Forgiveness

by Jim Grimsley

  In the movie, just before our big scene in the kitchen, there’ll be shots of Carmine reading our love letters from after college, when I was working as an administrative intern for a hospital in Milwaukee and she was finishing her senior year at Georgia Tech. She’ll be reading the letter I wrote where I called her my tiny goddess of love, or something like that; she read that letter over and over again the year she was pregnant with Ann, because it had touched her so much, she said. Carmine/Virginia in the movie will read the letter with tears welling in her eyes, the classic movie shot: she finds the letter, recognizes it, and sinks slowly onto the bed, framed by a beautifully lit window; Carmine/Virginia will let the letter fall into her lap, sobs rising in her throat, wondering, so obviously, how she and I came to this pass, a more generous version of the question she asked me in the kitchen. In the Lifetime Channel movie, entitled Tender Is the Dawn, the divorce will be Carmine’s divorce, and I will play the part of the villain. This is all right with me, since this is the role I’ve decided to take on myself, anyway.

  Will she be afraid for her life? When we know a murder is coming, foreshadowing appears all around us, at least on TV. In real life, right now, Carmine is thinking about other things: how to find a divorce lawyer, how to convince me to move out of the house peaceably, how to explain to Ann and Frank that their parents are splitting up, how to make it look like it’s not the fact that I’m out of work that’s pissed her off, that she’s not abandoning me so that she can take the house and the bank account for herself, while there’s still something left.

  She thinks there’s something left, anyway. She has a rude awakening coming, next time she uses her ATM card.

  The fact that I’m thinking about ways to kill her is hardly likely to be on her mind, because a thought like that is so out of character for me. It’s the last thing Carmine will suspect. But in the movie, through clever use of foreshadowing, the audience will see it coming.

  The Lifetime movie told from my point of view, my version of my divorce and crime spree, will be entitled Breakdown at Midnight. I will still play the part of the bad guy, but my character will get more screen time, and I will be played by a handsome leading actor like Dean Cain or Antonio Sabato, Jr. I will play the typical sadistic, uncaring, belligerent, philandering, extremely attractive husband. Maybe this will be one of the more daring movies and my lover, the one Carmine is certain I have, will actually be a man, or will even be her brother. Sympathy for my character will be established by my loss of a wildly respectable, lucrative job with Arthur Andersen, a company which turned out to be as crooked as its customers. I will be another orphan of the American Dream gone sour, and eventually I will give in to the so-called dark side of my nature when I strangle Carmine with the strap of her Prada bag, or stab her to death with a survivalist-quality hunting knife, or bludgeon her skull to a bloody pulp with a classic Tiffany lamp; this part of the script will have to wait for the real event to unfold since, though I’ve decided that tomorrow will be the day I kill her, I have yet to choose how.

  An Ordinary Person,

  Much Like Yourself

  I DRIVE TO A STARBUCKS for my morning latte. The clerk at the Starbucks is a dead ringer for Queen Latifah, but perhaps not as physically fit, since this young woman looks a bit like two hundred pounds of dark cheese poured into spandex pants and a black knit shirt, covered by a Starbucks green apron. At this Starbucks, the employees wear plastic name tags. Her name tag reads, “Teefallah,” and she has three gold earrings in one ear, six in the other, a gold stud through one nostril, and one bright gold tooth right in front.

  “What can I get for you?” she asks, the gold tooth gleaming.

  “Double shot latte with whole milk,” I say. “How are you?”

  “I’m all jiggly with it,” she says, or something that sounds like that, and her co-worker, a thin Latina with a nervous smile, gives her a sidelong look. “I love this good weather.”

  I smile and act as if I know exactly what she just said. “You move up here from Miami?” I ask, because of the tooth.

  She creases her eyebrows together, suspicious. “No, sweetie, I didn’t move here from anywhere.” She drops change from my five-dollar bill into my palm, her long, multicolored nails adorned with cut-outs, stars, and patches of glitter. “What’s in Miami, anyway?”

