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A Cup of Poison
“Max, Max do you want a cup of coffee?” shouted the housewife to her husband sitting in the living room. Again she called, as she stood near the kitchen counter in the kitchen. But she received no answer and she was quite irritated. Her man was settled comfortably as usual in his favorite armchair in his stocking feet on a footstool. The television set was turned on loudly to a current football game and he was quite engrossed in the play.
“That lazy good for nothing bum,” she muttered inwardly, “Comes home from work, chucks his clothes in the bedroom and then with a can of beer in hand goes straight to the television to watch the nightly football match. Only came up for air when supper was on the table! Can’t even lift his fat ass and get his coffee!”
“Poison, I’ll give you!” she cursed inwardly, bunching a shaking fist directed towards the living room. Then she crossed herself and begged forgiveness for the remark from the Almighty in the heavens above.
The frumpy woman, Matilda by name, shook her fleshy face in disgust as she surveyed the remains of the evening meal on the kitchen counter and the pile of dishes, pots and pans in the sink. She rolled up the sleeves on thick arms and was ready to clear away the dinner when she suddenly paused. There in far corner of the counter she spied a can of roach powder, heavily laced with cyanide, guaranteed to kill the toughest cockroach.
She lifted the tin to take a gander at the label of contents. Then adjusted her glasses to get a better look and with muttered breath sighed out, “Ohh it’s the can of roach powder, didn’t know where I put it. Getting a bit absent-minded in my aging.”
“Yes I do remember. Forgot to put away the tin under the sink when I dusted the corners of the kitchen with the powder! Could be the time when that fussy neighbor came to complain once again about the dog messing up her petunias! Told that idiot of a husband not once, but a hundred times to get rid of that mangy mutt! And who has to feed it?” Her hoarse voiced through thick lips voiced muted curses and with a shake or two to her untidy gray hair.
Matilda then wiped her wet hands instinctively on her apron, reached out and grasped the tin of roach powder in her hammy hand. She held it tightly, as she set her heavyset body on one of the kitchen chairs. The woman then sat back with sigh of relief to be able to rest her thick legs that always caused her a bit of bother.
“It was kind of a busy day, getting the dinner ready and dishing it out to that good-for-nothing. For almost thirty years the same routine! Not a word would come out of his mealy mouth and say something nice about the meal. He would just gobble the food and hurry to his favorite armchair, resting his stocking feet on the footstool and switch on the set. Damn, damn!”
Matilda felt the can in her hand and with slow motion lifted up in order to enable her to read word message through her thick eyeglasses. The first thing she spotted on the tin was a small sketch of skull and crossbones with a printed warning of the poisonous contents.
The distraught woman lowered the can to her amply lap, then set back in her chair and let her mind ruminate on the past. Tears turned to anger as she thought of her miserable life with her husband Max.
“Hardly a good word when he comes home. Just asks ‘what is for supper’. Nothing more, not even a kiss on the cheek like he did when we were first hitched, nothing.”
“What’s for supper? What’s for supper?” She made a sour facial expression, as she mimicked his terse greeting. “Could kill him for that!”
A few tears trickled from her eyes as she continued her thoughts, which was filled with equal misery in her long and tedious marriage to Max who, at the present, was cheering his team. The sound of his gruff voice penetrated the depths of the kitchen causing Matilda to wince in agony.
“Sit there you slob,” she muttered with a bitter tone, “Television, Television, nothing but television, and only to some stupid game or another. Bah! Never thinking of having a night out, no just that stupid idiot box.”
A vision was sighted her mind. A flashback of her life with her husband Max from the early years to the present. She saw the first years with jollity in meeting friends at parties and at the bar and grill, pleasant meetings with the families on both sides and the warm repartee between them. Those years of blissful marriage was few in number, as her sights turned to the time of Max’s drunken bouts at the gatherings and the sight of his vomit spewing out after heavy drinking. Then kin and kith shied away from them and her coming life was spent in loneliness with the morning coffee and gossip with the near neighbors and the required presence at a wedding or a funeral. The telephone then became the only connection she had with her immediate family.
Inward anger encroached upon her and bile reached her lips. She lifted her hand with the tin gripped tightly in fat fingers in an angry gesture that shook in despair. As she lowered her hand she came aware of the tin in her hand and a crazed thought entered her mind.
“Nah, it would be a cardinal sin!”
Without paying heed to last words, Matilda lifted her hefty frame with a sudden jerk from the chair. Then with lively steps she moved to the kitchen counter where she placed the tin or roach powder. Then the woman arranged a large mug and saucer on a small tray and filled it with grains of instant coffee. She went to the kitchen sink where she filled the teakettle. The gas was lit and the water boiled quickly. She returned to the counter with the kettle where she filled the prepared cup with the boiled water. Then with a fiendish smile to her lips she opened the tin and spooned out a heaping teaspoon of the roach powder into the mug.
“Not enough!” she hushed
Matilda added another spoonful of the powder. Then as quick she was able she took the carton of milk from the fridge and a bowl of sugar from the cupboard and placed it on the counter. With shaking hands she spooned the required amount of sugar and a heavy splash of milk and added it to the contents in the mug. Then with quick stirring to the contents in the mug, she made sure they all mixed together without notice to the poison. Then she arranged the cup of coffee on the small tray together with a dish of her husband’s favorite chocolate biscuits.
She paused for a moment, maybe for an afterthought. The she lifted the tray with her hands and walked through the kitchen towards the living room.
“Max,” she called out sweetly, “Max dear, I’m coming with your coffee, just as you like it...
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Norman A. Rubin
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