My wife's gone mad.

My Wife’s gone mad.

By Alexandra Riera© 2005 Alexandra Riera

“All I asked of her this morning was for a cup of coffee and off she went without a word. She’d been threatening with leaving for the past ten years and has never done so. I don’t think she does that because she hates me or she doesn’t love me, I think it’s just a way to make me feel guilty for something I don’t know about. I basically think she’s bored with me. I like chess, she doesn’t. I like sitting outside and watch the snow flakes fall and melt and she doesn’t. I like drinking and she doesn’t. Up until very recently all she did was sit by the window knitting jumpers for the neighbour’s children whenever she had a little time to spare. That’s all she did.

What annoys me most is that whenever I have proposed to do something together, the answer has always been a rotund no. I really don’t know why she married me. She had had a whole array of suitors when she was young and how she landed with me is a complete mystery to me. I wasn’t exactly the best looking guy in the world but she seemed to like me well enough in those days. She used to do everything for me, cook, saw, iron, clean and even brought the wood in for the winter after chopping it all by herself with her father’s axe. Everything used to be fine. I had plenty of time in my hands which I used to read, play chess with my friends and go to the local for a drink or two or three….. Perhaps a few more if the atmosphere was right and that was almost every night.

Yes, everything was fine until this Chinese doctor came to live next door. She started seeing more and more of him on a daily basis. Even go over to his place and cook breakfast for him. She always came back from his house with a ton of books which she read avidly. She even changed her knitting needles for some very long needles that she stuck all over her face. She even tried to stick them on me saying they’d do me good and when I refused, she stopped the cooking, the chopping of wood and basically everything else she had done until then.

I thought she’d recover her senses but she didn’t, she started going to the Woman’s Community Centre and that was even worse than having to bear watching her go to the Chinese doctor’s house. Every time she came back from the Community Centre she’d start telling me what to do and that was the end of me. I was not allowed to bully her around anymore, I had to chop the wood, I had to do the cooking and I was not allowed to go to the local bar anymore. I have been completely sober for the last year of my life and that’s killing me. I have even been forbidden to smoke in my own house. I’m thinking too much and not drinking. That can’t possibly be good for my health. I used to feel better when I drank. Things were better then, yes, I never had to do anything then..

She came back half an hour ago and instead of making lunch she’s taken her clothes off. Not for my benefit, no, of course not. I must be the laughing stock of the whole town. There she is now, half naked in the snow practicing some silly thing. She says she’s hugging the moon. AH AH AH! Yeah! Sure! And I’m a bulldog!

She says it cleanses her. But I don’t see why she can’t use soap and water like she used to do.

Tai-chi she calls it… I hope it’s not contagious!”




The end© 2005 Alexandra Riera
(634 words)