Little black book

As the taxi pulled up to the house I was flooded with memories. This was only the 2nd time I had been here and yet it was connected to so much of my life. My past and now my future. The last time I was here was before I was married. My fiancé had brought me here for dinner and to meet his mother. Dinner was quiet, almost void of emotion. David had done most of the talking and it was about him more than anyone else. I was nervous and proud of him and so was glad he had taken control as it made it easier on me. I thought he had done so to be kind to me. After the meal I helped take dishes into the kitchen. We were alone and she said to me “don’t marry him. No one deserves that kind of cruelty” just then David came into the kitchen saying we had to leave and I wasn’t able to say anything to her. I thought all the way home ‘why would she stay such a thing? She doesn't even know me and nothing was said at dinner to make her think I was a horrible person’ Did David say something before about me to make her think I was so horrible for him?’ I asked him why his mother didn’t like me and he said, “oh I am sorry she gave you that impression. She has always been a difficult person. I don’t think she likes anyone. She doesn’t even have any close friends that I know of. She seems to push everyone away.” She came to the wedding but only for the service and didn’t stay for the reception. she never smiled once that I can remember and even the few pictures taken of her she wasn’t smiling. So I didn’t mind that my husband let me stay home when he went to visit her or deal with things for her.

David said his father had been a strong man who had always taken care of everything. He demanded order and routine and that he himself hoped to be just like him. I tried to keep the house tidy and in the order he was accustomed to. At first he was patient and caring and tried to teach me what he expected. As the demands got to be more and more rigid I found it hard to keep up and he would get angry at times and be patient and caring at other times. I never knew what his reaction was going to be and it started to set me on edge. I felt like I was failing as a wife. I wasn’t working and it should not be so hard to keep house. We didn’t have any children yet and I feared I would fail even more when we started a family.

Then David became ill. His stomach would pain him and he would be in the bathroom for so long. It happened though that his mother was also suffering the same way. She would call and ask him to come and help her, that she didn’t feel well and needed him to help her put things away in the kitchen or take things to the basement as she did not want to fall. So we thought they had caught a flu or something and either I was immune or just had not shown symptoms off it yet. David did not wake up one morning. He had taken something to help with his stomach pain and it helped him sleep but he passed in the night. I was so alarmed I called for an ambulance and he was pronounced dead. They took his body away and said they would let me know when they knew why. The police arrived that night at my door and took me into custody . They said he was poisoned and did I know anyone else who could have done it? Did I have a lawyer? Was there someone they could call for me? I was in tears and I suddenly realized I had not Called this mother. I asked them to do so and gave them her address.

David’s mother was found dead in her bathroom and on the kitchen counter was a note to the police. She had been poisoning them both with each meal she had made for him. Each snack and treat had been laced with arsenic and all she said was that it was justice. I was released and the world went on. Swirling around me as I walked in a fog. Why, what justice? Was this some odd way of punishing me for marrying her son? I felt so lost and just wanted to wake up from the nightmare of it all. I had 2 funerals to arrange and I had no idea where to start. I called the police station and asked if they had a clue of who I could speak to about making funeral arrangements and getting the bodies released to a funeral home? They informed me it had already been done and the family lawyer would be in touch.

The next day as I walked about our house in a daze trying to understand something, to make sense of just one piece of it all. The doorbell rang and things began to change. The lawyer came in and we sat down. He read papers to me and spoke of property and things I don’t think I actually heard fully. A set of keys for the house and a safety deposit box key were set on the coffee table in front of me and then he handed me a pen to sign some papers. “Your mother in-law was very clear that you open the safety deposit box first before anything else.” I had so many mixed feelings and new questions forming in my head.

The safety deposit box was small and only contained one thing, a little black moleskin book. Each page was filled with delicate writing and it clearly had been started many years ago. My mother in-law wrote, this was her treasures and they were being left to me in hiding places all around the home she had lived her tortured life in. It was the only thing that kept her going. At first she had thought her son would be her treasure but as he grew she soon realized he was turning out to be just like his father. Controlling, demanding, ungrateful and just another man to torture her existence. She later said in her writing it was justice for her to suffer with him, as she had brought him into the world. She had failed in teaching him to be better than his father. She had sat still and let him become the brutal person he was. She did not want me to marry him because she did not think ‘I’ deserved such cruelty. All this time I had thought she hated me and that I was the one she thought would be cruel, but it was David. She knew what he was like and knew my life with him would be like hers. She thought it justice that her failing as a mother was worth her suffering such a painful death. I cried for her that day. I cried for the loss of her. If I had gotten to know her, maybe I could have helped change things. Could I have stopped their deaths? Then like a cold wind hitting me I realized I was like her. Sitting back and watching and not realizing I was being manipulated from the start. David knew so well how to make me think I was my failing as a house keeper, when really it was him being controlling and demanding. She had succeeded in one thing, she had set me free and in that I was grateful to her.

I got out of the taxi and looked up at the house, then down at the black book in my hand, with it’s spine still so strong, and took a deep breath. I walked towards the house ready for my new adventure. The book was full of instructions of where to find the money she had hidden away around the house over the years. Funds she had saved and hidden so that one day she could be free, and later when she realized she would never be free she kept saving and hiding so that I would be free when her plans had come full. A house that once imprisoned her was now filled with possibilities and freedom for me. The adventure was only beginning.