A Woman's Work

Monica looked at the lump on her floor with contempt. What an idiot! She knew she would have to kill him one day, but why did it have to be today of all days? Today, when there was so much to do for the luncheon tomorrow? Bread and pickles to be bought, finger sandwiches to be made, napkins to be folded and the body of a no-good, dirty-rotten, pig-bodied, scum-sniffing, head-balding husband to take out back and bury.

            And it wasn’t like she hadn’t told him she would kill him. She’d told him a thousand times. Once, when the whisky had stained her most stylish throw pillow. Again, when he’d vomited on the dinner table while the Andersons were over for an evening meal. She’d told him just two days ago after she’d found him passed out on the front lawn, his face pressed right up against the ass of one of those ugly gnomes he kept bringing home for the garden.

            Those gnomes. He kind of looked like one of them, she laughed to herself. Maybe she should set him up in the garden with some overalls and a pitchfork. Surely, no one would know the difference! At this she laughed and laughed and laughed. She laughed until tears streamed down her face. She laughed until the muscles in her abdomen screamed and begged her to stop. She laughed until her knees buckled and she had fallen to the floor next to the body of her husband. She laughed until laughter would come no more.

            That was when she noticed his face. One eye was open, gazing dumbly into the abyss. The other was bashed in to the point where one couldn’t tell if it was opened or closed. His unshaven face was flecked with pieces of his own flesh. His mouth hung open, tongue flaccid and sagging out from between his lips. She knew that tongue would taste of whisky. Her stomach turned.

            Cliff had been a good man, when Monica had married him. But he had a problem with whisky. He had liked the way the drink felt, rolling down his throat. He had liked the way it took his world, crumpled it up and tossed it away, like paper into a wastebasket. He had liked forgetting.

            But it got him into trouble. He got arrested and he got punched and he got spit on and he got thrown into the street. And of course, in the end, he got bludgeoned to death with a clothes iron. But that’s the thing with whisky. You take the good of it and you get the bad of it.

            Monica stood up. She wiped the blood from her hand on a napkin, one of the napkins for tomorrow’s luncheon. She would have to run to the store and buy some more of those this afternoon. She looked around the room. A new carpet would do as well. And a new sofa. She looked down and added a new dress to the list. Everywhere she looked, pieces of her husband had splashed and splattered. Even in death, the man couldn’t keep the house clean!

            Monica sighed, and went to work. A woman’s work is never done, that is certain, she laughed.