Dishonor Thy Wife (20 page)

JAYDEN

SOMEONE DUG UP MY PET CEMETERY, exhumed the bodies from the
graves, and then put up a sign marked
Boner Zoo
.

There is no proof but this is the sort of sick joke Brad
finds hilarious.

My stomach churns as I rebury the remains of my animals
using the same shovel as the culprit. Dirt flies around me, and there is a
baseball cap on the ground so I shove the hat on my head to keep the dirt from
my eyes.

I blink my eyes at an empty grave, imagining Brad with his
eyes wide-open, buried alive, scratching at the dirt, and silently screaming.

Ronni would be free.

Stop any murderous thoughts about your brother right now!
The culprits might have been neighborhood teens or a fraternity hazing by
college kids from the University of Victoria.

If only my brother would call back. His phone rings and then
goes straight to voicemail.

I thought of calling Ronni to ask for Brad, but do not trust
myself to speak to her.

His office has not heard from Brad either. It has been three
days.

The thought churns through my head that if anything happened
to Brad, I could return to Austin.

* * *

BRAD

Splash! Plop! Ka-pow!

I float to the bottom of Lake Travis. Luckily, I am still in
Superman
mode and can breathe under water.

People are careless. At the lake bottom are a lost cell
phone, wallet, wedding ring, and camera.

There is a nice pair of sunglasses stuck in the mud. Whoa,
now it is pitch black with the glasses so I throw them back to the sea. The pair
is missing an arm anyway.

A largemouth bass jumps at me with its mouth open like the
big fish plans to swallow me like Jonas in the Bible. I imagine Bubba Simpson
fishing the bass out, cutting the fish open and me springing at him. The shadow
of the man who pushed me resembled the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from
Ghostbusters
.
Bubba followed his wife and then me.

I am running out of air and my survival instincts kick in. I
shed my pants and swim to the top, my head bursting from the water.

I claw my way up the cliff, slipping and sliding, kicking a
pebble or two, and gaining inches until I crawl along the top of the cliff,
away from danger.

Leeches cover me. Most leeches feed on decomposing corpses,
making me wonder if I drowned. My skin is white in the moonlight and maybe I am
a ghost. Ha! I will head to Canada and haunt Jayden.

Frickin’ bloodsuckers are trying to eat me so I must not be
dead. I dig a fingernail into my skin to remove some slimy leeches. The popping
noise from the leeches as they release their suction on my skin is nerve
wracking.

I must be allergic to leeches and resemble an actor in a
horror film, soaking wet with my legs covered in bites. Red blotches have erupted
on my skin. My face has a rash, and my legs wobble like a drunkard.

My breathing is raspy. An antihistamine might save my life.

Someone has stolen my car!

Luckily, my cell phone is still at the top of the cliff but
there is no one I can call for help.

I stick out my thumb and hitchhike.

Even I would not pick me up.

Yet, there is always a Good Samaritan, usually a bubbly
nerdy type with glasses and potholes on his face, and red hair sticking up from
his head like an ice cream cone. He swerves his car onto the shoulder; pops
open his door and yells at me. “Climb in.”

The nerd jabbers as if I am his best friend. Coincidentally,
he carries a pharmacy in the console of his car. He offers me an antihistamine
and a bottle of water. “The pill will make you drowsy,” he advises in a
sinister way. The good Sam-aritan may actually be a
Son of Sam
type and a
serial killer who drugs his victims with cough syrup and allergy pills. He is
driving around Pace Bend Park at like five in the morning. He does not even ask
me where my pants are but glances occasionally at my
Superman
undershorts that have a couple of dead leeches clinging to the crotch.

My wallet is in my stolen car, but I found a wallet fished at
the bottom of Lake Travis belonging to a man who the news had broadcast killed
himself. His twenty-dollar bills will pay for a cab home after Samaritan Herman
reaches his destination. He smiles like Opie Taylor from
The Andy Griffith
Show
and turns down a twenty for his drugs.

Ah shucks, Pa, I was half-hoping he would kill me since the
leeches have failed to suck all my blood out.

