Something Happened

around her different kinds of boredom. I'm content with the boredom I have. (If I kill my wife, who will take care of the children? If I kill my children, my wife can take care of herself. A prudent family man must plan ahead toward possibilities like that in order to provide for his loved ones.) I almost wish my wife would go ahead and commit adultery already so I can get my divorce.

(I'm not sure I can do it without her.)

My wife is at that stage now where she probably should commit adultery — and would, if she had more character. It might do her much good. I remember the first time I committed adultery. (It wasn't much good.)

'Now I am committing adultery,' I thought.

It was not much different from the first time I laid my wife after we were married:

'Now I am laying my wife,' I thought.

It would mean much more to her (I think), for I went into my marriage knowing I would commit adultery the earliest chance I had (it was a goal; committing adultery, in fact, was one of the reasons for getting married), while she did not (and probably has not really thought of it yet. It may be that I do all the thinking about it for her). I did not even give up banging the other girl I'd been sleeping with fairly regularly until some months afterward. I hit four or five other girls up at least once those first two years also just to see for myself that I really could.

I think I might really feel like killing my wife, though, if she did it with someone I know in the company. My wife has red lines around her waist and chest when she takes her clothes off and baggy pouches around the sides and bottom of her behind, and I would not want anyone I deal with in the company to find that out. (I would want them to see her only at her best. Without those red marks.)

My wife is not as wanton and debauched as most of the young girls and women we're apt to find ourselves with today (and I would not want any of the men I work with to know that about her, either. I don't want anyone I know in the company to be able to blab to anyone else I know that my wife has red marks on her body and just might not be the most versatile piece of ass in the world), although I like that about her — I would not want her the other way — and repay her virtue and restraint with frequent overflows of affection and esteem and frequent acts of kindness. (I'll take her to church.)

Sober, my wife is a lady (and makes me proud). Especially when we entertain. She does that beautifully. (We had Arthur Baron and his wife to dinner once last year and she was superb. Everyone there had a good time.) We do not entertain as much anymore because of Derek. (He produces strain. We have to pretend he doesn't.) I used to like him when I still thought he was normal. I was fond of him and had fun. I joked with him. I used to call him Dirk, and Kiddo, Steamshovel, Dinky Boy, and Dicky Dare. Till I found out what he was. Now it's always formal: Derek. (You prick.)

(Why won't you leave us alone?)

My wife is happiest of all when I'm simply relaxed and kind, and responds to my acts of consideration with lively gratitude and astonished gaiety. It is so easy to make my wife happy it's really a crime we don't do it more often. (She's even prettier when she's feeling good, her face lights up. She doesn't hide it.) I try. When I can. (It isn't always easy to want to.) I'll make the children come along with us to church when I go, and we'll generally have a joyful time. (It isn't always easy to want to be kind and make her happy when I'm thinking of death, murder, adultery, and divorce.)

I feel tense, poor, bleak, listless, depressed (and she calls that strange). I have jagged, wracking inner conflicts filing, slicing, hacking, and sawing away inside me mercilessly like instruments of bone, stone, glass, or rusty, blunted iron butchering their own irreducible muscular mass, and so does she (but won't acknowledge it) almost everywhere we go now but church, which is one reason she might be so eager to go. (The world just doesn't work. It's an idea whose time has gone.)

My wife is a cheerful Congregationalist now (when she isn't getting drunk and crude at parties or humping me on floors or against the butcher-block table in the kitchen or outside at night on our redwood patio furniture). My wife is a devout and cheerful Congregationalist now because the building is airy and the people friendlier than the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians she has gotten to know since we moved from the city to Connecticut.

'Episcopalians,' she has told me, 'are the ones who go shush in movies.'

And I laughed.

(My wife can often make me laugh.) She will bake for cake sales. She will even stop drinking in the day-time well in advance of church socials, and she will grow more reserved in bed. (I can almost always tell when some spectacular social gala is in the offing at church by the waning initiative in her sex drive.)

I am a registered Republican (who nearly always votes Democratic sneakily) and believe I am nearer to God than she.

'The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,' says the new minister, who has been with us just about a year and seems to want a good deal more than he has in the way of social contact and community influence. (He strikes me as a man with his eye out for a better job in a growth industry.)

No registered Republican would go quite that far. We'll let the Lord be our shepherd readily enough, but there's plenty we'll want, no matter how much we've already got. Otherwise we'll fire Him, retire Him, or ease Him aside.

I'll let my wife drive us to church some Sundays when I'm feeling especially benign and charitable (the children exchange cryptic, supercilious signals during the service but do so inconspicuously, because they do not want to embarrass my wife) and then, often, feel like breaking her neck afterward for making me go and ruining my whole day. (I could have slept late, or phoned around for golf invitations. After all, how many years' worth of Sundays do I have left? Thirty? Two?)

'That new minister of yours,' I might announce sonorously on the way back, pausing to make certain the two children in the rear of the open convertible are brought in as accomplices, 'gives me a sharp pain in the ass.'

The children crane forward delightedly.

My wife purses her lips with a sidelong smile and decides to pretend to whistle. It will take more than a little routine baiting this fine sunny morning to crinkle the state of euphoria she's in as a result of having shown up in church with her husband and children. At moments like this, we are suddenly very close. (They don't last.) My wife even had the hope not long ago of walking unashamedly into church one day with Derek too. I killed that one quick.

'What say, Dad?' inquires my daughter, to help things along, when she sees my wife intends to remain silent.

'I really don't think,' chastises my wife amiably, going along with the game against us in a manner of placid contemplation, 'you ought to say things like that in front of the children.'

'Like what?' I am all contrived innocence.

'If you don't know.'

'Minister?'

'No.'

'What then?'

'You know.'

'I've no idea.'

'What?' demands my boy, bouncing on his haunches in anticipation as the three of us close in on her.

'Donkey,' exclaims my wife in triumph, evading his snare nimbly.

'No fair. He didn't say donkey.'

'I know, dear.'

'He said ass,' says my daughter.

'I know, darling. And I think he's depraved.'

'And I'm inclined to agree,' I second immediately. 'And his English is terrible. And I don't think it's healthy to bring the children to church to listen to a depraved minister.'

'I'm not talking about him!'

'His vocabulary's pretentious and his syntax is frequently wrong.'

'I'm talking about you. I'm not talking about his language. I'm talking about yours.'

'Well, it is.'