If They Only Knew, fiction by Mark SaFranko
`Watkins was walking on air. He’d had a thing for Tara Tometski ever since he spotted her behind the flower counter at the ShopRite on Morgan Avenue, and now she was head over heels for him too. After two dates she’d messaged him a naked photo of herself from the neck down, and he knew that they’d crossed a threshold. He’d checked to make sure he hadn’t been catfished, and she assured him that yes, it’s me, it’s real, and I’m all yours.
They were already in love, really in love.
It was the promise of a new life, exactly what Watkins had been after.
__________
But that Friday evening when he came to pick her up at her apartment she was as frigid as an ice queen. “You didn’t tell me about your wife,” she fumed when she threw open the door of her little apartment.
What the fuck? How had she found out?
“You’re not dressed to go,” he protested lamely.
“Didn’t you hear what I said? What about your wife? You didn’t tell me you had a wife. And that she’s pregnant. Pregnant! And what about your daughter? You have a family, I didn’t know that either, and we’ve been sleeping together for weeks! Jesus, Ron! What in the world were you thinking...?”
If Tara didn’t stop pacing from one end of the room to the other, she was going to wear a hole into the floorboards. She was freaked, so freaked that she could hardly find the words to speak.
“Um....How did you find out?”
“How did I find out? Does it matter?”
“I was going to tell you everything, but I didn’t have the chance....”
Like a lummox he stood there and stared at her. Lord, was she something! That long black hair. Those blue eyes. The killer body. At this terrible moment he was more in love with her than ever. He didn’t even want to contemplate the thought of losing her.
“You were going to tell me everything? When? When were you going to tell me?”
“I was going to tell you as soon as I got the divorce papers filed,” he lied. The truth was that he didn’t know when he was going to tell her about Lucy and his kid and the one on the way. Whenever the thought occurred to him, he’d pushed it away. He was just following his cock, proceeding by instinct, like he always did. Since he’d been out of work with a bad back for so long, he’d had all the time in the world to carry on with Tara, and his wife and daughter and mother-in-law who lived with him were none the wiser.
Tara stopped pacing, collapsed onto the sofa, and dropped her forehead into her palms. “Your wife is about to have a baby. I can’t forget that, I just can’t get it out of my mind. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to -- ”
Watkins took a step towards her, extended his arms to gather her in.
“No! Don’t. Don’t touch me.”
He’d never seen Tara like this. It was like she was someone he didn’t even know. Her hair wasn’t even combed and she was in a pair of sweatpants, for God’s sake. Their date, which he’d been feverish for all day long, was history.
Something else was very wrong here. All this time Watkins had assumed that Tara -- if and when this moment ever came to pass, and it had to, inevitably -- would be desperate to hold on to him, that she’d take his side no matter what, even when she discovered that he had a wife and child and one in the oven, but instead there was nothing but hard suspicion on her face, as if he were some sort of criminal and not the guy she was having unchained sex with a few times a week. It only went to prove what he’d always thought: If I do something right, nobody remembers it, but if I do something wrong, nobody ever forgets it.
“Now listen –- ”
“I’m no homewrecker,” Tara insisted, getting up and resuming her frantic circling. She was practically yelling now. She was incensed. Outraged. In a real state of shock. She was even starting to sob. Everything had suddenly gone horribly wrong for Watkins.
“I didn’t say you were,” he countered, as if it had any relevance. Every word he uttered now sounded weak. He kept trying to grab her, force her into his arms, but she kept pushing him away.
“I’m gonna take care of it, like I said.”
Finally she flopped on the sofa again and refused to open her mouth. She just sat there, where they’d made love only two days earlier, staring at the wall while he kept trying to explain himself. But it was going nowhere.
“Do you still want to go out? I mean for just a little while? We can get some coffee and talk, and -- ”
“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? The answer is no! I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”
“Well, maybe if we go out some- ”
“Are you deaf? I need space. I can’t be near you. I can’t be near you at all.”
Ugly words indeed. Watkins had to come up with something before he lost Tara for good, because he understood now that it was a definite possibility.
He went on cajoling, pleading, begging. He was about to get down on his knees when Tara retreated to her bedroom, slammed the door and locked it, leaving the thin walls rattling.
Well, that was that. She wanted nothing more to do with him, at least for tonight.
Watkins was furious, then depressed. He jiggled the handle on the bedroom door, but it refused to give. He thought about punching it, breaking it down, taking Tara by force, but he decided it would make everything worse.
He scratched his head. He had no choice but to leave. But if he understood women -- and he believed he did -- he knew that once you’d been in, there was always a way back. It might, however, take some doing.
__________
Not seeing Tara for a few days and wondering what she was up to made Watkins feel desperate. Whenever he popped into the ShopRite, she immediately retreated to the back of the store, where only employees were allowed. He got the impression that her coworkers were in on some kind of conspiracy against him.
