“What am I doing to Tammy?” I asked. It was my turn to sound cold. It surprised me to hear the anger in my voice. Up until that moment, I had planned on being the good little wife, of acquiescing, of pleading, of meekness.
I picked up the package of Oreos and took a bite of one.
“Tammy has taken to her bed, Eliza!” he continued. “Her bed. This had been all too stressful for her. She’s not used to dealing with people like you. Unreasonable, defiant, crazy people!”
“Wow, I’m a lot of adjectives,” I said with my mouth full of cookie.
“What did you say to me?”
“Nothing. Go on, Steve. Tell me more about Tammy’s stress level.”
“I don’t think I like your tone. Your dowdy, old-before-your-time, flabby tone. Saggy tone. Pathetic, loser, unemployed, passionless tone.”
“I’ll say this for Tammy,” I said. “She’s improved your vocabulary.”
I picked up the chip bag and popped a chip into my mouth.
“I was being generous, giving you time to get your life in order, but you’re proving that that was a fool’s errand,” he spat. “You don’t deserve generosity. You deserve wrath. Wrath! You have been very cruel to Tammy. Very cruel. You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re going to be sorry now.”
“Oh, yeah?” I screeched. “Oh, yeah! Well, you tell Tammy she can kiss my saggy ass! Oh, wait, I don’t want her sexually transmitted diseased lips on my ass. So, just tell her to go straight to hell!”
I expected Steve to really let me have it then, but there was silence on the phone.
“Hello? Hello?” I said, but there was no one there. He had hung up, and I had no idea if he had heard any of my good comebacks. He probably hadn’t heard a thing. He probably had had the last word and was now rubbing Tight Tammy’s head and they were talking about his crazy, saggy wife.
I screamed.
It was a primal scream. Like a neanderthal scream. Like a loud scream, but in a deep voice that tore at my vocal cords.
Jumping up from the couch, I threw my phone across the room and screamed again. I looked at the cookies and the chips, but I knew they couldn’t help me now. Nothing could help me in my red-light rage, except violence. I needed to commit violence.
Violence without getting arrested or without hurting anyone. Except for Tight Tammy. I could hurt her, and that would be worth prison time. Ditto Steve. I would have liked to stomp on his foot or pull his ear.
Did I? Did I want to hurt Steve? Had my grief turned to anger?
Yep, I think it did.
I spun around, looking for something that would soothe my rage. Something I could be violent with or against. Since the house was more or less empty, there was nothing much I could throw or destroy. Steve had taken everything that had meant anything to him.
“Hear that, Eliza?” I said to myself. “He took everything that meant anything to him. And he left you behind.”
It was like a light turned on in my brain. A light with an explosion after it.
Steve didn’t love me. Steve didn’t want me. He took everything he wanted with him and left me behind with the recliner. Steve wasn’t going to come back to me. Steve was a two-timing, low-life sludge, cretin creep.
I screamed again.
There had to be something in the house he liked. Something I could rip apart with my bare hands. I stomped upstairs and looked through the closets. Nothing. I came back downstairs and stomped through the house and into the garage. Nothing. Then, I stomped to the back of the house, to the empty sunroom.
Oh.
The sunroom.
Steve loved the sunroom. It was his favorite place. He had the designer deck it out with a bunch of outside furniture, even though the sunroom was inside. He always took company to the sunroom when they came over because he wanted to show them that somehow he had conquered the outside. Conquered it and lugged it inside with one wall of glass and three walls of oak paneling and furniture that had no earthly business being inside.
Now, there was nothing left of the sunroom. He had taken all of his outside furniture with him. The sunroom was now just an empty room filled with sun and nothing else. I flopped down on the floor and lay flat on my back with my knees up. The floor was cold. There had been an area rug there, but Steve had taken that, too. He wanted the area rug with him, but not me.
“Here lies Eliza,” I said out loud. “All alone in the sunroom. Just a big blob of ugly adjectives that that jerk husband called her. That jerk Steve. That horrible jerk Steve!”
