Husband and Wives

by Susan Rogers Cooper

  Halls led off from the rock wall to the left and to the right. Glancing to my right, it looked like bedrooms; to the left was a kitchen on one side, with a formal dining room next to the sunken living room on the other. The voices were coming from the left, from beyond the kitchen and dining room.

  I slowly made my way down the hall to the left, staying close to the living-room side, as I could see that the kitchen opened into a family room beyond, and I wanted to stay hidden until I could see what was going on.

  As I moved closer, I began to make out the words.

  Carol Anne’s voice: ‘I don’t understand!’

  Rene’s voice: ‘I told him! I told him twice – either marry me or I’m telling about Michael! But he kept saying he couldn’t! That I was married to Jerry and he couldn’t do that!’

  Carol Anne’s voice: ‘But you shot him!’

  Rene’s voice: ‘I didn’t mean to! He pulled out this gun and he said, “Just shoot me.” He said it would be easier than trying to work out him marrying me! He said he’d rather die than marry me!’ I could hear Rene burst into tears. Through her sobs, I heard her say, ‘So I shot him! I didn’t mean to! I just – I dunno – did it!’

  I moved around the wall to take in the scene in the family room. Carol Anne was standing in front of Rene, who had a gun in her hand; however, the gun was pointed at the floor. Behind Rene lay David Bollinger, bleeding onto the hardwood floor from a wound in his groin. As it was still oozing blood, I knew he was still alive, but for how long I didn’t know.

  ‘Rene,’ I said quietly, ‘just put the gun down.’

  Both women turned to look at me. The gun came up in Rene’s hand, pointed not at Carol Anne but at me.

  ‘Go away!’ Rene shouted. ‘Why are you here? Why is everybody ganging up on me?’ she shouted, the gun now being pointed at Carol Anne, then at me, then back at Carol Anne. ‘I’m just trying to do what’s best for my babies! Can’t you people see that? Everybody gets mad at me! I’m the one who should be mad! It’s not my fault! None of it is! But everybody’s gonna blame me! Just like Mary did! It just wasn’t right saying it’s all my fault! ’Cause it’s not!’

  ‘When did Mary blame you?’ I asked, trying to cover the sound of the front door opening.

  ‘Just shut up!’ she yelled at me, pointing the gun once again exclusively at me. ‘You don’t have anything to do with this. You’re not family!’ She turned a pleading look to Carol Anne. ‘We’re family, Carol Anne, aren’t we?’

  Carol Anne replied with a tentative, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you know! Mary could be real bitchy, right? She’d get on your case and just hound you until she got what she wanted, huh?’

  ‘No!’ Carol Anne said which, had she asked me, I would have said was the worst possible answer. ‘She wasn’t like that at all! She knew that you slept with Jerry when you were babysitting and that he got you pregnant—’

  Rene began to cry again. ‘But he didn’t. I just told him that. He’s a man, so he was too ignorant to notice that I told him I was pregnant two weeks after we had sex.’

  Carol Anne lowered herself into a chair, her mouth hanging open. ‘So Cheyenne is not Jerry’s daughter?’

  Rene shook her head.

  ‘She was your daddy’s daughter, wasn’t she, Rene?’ Milt said as he walked into the foyer.

  Milt Kovak – Monday

  Rene’s gun quickly turned on me so I raised my arms.

  ‘Don’t you ever say that!’ Rene shouted. ‘Never ever!’

  ‘I’m trying to work it out in my head, Rene,’ I said, hands still in the air. ‘I’m thinking your daddy came here looking for you. Maybe to take you and Cheyenne back to Oregon with him?’

  Rene didn’t answer, just sniffed.

  ‘That’s what I think. But he approached Mary first, didn’t he? He thought, and maybe rightly so, that when she found out Cheyenne was his child and not Jerry’s, that she’d gladly send you and your children packing. Is that right?’

  Still no answer, just a steady hand on the gun pointed at my chest.

  ‘Now here’s where I get a little fuzzy. How’d you get in Mary’s kitchen? I figured your daddy got there sneaking in from the country club entrance and just rang Mary’s bell. But did you just come over for a visit, or did Mary call you over after your daddy filled her in? Which was it, Rene?’

  Rene took a deep breath and said, ‘Mary called me.’

