RIDICULE(Charles E.J. Moulton) “Did your mother know you were here last night?”
I turned around, my hand clutching the handle and my knuckles turning white around the grasp. I looked at Barbara with the gaze of a man too stunned to answer.
I shook my head.
“No. She thinks I have broken the contact with you long ago. Why?”
My mother had called her a bitch for not being a republican and Barbara had thrown a vase of flowers at her. After that she was no longer ‘Barbara’ but ‘that female that votes poorly’.
Barbara smiled and looked down, pretending to search for something in the top drawer of the hall table. She fished out something and looked at it. It looked like a comb, a large afro comb. She inspected it and started combing her hair with it.
She looked at me looking at her, my right hand still grabbing a hold of the door.
I was ready to leave.
She stopped in the middle of doing her hair and then dropped her hands to her side.
“Well, I was only asking.” She grinned smugly. “You might’ve told her that she still has a prospective daughter-in-law. Or is your mum still a racist?”
“Come on, she was never a racist,” I laughed. “She is conservative, republican and bigot. Not racist.”
“She insulted me.”
I looked down and nodded.
“Yeah. Right.”
She sighed and turned around, walking to the living room again.
“I was sort of interested if she was going to start behaving like a person again sometime soon” Barbara said and chuckled.
I sighed. “She keeps telling me that she hates when someone watches CNN all day” I answered.
Barbara looked at me as if I had bitten her. “CNN is the most biased network in space and she knows what I am talking about. I just watch it to keep in touch. She has no TV.”
I held up my hands.
“Bobby,” she spat, “first of all: I teach English. I have sixteen students a week and it earns me about 1300 dollars a month without taxes. And just because my uncle left me some money doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy it.” She blew me a kiss. “Tell her that.”
“Why should I be a communicator between you two?”
“You love what I give you too much, don’t you?”
I shook my head.
“Bye, Bobby.”
I heard her pouring herself a scotch and turning on the TV.
Wolf Blitzer was reporting from the White House.
I was left standing there thinking about what reasons actually spoke for Barbara and me having this relationship at all. What then made me want to do what I was about to do? I was doing it for Barbara?
My hand fell in my coat pocket. I found something in my trench coat. A receipt. “Albert’s Weapons and Guns”. Clearly marked on the payslip was the price of a Magnum .45 and the handwritten signature of Albert and the word “Paid” written in red ink. Yesterdays date was written in the left corner.
I put the gun back into my coat pocket.
I sighed, feeling the lump within my inner pocket. I reached inside and felt that smooth black metal speaking to me with unloaded elegance.
I felt the trigger slowly giving way and clicking in my hand.
As my hand left the gun it dropped down again upon two bullets.
Why was I doing this?
It had gone too far. My mother ruled my life.
I opened the door and walked out of the apartment and into the open sunshine. The autumn sun was unusually strong and I could feel the cold biting my cheeks like some bloodthirsty insect eating at my flesh.
I put on my Ray-Bans, walked to my Jaguar, thinking of how terror actually arrived creeping like a lizard into the fat minds of law abiding citizens. I thought of my mother having forced me to marry Eve on the basis of … what?
Money? Eve’s parents being her best school pals?
Maybe.
What a future.
We had no children, although I am sure that this could be some prospect of consideration if my mother wanted it. That was all right. It would’ve been, if it weren’t for the fact that my mother came to visit us every day. Eve did not mind. No, on the contrary. They would sit there every day, playing Canasta and drinking tea telling me just to keep to myself and keep on checking my student’s homework.
I had lived like that for five years now. It was enough.
I loved Barbara.
I thought Eve would have proven to be a blessing, but my mother turned her into her own little revenge for Dad’s disappearance.
I sat there now, behind the wheel of my Mercedes, my knuckles whitening.
I reached into my inner pocket again and took out the gun.
I looked at it. So smooth. So well crafted.
I rubbed my chin with my free hand.
Could I? Should I? And what if … I did?
I put the gun back into my pocket and heard the gun clicking against the bullets, started the car and drove off.
“Don’t ever provoke an older person!”
That was mother’s motto. Had I done that?
I left Hubert Road and drove off toward Jezebel Street and past the hardware store where Barbara worked. When I reached the corner of La Sianega Street and Fisher Road, I picked up the gun again and looked at it.
