The Cruelest Month

“April is a cheat,” she announced resolutely to the weather guy on the radio. He prattled on indifferently though, through the same report as yesterday. “…this will be the twenty-eighth straight day and night of rain for the Pioneer Valley. A record in fact! Twelve more days of this and we’ll tie old Noah!” Jill was leaning forward with her eyes squinched and her mouth screwed up in a hopeless effort to see between the distorted remains of the fat flattened raindrops on the windshield. She replied with considerable Yankee apple vinegar dripping from each round finishing school vowel, “Well, whooptedoo! What a thing to get excited about!”

She snapped off the radio so she could hear her own thoughts. She was approaching the top of the pass now. She could feel it. The fog was becoming a solid wall of white clouds that made seeing anything immediately before her almost impossible. One day, one bright beautiful spring day on the first of the month. I should have guessed. It was the first of April after all. She ruefully considered how easily she had been fooled before. Many times before.

She’d been easing off the gas for the last ten miles at least until her car was moving as slowly as the engine would permit. She still couldn’t see even the yellow stripe on the pavement.

She knew very well that what she was doing was foolhardy but she’d already missed three days of work this month due to a terrible cold that left her feeling soggy and chilled to her heart. Then she’d been late at least half a dozen times on top of that. Three of those late days had been exceptionally late days. All of her late days came with the same excuse, “The weather makes the road almost impassable!” The boss had the same retort each time, “Leave earlier then! Everyone else makes it on time!”

Her boss hated even a little tardiness in his employees. She knew she was already far beyond his tolerance, so even if she had to walk, she had made up her mind that she wasn’t turning back. No matter what.

She actually had no idea where she was, at least not visually. She’d been up and over the pass all of her life, but when the clouds were this thick and the rain this thick, no one could say with any certainty where they were. She had nothing to base a guess on, no visible landmark or even a memorable pothole. The thickness of the clouds suggested she was very near the top, perhaps even moving slightly down on the far side of the highpoint. She took a long easy breath with that thought. If she was right, the worst would be over in a couple of minutes.

But the fog made the world seem dreamlike. Time loafed by as if in a dream, accordingly the minutes lazed by so slowly she began to tense up again.

Like taking a deep breath with eyes closed then diving into an icy clear pool, passing out of the cloud had that sort of sensation. Shock and an odd clarity had seized her body and her senses. The rain was thick, nearly frozen, but not quite, and it carried with it the chill of a forgotten January. Then, lightning charged the sky just in front of her and she involuntarily hit the brake.

Several things happened simultaneously then. Time suddenly sprang forward as if it were in a hurry to catch up with its real world counterpart. The traffic that was normally quite heavy at that time of day suddenly appeared as if it had condensed from the clouds like raindrops. The lightning flashed, she hit the brake, the car came to a complete halt slightly between the far right and middle lanes of I-91 just barely beyond the summit.

Cars scattered across the lanes trying to avoid her as Jill frantically attempted to move her car onto the shoulder. She had just cleared off to the emergency lane when a semi came thundering past hugging the right line. He sheared off her side mirror and some of her side bumper without slowing down even slightly. He either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care.

It was too much. Her sobs came so hard they drowned out the sound of the rain pounding the car roof. No one gives a good goddamn about anything or anyone else but themselves anymore! She took an unsteady breath. She paused. She thought. Maybe they never did. Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s Karma, just desserts and all that. Justice. That must be it. Somehow I deserve the last month, year, life I’ve had.

Jill had embraced a philosophy of self-determinism as a rock climber embraces the rope. She found comfort in a just world where everyone received exactly what they deserved. Any other philosophy equaled chaos and insanity for her, definitely too dangerous to contemplate. She pulled herself together again with the thought that she was not in fact being singled out for misery. She turned the key and carefully edged back onto the interstate.

