He said he loved his wife. Part of me wanted to believe him—wanted to believe he was telling the truth. Even afterwards, when I learned what had happened, what he had done, I still clung to that lie like it was the last rung on a ladder, dangling—over a great dark pit.
No one told me, of course, that it had happened. I found out the same way everyone else at Alpine State found out anything; I saw it on Facebook. Crammed between baby pictures and cat videos and ads for Diet Coke, there was the headline: “New Jersey Couple Die in Possible Murder-Suicide.”
Possible. Like it was still up for debate.
Maybe it was for them: the journalists and the police. Maybe it would take time, months even, until they knew what really happened beyond a reasonable doubt. Maybe they would never know.
But I was certain, I was sure. I knew because he’d sat beside me in the passenger seat of my old Subaru, his big paw on my bare thigh, the other out the window, the fresh summer air on a balmy night in June pouring in all around us.
This was six months before, when I was twenty-two.
It was the kind of night you write songs about. If I were an artist—a painter, a lyricist, one of those mood board bohemians—I would have holed myself up in my room for days, thinking, dreaming about Mr. Ashbury, rendering some sort of artistic expression of the night we spent together driving up and down back roads in suburban South Jersey. Instead, I just replayed it over and over before I fell asleep each night, for a quite some time after actually—remembering the touch of his palm against my skin, imagining what it would have felt like if his hand had slid up inside my tight little shorts.
But not anymore.
These days, I try very hard to not think about him; although, most of the time I fail. Even after all these years, I still can’t seem to get him out of my head. I’ll hear these stories about people with amnesia or old folks with Alzheimer’s and think: Wouldn’t that be better than thinking about him? Wouldn’t it be better to forget that I fantasized about a man who murdered his wife—the mother of his two children? Wouldn’t it be better than imagining his 11-year-old son coming home from school and finding them?
In the article, they said he purchased the firearm legally, that he had no prior convictions or history of mental illness. They said he shot his wife and then turned the gun on himself. They said no one heard or reported gunshots, that construction crews were working on a water main down the street all morning. They said their son called 9-1-1.
The very last time I saw Mr. Ashbury, he was walking up an empty driveway towards a dark house. No one had bothered to leave a light on for him. Not even the rustic metal lanterns mounted over the garage doors were lit. He moved slowly up the wide cobblestone drive, his heels dragging over the pavers, his shoulders slouched. And as he turned and went up the narrow path towards the front door, I just sat there in my old Subaru, my fingers clenched around the steering wheel, watching as he slipped beneath the shadow of the upscale colonial.
My windows were rolled all the way down and I remember hearing the crickets chirping over the low rumble of the idling engine. Or maybe I’m imagining it. It’s hard to say. Sometimes, when I think back to that night, the little details get lost somewhere in between; like which day of the week it was, or what I ate for dinner, or who touched whom first—him or me?
Dad came home early so it must have been Friday; he always got off work early on Fridays, something to do with foreign markets. I never paid any attention when he talked about work and if I’m being honest, I hadn’t paid much attention to anything he’d said since I had come back home after the semester ended.
Both of them, Mom and Dad, had been giving me shit ever since I had my stomach pumped in March. I’d been out all night with my suitemates and had one too many shots. This was college. No big deal.
Except, it was a big deal to them.
Mom made me surrender the login credentials to my student portal even though it was a major FERPA violation or whatever, but she didn’t give a shit about any of that. She said, “Drunk sluts don’t have rights,” which seemed antithetical to everything I’d come to learn about feminist theory in my gender studies course. Not that she cared of course; she was too pissed to be PC.
So, after dinner, late into the evening (the same evening I’d speak to Mr. Ashbury for the last time), the topic of me, the “drunk slut”, came up again. Dad started, gave some speech about how they loved and supported me, almost seemed sincere until I noticed his words slurring and saw the bottle of Opus One was almost empty. Then he mentioned my academic probation and I knew the night had taken a turn for the worse.
“No more iPod,” he said.