I looked up several times in order not to miss the green light.
With nervous hands I took out the two golden bullets. My hands were shaking. I put one in and looked up. Still red. No one looking. Then I looked to my right. A reserved toddler was looking at me. Did she see my gun? No. I put the gun carefully back into my pocket and saw the kid walking away.
Green light.
I stepped on the gas, turning down toward the highway.
“Affair. I am having an affair. Should I feel guilty?”
I shook my head. No, of course not.
I feel closer to Barbara than to my mother, for Pete’s sake.
Fact was that my mother did not even know that I had not broken contact with her, contrary to what I had told her.
I still remember them shouting at each other.
My mother had screamed: How could she believe that socialist crap? Democrats belonged in jail and not in the senate. Barbara shouted that she was entitled to believe what she believed and not have to defend her own belief. Did she go to church? Barbara answered that she rarely did, but that she was honest and true.
I left the highway and drove down the front road marked “Private” and finally arrived at the gates. Josh tipped his cap as I drove in, seeing the gates close behind me and Josh turn around to face the road again. My mum had even included poor Josh in her quest to keep me from divorcing Eve. Eve hated me and so did mum, but they had wanted me to remain faithful. Lies save lives. It also kills people.
I drove the car down the path past the mansion and parked my car in the open garage. I stepped out and closed the door. Then I closed the garage door and walked toward the house.
I heard my Valentino shoes crushing the gravel beneath them.
When I arrived at the door I found the door open.
I stopped for a second, wondering who could’ve opened it and where my wife was now. I sighed, my lip trembling, and stepped onto the porch and walked a few steps up to the door. The door was ajar, leaving a small stream of the hallway light shining upon the marble flooded with sun setting light.
I pushed it opon with my left hand and walked in.
Quiet in here. Very quiet.
I put my keys on the hall table and left my coat on the sofa that we reserved for waiting guests.
“Hello?”
No answer. I walked a few steps past the portrait of Eve’s father and into the hallway.
Eve was sitting with her face down toward the garden, the window open, her head cocked to one side.

She was wearing a negligee with a deep cleavage and had apparently not bothered to dress at all.
”Honey?”
No answer. The only sound that met me was the sound of the ebony clock ticking.
I walked up a few steps toward Eve and then put my hand on her shoulder.
“Darling?”
She fell over, her head bumping against the table and her arm falling down on the floor.
Her mouth opened and her tongue lolled out.
I gasped, my eyes widening.
I reached out and felt my hand touching her throat.
A pulse?
I tried to feel the pulse, my hand trembling.
No pulse.
A flood of livid icy temperature came surging up from my deepest bowels and up toward my head. My knees felt weak and my head felt hot. I looked out of the window and saw a bird landing upon the branch of the oak right next to the rose garden.
“She is dead.”
My voice sounded harsh and rugged. I felt like I had not drunk anything for the past week. I took a step back and sank into the armchair behind me.
I was stone cold sober.
I sighed a couple of times and reached into the breast pocket and picked out a handkerchief. I dried off my brow, again feeling myself breaking out in cold sweat.
Who could’ve done this? Who could’ve done this? Done what I had wanted to do? I shook with dread. Done what I wanted to do? Yes, I had wanted it. I had planned it. How I would’ve cleaned the gun of fingerprints after shooting her and faking my wife’s handwriting on the suicide note and leaving her to be found by the lake.
My breath was shallow and I felt frail.
I turned my head toward the library.
That is when I saw my mother. Her eyes were open and she was looking at me, contemptuous as customary. Her head was turned toward me and she seemed to be smiling, her countenance grinning and her lipstick faded, pink rouge smeared on her cheeks.
She was wearing her blue dress, the one that she had picked out at the local store last year for her birthday. A tear ran down my cheek and I bit my lip in order not to scream out or break something.
I felt myself standing up, my knees not holding my weight. I slumped down and hit my knees on the floor, crying out in pain. I stood up again, trying to gain control of my body.
I stood up, gathering all of my strength and walked up to the table where my mother was sitting. She was quiet, slumped down in that couch and motionless, staring at me with dull and lifeless eyes. She seemed to be saying:
“You see, Bobby baby. You can’t fool me. I know you.”
