Murderous husband has to think again when plans go awry.
If Push Comes to Shove
Bryan P. Little was regrettably short, overweight and, it had to be admitted, inconsequential. Winded but determined, he climbed up the rocky slope toward his wife, Alice, dislodging cascades of scaly white gravel. He and was out of shape, indeed, had never been in shape. Alice’s metallic shouts were ringing in his ears.
“Come on, quick, you’ve got to see the colors. The view is magnificent! Are you panting again? When are you going to stop smoking?”
“Stop nagging. I just stopped a few days ago. Didn’t you notice? In another week, I won’t be winded any more.”
He sighed between wheezes.
“You’ve said that before. You’ve never been able to keep up with me.”
Alice was tall, fit and nimble, one of those people who just don’t have to exercise.
“But this time I mean it……whew, I’m out of breath….I’m sick of this….If I’m such a millstone….around your neck,…..why don’t you file for…..divorce?”
There, he’d said it! It took all his courage to finally articulate the words, and outdoors, at that. He’d been trying to approach her for years, but hadn’t gotten the nerve up until now. Maybe it was the fresh air that spurred him on.
“But then I’d have to give you a lot of money and I don’t want to do that,” Alice said, leering unpleasantly, chucking him under the chin. “I like it better this way, honey.”
“What a way to spend our thirtieth anniversary,” Bryan said, under his breath, as he jerked her hand away. Alice’s malicious comments to him weren’t out of character but today she was surprisingly bitchy. Sweetness itself to their friends, she behaved saccharinely to him when one of them was around, calling him “honey”, “sweetie” and “sugar”. Her smiles almost soothed him into thinking she meant it. But when they were alone she reverted to her usual nasty behavior.
Right there and then, Bryan decided to kill Alice. He’d been thinking about it for a long time, afraid to think about it, really, and certainly terrified to put it into practice, but her nasty attitude today pushed him over the edge. He felt surprisingly calm about his decision. He knew exactly how he was going to do it. They would go on a hike, something they did all the time and he would just push her off the edge of a rock or a cliff. It would be a terrible, tragic accident. All he had to do was do a little research, find exactly the right spot, and then be terribly upset about the whole thing when the deed was done. An accident would be very believable. After all, they had been married thirty years and nobody had ever seen them fight. Actually they never did, never had fought. Alice humiliated him daily and he took it, swallowed it, bottled it up. The insults, the assaults on his manhood, the affairs, the way she flaunted her success and money. Just thinking about this catalog of offences made his blood boil, simmer, actually. He didn’t have the nerve to boil.
“C’mon, let’s go home. I’m tired of this. You want help getting off those rocks? You look like you need it,” Alice said.
“No thanks. I can do it by myself.”
“Are you sure? You look pretty pathetic teetering back and forth on that rock. Let me help you.”
“I said I can do it myself.”
“Ooh, he sounds mad. I’m very worried. Suit yourself.”
Bryan tried to jump off the rocks but his right leg buckled under him and he fell, spraining his ankle. Alice laughed as she helped him up and strode back to one of their cars, a blue BMW SUV. Bryan dusted himself off and hopped painfully behind her, out of breath, as usual. He looked at her freckled legs, her muscular calves. Her ankles were so thick, so un-feminine. He hated them. He hated her. Her face was freckled too, and her voice too loud and hearty. Everyone always said the same thing about her.
“She looks so healthy, like she enjoys life. Bryan’s so lucky.”
She enjoys life all right. Making fun of me brings her pleasure and fulfillment. Bryan hated her hair too. Just barely streaked with gray, its blonde highlights were entirely natural. Everything about her was entirely natural, maddeningly so.
Bryan P.Little’s diminutive size and stockyness were lamentable to him. His washed-out brown hair and thick glasses were like personal insults. He had no distinguishing feature, not even a mole to call his own. He was so ordinary, nobody would be able to pick him out of a crowd. They wouldn’t have any reason to, either. Everything about him was grindingly dull, his looks, his voice, his mind. He had a tendency to mumble. That’s why he had never been a success as a teacher. He longed to be extraordinary. Well soon he would be. He’d be extraordinarily wealthy!
Bryan’s attention focused on his newly formed plan. It was as if something in his brain had been released, like someone had pulled a switch. What fun this would be! What a brilliant idea! It’d been a long time since he had had any ideas at all. He’d been a high school English teacher and was used to being pushed around by his students but this wretched feeling of inferiority to Alice was something he could remedy. He immediately began to plan their next outing. It would be so easy. One tap and over she goes! He could see her now, tumbling head over heels, bones snapping. He smiled to himself. He had an urge to push her right now as she power-walked in front of him, her hideous, muscular arms pumping back and forth.
