How did I not anticipate this moment?
Oh, right. I thought when we left the cruise ship behind us, and karaoke along with it, that that would put an end to ABBA. But now it’s followed us back, it’s here, it’s in my home, and what the hell am I going to do? My wife loves this, she’s singing along with it for crying out loud. How am I going to ever tell her that her taste in music sucks?
I can’t tell her that.
Can I?
No, no, of course I can’t.
So what do I do? I suffer through the entire disc, right up to the very last song, which is also “Waterloo,” because it’s not enough that they sing it in Swedish as the first song of the album, oh no, they also have to close out the album with the English version.
Please, shoot me now.
But not before I make sure that we don’t have to listen to anything like that again.
“Honey?” I suggest. “Maybe we could just listen to whatever’s on the radio for a while?”
She thinks about it for a moment but then shrugs and switches the CD to radio.
Phew. I can go back to unpacking my books in peace.
“Hey,” I say, “my cat book!”
“Your what?”
“This is the book I was telling you about,” I say. “It’s what’s been helping me figure out what goes on in Fluffy’s mind. See the title: What’s Going on in Your Cat’s Mind. Where do you think I should put it?”
“On your side of the bed?”
And that is…?
I look around, realize we definitely are going to be using her bed, so I find her second night table and put my book on it.
After I put my book in its place, I realize my wife is singing. The song on the radio is one I like, “Lonely No More” by Rob Thomas, only I’ve never heard it sung before quite like Helen is doing now and then she commits a cardinal sin. She sings, “Open up to me, and let me do your girlfriends.”
No, no, no, no, no! How can someone garble a line of a well-known song like that? And what kind of sense would that make? Open up to me, and let me do your girlfriends. Dude! If you’re doing your girl’s girlfriends, there’s a good chance you’ll be lonely forever, even I know that.
So of course the line isn’t that absurd thing Helen just said. The line is Open up to me, like you do your girlfriends.
Big difference. Are we all agreed on this?
Oh my god, my wife is a song garbler.
But wait. I can just tell her this, can’t I? I can gently tell her that the lyrics she just sang were wrong, and further explain chapter and verse on why they’re so wrong. We’ll laugh about it together, right?
Then I realize, no, I can’t tell her. She’d probably be hurt—who likes to have it pointed out to them that they’re foolishly wrong?—or worse, angry at me. No, I better just keep quiet on this one.
But really. Crap. A wife who can’t sing is not great. A wife who garbles lyrics is not great. But does she have to be both?
Maybe she doesn’t do the garbling thing all the time?
By the time we finish unpacking I will know:
She does it: All. The. Time.
Sunday Bloody Sunday
I’m jolted out of sleep by a sound I hope to never hear again in my life, that of my wife letting out a bloodcurdling scream.
“What?” I shout, my eyes snapping open just in time to see her body jackknife. Holy shit. Did she just become possessed by the devil? Is she having a heart attack?
But no. As her arms and legs settle down into a more natural position, I see Fluffy sitting on her pelvis.
I know it’s wrong but, yeah, I laugh.
It’s probably just relief, relief that neither her soul nor her body are in imminent peril, but I do laugh.
Which is obviously a mistake.
“It’s not funny,” she says.
“I know but—” I laugh again.
“Just get your cat off of me,” she says.
My cat? But now that we’re married, shouldn’t Fluffy be our cat?
Still, judging from the stormy expression on her face, perhaps now is not the time to argue semantics with her.
“What the hell was that?” she says after I scoop Fluffy off of her. “Why would he do that?”
“Aw, he wasn’t trying to hurt you,” I say. I look over her body at the alarm clock and just as I suspect: It’s six A.M. “He’s just being a feline alarm clock.”
“He’s doing what?”
“It’s a habit he’s gotten into.” It’s true. It’s something he started doing during the past three months before we got married, the period when Helen and I stopped sleeping together. “He knows what time I get up in the morning on weekdays, so sometimes he jumps on me around this time to make sure I get up and fill his kibble bowl, maybe play a little.”
“But it’s Sunday. He does this on Sunday too?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, he’s a cat. He doesn’t know what day of the week it is.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for him to sleep in here anymore,” Helen says. “I think we’re going to have to start closing the bedroom door when we go to sleep at night.”
Close the…?
“I just can’t have it, Johnny,” she says. “It hurt. And did you see how scared I was? I thought I was going to have a heart attack.”
Well, when she puts it like that, but…
Seriously? I’m going to have to give up sleeping with Fluffy?
I close the door with Fluffy on the other side. I wonder what’s going through his furry little brain. “Did Fluffy do something wrong?” “Why you do Fluffy like this?” Whenever I picture Fluffy’s thoughts, it’s always with him thinking of himself in the third person because I don’t think “I” is in his vocabulary. He must be so confused by all this.
But as Helen spoons her back into me, that feels good; and when we fall asleep together for another few hours, that’s also good; and when we take our first shower together in our new home, that’s even better.
