Monique Parker // Fiction

Email this article

Terminal Wife

My lover fits neatly inside a twenty-one-inch Sony Trinitron monitor. I like it that way.    I don’t have to wash my hair or maintain eye contact while he rambles on about the engine he rebuilt in his 1968 Mustang. It’s been six months and the closest I’ve gotten to putting out is a naked photograph of a young woman in Guam that I found on a stock photography website and whom I claim to be me.

     I tell my lover I walk four miles a day in rice paper sandals to use a computer at an Internet café in Linggi, because Kuala Lumpur is too far. I tell him my father thinks I am taking classes there to improve my English. I tell my lover there is nothing that can keep me away from him. Not the torrential humid downpours that suffocate the air and soak my long ebony hair into a mop. Not the coin-sized mosquito bites that swell and ooze and blemish my otherwise flawless brown skin. I tell him I love Pall Malls and Marisa Tomei and that if I came to America I would want a thousand pairs of shoes and my very own taxi so that I would never have to walk again.

    He sends photographs of a barrel-chested commando in army fatigues. He’s a few years older than sixty and has a deep scar that looks like a recessed swastika over his right eyebrow: “a going away present from Nam.” I tell him his dark onyx eyes remind me of a brave pigeon that once flew into our home seeking mercy from a broken wing. My hungry family thanked the heavens and then peeled and cooked the bird over an open fire. Without speaking, we shared the sparse meat among the eight of us. I tell him we are poor and that if a miracle doesn’t happen soon, my family will sell me to a rich merchant next year when I turn twenty. He writes that he will come save me and take me to America, “the land of the free, home of the brave.”

    I’ve never been attracted to soldiers, though I am grateful for the risks and psychological trauma they endure to protect our country. I prefer well-read astute men who channel their testosterone into harmless activities like tax preparation and sales motivation.

    I stopped watching television a couple of years ago, tired of reruns of Cops and Murder She Wrote. The Internet is more entertaining anyhow. Last spring, I entered an online sweepstakes and won a twelve-week subscription to Home Improvement Magazine and fifty bags of cat litter. I don’t have a cat, so I graveled the driveway.

    Secretly, I exchange letters with my lover on the Compaq computer with a fast Pentium III chip that I bought online at eBay from Hazel and Charlie’s manufactured home three lots over. It sits on the floor of my sewing room next to the foot pedal. Sometimes I turn the computer and my sewing machine on at the same time and listen to the mechanical hum of their love making. Other times I flirt with the mannequin in the corner; I pretend it has a scar above the right brow and dark onyx eyes that watch me.

    Last week my lover told me he specialized in making Molotov cocktails. “Black or green olives?” I asked.

    “My little swan, you’re as innocent as a placid swamp before it’s rigged with dynamite,” he replied.

    “How you lose finger?” I write in broken English, “Must hurt. Wish I there.” I try not to say too much, to leave room for more. I tap the send button and watch my email disappear into cyber dust. It’s a luxury to wait, to anticipate his response.

    Each night before I go to bed, I shut off the twenty-one-inch Sony Trinitron monitor my husband brought home from work. Said it was outdated and had little value, so we adopted it like an old Border Collie. Really, he just wanted to make a contribution to my new hobby.

    “You don’t want to be wearing reading glasses in six months,” Ralph said, unplugging the fourteen inch monitor that came with the computer.

    “This Sony will change the way you look at data,” he assured me. “The Trinitron’s high-resolution, high-density display makes it ideal for graphics, video, desktop publishing…” He stopped and looked at me sheepishly, “Sorry, Dorothy. It sounds like I’m trying to sell you on the darn thing.”

    I nodded.

    “Look, if you don’t want it, I’ll donate it to the school and get a tax write off.”

    “No—it’s just that—it’ll take some getting used to,” I said wondering what difference seven inches would make.

    “Part of what made these monitors revolutionary was that Sony virtually eliminated dynamic convergence circuits and instead used bonded permanent magnets on the bell of the tube,” he continued, neatly wrapping the cables into a spiral.

    “I see.”

    “Instead of the common three-gun arrangement, they used what’s called a three cathode single electron gun arrangement,” he said, his voice full of self-satisfaction. “Brilliant, really.”

    “It’s so…so large,” I said, backing up to get perspective.

    “Uh huh. Nice. Isn’t it?”

    “I suppose.”

    “Cost a mint when she was new.”