Alice and Bryan had been happy years ago, before she discovered she had ability and earning power. When they were first married, she had worked the cash register at a Mexican restaurant, graduated to keeping the books, then discovered she was a whiz at organization. Success followed success and she eventually found herself CEO of a small computer company, then a large one. She became loud and aggressive. He began hating her then. Everything that had attracted him to her, the softness, the gentleness disappeared. As her accomplishments increased, Bryan’s stature declined. It was almost visual. You could imagine him shrinking as she became more important. He began to drink too much, becoming too shaky by nightfall to correct his papers for school. She began to fool around with other men. He came home early one day from school and found her in bed with the pool boy, a young Israeli, named Josi. She wasn’t even embarrassed and told Bryan to close the bedroom door, she was busy! What was worse than that, he had done it!
Bryan had always smoked but his cigarette consumption doubled, causing him to wheeze like an old bellows with a hole in it. He was put on notice by the school board and, after showing up for class one day, drunk, was fired. But the money kept pouring in. Alice’s company was successful beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. They bought a big house in the best neighborhood. They bought two luxury cars and an RV. It really wasn’t necessary for him to find another job so he sat around the house, watching TV. Talk shows were his favorites. He could lose himself in other people’s problems.
He began to hatch his plan. They would hike near the old reservoir. The area was always deserted. There were lots of cliffs, no guard-rails and there was no path along the edge of the cliff. The only possible activity could be a wildfire in the vicinity. Firefighters used the reservoirs to scoop up water in their helicopters. He’d have to watch out for this eventuality. He’d remind Alice to charge up her cell phone. A prompt emergency call would show responsibility. He silently rehearsed distraught feelings, observing himself in the mirror. The tilt of the eyebrows had to be just right. The lower lip could protrude a little bit, not too much. The more he thought about his brilliant plan, the more anxious he was to proceed.
The house would be his. The cars would be his. Their large joint savings account would be his. And her life was insured for $1,000,000 through the company she owned. And he was the beneficiary! The only thing missing would be Alice, herself. Bryan would have peace and quiet for the first time in his life. Maybe he’d take a cruise. Tahiti would be nice. A pipe and cravat would not be out of place. He could be sort of a modern Ronald Coleman. He tried to imagine himself in a silk shirt and gabardine trousers and wing tips, being sophisticated, pursued by a beautiful woman, eating lobster thermidor by candlelight. This plan had always been in the back of his mind but he had never had the nerve to put it into action. His thirtieth anniversary had made it clear to him that his life was going nowhere. He wasn’t too old to start again. He and Alice didn’t have children, thank goodness, and their parents were dead. No encumbrances. It was too good to be true !
“A hike? That sounds good. But are you sure you’ll be able to keep up?” Alice’s hearty laugh caused her nose to wrinkle irritatingly. “Saturday? I’ll have to check my appointment book. Maybe I can fit you in. Would you like that?” she smirked.
“Look, I’ll pack the car. I’ll do everything. All you have to do is sit there. Try not to be so nasty, by the way.”
“Don’t forget your hip flask. You’ll probably get thirsty.”
Only a couple of hours more of this. I can last out, thought Bryan. Soon she won’t be able to insult me any more. She’ll be lying at the bottom of a ravine.
They arrived at the starting place and parked by a wall of cement barriers and a chain link fence that bordered part of the reservoir. There was room for just one car beside the seldom-traveled road. The section of the reservoir with the cliffs that was to be the scene of the murder was on the other side, through dense underbrush. Bryan was glad they had brought the BMW and left the Jaguar at home. It was the last time they would ever ride in the SUV together. He was almost a free man.
“This seems a long way just to hike. We’ve been walking for almost two hours. It’d better be worth it. I hope you checked it out.”
“Don’t worry, I did. You won’t be disappointed.”
“I hope not. I have a terrible headache. I don’t feel very well.”
Just before reaching the ridge, Alice sat down on a big rock and propped her feet up on a tree limb.
“Did you bring any aspirin with you? This headache is not going away. I just want to rest a minute. I may have to go back,” she said, holding her head with both hands. “This is very unusual. I always feel….”
