A Gilded Marriage

Edith began her nasty little hobby soon after we lost our daughter. Like many things that come to destroy a life, it started off innocently enough.

Following the memorial service, she spent her waking hours in bed with the shades drawn. She gave up church, wouldn't entertain company, and could barely stomach a meal. It was, in every sense, her dark night of the soul.

I was arguably more fortunate. Much as I ached for Margaret, I had work to see me through. Indelicate though it may seem, a farm needs tending even after the Reaper has come a-callin'. My wife had no such purpose. Peggy had been her entire world.

This was 1959, mind you, before the brassiere-burning and we-wanna-work malarkey took hold of our formerly moral nation. Edith kept the house, prepared supper, and doted on her only child. Prior to the yellow, she was a sturdy Christian woman, salt of the earth as they come.

Even with all she's done to me, I would swear to that.

When she agreed to visit her sister in Omaha for a weekend, I was thrilled. I even offered to buy her a hat from one of those fancy boutiques on the main drag. Why not? The harvest had been fruitful and my coffers were full.

She declined, too depressed to be taken with luxuries.

On the way back from the city, we stopped into a gift shop to select a card for her mother. I still wonder where I'd be today if we hadn't, if I'd simply taken the other route as planned.

She spotted a pair of salt and pepper shakers in the display window, their surfaces decorated with marigolds. I remember her smile, timid but endearing, like a turtle that hadn't dared to stick its neck out in a while.

"These are pretty," she said tentatively. "I love the happy colors."

"They're yours!" I replied, relieved to see her enthusiastic about anything.

I asked the lady behind the counter to tie the box with yellow ribbon. It matched her purchase perfectly. Edith beamed at me, and for one glorious moment, I thought my gal had survived the worst of it.

Come Christmas, I paid a neighbor to make us a quilt with a marigold pattern. Edith was over the moon, going so far as to kiss me on the mouth. "It's beautiful! Oh, it's just too bright and joyful!"

She smoothed it across our bed, the curtains wide open, light streaming in like molten gold. From that day on, they were never closed.

I truly believed I'd done a righteous deed.

Shortly thereafter, I came inside to find her sketching. Marigolds in the form of a still life. My praise was sincere. It was a mighty nice job. "Isn't it soothing?" she cooed. "Aren't they the most darling flowers you've ever seen?"

That was 1960, assuming my memory holds up. The following year, she procured about fifty more marigolds for her magpie nest. Many came to us via catalogs. Some were from thrift stores or craft fairs. She had acquaintances keep an eye out whenever they traveled, reimbursing them on my dime when they'd return with a treasure.

I won't take up too much of your time on inventory. Suffice to say that over the next decade, she would go on to collect thousands of items with this insufferable motif and hue. They ranged from the expensive—a brass candelabra bought at auction—to literal trash—a used postage stamp. We had cups, utensils, faux floral arrangements. We had pillows, towels, a rug on which to wipe one's dirty feet.

She managed to find no fewer than seven—seven!—housedresses with the devil's bud prancing across the weave. When that wasn't enough, she purchased a bolt of fabric and had a local seamstress craft two more.

The tablecloth in the breakfast nook was the unappetizing color of rot. The wallpaper in our dining room crawled with sallowed petals fit for a funeral parlor.

She called it cheerful.

Cheerful.

Having run out of room in our spacious home, the debris started to pile up. I would rise in the middle of the night only to have piles collapse on top of me. I had to trip over mustardy junk and wade through gilded clutter just to access my meager belongings.

It was also all she talked about. Her latest score, her white whale of a find that must be tracked down. Seeing her this unwell, friends drifted away. In our youth, she had been the type of woman who spoke so seldomly that you'd hang on every word.

Now she babbled, stuttering and repeating herself ad nauseam. Sometimes under her breath so that only the consonants made their way to my ears. Sometimes loud as a banshee, stressing each syllable to the point of madness.

"I need a sixth bowl!" she screamed on the morning it happened. "Odd numbers will never do."

Repulsed by my house, I hid in my corn fields. I took my lunch with the crows just to avoid the shell of a woman inside.

That day was the hottest on record for as long as I've been alive. I don't say this as a defense, nor do I owe you such a thing. It's just the God's honest. The sun was a blazing inferno beating down on me from all vantage points.

I tried to keep the sweat from my eyes by giving it a constant mopping, but it was no use. By noon, I was half-blind from the salty downpour and vicious rays.

With difficulty, I checked my watch again a short stretch later.

Three o'clock.

Where had the hours gone? I will never know.

