I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression (3 page)

“You wanta nibble on my ear or something?” I asked.

“Are we out of chip dip?” he asked absently.

Within minutes, he was dozing in the chair, his paper on his chest, his can of beer balancing precariously on the arm of his chair.

I wondered how Wally Cox, Minnie Pearl, and Walter Hickel made out.

People are always asking couples whose marriage has endured at least a quarter of a century for their secret for success.

Actually, it is no secret at all. I am a forgiving woman. Long ago, I forgave my husband for not being Paul Newman. Those are the breaks. I realized, being mortal, he couldn’t possibly understand my dry skin, boot puddles on my waxed floor, hips that hang like saddlebags, and a house that holds for me all the excitement of a disposal plant.

How could he appreciate that my life is like a treadmill with stops at tedium, boredom, monotony, and the laundry room. That is why he comes bounding in each evening with a smile and a report of his day. Last night, for example, he munched on a stalk of celery and said, “I’ve had quite a day. Worked like a son of a gun this morning with Fred. Then we got in the car and toured an installation north of town. Suddenly I remembered it was
Sandy’s birthday. You remember Sandy, don’t you? (I remember Sandy. She was the one who burnt her bra and five engine companies showed up.) So, we treated Sandy to lunch. By the time I got back to the office, it was time to wrap up. I’m late because I stopped off at John’s to see his new boat. What did you do today?”

“I fired my deodorant,” I said. When he left the room I mumbled, “Paul wouldn’t have been so unfeeling.”

“Who’s Paul?” asked my eleven-year-old.

Now, trying to explain Paul Newman’s mystique to an eleven-year-old is as futile as explaining Dr. Wernher von Braun to Goldie Hawn.

“Paul Newman,” I said patiently.

“The guy in
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?
He rode a neat horse in that picture.”

“What horse?”

“How come you’re smiling and looking funny?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“Like when you find a quarter in Daddy’s chair.”

“It’s Paul Newman,” I shrugged.

“Would you like to be married to him?”

“It has nothing to do with marriage,” I said.

“You mean you’d like him to be your friend?”

“I wouldn’t have phrased it quite that way.”

“He’s about as tall as Daddy, isn’t he?”

“Daddy who?”

“Boy, ladies sure act silly over movie stars.”

“I don’t know if I can explain it or not,” I said slowly, “but Paul Newman to a tired housewife is like finding a plate of bourbon cookies at a PTA open house. It’s putting on a girdle and having it hang loose. It’s having a car that you don’t have to park on a hill for it to start. It’s matched luggage, dishes that aren’t plastic and evenings when there’s something better to do than pick off your old nail polish.

“Paul Newman, lad, is not a mere mortal. He never carries out garbage, has a fever blister, yawns, blows his nose, has dirty laundry, wears pajama tops, carries a thermos, or dozes in his chair or listens to the ball game.

“He’s your first pair of heels, your sophomore year, your engagement party, your first baby. Good grief, boy, he’s the Eagle on its way to the moon. Don’t you understand that?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Anyway, his horse was pretty neat.”

As I passed the window, I saw my reflection. Flats. Head scarf. Daughter’s windbreaker with 71 and two stripes on the sleeve. Mixi skirt (long and short). Who was I kidding? With the kind of day I had, I’d settle for the horse.

Like most women, I work at marriage, trying to keep alive the excitement and stimulation that made me marry in the first place. I convinced my husband that I have a friend who, every Friday, carries on a clandestine luncheon with her own husband.

She drives her car into town and he drives his. They meet at some obscure little restaurant, get a table in the rear where they hold hands and stare lovingly into one another’s eyes. In the parking lot after their tryst, they kiss good-by and she whispers, “I’ll try to make it next Friday.”

He laughed until he snorted, “How bored can a woman get?”

“So bored she would meet Walter Brennan without his teeth … at McDonald’s and go dutch.”

“Who do you know who is that desperate?”

