Affairytale : A Memoir

by C. J. English

  “Is this the Cousin Glen that was on that one trashy talk show because he looked like Jesus?” I asked. I’d overhead this story in a conversation before.

  “Yes!” he laughed aloud, then retold the story of Glen’s makeover from Jesus to regular Joe. A sneaky smile appeared on his face. “Why don’t you give me a ride back to my cabin for the night so I don’t have to take the boat, then I can show you.”

  I didn’t peg Grant for the pot smoking type and although I’d dabbled myself, it was never going to be a lifestyle. Perhaps an occasional afterthought when vacationing in Jamaica, but never in my responsible life. In fact, it was a major turn off to think he might have a pot habit I didn’t know about. It didn’t make sense. Why would an intelligent, bipedal, modern humanoid be stuck in the stoned age? If he was a weed smoker, that was a deal-breaker for me.

  Maybe seeing this side of him is what I need to let him go. Or maybe he just wants to get me alone?

  We drove my car to the other side of the lake. “Turn here, turn here!” He threw his arm across my chest pointing toward the trees.

  “Where? I don’t see anything!”

  “Stop! Turn here!”

  “Oh…There.” I said as I turned hand over hand down the near invisible driveway.

  I’d been down that road hundreds of times and had never seen that turnoff. Lichens and moss overtook the dirt road and foliage concealed its entrance. It was an eerie hidden path that made me feel like we were already sneaking around.

  I parked behind the vacant blue cabin where he told me to, then we walked toward the edge of the marsh. He parted the tall grass, making a small opening for us to slip through and as we did, we became instantly engulfed in a Darwinian landscape. Completely secluded, camouflaged from all sides, unusual plants and towering cattails encircled us.

  The brisk evening air smelled of detritus, and all around were dragonflies bounding from one velvet cat tail to another. In the center of the marsh where it turned into a mossy bog stood an ancient oak tree barely clinging to its life. My body begged Grant to push me against that timeless oak, rip the buttons off my shirt and devour me passionately lips to breasts. Instead we gazed at a few spindly, pathetic pot plants. Amateur grown ditch weed, inside what looked like my mom’s green plastic geranium planter. I was completely unimpressed.

  Grant didn’t ask me to smoke, not like there was enough to pack a pipe anyway, so I couldn’t help but wonder why he brought me here? Was it a ploy to get us away from spying eyes? My heart beat in loud thumps. I wanted so badly for this to be the time he kissed me, or at least held my hand again. I wanted him to do something, anything. I needed him to numb the pain I felt from years of wondering if he felt the same.

  We huddled close to one another on the only patch of dry ground and flutters of anticipation filled my stomach. Tension pulsed in the air between us and I thought I could hear his heart beating in his chest, but I couldn’t be sure.

  Make a move—please…don’t you know how much I want you?

  I was dying inside, impatient for something, for anything, to happen. “This place is amazing,” I said, looking up at him, biting my lip, begging him with wanting eyes.

  “Have you read On the Origin of Species?” He asked.

  I shook my head.

  “You should, I think you’d like it. See that red star?” He pointed to a twinkling red speck low on the horizon, eons from earth. I looked down the barrel of his arm, brushing my cheek against his skin. “That’s Betelgeuse.”

  Then he gave me a long explanation of which I don’t remember about why Betelgeuse is red, showed me Alpha Centauri and Sirius, then told me the real story of the Andromeda galaxy. All topics he enjoyed talking about, and I enjoyed listening to him talk, spending time alone with him. So I asked more questions like why isn’t Pluto a planet anymore, and do you think there are aliens? To which he replied, “It’s a dwarf planet” and, “of course there are other living beings out there. Though the distances between us are too massive, so it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever have an encounter. The real question is, if they do show up…who speaks for Earth?”

