Something Happened

known each other.

'I love you.'

What funny words ever to have to say. (They become more flexible if you're allowed to add a couple of others fore and aft to round them off with some frills of humor or sarcasm that pervert the meaning. Something like:

'Gee, baby, I sure do love you a lot whe______________'

Complete the above statement in fifteen words or less.)

I have not told my wife I love her, I think, since shortly after Arthur Baron first proposed Andy Kagle's job for me, and that was at night in bed and the meaning was sexual (which is not what she means. My wife does not know yet that it will be Andy Kagle's job I'm taking). It gnaws at my wife's self-esteem, tears at her pride and vanity that I do not say:

'I love you.'

I relish that. I have it on her. It has nothing at all to do with love. It has more to do with hate. We hoard pillows. We have big, fluffy, soft ones now, and she steals mine when I'm asleep. Also, she sleeps better than I do, which arouses so much wrath in me that I can hardly sleep at all, and then she maintains she's been awake all night with heartburn, headache, and humanitarian concern over the well-being of others. (I'm the one who's been awake. She won't stay in her part of the house, as my son and daughter prefer to do now. She won't answer the telephone, even though the calls are mostly for her. When one does come for me, she'll wait until I've been talking for thirty seconds and then pick up the extension breathlessly to shout: 'Hello?' We run out of light bulbs.) There is face to be saved in this tug-of-war, and I want to save mine. This is one victory she cannot pluck away from me. I have the advantage, because I don't care if she never says it to me (although I might begin to care if I felt she didn't).

She wants me to say it precisely that way:

'I love you.'

I prefer to sidle into it through methods of my own.

'Oh, Mom!' my daughter exclaimed in the car, pulling close to her in a hug. 'I just love her when she kids around this way.'

'So do I,' I said, edging it in.

There it was. But that isn't good enough. It doesn't do the trick.

(I meant it when I did.)

I've said it to her also the way she wants me to and will again; but I refuse to say it when she is trying to make me. I balk. I have my masculinity and self-esteem to protect against this indecent attack. I resist.

Call it spite. Call it petty spite. But call it highly sensual and gratifying spite.

'Would I be here with you if I didn't?' I have answered.

'Then why don't you ever say so?'

'I love you — there! I did.'

'You never tell me.'

'I just did.'

'But I had to ask you — no, don't smile, don't say anything, don't make a joke out of it,' she laments (just as I am about to make a joke out of it). 'I guess I expect too much.'

My wife not only wants me to say:

'I love you.'

She wants me to want to say it!

'I love you.'

'Do you?'

'I just said so, didn't I?'

'I had to ask you. I always have to make you say it.'

And I might consent to let her make me, out of the hospitable goodness of my heart, if I did not know there was this contest between us that I don't want to lose. I might make a deal with her on it anyway if she'd get me the pillows I want and stop snoring or breathing away indifferently in such slumbering, nasal contentment while I'm still lying awake trying to sleep.

'Get more pillows, for God sakes. We've got more cars and television sets than we have pillows.'

We've got four pillows for our king-size bed (which is something of a mocking joke. We could move around it for years and never come in contact with each other if we didn't want to. We do not sleep entwined). And I want her to get at least four more, maybe five. She forgets. I want there to be enough for me, which means at least one or two more than there are for her. (When we do buy light bulbs, we put them in places we can't find when we need one. We run out of toilet paper. The ladies run out of sanitary napkins. The world is running out of good maids and qualified laundresses, cobblers, and tailors. The wheels are falling off this gyroscoping toy. It hasn't stood the test of time. I can't get a maid to remember to put fresh towels in my bathrooms after she removes the old ones. I can't get my wife to serve dinner on time unless there's company.) It is very important to me where I sleep in relationship to her. I want more pillows under my head than she has so that I will be above her. I sleep almost against the headboard so that she will be below me. It is very important to me that my wife seem small. She isn't. We are nearly the same height, unless she kicks her shoes off. That was uncomfortable when we used to dance, still is when we want to kiss (we bunk foreheads and noses); and I still cannot walk with my arm around her shoulders without experiencing twinges of tendonitis. My wife just doesn't seem to fit. I want my wife's face on a line with my shoulder or lower when we sleep, make love, walk, or eat; I do not want it confronting me on a level equal to my own. (When we're out in public, though, I'm glad she's straight and handsome. She cuts a stately figure when she's all dressed up and makes a dazzling impression for me if she isn't drunk and obnoxious.) She is starting to snap her chewing gum again when she sits beside me in the car or movies. She goes back to chewing gum when she's trying to stop drinking. It drives me up the wall, nearly out of my mind with pent-up rage, some nights to see and hear her sleeping soundly in futile battles against worry, hurt, grievance, and overstimulation. (There are nights after drinking while I am lying wide awake lot or thinking very hard about matters at the office that I am unable to turn off my mind for hours or even slow to a governable tempo the free-flight of disjointed ideas from all sources that go racing through my brain. I never think of anything good. I sometimes think of something good.) I want to pummel her. I want to hiss vitriol. It is there in the darkness of sleep, when no one is looking, not even ourselves, that our true rudimentary spirits emerge. Like furled and eyeless embryos, we wage war murderously over areas of quilt and corners of pillow; bumps of knee and hip are the weapons we use; mewing grunts and moans are the curses and battle cries. (We are babies, although we probably did not feel this way when we were babies.) It infuriates me that she does not even know I'm awake. I feel martyred by neglect. (Some nights I can sleep and she can't: it registers upon me that she is leaving the bed repeatedly in some state of agitation, and I doze off again more blissfully as a result of this knowledge.) I am in a turmoil of tragic insomnia, and she is lying inches away from me in a mellow stupor of oblivious tranquillity. How dare she be so insensitive to my wretchedness and distress, especially when it's all probably her fault. And I want to shake her awake roughly.

'Get up, you, dammit you! Why should you be able to sleep when I can't? And it's all your fault.'

She wouldn't know what I was talking about and might think I'd gone mad.

'Do you love me?' she might ask.

She doesn't ask it anymore. She knows we are in a struggle also and has too much pride to fly a white flag of ignominious defeat. (I'm glad she doesn't. I would have to make concessions. I wish it were over.)

I think I know when it will end, how I will be able to disengage us from this stalemate and resolve the conflict in a way rewarding to both: on her deathbed.

'Don't die,' I can say then. 'I love you.'

I will have my honor. She will be appeased. I will be a hundred and eight years old. She will be a few years younger. I will have to start doing my own shopping in supermarkets and groceries to make certain there is coffee and juice in the house for me. I will have to sell the house and move to an apartment. (And then I will miss her.)

She hasn't asked in years. Age and self-respect, I think, have stilled the question every time she wanted to ask:

'Do you still love me?'