A Bitch and Her Bowl
By
Derik Taylor
(Inspired
by Janus a story whose author is named Ann
Beattie)
Posted
How’s this for
originality? How’s this for my suicide
note?
I want whoever
reads this to know that it was her fault.
She deserved everything I did to her, to her and her bowl.
It was almost a
year ago when I became suspicious that my wife was cheating on me. I should have realized sooner. I guess it’s my fault for being such a
trusting husband. When she wasn’t
working she found excuses for being away from the house. Going to crafts fairs seemed to be her
favorite. It was the ninth weekend in a
row that she scampered off to a crafts fair that I followed her.
And fuck me if I
wasn’t right. In the parking lot she met
a slick, thoroughly tanned man who looked like a car salesman; I was almost
relieved that he wasn’t someone I knew. I’d
hate to have to kill an old friend or someone else that I had trusted. She never kissed me the way she kissed
him. I stayed out of her line of sight
as I followed them through the booths of this wasted civilization. She never knew I was there.
At one booth I
noticed her paying particular attention to a certain cream colored bowl. Her lover was standing beside her. She didn’t buy the bowl and when she sat the
bowl down I approached her lover who still lingered around the booth looking at
a leg lamp.
I never cheated
on her, so I didn’t know if it was standard operating procedure for people
having an affair to showoff pictures of who they were cheating on. She might have said, “Here’s my husband, he
is a stockbroker. I think he is rather
dull and unattractive.” And he would have
taken out a picture of his wife and kids, “Here is my wife, and that is Zachary
and Warren. My wife doubled in size
after she had Zachary and I have hated her since.”
The man didn’t
recognize me as I told him that I thought his wife really liked the bowl and
that the bowl would make a great gift. I
guess they didn’t show off pictures.
Then I told him that I had bought the bowl years ago as a gift for my
wife, but she had passed away. He gave
me a half smile. The price on the
sticker informed me that the bowl was $550, but I told him that he could have the
bowl because he had such a lovely wife.
He said, “Thanks, I know” and walked away. I paid the man at the booth for the bowl and
watched the car salesman give the bowl to my wife. I heard her ask if he still wanted her to buy
that. He said that he had already bought
the bowl for her.
Then I went home,
but she didn’t till the next morning. When
she showed me the bowl I tried to be as indifferent as possible. I didn’t pick the bowl up, but looked into,
smiled and said the bowl was “pretty.” She
rolled her eyes.
We were joined
in holy matrimony when we were sophomores in college. I have always loved her even though she
changed after we were out of grad school.
First she insisted that we move to her hometown of
One of my first
clients, who owned a record label, had a tattoo on his back that said “Trust No
Bitch”. I thought it was funny. How right he was. My father always told me not to trust women, he
never gave a reason, just said don’t trust them. It couldn’t have been mom, she was a good
woman, he beat her a lot, I never knew why. I obviously beat my wife, but only once.
I don’t remember
how long it has been since I followed her to the crafts fair and learned the
truth. Time has melted together, I look
older, I feel older.
Yesterday I took three rolls of film with my Leica
camera. These rolls are full of pictures
of my wife and her lover having sex. They
didn’t even know I was there. The film
is on the kitchen table. I know her
affair didn’t give me the “right” to do what I did. I just wanted people to know that she did it. That I had a reason.
She came home
around eight last night. I was in bed
and while she was undressing I popped up and started punching her in the head. Two good hits and she was
on the floor. I crawled on top and
punched more as she scratched my face and screamed. Eventually I knocked her out. Using duct tape I secured her hands together
behind her back, taped her ankles together, and taped around her mouth and head
at least twenty times, ruining her pretty hair.
When she woke she
squirmed and gagged. I have heard talk or
read talk about seeing emotion in someone’s eyes, like love, for example, but I
had never seen anything like. What I saw
in her eyes was fear. It was cute. I talked to her; I told her that I knew about
her affair; I told her that I was the one that told him to buy the bowl for her
because I knew the bowl would symbolize something to her.
Oh how she loved
that bowl, she took the bowl everywhere, whenever she showed a house she took
it, when she went to fuck the car salesman she took it. She even dreamed about the bowl. I woke up on numerous occasions to find her moaning
as if wrapped in sexual bliss. At times
I could hear her saying, “Bowl,” or “Oh Bowl!” or “Oh yes, goddamn bowl, fuck
me harder!” The day she brought the bowl
home she told me the bowl was meant to be kept empty and I was not supposed to put
my keys or anything else in the bowl. I
bet she let him put his keys in the bowl, I bet she let him fill the bowl with
whatever he wanted.
Till
Last Christmas
she bought me tools. Tools for
Christmas, that’s like getting your wife a vacuum cleaner. “Now you can do something while you’re at
home doing nothing,” she told me. I did
just that. I did something.
I sung along to
our song while I did it. “Laughin’ and a runnin’
hey hey.
Skippin’ and a jumpin’,”
I said.
It had been our
song for fourteen years, since I met her in an English class fourteen years ago
and we started talking. She was so
beautiful then, I thought I had found a person that I could spend the rest of
my life with. We were married six months
later.
Her eyes were locked
on mine as I sawed her neck, a flesh-colored, blood-filled tree with the saw
she gave me last Christmas, the one that is upstairs in the bedroom. I cut all the way through.
“Do you remember
when, we used to sing, Sha la la
la la la
la la la
la la de da?” I asked her,
but it was too late. If I would have
asked her earlier and taken off the duct tape she could have answered me and she
would have answered yes. We had, at
times, sung together, when life was FUN, when being with my girl was what made
me happy, before she was a bitch.
Then I drug her
body downstairs to the coffee table where her bowl was. I propped her up against the table and sat
the bowl where her head used to be and put my keys in the bowl. Then I sat down and looked at my
masterpiece.
When I woke up this
morning Bondo, her silly mut
dog, had knocked the bowl off and was licking her neck hole. I told him he was a “bad dog” and put the
bowl back. He scampered upstairs. I sat in front of the body, looking at her bowlhead all day, smelling her rot. I watched the sun set behind the bowl, it was
like watching one at the beach, the rim of the bowl was the horizon and it
sparkled with a brilliant orange color as the sun vanished below. As I write this I feel good, better then I
have in a long time. If you are looking
for her head, Bondo sort of mangled it, but I put it
in the bowl and buried the two items together in the flower garden I made for
her.
That’s all, bye.