such a sad sack, “betrayed” by his wife—and before long you’d had some other little girl-woman taking care of you. Your kind never does without for very long.
God, I’m tired. I’ve been cleaning the house from top to bottom. I’ve been going room by room, and it’s amazing how much you can get done if you really put your mind to it. Of course, there’s just me now in it, no one else to track mud through the just waxed kitchen floor, no one to spill soda or fruit juice on the carpet, no one to leave toothpaste gobs in the bathroom sink. I mean, I know I’m a little messy now and then, but I swear, hon, that I think you used to do it on purpose. I would just get something clean, and you’d go and drip something gooey on it, and I’d have to scrub it again. I know you got a big kick out of it—sometimes, even with my head down as I scrubbed, I could see you out of the corner of my eye, and you’d be grinning this big old grin. Yeah, that was a big kick for you. Really got your rocks off on it, didn’t you? Just another way to keep me under your thumb. Of course, the times I decided not to clean, not to sweep up after you and the kids, the place became a real pigsty, and I got worried for their health. Not yours, mind you, but theirs.
Not that it matters any more. Nothing much matters any more, I guess.
Except that I have a very clean house.
And I can sleep in as late as I want in the morning. No one demanding to know where their lunch is or their schoolbooks, didn’t I iron a shirt, why didn’t I do that, just as if the three of you couldn’t do a lick of work yourselves. I guess it was just easier to sit in front of the tube and have good ol’ Mom run your errands and wait on you like I was your maid.
That’s pretty much a pattern in my family, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. My mother waited on my father hand and foot, and even though he’d be sitting closer to something, he’d ask her to get it for him. And she’d do it. Her mother did it for my grandfather, too. I hated that when I was going up; I hated my father for using my mom like some work animal, and I hated her for going along with it. Never once did he thank her, or say, sit down, Bess, you’re tired, I’ll get my beer, I’ll make myself a sandwich, hey, do you want something too? Never. Not in over thirty years of marriage. She resented him, of course, and it would come out in little ways, tiny pettinesses, as if she were getting back at him for everything she’d ever suffered. I don’t think he ever noticed, though. My mother was too much of a “lady,” though, to ever publicly complain. She never said a word to me, either, just pressed her lips together whenever she heard him calling her from the front room.
I vowed that when I got married and had children I’d make them do things for themselves. There’s nothing wrong with fetching something for someone—if you’re up already or whatever, but to expect someone to do everything for you...well, they abolished slavery over a century ago, you know.
Somehow all my good plans went awry. All of a sudden, it seems, I found myself getting your cup of coffee, then leaping up during a commercial to get another cup for you so you wouldn’t miss your show, and then the kids came along, and I was doing this and that for them when they were too little, and suddenly they were bigger kids and still demanding too much from me.
But when I got sick last week and was too tired to do anything for anyone, you all got so belligerent with me. What the hell did I think I was doing? Who did I think I was? And the unkindest cut of all: didn’t I love you all anymore? For God’s sakes, I was sick! I was puking up my guts half the night, running a fever, and all you did was peevishly demand to know why I hadn’t done the laundry. I could have shit the sheets, and you would have just stood there and complained about the smell and not lifted your hands to change them.
I was getting real worried and wanted to go to the doctor for some medicine, but you kept saying there wasn’t anything really wrong with me, that I was just being lazy. Lazy. Right. I think I almost died I was so sick. I was out of my head with fever most of the time.
I guess that’s when I began to see things a lot more clearly. Maybe the fever helped. I don’t know. I just know that I started to feel a lot different after I was back on my feet.
And you were still pouting, still whining that I didn’t love you or the kids.
Of course, I did, but you can love someone almost too much. You can’t smother them, can’t do everything for them; kids—and adults—have to do things on their own. It’s how they become real people.
I’m still tired, you know. This illness really took it out of me. Let me close my eyes for a while. I just want to rest them. That’s what my grandmother always said. We used to tease her about it.
There now. I’m closing them. I’m resting. I’m....
Oh, God, did I doze? Jeez, I guess so. It’s nearly two. Excuse me, while I yawn.
You know for a moment there it was almost like old times. You and me and a drowsy do-nothing type of afternoon. You remember how we use to lay on the bed upstairs, with just the whisper of a breeze coming in the window, stirring those gauzy curtains I’d picked up at the flea market? We would talk for a bit, then drift off to sleep, then wake up again, to finish our conversation, just like minutes hadn’t passed. That was fun.
There were fun times, you know. Don’t think I’ve forgotten them. I haven’t. And there are many more memories I cherish as well.
It’s just that there were so many more bad times, and in the past few years that’s all I’ve had—bad times with you and the kids.
Sorry, Randy. Yawned again. I think I’m going to go to bed early tonight. I’ve got a lot of errands to run tomorrow, and I want to get them done before it gets too hot.
Boy, I wish we had a swimming pool. It sure would be nice to strip and take a swim. The best time would be at night, though, feeling that cool water against my warm skin. Lying in the moonlight, then taking another dip.... We were always going to put in a pool, remember, but somehow we never got around to it. There was always something else for us to spend our money on. The truck, the boat, the cabin at the lake. All the things that you enjoyed. Few of the things that I like.
Well, I guess that’s water under the bridge, or something like that now, right?
Just where did all our hopes go to, hon? What happened to that eager young woman, that attentive man? When did we become the people we are today?
I don’t know. I really don’t.
Maybe it all began to change when the kids came.
Everything changes in a marriage, they say, when you have kids. I didn’t think it would. Not really. I certainly didn’t think our situation would get worse. But it did. The kids might as well have had just one parent for all the help you gave me. If they saw you at all in the first year I’d be real surprised. But boy, when we were out, you sure took all the credit, just like you’d carried them yourself for nine months.
You know, I just never realized how much you envied me. It wasn’t just for having the kids, but for a lot of other things. Things I couldn’t see before. And here you always told me I was the empty vessel, waiting to have something poured in it.
You were wrong. Dead wrong. You were empty.
And that’s all I’ve got to say on the matter. Maybe I’ll be in a better mood tomorrow. Maybe not.
I gotta go.
There. Locked the car doors. I’d crack the windows, Randy, but you understand...the smell and all. I don’t want someone just happening by and