“Me,” I said. “Every woman has to romanticize her marriage. Why don’t we do it?”

“I’d feel like a fool,” he said. Then, sensing my disappointment he added, “Okay, I’ll meet you at Ernie’s Eats next Friday.”

I dressed carefully, feeling a bit foolish, yet with a
certain sense of wickedness. I parked the car and ran to him. He looked at me intently. “What are you thinking?” I asked softly.

“Did you bring your American Express card? If you didn’t we’ll have to go to the Beer and Bloat Palace across from the office. They cash checks on Friday.”

“You devil you,” I countered, “you mustn’t say things like that until we’re alone.”

“What happened to the fender?” he said. “Another parking meter run out in front of you?”

“We do have to stop meeting like this,” I said. “Every week I say I am not coming, but when Friday comes I am helpless.”

“Are your corns bothering you again? You don’t look too good under the eyes. Like maybe you ought to get the load off your feet.”

“It’s eye make-up, precious. Just for you. Notice anything else different about me?”

“You sewed the button on your coat.”

“The perfume, you madcap. I won’t wear it again until you promise to behave yourself.”

“What’ll you have?” he asked, opening the menu. “Unless you’re too much in love to eat.”

“Are you crazy?” I asked, grabbing the menu. “Make it two hamburgers, an order of onion rings, a double malt, and banana cream pie.”

Naturally, I don’t want any recognition or awards, but I’ve forgiven my husband for a lot of things during our twenty-three-year marriage.

1. I forgive him for not tanning. Actually, I have devoted my entire life to getting my husband tanned. I have basted him with oil, marinated him with lotions, tossed him on all sides, and broiled him to perfection. (Frankly, if I had spent as much time in the kitchen as I spent on him, I’d outdistance the Galloping Gourmet.)

It has all gone in vain. The other day I wached him inch his way out into the sunlight. He was swathed in six beach towels, a pair of dark glasses, and a pair of sandals that buckled to his knees.

“Did you lose your umbrella?” I asked dryly.

“I don’t know why it bothers you that I am not tanned,” he said, moving his chair to a shady spot.

“It bothers me because you don’t look healthy. You look like a ninety-six-pound weakling would kick sand in your face at the beach and yell, ‘Yea Sicky.’ ”

“When will you get it into your head that some people do not tan,” he said.

“Everybody tans,” I insisted. “It’s just a matter of conditioning!”

“It’s not a matter of conditioning.”

“Doesn’t it make you feel awful to go into a crowded room and have people ask, ‘What happened?’ ”

“Look, just because I do not want to look like an escapee from an elephant burial ground …”

“Steve McQueen tans,” I said, “and so does Paul Newman. And have you ever seen John Wayne sitting in the saddle with towels covering his arms?”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“They all look healthy. That’s what it has to do. Wouldn’t you like to walk down the street looking bronze and mysterious? Women would turn and say, ‘Boy, does he look healthy.’ ”

“No.”

“Just for an hour or so, let the sun do its thing. You stretch out and I’ll pour three cups of oil over you and let you simmer.”

From time to time I checked to make sure he was tanning evenly. Later, he came into the house and eased into his clothes.

“What did I tell you?” I laughed. “Already your clothes look better. You should see the contrast between that
light shirt and your skin. And your eyes! I never knew they had color before.”

Later, as we sat side by side, leafing through a magazine, I tried again. “I know you don’t agree with me now, but believe me when I tell you, you are the healthiest-looking man in this doctor’s office.”

2. I forgive him for that performance he puts on every time he orders wine for dinner. Right away, he’s Cesar Romero. First, he makes a circle with the glass under his nose. Then he tilts back his head like he is going to make Jeanne Dixon materialize. Finally, his tongue touches the wine.

The rest of us at the table sit there like idiots waiting for this man who doesn’t know a vintage port from last week’s Kool-Aid to decide whether or not the wine will meet with his favor or disfavor.

