Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Married

by Heather McElhatton

  Winter drains away and spring blooms. I told Christopher exactly what the divorce lawyer told me: If I walk away from this marriage without justification, I’m screwed. It’s the prenup I signed. I’ll get nothing, less than nothing. Brad will get to keep everything, the stocks, the money, the property, the cars, the furniture, even my clothes. The prenup says whoever leaves without cause gets nothing. It also says anyone caught cheating gets nothing. Anyone caught committing adultery automatically forfeits all assets, joint and otherwise.

  “The real question,” Christopher says with a sigh, “is why’d you sign a prenup? Who on earth would sign a prenup?”

  “I was an idiot.” I sigh. “Like every girl getting married. I was in love. I thought my marriage would last forever. I would’ve signed anything.”

  Christopher groans.

  I tell him Brad’s mother made us sign a prenup, so neither of us would quit early or cheat and run off with all the family’s money. Christopher nods and looks impressed. “Well, at least she did her homework,” he says. “She knew to nail your shoes down.”

  “But the infidelity clause works both ways,” I tell him. “If Brad gets caught cheating on me, then he gets nothing and I get to keep everything. See?”

  “Um . . .” He looks around, confused. “No, not really.”

  “We need to catch Brad cheating.”

  “What if he isn’t cheating?”

  “Well then . . . we have to make him cheat.”

  “Make him? How do you make your husband cheat?”

  Top Ten Ways to Make Your Husband Cheat

  1. Tell him he can.

  2. Leave him alone with your cute friends.

  3. Reduce/eliminate talking to him. Walk out of the room when he walks in.

  4. Cut off all sex, including masturbation. Bang into the bathroom while he’s showering.

  5. Make yourself look like a lesbian folksinger. Wear baggy clothes and stop shaving all your leg and armpit hair. Glue extra hair on for added effect.

  6. Smell French. Refrain from using soap, perfume, or deodorant.

  7. Stop feeding him. Stop shopping for him. Stop cleaning up after him.

  8. Cancel all social engagements with him. Never have fun together. Look disappointed when he comes home.

  9. Take long trips away from home. Suggest he do the same and bring his secretary.

  10. Hang a big “Honey Do” list, aka “Nag Board,” on the wall, filled with lots of smiley faces and hearts along with nasty chores and ways he can improve himself.

  How ’bout going to the gym, honey? I’m worried about your blood pressure . . . Also, you’re getting a gut . . . I bought you a nose-hair trimmer because it looks like two miniature gorillas moved into your nose . . . I canceled your golf game and made you a doctor’s appointment—time to get checked for colon and prostate cancer!

  First things first. I tell Brad he can have an affair if he wants to. Big mistake. I thought he might take me up on it, look surprised but delighted, and say, “Really?” But no, he looks at me with suspicion and then around the room as if I’m filming this. Right away I backtrack and say I’m kidding. I smack his arm and remind him we’re cleaved together till death do us part. Of course, the way he eats and takes care of his body, that might be sooner rather than later. That triggers an argument about how I always nag him, which is exactly what I wanted to have happen. We are soon shouting at each other and quickly diverted from the topic of cheating.

  Whew.

  I move on to the next plan. Christopher and I launch into gear by . . . buying gear. Spy gear. We need hard evidence. I learned from listening to all of Addi’s divorce stories that eyewitness testimony is worthless. I could walk in on Brad balling the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders and it wouldn’t mean a thing, not even if they testified against him as well and signed legal affidavits stating they were all pregnant with his baby. It still doesn’t count. We need to catch Brad on tape. Red-handed. In the meantime I have to act normal; I can’t let on I’m leaving. Addi says that’s mistake number one that most women make. They blurt out that they want a divorce before they’ve gotten ready and stashed assets away for later.

  We order a boatload of creepy spy gear online, and using the dollhouse, we decide where to install all the spy cameras we bought. We have cameras disguised as a pen, an ashtray, a dictionary, a fluffy pink teddy bear, and a tabletop gumball machine. I find all of those items highly suspicious and unlikely to be in any home, but the spy gear website guarantees results.