  Who speaks for earth? I didn’t have the faintest clue who should speak for earth or what that even meant but I indulged him in the conversation. His face lit up each time I asked another question. He seemed excited to have someone to talk to about all that geeky stuff he loved and I was excited to be learning. Sometimes he spoke in a language I could barely comprehend, using terms like “albedo” and “cumulonimbus.” He tried to explain to me complex algorithms like the Drake equation and demonstrate how the Large Hadron Collider works. We discussed the implications of finding antimatter, which I thought only existed in a Dan Brown novel, and shared our views on the parallelism between Holy Communion and cannibalism.

  I marveled at his intelligence and longed for those meaningful, interesting conversations to exist regularly in my life and in my marriage. Grant challenged me to think beyond this earth and pushed me physically to try new things; to not only get up on the wake board but also to look like I knew what I was doing. He didn’t take any of my shit, he was always on cue with a witty comeback that rivaled my wise cracks. He was someone who could teach me new things about life and love and the human condition but he was also someone who wanted to learn from me. We had countless commonalities but enough difference to make things interesting.

  We talked as a steady speckle of stars made their appearance in the night sky. We talked until his blue eyes seemed to glow iridescent in the twilight. It was as if we’d known each other for a thousand years and felt like our lust would linger for another ten thousand.

  We emerged from our secret rendezvous then stood in the cool darkness next to my car, not wanting the night to end.

  “Why are you still single?” I boldly asked.

  “I guess I just haven’t found the right one yet. How about you?”

  “How about me what?” I said, “I’m not single.”

  “I know that.” His voice was calm. “I mean, did you find the right one?”

  I hesitated, “if you found a wallet in the Target parking lot, would you take it inside and return it?”

  He laughed at my response. “Yes.”

  “So would I. I did the right thing. I did what I was supposed to do.”

  He nodded and smiled in agreement, understanding my predicament. “I did the same thing,” he said. And since he eluded to it, now was my chance.

  “What happened with your ex-wife?”

  “She’s not my ex-wife,” he said, “we’d only been married for three months so marriage was annulled. It’s like it never happened.”

  “So it’s like she was erased from your life?”

  “Yes. Her cheating was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was miserable before we were married. But I was young and didn’t want to disappoint anyone. I would have made it work, I committed to that it wouldn’t have been fun or easy, but I would have made it work.”

  “Do you think marriage can be fun and easy?” I asked.

  “I think so. If you wait for the right person, be picky and don’t settle.”

  “So that’s what you’re doing?”

  He shrugged, “I guess.”

  “Is there someone you have in mind?”

  A shy smile grew on his face. “Maybe?”

  “Who?” I asked, my heart racing.

  “She’s from Seattle,” Grant said. “She’s from a wealthy family, grew up privileged, but still stayed normal…you know?”

  No. I don’t know, we were poor.

  “Yes. I know.”

  “We live so far away from each other, we never really had a chance to see what might happen. She’s coming up here to visit soon. You should meet her and tell me what you think.”

  I died inside as he told me about Molly.

  Chapter 10

  “SHE HAD NOT KNOWN THE WEIGHT

  UNTIL SHE FELT THE FREEDOM.”

  —NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, THE SCARLET LETTERr />
  Where’s the gun? Where is the fucking gun? I’ll fucking kill him.

  I ransacked the cabin while mumbling insults and listing all the ways I fucking hated him. I’d slipped into a temporary psychosis. I was a wife pushed over the edge of sanity by her dumb-fuck husband.

  There was a gun somewhere I knew it. I searched the rack above the television but found nothing, only air rifles. I wanted deer rifles.

  Nanook snuck up behind me to see what all the ruckus was.

  “Go back to bed boy, go lay with Dani…go!” I shooed him. Then headed for Dylan’s room.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Dylan whispered through the darkness.

  I ignored him and continued my blind hunt through his bedroom closet scouring the far back corners on my hands and knees, feeling my way around in the dark, searching for a long cold barrel. I frisked the floor and walls, nothing—not even a baseball bat hiding in that musty closet only moldy wet suits.

  In the top drawer of Dylan’s dresser, there was a box of bullets, I’d seen them. Shells of some sort that he and Dad used in their deer rifles. There had to be a gun somewhere.