The waiter shifts his weight to the other foot. Finally, Cesar speaks, “A bit more please,” he says extending his glass. As my eyes roll back in my head he says, “I’ve got to be sure.”

“You have not the foggiest notion what you are doing,” I accuse.

“Why would you make a statement like that?” he asks.

“Because I have that same look on my face when I squeeze melons in the supermarket and I don’t have the foggiest notion what I am doing.”

“For your information, my dear,” he says, wiping a bit of the grape off his chin, “tasting wine is an old tradition that was once initiated to protect kings and queens from being poisoned.”

“Where were you when the pot roast was served?” I ask.

As he sits there smacking his lips and wrestling with his decision, another question crosses my mind. How does the waiter know which one to have sample the wine for the rest of the group? The one with the reddest nose?
Or the one who looks like he’s going to pay the check? Or the Secret Service type who goes around protecting kings and queens?

“By the way,” I finally say to my husband, “you’ve sampled half a bottle. Do you suppose it is safe for the rest of us to have a little wine with our dinner?”

“I sent that particular bottle back,” he says.

“You’re kidding. Why?”

“Why indeed. You’re not fooling around with some little old lady who only tipples at the faculty Christmas party. I’ve had wine many times before in my home. I ordered them to serve us Lake Erie, 1970, and this time I want to see cork floating around in it!”

3. I forgive him for flunking Campfire in the Boy Scouts. It’s amazing how a careless camper will flip a match during a rainstorm and seconds later the entire forest will be in flames.

We will give a party and my husband will “lay a fire,” using thirty pounds of paper, a mound of brittle kindling, and a seasoned log with a guarantee stapled on the side. Within minutes, an entire party will be driven into the streets by smoke.

He’s the only man I know who had a fireplace with a gas lighter go out on him.

“Why don’t you forget the fire tonight?” I said, collaring him before a party.

“Nonsense,” he said. “I’ve got the secret. I just have to use more paper and get it started early. That’s the secret. Start it early and get a bed of hot coals. Then, just feed it logs all night.”

At 6:30
P.M
., he burned the evening paper which I had not read.

At 6:40, he emptied three trash cans into the fireplace and created another small flame.

At 7:05, he emerged from the garage with a wagon
full of papers I had been saving for the last three months for the Boy Scout paper drive.

The guests began to arrive.

At 7:45, he burned all the calendars in the house, plus five napkins which he snatched from the guests.

At 7:50, he frantically tore the plastic bags off the dry cleaning in the hall closet and burned a drawerful of brown paper grocery bags I save for garbage.

At 8:05, with the living room snowing with flying fragments of soot, he began emptying shoe boxes and wedging them under the log.

At 9:00, he was reduced to lighting unpaid bills with a match and throwing them in on the smoldering log. I collared him, “Look, Smokey the Bear, will you forget about the lousy fire and pay some attention to your guests?”

“I almost got it,” he said feverishly. “Just a few more pieces of paper. He ran to the cedar chest and emerged with the baby books, our wedding pictures, and our marriage license.

At 1
A.M
., he grabbed me by the shoulder. “It’s going,” he said. “It’s really blazing. Remember those cereal boxes with only a little cereal left? I threw it away and the boxes did it.”

“Wonderful,” I said, pulling the covers around my neck. “Now will you put it out and come to bed. We’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow. I’m going to have you committed.”

Actually, my husband and I are different in many ways. Our sense of humor is different. I told an amusing story the other evening about Phyllis Diller in which an interviewer asked her if she was a neat housekeeper, like when her husband got up to go to the bathroom did she make his bed while he was gone. She replied, “Make it! I have it sold before he gets back.”

My husband frowned and said, “Where would you find someone to buy a bed at that ungodly hour?” Then he retaliated by telling his dog story about the talking dog who played all the big night clubs and the talk shows. “Then one day he got sick and had to have an operation. After that, he couldn’t get a job anywhere.”