She had only gone down the road another mile or so when she noticed the figure of a small woman standing by a car. The woman was waving a scarf up and down, clearly asking for help. Not one car slowed down. No one even tapped their brakes for a moment. “Time to improve my karma,” Jill said to the rain.

She turned onto the shoulder again and came to a slow stop. When she had come a little closer to her karmic destiny, Jill could see the lady in distress was pregnant, extremely pregnant. She couldn’t help rolling her eyes in disgust. Out of all those people not one of them even slowed down for this pregnant lady in the pouring rain.

She was just trying to reason through this injustice when her husband's words came to her mind. "Don’t you dare stop for another hitchhiker. Do you hear me? Not one more. I don’t care if it’s Mother-fucking Theresa! I’m not having you raped or robbed on the side of the road. If I find out you disobeyed me, I’ll give you such a whipping that you’ll not forget again!"

The memory caused a momentary pang of regret for having stopped but the grateful woman was now standing at her door. It’s too late to think anymore. This is the right thing. Screw him. I don’t have to tell him anyway.

Jill lowered her window, “Trouble?” She asked with a sweet expression. The lady looked a bit younger than herself, and even though it was still raining hard, she could see the poor thing had been sobbing.

“Yes, my car broke down. I don’t know what’s wrong. There was a burning smell then the inside filled up with smoke. I pulled over because I thought it was on fire, but there was no fire. I tried to turn it on again but nothing.”

“There’s a service station at the next exit. I could take you there. They have a tow service and a mechanic and everything,” she said. “I’m Jill.”

“I’m Yoon,” the lady replied. “Nice to meet you, Yoon. My laundry is still in the back here. I can grab a couple of towels. Hop on in.”

Jill snatched a couple of folded towels off the top of her laundry basket. She spread one on the seat and handed the other to Yoon as she climbed in. Then she sighed as she noticed the time on the dash clock. She was already almost half an hour late.

“You know what? I’m late to work and I suddenly find I don’t care. You’re soaking wet and I just can’t leave you at that cold smelly garage alone. There’s a coffee shop only a couple of doors down from the station, let’s go there first.”

Yoon gave her the most grateful smile she’d ever seen. A smile that made whatever trouble she found herself in completely worth it. “They have a nice lounge in that coffee shop. You can go in there and put on a dry change of clothes. I have an old comfy pair of drawstring pants and a sweatshirt here,” she offered. “Maybe we could have a cup of coffee and a chat? You know, get comfortable, relax, give ourselves a break. What do you say?”

“Yes, please,” was all Yoon could say.




The parking lot of the coffee shop was completely empty and the windows appeared dark. Jill released a frustrated sigh.

"What's wrong?" Yoon asked.

"They're closed. The parking lot is empty and the windows are dark…"

"They're not. The windows are just tinted. I can see someone moving just inside at the cash register."

Jill squinted at the front door. She could vaguely make out a figure there. She reappraised her passenger's appearance and decided that Yoon must be at least ten years younger…maybe more. Maybe she could find a tactful way to ask over coffee, not that it mattered.

The heavy clouds were bringing with them an early nightfall. The effect was so convincing that Jill automatically checked her watch to make certain of the time. Yoon noticed. "Did you change your mind? Do you have somewhere you need to go?"

"Oh, no, not at all. It's just a habit really. I wanted to make sure it wasn't later than I thought. My husband is a bear about having his dinner served on time. 7:00 pm sharp every day without fail," she explained.

As she slipped into the booth, Yoon grunted, "Sounds like an asshole to me." She looked up quickly, face flushed. She hadn't meant to say it out loud. It just slipped out–but then she'd be preoccupied with assholes like him all day…

"I was going to be angry about that, just crossed my mind for a second really. You're right. He is an ass at least some of the time. He can be very kind and considerate too though. I don't know. Our relationship is complicated. Always has been complicated. See…I haven't been able to have children and he's been incredibly tolerant and kind about it…" Jill found that she was choked up now, talking to a stranger about her chief failing as a wife, and a pregnant stranger at that, had brought up feelings she'd been beating down for years.