  We call the pen-cam “Mr. Inky” and stash him on Brad’s desk. The ashtray-cam, or “Li’l Smokey,” goes on our bedroom fireplace mantel in case there are unsanctioned shenanigans going on in our bed. The dictionary-cam, or “Brainy Boy,” is shoved into the bookshelf in Brad’s office. The fluffy pink teddy bear, “Gay Ted,” goes in the front hall, so we can see who comes and goes. The gumball machine, “Chewy,” goes in the kitchen and looks absolutely retarded.

  We struggle with our roles as domesticated spies. Mr. Inky is out of the game after Brad grabs it, thinking it’s a real pen, and scribbles furiously on a piece of paper. Then he chucks it in the garbage can under his desk. Mr. Inky dies. Li’l Smokey is placed too high up to record anything useful, Brainy Boy is half obscured by a hockey trophy sitting on the bookshelf, Chewy records the Ice Empress insulting people, and Gay Ted falls over on his face repeatedly, the camera lodged in his nose making him top-heavy, and he records no footage whatsoever.

  We’re not completely amateurs, though. I get Pho to reprogram Brad’s Audi R8, which he bought to replace the Lambo, so the voice commands all do different things than they’re supposed to. Normally if Brad says something like “Adjust temperature” or “Turn on radio,” the car responds to those commands exactly. We make a few adjustments to the system, however, so now if Brad says any of the key words we’ve programmed in, the car will give us clues. If Brad says “pussy,” “wet,” or “girlfriend,” then the left backseat seat warmer goes on. If he says “How much?” the right backseat seat warmer goes on. If he says “blow job,” the passenger-side headrest rotates to the right. If he says, “Oh baby, yes!” the rearview mirror clicks two notches to the right. Now I’ll know if Brad is having sex in his car. Or eating a really good sandwich.

  I follow Brad to work and wear disguises so he won’t recognize me. I love the feeling of becoming someone else and stalking him like a blond, brunette, or redheaded panther into the store. I watch who he talks to and how; I sit through employee seminars and watch him just like I used to do when we were dating as smarmy seminar guys extol the virtues of change. Change! (Cue the sound of pennies dropping.) I follow him down hallways and peer at him through makeup displays and watch him through racks of clothing. I stand behind him as he rides the escalator. To my disappointment, he never speaks to anyone unusual or out of the way. I expect him to be cavorting with the whores behind the hosiery counter or with the sluts selling Clinique lip gloss, but he doesn’t. He’s always talking to or meeting with someone quite appropriate, like his father or his sister or fellow members of senior management.

  Infuriating.

  But I don’t give up. I follow Brad after work, to restaurants and bars, where he sips and sups with a variety of people. Nothing about it is scandalous, except that the amount of time he spends with Todd Brockman should legally be considered a crime. The man is heinous. It’s at one of their favorite sports bars downtown that I run into my ex, David. David, my longtime love, whom I loved since second grade, when his family moved in down the street. Everyone thought we’d get married . . . including me. Instead of a wedding, however, all I got was a long, grueling, tortuous on-again, off-again “relationship” with a hipster doofus who had a drinking problem, a tendency to borrow large sums of money that he never paid back, and a horrible garage band he loved called Obscure Cold.

  They were awful.

  David smiles at me. He says I look great and asks if he can call me sometime. I sort of bat him off uninterestedly
and say, “Sure, whatever.” An action I would’ve thought was inconceivable until recently. Now, however, I’m someone quite different from the girl he used to know. Now I’m doing things I never thought possible. Like ordering two hundred Patty Wee Wee dolls from a remarkably inexpensive wholesaler in Taiwan, who ships them to the house express overnight. I unpack the black-eyed dolls wearing diapers and line them up like a firing squad in our bedroom.

  “What’re all these freaky dolls doing everywhere?” Brad shouts at me when he sees them.

  I tell him I’ve started a new charity for incontinent children.

  “These dolls are freaky as shit!” he says. “I’m sleeping downstairs.”

  I continue to make the house as unpleasant as I can. I have Pho reprogram the Ice Empress to be the most annoying person I can think of: Brad’s mother. I have him download Tammy Faye Bakker’s voice and Billy Graham sermons, so whenever you ask her for anything she spits out a Bible verse. It goes like this: “Ice Empress, can I have a bottle of water?”

