Husbands
Drawing by
Naomi Koffman
“Is there anything I can do?” A neighbor asked Dorothy Parker after husband Number Two died.
“Yes, get me another husband.”
“Dottie, that's a terrible thing to say!”
“All right, get me a ham and cheese on rye.”
Husbands. The relationship we choose. The men we love, live with, fight for, and are baffled by. But yes, sometimes we’d rather a ham and cheese on rye. (And yes, this issue is heteronormative as hell.)
Written Into Existence
Word Count 802
There’s a good possibility that I only exist on the page. Unfortunately, I didn’t write that page. I have been written about since I was a kid when I frequently appeared in mother‘s weekly column in a Montreal newspaper. The person she bashed out on her Selectric typewriter was lippy, bucking authority, weirdly world-wise. A few times when I was riding the bus to school, I would see someone reading her column, smiling and nodding at my antics. I knew then that I could never compete with the character on the page.
Leaf Blower in Swindon Town
Word Count 27
I bought
the finest leaf
blower money can buy
The Long Marriage
Word Count 2202
A few years ago, I began noticing brown age spots spreading across the back of my husband’s hands. His father had these same spots in the same place.
“We’ve been hanging out together a long time,” I say to Michael, as we scroll through our respective devices on our faded green corduroy couch. “I can’t believe it’s been 42 years.”
“Forty-three,” he replies, matter of fact.
Michael knows my math skills are abominable. Early in our relationship, he thought I was faking it – trying to be funny. But honest to God, sometimes I cannot remember how old I am, let alone how old our marriage is.
I was 24 when I met Michael, 25 when we got engaged, 26 when we got married, 27 when I got pregnant with our first child. We barely knew each other when we said our vows, though of course we thought we knew everything.
But how could we? We didn’t even know ourselves.
Those early years are a blur, but I do have illustrations. Our bookshelves are filled with dozens of photo albums chronicling the first few decades of our marriage.
In Lieu Of A Cocktail Party
Word Count 1928
The winding country road climbs the hills miles west of Portland, swooping around bends and unexpected hairpin turns. It had snowed at this elevation and the road, while clear, was still slick in patches. The Western cedars and Douglas firs are thinner than lower down.
Rounding a tight corner, it takes me a moment to understand what I’m seeing. In the ditch, on our passenger side, another car points toward us, two faces peer from beneath the windshield as if they are underwater. One face so round and pale, I think of the full moon, despite the dark, frantic eyes and the trickle of blood
My husband pulls the car onto the narrow, graveled shoulder, and we run back to them. Their car is tilted with the passenger side pressed against the bottom of the ditch.
Organ Donor
Word Count 1290
Ten rules for a good life were posted on our fridge for years. Always be somebody’s sweetheart was easy—we had loved each other since we were graduate students. Also easy was When the circus comes to town, be there. We were fans of Cirque du Soleil. More difficult for me was If you’re ever going to laugh about something, you might as well start now.
Humor came naturally to him. He laughed about being held up at gunpoint and burning our holiday roast. His tales amused friends and family, as well as telemarketers and bank clerks. And when he was hospitalized for heart failure, which happened frequently as he approached sixty-five, he entertained doctors, nurses, and the custodians who emptied his trash.
I was too serious, he claimed.
The Housekeeper
Word Count 1187
I was in the laundry room in the basement of my building. It was chilly down there and the ceiling lightbulbs were struggling. I was violently stuffing a bottom sheet into a pillowcase after giving up on trying to fold it and thinking about how much I hated my husband when I first saw her.
Several months earlier, I left my job after a career as an international terrorism prosecutor traveling all over the world and trying complicated conspiracies in ornate courtrooms overflowing with spectators and international press corps so that I could “write a book”.
Three days into my retirement, my husband fired the housekeeper because, as he said in a tone like he was expressing sympathy at a funeral, “You are home now."
Gutted
Word Count 998
Because it was his birthday, I did not nag my husband about the blood spatters he'd left on the window above the kitchen sink. I did not raise a stink over the clumps of hair and flesh crusting the five doorknobs between the kitchen and garage. Because it was his birthday, I zipped my lip and spritzed ammonia onto the speckled glass. I sprayed bleach solution across the crimson-streaked counters and silently wiped down the sill, faucet, and backsplash. It was the least I could do on his special day. If you're with a person long enough, you seize whatever gifting ideas come, including the priceless gift of tolerance.
When people talk about the components of a good marriage, they often cite shared interests as a key to longevity. They aren't married to John.
Cat Lady, Interrupted
Word Count 1538
As I climbed uphill from my house to an abandoned hospital, I noticed a pair of eyes in the underbrush. A feral cat crouched amongst the thorns, its bent tail twitching. The creature was jet-black and emaciated, with streaks of mud embedded in its matted fur. I’d seen the animal before, but this time it looked different, like it recognized me for the first time.