“I don’t have an iPod,” I replied, bluntly.
“He means your iPhone, sweetie,” said Mom.
“You can’t be fucking serious?” I said this to him, not her. Never her.
“Don’t swear at your fucking father!” yelled Mom.
I turned to her and said, “Well what happens if I get kidnapped? Or murdered?”
To which she replied, “Well then, you won’t need your phone anymore, will ya?”
I pushed my chair away from the table, making sure my palms smacked against the polished cherry, and stood up.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked, exasperated.
I threw my arms back and screamed, “I don’t know why everyone’s yelling at me!” Even though I was the only one yelling.
And crying…
Quite hysterically.
Then I fled the dining room, grabbed my keys from the ceramic bowl, this little pink pinch pot I made in fifth grade, and rushed outside.
I tore out of our neighborhood and sped down the avenue in my white ‘03 Forester. Back in high school, my stoner boyfriend called it The Tic Tac. But I’d always preferred Casper and that’s what stuck, especially after he got busted for selling Oxy and I dumped his beautiful dumb ass.
I weaved Casper through traffic, not realizing how fast I was going until I zipped past the radar-speed trailer parked in front of Wawa and saw I was pushing seventy. I curled my toes, lifted my bare foot off the accelerator and let Casper coast down to the speed limit. I’d left in such a fury that my flip-flops got left behind. And, of course, my phone.
I didn’t care where I was headed, as long as it wasn’t home. Traffic died down once I got past the mall and the Regal Cinemas, the one with the brand-new recliner seats. I was still fuming but I wanted to just be over it so I switched on the radio (because again, no phone) and that one song by Sia, “Chandelier”, was playing on Q102. I turned up the volume and belted the words.
I wish I could say my vocals were up to snuff, but let’s be honest, most white girls ain’t got pipes like Sia—which is something my RA sophomore year used to say. He was this stocky Dominican dude, and I think he wanted to fuck me. He always called me “Becky.” And he gave me free condoms this one time for no reason in particular. He just came by my room, said, “Stay safe, Becky,” and handed me two LifeStyles. Then he left. And I threw them in the trash.
As I turned past the always packed Chick-fil-A and onto the jughandle, Sia came back around to the chorus and I might have shut my eyes for only a brief moment trying to hit that high note because suddenly, there was someone in the middle of the road, right at the end of the jughandle. I mashed my heel down on the brake and jolted to a stop.
That someone, a very tall man in dirty jeans and a plaid shirt, stood in between my headlights and glared at me. He slammed the bottom of his fist against the hood and flipped me off, all in one fluid motion. Out of pure reflex I laid on the horn. This startled him at first; he winced and stumbled backwards a couple steps. Then, with my headlights burning in his eyes, I saw the expression on his face turn to one of pure rage and he came around the front of the vehicle and charged towards the door. Panicked, I tapped the lock button repeatedly, sending the power locks into a frenzy—the relentless clicks turning the inside of the SUV into a wild metronome. He tried the handle, but the door didn’t give. So instead, he knocked against the window with his bare knuckles.
“Roll down your goddamn window!” he shouted; his voice muffled by the glass.
“Just go away!” I shouted back.
“Pedestrians have the right-of-way. Do you see me standing here? I’m a fucking pedestrian.”
“Okay!” I shouted. “I get it! Can you please just go away?”
“Ever heard of reckless driving? Girl, I could press charges!”
“Please just stop! I’m sorry, okay? I’m really really sorry.” I felt the tears rolling down my cheeks.
“Oh god,” he said and sighed loudly. “Don’t fucking cry on me.”
The traffic signal had turned red up ahead and a few cars on the avenue whooshed through the intersection.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said, crouching down to my eye level. “I’m not really gonna press charges. Alright?” I rubbed my eyes and let his face come into focus. It was him. I remembered even though it felt as if it had been a lifetime ago.
“Mr. Ashbury?” I murmured.
“Huh?” he groaned. “What’d you say?” I pushed the switch and rolled the window down.
“Mr. Ashbury! That’s you, right?”
