her car over or around it. Now that she was actively searching for one, it appeared that last night all the possums, groundhogs, deer, squirrels, and others had been spared. There were a couple of flat, dried-looking specimens as well as a smelly dead skunk on the road; these she ignored entirely.

  Finally, several miles from home, she spotted a brown, hairy lump and a vulture pecking at it. She hit the brakes and jerked the car to the side of the road, ignoring the honking from the car behind her. The car passed and the driver gave her an annoyed look, but Erin didn’t care.

  Another car approached from the opposite direction. Erin waited until it had passed, then got out, opened the trunk and retrieved the shovel. She unfolded the tarp inside the trunk.

  The road was empty of traffic for the moment. A farmhouse stood way back in the middle of a field of hay bales, but otherwise Erin didn’t feel she was being watched, other than by the vulture that had flown off but now circled overhead. She approached the animal.

  It looked like a groundhog, now a hunk of ruined, shapeless red flesh. Its mangled jaw exposed sharp teeth set in a death snarl. One eye remained intact, dull and brown; the other had disappeared. A dark, meaty odor came from the animal.

  It didn’t look fresh, in fact looked to have been run over more than once or twice. But Erin hadn’t seen anything else, and time wouldn’t wait. She needed to finish the recipe before the children got home from school.

  The distant sound of an approaching vehicle registered, but her attention was on the carcass. Grimacing, she placed both hands on the handle of the shovel and tried to slide the blade under the groundhog. Some of the carcass was stuck to the road, probably from its insides exposed and drying on the pavement. Erin had the feeling of trying to get biscuits out of a pan that she’d forgotten to grease first. She drove the shovel harder. Maggots wriggled and crawled as she disturbed it. Erin gagged and told herself not to throw up, breathe through her nose, relax.

  Maybe she should drive on and find another, fresher animal. But no. She was here, and had herself a carcass to take home. She placed her foot on the shovel and, grunting, pushed it under the animal. The animal’s flesh separated from the pavement with a wet sticky sound. The sweet, rotten smell was overpowering, and her stomach lurched. Dropping the shovel, she turned and vomited into the brush.

  The oncoming vehicle slowed as it got closer, and then pulled over and stopped directly across the road from her.

  Leaning over, hands on her knees, Erin glanced over her shoulder at several faces staring at her from the rolled-down windows of the minivan. Shit. An entire family.

  “Do you need help?” a woman asked.

  Erin straightened, turned and wiped the back of her hand over her mouth. “No, I’m fine, thanks.”

  “You sure?” the driver asked.

  “No. Um... I found my pet on the road and wanted to take it home and bury it. Thanks for stopping, but I’m doing fine.” She leaned down to pick up her shovel and felt another heave coming on.

  A smaller face peered through the window. “But that’s a groundhog. Your pet is a groundhog?”

  His shrill voice was too much. Erin spat and wiped her mouth. “Yes. My pet is a fucking groundhog, okay?”

  An audible gasp came from within the car. The vehicle sped off, windows rolling up as it accelerated.

  Erin looked at the carcass. It was too old, too gross. She didn’t want to see the maggots bursting off the meat like popcorn as it roasted. She trudged back to her car and put the shovel into
the trunk. In the driver’s seat, she found some fast-food-restaurant napkins tucked into the pocket of the car door, and wiped her lips.

  Maybe this wouldn’t work. Ordering the other ingredients had been fun and interesting, but this part made her want to quit. Erin put a hand on her still-roiling stomach. She wasn’t about to try to scrape up road kill again even if she came across something that had only been there since this morning.

  There had to be another alternative. Maybe simply buying a hunk of beef from the grocery store would do.

  Yes, that was the perfect solution. Why hadn’t she thought of this before?

  Putting the car in gear, she checked for traffic and then headed down the road toward the grocery store eight miles away.

  As she drove, she made her plans. She’d offer the chocolate treats to David’s lover first and see what happened. Erin would drive over to his office, get Jessica alone, and make up some story about entering a contest and wanting to give out samples—

  She crested a hill and saw a woman standing in the road directly in front of her car. Thin body. Pink dress. White hair.

  Great-Grandma Clower.