Working out what we’re going to have for breakfast is more of a chore, but somehow we manage. And Fluffy doesn’t look too hurt.
Later, Helen comes to me with a list she’s made.
“Even though it’s a Sunday,” she says, “I called the movers. They’re going to come back today and take away everything we don’t want.”
I look over the list. Apparently everything we don’t want includes everything of mine with two exceptions: my pool table and the second big-screen TV.
“I guess this is OK,” I say. “Maybe at some point you and me can go shopping? You know, pick out furniture we both like?”
“Sure,” she says, “that could happen. We might do that at some point. OK, can you let the movers in? I’m going out for a bit.”
“Out?” Without me? “Where are you going?”
“To pick up paint charts. I want to start looking for colors to paint this place.”
Paint? But isn’t paint my job?
Can’t Trust That Day
Monday arrives and with it a return to work. Helen left a half hour ago and I’m watching the morning shows with Fluffy when the doorbell rings, so I hit the mute buttons before answering it.
“Sam!” I say when I see who’s on the other side.
Sam and me aren’t much for hugging but we indulge now because it’s rare for us to go a whole week without seeing each other. We actually talked on the phone yesterday; in fact, I called everyone to let them know that Helen and I were back. While I was on the phone with Sam, I started to invite her over to watch some sports but Helen shook her head so I never finished the invitation, which was actually kind of awkward. If memory serves, I believe it went something like, “Hey, you want to come over and…go to work with me tomorrow as planned?” When I got off the phone, Helen said it was simply that it was our first weekend in the house and she thought it would be nicer with just us two, plus we had a lot to do, which was understandable.
And anyway, none of that matters now bec
ause Sam’s here.
“Ooh, I like what you’ve done to the place,” Sam says, snaking by me into the foyer and beyond.
“You do?” I say, unaccountably pleased. Hey, I know what I’m feeling—I’m feeling house-proud!
“Not really,” Sam says, turning in a circle to take in the living room and the dining area that’s through an arched doorway. “It’s just what you say when you walk into someone’s new home.” She shakes her head. “I don’t get it.”
“What don’t you get?” I’m still reeling from the revelation that maybe she doesn’t really like what we’ve done with the place.
“I let the movers in for you. I know they brought your stuff in. I saw it with my own eyes. So, where’d it all go?”
I explain.
“Let me get this straight,” Sam says. “Helen made you get rid of all your stuff but kept all of hers?”
I guess that pretty much sums it up but those are not the words I would have chosen.
It doesn’t help that just then, the grandfather clock Helen’s parents gave us bongs eight times—loudly—to mark the hour.
“Well,” I say after the eight bongs are finished, “I did get to keep my pool table and the big-screen TV.” I give a chin nod to the far corner of the living room where both TVs are set up perpendicular to one another in front of the sectional and ottoman. The movers had left them side by side but Helen and I decided this arrangement would work better.
“Now that is cool,” Sam says.
“I know, right? Check this out.” I pick up the remotes and unmute the two TVs. “I can watch Morning Joe and one of the stupid network morning shows at the same time. No longer will I have to choose between politics and finding out what Brangelina are up to.”
“It’s like the ultimate in luxury.”
“I know, right? I do worry about Angelina, though. Do you think she eats enough? I don’t think she eats enough.”
“She’s spraying to mark her territory.”
“Angelina?” I say. I’m confused.
“Your wife,” Sam clarifies, “the little lady.”
“Don’t call her that, Sam. Leo’s wife was The Little Lady and she’s gone.”
“OK, then, Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith is spraying to mark her territory, just like a cat. That’s why there’s only her stuff here except for the extra TV.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “Were you reading my cat psychology book while I was gone?”
“Maybe.”
“And do you have to call her Mrs. Smith? You make it sound like she should be baking pies.”
“Yeah, but didn’t Angelina play Mrs. Smith in that movie she and Brad fell in love with each other while filming—you know, Mr. and Mrs. Smith?”
“Do you think we could go to work now?”
We stop by the paint-supply store first and then Leo’s to pick up coffee. Even though Leo’s been dead since the fall, the coffee shop is still called Leo’s, only now a young husband-and-wife team own it and nothing is the same. It’s got, like, a couch in the middle of it now. On the whiteboard, all the breakfast and lunch specials are listed in various scripts, each with a different-colored Magic Marker, and it’s all just too bright and perky for first thing in the morning. The coffee doesn’t even taste the same. And the husband part of the ownership? Not a big sports fan.
I’d find another place to get coffee in the morning, but, you know: force of habit. And the owner isn’t really a douche or anything, so long as we don’t talk about sports.
Guy’s name is Bailey.
Him: What can I get you?
Me: Two large coffees to go—one black, the other practically white and sweet—and the largest sugary thing you’ve got.
Him (two minutes later): Here you go.
Me (paying): Thanks.
Him: No. Thank you! Have a good one!
Definitely not the same.