  I carry my cup to one of the polished, round tables by the window, on which someone has conveniently left a discarded copy of today’s Times.

  There is something about the décor of a Starbucks that makes me feel comfortable, yet up-to-the-minute. This particular Starbucks is always teeming with customers. I’m reading the New York Times Bestseller List in the Book Review when a woman in dark glasses asks if she can join me at my table. By this time the rest of the tables are full. She slides into her seat with her cup. The woman wears a mauve scarf, very simple, but obviously expensive, over a finely woven sweater-blouse that looks even more chic than Carmine’s best designer items. Designer scent washes over me. The woman removes the scarf and shakes out strawberry blonde hair, abundant as a waterfall, shimmering like a shampoo commercial, and, judging by the luster of her hair and her pearl-white, perfect skin, I recognize her as N— K—, the famous movie actress and Oscar winner.

  I’m stunned by the fact that she’s here, that she’s sat down with me. She removes her sunglasses with a knowing glance in my direction, realizing at once that I have recognized her and that I am much too sophisticated to say so. She pinches off a morsel of her cranberry muffin and slips it into her bare, soft lips. Not a shred of makeup on that flawless skin. We sit in silence, each sipping our coffee, and I offer her part of my Times; to my surprise she asks for the sports section, and I detect the slight lilt of her Australian accent as she thanks me. She reads quietly, her lips forming the most perfect touch of a pout as she does.

  After a while, N— says to me, in an undertone, glancing around, “This place is awfully busy this morning, for a weekday.”

  “It’s getting to be too popular,” I say. “I may have to start driving farther out of town.”

  She nods demurely, sliding more muffin into that prime, kissable mouth of hers. She gives me a kind of come-on look; her face, it appears, has been frozen into a series of come-on expressions, each as artful and subtle as the last, and therefore I do not feel any sexual excitement or have any notion that she is purposefully cruising me. She has that quality that all fine actors and actresses have, of being able to see herself from all angles at once, of constantly watching herself. When I glance from my newspaper to her perfectly composed face, I feel as if I have become not a would-be suitor but a blissful movie camera, recording each spark of light from her cheekbones, searching for any marks left by that fake nose she wore when she played Virginia Woolf in The Hours. Not a mark, not a line, not a flaw. “I’ve seen you in here before,” she says.

  She enjoys my surprise. I had no idea she was a regular in this neighborhood. “It’s a little out of my way, but I like the drive,” I answer. “Gives me time to think.”

  “You sound like a man who has a lot to think about.”

  “It’s nothing,” I say modestly. “A few problems at home.”

  “We all have those.” She’s looking outside now, into the perfect blue of the sky, the swell of the Pacific waves; I think maybe she’s checking the parking lot for paparazzi, though I’ve never seen a single photographer here, no matter what famous person has dropped in for a cup of coffee-of-the-day. “Anything serious?”

  “My wife has asked me for a divorce.” I shrug. “And I’m out of a job. The usual.”

  Her eyes flood with a moist sympathy that gives me goose pimples on my forearms. “Poor you,” she says, and injects the whole of her soul into the words.

  “Nothing I can’t handle.” I’m getting a bit of an erection, so I cross my legs.

  “You know I’ve had the same problem, of course.”

  “I knew about your divorce. Not that I was going to ask any questions. You kn
ow. About your ex-husband.”

  She nods with perfect grace. “It’s not just the divorce that you and I have in common, either,” she says. “Actors are constantly out of work. So I have nothing but empathy for you there, too.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You do seem to be holding up well.”

  I lean forward in a conspiratorial way. “Can I ask you a personal question?” Hurriedly completing the thought before she gets the wrong impression. “Not about … him, or about your marriage, or, God help us, your children. About your emotions.”

  As she smiles, a gray-and-white gull dips into the air above the parking lot behind her head, hanging, wings spread, in that eerie way that gulls have, and for a moment she wears it as a hat. She has become Tippi Hedren in The Birds. “I don’t mind.”