  “Amen!” she shouts. “Verily I say unto you, that through the valley of the shadow of death I was hungry and He gave me food. I was thirsty and He gave me drink. Behold!” (Panel flips open and bottle of water appears in frosty nook.) “I was near death!” she says. “And He gave me a generous donation! At 1-800-GO-JESUS!”

  I make sure I myself am as gross as possible too, so Brad won’t want to touch me. I stop shaving and cease wearing deodorant. I tell Brad that I have sleep apnea and wear a CPAP machine to bed. I wear baggy boxy clothing from my absolute favorite new clothing designer: the Mormons. They sell Fundamentalist LDS dresses on the Home Shopping Network now to raise money for their compounds or jail funds or whatever. The dresses are all handmade and totally porn-on-the-prairie. They’re made of worsted felt and have high necklines, floor-length hemlines, and little peaked, tufted shoulders. They’re boxy and big. I look like I’m wearing an enormous felt tea cozy. The opposite of sexy . . . in a dress.

  I make sure my activities are disgusting. I take up the lost art of Victorian hair jewelry and spend hours with pale women from the nearby Mennonite community, who join my regular hair-weaving roundtables and sing hymns and braid long tresses of dead hair in the kitchen. Afterward I forget to sweep. I hire a graphic artist to paint random religious murals on the walls. The crucifixion of Christ stares at us from our bedroom ceiling. I sell all our traditional furniture and replace everything with big blocky modern furniture . . . so modern I often I don’t even know what the furniture is. A couch or a collapsible bed? A rug or a wall hanging? A lamp or a flower vase? Who knows. I give up after I put what was a porcelain bidet in the living room, thinking it’s a wet bar. I routinely rearrange the furniture, especially upstairs, so Brad trips over things when he goes to the bathroom at night. I sigh when he does this and call him Mr. Klutzy.

  I ramp the Fang Gang show up to high volume. I tell Pho to use the house as cyber-ninja command headquarters. I tell Star Fan she can invite all her friends over anytime, day or night. I tell Bi’ch that she and her Hmong singing group can use the house as a rehearsal space. Soon my home looks like a Hmong rec center. To be honest, I’ve never had so much fun.

  I call the animal hospital and tell Greta to send me their most unadoptable animals. That’s how I wind up adopting a tattered band of abused alpacas. I start an alpaca refuge in the backyard, installing the beasts in a large pen that takes up most of the shoreline. I tell Brad the truth. They’re rescue animals. That’s why they spit. “If you knew what those poor creatures had been through,” I shout when Brad complains. I insist they eat nutritious homemade alpaca kibble made from a complicated, smelly recipe I find online.

  I find a pan-flute player to stand on the front staircase and play the pan-flute five hours every day, even on the weekends, because the music soothes the alpacas. When the pan flute player is done, I let my old boyfriend rehearse in the garage with Obscure Cold. They practice at all hours of the night and keep their drum kit in the bay where the apple-green Lamborghini once lived.

  Next I launch Operation Toothpaste Smear. I hit every surface of the bathroom day after day and tell him Trevor did it. Then I forbid him to say one word to Trevor about it . . . because if we yell at Trevor, that wouldn’t look too good to his grandparents, would it?

  I monkey with the neighbor’s Swift-Away harmless insect replacement system. The Swift-Away system has intake pipes that peep up from the manicured hedges, like a row of miniature tubas crouched in the bushes, bells pointed up at the sky. The tubas suck up any flying insects within ten feet and shoot them headlong into the ether. If a bumblebee ambles by, whoomph!, the green tuba sucks the bumblebee up. If a butterfly flutters into the frame, then whoomph!, the green tuba swallows the butterfly whole. The intake pipes suck up the mosquitoes and moths and any other hapless insect that dares to trespass against them and shoot them cannon-style out of the hedges and into outer space.

  I simply reposition the mouths of the tubas so they’re aimed at our property, at about chest height. Judging by the number of dead, damaged, and wingless insects that pelt Brad as he tries to get in his car every morning for work, I don’t think the engineers at Swift-Away have the “harmless” element of their technology down pat yet. Brad comes charging back into the house every morning with squashed bugs all over his shirt.

  “What is happening?” he shouts. “Look at this!” He points to the pulpy yellow insect goo smeared across the lapel of his suit. “What the fuck is this?” he shouts.

  “A dragonfly, maybe?” I guess, and he stomps off, muttering, to change his suit.

