I’d rather be dead anyhow probably. I mean, I already tried. And failed flat as I did Algebra II when I was going out with Kyle every night, which was a shame, I mean the algebra ’cause it was kind of interesting. But at the time, I’m sorry to say, not as interesting as Kyle, who was already such a big basketball star at Creekside High he was on the news just about every week, leaping and dribbling and dodging and tossing. He could have had any girl he wanted in Creekside High and I was such an idiot I was glad he picked me.
Anyhow, I tried to die after I killed Kyle but I didn’t. I woke up alive in the ICU and I could just hear Kyle laughing that snuffling way he had about how Charmain Luby never could do a single thing right. But I did try. I bought a shelf’s worth of every pill Wal-Mart’s had on display, then I went to the Marriott and got most of them down with a bottle of vodka which tasted terrible because I’m not much of a drinker. I propped my letter to Mawmaw against the ice bucket and took out my silver-framed picture of my baby Jarrad (that Mrs. Markell got named Kyle, Jr., on the certificate) and I lay down with the picture on the bed and cried myself to sleep. I felt like I was dying and they said I would of too if it hadn’t been for the highway patrol knocking the door down and rushing me to the emergency clinic.
It was my brother’s Mercury Cougar got the police there, which I didn’t know was a stolen vehicle at the time I parked it out in front of the Marriott on Old 89, not that anything Tanner did would surprise me anymore. They had a whatever-you-call-it out for his car and it was a easy color to spot, Light Sapphire Blue, plus had a Pirates of the Caribbean flag from Disney World hanging on the antenna, plus Florida plates. They weren’t even looking for me yet. So they saved my life anc. went for the death penalty.
I always wanted to stay in that Marriott. Or any Marriott. Even on our honeymoon Kyle took me to a Motel 6 at the beach. “I’m not paying good money for a bed in the dark.” He wouldn’t eat in nice restaurants either. “I’m not paying good money for something that’s going to turn to shit in three hours.” Kyle always called it good money and I guess what was good about it was he never spent it on me. He spent it on drugs and what he called Antique Vehicles. He collected old junk motorbikes, cars and trucks, and anything else crappy that used to move and now couldn’t anymore. He claimed their “value” was “going through the roof” someday and then he’d fix them and sell them for a fortune on the Internet. But he never did, surprise surprise. All he did was leave them there turning to red rust and weeds I couldn’t get at to pull. Between his antique vehicles and his basketball court, he used up all the space in my yard so I couldn’t grow a vegetable garden. He squashed my peonies under a 1952 Ford truck and he shot free throws standing on top of my tulip bulbs. Mostly up Kyle’s nose is where the good money went. And I got Motel 6.
Where I really always wanted to stay at was the Polynesian Resort at Disney World. But considering what’s happened, it don’t take the Psychic Hotline to tell me Disney World’s not in my future, because even if I don’t get Death, I’ll get Life.
My brother Tanner went to Disney World. Drove down to Orlando right after he got out on the ABC store thing. I wish he’d taken me with him. At least I would have seen the Magic Kingdom. Or I wish he’d never come back with that Mercury Cougar that stopped me from dying at the Marriott. Or I wish he hadn’t come back at all, so I wouldn’t have gone over to his trailer and seen his Desert Eagle Mark VII.44-caliber Magnum pistol I shot Kyle with. (Mr. Goodenough has been talking for weeks about that gun, like it was the most important thing in my life, so that’s how I know so much about it now, because believe me at the time I borrowed it from Tanner, all I knew was it was black and heavy and if you pulled the trigger a bullet came out.) Most of all I wish I’d never eloped with Kyle.
I picked the Marriott because I figured as far as me and a nice motel goes it was sort of now or never, since I planned on meeting my Maker after those medications took hold-if there’s even Anybody up there to meet, though I’d hate for Mawmaw to hear me wondering something like that. And you know what’s funny-not really funny but freaky-is at first I was thinking, Ha ha, wait’ll Kyle gets this Visa bill, he’ll turn totally purple, because on top of $129 at the Marriott, I had tore through Wal-Mart, looking like Kyle used to on the basketball court before they found out he was using cocaine. After I loaded up on medications, I bought Mawmaw a Hoover Deluxe because she brings her own equipment to the job, plus $326.59 worth of toys for her to put out under the tree next Christmas for Jarrad. It took me a long time to choose the toys and it was like I forgot I didn’t have a long time. That’s what was funny. I had completely forgot I’d killed Kyle, shot him in the head and drug him out in the yard and set fire to him right under his basketball hoop with a big pile of brush and a gallon can of kerosene.
Then when I was lying on the king-sized bed in the Marriott swallowing those pills, it hit me how there was no way Kyle was ever going to pitch another fit over the Visa bill or the other million things he blamed me for, like his whole entire life, which I used to be dumb enough to think was my fault. And then it hit me how it was Mawmaw that was gonna get stuck with that huge Visa bill. And how it was Jarrad that was gonna get stuck with his friends saying his mama had murdered his daddy, which is worse than what I had to put up with in school because of my name and that was bad enough, calling me Toilet Paper and “Please don’t touch the Charmain.” Plus jokes about my parents being trash and roadkill. Trying to write a letter for Jarrad to read when he was old enough was the last thing I remember.
My lawyer said a suicide attempt didn’t look good for me in some ways, and did look good in others. The way it did look good was it showed I wasn’t in my right mind and was full of remorse and confusion and maybe had acted “on impulse” and wasn’t trying to get away with something. The way it didn’t look good was I’d left a note for Mawmaw asking her to apologize to Mr. and Mrs. Markell for me and say I hoped they could forgive me for killing their son but not saying anything about how shooting Kyle was a accident, or self-defense, or spur-of-the-moment, or too much to drink, or some other reason why it wouldn’t be Murder One. Plus setting fire to Kyle with kerosene-my lawyer said that had the look of a cover-up.
I guess it was a cover-up, just not enough of one. But it’s true, I couldn’t stand the idea of Mawmaw and Jarrad (when he was old enough) thinking I killed anybody, much less my husband, and I guess that’s why I tried to get rid of his body. I figured if Kyle was just gone and everybody thought he’d run off to Hawaii or something, then Mawmaw wouldn’t get her life ruined and Jarrad would have, I don’t know, a chance, I guess. When I tried to explain my reason to Mawmaw in the hospital, she said my Mama and Daddy hadn’t had half a brain between them but she had used to think I did have some brains. But I’d handed them over to Kyle to wipe his feet on. She said there wasn’t no reason for acting the way I had, and I had to accept I’d acted crazy and move on from there.
But I will swear this on a Bible. I never thought Mr. and Mrs. Markell would drop by our house that afternoon (which is something they never did, and Kyle sure never told me he’d asked them to supper) and find Kyle only half burnt up. I figured that brush pile would burn on through the weekend-nobody lives near us and besides Kyle liked to keep trash burning out back so you couldn’t smell his marijuana. I’d figured by the time anybody showed up, I’d be gone to Heaven or probably Hell, considering, and Jarrad would be at Mawmaw’s safe anc sound, and when Kyle wasn’t at Creekside Ford on Tuesday, because he had Monday off, somebody would call the house, and then one of his coworkers would come over and think he was gone. I never figured Mr. and Mrs. Markell would be wandering through my kitchen by four o’clock on Sunday, and they’d see the smoke and walk out to that brush pile. Because that is something parents should never have to see. Their son burning up in his backyard. And I do apologize for that.