Serves Him Right

What was left of her husband Jack, Carol kept in the freezer in the basement. By the beginning of February, she expected to be on the nine o’clock news, handcuffed, and guided into the back of a police car. She wouldn’t protest or pretend to be innocent. She wasn’t innocent. She knew exactly what she was doing. Of all the women in Copal, of all the women in southern Wisconsin, it just had to be Nancy. Nancy, who had taught her to braid on that big disembodied Barbie head during their first sleepover when they were both eight years old. Nancy, who stayed on the phone with Carol on prom night after Kyle Henderson broke up with her just a week before the dance. Nancy, who helped Carol pick her wedding dress. How long had Nancy had an appetite for Jack?  In a sense, he was gone. But Carol wouldn’t let Nancy starve.

Ingredients:

1 apple, sliced—

The one in his throat. Wait for him to be doing the dishes after dinner. He’ll be singing Garth Brooks. He won’t hear you coming. He’ll be focused on his hands, so he won’t see the knife in yours. It might come to you as a surprise, all that brightness coming from a body. Spilling onto the kitchen floor. He won’t be able talk, but you’ll know he’s asking why. You tell him you know. It’s not hard to project over his gurgling, so you know he’ll hear you. You’ll see it in his eyes—guilt. It’ll come right before the fear, which comes right before the death. It’ll be both sweet and tart.

2 gallons of bleach—

For the mess. As you scrub the floors, you’ll likely consider why you didn’t just poison him.  It would’ve been easier to just disconnect the phone, hide his cell, and wait for him to drop dead after supper. But you live forty-five minutes out of town. No one stops by unexpectedly here. There won’t be neighbors to see any struggle, only trees. At first, you’ll smell it. That clean smell that somehow also reeks of sex. It will make you furious again, even though he’s dead. Scrub until you cannot smell it anymore.

13.25 lbs. of offal—

Cut him open in the garage, since the kitchen is clean now. It’ll be easier to hose down the floor. When everything spills out, you’ll think of the doe that your father opened up in the spring of 1976, when you were six. You consider what it would be like to string this body up like your father strung up the doe. The man you love hanging from a tree.  Morning frost spreading across his skin. The organs will need to be put into containers and frozen. You can grind them up later. Take your time.

2 hands (his)—

Marinate one for thirty years inside you. Marinate one for a decade or more inside her.  Then cut. It doesn’t need to be pretty. You’ll be dicing the meat anyway. Slice the skin open and pull out all of the bones. There will be more than you expect, so double and triple check. The meat will be tough. The meat may look shredded by the end, but if you want the meat to blend nicely with chicken, this is necessary anyway.

1 heart (his)—

Check to make sure it’s still there. Because you can’t hear it, you’ll have to see it.  It’s not a myth, and it doesn’t belong to her. It’s really there. You can hold it in your hands. It’s still warm. Wrap it in butcher paper and put it right in the fridge. You’ll want to cook that first. Since she wanted his heart so bad, it’ll be the first thing you’ll feed her. If you’re going to get caught eventually, you need to make sure that happens first. Her birthday is coming up, so you think of making her a casserole, wondering whether or not it will be difficult to make heart meat look like ground beef.

Preparation:

1. Place ground beef (thawed) into a bowl. Dice the heart on a plastic cutting board (for easier clean-up) and fold the pieces into the beef.

2. Cry if you must, but don’t vomit. Eventually, the pieces of heart will look like any other piece of meat. After that, it’ll be easier to forget. Be thankful you’re not pulling bones from hands. This is so much easier.

3. After the heart is mixed in, put the bowl in the fridge and grab a bottle of wine. Grab the one that he bought you for thirtieth anniversary. It’s red, of course.  As you drink it, try not to think of all that blood. Drink until you stop shaking.

Carol and Nancy had a tradition. Every Sunday, Carol came over to play a few games of pinochle. By the middle of February, Carol had fed Nancy a green bean casserole with a hint of Jack’s heart and some taco soup with little bits of his left hand.  This meant that Carol had to eat him too. This seemed a more intimate way of sharing him. After each meal, she excused herself from the card table to purge. She said things like, “That taco soup went right through me.” It was in that second week of February that Nancy finally asked about Jack.

“How’s the husband been? Haven’t heard from him for a while.”  Nancy looked down at her cards. Like she was ashamed to ask. She should be.

“He’s down in Iowa. His mom isn’t in the best shape. Getting old.”

A lie Carol had thought of as she found a way to make Jack’s body fit in the freezer. Even if she hadn’t killed him, Carol knew that his mother would find a way to outlive Jack. Phoebe would’ve outlived her son just to make sure Carol stayed as miserable as possible. She was also sure Phoebe would’ve called her son’s cell at least three times by now. Carol was honestly surprised that she hadn’t called the home phone or her cell yet. The woman had always avoided Carol, but Carol had never considered how stubborn that avoidance was until now. That was one quality she loved in Phoebe, and it had never been more beneficial than it was now.

“That’s a shame. I was wondering why he didn’t make it to my birthday get-together. You headed down to see him soon? You probably miss him.”

