The Devil on the Left

A woman trapped in a life she so carelessly chose must find a way out.

I was clumsy as a little girl: always spilling or falling or tripping or dropping. Bruised knees and dirt under my nails. It came naturally to be careless.

This translated into my teenager years: often getting into fender-benders or losing my purse. Lost assignments and forgotten chores. It felt familiar to think so little of the consequences.

Again, this carelessness seemed to follow me right into adulthood, but by then with much more dire results: I quit the right job, I married the wrong man, and I stayed for much too long.

It hindered me just as much as it became a part of me. My carelessness was often personified, taking on the role of perhaps an evil twin, a haunting ghost, or even a demon waiting to be exorcised.

"Margot," my mother would lecture, "your bad luck follows you!" she said, engaging in the superstitions her mother had burdened her with, tossing the salt I had spilled over my own left shoulder.

"You must rid yourself of it! Toss it right back into his eye!" she explained, referring to the devil who apparently sat on my shoulder. I placated her those years at home: tossing the salt, knocking on the wood, and stepping over the cracks.

As an adult I don't bother with such superstitions. Maybe it's because my mother is now dead. Either way, Carelessness stayed even if the delusions did not.

My wrong husband was rather well known and rather rich. Or at the very least, his family was. He moved me into his home with an apple orchard on nearly five acres just after the wedding, and there I stayed. He worked and I stayed, I couldn't have his children and I stayed, he hit me and still, I stayed. He kept me there, Carelessness and I, never allowing us to leave the house or the orchard. I was as stuck as the trees outside my window, aging only to be picked, picked, picked.

His imprisonment juxtaposed his love, though he thought the two were intertwined. I think he found it romantic to keep me there. He found he felt powerful in the way he slapped me around if I asked about leaving and found the idea of me always waiting for him (as he came and went) particularly alluring.

I watched each Spring as the groundskeeper dusted the pesticides along the trunks of the trees; something so toxic allowing the trees to fruit felt rather beautiful. The white salt-like dusting protecting not only each tree but the entirety of the orchard. He'd cover the nearly five acres before carefully locking the pesticides away in the toolshed, clicking the combination lock. I learned his routine over the years, never able to leave but always able to watch.

The house was covered in windows along its back walls; built originally to allow the view of the apple trees to all inside, now allowed me to watch, mindlessly, carelessly, at the routine of such a place. The maids who scurried, the cooks who hid, the groundskeeper locking up that damn shed. They all had their routine, a dance-like rhythm which beat soundlessly against the oppressive walls which contained me.

I noticed they too watched me. Eyes glared when I left a room, they followed as I walked the tree lines, they glanced as I ate my meals. Whispers and tight-lipped smiles. I was never sure if they were keeping tabs or felt pity or if it was possibly both. I hoped it were both.

One early evening while watching from the parlor, I noticed the groundskeeper put away his tools before leaving rather suddenly. It was only then I noticed the padlock was left open. Carelessness and I looked at each other.

Asking him for a picnic was not necessarily out of the norm. There were a handful of times throughout the years I attempted to create some sort of connection with my husband, perhaps at first out of a desperation for love, which then shifted into a hope of being able to leave. So, on that warm fall day when I asked him to join me for lunch, he didn't even bat an eye. I gathered the wine and charcuterie, the potatoes and sandwiches, the napkins, and of course the salt and pepper shakers. With the blue and white checked blanket tucked carefully under my arm, I made my way to meet him in the orchard.

I fixed his plate on the picnic China, delicately tightening the lid of the salt shaker before passing it to him. I watched silently as he sprinkled the salt, even at one point opening the shaker to pour more of its contents onto his meal. He spoke of work and his mother and whatever else he could muster as I waited.

When he finally collapsed, I noticed the salt shaker had spilled upon the checkered blanket. Its contents filled up nearly an entire square of the blue and white pattern, a perfect white dusting. I left it behind to finally leave, allowing the wind to spread what was left along the trunks of the trees.

Katie Lilljedahl | 2024-06-02