The weirdest thing about the nerd giving me a ride is when he
asks if I have any
live
leeches on me to add to his pharmacy. “A dead
leech won’t do me any good,” he says and shifts his eyes to my crotch again.

I nod off to sleep while Opie lectures me on maintaining a
clean lifestyle.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
wakes me. Yellow goo on my
lashes have glued my eyelids and I rub until the sun shines through the front car
window. Through the fuzz in my brain creeps the night before in Technicolor. I
groan slamming my fists against the dash. Too much booze mixed with sniffing drugs
makes me crazy.

My cell phone keeps playing
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
with persistence, going into the fourth movement. Barbie must be ringing to
apologize. Surely, we can make it through this burp in our relationship. A man
knows he is nuts about a woman when he thinks about her as
She
.
She
.
She
, as if
she
is the only woman owns the pronoun. I will let her
speak first and then apologize. We will make up. I will offer to go back to the
motel and fix her up. Damn! I should have brought a medical bag with me. Opie’s
Drugs and his pair of first-grade scissors would not even help a scratch.

I flop open the passenger mirror, one of those vanity types
that lights up, and straighten my hair. Clothed in just my underwear, I feel undignified.
“Give me your pants and another antihistamine,” I whisper to Opie. “Make that
two allergy pills.” Only half my rash is gone and my skin appears freckly or
like an alien spawned me.

Quick, I pick up before the call transfers to voicemail. I
hit the answer button and clear my throat. My mouth tastes like fish feces. My
vocal cords wobble like a pussy.

A voice sounding like me barks into the telephone, “You owe
me $49,321 Brad! I want that money transferred to an account I have set up. Got
that?”

“O-kay.” My voice sounds as blistery as my face. My brother does
not even tell me good morning. He just bitches as usual.

“I want that money today. I’ll check this afternoon and see
if you’ve transferred the money and if you haven’t, Brad...”

“What are you going to do? Huh?” I stick my chest out,
spoiling for a fight.

“You son of a bitching liar! You did sign the marriage
certificate! Well I do not want a wife! Get your butt back to Canada, Brad,
tonight, and tell Vanessa the truth and annul your marriage.”

My voice sounds cooler than I feel, as if I am in control even
though the cell phone shakes in my hand. “What about you messing with my woman,
huh? I warned you not to touch Barbie!”

“I never touched your mistress.”

Pharmacy drugs fuddle my brain. Last night at the hotel,
Jayden was with Barbie.
Stay calm. Be nice for now until your head is clear.

“Disclosure, Brad. You never told me you have a gambling
problem when you vomited your life to me in Philly.”

“Not a problem really, a vice, a little vice. I have been
trying to abstain ever since my mother rescued me financially from my last
scrape. I might have lost my house if not for good old Viola. I fell off the
wagon, big deal! There is nothing wrong with having fun now and then.”

“You do have a problem if you’re gambling with my money. Is cocaine
a vice too or are you an addict?”

“I only take antihistamines now.” I keep the sulkiness from
my voice and smile in a groveling manner. “Fly over and take my place in Austin
while I straighten out your boring life
in Canada. I have patients, too, you know. Besides, you and I shouldn’t
be seen in the same town together.”

“Agreed. We shouldn’t be seen in the same town.” He says
this as if any town would be too small for the two of us.

“My last appointment today is at one. I will catch the first
plane out. I’ll e-mail you my travel plans,” I say.

 “Bring plenty of cash. I’m not exchanging credit cards this
time.”

“I’m subtracting from that $49,321 the good times you
charged on
my
credit card,” I say mockingly to my goody-goody two shoes
brother, holier-than-thou Jayden. “The amount is what, a dollar
for bubblegum?”

“You charged a lot of vice on my card, Brad. Casino charges.
Prostitutes. Massage parlors. Tattoo parlor. Porn DVDs not rented but bought.
An escort service. Dirty on-line subscriptions. Credit card charges that might
be drug-related...”

“Cut the laundry list, mother. Don’t judge a brother until
you’ve walked in his shoes.”

“I have walked in your shoes, Brad, and you have a sweet
daughter and a nice wife in Austin.”