    The monitor was so big it took up the entire desk. Turned on, it looked like a television: bright and glaring. “Well now—look at that!” Ralph mused, adjusting the color and brightness. “You control the contrast here, you see, Dorothy.” He smiled warmly and for a moment a friendly feeling was there, between us. Thirty-nine years of marriage and it still amazed me the things that turned him on.

    Size did matter. And would you know, over time, the twenty-one-inch monitor began to suit me. I came to appreciate its sturdy box and sharp images and titanic words. Before long I splurged on a cushy leather chair with wheels and arms and adjustable height; and as often as possible, I sat in the prodigious shadow of my Internet Terminal and fervently explored this new and exciting frontier called the World Wide Web. I started entering HGTV sweepstakes, scouring recipes, playing interactive bridge and buying merchandise I didn’t need on the Home Shopping Network. 

    Months later, I began searching Google and Yahoo and Wikipedia, entering key words like “Oprah and Dr. Phil” and “how to spice up a passionless marriage.” Soon I discovered adult personals: pop up windows that seduced my screen with images of virile, fit, sexy individuals. On SexSearch, Bob from Carbondale wore nothing but a pomegranate colored jock strap. And bulging out of a muscle tank, Tony “The Chisel” stood in front of a diesel rig painted with metallic blue flames and the inscription: Feast on the Fox Man, Ladies. He sought a mature, well-endowed woman for cybersex and BDSM, which a Google search instantaneously confirmed as: Bondage, Domination, Submission, and Masochism.

    In time, I began covering the Sony Trinitron monitor—all twenty-one-inches of my lover—with a beautiful swatch of navy shantung that I plan to use one day to make a floor length muumuu. That way, I won’t have to wear pantyhose when I vacation in Hawaii. My husband Ralph promised to take me as soon as he retires, which according to my calculations, is now only 238 days away. The amorphous flowing muumuu will hide my fat legs and varicose veins: dirty words like obesity and diabetes—conditions that have grown out of the tedium of marriage and require too much work at this point in my life to resolve. My husband says there is more of me to love. Says, “Look on the bright side: You’ve got too much sugar, better than not enough.” Platitudes aside, I anxiously await my destiny: warm tropical breezes, blue drinks with miniature umbrellas, all you can eat roasted pig at a full moon luau, and the feeling of my own skin underneath a tent of midnight sky. The last time my husband took me on vacation was two years ago. We drove across Idaho and Wyoming and then Kansas to his Cousin George’s funeral, stopping every seventy five miles so I could use the toilet: oh, how I detest public restrooms. On our way back, in a prairie town where we stayed over night, I got ill in a motel room. There was no reason for it, nothing I had eaten to upset my delicate ecosystem. But there I was in the bathroom nauseous with gas and distension and vomiting.

    Ralph knocked on the door to see if I was OK.

    “Say, Dorothy? Uh—you might want to hurl in the wastebasket. They’ve got those nifty little plastic liners, and if you throw up in there instead, when you’re through, I can discard it the dumpster outside.”

    His voice sounded impartial, as though he had been hired to clean the joint. You’ve got to be kidding—I’m sick and you want me to put it in a doggie bag? All around me hideous browning linoleum and towels with ancient rust stains spun dizzy. Bracing the toilet with both hands, I hesitantly lifted my gaze. Adjacent from where I knelt, a sanitized-looking, unfriendly wastebasket sat in the corner strategically located between the toilet and shower curtain. Its diameter so small I’d no doubt miss the target.

    “No,” I said. “I like cool touch. Porcelain—”

    “I understand dear,” he said. I could hear him pressing into the door now. “But we can keep it neater for the maid if you use the wastebasket. And the odor won’t offend you all night.”

    You mean the odor won’t offend YOU all night.

    There was a pause.

    “Dorothy?”

    It was no use arguing; if I ignored him long enough he would eventually abandon his reasoning. I flushed the bile-green muck and slid onto the chilled linoleum. Nestled snugly below the plumbing, I noticed for the first time a deafening headache amassing, and then I became so lightheaded that every system within me seemed to shut down completely whereas I could not go to the bathroom at all.

    When I opened my eyes, Ralph loomed above me, his head and torso in a back lit florescent glow. “The door was unlocked,” he said, judicially. “And anyway, the floor is no place to be in your condition. Let’s get you to bed.” He stood there a moment, surveying the situation, and then determinedly hoisted my tired body off the floor. “Pathogenic bacteria are the likely culprit. That parmesan chicken you had at that diner back in Cheyenne. I bet those guys don’t wash their hands after using the urinals.”

