February 19, 2012
I Fell in Love
(Notes from the wife of the Long Island Serial Killer)
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by Luanne Rice
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He never hit me, I have to say that. Maybe because I’d given him warning, unintentionally, when we first fell in love and were talking about the things people talk about getting to know each other, normal stuff, just riding in the car somewhere, who cares where, and we were saying what we liked and didn’t like and what we’d take and wouldn’t take, and he had just told me, “I once had a girlfriend who littered, she left a chocolate milk container on the ground, and I broke up with her that day,” and I said, the way I might have said, “I will never pick up a copperhead,” a statement so obvious yet seemingly random, my conscious mind not in control of those words that flew out of my mouth: “I would never stay with a man who hit me. One time, and I’d be gone.” My instincts knew more than I did, way-to-go instincts, but a lot of good they did me in the end.
I can’t remember what he replied, if anything. When I look back, I imagine him taking my statement in as if it were food and he an alligator snatching some poor small dog trotting blithely along a canal, holding the canine underwater till it drowned and rotted and could be devoured at leisure.
There are worse things than being hit. The silent treatment has raw power, especially when it lasts all weekend, when you have to tiptoe around because if you wake him up he’ll look at you with those red eyes that tell you how thoughtless and stupid you are and how inconvenient you are and how if he felt like it he could smash your head against the wall and wrap your body in burlap and dispose of it in a swamp.
They say that lobsters fall asleep as the water comes to a boil. That’s how it was for me. The hot silences and raging foot on the gas, tailgating on the highway till I hit the air brake and set him off, “here it comes, why don’t you just tell me I scare you, you make me feel like an animal, you know that? I’m a good driver, I’ve never gotten a ticket, not once.” Oh, those moments came slowly at first, each one stunning me, till after a few months or a year there was no more shock. Why do you stay with him? my stronger self would ask the self I was becoming. And what was my answer? I love him, we’re married, I don’t want a divorce, he has a good side if only I could figure out how to bring it forth more.
Toward the end, I had a recurring dream that I was dead. He had killed me, dismembered my body, and roasted my bones over an open fire. He sat beneath a red rock cliff at night, his handsome face illuminated by the flames, gnawing on my femur. The scary part was not so much the fact I was being consumed, but rather the expression or lack thereof in his eyes: lifeless like a shark’s, no emotion at all, just the look of your basic killing machine. He didn’t take the act personally, and neither should I; this was just what he did, the way other people play golf or hike the high Himalaya. You might think he hated me, but he didn’t, not in the way that you and I understand hate. The dream didn’t exactly come true. When the time came, he never did cut me up.
The others are prostitutes. He is insatiable, and they were easy. Maybe he thought no one would miss them—he never thinks that woman are loved, cherished beyond words and measure by their mothers and sisters and friends and fathers. I thought I was his wife, but I was just another woman who’d fallen at his feet.
We lie in the swamp, side-by-side, rolled up in burlap bags. The tide comes in and it goes out, every six hours, forever. Minnows dart through holes crabs have torn in the fabric. On full moon nights the marsh swells with salt water. It covers the soft mud and shimmers with blue light. My sisters lie beside me, and we look up and see his eyes.
by Luanne Rice
.
He never hit me, I have to say that. Maybe because I’d given him warning, unintentionally, when we first fell in love and were talking about the things people talk about getting to know each other, normal stuff, just riding in the car somewhere, who cares where, and we were saying what we liked and didn’t like and what we’d take and wouldn’t take, and he had just told me, “I once had a girlfriend who littered, she left a chocolate milk container on the ground, and I broke up with her that day,” and I said, the way I might have said, “I will never pick up a copperhead,” a statement so obvious yet seemingly random, my conscious mind not in control of those words that flew out of my mouth: “I would never stay with a man who hit me. One time, and I’d be gone.” My instincts knew more than I did, way-to-go instincts, but a lot of good they did me in the end.
I can’t remember what he replied, if anything. When I look back, I imagine him taking my statement in as if it were food and he an alligator snatching some poor small dog trotting blithely along a canal, holding the canine underwater till it drowned and rotted and could be devoured at leisure.
There are worse things than being hit. The silent treatment has raw power, especially when it lasts all weekend, when you have to tiptoe around because if you wake him up he’ll look at you with those red eyes that tell you how thoughtless and stupid you are and how inconvenient you are and how if he felt like it he could smash your head against the wall and wrap your body in burlap and dispose of it in a swamp.
They say that lobsters fall asleep as the water comes to a boil. That’s how it was for me. The hot silences and raging foot on the gas, tailgating on the highway till I hit the air brake and set him off, “here it comes, why don’t you just tell me I scare you, you make me feel like an animal, you know that? I’m a good driver, I’ve never gotten a ticket, not once.” Oh, those moments came slowly at first, each one stunning me, till after a few months or a year there was no more shock. Why do you stay with him? my stronger self would ask the self I was becoming. And what was my answer? I love him, we’re married, I don’t want a divorce, he has a good side if only I could figure out how to bring it forth more.
Toward the end, I had a recurring dream that I was dead. He had killed me, dismembered my body, and roasted my bones over an open fire. He sat beneath a red rock cliff at night, his handsome face illuminated by the flames, gnawing on my femur. The scary part was not so much the fact I was being consumed, but rather the expression or lack thereof in his eyes: lifeless like a shark’s, no emotion at all, just the look of your basic killing machine. He didn’t take the act personally, and neither should I; this was just what he did, the way other people play golf or hike the high Himalaya. You might think he hated me, but he didn’t, not in the way that you and I understand hate. The dream didn’t exactly come true. When the time came, he never did cut me up.
The others are prostitutes. He is insatiable, and they were easy. Maybe he thought no one would miss them—he never thinks that woman are loved, cherished beyond words and measure by their mothers and sisters and friends and fathers. I thought I was his wife, but I was just another woman who’d fallen at his feet.
We lie in the swamp, side-by-side, rolled up in burlap bags. The tide comes in and it goes out, every six hours, forever. Minnows dart through holes crabs have torn in the fabric. On full moon nights the marsh swells with salt water. It covers the soft mud and shimmers with blue light. My sisters lie beside me, and we look up and see his eyes.
.
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Luanne Rice is the author of thirty novels including twenty-two consecutive New York Times bestsellers. Five of her books have been made into movies and mini-series, and her work has also been featured in several off-Broadway theatre productions. She lives in New York City, Southern California, and Old Lyme, Connecticut.