Poor Brutus, with himself at war,
Forgets the shows of love to other men. (Julius Caesar 1.2.46)
“At the same time, I wanna hug you
I wanna wrap my hands around your neck
You´re an asshole but I love you
And you make me so mad I ask myself
Why I´m still here…
But I hate you, I really hate you
So much I think it must be true love…” (Pink, True Love)
Trying to have a conversation with my husband
is like trying to exfoliate with a cheese grater. Like backscratching with a
bear claw, picking your teeth with an electric eel. Monosyllabic, vituperative,
sullen in turns with the occasional transient flash of humor and affection, there
is never any guarantee of his mood, response, reaction. You therefore spend
100% of your time being anxious and fearful that his reaction to any given
attempt at conversation will be brutal and being correct 90% of the time,
leaving you pathetically and disproportionally thrilled 10% of the time. A
simple cheerful grunt lifts the spirits and inspires an idiotic grin. On his
good days, if I happen to be in the vicinity when he emerges from bed he MIGHT
flap his hand in my general direction by way of greeting.
Did you ever have one of those boyfriends at
school who would break up with you on Friday afternoon and make up with you on
Monday morning? Come on, you know the ones I mean. It usually happened the very
weekend there was a party or some other social event that he clearly calculated
would be more fun if he were single. Well I married one of them.
Oh no, don´t get me wrong, he doesn´t want to
go out and party like a young stud. Noooo, it is far more subtle and cunning
than that. For him, family life during the week is fairly legitimately limited
to coming home from work late bearing the occasional pizza and relaxing on the
couch while hearing about the children´s exploits from me. Our weekday live-out nanny and I take care of
the rest. But on weekends, when no domestic assistance is available and neither
of us are at work, it is a bit more difficult to justify doing fuck-all around
the house for two whole days. So what better way to avoid domestic duties than
to manufacture a Friday offence, get offended and retire in high dudgeon to the
couch in front of the TV until late Sunday night?
No, I am NOT exaggerating. My husband is
capable of sustaining a snit for longer than the Queen of England has been on
the throne. He once retired to his bed and refused to speak to anyone for two
weeks, getting up only at night when everyone was asleep in order to prowl the
kitchen for sustenance. He sails through two days of the sulks like Usain Bolt
cruising across the 100 metre finishing line.
And he is a perfectionist. I am not talking
about some half-assed monosyllabic-replies-only hissy fit. No, nada de eso. He
is a full-on Easter Island statue.
On one occasion, alone in the house, he refused
to even get up and answer the door, leaving his family banging futilely outside
and asking the wachiman to climb
through the window to let us in. The couch is only about eight feet from the door.
When he does speak you really wish he hadn´t.
His normally irresistible three year old son skipped up to him asking “Papi,
papi can we…” “No jodas” came the instant reply.
Meanwhile, life must go on and those kids won´t
raise themselves, so I rush around dispensing asthma medicine every three hours,
chauffeuring them to and from weekend activities, baking low-carb snacks for
the week ahead, grocery shopping, listening to endless complaints of “papi
won´t let me watch TV!!!”, building and rebuilding lego mini-figures, playing
football in the corridor and endlessly debating issues of appropriate attire
and the acceptable age to get a tattoo.
And there he sits, like a resentful granite
boulder in the middle of the familial stream, interrupting the smooth flow of
family life, making the waters eddy and ripple, adjusting to find a way around
him and continue forward as best they can. Six-foot-three-inches of pure
seething disgruntlement. And then (usually on Sunday evening), just when he is almost
left behind, forgotten, the river of life having moved on and regained its
former placidity, some subtle seismic tremor in the highlands of his brain will
suddenly dislodge him and he will come rumbling and rushing downstream, eager
to catch up and play, causing shrieks of delighted laughter from the children
as we once again take off on surprise family weekend getaways and impromptu
shopping trips to Wong…until the next time.
So why stay? Well for one thing, over time the percentages
seem to be evening up. It ain´t 50:50 by a long shot when it comes to domestic
duties but the 90:10 grumpiness to charm ratio has gradually been reversed to
somewhere in the 30:70 range. He is now more llama than guanaco. His macho
latino disdain for the minutiae of child-rearing has gradually dwindled and he has
been known to prepare meals and change clothes. His marathon sulks have become
short sprints. Yes, he is still an infuriating Easter Island statue but he is our infuriating Easter Island statue.
There are not many like him so we think we should keep him – one day he might
become a collector´s item and be worth a lot of money.
As any pop-psychologist will tell you, marriage
is give and take, up and down, never perfect, blah, blah, blah and the reasons
you choose to stay in one don´t always add up.
And anyway, I was always crap at maths.