“Uh, how do you know me?” His brow was furrowed.
“I used to play soccer with Gina,” I said. “Ninth grade. I’ve been to your house a bunch of times.”
His face softened. “Holy shit. Kitty, right?”
“Oh my god. No.” My face went flush. “It’s actually Katrina now. My mom says it’s more professional.”
“Smart lady.”
“What are you uh…doing out here? It’s kinda late.”
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said.
“Do you maybe want a ride home?”
“Oh…I don’t know.”
“Please,” I begged. “I think I kind of owe you.”
We drove for a while with only the low hum of the radio to cut through the silence; past the Outback Steakhouse, the P.F. Chang’s, past the Baskin-Robbins where I almost lost my virginity to the co-captain of the varsity lacrosse team, past the dingy froyo shop where it finally happened the night before graduation in the front seat of his Civic. He had something of a sweet tooth. I did not.
“You know where you’re going right?” asked Mr. Ashbury.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Of course.” Even though I didn’t.
I knew I was headed in the right direction; in fact, I was almost certain. But then we passed the Baskin-Robbins again and he started laughing.
“Hmm,” he said, and then cleared his throat. “This looks familiar.”
“I’m so sorry.” I felt my face turning red again. And then even redder once I realized I’d apologized to this man now twice in one night.
“Don’t worry about it. Just take a left at the next light.”
I glanced over at him. He wasn’t laughing anymore. Instead, he was gazing out the window; his sharp cheekbone propped against a giant pale fist.
“I don’t know why,” I said. “But the longer I’m away, the more this place looks like Mars.”
“Huh. That’s funny.” He sat up and took a deep breath. “So, where you at these days?”
“Alpine Mountain State.”
“Ahh, North Jersey,” he said. “Giants territory.”
“My dad says the exact same thing.”
“Must be a true Eagles fan.”
“I guess so.”
I stopped at the next light and waited for the green arrow. There were very few cars on the road by that point, since we were a long ways away from the mall and the “good” restaurants, and I remember this made me feel a little antsy. I didn’t have my phone, so no Google Maps. And I was not super familiar with that particular part of town. It gets pretty rural the farther east you drive, and I did not want to end up on some backcountry trail, without a phone or GPS in my little old Subaru, with a much older man I only sort of knew.
“Hey,” he said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you a hobbit?”
“A what?”
“A hobbit. Those little dudes that run around without shoes.”
“Little? I’m five, four!”
“I’m not talking about that. I meant your feet.”
“Yeah? What about ‘em?”
“It’s just…you’re not wearing shoes.”
“So what? I forgot ‘em.”
“You been drinking tonight?”
“Oh my god, why does everyone always think… No. I have not been drinking.”
“Hey, don’t get all mad. My son always has those movies on. I was just trying to make a joke.”
“Oh,” I said, dryly. The light changed but I didn’t move. I was too conscious of my own body: my bare feet, my bare legs. At least I’d worn a loose t-shirt. I tugged at the bottom of my high-waisted denim shorts, hoping they’d stretch even just a little.
“You good? The light’s green.”
“Sorry,” I said, and instantly cringed, realizing I’d apologized yet again. I checked for oncoming traffic and pulled through the intersection.
It was quiet again for another long stretch. I kept both hands tight around the wheel and refused to let go—not even to scratch my brow, not even to turn up the radio. Because if I did, he might read it as some sign, an acknowledgment of the awkwardness and tension in the air. I didn’t even move my hands from ten and two until we drove by the Target, and he told me to make a right.
“Do you mind if I turn on the AC?” he asked, as we turned past the crowded parking lot.
“It’s on already,” I said. “I think it’s just out of fluid or something. I gotta ask my dad to refill it.”
Without asking, he pressed the switch beside him and rolled his window down. The wind throbbed loudly through the gaping window; the sharp pulsing sound of air being sucked in rang in my ears. So, to stop it, I rolled the other windows down too and then, surprisingly, the warm breeze and steady thrum of the tires rolling against the blacktop seemed to lighten the mood.