  Dad’s closet.

  Four Hours Earlier

  “You treat everyone better than you treat me! You treat me like a dog, worse than a dog. You fucking hate me. Just say it. I know you do. Just Fucking Say IT!”

  Levi threw his arms up and yelled so close to my face we were nose to nose. I stood like a stone statue, unbending and nonreactive. My arms folded across my chest, and my feet cemented into a fighting stance.

  The outdoor concert at We Fest stopped at midnight and thousands of people were herded like cattle toward the exit. It was a stampede of shivering bodies running for the shelter of their campers or cars, seeking relief from the torrential rain. Floodlights lit up the night sky, and illuminated the millions of shimmering drops pouring down around us.

  Water gushed off my cowboy hat like rain pouring from a gutter and every thread in my clothes was sopping wet. My shoes squished and sloshed as I shifted my weight from side to side unflinching as I stood there, taking my punishment.

  Levi circled me, flinging his arms, taunting me. He was drunk and when he pressed his face to mine I wanted to gnaw off his nose, kick him in the nuts, and gouge out his eyeballs. But any reaction from me, verbal or physical, would only escalate his madness. So I just went numb.

  “You’re a cold bitch. Heartless, you know that? You never loved me.” His face twisted in disgust, “I gave you everything! Anything you wanted. What more do you want from me?” He shouted but I didn’t react. “I’ve given you all I have. I’ve loved you. I’ve taken care of our family. I’ve worked my fucking ass off for you! For us!” He was soaked from the rain, but I could still see his tears.

  He was right, he had worked his ass off for us, so much that at the end of every evening there was nothing left but crumbs. His lunatic rant was the by-product of big-gulp-size beers, mixed with years of unresolved resentment and anger toward me. Events ranging from my refusal to have sex, to arguments about who does the dishes, or picks up more dog poop had coalesced into one very large eruption.

  We were a spectacle. A pretty girl in a cowboy hat standing in the middle of a muddy field, while her berserk husband circled her and ranted furiously. I thought of Grant, wondered if he was there somewhere in the sea of bodies.

  Would he help me if he was? What would he do? Would he use his lethal martial arts skills to fight off my drunken husband? Or would he walk past me and leave us to sort out our embarrassing white-trash argument?

  A man walking by with no shirt and a cowboy hat said, “Hey lady, you okay?”

  No. Yes. I don’t know.

  If I said no, there might be a fight, if I said yes, it was an obvious lie and he still might intervene. I stared blankly as if I hadn’t heard him and stayed silent.

  The man shrugged and kept walking as if to say, Okay you stupid bitch, stay with him then.

  “You’re not gunna talk?” Levi shouted at me stumbling and slurring, “You’re just gunna stand there and act all innocent? You really are a cold, heartless, bitch you know that?”

  “Hey, leave her alone, you dick!” some girl yelled from the passing crowd.

  “Shut the fuck up. Stay out of it. She’s my wife!” Levi yelled back, as if the fact that I was his wife was justification for his behavior.

  There was a cold callousness about Levi sometimes. He was easily provoked and not scared of a bloody fist fight. Levi was the guy in high school who stood in the middle of a circle of headlights waiting to fight anyone who dare enter. He was a dirty street scrapper who usually was the victor, but I’d also seen him the victim.

  A few years before Dani was born, when our lives were one big party, I watched him take a dozen hits to the face as two thugs used his head for a punching bag while a third restrained me. The beating ended when Levi hit the pavement chin first, unconscious. The assailants quickly fled the scene and were never caught. It was a brutal attack that shattered his jaw into three pieces and left his mouth wired shut for months. The whole ordeal could have been prevented had Levi just kept his mouth shut for one minute. As Levi circled me, I had flashbacks from that night and prayed no one would intervene.

  When Levi just wouldn’t shut up, I could only funnel away the insults so long before they collectively caused an explosion. “I’m leaving! You insolent fucking jerk! I can’t believe you wrecked another night.” I got close to his face. “Know what?” I said in the most snide tone, “I do fucking hate you.”