"Not being able to get pregnant is not something to be tolerated," Yoon wisely observed. "Did he convince you that he was being 'tolerant' about that?"

Jill thought for a moment as the waitress set down their coffees. This was a real coffee shop, the kind where they served you coffee as soon as you parked yourself. She gave an unconvincing smile at the woman. The idea of such a small quaint hospitality surviving had made her want to smile but she found she couldn't mean it.

The woman hastily jotted down Yoon's order for a bowl of chicken noodle soup and toast then just as hastily departed when Jill waved her off. Must remember to tip her well, minds her own business and knows when to hustle off to the kitchen, she thought. "You're right, Yoon, he did convince me that my condition was something to be tolerated. You see, I was a party girl before I married…the doctors told us that I'd had one too many abortions back in the eighties…" She paused again to study Yoon's face. If she'd seen one trace of disapproval there then the conversation would have been over, but the girl looked on her with sad empathetic eyes. "So Peter just flipped. He hadn't really known how I had been before. He didn't know about all the boyfriends. I had changed so completely, grown up, found a personal philosophy even…I just didn't see the need to share my past. I wanted to forget it, so why should I tell someone who would undoubtedly remember it for me?"

Yoon gave her an encouraging nod. "So your husband's name is Peter?"

"Yes. Like the apostle as he's fond of saying." She snorted reflexively. "I know, it's more than a bit pompous and well sort of right-wing Christian in a way but then he is a right-wing Christian." She chuckled to herself in a nervous way while she toyed with her spoon. All the while, she continued to study Yoon's face for signs of an opinion. What she saw there at that moment was confusing and a little worrisome. The girl looked almost as though she might faint. "Are you okay?"

Yoon made no response. Not even a nod. Nothing.

"Hon, are you all right? Do we need to get you to a hospital? Should I ask them to call an ambulance?"

Still nothing. Jill began to move out of the booth but resettled herself when she heard Yoon's weak voice whisper, "Stop. Listen. I have to tell you something."

Jill waited breathlessly. She knew that she was about to hear 'the voice of Doom' as Peter liked to call anyone who was trying to tell him anything serious. That's what he'd said about her physician after he told them they could not have children. He didn't listen to what he didn't like. He'd pressed her to keep trying anyway. Told her never to listen to the voice of Doom.

Yoon said, "I'm a Buddhist. I don't know anything about right-wing Christianity. I grew up in a rural part of South Korea. My parents decided to move here just in case…my father was a very cautious man. He passed away not long after we got here. I got a job as fast as I could. Not a great job but I didn't mind.

The owner liked me despite the fact that I was a “heathen”. He liked to tease me about not being a Christian. Anyway, I think he decided he could save me so he began to ask me to go out to coffee or to lunch. Soon he started pressing me to go to his church. After I agreed, he wanted to officially date, even asked my mother’s permission and she thought he was a good catch for me because he owned his own business and was a religious man.

He owns a laundry not far from here…"

"Peter owns a laundry not far from here…" Jill said, her eyes widening as her voice trailed off.

"Yes, I knew you would tell me that. Let me say most importantly, I want to say, I'm deeply sorry. I never meant to cause anyone harm. I honestly did not know he was married," Yoon said as tears began to well in her eyes again. "He never wore a wedding band when he was with me. He told me he was widowed. He said his wife had died in a tragic car accident. He told me he'd marry me as soon as he'd done well enough in the business. He was getting very nervous about the pregnancy. He wanted the baby but he didn't want it born out of wedlock." The story was spilling out of her between tears and sniffs while their coffees went stone cold. "The lying bastard!" she said almost inaudibly over the sobs.

Jill simply couldn't respond. She was desperately trying to understand, but it wasn't making sense no matter how she retold the facts to herself.

Both women automatically began to sip their cold coffees when the waitress returned with the soup and toast. "Warm those up?" she asked. They nodded automatically. She quietly disappeared again.

