Rest Easy

prologue

Summer, 1972. Bakersfield, California.

"I wrote a list, even though it won't be a huge shopping spree. Just a few necessities." Violet unbuckled her seat belt. Her husband lowered the volume on the radio, watching her as she brought down the mirror above her head and hastily powdered her face, spraying some perfume afterward.

"Didn't know the supermarket had a beauty pageant aisle." He chuckled.

"So just to make sure: fruit to fill the bowl, some bread and milk, diapers for Charlotte, some cigarettes, and salmon for tonight's meal?" She looked over at Charles once she'd finished applying a rose-colored lip tint. The toddler gargled and mumbled incoherently to herself in the back seat.

"Yeah. Oh, and get us a bottle of wine. Your choice. We can celebrate my promotion, after dinner. Watch a film once Charlie's in bed. Drink up." He rubbed her left thigh, and she smiled at him softly, bringing her hand to his cheek.

"Congratulations, honey. I'm so proud of you. I can only hope for the same kind of fortune for me, one day," she said.

"Don't hope. Expect it. It will come, I promise you that." Charles knew how much her poetry meant to her, and it broke his heart to see her still struggling to get it out into the gargantuan, chaotic, fickle world. She had been writing for as long as he had known her, needing to work three jobs, and still being turned down at every agency, her work given little attention in poetry journals. It almost finished her, once upon a time. She almost gave up on herself, on everything. Almost. Her husband was getting what he wanted in life: a good job, a baby, a wife, and she was a ball of static energy, her efforts being wasted, her poems piling up in their house like a mountain she couldn't climb. She still had so much to give to the world, she was sure of it. It was just a question of figuring out how.

Violet leaned over to kiss her husband. He counted its duration: four seconds, approximately. "I love you," she said, and kissed him again. This time, two seconds. When he turned to face the windshield, she kissed him on the cheek, quickly, in an almost juvenile fashion. Three kisses.

"I love you too," Charles said.

Baby Charlotte started laughing at something imaginary in the back seat. Violet got out of the car and strode through the parking lot, toward the glass doors of the local supermarket. Her strawberry-blond hair swayed and bounced along with her peppy gait, and her skirt fluttered in the gentle wind outside. She clutched onto her handbag like a rich schoolgirl with a Chanel purse, and she suddenly looked eight years younger. It was like he saw a spark of energy in her, and it warmed his chest. She's okay, he thought. She will get what she wants in life. She'll be fine.

That was the last time Charles ever saw his wife.