“So,” he said, “Alpine State, huh? You know, Gina thought about going there. We even did the whole campus tour thing. Met the coach. You two coulda been roommates.”
“I think the athletes dorm together actually,” I said, totally leaving out the fact that Gina and I stopped hanging out after ninth grade. I was never much of an athlete, and we just sort of drifted, went with different crowds as high school kids tend to do.
“Oh right. She’s livin’ with a couple teammates right now.”
“Where does she go again?”
“Marquette,” he said, with a proud smile. “She just transferred last year. It’s all pretty exciting…oh, hold on.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, glancing over. He was looking back over his shoulder.
“You were supposed to turn, back there. Eh, it’s fine. You can keep goin’ this way. We can just take Lakewood and go by the high school.”
He directed me through one of the newer developments: Woodland Creek Condominiums—a posh-ish but affordable housing complex that had sprung up while I was away at school. I remember making some comment about how well he knew his way around the maze of winding roads and that’s when he let it slip—he had housing problems.
“We’re thinking about moving here,” he said.
“Oh, why?” I asked, eagerly. At the time, I was ignorant of the dire straits he was in.
“Uh…” he groaned and paused for a moment. I realize now, he was trying to come up with a good reason, anything besides the truth.
“It’s cool,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me.” He exhaled and let himself sink further back into the passenger seat.
After we made our way through the housing complex, we ended up by the high school. Every hallway was lit, the classrooms shrouded in black. School was out now until fall and everyone was away on summer vacation. In a few of the empty classrooms a computer or two had been left on, the bright screens like little blue beacons glowing in the dark. The football field, beside the school, was all lit up by the big floodlights above the bleachers—bleachers where I’d screamed and cheered with friends at pep rallies and playoff games, jealous of all the cheerleaders with their tight uniforms and dumb jock boyfriends.
“What was that nickname the team had for you?” he asked, as we drove by the soccer fields. “Meow something. Meow Mix?”
“No, that’s what we called Tiffany. Her last name was actually Miao.”
“What’s that, like Chinese?”
“Yeah, I think.”
“So, what’d they call you?”
“Fucking Kit Kat. I always hated it.”
“Oh c’mon, that’s better than Meow Mix. Know what they used to call me in high school? Lurch.”
“What’s a Lurch?” I asked.
“You’ve never seen The Addams Family?”
“I think I saw part of it at my cousin’s house. That’s the one with the girl from Casper, right?”
“No, not the remake,” he said. “The original TV show with Thing, Uncle Fester…Lurch. None of this sounds familiar?” I shook my head. “Goddamn, I’m old.”
“You’re not old,” I said, cheerfully. I felt kind of bad. The way he said it, he sounded beat. “You seem a lot younger to me—younger than my parents at least. They’re old AF.”
“That’s nice of you to say. But I am old. Might as well admit it. I sure as shit can’t hide from it anymore.” He had his arm stuck out the window—his long, sinewy forearm exposed, his flannel rolled up and rippling in the wind. It must have felt nice.
“But it’s weird though,” he continued. “When I was your age and I was in college, I couldn’t even imagine life beyond thirty. Just couldn’t picture it. You know those goals they make you write down? By the end of the semester, I want to accomplish this, by graduation I want to do that. In five years, ten years, twenty years… I couldn’t even write something down for the first goal. I think I just made something up. Get a 4.0 or something cliché like that. I don’t know, maybe I was just stupid. Maybe I lacked imagination. But then thirty came. And then forty. And now I’m almost fifty and I still don’t know what the fuck I’m doin’.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know what I’m doin’ either.”
“No, that makes me feel worse actually.”
“I know what my mom would say,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Just think about the starving children in Africa.”
“Sounds a lot like someone I know,” he said.
“Who?”
“My wife.”
