A Dead Woman Scorned

This story contains profanity, alleged pedophilia, and sexual insinuations.

I see you, all snuggly; your legs in spoons, your forearm parting those breasts that caught your eye at the church’s Mardi Gras and reverse raffle, when your head nodded with each step that she bounced towards us —us, parents of two, ‘til death do we part— as we refilled our plastic party cups from the half-barrel keg on the muddied church lawn. Having smoked a joint in the parking lot, we were in full flight and everything was funny, especially when you’d renamed St. Therese to the only Catholic church in Lake Wobegon, Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility. Father Figueroa was passing just then, and you high-fived him. You called him “Figgy,” and I very nearly wet myself from laughter; when I looked up from my doubling over I saw your head nodding with each step she took and somehow I knew, I just knew, right then —because never had you ever been baited like that— that I was temporary.

And I suppose, fourteen months later, when the kind man held up traffic to let me through, and I proceeded without a thought of the two remaining lanes of five o’clock fury, the last sounds in my temporary thirty-two years being a blip of horn and shatter…I suppose, that when I drifted from that carnage of metal and steam and rubbersmoke, to look down upon the people rushing from their own cars to Livestream my limp mannequin but to swoop up Lanie’s car seat and carry her to safety, I suppose you were probably…a little bit relieved, yes?

For now, you had it all: the grief —and oh how you grieved, your snot, your snorts, your belabored, emphysemic breathing— yielding the desired consoling, you poor man; the hearty cash, from my insurance, my retirement, my investments, rendering you poor’s evil twin; and the floozy, whom I know, for the past twelve-plus months, you’d been pampering.

Had an awful dream last night, Sal.

Oh?

Dreamt you had left me for another woman.

Oh how I tried, desperately tried, to read your expression, to send a hint that I knew what was going on with whom I discovered to be Beth. But, each time:

Now, now Samantha…

I started wearing babydoll negligee, advancing in the bedroom, initiating what I assumed would reignite that wanton lust we’d shared back when things were simpler and I was new.

Been a long day, Samantha. Maybe tomorrow, huh?

I was too afraid to bring up what I knew to be true because I did not want to know the truth, biting my nails and chewing the skin around those nails as I paced in front of the bathroom where you’d been spending a lot of time lately…

But now, you have it all, completely independent of you: your dalliances, that devolved into lusty desire, and undoubtedly your ruminations over how to best get rid of me without implicating you, were all eclipsed by my one-microsecond’s bad decision.

So here we are, in our bedroom, your little tramp having requisitioned my side of the very same bed you and I bought together at Comfy’s Ridiculous Liquidation Sale, the two of you in spoons, your arm parting those ample mounds that are the cause of every man’s mental stray, but were the catalyst for what was evidently your one-third life crisis.

I lean down, and whisper in your ear, beauty is only skin deep, my dear. We shall discover that soon, you and I. Death is a lovely state, for there is no body to lug around. The oneness, the lightness, the levity; the new relationship with matter, and the ethereal acceptance that none of it does. You have to lug me around no longer. I gently tuck some hair behind your ear; you shift, you sigh, your hand moves down her thigh.

Foolish, foolish man.

Quite the redundancy.

-----

“Mr. Ayshuss, we need you in the office. Mrs. Kincaid will take your class.” Dolores stands behind Security Resource Officer Bell.

The chilly tingles of the dopamine rush. I feel injected with Icy Hot. “Um, sure. Let me just—”

“—and I’ll need to take your computer, Mr. Ayshuss, so if you could just step away from it, please?”

Pause, rewind, replay.

“I’m not sure I—”

“I’m trying not to raise my voice here, Mr. Ayshuss. Best if you just cooperate.”

This is the closest I care to come to Parkinson’s, my hands are tremoring so; I feel fatigued, and the room is off-kilter. I look up at my class, and every one of them is looking at me. Their faces are a smeared montage and I swear that’s Samantha in Pasqual’s seat.

“Mr. Ayshuss—”

—and she is now standing, smiling. She looks…radiant—

“—do I need to make a scene?”

And now she is beside me. “Samantha, you look—” But she puts her finger to my lips, whispers sssshhhhhh.

“MIS-TER AY-SHUSS.” Officer Bell cocks his head as though peering around me. I blink my eyes that are now stinging from sweat. Mouths are agape in the wide-eyed class; there is not even a titter at the spectacle of their teacher talking to—

“Yessir, sorry. Sorry, class, I,” and I have to clear my throat, e-hem, “I am needed in the office.”