I don’t know what happened next. I just know I found myself running to my car and desperately trying to figure out how to get out of this place without letting Josh see me. I stepped into my Mercedes and drove off, certain to use the back way. On the way out I found car tracks of a jeep next to the gates. Oh, my God. A thought struck me as my I stood there, the gate in my hand and my knuckles turning white.
I opened the gate and rushed to my car, drove out and closed the gate and left the house behind me. Then it occurred to me that there was another road down the back that I never used. It was the path for people that needed to sneak in unseen, like drunk members of the staff or mistresses in for a quickie when the missus was gone.
As I drove down the highway I remembered every one I had told that there was a back way to our house. Unreachable to most, yes, but available.
And I knew of only one of those people who owned a jeep.
Barbara.
I drove as fast as I could the way I had come and then parked my car in front of the dwelling.
“Bobby, hi!” She smiled. A glass of scotch was in her hand, the ice cubes rattling in her glass. “I didn’t expect you so soon!”
I said nothing as she closed the door behind me and took my coat. My hand reached for the gun again as I walked behind her into the living room.
“Come in!”
The TV was still on as she sat down, smiling.
“Sit down here next to me! Have you changed your mind?”
She saw that I didn’t respond.
Her expression changed.
She sat up, her face receiving the look of someone just fired from work.
She looked down into her glass, emptied it and walked to the window.
I walked the other way, turning off Wolf Blitzer.
I waited by the TV for a while, feeling the silence stroking my cheek and biting into it like a hungry insect.
“Barbara!” There was no answer. I turned around and saw her looking at me.
She sighed.
“I know you were here during your lunch break, because I saw you leave as I came back in the jeep. I was just back from the house when you arrived.”
I took a few steps up to her and looked at her very sternly.
I reached into my pocket and took out my gun.
She looked down. Her eyes widened.
“Oh,” she said. She looked up. “Bobby, I …”
I whispered to her as soft as I could.
“I found them, Barbara” I croaked. “I found them.”
We stood like that, looking into one another’s eyes for a bit.
“Them?” Barbara seemed confused. “Bobby, I …”
She stuttered and stopped speaking.
I sighed. “Dead.”
Barbara nodded. “It was providence. I … I went there … we fought … the gun …” She swallowed hard. “I had just brought it along just in case. I wanted to inform her you were mine and that she couldn’t hold us back any longer. Then she grabbed me and pulled me by my hair and then the gun went off. I … don’t know what happened.”
I went down on my knees.
“Barbara” I said. “I went there to speak with her about a divorce. Why you? Why did you not let me do it? I …”
There was a long pause in which neither one of us said anything at all.
Then, Barbara finally said:
“Do you wish you had not told me about the back way to the house? Josh would never let anyone in that didn’t belong there, so you suggested that I come in the back way whenever Eve was gone. I took the chance. They were destroying us, Bobby.”
I shook my head.
“Barbara” I accused. “You killed them.”
She chuckled nervously. “What were you going to do with that?”
”I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.
She caressed my cheek, just as the doorbell rang.
We looked at each other and we both saw in each other’s eyes that we both were scared.
We took each other’s hands and walked up to the door and looked out the spy hole.
I jumped back a foot and stood there as if something had bitten me.
Outside, there were two police officers.
I gestured toward the spy hole.
She gasped.
“We are criminals, Bob” she said. She constantly called me Bob as soon as she accused me of something. “Murderers.”
I bit my lip. “I have a job” I responded, giving her an accusatory nickname. “A responsibility for my students.”
“We have to sprint” she whispered.
There was another ring.
“Where to?”
“Canada” she said. “It is only six hours away. We’ll go to the mountains and then come back when things have calmed down. We'll tell your school that you are ill and need some time to get well.”
There were voices outside.
Somebody knocked.
“Mr. Peters, open the door.”
“We have each other” she said. “That is the important thing.”
“God, I am terrified” I murmured.
“Don’t be” she comforted.
I shivered.
“There is a flight of stairs outside the windowpane, is there not?”
”There’s a fire escape” she said and gestured to the back window in the TV room.
I took her hand and walked into the living room, leaving the apartment by way of the fire escape, closing the window behind me.
Faster than lightning we headed for my Mercedes and left just as the two officers entered her apartment. I headed for the highway and we ended up not talking to each other for the next hour. When I had reached the next state, she whispered:
”Where are you heading?”
