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I
Fear That My Wife Is Insaneby
Byron Browne | |
I
fear that my wife is insane. There can be no other reason for her continued presence
here in our home. Any rational, right-thinking person would have been packed and
gone months ago. Yet, she stays and even finds a way to maintain a smile on that
marvelous, olive-skinned countenance of hers. Clearly, something, cerebrally speaking,
is not right. Consider this example.
Recently, we traveled overseas on
business. Well, we traveled overseas to begin a process that will require returning
on business in the near future. In any event, our excursion necessitated a car’s
rental, hotel bookings and airline tickets. While I sat at home earlier this month,
complaining about my classes and students, while I sat at home skimming through
magazines and books, yelling at the dog and fingering what is left of my hair,
my wife was on the computer and telephone making all of the arrangements for our
trip. That is to say, when I looked up and noticed what day of the week it was
and realized that our plans needed attending to, my wife had already taken care
of the entire mélange. I was, as usual, left pacing around the room looking for
some way to be of use for a situation that was completed.
Imagine this.
Imagine a clown at the circus. The show is in full expression and he, this clown,
is in the back dressing room trying to decide which shade of red make-up to apply
to his fat cheeks. This done, he then spends several minutes trying on different
pairs of big, slapping, wagging clown shoes. He chooses the right pair. Maybe
the blue ones with the wide, white stripe down the middle. These always get a
laugh, although he’s unsure why. Then, maybe, he takes a phone call. Not an unimportant
one, but one that probably could have waited until the show’s completion. Now,
he’s ready and waddles out into and under the big-top only to discover that, not
only is the show over but, the crowds are gone and the big-top is being dismantled
for the next show down the road in the next town. “Nice job, clown!” a stagehand
might yell, sardonically. The other clowns sneer-having been left to perform on
their own.
Of course, I am that clown. How many times have I emerged from
the fog of my own thoughts and machinations to discover that the house has been
cleaned, the laundry washed, ironed and folded and the dishes put away? Not just
once, after completing a few of these pages, have I found dinner steaming on the
table- having appeared as if by magic. These things, and many others besides,
are done by my wife daily, hourly in fact, to the soft, strumming melody of matrimony.
She states that she does these things because she loves me-because the perfection
of these chores comes as easily and naturally as waking. She tells me not to worry-
that she does these things because she enjoys taking care of the house and those
things in it, our son and myself included.
And then, we’re overseas. My
wife has booked a car rental and it is the first time we have done this. Frequently,
we have taken students to Europe as supplements to their educations. Many times
we have taken ourselves there to augment our own education. However never, although
we thought and spoke of it often, have we rented a car to drive ourselves around.
And then, here we are leaving the airport in a kitchen appliance with a standard
shift- a Citroën about the size of a Mr. Coffee machine. And, we’re in a town
we have never experienced. We (she) have printed driving directions showing the
route from the airport to the hotel and the papers demonstrate that the hotel
is very near and should take us about 10 minutes to reach. The illustration shows
a path that resembles a block-U turn. Easy. But, ten minutes becomes a half hour,
then a full hour. I’m shifting between first and second gears so repeatedly that
you would think I’m trying to teach the car a new dance step. We pass the same
middle-aged, open-shirted, beer-swigging man so many times that he begins to wave
as we pass. All at once, to him at least, we’re locals.
Then a fatal moment
arrives. We must perform tasks that my wife and I abhor- me, to ask directions
and she, to translate that information. Time after time my wife leaves the car
that I have parked on the sidewalk to ask directions from someone unfortunate
enough to have placed themselves within striking distance of our ignorance. Oddly,
no one has heard of the hotel. The street the hotel is on, likewise, is a mystery
to the town’s residents. We think of calling but we don’t know where we are to
offer as a starting point. In the end we become very familiar with a section of
town that is miles from the hotel. Turns out, we passed it about three times and
it was, in fact, just outside the airport. Throughout all of this, a sequence
of events that normally would have broken me, a series of happenings that normally
would have seen me ranting like Basil Fawlty, my wife smiled and laughed and mollified
my melting temperament.
I tell you all this to show that from the trip’s
inception, the planning, booking and execution, my wife handled the logistics
with an enviable alacrity. To hear her tell it, she undertook all of these tasks
solely because she wanted to-she wanted to make the experience less stressful
and more enjoyable for me. However, I’m not sure that the whole business was totally
altruistic. She may extract some satisfaction from placing herself in charge of
details. As an artist she is comfortable either arranging the minutiae of hundreds
of pieces of broken, colored glass into a mosaic or sewing stretches of cloth
of varying sizes and textures into something extraordinary. Perhaps she simply
has a predilection for creating order from chaos.
Whatever the reasons
(I suspect it is a combination of things) for her managing all of these challenges,
I am still worried that she is not quite right in the head. The housework, the
trip planning, her classes and students and my son and me are all orchestrated
with a smile. Also, she seems to sleep just fine. Something’s not right.
I’d
tell you more about her incredible character-because there is more to tell-but
she has just called me to dinner. It was her usual announcement to me when I’m
back here writing: “cena est· lista, mi payaso!” Payaso. It’s one of her
terms of endearment for me. It means clown.
Copyright Byron
Browne
Notes From Over Here October
2, 2009 Column
Byron Browne can be reached at Byron.Browne@gmail.com
Related Topics:
Marriage
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