“You don’t seem to be getting the message. I’m very busy, and you have to stop coming in all the time,” she texted him after he appeared unannounced for the third or fourth time. “If you keep showing up, I’ll get fired, and it will be all your fault. And you don’t want me to have to call the police.”
No -- he didn’t want that.
Damn, this was serious.
He had nothing else to do but drive around with a beer can in his lap and think. Watkins had completely given up trying to find a job. The truth was that he didn’t want to work.
For days on end, it seemed, he cruised all over the county. Finally a plan began to form in his mind, and it was a nifty one, if he had to say so himself. After he executed it, Tara would be his again. His troubles would be history.
The next day he drove over to the Home Depot superstore, and with a wide-brimmed hat pulled low to hide his face from the security cameras, purchased a container of rat poison with cash. When he got home, he stashed it in the garage.
“Daddy, what are you going to do today?” asked his daughter Kerry the next morning at breakfast.
The six-year-old never seemed to grasp that he was unemployed, and that he had nothing whatsoever to do for the entire day, or the next day, or the day after that, except for trying to figure out a way back into Tara’s panties. The problem was that whenever the little girl called attention to his lack of purpose, a fire ignited in his mother-in-law’s eyes, resulting in snarky comments.
“Don’t you think you could do more to support your wife and child?
“Are you really putting enough effort into finding a new job?...Don’t you know that’s what a real man does? Surely you can do something that doesn’t strain your poor back!
“It’s shameful that you let your pregnant wife go out to work while you sit around wasting time!”
It took all of Watkins’ willpower to not rise to the bait. But it didn’t matter. Before long, all three of them -- his wife, Lucy, Kerry, and his mother-in-law from Hell -- would all be out of the picture and he wouldn’t be hearing any more nasty crap from anybody.
“Tonight we’re having spaghetti and meatballs,” Lucy announced before driving the little girl to school. It was remarkable that she’d never caught on to his relationship with Tara, but with her pregnancy developing by the day, she didn’t seem to want to think that anything was wrong between herself and her husband until her goddamned mother stirred the pot.
Again, it was of no consequence. How had he put it to Tara that night when everything came to a head? “I might still be married, but I just don’t love her anymore –- I never did.”
A few hours later, Kerry was still in school. Lucy was out at her secretarial job at the construction company. His mother-in-law had walked over to a friend’s house a few blocks away.
The house was quiet. The time was right to kick his scheme into motion.
Watkins went out to the garage and brought a pouch of the rat poison back into the kitchen and placed it on the counter. Then he took the plate of defrosting ground beef to be used for meatballs out of the fridge and put it up there too. He tore open the container and saturated the meat with the deadly liquid, which absorbed quickly into the bloody red flesh. He stared at the lump for a minute, then, satisfied that the quantity was sufficient and his plan was going to work just fine, replaced it in the refrigerator.
__________
“I’m going out for a while,” he announced to Lucy when she got back from work that afternoon.
“Where are you going?”
“To see a friend.”
“Who?”
“You don’t know him. He lives over in Victory.”
“Victory? I didn’t know you had a friend in Victory.”
“Well, now you know.”
“You’ll be home for dinner?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, but maybe not. Get hungry, go ahead and eat without me.”
Then he took his jacket off the hook near the front door and jumped into his car.
__________
Watkins had been driving around for a couple of hours when his phone went off. He was in a state of excitement, if not panic, waiting for the damned thing to finally ring. He knew something was going to happen, but he didn’t know when, or even what or how, exactly. Until it actually went down, he didn’t want to think about how all three of them -- his wife, his kid, his mother-in-law -- had died from consuming the poison-laced meatballs, which was why he was surprised when he saw that the call was coming from Lucy. What the hell? She was supposed to be dead by now.
When he clicked the phone to life his hand was trembling.
“Hey. Everything all right?”
“Not exactly,” said Lucy.
“Why? What’s up?”
“There was something wrong with the meat for the spaghetti dish.”
“What? What do you mean something wrong?”
“It turned green like overnight.”
“Green?”
“Yes, and it smells -- bad. Yech. It must have not been too fresh.”
“Uh-huh.”
Watkins’ heart sank. It was like hearing that his favorite TV show had been cancelled.
“First chance I have, I’m going to take it back to the market for a refund.”
Watkins felt a fresh surge of fear.
“Don’t do that. You don’t have to do that.”
“Why not? The meat was spoiled. We can’t use it. According to the date on the package, it should still have been fresh for a couple more days.”
“Nah -- not worth the trip.”
“No? We’re not made of money, honey. Especially with you out of work and another one on the way. I hope you haven’t forgotten about that.”
How could I, he thought. “I’ll take care of it,” he said half-heartedly.
“You will?”
Lucy sounded surprised, because it wasn’t like her husband to volunteer to help with anything. But under no circumstance did he want his wife running that tainted meat back to the supermarket.
