Arsenic.
We’re all respectable members of the community here, right? We know each other. We trust each other. None of us could ever even contemplate something like this. Something so grotesque, so inhumane. And Mrs. Jones, we thought we knew her too. We thought, nay knew, she was one of us, another well-to-do suburban wife in a well-to-do suburban family. She went to church on Sunday, for God’s sake. Braided her daughter’s hair. Fixed her son’s tie, and the best fried chicken and okra on this side of the Mississippi! Mission trips to Haiti for those poor, godforsaken orphans. PTA meetings and brunches and baseball games. She was the best one of us, truly. She still is.
If Deborah Jones was capable of something like this, we all are. That’s the hard truth that not a one of us wants to face.
Heck, Shelly, I know you have a drinking problem, who’s to say that you wouldn’t be capable of smashing a wine glass against a cheating man’s head in a drunken stupor?
Catherine, I know you aren’t happy here. Who’s to say you couldn’t just...pick up one of those fancy kitchen knives while you’re dicing them strawberries and twist it into the side of one of your pesky little progeny?
Delilah, I know you’ve got the postpartums. If you could drown each of your noisy little sorrows, well, would you?
Lucille, you’re barely keeping your head together as it is with Tommy gone. Charlene, I know where you been goin’ at a quarter till nine, and it ain’t to the dryclean! Sheilla, how far would you go to keep quiet that you got a bastard son? Elaine, I know you done have some regrets that you would kill to undo.
Georgia, you eat like a pig and you cinch that corset so tight I know your brains are practically popping out of your head - if you had any in the first place! What would it take to lose some weight? What if you could sell your soul for an hourglass torso? What if all you had to provide was a measly little life?
Agatha, your face ain’t any better than them pastries you make, and that’s saying a lot, especially since I know how long a day you spend caking it.
Darlene, your pride’ll be the death of you and I know you skipped Mass the last seven Sundays. Lord have mercy! And Charlotte, poor Charlotte, you’re the worst off of us all. Can’t keep a figure, can’t keep a husband, can’t even keep the house clean. You’d kill to be Deborah Jones.
All I’m saying is, if she could wrap her mind around something like that, if she could bring herself to it, imagine what the rest of y'all must have already done in your sleep. Sending her off to prison would be like selling yourselves out, because she’s everything you wish you were and everything you ain’t. Jealousy, really, condemning perfect domestic tranquility to make your rotten hearts satisfied for a few minutes, broiling with sins and secrets.
Her purity emphasizes everything you lack, and her downfall would leave you feeling smug and whole. There really isn’t anyone who can do it better than you can once she's gone, at least that’s what each of you would rather believe. Even the perfect Southern housewife is flawed. Envy is just a dressed-up, green-eyed monster, and I can see it writhing in each of your eyes now. You know she didn’t do it.
You can’t condemn her and admit that everything we aspire to - her allure and her feminine mystique - is a facade. Docile women, demure women, good women - don't feel rage. They don't fail to keep their husbands happy or their children well-fed. They praise the Lord and are fully content with His righteous plan for them. Right? So to insinuate that Deborah - the pinnacle of housewivery - could fall prey to an unfeminine wrath so intense that she could... that she could...taint her loving family’s delicious dinner... Nay, that would undermine your very existences. Look at that shaking woman and see her for who she is: modest, charming, innocent. Your secrets are safe with me.