  Then I turned and sloshed my way toward the gate, trying to lose him in the crowd. Levi followed close behind, mumbling and ranting among a flock of strangers.

  When I got to Dylan’s truck, our only ride home, I begged him, “Dylan, please take me back to the cabin, we have to go now. Please leave Levi here.” My voice was strained. Before Dylan could answer, Levi strolled up and was intercepted by our friends. Each trying to talk him down, and keep him away from me. Insults and endless put-downs kept spewing from his filthy mouth. I recognized an evil in him that was also in me, it was an evil that only we could bring out in each other. I was as toxic and lethal to him as he was to me.

  “Let him go, just ignore him.” I said to our friends, fearing Levi would turn on them. When they stopped holding him back Levi approached me trying to be as intimidating as he could. I wasn’t scared of him, I just hated him.

  He put his lips to my ear.

  “Wanna fuck?” he said then tried to cup his hand around one of my breasts. “Come on, let’s fuck,” he said again as he tried to fondle me.

  I gritted my teeth and shoved him as hard as I could.

  “No? You don’t wanna?” He said. He was acting; putting on a show and I knew it. He was only doing those things to rile me because he knew it would. “Why don’t you tell everyone you never wanna have sex with your husband? Why don’t you tell them that I practically have to fucking rape my own wife!” He yelled into the crowd of onlookers.

  Rage began to grow in me and I started boiling inside. Levi was the only being in the world that could provoke me enough to want to kill. In all other areas of my life, I was peaceful.

  “She won’t even kiss me!” He yelled toward our friends. “My own wife, won’t even kiss me. I’m your fucking husband!” He screamed into my face so close I felt him spit. Then he started to cry. Real or fake, I didn’t care.

  I felt nothing for him. No empathy, only hate. I was humiliated and belittled. Broken so badly that sociopathic thoughts of violence flooded my mind as I stood there and watched him sob

  Then, as if my mind hadn’t issued the order to fight, and my body acted alone fueled solely on rage. I shoved him. Then ferociously kicked him. He didn’t fight back which only made me even more furious. He stumbled, then found his footing and started to laugh sending me into a murderous rage. I pounded him with my fists in every way and every place possible.

  “Oh, it’s like that huh?” He pounded his ow
n fists to his chest harder than I could hit him, showing me that my hardest hit didn’t even phase him. A smirk grew on his face, he was happy to have finally awakened me in this way.

  “Get in and shut the fuck up! Both of you!” Dylan finally yelled, and we obeyed.

  I jumped out the moment we got to the cabin.

  This is not the life I want for Dani and I…I’m done.

  I spun around and lost all control when I realized he was following me up the driveway as if he was going to come inside.

  “You fucking loser, I hope you die. I hate you.” I scrunched my eyes and flared my lips, “I don’t know why I ever married you. You’re a fucking freak with no friends and no life.” I walked toward him unafraid. Backing him away from the cabin. “Get out of here!” I flung my arms toward his face. “I don’t want you. Can’t you see that? Can’t you take a hint? No one wants you here. This is my home, not yours.” Abuse came pouring out of me. “You’re not welcome here. You never have been. I’ve never wanted you here! I’ll call the cops if you even try to step one more foot up this driveway. Get the fuck out of here!”

  Levi’s voice was calm now, “go ahead, call ‘em. I didn’t do anything.” He shrugged, “I’m your husband. I don’t have to leave.”

  His sudden calm demeanor enraged me, but what enraged me more, was when he stepped forward and wanted to make up. That’s when I decided to kill him. That’s the moment when I remembered there was a gun.

  “Don’t you dare touch me, and don’t you dare try to come in the cabin.”

  “Stop it,” He said in such a condescending way, my blood began to boil. “Loser huh? So that’s what you think of me. Well, at least you’re being honest now.”

  “Get out of here!” I lunged toward him, shoving him, every cell in my body quivered with maximum rage.

  “No. I’m not leaving. This is my house too.”

  “Take a fucking hint loser! Get out of here!”