The road was closed after we passed by the old Sears. Back in high school we got my new mattress, a Tempur-Pedic, during their going-out-of-business sale, along with a bunch of random pieces of furniture we ended up throwing out eventually anyway. Men in reflective vests waved us down a side street and into a neighborhood I didn’t recognize. I followed the big orange detours signs through a sleepy suburbia towards an end neither fixed nor certain.
“I really hate these neighborhoods,” I said. “Everything looks the same and I never know where I’m going.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” he said. “To get lost in it.”
“You sound like a fortune cookie.”
“I can’t help it. I’m a dad.”
“What’s that like?”
“What’s what like?”
“Being a parent.”
“God, I don’t know. I guess it’s fine sometimes. Mostly it’s really hard. It’s just like anything else I guess.”
“Wow,” I murmured, sarcastically. “That’s like so deep. I think I’ll post that on my Tumblr.”
“Oh, shut it. What am I even supposed to say to a question like that? Hmm? You tell me, Kit Kat.”
“But I don’t have any kids,” I said.
“No, no. what’s it like to be you?” he asked. “You’re how old, twenty-one?”
“Twenty-two, actually.”
“I see. So, what’s it like then to be you, a hot twenty-two-year-old on the cusp of adulthood?”
“Uh, not sure twenty-two really counts as being on the cusp.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Well, if I’m being honest…I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t know what I’m doing either. I haven’t even declared a major yet.”
“You’re kidding,” he said. “Aren’t you like a junior?”
“I took a gap year.”
“Oh.” He was quiet for a moment. His big hands were on his knees, and he was rubbing his palms against the denim. “I guess you answered my question then.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, shyly, before making my move. “But do you really think I’m a hot twenty-two-year-old?”
“No, I was just saying.”
“So, you think I’m ugly then.”
“That’s not…no. Don’t twist my words! It’s just…you remind me of someone.”
“Who?”
“You’re kind of nosey, aren’t you?”
“Hey, you called me a hot twenty-two-year-old. Who do I remind you of?”
“No one. Just some girl at work,” he said. “An intern.”
“Ooh interesting. Is this a crush, Mr. Ashbury? Kinda sounds like a crush.”
“Please stop.”
“It’s cool. I’m not gonna tell anyone you’ve got a big crush on the hot young intern.”
“Seriously, knock it off.”
“What’s she look like? Lemme guess, is she a blonde? Ugh, how boring! You seem like the kind of guy who’s only into blondes. Can’t you be a little more original? Like, try a new flavor every once in a while.”
“Stop!” He banged his fist against the passenger door, making me flinch. I peeked over at him, and I saw that look on his face again, the same one he had standing in front of my headlights. “Quit asking, alright?”
“Christ, sorry. I was just fuckin’ around.”
“Goddammit, girl. You’re worse than my wife.”
Now I don’t know why I said this. I don’t know if it was the lateness of the hour, or if it was the way he looked sulking under the glow of the passing streetlamps, but then I said to him, softly, “If I were her, Mr. Ashbury, I’d probably have a huge crush on you also.”
He didn’t say anything at first. But then he sighed and said, “If you were her…” his voice trailing off.
“Well, you know,” I said, gripping the steering wheel tightly. “We could pretend. Tell me, if she was here right now, in this seat instead of me, what would you do about it?”
“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
“I can keep a secret,” I said. “Try me.”
And then he told me everything.
How it started with some casual compliments here and there, and a few flirtatious emails after work hours. Then, a few turned into dozens and eventually progressed into explicit texts and pictures until finally, on a Tuesday, after everyone else left for the day, they fucked in his office.
“I bet she smelled nice,” I remember saying, after he told me all the things they did in his nice corner office.
“Like Victoria’s Secret.”
After I’d read about what he had done, I only saw Gina one more time. It was about a year later and she was looking at shampoo in the health and beauty aisle at Target. I came around the corner and froze when I saw her standing there, holding a bottle of Garnier, reading the back label. I backed around the corner before she could see me and hurried the hell out of there.