Lightheaded, I stumbled into our kitchen. Edith was standing there in dungarees, a marigold kerchief tied around her hair.

Her grin was positively obscene.

"Surprise!"

She was painting the previously gray walls to match a dying man's urine.

I looked around, horrified by what used to be my sanctuary. The burnt yellow room spun, a carny ride run amok. My eyes didn't take in the color so much as they were infected by it, consumed by it, their cones singed by its putrid, insincere mirth.

It was in my blood now, under my skin, like jaundice.

Then she laughed. I swear to you, the loon saw me struggling with napalm burns from her deranged obsession and she had the chutzpah to laugh at me.

Without thought or reservation, I picked up the candelabra and brought it down on her empty belfry.

By that stage, even the bats had flown.

She just looked at me, a queer half-smile on her face. So I hit her again, harder this time.

What started as a hairline crack fast became the San Andreas. I will spare you the gruesome details. For all of my supposed flaws, justified as they be, I am still a man of the good book.

Then she was on the floor, a frail puddle of a thing, crumpled and pathetic. Dizzy, I plopped down next to her, bracing my head in my hands. I must've passed out, for when I came to, it was dark.

The sun responsible for this trouble had packed its bags.

As a formality, I leaned over to check her pulse. Her wrist was stiff and cold. I'm a working man, not a learned physician, but dead is dead.

I wasted no time in deciding. I would keep her in the storm cellar, dealing with the situation further when up to the task. I threw her over my shoulder and carried her out to the makeshift grave.

Not wanting to fall, I admit to tossing her body onto the landing. If it helps, I did feel a smidge guilty about that later.

When I went back inside our house—now my house—the marigolds were watching. They'd multiplied in a few short hours, I was certain of it.

To employ Edith's mantra, this would never do.

I gathered everything I could carry and piled it into my wheelbarrow, dumping it into the cellar with its mother. I repeated the process until there was no energy left in these brittle bones, blessed to be rid of the floral scourge at last.

Satisfied, I nailed the door shut.

Unable to look at the sputum on my walls, I found a can of red paint and hurled it at today's lunacy. Red was honest. Red was a stand-up pal. It didn't pretend to love you while making you sick.

Stomach growling, I fixed myself some dinner and turned in, the obnoxious quilt on our marital bed switched out for solid beige.

I feared remorse might surface by morning. It did not. In fact, I experienced a newfound vigor. My eyes acclimated, and I could see the genuine shade of the sky again! The vivid greens of the grass, my cherry-toned vehicle...

It was like being dipped in the River Jordan.

I went out back, itching to put in a full day, and came to an abrupt halt. In the dirt around the storm cellar, marigolds were growing by the dozens. Tall and proud and fully formed.

There hadn't been so much as a seed twelve hours prior.

My bladder nearly let go at the sight, and the irony of bringing more yellow into the world prompted an unbridled fit of hysterics. I should've known a woman so possessed would never take her mania to the Beyond. Edith, High Priestess of Patterns, had found a way to be heard.

I jumped in my pickup and punched the gas, clouds of dust billowing in my wake. As the old Chevy wheezed down the road, I decided to aim for my brother's place a few towns over.

He would keep my secret and help me remove the filth from my property, Edith included. I'd put down lye, make the land inhospitable.

Whatever it took.

On the radio, Tammy was singing about standing by your man. At least she knows what matters.

I turned right onto Pease Street, then took a left at the county fork. I hadn't been out this far in a while and the neighborhood was different than I recalled. Now that I thought about it, I hadn't seen a house for miles.

I made a final turn that should've brought me to the highway. Instead, there was a wooden gate up ahead, busted up proper and half off its hinges.

I'd hit it one drunken afternoon about a month ago.

It was my gate. I was back at my farm.

Out of options, I rolled down the drive, panic doing a number on my tremulous heart.

That's when I saw it. My corn fields were gone. Every stalk—every acre of blood, sweat, and tears—had vanished.

In its place were endless rows of marigolds. They cackled at me, their pitch identical to that of my dearly departed, shrill and demonic.

They once more blocked out the blues and greens, casting the whole parcel in orangey yellow.

Always yellow.

I sit here under its fetid glow, unable to leave, writing Edith's unsavory confession and of how I was forced to cope. My shotgun is at the ready. One day, when the color reaches full saturation, I will put it to use, provided a lack of food doesn't take me first.

If you require honesty, I haven't done so yet out of cowardice. I'm afraid to end this nightmare only to discover that evil is not embodied by a man with horns but rather a woman in an apron, grinning as if she's swallowed the sun like a lemon drop.