So Mr. Goodenough the D.A. said he was going to make an example out of me and he sure has tried. He’s been elected District Attorney in Creekside for twenty years running and they say it’s mostly because of his name. I remember those campaign billboards from when I was little: HE’S GOODENOUGH FOR YOU.
At my trial the D.A. said I had broke every vow I took in church when I promised to love and honor Kyle till death do us part. He said I was a black mark on the holy name of “Wife.” Every chance he got he told the jury how Kyle had been a basketball star and played for the ACC because around here that’s like saying you taught Jesus how to walk on water. He held up that souvenir basketball Kyle had from the Sweet Sixteen game that I’d shot a hole in and he carried on about it almost like it was worse I’d shot the damn basketball than shot Kyle in the head. That’s when I could see Dr. Rothmann on the jury start to fidget in her seat like she wanted to tell the judge to make the D.A. stop talking so much about how this was the very same basketball that Kyle had shot that three-pointer with, with two seconds left in overtime. Dr. Rothmann even rolled her eyes at the ceiling when the D.A. said how I’d cut short a promising young man’s great career in pro basketball when even the newspapers knew it was drugs cut short Kyle’s career when he had to drop out of college his sophomore year and no pro basketball team had given him the time of day since. He couldn’t even have held on to his job at Creekside Ford if his uncle hadn’t owned it.
Now, my brother Tanner is so dumb he figured it would look better for me if he told the police he gave me the gun to take home because Kyle hit me all the time and I was scared of him. The truth is, I don’t believe Tanner even knew I took his pistol out of his refrigerator that day.
And Kyle didn’t hit me. Oh, he said he was going to hit me all the time, but he didn’t have the guts. His style was more stuff like kicking my dog JuliaRoberts when I wasn’t looking. Or pouring nail polish on my new winter coat and saying Jarrad did it when Jarrad was so little he couldn’t even walk yet. Or making fun of me in front of his stupid buddies at Creek-side Ford. Or smacking Jarrad in the face when he was a tiny baby, which is the one time I ever slapped anybody in my life, when I slapped Kyle as hard as I could except it mostly just got his shoulder and he laughed at me.
So I couldn’t help Tilden Snow with his plan to use the “battered wife syndrome.” The only 911 ever got called from out house was me getting the ambulance for Kyle when he sniffed too much cocaine and knocked over his trophy case and almost bled to death from broken glass. Course if I’d let him die that time maybe me and Jarrad would be in Disney World right this minute, staying at the Polynesian Resort.
I don’t mean to make it sound like I wanted a fancy life. And maybe this is what I would of tried to explain to Dr. Rothmann if there’d been a way for her and me to talk. I could of took not having things, easy, no problem, if I’d had somebody that loved me, even liked me. Because you can hit somebody without laying a hand on them, which is what Kyle kept doing to me. That’s why I couldn’t stop thinking about what Mawmaw said about how I was her only hope and had to earn respect. So I told Kyle he had to respect me more and not make me feel small. But he laughed at me and said, “Yeah, well, maybe I would if you stuck a gun in my face.”
So that’s really why it all happened. That’s why when I was over at Tanner’s trailer and I saw that black pistol of his in the refrigerator, all of a sudden I got the idea I’d do just what Kyle said. Next time he was making fun of me, I’d stick a gun in his face.
So that Friday when Tanner carried Jarrad down to the pond to look at the ducks, I took his gun and hid it in my purse. Then on Saturday Mawmaw watched Jarrad for me and I worked all day at Pretty Woman. That night was bad because Kyle was trying to make me do stuff in bed I didn’t want to. Sunday morning he’s mad at me. He’s sitting on the couch in his underpants and wearing his old college basketball shirt, Number 56, click-clacking with that straight razor blade at his cocaine. I’m trying to get me and Jarrad dressed to go pick up Mawmaw for church and I’m late. Then Kyle tells me to nuke him a cup of coffee and when I can’t get the microwave to go off Defrost, he starts laughing about “No-Brain Charmain.” Then pretty soon he starts bouncing his souvenir Sweet Sixteen basketball off the living room wall like he was in a gym and not our living room.
Then he starts in on me about the Visa bill and what was I buying shoes for “that kid” for anyhow when he was so dumb he couldn’t even walk yet so he must take after me? I’m looking at Kyle bouncing that basketball while I’m standing there crying, and Jarrad’s crying too because I’m crying. I’m thinking, How dumb was I marrying this man when I was just sixteen when Mawmaw begged me to at least finish high school? How dumb was I not knowing maybe he was a freshman in college and a big basketball player, but he was still, excuse me, a total asshole?
So I’m standing in the living room, holding Jarrad. Kyle’s yelling about the Visa bill, and my whole body fills up with the idea that year after year after year for the rest of our lives Kyle’ll do the same kind of meanness to me and he’ll do it to Jarrad too if I don’t make him respect me starting now. And that’s the first time I think about Tanner’s gun since I took it. So I walk down the hall to our bedroom and I put Jarrad in his crib. Now he’s crying at the top of his lungs, and I can hear Kyle yelling from the living room, “Shut him the fuck up!” I go get the pistol out of the bottom drawer of my bureau where I hid it and I walk back in the living room and I stick it in Kyle’s face and I say, “You shut the fuck up.”
He’s surprised and his mouth falls open. But he’s not scared. And then he laughs. “Hey, where’d you get that thing?” he says, pointing at the gun. “You planning to shoot somebody?” I don’t say a word, I just keep looking at him. He says, “Well, No-Brain, if you’re planning to shoot a pistol you got to take the safety off.” He laughs some more and then he snatches the gun right out of my hand. He waves it in my face and says, sarcastic, “Here you go.” He snaps this little lever on the side of the handle. “That’s the safety.” Then he hands the pistol back to me. “Knock yourself out.”
Off in our room, Jarrad’s bottle falls out of his crib and he cries harder.
All of a sudden Kyle starts throwing the basketball against the wall close to me. He breaks a lamp. Down the hall Jarrad screams like the world’s gone crazy and Kyle turns purple. “I told you, shut that stupid kid up!”
I say, “You’re scaring him.”
Kyle screams, “I’ll scare him okay!” And then he throws the basketball hard right at me and hits me in the head with it. Then he grabs the ball back and spins around to run down the hall. And that’s when I pull the trigger. The pistol goes off. The noise was so loud it hurt. Most of the back of Kyle’s head flies away. But he spins around and it goes off again and then it flings out of my hand. His knees bend, and it’s weird, it’s just like he’s at the free-throw line and is going for a basket. But then he drops the ball, which is all crumpled because I shot it, and his knees give way like the floor fell out from under him. He jerks over sideways and lands hard. The whole room shakes. Down the hall Jarrad keeps screaming. All I can think about is, at least Jarrad didn’t see it but the noise must have scared him. I run and go pick up my baby and I hide his eyes against me so he can’t see Kyle lying there and we run out of the house. I drive Jarrad to Mawmaw’s and tell her I can’t go to church. I say I had a fight with Kyle and I can’t talk about it now. Then I go back home and Kyle’s still lying there with blood oozed out all around his head and his stomach. I have to run to the bathroom ’cause I’m sick to my stomach. I don’t know what to do. I just keep wishing I could make it go away. After a while I get an old blanket and wrap him in it. He’s cold but I try not to touch him. I think I fainted. I don’t remember the rest but I must of drug him out to the backyard and poured the kerosene on him and lit it.