“Nowhere.” I shrugged. “Everywhere. I don’t know.”
I didn’t answer for a while, but finally I gathered enough strength to do so.
“Away from the authorities …”
“But we can’t just leave.” Barbara spoke louder now. “They will find us.”
I shook my head. “Not if we are smart.”
Barbara looked at the road, it was dark now. I had my credit cards with me and I knew that I would have to get some money from an automat before we headed for Canada.
Then we would be safe if we hid for a while.
Barbara seemed to want to say something, her breath thin and her cheeks puffing.
“I had to do it, Bob!” She looked at me. I nodded.
“I know, babe. I had the same instinct. It was self defence.”
She looked back upon the road.
“Yeah, that was it. They were making fun of us. They ridiculed us. I could hear them at dinner parties laughing. You, me, friends. The coward and the lazy bitch. Ridiculed.”
And so, Barbara and I drove down the highway toward Canada and an uncertain future, leaving everything we knew and loved behind us, a police car just a mile behind our trail. She looked down. “I didn’t want this.”
“Neither did I, Barbara” I said: “It was self defence.”
Soon, we drove up to a motel and checked in.
We fell asleep around four o’clock in the morning after having talked for three hours.
The next morning there was a harsh knock on the room door.
I turned to Barbara:
“They found us.”
“Shit” she spat.
“Does this place have a back door?”
Barbara turned to the window and saw that we were on the bottom floor.
She nodded.
“Let’s go” she whispered.
There was another knock.
“This is the law enforcement” the voice outside screamed. “Open up.”
I jumped out the window and we ran across a pasture.
Somehow I wanted to escape the fuzz.
No matter what happened, I wanted to get away.
Even if it meant being on the run for the rest of my life.
After all, I had reached my goal.
Barbara was mine and if I was lucky I could spend the rest of my life being with her.
That was what I had wanted.
Two amateur criminals were in love and on the run.
Barbara and Bobby? Did that sound like Bonnie and Clyde?
No, Bob and Barbie. That was better.
Whatever our nickname would be I was intent on leaving no trail behind me.
As I ran through the field toward an open parking lot filled with cars, I heard the police screaming commands at each other behind my back.
“Bobby, are you with me?”
“I am right here” I shouted.
We soon arrived at the parking lot and took the first best car we could find.
It was old Mustang. It was black and badly kept, but still a car.
Barbara broke the back window and opened the front window by the way of the back.
“Jump in” she hollered.
I did as I was told. As she tried to jump start the car by giving it a short circuit I heard the cops’ voices coming closer.
“Can’t you do this any quicker?” I screamed.
She bellowed at me to shut up just as the engine roared and we took off. The police had to run back to get their vehicles.
Suddenly, the motor started coughing.
“What the hell?” I said.
“We have no petrol” my girlfriend laughed.
She was right. We had picked a car that had no gasoline.
Before we could run any further the police were there and they took out their handcuffs, telling us that we had the right to remain silent and that everything we said could be used against us.
We said nothing. We just looked out of the window and realized that we were probably facing a serious charge. I dared not say anything, but I believed that my relationship with Barbara or with any woman from now on was over. Eve had been dead and my mistress had killed her.
Then it suddenly struck me.
The thought was frightening, but I dismissed it.
It was too silly to be true.
I was locked up in a cell far away from Barbara, who was in a woman’s prison. We were both waiting for trial and we got to choose our own lawyers.
Next morning, I had a visitor.
A huge stout chap came and handcuffed me and brought me to a room with very intense fluorescent lighting. I sat there for five or ten minutes biding my time, thinking about what I had wanted to do and what I hadn’t done. My thoughts wandered about the pathway of what Barbara actually had done and if she was going to be worse off than me. Could they punish me for what I had thought? There was the gun, of course. But no one could punish me for buying a gun.
Then I thought of my fights with Eve, my fights with my mother and Barbara. It would be obvious to everyone. We had to pin down first-class lawyers or we would be worse off than anybody.
Out of the blue, the entry opened. It was a big clunky metal object and the chubby protector came in. He wore a police uniform, but looked like everything else but a policeman. He looked like a biker with his big long moustache and his ponytail.
He made way for my guest by opening the door wide and letting her stride through.
