Eliza or Till Death Do Us Part, page 1
Pascal Ifri
Table of Contents
Title Page
ELIZA OR TILL DEATH DO US PART
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EPILOGUE
ELIZA OR TILL DEATH DO US PART
1
I am in prison. I got life. With no possibility of parole. For first-degree murder. For the murder of myself. Yes, I’m in prison for killing myself. Of course, nobody believes me. Nobody. Darius, the other inmates, those hardened criminals and murderers I’m stuck with, maybe forever, the guards... In fact, it makes them laugh. They all believe that my story is funny, that I’m some kind of comedian, that all I want is to entertain them. They all believe that I’m like them, that I’m a criminal, that I belong here.
What a terrible fix I find myself in! I’m in a maximum-security prison where I may very well spend the rest of my life since nobody believes me. In a way, yes, I have committed a murder, almost the perfect murder, but I am also the victim, for Christ’s sake! The truth is that I am innocent, innocent as a lamb. I’ve made many mistakes but I’m not a criminal. My only crime is that I have loved my wife too much. Yes, I’m in prison for loving Eliza too much. What was I supposed to do? Accept the divorce and leave it at that? No, not me. Maybe I should have told her the truth as soon as the problems started. Then she would have believed me, I’m sure. I’m also sure she would have forgiven me for what I did. It was not that bad since I did it out of love. After all, I was so handsome by then. She would even have been grateful.
Today is Sunday. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon. I have been here for three weeks and four days now. When I first got here, I was in a daze, in a state of stupor. I spent most of my time trying to think how I managed to put myself in such a predicament. Then I thought of starting a new diary, but how interesting would the diary of a jailbird be? Nothing really worth writing about happens here. The days follow one another, unending and identical. Anyway, all I can think about is Eliza. I tried so hard to stay with her. And it had to end like this, with me behind bars. In Potosi, Missouri.
I have decided to write down my story, in great detail. Maybe it will help me get released. I guess that’s why I’m writing this. To be free again. To start the whole thing again. I also want my story to be read by Eliza. For too long I didn’t want her to know the truth, but what do I have to lose now? So, I’ll start. What else do I have to do anyway? I mean, when the other inmates leave me alone and don’t ask me to tell them again the story of my “murder.” Besides, I have always liked to write. Especially about me. And I have not done it for so long.
I don’t know where to start. And I’m constantly interrupted by inmates who want to talk to me, like Leroy Hardbaugh, a notorious rapist and killer, who is pestering me as I’m writing this:
– Smith, tell me more about your Eliza?
– My name isn’t Smith, damn it. It’s Jenkins, Gary Jenkins.
– I forgot. Of course, your name’s Jenkins. So, tell me about Eliza.
– What do you want to know?
– Why did you like her so much?
That’s a good question. What did I like her so much? Why did I do all this for her? I don’t know what to answer. In fact, when I first met her, I barely noticed her. It was at a wedding, in the spring of 1983. I was the photographer.
– I don’t know. When I first saw her, I didn’t think much of her. I liked the girlfriend she was with better.
– Tell me about her tits.
It was a beautiful sunny day, with nothing out of the ordinary, except that for once I didn’t have a crush on the bride but on one of the guests. She was a tall and skinny girl with exceptionally long silky strawberry blond hair. Her very pale, almost white, face was sprinkled with freckles. She was not pretty in the traditional sense of the word, but for some reason, her particular looks appealed to me. I noticed her when she took her seat in the church, right as the Mass was starting. I spent so much time staring at her that I missed some crucial pictures of the ceremony, and, on a couple of occasions, the bridegroom had to snap his fingers to attract my attention. As the wedding party and the family were gathering after the Mass for the pictures, I couldn’t stand to see her leave and, without thinking, I left everybody waiting and ran after her to tell her that I wanted to take some shots of her. Everybody was surprised but nobody said anything when I included her in some pictures where she should never have been and when I asked her to pose with the bride who hardly knew her. I learned afterwards that she was a classmate of the bridegroom.
A few hours later, during the reception that was held in a large hall in West St. Louis County, I took more pictures of her than of the bride. Around one in the morning, as the whole thing was drawing to an end and as half the guests were gone and the other half too drunk to be photographed, I put away my material, but couldn’t make the decision to depart. As usual, I was sitting alone at my table drinking a soda and staring at the girl who was at another table with a girlfriend, thinking about asking her to dance but dreading she would refuse.
– Because you were fat and bald and ugly and almost blind?
– Yes, but let me go on.
After a while the two girls became clearly embarrassed. I could see that the girlfriend was trying to persuade the strawberry blonde one to invite me to their table, but that the latter was not exactly thrilled by the attention I was giving her. Nevertheless, she gave in, and the girlfriend came over and asked me to join them. I was so ecstatic that I spent the few minutes in their company mumbling unintelligible things to which they couldn’t respond much. Fortunately, the girlfriend took the matter in her hands and invited me to dance. I must have been so pathetic on the floor that as soon as we returned to the table, the strawberry blonde, who obviously feared that she would be next, told us she was tired and asked her friend to give her a ride home. I offered to take her home myself, but she looked so horrified at that prospect that I didn’t insist and watched them leave, more discouraged than ever. I had not even dared to ask for her phone number. All I knew was her name: Melissa. Her girlfriend was Eliza.
