My Wife Is Mad

She never knew this guy, though she helped create him. And now that she’s met him, she hates him.

She especially hates it when he shows up, which he mostly hasn’t done in a dozen-plus years of marriage.

Showed up last night. Big Fight. First ever in a decently long marriage. She threatened me physically. I called the cops, then called them off. She, like me, has a reputation for winning confrontations. She needed a lesson. Which I had tried to deliver in every other possible way.

Try this. We had a deal. I would do the writing, she would promote it. We both had long careers as editors, proofreaders, and documentation producers and managers. She ran into the red tape wall that exists now at Kindle and Amazon and gave up.

Okay. I have several stillborn books in queue at those places. But she gave up.

Okay.

I aimed her at new targets, all with the same purpose: 1) Getting somebody on the phone at Amazon or Kindle who could unstop the logjam of new books;  2) Finding new ways to promote the existing 15+ books and 10+ websites where my work is presently buried;  3) Finding me my first literary agent in 30-some years. Also, a couple less pecuniary tuneups. Get someone at Mercersburg Academy to acknowledge that I am a Notable Alum. Get an old friend from teen and tween years to talk to me again, even though he’s dying in some self-made prison because he never tried to escape and somehow blames me for his own sins. Upshot? She’s flopped across the board. Which I kind of knew she would. It’s okay. I married her because all racing greys need rescuers. And she’s been the best of all and I love her.

So why would I do this to her? We’re out of money. Completely. Well over $50,000 worth of credit card debt, every debit card transaction but for twice or so a month a chargeable overdraft, and SHE DID NOT TELL ME. I had to discover it trying to get a Big Breakfast at McDonalds.

So we need money. I could give you a lot of fancy exposition — I am still a writer after all — but I won’t. I’ll just give you the truth, which sounds noble until you’re on the vet table looking at the business end of a needle. She’s a rescuer. She rescued greyhounds for 20 years, and other breeds. They all had to be beauties. She rescued me too. Tried when I was still in my 20s, succeeded finally when I was leaving my 40s. Her biggest, grandest rescue of all. And then she effed up. She has impeccable motives.

They were greyhounds. I was the rarest dog of all, a real American writer. Actually, the only one. She found me. Recognized the breed at once. Set out to save me before I had done anything noteworthy. Yes, I love her. Loved her then. Knew I had to leave her to go do the noteworthy things I had been designed to do. Still love her too deeply to describe (though these words should suffice), but her rescue failed. Utterly. Now I am looking at the one end more than any other I had hoped to avoid. Dying alone on a grate in Philly with other homeless wrecks on a cold ight in February, toothless and unable to afford a last drink.

A simple failure on her part. She has to keep putting blankets on her rescues While they wait for the euthanist’s ministrations. A simple failure on my part. I thought she really did care about and understand the writing. I was wrong. She’s published a dozen books for me, but she doesn’t care about anything past one reading. She can’t see what I have been creating, a multi-layered Mystery in multiple media and dimensions, something entirely new that should be a cinch to sell one cheap thriller’s worth to one agent, one publisher, Woman to woman. Unless they just can’t see the mountain I have built to drive sales and illumination.

So I found her out last night. She knows even less than I had feared about my work, despite all her very real work and love. My reaction was, Why do you claim to love me at all? She said things. Threatened to punish me for my “abuse”. Which consisted of telling her the truth. She had done virtually nothing about our agreed-upon list, we were so out of money we couldn’t afford gasoline for the Jeep, and I am staring down the barrel of humiliating toothlessness because it’s forever since I had the money for a dentist. And, as I should have remembered, all greyhounds have bad teeth. Not to worry. They’re still beautiful.

My fault. Got it.

Which leaves me where? I could write our way out of this financial abyss I just discovered we were in, but that would require her to understand that her toothless old grey is still a champion. Still a Secretariat length ahead of all the competition but in need of a venue he can’t arrange for himself by phone. Not going to happen, is it?