  I mess with Brad’s food. I grind up weight-loss pills and put them in his protein shakes so he can experience volatile gastric events at the store, just like I did. I set up a dating profile for Brad on ExplodingHearts.com. I make his profile pitch-perfect for every crazy stalker and gold digger in the nation and direct phone calls to his office. Wealthy executive seeks loving woman to adore and pamper. Age unimportant. Kids terrific! Looking for one-night stands, meaningless hookups, and long-term relationships only.

  I hire a stripper to be our new auxiliary maid. An actual stripper that I hire from an escort agency. She’s also a local porn celebrity, and after she shares the titles of some of her favorite films that she’s starred in, I’m inspired to make a list.

  Top Ten Worst Porn Stars

  1. Great-aunts

  2. Cheesemongers

  3. New York cabbies

  4. Ladies of the PGA

  5. Hoboes

  6. Mermen

  7. Amish sadomasochists

  8. Hirsute Taco Bell employees

  9. Amateur taxidermists

  10. Danny DeVito

  My stripper’s name is Diamond and she shows up wearing silver lamé shorts. I tell her all she has to do is cook and clean in the sexiest manner she can think of. I’ll pay her five hundred bucks a day, and if she tape-records herself having sex with my husband, there’s a thousand-dollar bonus. Diamond throws herself into her work, treating it as risqué burlesque. She’s actually a better maid than Bi’ch and seems to have a real grip on what men like. Her second day here I find her grilling T-bone steaks outside while wearing nothing but stilettos and a purple thong.

  “Did you see our new maid?” I ask Brad.

  “Seems pretty creative,” he says, reading the paper.

  I have her do striptease acts while cleaning the stove, her head stuck up in the vent; I tell her to polish the woodwork by oiling up her lunch box and sliding down the banister repeatedly; I have her design a “cleaning supply saddle,” which she wears on her back like a horse, and crawl butt-naked around the house, wearing nothing else but kneepads and cowboy boots.

  Nothing. Zilch. It’s like Brad is gay . . . but even a gay man would adore the production value we’re putting into this show. Lenny stops by to drop something off one day and I hear him hollering in the front hall. “Lenny?” I shout. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh Jesus!” he ho
llers. “Oh God, I saw naked titties! Big ones! Pressed up on the window outside!”

  “Sorry.” Diamond shrugs. “I thought he was—”

  “Never mind, Diamond. It’s okay. Lenny, you can open your eyes.”

  He shakes his head and moans. “Oh Jesus . . .” he says. “Diamond? The porn star?”

  “Um, yeah.” I nod.

  “Lord, why’d you say her name? Now I know her name and Hailey’s gonna know I know her name. She’s gonna know I saw naked titties!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I won’t say anything.”

  “You don’t have to,” he whispers while looking around the room, as though Hailey might spring out at any moment pointing her accusing finger at him.

  “Lenny, forget about it.”

  “Sorry!” Diamond grins.

  Lenny’s phone rings. He looks up at me, ashen, and says, “It’s her!”

  “Are you serious?”

  Lenny leaps out the front door while answering the phone. “Hon?” he says. “Hang on, I got bad reception here. Hang on . . . Stop yelling at me!”

  He runs out to his truck. At least he cares what his wife thinks. My husband—and I snort every time I use the word—could care less what I do or think.

  I’m out of ideas.

  I can’t take this house or this life anymore. I tell Pho to make the Ice Empress normal again. “Okay,” he says. “And what’s normal this time?”

  “Make her like when she first came to us. Mean and nasty. At least one of us will be who we really are.”

  Mom calls to wish me a happy birthday. She’s one of the few who remembers. I get my annual Bacon Club rasher of bacon from Christopher. He signed me up for it like five years ago and it’s sort of lost its . . . charm. I’m not complaining. At least he remembers. Well, the bacon people remember. Brad forgot my birthday last year and he got me a gift certificate for a massage two days later. He told me to go buy something sexy. Wow. Right on. Nothing says Mr. Great Big Hard Cock . . . like a gift certificate. Mom reminds me about Supper Club and she asks if everything’s all right. I tell her everything’s fine . . . pretty okay . . . sort of all right . . . actually, not so good. She says I can always come home for a while if I want to. “We’re always here for you, sweetheart.”