– Then what happened?
A couple of weeks later, as I was having dinner by myself in one of the restaurants on Euclid Avenue, the main commercial street in the Central West End of St. Louis, my attention was caught by a young woman who had just entered the restaurant unaccompanied and was waiting to be seated. Although she was not my type at all, I stared at her because I was intrigued by the fact that she was going to dine out by herself. It isn’t very common to see young women eat out alone in St. Louis. I was watching her just out of curiosity, without expecting anything or even considering the possibility of making a move – I had been disappointed so much since my return to St. Louis that I had pretty much, by that time, given up trying to meet people –, when I realized that she vaguely looked familiar. Was she a former client or a woman I had already noticed in a bar or elsewhere? I couldn’t remember. I just knew that, since she was not my type, she was not one of the girls I had recently followed.
Yet, she was not bad looking. Her light blue spring dress revealed a rather tall body that would have been perfect had she not been slightly overweight. Her dress and dark blue hose partly covered amazingly long and well-shaped legs that impressed my photographer’s eye. Her plain but rather pretty face, with, in the middle, a tiny nose stuck above big red lips, radiated energy and determination. Below her short frizzy brownish hair all messed up by the wind, I could also make out skin recently burned by the precocious sun and two huge green eyes that soon rested on me and forced me to lower mine.
When I raised my eyes again, I couldn’t believe what I saw: the young woman was standing in front of my table displaying a big smile. I didn’t know what to do. I thought she was going to ask me why I was staring at her in such a rude way, but she just kept on smiling and said: “Hi Gary, how nice it is to see you again, remember me?” I did not, but I said yes. “Mind if I join you?” She started to talk then and talked and talked, exclusively about herself, which suited me fine since I had no idea who she was.
Yet, one hour later or so, although I still couldn’t remember in what circumstances we had met before, I knew everything about her and her problems. She was a first-year law student at Washington University, but essentially, she couldn’t afford it and led a miserable life. She had barely been able to come up with the tuition money and had to wait on tables several times a week to be able to survive, which considerably hurt her studies. She had been born in Oakland, California, in a working-class family and had graduated from San Francisco State University the year before. She wanted to become a lawyer and make lots of money. She would have preferred to go to law school in her home state, but Washington University was the only decent law school that had accepted her. She had somewhat grown accustomed to St. Louis and the Midwest but couldn’t wait to go back to California where she wanted to practice.
It’s only by the time we were having coffee and dessert, when she casually mentioned her best friend at the school, Melissa, that I realized she was the girl I had danced with exactly two weeks before. No wonder I had blocked her out of m
– I do weddings just for the money. Actually, I mainly do art photography and I occasionally freelance for Vogue and Playboy. In fact, I’m the one who discovered the model on the cover of the current issue of Vogue. I found her in Brazil last year.
– Have you really been to Brazil?
– Oh I’ve been everywhere for my job, South America, Europe, Asia...
True, I had travelled just about everywhere in the world, not for professional reasons but in the vain hope of losing my virginity with one of those incredibly beautiful foreign girls who had excited me so much when I had seen them in dirty magazines and later in porno flicks. Anyway, I think I made quite an impression on Eliza. Then she asked me more personal questions and when she understood that I was essentially alone in the world (“I’m more the East Coast type and I’m not really interested in making friends in this city, besides I’m always gone for my work”), she told me that she was like me, busy, unrooted and lonely, and, on leaving, gave me her phone number (with her first name that I had forgotten) and made me promise to call her.
A few minutes later, as I was lying on my bed to ponder the extraordinary moments I had just gone through, the incredible reality sank in: a pretty girl was showing some interest in me. The piece of paper in my hand, with her name and phone number, was the proof that I had not dreamed it. Although she had not showed in any way that she might have been physically attracted to me, I instinctively knew that our future relationship would be romantic, and I didn’t doubt for a second that she was the woman of my life. I couldn’t believe my luck.
Why would such a pretty girl be interested in a bald 280-pound man? I was only twenty-three but I had been balding since I was 14 and overweight almost all my life. That was because I grew up on junk food. My mother left the day I turned three and my father, a traveling insurance salesman and an alcoholic, was not much of a cook. So, it was fast food and pizzas until my sixteenth birthday when dad gave me Betty Crocker’s Good and Easy Cookbook. I then took up cooking even though I was already in charge of the shopping, the laundry and the cleaning. Actually, all the knowledge I acquired at that time was to come in very handy when I was married to Eliza. At least the first time. But I was not exactly an unhappy child. I had more freedom than any other kid around. I read a lot and watched some TV. And I wrote in my diaries. Everything that happened to me, I put it down, starting at the age of eight. It must constitute some kind of record.