“Okay, stop right there. You really have no idea how a wife
and kid can tie you down. Ronni is a low-class slut who screws every man she
sees except her husband.”

Jayden hangs up on me without even saying good-bye.

I riled you up brother, by putting down Ronni.
Interesting.

Opie drops me off at the office.

As bad luck would have it, my staff has all come in early today.
My rash appears as if an alien spawned me, and I strut past them in my
undershorts, dried mud stuck to my rear and a dead leech clinging to my crotch.

I keep an extra pair of pants in my office but unfortunately,
there is no extra pair of
Comfyballs
so I work with my boys hanging
loose and flopping about, even more liberating.

Barbie mentioned stirrups and Jayden with the same breath.

There is a landscaper outside the office and I borrow his
tree saw and hack the examining table with the stirrups to pieces.

I then carry the splinters out to the parking light and
light a bonfire.

Really, this is all therapy, part of
Anger Management for
Dummies
, a downloaded ebook.

To the bonfire, I add the picture of Jayden and me taken
together at a Philly bar, both of us holding up our
AMF
s in a toast.

Adios Mother Fucker
!

Up in smoke!

JAYDEN

Brad was quick to pay off my credit card bill and restore my
credit.

I had the urge to tell Ronni about Brad, the drugs, the
other women, and his bride Vanessa. Instead, I retrieved the wedding picture of
Brad and Vanessa from my office wastebasket and shredded the photo.

Ronni will think Brad and I are two peas in a pod
, I
thought with disgust.

The thought of Ronni hearing from Brad about our switch
caused my stomach to somersault. I ran into the bathroom and threw up.

I have been vomiting a lot lately from a nervous stomach.
Oh,
the tangled stomachs we weave when we practice to deceive,
or some such
Shakespearean quote. Our trading places were both comedy and tragedy. I wiped
the bile from my mouth and spit dramatically into the sink
.

Maggie, the woman who handled insurance claims, stuck her
head in the bathroom door and said in a cold voice, “Your wife is on line two,
Dr. Tremblay.”

“I told you that I don’t want to speak to Vanessa, ever.”

Maggie gave me a dirty look and left the office door open. “There,
there now. Don’t cry,
sweetie,”
she said loudly into the telephone.

I walked into the reception room to get the files on some
patients and the women in the office all raised their eyebrows at each other. Maggie
shook her head as if to say,
the honeymoon is over and our boss acts just
like my ex-husband.

I gave the women a dirty look right back and slammed the
door to my office.

I brooded as I so often did lately. There must be a way I
could soften the blow when confessing to Ronni.

 I dropped my forehead on the desk. My father was right and I
deserved the pains in my stomach. It was my duty to my brother to make sure no
harm came to his wife and yet I screwed her big time. I could not help myself
because she enticed me with her sensuality, personality, and sense of humor,
not to mention her looks. Almost from the very first, she attracted me like a
moth to a flame. “It’s your fault,”
I planned on telling her. Ronni
would probably hate me forever, but I promised my father to come clean and tell
her the truth. I ruthlessly rescheduled my patients to meet Brad’s schedule,
determined to face Ronni.

My laptop pinged with an email from Brad and the travel
arrangements to meet up in San Francisco, the airport of our first meeting
point. Our masquerade had come full circle.

I practiced several speeches and in each scenario, Ronni runs
from me.

I chase her until she has nowhere else to run, and corner
her at a deck of the Oasis Restaurant
overlooking Lake Travis.

My sister-in-law turns and smiles at me, beckoning with a
finger.

I walk over to her with open arms and a loving smile on
my lips.

Ronni falls into my arms and kisses me forgivingly.

She spins and shoves my back against the railing, and
then hurls me into the depths of Travis Lake.

I groaned, pounding my head against my desk. If I’m going to
feel so damned guilty about my sister-in-law, maybe I should just bang her
again before confessing and she kicks me in the balls for deceiving her.

Anyway, I am damned if I do screw her again and damned if I
don’t.

Oh, God! What will she think of me when she learns the
truth?