The Subtle Art of Brutality

I finish the sandwich and wish I hadn’t started it. Drain the booze. Smoke two cigarettes just sitting there; snub them out slowly. I twist the last Rum Coast butt in a deliberate manner; the kind of motion that brings contemplation to mind. I want to go in the closet, I want her back. I’ve been shot at, I’ve been shot, people have looked me in the eye before they’ve tried to kill me. I’ve wrecked cars six times as a policeman. A man held a knife to my throat once that still had blood on it from the last person he’d killed. The blood was warm against my skin.

And here I am. The same cannot be said of most of the folks I speak of now.

I received a gift, a divine application. It just seems like I can’t be broken. But when she died, when I collected her things and still to this day with each touch, with each whiff of her lingering perfume, with each sight of an item she may only have had fleeting contact with, I am...

Destroyed.

But I stand up anyways. Deliberation is over. Just a moment tonight. I miss her. Warm in the gut from whiskey, feeling that chicken parm roiling in my stomach minutes after choking it down, the last of my tobacco smoke floating out from my lips and nostrils. I walk to the closet. I open the door with a reverence she deserves.

Inside are my deceased wife’s belongings that I could not part from. Her folks had come over not too long afterward. After she passed. I let them take of hers what they wanted. They’d had her longer than I did. Her mother cried as she delicately lifted every article of clothing out of its drawer. My mother-in-law pressed her face into every shirt and sobbed harder. My father-in-law took the earrings he got her for her sweet sixteen. The ballerina shoes she had since she was six and kept to her death. I almost hid those shoes before they came over because I knew he would take them and I wanted them for myself. But she was still his little girl. Her sister came and asked for the clothes. Her best friend asked for the half a locket my wife had that they shared. People who were, in reality, mourning the loss of their angel became to me, mere vultures.

By the end I had two cardboard boxes to fill and a fury at God that would not abate. He had given me so little, but He gave me her. And then He snatched her right back. The cardboard boxes found a place for their belongings inside this shrine hidden within my apartment. The fury at God, well, it has found a place hidden within me.

I refinished the wood inside here. The light is sunlight quality. Pictures adorn the walls. Her wedding dress. A shelf chest high with a scattering of the elephant trinkets and miniatures she collected. Here is a detailed miniature of an African elephant cast in resin and hand-painted. Here is a wooden elephant painted in bright colors and abstract designs. Here is one wearing a tunic from the circus. All with their trunks up; a sign of good luck

.

Here is a bedside lamp she had as a child with Tinkerbell on the shade. Two pencil sketches she drew in high school. One of a toddler playing with a beach ball, the surf breaking in the background and the other of me sitting in tenth grade science class. I was reading and didn’t know she was feverishly copying my image. Ignoring our assignment due by the end of class. She didn’t finish the class work, but she was so proud of the drawing. I can smell her perfume. Gardenias. The scent enters me and I can smell her hair, her breath, her skin. My fingertips can trace ghost images of the palm of her hand, the texture of her knuckles, the angle of her jaw. I back out and shut the door before I fall to my knees.

Under my bed I have a suitcase. Inside it I have two changes of clothes, ammo, a carton of cigarettes and almost a quarter million dollars. The threads, bullets and smokes are mine. The cash came off a mob currier I bumped into one night and made dead. If this whole fucking block caught on fire, I’d take that suitcase and dump it out on the bed just so I could fill it with my wife’s things.

Father Bentley blesses this shrine. He knows if I ever get caught with my pants down and get the hard goodbye, she needs to be cared for. He has a shelf in the rectory set aside with enough space for two cardboard boxes of some other man’s wife’s possessions.

I grab the bottle, put my back to the coat closet door, slide down the floor and wake up with whiskey still in my mouth the next day.

Darla Boothe again.

Even through her wrinkles, her dark features inherited by Delilah are pretty. Smoking has aged her the same way it has me. But my tattoos cover up my wrinkles. Weariness and uncompromising sadness have aged in her in a way I haven’t known since the war.

“Ms. Boothe—”

“Please call me Darla. That last name is diseased.”

“Sure.”

She stares off, drags from her smoke. She brought her own this time. Then: “I don’t know how long since he walked out the door that I’ve wanted to get rid of that terrible name and just never did.”

“You were busy raising a family.”

“Yes. That’s true.”

We’re at a diner. I like this place; the pot roast is cut thick and the beer is ice cold. The scent of bacon is always in the air no matter what meal they are cooking. There’s nothing special about the place, which makes it special.

Since Delilah’s one horrible phone call and the arsons, Darla’s doctor has prescribed her pills to keep her calm. Darla then: fraying at the seams, nervous wreck, almost incoherent. Darla now: mellow. High mellow. Contemplative.

“Tell me about Ben.”

“What about him?”

“Was he always a rapist?”

“Ben was...oh God, how can I say this without looking dirty or perverted myself?” Darla studies her coffee like it could provide an answer.

“I don’t lump you two together,” I say, drag on my cigarette. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Well...” she looks away, embarrassed. “Ben was insatiable. And impulsive. As much as I don’t want to compare my sweet baby girl to her dad the date rapist she’s kind of the same way.”

“Okay.”