Late-afternoon heat seared my face and shoulders, reminding me that I’d forgotten to apply sunscreen.
Lately, I forgot everything. When to pay bills, what time to get up, even the day of the week. My husband had been dead for only a month, after a two-year bout with colon cancer. He’d closed his eyes and gone to wherever escaping souls reside. I had no idea where that was.
Everyone tried their hardest to tell me. People seemed so certain about the afterlife’s heavenly reward. Easy enough, since they weren’t the ones grieving.
A Good Marriage
Word Count 997
For a long time, I thought I would never get married. I wanted to get married -- my parents had been happily married forever – but I hadn’t been in love with anyone since I was fifteen, and I despaired that I'd ever feel that delightful, unrelenting fluttering again. And then one day I did. And here it is 37 years later, and in so far as my arthritic body allows, I still feel it.
I met my husband when I was 27. We were introduced at a party. After a quick hello, I brushed him aside to finish my conversation. To this day he reminds me of my bad manners.
Five years later, we met again, and this time I fell in love. In the interim was a broken engagement – mine – and a separation – his.
I Hate You, Sometimes
Word Count 266
I Hate You, Sometimes
You stand in the hallway outside the bedroom
safe distance from my germs.
I sympathize but what if I was in a car crash?
I doubt you would pull me out of burning flames.
You don’t like being hot.
You are hot, almost eighty and so boyish.
It pisses me off. You being all adorable
in those round-framed glasses.
I hate you sometimes.
Already Broken
Word Count 627
Many years ago, my mother's jewelry disappeared.
She herself had disappeared some two decades earlier. In fact, by the time I was in my early 30s, both of my parents were gone. I had few mementoes of their time on earth; furniture and art were swept up in the hurricane of time, distance, and family dysfunction. But, as their sole daughter, I did inherit the jewelry.
The year my mother died, I also lost my grandmother and brother-in-law. My own brothers and I became estranged and, not long afterwards, my marriage ended. Those years felt sickeningly out of control, my body caught up in a rough cold ocean; thrown onto the rocks again and again.
Stranger in a Strange Land
Word Count 1394
Young Mothers’ Program, 1979
First Quarter
First, be single and just out of college. Be uninterested in finding a husband; be interested, instead, in babies.
Second, move to Utah. Teach in a high school program for teenage mothers. Live in a slum.
Teach your students things you know nothing about. Teach a Foods class when you do not know how to cook. Teach Child Development when you have never raised a child.
At night, dream about babies. Dream that you’re pregnant by the drug dealer with the golden-red hair. Dream that you’re lying next to him in his hut. Feel your breasts swell, your belly grow. Think, after this, my life will never be the same.
When Your Husband Is Autistic
Word Count 2021
“I deserve so much better,” I whispered.
It was the morning after my husband Lars stood me up for a lunch date. He’d feel cornered if I looked into his eyes, so I drew him into a hug and spoke softly into his ear.
“Yesterday you left me waiting for you at the restaurant,” I reminded him.
I had waited for an hour before eating alone. He texted me later with an offhand “Sorry, I got caught up in some work.” For the hundredth time, I felt invisible.
I was so upset that I searched the Internet for “legal separation,” and then scribbled a list of divorce lawyers on a Post-it note.
We kept hugging, his barrel chest pressed against me, the musky scent of his body wash filling my nostrils. During our courtship he hugged and kissed passionately. Where had that gone?
The Secret Lover
Word Count 1523
In February of 2023, I learned that my first love had died. Our relationship spanned seven years between 1991 and 1998. When I met him, I was a first-year student at Wellesley College; I went on an early online chat service called IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, and one night met a 66-year old philosophy professor for a west coast liberal arts college. Marvin and I hit it off right away. I was enthralled with his humor and smarts, and he seemed besotted with me, calling himself "your aged admirer." His attention left me dizzy; online chatting turned into daily phone calls and we formed an intense and special friendship. By the time our relationship ended in 1998, we'd met in person twice, and he'd become my first lover.
The Quarry
Word Count 995
That last summer was impossibly hot. My husband and I would go in the late afternoon to swim in the quarry outside of town. If you’ve ever been swimming in a quarry, you know how it is—the sides are rough and razor-sharp. You sit in a cloak of dry heat, brushed now and then with a whiff of cool stone smell. You can’t see the bottom. The water lulls you with its warm top layer and shocks you with the sudden touch of ice on your legs.
On these outings, my husband seemed more open, looser than he had been for months. While he was finishing his degree, he fretted over his exams, talking less and less, finally fading to silence. But now, we sat together looking down in the water, and he told stories about his childhood, puffing on his pipe as he talked.
We’d just gotten our son little soft shoes for his first birthday, and my husband told me about his own baby slippers, which he called “goggies.”