-----

I am walking to the office when my cell rings. It is Beth. “Can’t talk now, hon. I’m—”

“—what in the fuck were you thinking?”

“Ummm…I have no idea what you’re talking about but I—”

“—have you any idea the damage you did through that post? And how did you get that picture?”

“Beth…Beth, please, just slow down. I really can’t talk now. I—”

“—Sal, take it down. NOW, Sal, before—”

It’s too late my love. It’s already out there, shared and reshared. Everybody knooooowwzz…

Oh my God what is happening. “Samantha?” She wisps by me, and I have to grip the handicap railing for balance.

“Mr. Ayshuss, you alright?” a student asks in passing. I wave her off.

“Salvatore, are you still there?” Beth’s voice sounds grainily tinny from where I am now grasping the cell phone, near the floor as I try to keep my balance. The handicap ramp drops; my legs kick out from under me, trying to maintain footing, and I wrap my arm around that railing.

“You need some help? Here, let me help you—” The student is now Samantha. She is so radiant, so aglow, like I’d never seen her before.

“Sam?” I whimper. “Sam?” She’s developed quite a bit, I think, in places that I…”Oh, Sam. I am so, so sorry.” I pull her to me; I put my mouth to hers. “God how I’ve missed you…”

-----

Principal Mayo sits behind his camera monitor in his office. He zooms in on A-Wing. “Are you seeing this, Officer Bell? Get some cuffs on him now.” Who in the hell have we hired here?

-----

Officer Bell escorted me to his cruiser, handcuffed; I spent the next three hours “downtown,” batting away ridiculous accusation after insinuation after assumption until, finally —when it dawned on me that this shit was serious, like, felony serious— I called my lawyer.

I then called Beth, but the call went straight to mail.

I then slumped in my chair. The specter of Samantha was now seated to the right of the interrogating officer. With a grin, she flamboyantly pantomimed his flexing; trying to get a rise out of me, she stood on the table, did a pirouette. I followed her with my eyes, like following a fly.

She then jumped from the table, and knelt before me. She parted my legs; she looked at my crotch. Oh, Sal…she crooned…such a waste. I’m sure you’ll make Malik very happy though. After he knocks your teeth out.

Hell hath no fury, she then growled. And she grabbed my scrotum, and squeezed like it was a stress ball, and I threw that metal folding chair against the peeling interrogation-room wall and I slapped at her remarkably perfect cranium and I shrieked —yes, I shrieked, like the girl I was accused of stalking— “GO BACK TO THE GRAVE YOU FILTHY BEAST!”

The two detectives are now standing over me, as wide-eyed as the students in my classroom. The good cop kneels down, feels my forehead. “Mr. Ayshuss, is there any medication we should know about?”

-----

“Mr. Sal Ayshuss, have you anything to say in your defense?” It is the next day. I am sitting in front of the superintendent of human resources as she recounts the allegations against me. I’d already heard them all yesterday, two hours before my remarkable meltdown:

a)      From my school computer, and from my school account, an email was sent to one Josephine Lancaster, a junior: Dearest Josephine, how many nights I have spent in silent ecstasy over your voluptuous body. I care not about the consequences; the truth must come out. In the wettest of fantasies, I lust for your submission;

b)     From my school computer, and from my school account, an email was sent to two of the younger teachers with the same salacious content;

c)      over three dozen teenage pornography videos and stills had been downloaded to my school computer; and

d)     the last post I’d made on Facebook, the one Beth was infuriated about, the one that showed the two of us in bed in a tight spoon, was innocent enough, but it was the caption that sent it home: I finally scored a younger woman. Don’t have to lust after my students anymore lololol.

-----

Beth is obviously gone, and I need to Door Dash and Instacart because I dare not be seen out: the Daily Rag had published the allegations, and the small, child-friendly community is incensed. A brick was thrown through my window, a note tied to it: Burn, Pedo. I was able to cover that window with a tarp from the garage. I have lost weight; nothing fits me anymore. My skin is waxen. I have taken up smoking.

My trial is not for two months but I do not think I will make it until then. There will be no “fair and impartial”; I will be found guilty, and I will be incarcerated for indecent liberties, and I will have to register as a sex offender.

Makes no difference that my dead wife framed me. It’s all about the optics of the thing.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Samantha?” I say aloud to the cold, empty room.

But the only response is the tarp that rustles against the wind.