  ‘So you’re in the kitchen with your daddy and Mary. Where are your kids?’

  ‘In the family room, in the playpen with Mark.’

  ‘OK. So something happens. I’m not sure which happened first. But I think it was your daddy. He had to say something mean and stupid, right?’

  Rene’s voice broke on a sob, as she said, ‘He said me and Cheyenne were coming home with him, but that my bastard boy should be put in a paper bag and thrown in a river, like a puppy.’

  ‘I don’t think I would have liked your daddy,’ I said.

  ‘Nobody did,’ Rene answered.

  ‘I bet him saying that surprised Mary,’ I said.

  She shrugged. ‘I dunno. I wasn’t paying much attention to her.’

  I nodded. ‘No, I guess not. All your attention must have been on your daddy. What did you do? Did you hit him with something first? There was a knot on his forehead.’

  Rene nodded slightly. ‘There was a grocery sack, a plastic one, on the counter and I just picked it up and swung it at him. There was a glass bottle in there, juice or something, and he fell down, but he was still talking, still saying ugly hateful things!’

  ‘You had to stop him,’ I said. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I had the plastic bag in my hand after the juice bottle fell out. I just took it and covered his face with it and held it there. He kicked a lot. And Mary was screaming at me, pulling at me. But I held it there! I held it until he quit moving! I held it until he was good and dead!’ Rene said, a slight sound of triumph in her voice.

  ‘I bet Mary didn’t like that,’ I said.

  Rene sighed and lifted up her arms, with gun in hand, in a sigh of resignation. ‘She was going to call the police! She said I murdered him! That was justifiable homicide, right, Sheriff? ’Cause if he took me back to Brighton, it would be the same as killing me! And he threatened to kill my baby boy!’

  ‘So you had to stop Mary from calling the police, right?’ I said.

  ‘I just grabbed the first thing I saw, which was the meat pounder she was using to fix dinner. I didn’t mean to kill her – that was an accident. I just wanted to stop her long enough for us to talk about it. But I think maybe I just hit her in the wrong place,’ Rene said, sitting down and dropping the gun on the floor. ‘I really didn’t mean to kill her.’

  Nita Skitteridge, who’d come in behind me, hustled over to Rene and picked up the gun. I waved for her to back off when it looked like she was going to handcuff Rene.

  ‘Did you have help getting your daddy out of Mary’s house?’ I asked Rene.

  ‘Naw, Daddy’s a little man, I weigh more’n him. I just ran and got my car and then dragged him out and put him in the trunk. I knew nobody’d see me, and there wasn’t no blood. Kids were all in school, Jerry and Dennis were at work, it was Carol Anne’s day to be parent helper at one of the kids’ schools, and Mrs Rigsby, she never takes her eyes off the TV during the day. And I waited until late that night when the babies were asleep and I took them out to the car and buckled them in, then drove around looking for a dumpster. I found one and tried to lift Daddy into it, but I couldn’t, and the place was a real mess, so I just kinda shoved him behind the dumpster, between it and the fence.’

  ‘You took the children with you to dump your father’s body?’ Carol Anne said indignantly, standing up.

  ‘Carol Anne . . .’ I said, trying to shut her up.

  ‘You killed your own father, you killed Mary, and you exposed your own children to your depravity—’

  ‘Don’t you get on your high horse!’ Rene
shouted back. ‘Like you ever welcomed me into this family! You were jealous of me from day one! If you’d ever acted to me like a real sister-wife, maybe none of this woulda happened!’

  ‘You’re blaming this on me?’ Carol Anne shouted then lunged at Rene. Rene lunged back, but Nita Skitteridge managed to get in between.

  ‘Carol Anne!’ Jerry shouted, coming in from the garage. ‘Let go of her!’ he shouted at Nita, grabbing at her left arm, while her right went for the gun riding her hip.

  I figured it was time to intervene. So did my wife, who threw a crutch at Jerry before I could join the brouhaha. Jerry grunted and fell on his ass. Nita grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back.

  ‘Enough!’ I shouted as I walked up to them. ‘Nita, just stop it. He thought you were hurting Carol Anne—’

  ‘She was!’ Carol Anne said. ‘When she should’ve been hurting this little tramp!’