  “Did you ever have violent feelings? I mean, a longing to do something violent. When you and … he … broke up?”

  “I should say. I wanted to rip his heart out. Well, not actually his heart.” She shudders at the memory, as deliciously as if some camera is recording this moment.

  “That’s a relief,” I say.

  “What about you?”

  “I can’t deny that I’ve had thoughts.”

  She’s watching me carefully, as if she’s studying me for some part she’s working on, some mannerism or facial tic that she finds interesting. “You can’t blame yourself for that.”

  “My wife claims she thinks I’m gay.”

  “Claims?” She arches one perfectly shaped eyebrow.

  “I don’t think she’s serious. This is a psychological war, and she’s trying to win any way she can.”

  “You don’t think she’s serious?”

  “Well,” I say, adjusting my belt buckle a bit, sunken beneath my overhanging gut, “I’m not gay, if that’s what you mean.”

  She is studying the beautiful manicure of her nails. “I’m sure you’re not.”

  She’s thinking about T— her ex-husband, I’m sure. I ask, “Did you ever want to hurt him?”

  Her eyes have suddenly grown very sad. “We were very happy. At one time.”

  “But that didn’t keep you from having violent thoughts?”

  She shakes her head. From the table she lifts her sunglasses as if she’d like to put them on again. “What about you, what’s your fantasy? What do you want to do to your wife?”

  I lower my eyes. “I’d better not tell you what I have in mind.” My whisper is conspiratorial, and draws her closer to the table.

  “Why not?”

  “Better that you don’t know. In case the police find out we’ve talked.” I sit up straight, look her in the eye. “I wouldn’t want you implicated.”

  “Oh.” She sits back and blinks and understands. It is as if a curtain has gone down between us. She waits a moment longer before standing; she’s wearing the most perfect, form-fitting pair of jeans I’ve ever seen, and no belt at all. “It’s been so wonderful to talk to you,” she says. “I do hope we run into each other again.”

  “Maybe we will,” I say, though my heart is pounding as I watch the sunglasses travel so gracefully to cover her eyes. “I come here rather often.”

  At some point during our conversation she has put on lipstick, a glistening, wet, expensive pink. She walks away as if we had never been talking. She’s afraid of me now, she knows that I’m planning something terrible. Tomorrow, I remind myself, as N— ties the scarf over her shining hair and disappears into the parking lot, carrying what’s left of her mocha. Tomorrow this will all be over. Even a major star like N— K— can’t stop me in that short space of time.

  You Always Kill the One You Love

  THERE ARE TWO KINDS of people in America: those who want publicity and can’t get it, and those who attract too much publicity and can’t escape it.

  The question, in my case, is no longer whether I will kill my wife, but how will I do it in a way that guarantees me maximum attention from the press.

  Certain kinds of murderers have advantages that I will never share. A killer with a Heisman Trophy, for instance, begins his crime spree with a ready-made notoriety and a financial war chest that will be difficult for a non-athlete like me to duplicate.

  Other famous killings are impossible to imitate for various reasons. Much as I hate Carmine at the moment, I could hardly, for instance, drown her in the waters of the San Francisco Bay, or any other bay, for that matter. Over the years of our marriage, Carmine has consistently refused any contact with large bodies of water; she prefers mountains (in which she does not hike), ski resorts (at which she does not ski), or large hotels in inland cities (in which she orders room service and rests between shopping trips). To this tenacious disinclination she has clung in spite of the fact that many bodies of water are the haunts of fashionable and expensive friends of ours, which makes me believe this aversion to be all the more genuine. She has, in fact, what I would call a morbid fear of any volume of water greater than the pool in our back yard, in which, of course, she does not swim. So this rules out any death similar to those visited on Laci Peterson or Natalie Wood. Though I am reminded, of course, that Laci most likely did not drown but was already dead when she went into the water.