As soon as I was safe in my old Subaru, I broke down. My hands were shaking, my eyes tearing. I couldn’t breathe. I imagined her saying hello, pretending to be happy to see me after all those years, and it was all a little too much. She didn’t have a clue. And I couldn’t stand there and pretend that I didn’t spend the better part of a Friday night with her father, driving around town, only six months before he’d kill her mother and take his own life. I have a hard time even saying the words out loud, let alone writing them.
After we made it to the end of the detour, we were still a mile or two away from his neighborhood. That’s what he told me at least. I can’t remember what time it was by then, but I know it was pretty late. The road was empty for long stretches, only a single car every few minutes. There was a thick line of trees on either side of the road, with a few houses hidden behind them at the end of long driveways, and I remember being afraid a deer or some other large animal was going to run out into the road. I think I was worried that if I got into an accident and the cops showed up, somehow Mrs. Ashbury would find out we’d been driving all night, just the two of us, and she would call my mother or something. I know that sounds childish now but at the time I was kind of childish. I was only twenty-two. But I guess that’s not much of an excuse.
“So, what were you doing out here?” I asked. “You lock your keys in your car?”
“Nope. Got ‘em right here,” he said, tapping his pocket. They clanked together beneath a thin layer of faded denim.
“So, what then?”
“Has anyone ever told you, you ask too many fuckin’ questions?”
“Don’t get snarky with me, Mr. Ashbury. I know where you live. I mean…sort of.”
“You can call me Damon,” he said. “If you want.”
“I’d like that,” I said, smiling.
“If you must know, I guess it doesn’t matter now… I lost my job. Well technically, I was fired, for obvious reasons. And Nora’s having a tough time being the breadwinner right now.”
“I’m sorry. That must be hard.”
“It’s alright. It’s not your fault. Only mine. But goddamn, she sure loves reminding me. Don’t get me wrong; I still love her. But the way I see it…yeah, I’m married. But that doesn’t mean I’m dead. You can’t just like…turn it off. It’s not like there’s a switch.”
“That’s interesting,” I said, plainly. “So, you walked all the way to Chick-fil-A because…?”
“I needed to get out of the house. Get some fresh air.”
“For a second there I thought you were gonna say, for the waffle fries.”
“Na,” he said, patting his stomach. “Tryin’ to watch my figure.” Even under the dull yellow glow of the streetlamps and a thin layer of flannel I could tell his midsection was nice and firm.
“I don’t think you need to worry about it,” I said, glancing back at the road.
As we came over a small hill, the radio crackled with static. I turned the volume up, hoping to get clearer reception. That one song, “Wildest Dreams,” was playing on Q102.
“Can you turn it up?” he asked.
“You like Taylor Swift?”
“She’s got a nice voice. I like to pretend she’s singing to me.”
“She is, technically.”
“Shh.” He held his forefinger up to his lips. “I really like this part. It’s like she’s letting out a sigh.”
“You’re so cute,” I said, my fingers going numb. I reached over and cranked the volume, and I don’t remember if that’s the moment he touched me or if I touched him, but in an instant, his hand was in mine, and I clutched it tight. Then I moved it over and placed it on my bare thigh and kept it there. The tips of his fingers pressed into my flesh and slid down to my knee. I just stared out the windshield and watched the dashed white lines.
I’ll never forget what he said to me after we pulled in front of that dark house and stopped at the end of that wide cobblestone drive.
I asked him, “Are you gonna be okay?”
And he replied, “Don’t know. I hope so. Really just livin’ on a prayer at this point. Thanks though, for asking. You’re really sweet.”
“Don’t call me sweet, please,” I said. “I’m not a piece of candy.”
Then he smiled at me, and he said, “Whatever you say, Kit Kat.”
And then he got out.
Jonathan Wittmaier is a Korean American writer and educator. Born in Seoul—he was raised in southern New Jersey. His writing can be found or is forthcoming in Water~Stone Review, The Museum of Americana, WordCity Literary Journal and Weave—a PNW Kundiman zine project. Winner of the 2018 Creative Writing Award for Dramatic Writing (Adelphi University). He currently resides in Seattle, Washington.