I could practically see through her skull to the fantasyland she was building in her mind. Actually, she wasn’t building: She was grabbing — all of this, every bit of it, making it hers.
Not that she would ever garden, not with those lacquered nails, but she’d hire someone to keep up my good work and it wouldn’t be the same at all. A garden’s like a marriage: You can’t acquire it and simply admire it. You have to work at it constantly, pay attention, keep away the pests, or it dies.
“This property wouldn’t last a day on the market,” she said. I’d almost forgotten why she thought we were here. “There’s even room for a pool.”
I let her go on, while I picked up a trowel lying nearby, and put on my garden gloves, puttering with a pot of irises while she babbled.
She inhaled deeply and smiled at the freshness of the air, at the smell of spring — at the prospect of long summer evenings out here with my husband, I’m sure.
She twirled around, carefully estimating the size of our lot with her conniving mind, turning to view the house from the patio, and with each move she became ever more assertive, informing me that it would be best if we “staged” our house to give it more appeal to buyers. That meant streamlining things, removing everything that wasn’t essential — I’m sure she included me in that list. “And of course,” she said, “with your garden and the way you’re making it — those pots will be stunning on the patio!”
She was happy. Thrilled, even, so that seemed a good point at which to terminate our conversation. I stunned her with the trowel, put a patio pillow against her head, and shot her through the back of her skull.
I’m not saying my plan was clever or even original. I’m only saying it worked. I planted Lili Beth Warsaw in the future perennial bed which I’d carefully prepared. I also planted George’s gun — I knew it would be forever before he noticed its absence — along with her little notebook and her pocketbook, although not before I removed her car keys and cell phone. I am a good gardener and the ground had been nicely turned, so it was easy enough to cover her up and, in fact, to arrange seventeen young plants in the fresh earth.
I then drove her car to the airport, left it in long-term parking, and took the shuttle back to the stop closest to my home. It was a lovely afternoon, and fine for walking. I knew that sooner or later, her car would be ticketed, then towed out of the airport lot, and her disappearance would be interpreted as deliberate.
I must mention, with all due humility, that I was right again, and that is what eventually happened.
Lili Beth Warsaw and my problems had both been made to disappear, and in their place appeared lavender, salvia, roses, phlox, and as a private joke with myself, a generous helping of lilies.
As I say, you can’t let things slide in a garden or a marriage. You have to work at keeping them the way you want them to be.
Of course, George couldn’t comment on his missing mistress, or share whatever degree of bewilderment or grief he may have felt, so peace reigned in my household. After he’d mourned a lot longer than I would have preferred, he slowly recuperated and reverted to his usual pattern of petty and sloppy deceits. Who cared? The marriage-fortress’s walls were not being breached.
We had our usual confrontations about the bimbos.
He gave me a bracelet with diamonds spelling my name.
He hired a private trainer and a masseuse and installed a luxurious gym.
He gave me an emerald necklace that looked as if the Empress of All the Russias had been its former owner.
I can’t even think of what all I received. Fur was no longer PC, so I was given coats made of the softest leather, handmade shoes.
They say you can’t have it all, but I did. And then some.
The kids finished high school and entered college. I’d read that this was a dangerous time for the male of the species, that empty nest, and indeed, my problems started again. Or rather, what had restarted stopped again. No more guilty please-somebody-stop-me expression, no more sloppy covering of the tracks, no confessions, no tears.
The man had gone undercover literally and metaphorically. Just the way it had been with Lili Beth. He was extra nice to me. He had almost-believable excuses for his absences.
Déja vu all over again, except it was worse this time. Despite the trainers and some nips and tucks, I wasn’t young anymore. I knew what happened to ageing first wives, but I was not about to become another piece of roadkill on the marital highway.
George, on the other hand, was full of energy. He made major use of the household gym and the personal trainer. He jogged. He used hair-thickening drugs and maybe even those pep-up-the-body-parts drugs and he had the surgery where they slice your eyes so you don’t have to wear glasses anymore.
He was, in short, a walking, talking cliché, but as disgusted as I was, I was not about to allow him to destroy my marriage after all my hard work. I began investigating my husband.
This one, I eventually learned, was a lawyer, like George. Too much like him. Even had three first names, just like him: Gina Allison Clare. An associate in the firm, also involved in criminal law, and like him, crafty and shrewd. And a looker as well. It wasn’t hard getting a glimpse. I was the wife of the senior partner, after all, and all I needed to do, once I’d narrowed it down, was stop by at the office.
She was twenty years his junior, at least, and stunning. And when our glances crossed, briefly, I would have sworn she was coolly appraising me, like a problem to be solved. And she looked as if she thought I wouldn’t be a particularly difficult problem, either.
I was afraid she might be right, and I could tell right away that Gina Clare wasn’t going to be a piece of cake like dumb and greedy Lili Beth. Besides, the garden now looked precisely the way I wanted it. There were no more empty beds to be filled in, and I wasn’t as young as I used to be and my back wasn’t up to digging another suitable gravesite.
Even more relevant — I was tired. My jewelry box was filled to overflowing, as were my closets, and I didn’t want any more reparation payments from George. My children were on the way to their own lives, and as ever, I wanted to set a good example for them of a solid, stable marriage. I couldn’t let George — or what’s-her-face — ruin that.
I tried waiting it out. Tried believing that I could ride this through, that this was nothing more than middle-aged crazy. But I was also middle-aged, so I didn’t have forever to find out if George was going to get over it.
His good-guy facade began to crack under the weight of his impatience to move on, even though he never said that outright. Instead, he found fault with me for doing things precisely the way I’d done them for the past twenty-four years. He took to sitting silently for hours. The room would grow dark around him if I didn’t turn on the lamps. Infantile how he sat there pining away, like a junior-high-school boy with a crush, if junior-high boys were balding and jowly.
He tossed and turned half the night.
“Lots on your mind?” I finally asked one day. I knew he was defending a man accused of killing five people and though George couldn’t say so, he knew the man had done it. I knew the man had done it. Every human with a functioning brain knew the man had done it. But George had found ways to discredit eyewitnesses, to present — let’s be honest, to fabricate — a time scheme that put the killer somewhere else despite all evidence to the contrary. In short, George was doing what he did so well, justifying the high opinion of him in the less savory segments of society.
But he was, as always, infuriating others. I’d seen letters to the editor about how George Alexander and his ilk corrupted the system, twisted it so badly it was deformed. He wasn’t winning any popularity contests these days, and though he always said he didn’t care, I knew that at some point, he did.