Alice stood up, raised her hand accusingly, her index finger pointing in his direction. She smiled and looked as though she was going to say something. She tripped over a root, her mouth moving, hit her head on a rock and fell limply at Bryan’s feet. Bryan stared at her, blankly. This was not part of his plan so he didn’t quite know what to do. His first impulse was to run, imagining that somehow she had detected his intentions and had died of shock. On closer inspection, however, he saw that she wasn’t dead and was breathing, although she appeared to be in great distress. There was an ocean of blood, pouring from her head wound Her eyes were rolled back in her head and a white froth was forming on her mouth. Bryan thought of the cappuccino he drank every morning for breakfast and licked his lips. Alice had been aggressively healthy all her life and, except for the occasional cold, had never been sick. He had no knowledge of CPR but it looked like Alice needed more then resuscitation right now. Bryan was desperate. His plans were ruined. He sat on a nearby rock and mulled over one possibility. He could carry her to the edge and throw her over, but he quickly discarded that one. He was too weak. And…there might be an investigation. With footprint examination, they might be able to see that he’d struggled to throw her over the edge. Finally he decided to report the situation just as it was. Maybe if he were lucky she’d die on the way to the hospital .He fumbled through Alice’s backpack and found her cell phone. He called 911 and told the dispatcher of their location, careful to inject the right note of panic into his voice.
“I need help. She’s too heavy. I can’t carry her.”
“Stay calm, sir. We’ll send a helicopter. Someone will be there soon.”
In an hour, a chopper landed on the beach of the reservoir and a few minutes later an EMT team arrived at Bryan’s site. He was hoarse from yelling and was aching from waving his arms to attract the team’s attention. Bryan trailed behind, tripping over rocks and tree roots. Soon they were all bundled into the red helicopter headed toward St Mary’s hospital. Bryan was shown to the uncharacteristically empty waiting area. An irritable-looking, large bosomed nurse was shuffling papers. A man with a huge belly and bald head occupied the seat opposite him and tried to start a conversation about football. Bryan picked up a three month old news magazine and tried to concentrate on it, but couldn’t. All the news stories were old and nothing caught his attention. The smell of disinfectant nauseated him. His seat was uncomfortable. The cushion under his behind was hard and unyielding. His left leg began to ache. He grew drowsy and began to nod off.
“Mr. Little? I’m Dr. Lyle Boddy,” said a man with a saggy face. His jowls shook sadly as he introduced himself. He extended his hand to the sleeping Bryan, who snapped to attention like he’d been electrocuted.
“Are you Mrs. Little’s spouse? I’m sorry to tell you that Mrs. Little suffered a severe head injury and…...”
As Bryan sprang to his feet, he thought, she’s dead, thank God. He wants to break the news to me gently.
Dr. Boddy motioned to Bryan to sit back down and, from the seat next to him in a confidential tone said, “Mr. Little, you look like an intelligent man. I’m sure you are acquainted with head injuries. At-risk people for falls are usually heavy smokers, obese, heavy drinkers, people who are out of condition. It doesn’t appear to me that your wife fit any of these categories but there you are.” He looked more and more mournful. “We don’t know everything about brain injuries. Your wife was in good physical shape. The reason for her tripping can only be explained by a case of the flu, which had already begun. Perhaps she didn’t feel well. The first hour is crucial but we treated your wife too late. There probably wasn’t anything we could have done anyway. Part of her brain was exposed,” he said, sadly.
Bryan nodded his head in careful appreciation of the doctor’s instruction and looked appropriately desolated.
“Did one of her parents have problems with gait? A brother? A sister?”
“Her father died of a stroke about fifteen years ago and her mother had a sudden heart attack and died ten years ago this month, but no problems with gait that I know of.”
“That explains it.”
“That explains what?”
“Why she won’t respond to rehab.”
“She’s not dead?”
“Oh no. We were able to save her.”
“Will she recover?”
“Unfortunately no,” he said.
“Who will take care of her?”
“You will, I suppose, or you can hire someone to give her around the clock care. We can help you with that. Just ask my nurse over there.”
“That sounds expensive.”
“It is. Very. She could live for years. Unfortunately she’ll be nothing more than a vegetable. Of course, if we had gotten to her sooner…..”
Bryan buried his head in his hands and sobbed piteously.
“There, there, Mr. Little. Your wife isn’t suffering,” said Dr. Boddy, his soothing hand on Bryan’s shoulder.
But Bryan wasn’t worrying about Alice’s suffering. He was crying for Tahiti.
On the way home, he thought of how he, as a devoted husband could care for his beloved wife, seeing to all her bodily needs (Ugh! Most of them disgusted him) and smother her. It would be easy but would take careful planning. All is not lost. He thought of the legal pad on his desk. I’ll call this Plan B…..
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