“Don’t worry, I’ll do it....What are you going to eat, then?”
“I called out for pizza. It’ll be here any minute.”
“Okay....”
“Yes. One plain, and I ordered one with pepperoni for you because I know how you feel about pepperoni.”
“Right.”
“When will you be home?”
“Oh -– soon.”
“Want me to keep yours warm in the oven?”
“Sure.”
“Hurry up, then. Kerry’s waiting for you. She likes to eat with her daddy.”
“Mm-hm....”
“One more thing.”
“What?”
“Can you stop somewhere and pick up a shaker of ground oregano?”
“Oregano? Right.”
In the background he heard his daughter’s high, slight voice calling: “Hurry up, Daddy! Your pizza’s getting cold!”
__________
Watkins bit into the pepperoni slice and chewed. He didn’t usually care for their pie, it was too doughy and rather tasteless, but Orlando’s was close by, and it did in a pinch. Tonight he had to admit it was a little better than usual.
But he wasn’t thinking too much about what was in his mouth. Tomorrow was trash day, and when he was through at the table, he would get rid of that poisoned meat before his wife did something crazy like return it to the store.
They were all there at the table: Kerry, Lucy, and his mother-in-law, talking, munching, drinking, grabbing for more. Since discovering she was pregnant, he’d never seen his wife eat so much. She was twice the size she’d been when they got married. Her flab disgusted him. His mother-in-law didn’t have much to say as she slowly worked on her slice with a fork and knife, but Watkins knew what she had to be thinking, because she never made a secret of it.
“Did you see your friend in Victory?” asked Lucy, reaching for the oregano shaker. This thing with seasoning must be a new pregnancy craving, surmised Watkins, since she’d never shown the least interest in the stuff before, and now she sprinkled it on everything she ate.
“Yeah.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s fine.”
“What did you say his name was?”
Before he had the chance to make something up, Kerry interrupted: “Pizza is my favorite food, Daddy!”
“I see that, baby.”
“You do?”
Lucy laughed a little, and so did he.
“What’s funny?” asked the little girl.
Watkins hoisted another oily slice and went to work on it as he watched his family. He was thoroughly disappointed that they were still alive, because it meant his problem with Tara wasn’t solved. He was going to have to figure out something else.
And...maybe, just maybe, it was good that it had worked out this way. Maybe his original plan hadn’t been so hot after all. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that not getting caught was going to be tricky.
He thought about Tara and what she might be doing at that moment. He hoped that she wasn’t with another man; not likely, since she didn’t seem the type and whenever he drove past her apartment, he never saw a strange car out front. But how could he know for sure? Eventually, unless he did something to win her back, it was going to happen; she was going to find another bozo.
Watkins washed everything down with the dregs of his beer. He studied his wife, his daughter, his mother-in-law. None of them were thinking anything, certainly nothing important. He was the only one thinking.
“Do you have homework?” Lucy asked Kerry after the girl had made a mess of a pair of plain slices.
“A little.”
“I want you to do it before it gets too late, do you hear me?”
“Okay.”
“And let me know if you need help.”
Watkins’ mother-in-law glared at him. Why don’t you do something, you worthless leech? That’s what was going through her brain, he knew it.
But he had something over on her. None of them knew what he was thinking. They had no idea whatsoever that they were sitting at the same table with someone who was going to kill them -– someone who had already tried to kill them but had been foiled. What would they think if they knew? Jesus, they probably wouldn’t even believe it!
“What are you going to do tonight, dear?”
Watkins shrugged. He was still thirsty. There were no more Coronas in the fridge. Since the rupture with Tara, he tended to drink himself into oblivion every night.
“I don’t know. Maybe go online and look for work. How about you?”
“I’m going to watch that show I like, the one about the cops in California.”
Yes, she’d told him about it, but he wasn’t interested.
He was still hungry, too.
“Anybody dying for that last pepperoni slice?”
“No.”
“No....”
His mother-in-law glowered again.
“It’s all yours.”
He reached out and snatched it up. It was already cold.
He shook out the last few drops of Corona out of the bottle. At that moment the vague notion of a yet another idea came to him: maybe he’d set the place on fire -- when they were all sleeping. Then he would drive away....Arson, he’d read, was a great way of destroying evidence. Fire was much better than poison. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier?
One thing he wasn’t going to do tonight was hang around here waiting for nothing or looking for a goddamned job. He was going to take action. He would make a run to one of the service stations over in Victory and fill his gasoline can. The sooner it was done, the better.
He could see it now: from a block or two away he would watch the place go up in a blaze of orange and yellow flames. He’d hear the sirens wail in the distance, knowing that by the time the fire engines arrived it would already be too late. He would wait awhile, then drive over and knock on Tara’s door, tell her about the awful thing that had happened, maybe even make a show of shedding tears. She would feel terrible about his loss, realize he was free forever, and....
When the smoke cleared, he’d be walking on air again.
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