  I am a fairly weak swimmer myself, and would have to admit, though only under duress, that it has been quite some time since I viewed our pool as anything more than an interesting art object, a water installation, and that I have no emptiness in my life that would be filled by walks along the sandy tides. I would not wish to be seen as presuming any moral superiority over my wife, as if that could justify what I am about to do.

  Other varieties of spousal murder, or the murder of significant others, are interesting but unlikely, as the case of Julia Lynn Womack Turner who was indicted for poisoning her police officer husband by tricking him into drinking antifreeze. A later boyfriend, a firefighter, also died by ingesting engine coolant under mysterious circumstances, before Lynn was brought before the courts and the cameras. Perhaps, if she had not been caught, she would have married a soldier next, or a member of the Georgia State Patrol, or a forest ranger, completing a whole set of murdered public servants. Death by ethylene glycol mimics natural death by an irregular heartbeat, leaving little evidence, and even tastes sweet, making it perhaps the perfect choice for a fellow with a hearty sweet tooth. However, my Carmine has highly developed taste buds and a very sensitive palate, as any number of local and area restaurant waiters will attest; short of pouring the fluid down her throat while she is sleeping, I consider it to be unlikely that I will be able, for instance, to trick her into drinking special homemade punch.

  The kind of murder I have in mind is of a peculiar character, since it must earn for me all the bounty of fame and celebrity without the appearance of seeking to do so. I prefer to be seen as other than grasping; I prefer to sit, Womack-like, perfectly composed in the courthouse, dressed in neat pantsuits with my electronic detection anklet discretely concealed, my eyes spaced perhaps less widely than hers, in order to appear more photogenic than demented. I owe Carmine that much, not to make a mockery of her death.

  For other reasons, a simple contract killing appears out of the question. First of all, in order for me to achieve any kind of real publicity, my part in the murder must inevitably be found out. A contract killer might prove to be too efficient, or, if detected, too mundane. Anyone with a little money can pay to have his wife, or her husband, killed; there’s no originality or verve in it; I could probably make the arrangements online if I were willing to risk sending my credit card information over the internet.

  The most expedient solution to the dilemma would be to murder others at the same time as Carmine, as an expression of rage, perhaps because of my many months of unemployment. Were my children still of a tender age, I might stab their mother to death and then slit their throats, preferably at some wee hour of the morning with Frank in his footed pajamas and Annette nestled in a cotton nightie. I suppose, given the power and convenience of the automobi
le, that I could drive to X and attack Frank in his comfortable house, and then buzz over to that little town in Y to do the same to Annette and her skinny girlfriend. Slaughtering in three states would certainly do me justice in terms of exposure. But there’s the inconvenience, the added risk of capture, not to mention triple the clean-up.

  Carmine deserves an original end. She has been, at times, a good mate, probably better than I have been. She deserves the best, the most creative, murder that I can contrive. Not some cheap passion killing but a true piece of planning and art. She deserves my all.

  For Carmine, I must do better than the cheap, lurid spectacle of massacre performed by Mark O. Barton, the Atlanta day trader who shot his wife Leigh Ann, his two children Matthew and Mychelle, and nine people in two Buckhead stock brokerage offices; and who very likely killed his first wife, Debra, years before. While his motives may have sprung from the same roots as my own, though both Mark O. Barton and I have lost fabulous sums of money in the stock market and have in general presided over the financial ruin of our families, I myself don’t have the sort of self-satisfied self-preoccupation that would allow me to bother so many of my neighbors and fellow beings in that way. I can understand his wanting to shoot and kill his family, an impulse familiar to anyone who has ever been a member of a family, and certainly can sympathize with his shooting the second wife if he had already gotten away with killing the first. It’s certain that this kind of killing spree would guarantee me the public exposure usually reserved for rock stars and movie idols, which is, of course, what I seek. But it would be a false and immoral way of murdering my faithful Carmine, who deserves that her death should not be diluted in gallons of blood from other people. Besides, I would have to shoot myself at the end of the killing spree, and I doubt I’d ever muster the nerve for that.