The Question

The guys at the office are gonna get a kick out of this one.  That’s it.  That’s my last thought before dying.  Sad, isn’t it?  Worse is the fact that it’s true.  I mean really, how many men get beaten to death by their psycho ex-wives?  Stabbed in the kitchen, sure. Shot with a cute little derringer, why not?  But that’s not Mary’s style.  No, it’s gonna be one of those little souvenir baseball bats that the bitch always bought for Timmy.

Christ, those bats.  I hate the fucking things like I hate everything about that game.  I guess it’s un-American, but fuck it, the game is boring.  Any game where it’s one team’s job to draw the thing out as long as possible should be fucking illegal.  But there’s the one thing she won over me.  I know it’s not supposed to be a contest and that’s harmful to Timmy, but fuck it, she did win… the kid loves baseball.  Hell, I’d just yesterday wished she’d get out so I wouldn’t have to go to any more fucking little league games.

Smells like I got my wish.


There was a time that I liked that perfume.  ‘course that was before the allergies started… ‘manifested,’ the doctor said.  In the dizzy mix of the cast party, it was easily as intoxicating as the wine, although I bet the wine helped.

She was great then.  Another of the little perky actress chicks, sure, but she seemed to actually give a shit about something other than herself and her art, which was a bit rare.  She must have, because it couldn’t have gained her much popularity to be seen dragging a lowly light-hanger off to the sex couch.

Only after did the question that was to plague my life came up.  “You don’t have a girlfriend, do you?”  I tried to wipe a satisfied grin off my face long enough to smile and said I didn’t.  And that’s how we started.  Ain’t it sweet?

No.


I didn’t get it till later, much later, after I’d heard that question a thousand more times, in varying tones of accusation.  In fact I didn’t think about it until now, but that’s the phrase that got us started.  The answer’s always been the same.

Until now.


I got a friend with a three-year rule on marriage.  He says that any woman who won’t stick with him for three years before the ring ain’t worth the trouble to try and stick with for life.  I guess it suits him fine, as I’ve never known him to stay with the same blonde for more than three months.  Didn’t work for Mary and me, though.  We had all of five months before we got hitched.  

I didn’t learn about the baseball till after… it was winter, you see.  I found out come spring training, though.  Damn, she was addicted.  She dragged my ass to the stadium more times than I care to count, and then just got the pout face and went on her own after I finally announced my intention to never see another man spit as long as I lived.  

Kid made me a liar, of course.


Didn’t matter. By that time, I was working production at the auditorium and didn’t have time for work, sleep AND baseball.  She wasn’t working… actresses don’t work all that much anyway, too much competition, and anyway she was pregnant.  So I did the working part of being a man, and she did the baseball part.  Suited me fine.

“You don’t have a girlfriend, do you?” didn’t come up much in those days… and when it did, it was just teasing when I got home from ripping apart some rich rock bands overly complicated set.  At least that’s what I thought.  Answer was the same.  “No.”  Sometimes I added a “You’re enough for me” when I wanted to get laid or a “I don’t have time for one” when I was in a piss mood.  But it was always a ‘no,’ anyway. Always the same answer.  

Always the same question, too.


Maybe I shouldn’t have taken the good job.  Maybe that would have solved all the problems.  I know it isn’t true though.  The woman’s a fucking case, and it wasn’t me going on tour with The Cult that done it.  Sometimes you’re just wired wrong.  Ain’t nobody’s fault.
Anyway, out I go.  Kiss the wife, try to kiss the new baby boy, but he squirms away and tries to spit up on me, and off I go.  Four months of professional roadie shit, walkin’ beams because I’m one of the only guys crazy enough to climb up on the crazy contraptions the engineers put together.  In comes the money, out go the checks after I tap a little spending money to enjoy life.  Letters go back and forth, and nothing wrong.  I love her, she loves me, everything is happy-happy right?

No.


I don’t know when it got into her head, probably watching the fucking tube on some KISS documentary or something, but she decided that the only reason a guy would be a roadie is so he could fuck the women that the band shrugged off.  And once there’s an idea in that woman’s head, it stays there.  The question showed up in the letters, then, so there was no tone to it.  Nothing to suspect.  It was just that teasing again… or that’s how I read it.  But words are tricky that way, sometimes… and I think I know better now.  I think that the words were starting to have that bite that I heard later on.

But I didn’t know shit then.  I just plowed on with my life.  Didn’t have a job when I was home.  Didn’t need one.  I got paid pretty good, but it was still something like six months out on my own every year, and that’s how I missed half of my boy’s first five years.
After awhile, there were a lot less letters, which should have worried me, but I was busy.  More of them had the question, too.  I think I started to suspect that there was a problem then, but the guys just laughed it off.  Everyone had relationship trouble when they were on the road.  Three months on and two off wasn’t a way to keep a marriage together.  But I didn’t cheat like they did… when I answered the question, I said “no” and I never lied.

Not once.


