Too Much Happiness

this nice little bakery my husband was always praising for their coffee and their baked goods, so I dropped in and bought a couple of tarts and two cups of coffee. Thinking of her all alone when the rest of them got to go on their holidays and me all alone with my husband gone to Minneapolis. She was sweet and grateful. She said it was very boring for her there and the cafeteria was closed so you had to go over to the science building for coffee and they put hydrochloric acid in it. Ha-ha. So we had our little party.”
    “I hate rhubarb,” he said. “It wouldn’t of worked with me.”
    “It did with her. I had to take a chance that it would work fast, before she realized what was wrong and had her stomach pumped. But not so fast she would associate it with me. I had to be out of the way and so I was. The building was deserted and so far as I know to this day nobody saw me arrive or leave. Of course I knew some back ways.”
    “You think you’re smart. You got away scot-free.”
    “But so have you.”
    “What I done wasn’t so underhanded as what you done.”
    “It was necessary to you.”
    “You bet it was.”
    “Mine was necessary to me. I kept my marriage. He came to see that she wouldn’t have been any good anyway. She’d have got sick on him, almost certainly. She was just the type. She’d have been nothing but a burden to him. He saw that.”
    “You better not of put nothing in them eggs,” he said. “You did you’ll be sorry.”
    “Of course I didn’t. I wouldn’t want to. It’s not something you’d go around doing regularly. I don’t actually know anything about poison, it was just by chance I had that one little piece of information.”
    He stood up so suddenly that he knocked over the chair he’d been sitting on. She noticed there was not much wine left in the bottle.
    “I need the keys to the car.”
    She couldn’t think for a moment.
    “Keys to the car. Where’d you put them?”
    It could happen. As soon as she gave him the keys it could happen. Would it help her to tell him she was dying of cancer? How stupid. It wouldn’t help at all. Cancer death in the future would not keep her from talking today.
    “Nobody knows what I’ve told you,” she said. “You are the only person I’ve told.”
    A fat lot of good all that might do. The whole advantage she had presented to him had probably gone right over his head.
    “Nobody knows yet,” he said, and she thought, Thank God. He’s on the right track. He does realize. Does he realize?
    Thank God maybe.
    “The keys are in the blue teapot.”
    “Where? What the fuck blue teapot?”
    “At the end of the counter-the lid got broken, so we used it to just throw things in-”
    “Shut up. Shut up or I’ll shut you up for good.” He tried to stick his fist in the blue teapot but it would not go in. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he cried, and he turned the teapot over, and banged it on the counter so that not only the car keys and house keys and various coins and a wad of old Canadian Tire money fell out on the floor, but pieces of blue pottery hit the boards.
    “With the red string on them,” she said faintly.
    He kicked things about for a moment before he picked the proper keys up.
    “So what are you going to say about the car?” he said. “You sold it to a stranger. Right?”
    The import of this did not come to her for a moment. When it did, the room quivered. “Thank you,” she said, but her mouth was so dry she was not sure any sound came out. It must have, though, for he said, “Don’t thank me yet.
    “I got a good memory,” he said. “Good long memory. You make that stranger look nothin like me. You don’t want them goin into graveyards diggin up dead bodies. You just remember, a word outta you and there’ll be a word outta me.”
    She kept looking down. Not stirring or speaking, just looking at the mess on the floor.
    Gone. The door closed. Still she didn’t move. She wanted to lock the door but she couldn’t move. She heard the engine starting, then die. What now? He was so jumpy, he’d do everything wrong. Then again, starting, starting, turning over. The tires on the gravel. She walked trembling to the phone and found that he had told the truth; it was dead.
    Beside the phone was one of their many bookcases. This one held mostly old books, books that had not been opened for years. There was
The Proud Tower
. Albert Speer. Rich’s books.
    A Celebration of Familiar Fruits and Vegetables: Hearty and Elegant