Epilogue #2
Two weeks later, I told John Robert that I was going to try to find a job.
He surprised me by saying, ‘It’s about time you got off your lazy ass and helped out around here.
’ I just turned back to the dishes and made a plan to leave the instant I had enough money to support Claire.
I needed to talk to my parents first. This was technically their house, and maybe they could evict us and then rent to just me after we got John Robert out, but as it turned out, I didn’t need to worry about the house; my parents already had a plan.
I got a job at the Spring Street Diner working Tuesday through Sunday, 5 a.m. to 1 p.m., Breakfast and part of the lunch shift.
It was just me, one other waitress, and the couple who owned the place who worked there.
I just remember the food was so good, and the people were so good to work for.
I think they knew about what I was dealing with at home; I never needed to say anything.
On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, I got an hour for lunch and would go across the street to the Public Library. I loved reading, and I loved history, and I learned so much in that time. If the truth were known, I learned more than I probably should have.
Anyway, I keep getting sidetracked because I’m trying to tell you so much.
I spent the next three years working my ass off and hiding away as much money as I could without tipping John Robert off.
He knew exactly how much I made and had his hand out the minute I walked in the door on payday.
My mom watched Claire when my work conflicted with school and in the summer.
But I managed to put away nearly $500. That doesn’t sound like much now, but in that time, that was a decent amount of money.
I had one day off a week, and I used that day to extra-clean the house and go grocery shopping, so I wouldn’t get behind the rest of the week.
For three years, my strategy was to keep my head down and keep my mouth shut, save money, and then just disappear with Claire one day, but no… I had to open my big mouth.
When Claire was around 8, we were walking through the grocery store doing the weekly shopping when a pretty woman about my age came up to me in the cereal aisle.
She looked me up and down and said, “Guilia Marcus? You are her, aren’t you?
John’s wife? Well, I’m Vivian! John’s girlfriend.
I just wanted you to know that if I never do another thing in my life, I am gonna take that man from you!
You don’t deserve him! I deserve him!” She stood there with her hands on her hips and looked like she was just itching for a fight.
I just smiled at her, asked Claire to run and get me a big box of Frosted Flakes, and once she had trotted away, I leaned in and softly said with the biggest smile on my face, ‘Yes, you absolutely do deserve him, and you can fucking have him. You can come pick his drunk ass up any fucking time you want! Hell, I’ll tell him to pack his bags because his whore is coming to get him!
” and then I turned and walked toward Claire to finish shopping.
Vivian walked away stunned, and we checked out and went home.
I was so mad, but I didn’t want Claire involved.
Later that evening, while Claire was out on the front porch playing, John Robert was on the phone in the bedroom, and he came stomping down the hallway into the kitchen, screaming at me because Vivian had told him what I had said.
He cornered me in the kitchen by the back door.
I don’t remember every word, but I remember calling his girlfriend a whore, and he backhanded me into the stove and had a look on his face that I had never seen.
I was truly frightened by that look. He told me to send the girl to my parents.
I was too frightened not to do it, so I called my mom to come and get her.
She did so without any questions, but the events afterward aren’t entirely clear.
He didn’t talk all that much that I can remember, but he beat me within an inch of my life, and if my mom hadn’t come back to get Claire’s sleeping frog, most likely, I would have died on the kitchen floor that night.
It was a messed-up ordeal, and it took me two months to heal enough to go back to work.
And then six months after he beat me, John Robert was apparently jumped outside of a dive bar in town and beaten up badly.
Never forget, Lewie, what comes around goes around.
I don’t know who did it, but John Robert deserved everything dished out to him.
He took a while to heal, but only the wounds healed, not the man.
He was still just as nasty, but not so quick to hit me.
He spent a lot of time with Vivian, and I was not mad about it.
About three weeks after John Robert went back to work after the beating, I had my day off.
It was later in the evening, and I was cleaning up the kitchen after supper.
I had put Claire to bed about 30 minutes prior to this, and John Robert was already drunk in the living room, half-naked in his ratty old bathrobe.
I heard voices coming from Claire’s room, and I walked down the hallway.
I saw John Robert walking slowly towards Claire.
She had an indescribably terrified look on her face.
My mind couldn’t even process what he was probably thinking.
I pushed the door open all the way and, while holding a dripping wet cast iron skillet, I said, ‘John Robert, you don’t need to be in there bothering her; get on back in here to the living room.
’ I knew I had interrupted something, and I knew I was about to pay for it.
I shut Claire’s door and followed John Robert back into the living room.
He slapped me across the face and then knocked me around the living room for a bit and told me to never tell him where he could and could not go in his own house.
He was throwing plates and vases and ranting something about this being his house, and that was his daughter, and I was his wife, and he would do with us whatever he wanted to do.
He said something about having a mind to take us to the woods, hunt us for sport, then bury us so deep no one would ever find us.
He had a crazy look in his eyes, and I knew he meant every word he had said.
I decided right then that I had to do something.
He grabbed his car keys and left the house, slamming the door, and was gone until the next afternoon when he got home from work.
He said exactly five words to me from the time he got home until the next morning.
‘Where’s the girl?’ and ‘When’s supper?” I had arranged for Claire to be at a sleepover at her friend’s house, and she wouldn’t be home for two days.
Now, you probably aren’t surprised by now to hear about all the awful things that man did to me.
I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of stories from Claire about John Robert, but what no one knew was how much of a coward I was.
See, I had, as you know now, a secret garden.
I took care of the yard and the gardening.
John Robert had no desire or interest. So, I knew I could grow whatever I wanted.
I wanted out. I knew if something happened to me, Claire would go to my parents.
With me gone, John Robert wouldn’t be bothered as long as Claire was somewhere else.
So, I decided to take myself out. I was so tired of it all, and I was in such a depression that I couldn’t fight for myself.
In my secret garden, I had been growing for years a lot of things that could be very dangerous if consumed: Belladonna, Foxglove, Oleander, Water Hemlock, Henbane, and others.
I had grown, processed, and concentrated these plants into an elixir that I was sure would kill me with one dose, and I had it stashed in the little cubby under the angel’s wings in my garden.
See, I learned a lot of things in that library.
One day, I learned about a woman who shared my name.
Guilia Tofana. She was rumored to have made and sold a poison called Aqua Tofana to women who needed to, as you kids say, ‘unalive’ their husbands.
Now, none of that is proven, and most historians think it isn’t true, but that is what led me to research poisonous plants and how to concentrate them and make them into a powerful elixir.
So, I tell you that in order to say this: Since I had arranged for Claire to be safely away from the house, I called work to ask my boss if I could switch to the afternoon shift the next day.
I needed the time to do all I needed to do.
I didn’t want to fight for myself, but I would fight for Claire.
She needed me, and I had to protect her from the monster that was her father.
John Robert came home that afternoon and was eerily quiet.
We didn’t speak to each other. He ate his supper and went to bed.
The next morning, I got up early. I dressed in a nice dress with heels, and then I fixed his favorite breakfast and placed it on a bed tray.
3 fried eggs over easy, 2 slices of toast with “special” strawberry jam, and 4 slices of thick-cut bacon fried crispy.
With his seemingly normal cup of black coffee in that old, ugly white and blue mug.
I placed everything nicely on the tray with a white linen napkin and carried it to the bedroom.
John Robert was just waking up when I walked into the room.
I put on my biggest smile and said, “Wake up, sleepyhead.
" I made your favorite breakfast.’ He sat up with a confused look and took the tray.
Looking down at the tray and then back at me.
“What the hell’s all this for? He scowled.