I gave up on the road shit for awhile when it got clear to me that it was either me having a family or me working on the road.  The road wasn’t all that important to me.   Most of the guys, that’s not the case.  Joe’s got seven divorces under his belt now, I hear.  I didn’t want any.  

Not then, anyway.


So I came back and everything was good.  I wasn’t making as much walking the same beams over and over as I’d made bouncing around from city to city, but the hours were better and I got to see my damned kid again, ‘course by then all he wanted to do was play baseball.
I’m a world-class loser as a pitcher and I can’t hit a damned thing, but the kid was young, and I was his dad, so he thought I was great.  So we spent time out in the backyard, both of us missing every throw we made.  He got better, I didn’t.  

Mary must have been slipping in some coaching.


‘Bout that time Cindy and Ralph moved in next door.  Nice folks.  We brought them over a fruit basket or some damned thing, probably the only family in the area that did.  But Mary insisted, so over we went and tried to pretend like we were gonna be best friends just because we live near each other.  I guess the joke’s on me, though, because we did get pretty close.  They were nice people like I said.

I say ‘we’ got close, but that’s not really true.  I got close to Cindy and Ralph.  Mary didn’t.  She took one look at Cindy and saw something she didn’t like.  I didn’t understand what it was until later.  It was simple.  Mary thought that Cindy was prettier than she was… and since I’m about to die, I’ll tell the truth.  

She was.


Wasn’t long before the “You don’t have a girlfriend, do you?” started up again.  And it wasn’t teasing anymore.  I knew it right from the beginning, even if I didn’t figure out until later what brought it on.  I should have, and I’ve got all the guilt in that one.  

They were nice people.


I remember the last time she asked the question, too.  How could I forget?  I was headed off to take Timmy to one of those endless games, and for some reason that I couldn’t figure out, Mary didn’t want to go this time.  She bought the tickets, but I was gonna have to take the kid.  She didn’t feel good, she said, although she looked fine.  Appearances can be deceiving, they say.  They’re right.  

The bitch was sick.


Anyway, she asked it right when I was about to leave.  Had a strange look on her face, too.  So I thought maybe she really was sick.  Feverin’ people get their brains stuck on stupid things sometimes, so I figured that was it.  I told her “No.  I don’t have time for a girlfriend.  I gotta go to a baseball game.  By the time I get back, I’ll be too old.”  I thought it was witty.  Mary made a sour face and Timmy didn’t get it.  Comedian in my own mind alone, I guess.
We drove out and I sat through about 7 thousand hours of men standing around and spitting with thirty seconds of action once in awhile to make me remember that a game was happening.  Tim loved it of course, and I kept up that look of enthusiasm that all parents learn.  It’s a good thing that kids are gullible, or they’d hate us.  I wonder if that’s why teenagers hate their parents… they realize that we’ve been faking enthusiasm for ten years.  Guess I’ll find out eventually.

Or rather, I won’t.  I’m about to die.


When we got back, the street was full of police cars.  They wouldn’t even let us onto the block.  We had to stand down the street and watch with the news crews and other gawkers.  I asked people what happened, and they told me some woman went nuts and killed her neighbors.  It wasn’t until they hauled two black bags out of Cindy and Ralph’s house that I figured out who they were talking about.

Cindy called 911 instead of leaving the house when Ralph tried to protect her.  I got to hear Mary catch up with her at the trial.  It was all on the 911 tape.  They tell me that Mary was still hitting the body with that little bat when the police came in.

Mary didn’t make her insanity plea.  The jury didn’t buy it, thought I don’t know how they couldn’t.  How could anyone who would do that be sane?  But she got shipped up to Norfolk, were they got that women’s correctional jail, instead of downtown where they got the crazy-hospital.  I figured it didn’t really make a difference.

Guess I was wrong.


I heard on the way home today that there was an escape up there.  I gotta admit, I didn’t even consider that it might have been her.  She’s little, and she may be able to take out a fat man and his pretty wife with her homerun follow-through, but a prison guard?  

Na.  


OK, maybe I did think of it.  But I shrugged it off.  Didn’t even think of it again until now.  Because now, I’m smelling that perfume again.  She never changed brand.  I don’t know how she got it in jail, but she must have, because here it is, creeping in just a little faster than those soft little footsteps that I now hear.

My back is to her, I’m on the couch, and I’m gonna die.  I’m already in range and my brain is screaming to duck even while all this shit is flashing up into memory, as if to remind me how I got here.  I’m not going to duck, though.  I’m gone… I’m frozen.  When the bat hits my head, I’ll move, but right now, I can’t.

Deer in the headlights.


Still, I’m waiting for the question.  Maybe she’ll ask it after she hits me, maybe before.  I hope it’s after.  If it’s after, I won’t have to answer it.  Because the answer’s yes now, and she’ll make it hurt more if she knows.  I just wait for the question.

“Daddy?  I think you should give this to Jennifer.”


I turn around.  No Mary… no bat, just Timmy holding a bottle of his mom’s perfume.  I tell him to go to bed and we’ll talk about it in the morning.  If I’m lucky, my pulse will be back to normal by then.

Fat fucking chance.