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$27,820 To Lose My Wife. “I need my Masters.” Next the wife tells me that she needs two masters, it takes two Masters Degrees to be worthwhile to people needing counseling, to people needing workers. “What does that have to do with me?” And she yells that I am not a partner. She blames me for the imperfections we each have, “Why don’t you help me??” My wife has asked for a five-year plan for the last ten years. I assume there should be babies with marriage, that one end is connected to the means. She shows me her ass in denim before the mirror, “You’ll never get babies out of me!” This is ok though. We can’t decide if we want five children or none. My wife leaves the house in the only car still needing a payment. The other car is paid for and will keep the mechanic happy. She doesn’t speak as the engine to the good car is warmed. She checks the mirrors, and adjusts the seat for comfort. I turn on the radio for traffic. The 405 is backed allll the way up on the Renton S Curves. It is beautiful to hear the traffic person say the things that don’t affect us. I don’t care about Highway 405. I don’t care about Seattle traffic, the pedal pound quivers of blank motorist lives—the rage and the wonder. Hwy 16 makes me shudder. The ‘Narrows Bridge’ makes me cry. For when the first is mentioned, I stop whatever I am doing. And when the bridge is called out, I know someone has died. Every crash on that bridge is fatal. I listen to the radio to make sure my wife will cross it safely. * At 6:35, I know that the bridge is clear. My wife has made it to work. She will take care of her business. She will dredge through the changing sheets, and meals, her ‘girls’ will get attention. The wife is an assistant psych tech waiting to be a clinical psychologist. She makes $6.95 every hour, working forty hours in only three days. We always fight on Fridays. Friday is the culmination of a sleepless week. It is the time in which most of the world is out romanticizing with trips, shows, or meeting in clubs to dance, drink, laugh. The world laughs on Friday. My wife works. I am alone. * Mary Jane doesn’t ask about my wife, I don’t tell her, take off her shirt, and bring out one arm and then the other. She likes it when I lift her into the bathtub. The water is turned to hot, then I use my palm to choose the correct addition of cold until all the bath is cozy. Her most sensitive areas get submerged. The back of my hand is not always sensitive enough to judge the proper temperature. This is when Mary Jane screams. “Hauuuu t! “ I try to console her with air kisses and soothing words. There is no reason to upset the other clients. They should feel at ease at all times. They should not think twice about a male left alone with a naked disabled woman. “HAUUUUT !” And I turn the knob to the right too quickly. Mary Jane splashes the water all over me. My wife disapproves. She yells and calls me “stupid.” I am a stupid person taking care of stupid people that cannot take care of themselves. The rover comes in, Jessica. She was always nice before, sharing cigarettes, talking about the nurses who supply the meds. “What are you doing?” Mary Jane bites my leg, throws and splashes water with her massive feet. The bathroom is flooding. I am speechless. Jessica pushes me aside, tries to lift the wet, splashing, Mary Jane on her own. But one woman is too heavy for the other. “Get over here! Help me.” I am obliged to lift the naked woman by stepping into the tub, soaking my white nursing shoes to the cuff. Mary’s breast squish all over my arms. I pivot with the smallest amount of lift to avoid any back injury. Mary Jane keeps squiggling, then rolling and she lands on the floor mat with a small bruise to complete the evening. “Oh my God. We’re going to be fired.” I love the way Jessica said “we” and not ‘you,’ meaning me. Mary Jane is our favorite client. We share her lifting, feeding, and cleaning. If I think that I can do something myself, the wife calls me a fool and tells me to wait. Jessica shares in all the interesting work. She wraps MJ in the floor mat. The shower curtain has too many rings connecting to the bar. There is no towel. I forgot it. The floor mat is dusty but fluffy. “Sleepy-by.” Mary Jane starts sucking her thumb like a child of three instead of a thirty six year old woman. She is angelic in all her simplicity. Jessica is disarming; her anger loses momentum in the cheerful face of the woman that we share. Naked Mary makes us giggle. “Wonders never..” Jessica looks at my wet clothes, regards the situation and takes control. I will wait for her instructions; I don’t want to fail. I don’t want to get fired. My wife calls me a coward. We coax MJ to stand and then hop her into bed between our outstretched arms. The door jam catches my co-worker. We flop the client onto the bed, throw back the sheets, roll her over. No pajamas this time. Jessica looks deep into my soul: A pause at nightfall in dim light with nothing to do but clean, studies, or join. “Can you do this forever?” I think she is talking about the job but then Jessica bends her head down, loosens the top blouse button, her hands fall to side; she is waiting. The wife cackles. Jessica is my rover confidant. The only person to talk to for thirty-three hours a week; my wife never listens. We share stories and cigarettes for hours between shift changes. The conversations are usually light and friendly. Her slim neckline can be touched with the smallest stretch. “Can you?” Jessica insists that I answer. I regard her ample lips, the stray strand of hair that has fluttered down slower than the others. It is a common, beautiful head, poised atop a visceral base. “How much money do you make?” The wife talks through me. Jessica looks curious at me, eyebrows crinkled, her vagina shop closing. “What do you mean?” “How much?” The wife does not like to repeat herself. “Six ninety-five an hour. Same as you.” Now the wife and I are excited. That means thirteen ninety for both of us, each and every hour-- Twenty seven thousand eight hundred and twenty dollars every year! I force the wife to be quiet. “What do you think of children?” “What the.. Where did you get that from?” The wife starts a tantrum, yelling in my ears that there is not enough money for children and school—one or the other-- “The Federal Poverty Line, twenty seven thousand to make it happen.” I want to tell her about five kids, like mom had, like grandma had. My mental wife is laughing. She knows that the math is wrong. Jessica says the room is cold and replaces the missing button. Jessica doesn’t wait for me to explain that we could live together, over that bridge. We could live and work as lovers and housemates. I am so ready to give up that Masters, then we could work on zero to five babies. It is a beautiful opportunity, our combined income, the second person between poverty and regularity—just the two of us. Jessica didn’t hear me at all. My wife was talking again, very sensibly about the benefits of education. Maybe Jessica could give me that family, but the children would be uneducated, shattered, shambled children needing material. The wife called it a welfare dream. “Your clock is ticking girl! Tick, tick..” The wife screamed this as Jessica left the room, past the hall, out the door—it closed quickly. “She’ll never talk to you again.” Whispered my wife, smugly. Mary Jane pulls at my leg, she won’t go to sleep. “Mary-me, MarReee Meeee.” In her disabled dreams she knows her name. I check her chart: Verbal deficiency, motor impairment, myopia, 82 point IQ; found behind a toilet. Mary is fertile. Permanent disability checks every month. I already spend a fifth of my life with Mary Jane. She can be my real-life somebody. She can be the body behind that voice in my head. I turn to the retard in desperation: “will you?” |
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