I leave Leo’s, juggling two cups of coffee and a bag with some large sugary thing in it for Sam and there’s Sam in the passenger side of my truck. She’s got the windows down because the day is already shaping up to be a scorcher but she likes to put off turning on the AC for as long as possible. She’s got on a T-shirt and super-short shorts—summertime work uniform for her—and her insanely long legs are propped on my dashboard as she bops to some music she’s got coming from the radio.
I get in the car, switch the station to The Wave, hand over her sugar injection, and tell her to get her feet off my dash as I key the ignition.
Pull into traffic, her legs are still on the dash.
“If we get in a really bad accident,” I say, “your legs’ll get broken.”
“If we get in a really bad accident,” she says, “I’ll probably be dead anyway so I doubt I’ll notice.”
Fucking Sam.
She slugs back some coffee. “So, how’s married life treating you? The Wife getting on your nerves yet?”
I’m not sure that “The Wife,” said like that with capital letters, is an improvement over Mrs. Smith.
“It’s great,” I say. “And no, why would she be getting on my nerves?”
“I don’t know.” Sam shrugs. “I always figured that’s what happens after two people get married.”
“Says the woman who knows so much about marriage.”
“You never know. I might do it someday. It’s legal in Connecticut now. So tell me more about your honeymoon.”
I start by telling her the good things—like how it constantly amazed me and still amazes me that Helen is my wife—but before long, for some inexplicable reason, I find myself telling her about karaoke and Helen’s singing.
“Your wife, that gorgeous creature, can’t carry a note?”
“Not a single one,” I say. “On top of that, she garbles lyrics.” I tell her about the Rob Thomas song.
“Who does that?” she says. “If you don’t know the lyrics, why would you make crap up?”
“I know, right? Isn’t it better to just hum? You know, dee-dee-dee-dee-dee?”
“Exactly,” she says.
We ride in silence for a few minutes, feeling complete satisfaction in our agreement on this issue. But then I start to feel bad. Should I be talking about my wife like this, out loud, even if it is only with Sam?
The guys on The Wave are talking about the Ike Davis situation.
“Could only happen to the Mets,” one of them says. “Whoever heard of Valley Fever before this? And did you hear about that guy who lost nearly a whole year’s playing time when he had it? OK, we’re taking calls. Caller, you’re up. Who’ve we got on the line?”
“Never mind that,” says a voice I know and love well, a voice that just last year I used to think of as Sexy Caller until I discovered it was Helen. “The media does this all the time. You people find one guy—one guy!—who was out for nearly a year with it, but that’s not a typical case. It’s really not a big deal. Davis’ll be fine. So untwist your panties and just let the team play ball.”
Click.
God, I love that woman.
“Well,” Sam says, “at least she didn’t sing her call in. So, are you getting on her nerves yet?”
“No,” I answer immediately. “Of course not.”
But wait a second.
Am I?
We pull up in front of the job, the McMillan place.
“What’re we doing today, Boss?” Sam asks.
“Living room,” I say, “Chartreuse Chamber’s the color they picked out.”
Sam makes a face. “That sounds purely awful.”
“I know, right?”
“We’re going to have to stop doing that,” Sam says.
“Doing what?”
“Saying ‘I know, right?’”
“But we always say that. We’ve been saying that, like, forever.”
“I know and that’s why we have to stop. We need something new, fresh, different.”
Huh.
“Um, I’ll get right on that,” I say. “Now where were we?”
“You were telling me the McMillans want a Chartreuse Chamber living room, I was saying it sounded awful, then you said that thing we’re not going to say anymore, so it’s my turn to pick up with: And we’re going to do it anyway?”
“Yup.”
“You’re not going to try to talk the customer out of it, like you had me do with the Ryan job?”
“Nope.”
“How come?”
“Because sometimes you have to just let other people do whatever they want.”
“That sounds so Zen. Stupid too. You do know that living room’s going to look like shit, right?”
“Yeah, well.”
On the plus side, the man of the house is home and sometime after we bond over the Mets but before the job is finished, he offers me free use of his ski lodge in Vermont for a week next winter. I’m supposed to call ahead.
Sam rolls her eyes at me as I tuck his business card into my pocket.
Hey, at least I’ve still got it.
Nice thing about being your own boss, you can set your own hours. This means that by three in the afternoon, Sam and I are stretched out on opposite ends of the sofa in my new home, feet meeting somewhere in the middle, each with a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale as GH starts.
On both TVs.
“Oh my gosh,” Sam says, “this stuff with Robin Scorpio is killing me.”
“It’s brutal,” I agree. “People finding out one at a time, having to relive it each time someone new gets told—it’s like water torture, but you know, not.”
The nice thing about having a best friend you’ve had for years is that you can say anything, even bust each other’s chops, or just say nothing at all, simply living your lives side by side as Sam and I do for the next half hour while watching GH.
Well, it’s not just the two of us. Fluffy, who’s grown a taste for music, wanders in at the theme song, plopping himself on the coffee table and staring at the screen.
Is it just me, or is this cat acquiring more personality? And here I thought cats were supposed to become boring once they were no longer kittens.
Isn't It Bro-Mantic? Page 9