Recalculating Read Online Free PDF Page B

was taped there. A scrap of her missing silk blouse. Afew strands of her hair, probably pulled from the brush. And—she groaned softly, barely hearing herself—a scabby patch of blood. Blood that could, just maybe, have been snipped or scraped from a used menstrual pad.
    She crumpled the picture in her hand and threw the picture across the room, shaking with revulsion. Then, back straight, moving with a purpose she hadn’t felt in years, she’d gone to the medicine cabinet and fetched Tommy’s bottles of prescription painkillers. He rarely took them—
I don’t want crutches
, he would say—so there were plenty left. She took four, put them in a plastic bag, crushed them with a hammer, then stirred the powder into his evening martini.
    He walked through the door, too thin, too pale. “Hi, honey,” she said, same as ever. She handed him the drink. He took a gulp. Then he looked at her. Maureen felt her heart stutter to a stop.
He tasted something
, she thought.
Oh, God, he knows
. But Tommy merely drained his glass, then handed it to her and gave her his suit jacket and briefcase to hang up and put away. Twenty minutes later, he was in his recliner, feet up, eyes half shut.
    “Dinner’s ready!” she singsonged. This was a lie. For the first time in all of the years of their marriage, Maureen had taken no steps to ensure that her husband was fed. She hadn’t cooked or called for take-out; she hadn’t made a reservation.
    “Sleepy,” he muttered.
    ‘Then let me help you upstairs,” she said. “You should rest.”
    He leaned on her, letting her lead him up the stairs past the bed and into the bathroom, where she got him seated on the toilet.
    “What are we doing in here?” The words came out a slurry mush—
wha’ we doin’ ’n here?
    “A shower,” she said briskly. “And then you can sleep.”
    She wrestled him out of his shoes, his socks, his pants and boxer shorts. His penis hung limp between his thighs. She pictured his prostate hiding inside of him, lurking inside of him at the base of his penis, like a decaying black walnut, a rotting brain. She unbuttoned his shirt. “Arms up!” she said, the way she’d said it to Tommy Junior and Liza when they were tiny and she’d given them their baths. Her husband lifted his arms, and she maneuvered him under the hot spray. The bar of soap was where she’d left it, half melted on the tiled floor. She bent and lifted one of his legs, set his foot down on the slippery bar of Dial.
Last time
, she thought.
The last time pays for it all
. And with all of her might, all the strength in her hips and her shoulders, the muscles she hadn’t used in years, she shoved him.
    The soap squirted out from under his foot, caroming across the tub as if it had been shot. The sound of his head on the lip of the tub was enormous, world-shaking. She heard something break. Then he crashed down on his back, water pounding in his face, his old familiar face, the nose now a sharp blade, the bones almost visible, the hair mostly gone. “What … what did you do?” One of his teeth had gotten chipped in the fall. His mouth was full of blood.
    “You slipped in the shower,” she said. “These things happen, you know. Especially when you mix martinis and pain pills.”
    She could barely hear his voice over the sound of the water, but she could watch his lips form the words.
Didn’t fall. Pushed me. Bitch.
    Bending down, making sure to move from her knees, Maureen picked up the washcloth she’d brought and positioned it over the drain. Immediately the tub began to fill with water. Then she knee-walked backward, moving until her face was mere inches from her husband’s. With the thumb and forefinger of her left hand, she pinched his nostrils together. With the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, she pinched his mouth shut. The water beat down. The tub filled, inch by inch. Tommy struggled at first, or tried to, but between the injury he’d sustained, the drugs she’d fed