    I had only enough energy to glance in his direction and roll my eyes. “Tomorrow morning,” he continued. “You’ll be as good as new.”

After helping me out of my clothes, Ralph lay beside me combating road weariness, eyes drowsy, rubbing the hair on my forearm. I barely remember his murmuring, “Oh, no…not a sick wife!” before succumbing to sleep. We haven’t been on another vacation since.

Tonight I choose the Swanson beef steak dinner with garlic potatoes. Poke holes through the plastic sheath with a fork and put it in the microwave on high for five minutes while I log on to my computer to check for new email.

    Thor (my lover’s name) has not yet responded. I click on his Match.com profile to verify when he was last online—humph, no activity in over a week. I imagine him at the end of a musty bar, sliding spirits down his thick throat and tossing peanuts at the nubile waitress. The dimly lit room casts a shadow on his face, concealing the scar above his eyebrow, and his chiseled good looks give him the appearance of a man much younger. Leaning the shot glass to his lips, the corner of his mouth turns up, mischievously. He knows the waitress by name, Susie or Sharon or Stacy, has probably slept with her on occasion when he tires of his girlfriend Casey or Cathy or Katie. Thor claims he hasn’t had a date in twelve years. But a man with his looks must have someone nearby to warm his cold feet in the winter. Come to think of it, that’s probably where he is right now. I bet she’s still in the cradle, wears short skirts with tiny flowers and purses her lips when she talks. He visits her quaint one bedroom apartment over a flower shop in Huntsville, Alabama. And since he reeks of Guinness and Wild Turkey, she sponge bathes him in her claw foot tub, the smell of fresh pralines wafting from the kitchen. She coos as she squeezes hot water down his hairless chest, top button of her chiffon blouse falling open so he can take her in his mouth. I won’t hear from him until a fight ensures and Casey or Cathy or Katie dumps him. And because he’s seen enough jungles in his lifetime, he won’t be in any hurry to save this tropical eye candy, my smokescreen. At this moment, he doesn’t even remember that he owns a computer. To him, the Internet is foreplay, electronic Viagra.

    The truth is, when I need Thor, he’s never quite there. Always a lag time: a gap between my need and his own. And I end up feeling despondent and alone and wishing I could log onto his real life and say: “Look, mister, you’re messing around with a sensitive, kind, neglected human being. So what? I lied: I’m not nineteen. My body is ancient; I could hold a pencil under my breast for a decade and never know it was there. The girl in the photo?—bait. Candy. Could you blame me?”

    The last time my husband and I made love was October 27, 2002, the night the Anaheim Angels won the pennant. Ralph took me in the bedroom and let out whoops and moans of victory in a state of heightened euphoria, as though possessed by the Great Spirit of Baseball itself. He broke every last record and statistic with his hard, leathery you-know-what. And we’re not talking regulation size, either. But that was six years ago; seventy-two months, too many days. Long enough to starve a fat woman.

    Of course, I don’t write anything to Thor that would blow my cover. Only think it. Nor do I mention that I throw up on average of once a week now. What purpose would it serve? Plus, I don’t possess that kind of gumption: scolding a grown man who’s unresponsive to his pen pal, a married woman who hasn’t the courtesy or courage to reveal her true identity. Instead, I diversified my love portfolio. Like our investment fund manager said years ago, when Ralph and I started saving for his retirement, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Prudent advice: whether it’s money or men. I quickly discovered, as it turns out, all men—even those who send gifts which require thought, who stay up all night instant messaging me into the wee hours: all men are prone to lag time.

    Since acquiring the computer, my imagination has ripened into an exotic and wanton fruit. Below the monitor, I’ve taped the words of Helen Keller: “Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.” I wondered what Ralph would think of my newfound pluck. Would he be onto me? Would I give myself away? What happened was he walked into my sewing room one Saturday morning, looking for his all-in-one model airplane prop wrench, which he had left on my worktable earlier that morning. (The first time he came in was to relay a newsflash: a lost WWII P-38 Fighter had been discovered buried under a 300 foot glacier of ice in Greenland.) Anyway, Ralph bent over, read the quotation taped to the big monitor and then raised one eyebrow. I held my breath, expecting a response. But he turned around, oblivious to the fact that he had left his wrench beside the Trinitron; and then, standing in the doorway, he announced in a firm, but friendly tone that foul weather had forced the pilot to crash land onto the glacier in 1942—“and, by golly, he’s alive today to share the details of this most daring adventure.” As is Ralph’s tendency, he matter-of-factly osmosed the phrase right into his own cognition.

