The idea that her frightened mouse of a husband might have drugged her never crossed Wilma’s mind. Nevertheless, that was just what Pete jerzyck had done, and not for the first time, either.
Wilma knew that she had cowed her husband, but she had no idea to how great an extent. He did not just live in fear of her; he lived in awe of her, as natives in certain tropical climes once supposedly lived in awe and superstitious dread of the Great God Thunder Mountain, which might brood silently over their sunny lives for years or even generations before suddenly exploding in a murderous tirade of burning lava.
Such natives, whether real or hypothetical, undoubtedly had their own rituals of propitiation. These may not have helped much when the mountain awoke and cast its bolts of thunder and rivers of fire at their villages, but they surely improved everyone’s peace of mind when the mountain was quiet. Pete jerzyck had no high rituals with which he could worship Wilma; it seemed that more prosaic measures would have to serve. Prescription drugs instead of Communion wafers, for instance.
He made an appointment with Ray Van Allen, Castle Rock’s only family practitioner, and told him that he wanted something which would relieve his feelings of anxiety. His work-schedule was a bitch, he told Ray, and as his commission-rate rose, he found it harder and harder to leave his work-related problems at the office.
He had finally decided it was time to see if the doctor could prescribe something that would smooth off some of the rough edges.
Ray Van Allen knew nothing about the pressures of the real estate game, but he had a fair idea of what the pressures of living with Wilma must be like. He suspected that Pete jerzyck would have a lot less anxiety if he never left the office at all, but of course it was not his place to say so. He wrote a prescription for Xanax, cited the usual cautions, and wished the man good luck and God speed. He believed that, as Pete went down the road of life in tandem with that particular mare, he would need a lot of both.
Pete used the Xanax but did not abuse it. Neither did he tell Wilma about it-she would have had a cow if she knew he was using drugs.
He was careful to keep his Xanax prescription in his briefcase, which contained papers in which Wilma had no interest at all. He took five or six pills a month, most of them on the days before Wilma started her period.
Then, last summer, Wilma had gotten into a wrangle with Henrietta Longman, who owned and operated The Beauty Rest up on Castle Hill. The subject was a botched perm. Following the initial shouting match, there was an exchange between them at Hemphill’s Market the next day, then a yelling match on Main Street a week later. That one almost degenerated into a brawl.
In the aftermath, Wilma had paced back and forth through the house like a caged lioness, swearing she was going to get that bitch, that she was going to put her in the hospital. “She’ll need a Beauty Rest when I get through with her,” Wilma had grated through clenched teeth.
“You can count on it. I’m going up there tomorrow.
I’m going to go up there and Take Care of Things.”
Pete had realized with mounting alarm that this was not just talk; Wilma meant it. God knew what wild stunt she might pull.
He’d had visions of Wilma ducking Henrietta’s head in a vat of corrosive goo that would leave the woman as bald as Sinead O’Connor for the rest of her life.
He’d hoped for some modulation of temperament overnight, but when Wilma got up the next morning, she was even angrier.
He wouldn’t have believed it possible, but it seemed it was. The dark circles under her eyes were a proclamation of the sleepless rug ’ lit she had spent.
“Wilma,” he’d said weakly, “I really don’t think it’s such a good idea for you to go up there to The Beauty Rest today. I’m sure, if You think this over-”
“I thought it over last night,” Wilma had replied, turning that frighteningly flat gaze of hers on him, “and I decided that when I finish with her, she’s never going to burn the roots of anyone else’s hair. When I finish with her, she’s going to need a Seeing Eye dog just to find her way to the john. And if you fuck around with me’ Pete, you and her can buy your goddam dogs from the same litter of German shepherds.”
Desperate, not sure it would work but unable to think of any other way to stave off the approaching catastrophe, Pete jerzyck had removed the bottle from the inside pocket of his briefcase and had dropped a Xanax tablet into Wilma’s coffee. He then went to his office.
In a very real sense, that had been Pete jerzyck’s First Communion.
He had spent the day in an agony of suspense and had come home terrified of what he might find (Henrietta Longman dead and Wilma in jail was his most recurrent fantasy). He was delighted to find Wilma in the kitchen, singing.
Pete took a deep breath, lowered his emotional blast-shield, and asked her what had happened with the Longman woman.
“She doesn’t open until noon, and by then I just didn’t feel so angry,” Wilma said. “I went up there to have it out with her just the same, though-I’d promised myself I was going to, after all.
And do you know, she offered me a glass of sherry and said she wanted to give me my money back!”
“Wow! Great!” Pete had said, relieved and gladdened… and that had been the end of laffaire Henrietta. He had spent days waiting for Wilma’s rage to return, but it hadn’t-at least not aimed in that direction.
He had considered suggesting that Wilma go to Dr. Van Allen and obtain a tranquilizer prescription of her own, but discarded the idea after long and careful consideration. Wilma would blow him out of the water-maybe right into orbit-if he suggested that she TAKE DRUGS.
TAKING DRUGs was for junkies, and tranquilizers were for weak-sister junkies. She would face life on life’s terms, thank you very much.
And besides, Pete concluded reluctantly, the truth was too plain to deny: Wilma liked being mad. Wilma in a red rage was Wilma fulfilled, Wilma imbued with high purpose.
And he loved her-just as the natives of that hypothetical tropic isle undoubtedly love their Great God Thunder Mountain. His awe and dread actually enhanced his love; she wasWILMA, a force unto herself, and he attempted to deflect her from her course only when he was afraid she mi lit inure herself… which, through the mystic 9
transubstantiations of love, would also injure him.
He had slipped her the Xanax on just three occasions since then.
The third-and the scariest by far-was The Night of the Muddy Sheets.
He had been frantic to get her to take a cup of tea, and when she at last consented to drink one (after her short but extremely satisfactory dialogue with Crazy Nettle Cobb), he brewed it strong and dropped in not one Xanax but two. He was greatly relieved at how much her thermostat had dropped the next morning.
These were the things that Wilma jerzyck, confident in her power over her husband’s mind, did not know; they were also the things which kept Wilma from simply driving her Yugo through Nettle’s door and snatching her baldheaded (or trying to) on Friday morning.
2
Not that Wilma had forgotten Nettle, or forgiven her, or come to entertain the slightest doubt as to who had vandalized her bedlinen; no medicine on earth would have done those things.
Shortly after Pete left for work, Wilma got into her car and cruised slowly down Willow Street (plastered to the back bumper of the little yellow Yugo was a bumper sticker which told the world