“Harmless,” Mary Ellen said. “Famous last words.”
I went over and kissed her neck. Damp, but it still tasted pretty good. “What’re you making there?”
“Ceviche.”
“What’s ceviche?”
“Cold fish soup. Mexican style.”
“Sounds awful.”
“It isn’t. You’ve had it before.”
“Did I like it?”
“You loved it.”
“Sounds wonderful, then. I’m going to have a beer. You want one?”
“I don’t think so.” Pretty soon she said, “He really ought to see somebody.”
“Who?”
“Jerry.”
“See who? You mean a head doctor?”
“Yes. Before he really does do something to Verna.”
“Come on, honey. Jerry can’t even bring himself to step on a bug. And Verna’s enough to drive any man a little crazy. Either she’s mired in one of her funks or on a rampage about something or other. And she’s always telling him how worthless and lazy she thinks he is.”
“She has a point,” Mary Ellen said. “All he does all day is sit around drinking beer and staring at the tube.”
“Well, with his back the way it is—”
“His back doesn’t seem to bother him when he decides to work in his garden.”
“Hey, I thought you liked Jerry.”
“I do like Jerry. It’s just that I can see Verna’s side, the woman’s side. He was no ball of fire before the accident, and he’s never let her have children—”
“That’s her story. He says he’s sterile.”
“Well, whatever. I still say she has some justification for being moody and short-tempered, especially in this heat.”
“I suppose.”
“Anyhow,” Mary Ellen said, “her moods don’t give Jerry the right to keep pretending he’s killed her. And I don’t care how harmless he seems to be, he could snap someday. People who have violent fantasies often do. Every day you read about something like that in the papers or see it on the TV news.”
“‘Violent fantasies’ is too strong a term in Jerry’s case.”
“What else would you call them?”
“He doesn’t sit around all day thinking about killing Verna. I got that much out of him after he scared the hell out of me the first time. They have a fight and he goes out on the porch and sulks and that’s when he imagines her dead. And only once in a while. It’s more like... wishful thinking.”
“Even so, it’s not healthy and it’s potentially dangerous. I wonder if Verna knows.”
“Probably not, or she’d be making his life even more miserable. We can hear most of what she yells at him all the way over here as it is.”
“Somebody ought to tell her.”
“You’re not thinking of doing it? You don’t even like the woman.” Which was true. Jerry and I were friendly enough, to the point of going fishing together a few times, but the four of us had never done couples things. Verna wasn’t interested. Didn’t seem to want much to do with Mary Ellen or me. Or anyone else, for that matter, except a couple of old woman friends.
“I might go over and talk to her,” Mary Ellen said. “Express concern about Jerry’s behavior, if nothing more.”
“I think it’d be a mistake.”
“Do you? Well, you’re probably right.”
“So you’re going to do it anyway.”
“Not necessarily. I’ll have to think about it.”
Mary Ellen went over to talk to Verna two days later. It was a Saturday and Jerry’d gone off somewhere in their car. I was on the front porch fixing a loose shutter when she left, and still there and still fixing when she came back less than ten minutes later.
“That was fast,” I said.
“She didn’t want to talk to me.” Mary Ellen looked and sounded miffed. “She was barely even civil.”
“Did you tell her about Jerry’s wishful thinking?”
“No. I didn’t have a chance.”
“What did you say to her?”
“Hardly anything except that we were concerned about Jerry.”
“We,” I said. “As in me too.”
“Yes, we. She shut me off right there. As much as told me to mind my own business.”
“Well?” I said gently.
“Oh, all right, maybe we should. It’s her life, after all. And it’ll be as much her fault as Jerry’s if he suddenly decides to make his wish come true.”
Jerry killed Verna three more times in July. Kitchen again, their bedroom, the backyard. Tenderizing mallet, clock radio, manual strangulation — so I guess he’d decided a gun wasn’t the best way after all. He seemed to grow more and more morose as the summer wore on, while Verna grew more and more sullen and contentious. The heat wave we were suffering through didn’t help matters any. The temperatures were up around one hundred degrees half the days that month and everybody was bothered in one way or another.
Jerry came over one evening in early August while Mary Ellen and I were having fruit salad under the big elm in our yard. He had a six-pack under one arm and a look on his face that was half hunted, half depressed.
“Verna’s on another rampage,” he said. “I had to get out of there. Okay if I sit with you folks for a while?”
“Pull up a chair,” I said. At least he wasn’t going to tell us he’d killed her again.
Mary Ellen asked him if he’d like some fruit salad, and he said no, he guessed fruit and yogurt wouldn’t mix with beer. He opened a can and drank half of it at a gulp. It wasn’t his first of the day by any means.
“I don’t know how much more of that woman I can take,” he said.
“That bad, huh?”
“That bad. Morning, noon, and night — she never gives me a minute’s peace anymore.”
Mary Ellen said, “Well, there’s a simple solution, Jerry.”
“Divorce? She won’t give me one. Says she’ll fight it if I file, take me for everything she can if it goes through.”
“Some women hate the idea of living alone.”
Jerry’s head waggled on its neck-stalk. “It isn’t that,” he said. “Verna doesn’t believe in divorce. Never has, never will. Till death do us part — that’s what she believes in.”
“So what’re you going to do?” I asked him.
“Man, I just don’t know. I’m at my wits’ end.” He drank the rest of his beer in broody silence. Then he unfolded, wincing, to his feet. “Think I’ll go back home now. Have a look in the attic.”
“The attic?”
“See if I can find my old service pistol. A gun really is the best way to do it, you know.”
After he was gone Mary Ellen said, “I don’t like this, Frank. He’s getting crazier all the time.”
“Oh, come on.”
“He’ll go through with it one of these days. You mark my words.”
“If that’s the way you feel,” I said, “why don’t you try talking to Verna again? Warn her.”
“I would if I thought she’d listen. But I know she won’t.”
“What else is there to do, then?”
“You could try talking to Jerry. Try to convince him to see a doctor.”
“It wouldn’t do any good. He doesn’t think he needs help, any more than Verna does.”
“At least try. Please, Frank.”
“All right, I’ll try. Tomorrow night, after work.”
When I came home the next sweltering evening, one of the Macklins was sitting slumped on the front porch. But it wasn’t Jerry, it was Verna. Head down, hands hanging between her knees. It surprised me so much I nearly swerved the car off onto our lawn. Verna almost never sat out on their front porch, alone or otherwise. She preferred the glassed-in back porch because it was air-conditioned.
The day had been another hundred-plus scorcher, and I was tired and soggy and I wanted a shower and a beer in the worst way. But I’d promised Mary Ellen I’d talk to Jerry — and it puzzled me about Verna sitting on the porch that way.