    But, as I was saying, since acquiring the computer, and even more so, the monitor, I have taken the attitude of Helen Keller: I am now eager, animated. Whereas before I idled around the house like a character in a silent movie, my mouth now exudes music, lips move incessantly. I go nowhere, yet habitually travel to worldly locales to unearth paramours—ah, men!—and I correspond with them all: white collar, blue collar, no collar, no hair. Some compose pithy and intellectual email which impels me to dig deep, pull out words like “scrofulous” or “vilipend.” Appeal to them with the same compelling shibboleth used to describe electronic golf caddies and GPS powered radar detectors in the Sharper Image catalog. “Wanna show me your corkscrew and infrared wine thermometer?” Aloud, I dictate letters to secret lovers I have no intention of ever meeting. “Darling, after sex with me, you’ll be flying like a superhero and spinning in midair with thirty seconds of hang-time!” To them, I speak in a sanguine voice I am too reluctant to use with my husband. Though, I wouldn’t be offended if he impetuously addressed me as a robust hottie who stimulated his brain’s frontal cortex. Unfortunately, in each other’s presence, our vocabulary regresses into five syllable sentences. Conjugal ape speak.

I shut down the computer, stretch the navy shantung over the Trinitron monitor and turn off the sewing light on my worktable. The microwave timer goes off for the third time. No longer in the mood, I forego the beefsteak dinner, and instead head straight to the freezer for a carton of Snugbury’s diabetic chocolate ice cream. I want to feel the hardened ice against my teeth, my tongue, swallow my need, and hurl my blood sugar towards sleep.

    Between cold sheets, I hear the sound of Ralph’s engine, the car tires pulverizing the already pulverized absorbent kitty clay. He’s rarely home before nine. Says it’s the new aerospace contract, always some excuse.

    When he finally walks in the door, beaten down with fatigue, suit smelling of tobacco, I flip the light on and say, “Hi dear, what took so long? I missed you.”

    Ralph yawns, says, “God; am I glad to be home.”

    “You hungry; shall I fix you something to eat?”  I ask, my voice tired and coaxing.

    “Nah—I’m alright. Grabbed a burger earlier.”

    “It’s no trouble,” I say, carefully folding down the bed sheet, exposing cleavage.

    Ralph suddenly perks up. At this he comes traipsing over, hump shouldered and all smiles. “Hey, you know the software release we’ve been trying to get out?”

    I look at the bureau for help. He has already placed his keys on top of his billfold. “The compliance, right?”

    “Yup—Restriction of Hazardous Substances Compliance Module,” he says with a flourish, and then looks at my flesh. He begins to fumble with the knobs on the bureau. “We announced it to the press today,” he says, retrieving his pajamas.

    “Sure you don’t want anything to eat?”

    “Nah,” he says, slipping out of his clothes. “Jack was concerned it wouldn’t run on Microsoft’s .NET framework. But he’s convinced now.” Ralph sits on the bed and switches on the television. With the sound muted, he tells me about the rest of his day while he trims his toenails. I watch him stooped over and visibly older than the night before, picking fuzz from between his toes, wishing he might notice something irrevocably different about me. Something conceivably terminal.

    Finally, I say, “Notice anything different, Ralph?”

    He looks up. “Oh, yeah,” he says, nodding. “You had your hair done. Looks nice.”

    I am sitting here thinking. I know what he’s saying in his mind: “Uh; let’s see, what does she want me to say. What am I suppose to notice. C’mon Ralph, figure it out.” Can’t he see the strain in my face? The pain. A woman can detect a straying husband from a mile away. Certainly men possess a similar, albeit technically antiquated guidance system. If Ralph can intuit excessive back pressure in his car’s exhaust, then surely he can tell I’ve been holding out on him.

    “Anything else?”  I ask.

    He gazes thoughtfully into my eyes. “Maybe,” he says, breaking into a faint smile, “Maybe it’s—I know; you won your bridge game. That’s it, isn’t it?”

