The Breakup

Loretta led the way and I strolled silently behind her. In our years of marriage, the two of us had made this very same trip hundreds of times. She would walk confidently out in front, list in hand, the business of product acquisition firmly planted in her mind.

I would bring up the rear. My only real duty was not to bang the cart into her heals.

Occasionally, she would turn and ask me a question about what I preferred. She would raise her eyebrows while holding a loaf of bread or a certain kind of yogurt (which I would never have eaten on my own decision) and ask me my opinion.

My opinion was always the same. I didn’t care. I had long since made up my mind which type of bread I would not eat (very few) and which type of yogurt I would stomach to avoid conflict (all of them). More times than not I would shrug my shoulders and say something to the effect of, “Whatever you think is best, dear.”

This would usually satisfy her and she would put her choice, the choice she would have made anyway, into the cart. Then she would continue. Her concern for my opinion was, at this point, merely a formality.

If I had spoken up and suggested something that she didn’t approve of or some out-of-the-blue option (that maybe I actually wanted to try) it would have just ended poorly for me. I would have had to deal with an afternoon of bad vibrations and belittlement over other matters.

So I stayed quiet. I did my part. I pushed the cart and agreed with her and I did not bang the cart into her heels.

I would occupy myself with other things. Today I was actively looking at the items on the shelves. I was searching for sale prices that ended in 5 instead of 9. To my surprise, there were quite a few.

Loretta walked in front of me. She chose the groceries. She put them in the basket. She calculated the cost in order to stay within our meager budget.

I counted fives and tried not to let my arthritis get the best of me.

A girl wearing workout clothes trotted past me. She was walking the other direction, so I only had a moment to take her in. She was young and peppy and full of things I didn’t know about or have any way of finding out. Her blond hair was up in a playful ponytail and her basket contained soy milk and wine.

I nodded and kept my eyes forward.

We were in the kitchen supply aisle. This was a place that we rarely stopped unless Loretta was cooking something special or different.

“Do you mind,” she began tentatively, “if I get this knife?”

I looked up and saw her holding a kitchen knife that I would never need. The most I ever cut these days was the occasional block of cheese. I shrugged in my usual non-committal way.

“If you need it,” I said.

She tossed it into the cart. It was an extra eleven dollars that, in the end, would probably come out of my 'hard candy' budget.

It was okay. I could do without. Hard candy was a small price to pay for quiet.

At home, we put away the groceries and then I relaxed into my recliner. I let out a sigh of relief because I suspected that Loretta would now go into the bedroom and read from some romance novel or other. This would give me an hour or so to sit quietly and run down the clock.

But Loretta came briskly from the kitchen as I heard the last cabinet door slam closed.

I barely had time to turn my head before I felt an awful pain in the lower part of my ribcage.

I looked down and saw the kitchen knife that Loretta had just bought (no, had asked to buy) buried in my torso. I followed the trail of its path to Loretta’s pale hand, then up her arm to her stern face.

I realized in that moment that I had not looked directly at her in some time. She was still quite beautiful; even with her gray hair pulled back had her lips pursed.

I brought my hands to the knife in a feeble attempt to draw it from my body. I did not have the strength. So I looked at her again, this time for explanation.

She stood for a moment, somehow triumphant. Then she spoke.

“Edgar,” she began, as if she were going to scold me, “I’ve been planning this for weeks.”

I felt my eyes widen.

“My hope,” she actually looked a little sad, “was that you’d notice. I dropped hints. Things I said. Shows I was watching. Do you remember when I asked you how you hoped you would die?”

I didn’t remember. I had not been paying attention. I didn’t remember that at all.

“My hope was that you would have some plan in place to stop me,” she continued, “that I wouldn’t be able to do it and that we would just…”

She faltered for a moment and then found her strength again.

“My hope was that we would be able to continue with the life that has always seemed so acceptable to me. But you’re so distant. You’re not here and you don’t want to be. Now we both know it and you don’t have to.”

My wife stood over me and watched me bleed to death. In a very too-little-too-late moment, I wondered who would help her dispose of my selfish corpse.