  ‘Who are you calling a tramp, scarecrow!’ Rene said as she jumped up on the couch and grabbed a handful of Carol Anne’s hair.

  Holding his head, which was bleeding a little, Jerry looked at me. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Well, you aren’t Cheyenne’s father after all,’ I said, speaking loudly to be heard over the screaming of the catfight going on in the center of the room.

  ‘Milt!’ my wife screamed. ‘Stop them!’

  ‘Sheriff?’ Nita Skitteridge asked.

  ‘Huh?’ Jerry said.

  ‘Cheyenne is the product of incest, poor darling,’ I said. ‘Rene’s daddy did it. Rene killed her daddy. Unfortunately she did it in front of Mary, who of course was going to do something about it, so Rene killed her too.’

  Jerry sat there for a long moment, then said, ‘No shit?’

  ‘No shit, Sherlock,’ I said.

  Jerry’s two surviving wives were snatching each other bald-headed and screaming really mean stuff at each other. I sat down to watch, while Jerry watched from his position on the floor.

  Jean moved into the room on one crutch, so I said to Jerry, ‘Hey, hand my wife her crutch, OK?’

  Jerry said, ‘Oh, sure,’ as he reached behind him at the crutch that had hit him on the head. Stretching, but not getting up, he handed it to Jean. She, in turn, glared at both of us.

  Jean walked up to Nita, who was staring at the two combatants. ‘Are we going to do something?’ Jean asked Nita.

  Nita yawned. ‘Hell, ma’am, I don’t feel like getting scratched. They’ll settle down in a minute.’

  And Nita was right – they did settle down, but it took more like fifteen minutes.

  Milt Kovak – The Weeks Following

  Rene pleaded guilty to killing her father and Mary Hudson. The judge, who must’ve liked cute butts too, gave her a year suspended for killing her daddy, saying the old bastard had it coming, and ten years for killing Mary Hudson, saying it was a crime of passion and mostly an accident. Neither Carol Anne nor myself thought that to be true, but both Jerry and my wife Jean thought it to be so. Chances were good that Rene could be out of jail in five years.

  Meanwhile, David Bollinger refused to submit to a paternity test, although anybody with eyes and a smidgeon of scientific knowledge would know that about the whole cleft chin stuff. Carol Anne refused to take in Rene’s children, even though all her own children felt they were kin – blood or not – and Jerry was up for it. So since the boys were back in Carol Anne’s house, Rene’s kids were staying with Dennis Rigsby and his mother. Dennis Rigsby asked Rene to marry him, which they had done by the same judge who sentenced Rene to prison, and Dennis started adoption proceedings for both of Rene’s children. It should be final before Rene gets out of prison.

  He and his mama are staying in The Branches, in Carol Anne’s old house to be close to the prison where Rene will be; meanwhile, Jerry and Carol Anne and all their kids are moving back west. No longer a plural family, they’re moving to Salt Lake City and going to be real Mormons, according to Carol Anne. Which means, one of these days, we might see some of the boys riding bicycles and wearing white shirts with ties. It’s possible.

  It turns out there was never a marriage license filled out for Michael McKinsey and Rachael Owen, so there was no need for Rachael to divorce him. I had the county hire a forensic accountant, who went over the books I found on Michael McKinsey’s desk and, sure enough, Rachael would be getting all her money back. Of course that, like Dennis adopting Rene’s kids, would work out about the time Rene got out of prison. Meanwhile, Rachael and her kids are moving back to Tyler, Texas and, strangely enough, my good old buddy Roy Donley has decided to relocate his trucking business to east Texas. Go figure.

  The two little kids Jean and I rescued from that trailer were placed in the same foster home – a new foster family, a young couple who can’t have kids of their own – and the children seem to be thriving, according to CPS. I hear the couple would like to adopt them, but since Charlotta’s in the wind, it could be hard to do.

  Meanwhile, the VFW’s Sadie Hawkins dance is coming up in about a week, and me and Jean are going. It’s not that we dance all that much (although we can cut a rug on occasion). Mostly we’re going to see how well Dalton does dancing with Holly Humphries. She finally asked him to the dance, once I explained what a Sadie Hawkins dance was. Dalton and Nita Skitteridge practiced at the shop during evening shifts. What I saw was pretty funny, but Nita said he’s getting better. Jean and me want to see for ourselves.