Jill finally found her voice. "He told you his wife was dead? You didn't know he had a wife? I presume you meant a living wife? So you didn't know he had a living wife but yet you knew at once that I was his living wife?" Jill wasn't being sarcastic, not entirely. She was genuinely trying to make sense of this young woman's story and also discern what made this stranger so certain that her Peter was an unfaithful lying bastard.

"Okay. I can explain this. I can explain it so you'll know that I'm telling the truth. Just please, a little patience with me? I'm having heavy emotion right now, not just from the hormones, or from the fact that Peter lied so disgustingly to me, but from other things…Just please, a little patience with me?"

Jill recognized genuine desperation. She empathized with it, perhaps at that moment more than ever before. She nodded her head.

"I knew I should have pampered myself as Peter suggested this morning and just stayed in bed…" she shivered. "My date is only a week and a half away now…he seemed genuinely concerned for me and for our child…so I had agreed with him, but then I got restless. I don't know why exactly. I just felt the need for company, I think. I was all alone in the apartment and I just didn't want to be alone."

She paused to take some healthy swallows of her soup as if searching for courage among the noodles.

"So I went over to the restaurant. I thought I'd surprise him for lunch, maybe even make his lunch."

"The restaurant? You mean St. Pete's?" Jill asked.

"Yes, that's the one. I should have known from the way he named his restaurant that he couldn't be trusted. He was just so charming. He seemed sincere to me. He seemed a man of principle, like one of the good guys in those old westerns my dad loved so much. So I fell for him. Never questioned anything he said even slightly. I was a fool. I know that now." Yoon hung her head as if mortally disgraced.

A spark of genuine empathy seared Jill's heart. She understood all too well the impression this young woman had of her husband. She'd felt exactly the same about him when she'd met him so many years before. She was applying as a waitress in that very same restaurant when he was only the manager. She reached out and patted Yoon's hand. "I know exactly what you mean. Truly."

"See, I just barged in on him. That's why it all happened." She paused again, she knew she needed to fill in the details no matter how painful. She started again. "It was the way I found out about him, the whole truth about him all at once. I just walked into his office, not even a knock on the door. I guess he was distracted because he obviously hadn't heard me open the door." She took a deep breath like a diver then headed for the cliff. "He was giving her the tickets to some island in the Caribbean, I can't remember which one, not that it matters. He was telling her that he'd gotten the price he was looking for on the restaurant and that all the money was safely tucked away in some bank there." Yoon waited for Jill to catch up.

"Wait, who is she? He sold our restaurant?!" Jill began to feel like she was in slow motion while the world was racing ahead. She found herself thinking that it was exactly like coming out of that cloud bank earlier. Maybe she had a warning about all this, she thought. Maybe all this was supposed to happen. I should just relax, she told herself, then so this is what it's like to have a nervous breakdown...




Yoon waited patiently and while she waited, studied her companion's features. She was surprised by Jill's lack of emotion, no tears, not even a visible frown.

“I know it sounds weird, but truthfully, I didn’t know he was treating me badly. I guess I’d managed just that well to hide the truth. Some part of my mind kept clinging to the idea that if I didn’t say anything to anyone, not even to myself, that everything would come out right. Truthfully, I’ve known he was with someone else. Many times before actually. I knew, but I did everything not to know. Does that sound crazy to you?”

“No,” Yoon said, “Sounds like survival to me.”

“Peter said when we got married that I would have to keep my own last name and that I couldn’t wear the ring at work. He told me that he needed me to keep working at the restaurant. He didn’t want to cause talk among the help after he bought the place. They had known him as manager and me as just another waitress. I kept my maiden name and didn’t wear the wedding band at work. I wanted to be a good wife so badly, I wanted to protect him and please him…”

Yoon smiled empathetically. She looked deeply into Jill’s eyes for the first time and saw a woman who had done what she must to preserve her dignity. She liked Jill. She liked her a great deal. “Well, we’ll have to admit that Peter knew how to find the right women. The ones who want so desperately to be happy that they’re willing to do anything and see not much,” she said. She wanted Jill to know that she didn’t think she was either crazy or a fool. “I understand perfectly. I really do.”