    Sometimes I wish Ralph could see through me, into the crevasses of my body. To know me in a way that he is thoroughly incapable. Although I am fittingly flustered, he is unaware of this fact. Feeling self-conscious, I pull the sheets over my chest, as if suddenly chilled by inclement weather. “I won the first pot. Hazel thinks playing bridge on the computer is putting an edge on my game.”

    “Fantastic,” he replies. Almost mechanically, he shuts off the television, places the nail clippers on the nightstand, and climbs under the covers.

    “You sure are beautiful,” he says, then looks at his watch. “I’m beat, dear. Hit the lights—let’s get some sleep.”

    Long ago, in our first decade of marriage, back when I still wore a size six, Ralph never wanted to sleep, couldn’t get enough. His was a deep and tender love; I recall his heart beating wildly at the very sight of me. I desperately wish he possessed that longing today—a longing so consecrated it would cleanse my body of every last bit of untruth I’ve concealed from him this past year.

    “Good night, dear,” Ralph whispers, his face above me in the dark, his breath warm and dry like smoke from a cigarette. I feel his lips bump my eyelid, brush my cheek, and land upon my mouth—firm, resolute, final. Every night I wait for him to come home so that we can share this familiar interlude. It’s been six years and the closest he’s gotten to touching me is in these lingering moments when he places his lips impassively upon mine. I reassure myself: I like it that way. It’s predictable and secure. And after this long, marriage—well, marriage simply is by the sheer weight of its existence.

    Ralph rolls onto his back, breathing hard, as though he were extinguishing birthday candles. As soon as his head hits the pillow—a cottony thud—he lets out a few gruff sighs before falling asleep. I lay in the dark inches away, listening to his throaty snoring.

    Every so often he wakes himself, mutters a few indecipherable words. Drifts off again.

    I clear my throat and begin quickly to confess, “Ralph? There’s something I need tell you—”

    He says nothing.

    “Wake up, Ralph,” I say, faintly elbowing his ribs.

    “Mmm,” he moans and rolls away.

    “Hey,” I whisper again. “Can you hear me?”

    Dead quiet.

    I begin to speak.

    “I’m sick, Ralph—it’s cancer. I never said anything because I didn’t want it to interfere with your work. You’re always so busy. Foolish excuse, I know.” My voice sounds stiffly formal and somehow juvenile. When there is no response, I say, “Ralph, you hear what I just said?”

    “Stroke—crankshaft. Stock connecting rods,” he says in a barely audible whisper.

    I clear my throat and start over.

    “Ralph—Please hear me.” I begin to sniffle and wipe my eyes with the back of one hand. But it’s no use. Tears race towards my chin. I roll onto my side, crushing my face into the pillow trying to dry the wetness and stuff from my nose. I lay my head gingerly on the pillow, my breath on his neck.

    “I’m so lonely, Ralph,” I say. “I need you to spend more time at home. I have cancer, honey. You understand? It’s serious.”

    He groans, and I spoon him with my whole body, my belly fitting convexly into the small of his back.

    “I’m all bound up inside. I have felt so unappreciated and lost. Every night I wait for you to come home—so I can tell you. But even when you’re here, it’s like…it’s like you’re not here.”

    Ralph’s breathing is steady, as though he were deliberately listening.

    “I’m being eaten up by this cancer and if it were it up to me I’d run away to some place tropical and warm, where people are kind and always smiling. I just want someone to care about me, Ralph—listen to what I have to say.”

    “Hmm,” he mumbles softly. A low, inarticulate sound.

    “I love you, Ralph, but I can’t wait for you to retire. I need you, now. I know it’s not fair of me to ask, but I’m sick—you’re not around much to see it. I promise I won’t go online anymore. Those men don’t mean anything to me. I’ve just been so miserable.”

    At this, Ralph is snoring and the noise grows louder and louder. The room seems to reverberate; and once again, he has not heard me. I listen for some sudden disquiet, for him to snap out of his sleep. Hope that he might jolt to attention, say my name, hold me. Quietly, feeling the need for affection, I recoil from the spoon shape of our bodies, step out of bed, and walk out of the darkness, towards my computer.

Monique Parker is a Professor of English at the University of New Mexico-Taos. Her work has also appeared in the SoMa Literary Review. The previous editor of Chokecherries, she has an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University-Los Angeles. She makes her home at the base of a remote unspoiled mountain wilderness in Northern New Mexico.

Date of Publication: 11 Dec 2007