There she was in her blue dress and white pillbox hat, looking like a lady from the sixties. She was holding her little cream coloured handbag over her stomach in both hands as she always did. She smiled at me and cocked her head to one side.
She pursed her lips and made a ‘tut-tut’- face and that is when I realized I was in big trouble. I stood up and as I did the guard walked out and closed the door.
“Ten minutes, Ma’m,” the guard said in a low, husky bass.
She waved away the man with a disregarding and gloved hand.
It made me realize that she could boss around even the hardest and meanest cop.
“That is all I need, boy” she said and I felt like she had just turned a three hundred pound boxer into a hamster.
The door locked and the keys rattled behind him.
There was a clearing of a throat outside and steps leading away from the door.
Now we were all alone.
I began to stammer. I embraced her, did all I could to cover up the actuality that I thought she had been deceased. I sighed and kissed her and she did not move an inch.
“Mom” I croaked. “I thought you were dead. I saw Eve and I panicked.”
She grabbed my cheeks. “Son” she sang in a high soprano. “Have a seat.”
I sat down, my handcuff rattling and hitting the wooden table.
She picked up her purse and opened it. Very slowly she unpacked her lipstick and her mascara and spent two minutes making herself up. She put it all back and then uncorked a small bottle of bourbon, which she drank in one swoop.
Then she smiled and sighed:
“You should’ve listened to your mother” she whispered. “Eve was good. That black woman was envious of her talents. I know you planned killing me and I was going to say something to you about it had you not dashed off in that manner and made yourself look so silly” she said in that high strung British way. “I saw it all. We were playing Canasta, but Eve wanted to speak to Barbara and finish it.” She looked down. “Sadly, Eve was finished.”
My mother looked down again and shook her mane.
“Robert,” she said and looked me straight in the eye with those green irises. “Darling, I know you wanted to bump me off and I know you bought a gun.” She made it sound like I had been caught fondling the dog and trying to steal its’ cookies. “If you are clever, you will do what I tell you. Mommy has found a good lawyer and she will pay for him. You will be free again.” She leaned over, turning into Cleopatra. “Barbara is the bad one, Sweetie. Break the contact.” She leaned back and smiled, turning into the steel cat again. “I even have another girl for you. She is perfect and she wants children. She is well behaved and you will marry her.”
I laughed. “Mom, kiss my ass.”
She stood up and smiled. She pointed a finger at me.
“You will be a good boy” she cackled. “If you are not a good boy, I will make sure you stay in here for the rest of your life so I can visit you and remind you of how naughty you were once. But if you cooperate then you will be free sooner than you think.”
I sighed. My entire being shook. I knew she had the influence. She was rich and famous. I nodded. My mother smiled.
“Good boy” she spat. “I will be here tomorrow with your lawyer. He is expensive, but that does not matter to Mommy. Only the best for my little Bobby.”
She stood up and circled the table, patted me on the head and knocked on the door.
“I am ready” she sang. “Don’t try to kill me again or its’ the electric chair for you.”

Soon enough, the woman who happened to be my mother was let out and disappeared into the hallway. Two minutes later, the fat guard came back and brought me back to my quarters.
I started to cry.
No matter how I tried I couldn’t escape.
Ridiculed and underestimated, I was dependant on my mother.
This time, Barbara was history.
I was going to have to do whatever she wanted if I wanted freedom.
Maybe if I accepted her will and did what I was told, I could learn to love the woman she had chosen and get some other things from her like money or contacts. She had always found my job unappealing, but I loved teaching. She would have accept that. I wanted to write. Maybe my mother could put me through to some good people.
What was I thinking? I had been here before.
Here I was, being punished and harassed by my own mom and I was defending her.
I would keep quiet and marry whoever she had chosen once I was free.
I would lead a double life again, but this time I would not get caught. I would break contact with Barbara and would be a good boy. Until I was free and married to my chosen stranger, I would keep my mouth shut. Then I could go on with my business of leading my chosen second life.
If I was too much of a coward to face my fears, it was just a case of being a good liar. This time, I promised myself, my mother and new wife would not suspect a thing.

Barbara was still in prison when I married my new wife.
When she was released a year later I was there to pick her up.
The first thing we did was to resume our affair and plan how to succeed better this time around.

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