“Jill, I surprised you haven’t asked me, but well, I suppose you wouldn’t think of it…er,” Yoon faltered a moment, looked at the ceiling as if pondering its smoky tinge. Jill added helpfully, “Considering what I’ve been digesting you mean?” “Well, yes, naturally,” Yoon said. “The thing is, you never asked me why I was heading back towards the restaurant since I just left there.” Her face flushed with color as if she’d just run a race but she took an easy breath and relaxed.

Jill was surprised she hadn’t thought of something so obvious. She looked at Yoon expectantly now and confused.

“I left something out of the story I was telling you about Peter and the tramp…when I heard the tramp’s voice coming from the office, well, I knew. Honestly I was expecting to catch him so when I heard her voice I knew. I wanted to kill him and her at first. I stopped behind the bar where I knew they kept a gun and I took it.”

“I went quietly to the door of the office and listened and thought. I told myself that killing her would be pointless because she didn’t make him cheat. He had no trouble cheating on his own. Then I started to think that murder wasn’t going to improve matters at all. So I changed my mind, but I kept listening.”

“Then they started discussing their plan which I told you about already and I got crazy angry. I made certain that girl didn’t see me when she left then I walked into the office, held up the gun, and fired. Two shots, I think.”

Jill had known what was coming after Yoon mentioned the gun but somehow she hadn’t believed it until Yoon got to the end. She was out of emotion especially emotion for Peter. She asked flatly, “Is he dead?”

“Yes. I checked after the shots. I regretted shooting him. I wanted to help if he could be helped, but there was no pulse, no breath, no heartbeat. He was dead. Then I ran out of there, got into the car, and drove back to the apartment as fast as I could.”

“But then…I felt such horrible guilt. Like I would die unless I confessed. All I could think of was getting to the police station down there and tell them the whole story. I told myself they’d probably go easy on me because Peter was after all, a rat. Then of course, the car broke down and here we are.”

Jill seemed focused on her own thought and plans. She didn’t respond right away but then she said, “I doubt anyone noticed. I doubt anyone has found him. It’s an awful neighborhood, no one pays attention to shots anymore.”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t confess?” Yoon asked.

“Not only should you not confess but I’m going to drive us right down there and we are going to make sure no one ever comes accusing you.”

“I don’t see how…”

“Simple. We’ll break the backdoor lock first. Peter should have replaced it months ago after someone tried to break in but he was too cheap to spend money on a locksmith. I have a crowbar in the trunk, and we’ll break in. Simple. The alarm isn’t set, so no danger there. Then we’ll go into the office and take the gun away.”

“But then they’ll know that the gun from the bar was the murder weapon and they’ll think someone inside must have done it,” Yoon said.

“No, that’s not what they’ll think at all,” Jill insisted. They’ll assume someone was trying to rob the place, they were behind the bar going after the cash drawer, and Peter surprised them. We’ll take whatever cash we can find and we’ll get out of there.”

“What about the tramp?”

“What about her? She’s already left and will wonder why Peter hasn’t followed but she won’t bother to come back. She’s sharp enough to know that they were committing a crime. She was helping Peter commit a robbery basically. They were stealing from me. Seems like Karma finally caught up to both of them.”

“What we’ll do is use the fact that I’m his wife to withdraw the money he stole from that bank account. Then you and I will be set. You’ll move into my house and we’ll look after each other. What do you say?”

“Just like that?”

“It’s a Karma kind of day,” Jill said, “and mine has been improving by the minute. Do you know what you’re going to name the baby by the way?”

“Yes, I’m having a girl and I’m naming her April.”

They had a good long laugh. They smiled at each other. They took care of the messy details. They lived happily ever after.