My Husband Wants Me Dead

With all due respect, I believe my husband might be trying to kill me. I’m not sure why people start statements with, “with all due respect” because it’s similar to the, “I don’t mean to be critical” entrée, which, of course, always means that criticism is to follow. In this case “respect” has nothing to do with what I’m going to tell you. But I say it, I guess, because my husband is Italian and he looks like Al Pacino, before Al started wearing a headband, and if Al wore glasses to watch TV. So I guess “in all due respect” does have its place regarding my husband, and so does murder, in a “rubbing out my wife” sort of way via “The Godfather” but not “ The Sopranos” because my husband is not a fan of that sort of way. So while “I think my husband might be trying to kill me” may be a hyperbolic statement, when I say that my husband loves our cat, Beacon, more than he loves me, or any living thing on earth, it is not an exaggeration, but a cold, hard fact of life.

I love animals very much. I always have, and I take great pleasure in them and have made great sacrifices for them. At one time, two little children, three cats and two dogs populated my house. Most of my animals slept in the bed with me throughout my children’s early years. My black cat, Boo, knew how to meow “Mama” and I spent countless hours with him, playing fetch with rubber bands and milk bottle plastic tabs. He was a genius and I was obsessed with him. Although I was so allergic to Boo that I had to use an inhaler, I let him sleep on my face despite a series of asthmatic attacks. 

Boo’s youngest adopted brother, Beanie, was a blonde and very tough. He ran away for twenty- six days and everyone who knew me remembers my midnight searches for him through our neighborhood.  Flashlight in hand, I was unwavering in my quest to find him, which included talking to everyone who walked or ran within a five mile radius of our house and posting a flood of colored Xerox “Lost Cat” signs on every tree and telephone pole. I vowed never to rest until Beanie was found, which he finally was, under the porch of a couple named George and Elaine.  Not even kidding.

The middle sister cat, Cookie or Little Girl, her original name, had the loudest purr and the sweetest nature. Aside from the fact that she scratched the face of a friend’s son who pulled her tail, she really had no bad bones. Her only flaw was her incessant proclivity to urinate everywhere. The older she grew, the more regularly she peed outside of her box and on everything in my house. She destroyed all of my rugs, an antique sofa, coats, blankets, mattresses and a cd player. (This list is left incomplete out of consideration for the reader.) I loved Cookie and let her live out her life in a happy pool of her own urine, which permeated every bit of my home. Oh well.

None of this devotion compares to how much my husband loves Beacon. Beacon is a white cat with a little black spot on the top of his head, which makes him sometimes look like an old Jewish man wearing a yarmulke, and sometimes like Moe Howard from The Three Stooges - both comparisons being eerily similar to each other. He is named for the town from which he hails, Beacon, New York, and because he came into our lives as a beacon of light.  My husband disapproves of me writing about Beacon. I think he might be afraid of paparazzi, I’m not sure.  Despite his suspicions, he does want me to include here that his love of Wilco and the Jets are also intense, though not as deeply rooted as his feelings for Beacon.  My husband walks though the house chanting, “Where’s that Joe Buck?” which is code for “Where’s Beacon?” and also makes reference to one of his favorite 70’s films, “Midnight Cowboy”(my husband’s favorite’s, not Beacon’s). But I digress.  I meant to be specific in my outlining as to why I suspect that my husband wants me dead.

The other morning, my husband announced that he saved Beacon’s life. I was getting ready for work at the ungodly hour of 6:00 a.m. and weakly asked him what he meant.

“Beacon was playing with a huge spider, the kind that can bite and really do damage.”

The thought of a huge spider near Beacon was, of course, very upsetting to me, too, and I was glad that my husband killed it.

“No, I didn’t kill it. You know I can’t kill a spider.” 

In fact, I did know that my husband would never kill a spider or any other living thing. When my cats have brought mice to us in our bed, and elsewhere, my husband gently places them in a glass, closing the top with a lid made by a magazine at hand, and takes them outside to their natural home. All bugs are similarly relocated including beetles and moths. Only once did a hoard of carpenter ants have to be exterminated by my husband, as they aggressively attacked the wood foundation of our house. He still mourns that day. The hairy, viperous spider who threatened our Beacon was left unharmed, and deposited out onto the grass outside of our porch, keeping Beacon out of harm’s way. Or so I was told.

I have included in my longstanding love of animals a relationship with a horse named Isabelle. She is mine, I can’t afford her, and I love every equine part of her. My boots, after having ridden her, were caked with mud and so I left them on the porch so that I could remove the dirt when it was dry. It was time for my next ride and I gleefully brought my boots into the house, having cleaned them off and slipped one on my right foot. Hmmm. I guessed that the pad that I used for extra support must have come undone because something soft and cushiony was not in the toe of the boot where the support should be. Almost mindlessly, I reached my hand inside the boot and pulled out the black and grey, hairy, disgusting, virulent appearing spider that my husband SAID that he’d put outside. Had he let the spider live because of his excessive pacifism? Or was it really a diabolical plot, all forged under the guise of “sweetest guy in the world” for the singular purpose of making sure that the spider was placed in my boot to sting me and put a fast end to me even as I was dressed and ready to ride? I’m sure this was the case, though of course he denies it.

Now I must live in fear of the next household “accident” that awaits me. My children don’t believe me because my husband gives them money for movies and gas. Clearly, it’s true and I hope that his document will serve as evidence when my time has come.

Oh, what is his motive, you ask, for wanting to ensure my speedy demise? From all appearances we seem happy, settled, one might say, even loving. But the truth is there is motive that supersedes that pretty picture entirely.

You see, dear reader, Beacon loves me, too.