Unfortunately, or fortunately I don’t know, I didn’t have any friends. The kids in my neighborhood or in my school didn’t like me because I was fat and because I had no mother. Not only did I have no friends but hardly any family either. I was an only child and my father had just one sister, who lived in Chicago, Aunt Margie. We visited her a few times over the years, but those trips were not exactly pleasurable. I was as bored at her house as I was at mine. She was divorced and had a rather pretty daughter, Jane, who was a few years older than I and who couldn’t care less about me. I didn’t think they liked us very much because they never came to see us in St. Louis, but I learned later that it was because of my dad’s drinking.
I still thought Eliza was not my type, but I was now desperately in love with her, so desperately that my body was shaking all over, that I knew I could never sleep again or think about anybody or anything else but her. I had read enough love stories to know how to act in such a situation and waited almost two weeks before calling her so that she wouldn’t believe I was interested in her. I knew that the surest way to lose women was to show your interest too obviously and that indifference toward them was the fastest route to their hearts and to their beds. Those two weeks were the longest in my life, though. I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep at night and couldn’t concentrate on anything but her. Every day I went back to the restaurant where we had dinner together, hoping to meet her “by chance,” and I spent hours on the Washington University campus, in the vicinity of the law school, with a camera in my hand so that she would believe that I was there for professional reasons, but I didn’t see her. Then I finally called her to invite her to spend an evening with me in an extremely expensive downtown restaurant before attending a play. She said yes. The evening of the date, as I was about to go out to pick her up at her place, I was so nervous that I threw up. But our first date went fine, and it was followed by many others.
It took a while, though, before we became romantically involved. On the one hand, she seemed to enjoy my company, but never let me understand that she wanted me to make a move. On the other hand, as I was too shy and too afraid to ruin everything and lose her, I didn’t try anything for two months. Then one evening, at a time when she was working in a small Clayton (a St. Louis suburb) law firm for the summer, she asked me out of the blue: “How come you never try to kiss me?” So, I did. She didn’t seem to mind my kissing her, but a couple of days later, when I became bolder and tried to slip my hand under her skirt, she gently removed it. A few weeks later, however, she allowed me to touch her, and she even occasionally spent nights at my place but not before she made me promise that I wouldn’t try to have sexual intercourse with her. She explained to me that she had had “bad experiences” and had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t have sex again until she married.
I didn’t mind the situation. In fact, I was very happy with what Eliza let me do to her and couldn’t believe that I had not only a girlfriend, but also a pretty one. Even in my wildest dreams I had never thought that I could have had a girl like her all to myself and for free. She was my first real girlfriend. When I was a teenager, girls were at the center of my life and of my thoughts and, since nothing really happened to me at that time, they were the main subject of my diaries, but I had not kissed or even dated a single one by the time I graduated from high school in 1977.
However, I was not unhappy at all about the situation. I was perfectly content just watching girls in school or in fast food joints. For one thing, I was extremely shy, and for another, I was not what you would call a handsome guy. To give you an idea, when I was sixteen for instance, I already weighed over 200 pounds, I had an extremely bad case of acne, I wore very thick glasses because I was hopelessly shortsighted, I still had my braces, and I had been balding for a couple of years. It would have been difficult to be worse looking. That’s the reason why I was perfectly content watching girls and not expecting anything from them. The possibility that I could really kiss or date one simply never crossed my mind. At least women never disappointed me then. When you don’t expect anything from them, they can’t make you unhappy.
At that time, the only way I had girlfriends was in my imagination. The way it worked was simple. I would select one I liked, usually at school during the school year or in a fast food joint during the summer; I would try to know everything about her by discreetly listening to her conversation and by following her everywhere; and when I couldn’t be near her, like at night, I would fantasize about her, imagining that she was mine, that I was kissing her, touching her, undressing her... When I was tired of her, I would choose another one. But I had only one at a time, always. I had my principles. It was wonderful. I had so many girlfriends at that time, and always the prettiest ones. In some very rare instances, I would talk to one, especially if the girl was in my class. I would manage to have an assignment with her, and we would really spend hours together. Once, I even went to the house of one. Her name was Sharon. She was a tall and pretty brunette who had a real boyfriend named Terry. Sharon and I had a history assignment together and she invited me to do it at her house. We actually worked in her bedroom! Of course, nothing happened, but the few hours I spent there are among the most erotic memories of my adolescence. I kept Sharon longer than most of the other girls because she gave me enough fantasizing material to last for weeks.
Later, in college, I was kind of involved with three girls, but it didn’t go beyond the kissing stage. It’s all the more surprising as the atmosphere at the Rhode Island School of Design was extraordinarily permissive and as everybody, except for me, slept with everybody. Maybe I was not lucky with the girls who picked me or maybe I was not aggressive enough, but the same story essentially repeated itself three times. After a few days, when they let me kiss them, I had every reason to believe that it would lead further, but it never did. Finally, I broke up with the three of them because of their stubbornness, naively hoping that they would change their mind to save the relationship or that I would be luckier with the next one. Even now, I can’t believe that I was not able to make love with any of them. The most likely reason for this is that despite the particular environment and despite what they said, I was not handsome enough for them. They kept their bodies for someone else. I refuse to think that they went out with me and let themselves be kissed just because I had lots of money.