“Oh no, he calls every day. He was really disappointed he couldn’t make your party though.”

“His mom lives in Ames, right? I hear it’s pretty icy down there this year,” Nancy said, taking a sip of her Irish coffee.

“That’s what he keeps telling me. Says I wouldn’t believe it.”

Prep Time:

As long as you need. As long as you want. The heart was the only part you needed to rush for, and that’s done. The rest of the meals are dessert. Icing on the cake. Gravy on the turkey. His truck is hidden deep in the woods, so as far as anyone knows, he’s not here. His phone is in the junk drawer, its battery is in the trash. His mother hasn’t called you yet, and Nancy thinks he’s in Iowa with her. His best friend Dwayne calls, but you can use the same excuse that you gave Nancy. And Jack’s phone was never really on when he was alive either. He always said that if someone wanted to reach him, they would just come over. So you have time. All the time in the world.

When Carol served Nancy the chicken salad that had Jack’s left hand in it, Nancy found a bone. A really little bone. The very tip of a finger. Maybe even a little piece of the very tip of a finger.  Still, Carol couldn’t believe that she missed it. She checked four separate times.

It crunched against Nancy’s tooth, and she pulled it out. “What in God’s name is this?”

“Let me see,” Carol said. It could all be over. She could just tell Nancy now.  Two months was a good run. No, not yet. “That could just be a bit of gristle, maybe.”

“That’s not gristle, Carol, look.” Nancy held it up close to Carol’s face. “Is it a chunk of bone?”

Carol wanted to say that it was. That it had belonged to Jack. That this was the first time she had made a mistake while preparing a meal that featured traces of his flesh. And she wanted to ask if Nancy felt close to him when she swallowed slices of his heart. If Nancy thought about her over the years, or if she just ignored the fact that Jack was married. If she thought Jack would leave Carol for her. And she wanted to ask if Nancy preferred the taste of him cooked or raw.

But she didn’t ask. Instead, she said, “I don’t usually use a rotisserie chicken for this recipe. I must’ve just missed a bone.” And then Carol offered Nancy a napkin to put the bone into.

Nancy asked for the recipe.

Three months. That’s how long it took before Phoebe called Carol. There was still plenty of her son to find, although he was in pieces. Carol didn’t have the patience to put the tougher cuts of him in the pressure cooker, make those parts more malleable, easier to camouflage.

“I haven’t heard anything in a while. I just want to make sure Jack is okay.  Everything is alright with you two, right?” Phoebe said. Carol knew that she hoped the answer was no.

“Oh, we’re great,” Carol said. “He’s just been down with a cold the last few weeks.  Nothing too serious though.”

“He usually calls me every couple weeks. He hasn’t been, so he must not be well.  Put him on the phone.”

“He just went down for a nap,” Carol said. It was more possible for her to mail him to her than it was to get him to talk on the phone at this point.

“Fine. Wake him up, then put him on the phone. I don’t need to hear that snoring. I put up with eighteen years of it,” Phoebe said. Worried as she was, she managed to belittle her son. She was a talented lady. Persistent.

“I’m not going to wake him right now. Sorry.”

“Hang up. I’ll wake him myself with the damn ringer.”

Carol listened. And then she disconnected the landline and put her cell on silent.

“Have you been feeling okay, Carol?” Nancy said, slurping a spoonful of soup that was made with chicken thigh and a little bit of Jack’s thigh, shredded.

“I feel fine. Why do you ask?”

“Well, you know. Jack is gone, and I know that can get stressful. And, um—”  Nancy paused. “I’ve noticed you been having a lot of trips to the bathroom after our meals.”

“I might just have a bug. Jack was feeling a bit ill right before he left.”

“I bet.” Nancy looked down at her soup, stirring. “I just want you to know.  Well, you know my niece Caitlyn? She used to spit up after a lot of meals too. A few years back. Mostly when she was thirteen and fourteen. You know, a different kind of sick.  And she went to a great therapist and she’s a lot better now.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Carol said. “I don’t have that problem.”

“Just know I’m here for you if you need anything.”

“You do more than you know, Nancy. I appreciate it.”

Reminder:

Don’t let the meat sit too long. That freezer-burn taste is a lot like the smell of death. No matter what you do, you can’t cover it up. It’ll overtake everything. It’ll spoil the meat.  Use it up. Don’t be wasteful. Enjoy with friends. Sit at the table, the meal laid out before you, and just tear at it. No need of utensils, just dig in. Indulge.

It’s a nice thought, but not always an option. That can make quite a mess. So, if you can’t get to everything in time, there’s only one thing you can do. Cook the meat until it can no longer burn. Reduce it down. Blacken it. You won’t get the fire hot enough to break the teeth down completely, so keep what you find.  Sprinkle a little in her lawn. Maybe even a little in her house. In that pair of boots that’s caked in mud. Anywhere you think might cause some reasonable doubt. And then you wait. Fingers crossed. Just like the two you put in the very bottom of her freezer. The ones that belonged to him.