Janeology

CHAPTER ONE

Here’s what I remember about that day. What I can’t forget about that day. It was hot and humid. My sweat-soaked shirt clung to my skin under the oppressive June heat. There are dozens of photos showing me like that. Dozens more of me as I was led away by an officer, my tie flapping up as I stumbled over the plastic toys in our front yard.

And then they led me to the jail where I found myself with Jane. We were alone in a cold room and I kept plucking the shirt material from my chest, still overcome by heat and shock.

There were no attorneys then. Funny, it’s hard now to remember my life before attorneys. That day, we were just two people sitting in a room waiting to have a conversation. You would never know that hours before Jane had turned on the kitchen faucet, filled the sink with water and killed our son Simon. And then she attempted the same with little Sarah, who God knows must have been terrified as she watched her mother do this to her brother before being chased through the house until she, too, was caught and submerged. But I learned that later.
If I had known those details when I went to the jail, maybe I would have been raging, maybe violent. Who knows the appropriate response to having a wife who kills? That day, I felt stuck, nervous and hesitant at meeting my own wife. I was forty-one years old and should have been in control of my emotions as I entered the holding room, but as I felt the thick door click closed against my back, I had the urge to turn and run.

Jane looked normal. Or perhaps normal for Jane. She wore no reaction of any kind to seeing me. Her body was relaxed, her legs crossed. She greeted me with a light, dry voice, saying my name in her usual fashion by drawing out the vowel.

Toooom.

The intimacy of it made me ill.

“Tom, are you okay? I wondered when you would get here,” she said, standing.

“Jane, sit down.”

She backed away and slipped back into the plastic chair. We looked at each other for a long moment. I searched her blue eyes for traces of murder, believing I should see something black that belied her beauty. Some flipped switch. Something red or black. I thought perhaps I saw less white in her eyes, but that might have been a trick of the room’s flickering fluorescent light. The only visible difference was what she had on: a county-issue orange jumpsuit. The orange reflected off her face, giving her a sun-kissed glow, like she might have spent a day at the beach instead of within the cement-grey walls of a jail. Even her hair was still in its trademark perky ponytail with wisps of dark blonde highlights framing her face.

“Are we going home?”

My mouth was dry. I licked my lips. I heard ringing in my ears.

“We’re not going home. You’re not going home.”

“I guess I know that. They said you would say that.”

“Why Jane? Tell me. What’s going on because I can’t figure this out? Tell me what happened.”

She was devastatingly casual.

“I had too much. I was done being a mother, you know.”

Continues...