Wendy Markham - Mike, Mike and Me

My parents’ relationship survived the Vietnam War—not that my dad was sent to Southeast Asia or anything. But he did serve in the military back then, stationed in Alabama for more than a year when my sister and I were really young.

I couldn’t imagine that Mike and I would ever live through a war in this day and age, but I honestly believed, in my young and foolish heart, that we could make it through anything the future was going to throw at us.

The present

Splat.

“Shit!”

No, not literally shit. That would have been even more disgusting, but this is pretty vile. I have just been sprayed with Earth’s Best Organic First Sweet Potatoes.

“Beau! Watch your mouth!”

Startled by the voice, I turn to glower at my husband, who is standing in the kitchen doorway, fresh from his shower and wearing a crisp white button-down and maroon tie unmarred by pureed orange root vegetables.

“Well, I wish he’d watch his mouth,” I snap, gesturing at my squirming five-month-old, whose chubby cheeks are ominously puffed again. “He does this spitting thing because you taught him.”

“I didn’t teach him to spit food. I taught him to do this. Didn’t I, Tyler?” Mike leans over the high chair and blows a vibrating raspberry into our son’s face.

Tyler squeals with glee.

“Stop it, Mike. You think it’s cute, but lately he does that whenever he has a mouthful, and I’m the one who ends up wearing his breakfast, not you.” I reach for a cloth diaper from the basket of clean, unfolded laundry on the table and mop the mess from my face.

“Yeah, well, I’d trade feeding him his breakfast for getting on the train,” Mike says darkly.

Tyler does another loud raspberry.

“No, Tyler, that’s bad, bad.”

“No, don’t say bad like that—he’ll think you’re saying he’s bad,” I reprimand Mike for the millionth time since I read that parenting magazine article that claimed telling your children they’re bad will create self-esteem issues they’ll carry for a lifetime.

“Oh, right. What am I supposed to say again?” Mike doesn’t roll his eyes at me, but I can tell that he wants to.

“Tell him ‘that’s naughty.’”

“That’s naughty, Tyler,” Mike says, even as he strides over to the polished granite counter and peers at the coffeemaker.

A moment goes by. I pretend to be oblivious, focusing on circling the rubber-tipped spoon just below the rim of the jar until it’s coated with orange goo.

“Oh…no coffee?” Mike lifts the empty glass carafe, as if to be absolutely certain that steaming black brew isn’t somehow concealed inside.

I swallow a snarl as Tyler swallows the spoonful of sweet potatoes I’ve cautiously slipped past his drooly pink gums.

“No coffee,” I inform my husband curtly. “I haven’t had a chance to make it yet. I’ve been busy with the laundry and the baby.”

“Mmm,” he says, or maybe it’s “hmm.” Either way, the message is clear. He, the commuting husband, is feeling neglected by me, the stay-at-home wife.

“You can stop at Starbucks on the way to the station,” I inform him.

“You know I don’t like their coffee.”

I do know that. He thinks it tastes burnt, making him the only grown human in the tristate area who doesn’t patronize the place.

“Go to Dunkin’ Donuts, then,” I tell him. “You like their coffee.”

“It’s too out of the way. I’ll miss my train.”

I shrug. What the hell does he want me to say?

I clear my throat. “Sorry.”

That, I know, is what he wants me to say.

But now that I’ve obliged, he merely shrugs and strides to the sink, where he reaches for the orange prescription bottle on the windowsill.

You’d think he’d tell me that it’s okay. That, for once, he can live without his caffeine fix for the hour it will take him to get to his office in midtown. You’d even think he’d offer to get up five minutes earlier from now on and make his own goddamn coffee.

Nope, nope and nope.

He swallows the small white pill he’s been taking for his high cholesterol ever since the doctor prescribed the medication last winter.

You’d think he’d be grateful to me, his loving wife, for caring enough about him to insist that he get a physical after years of neglecting to do so.

Nope again.

If I’m in the vicinity when he takes his daily dose, as I am most mornings, he makes a big show of making a face as he swallows. Sometimes—like today—he throws in a heavy sigh for good measure, as if to illustrate how tragic it is that his very life depends on modern medicine.

Not that it does. His cholesterol wasn’t that high. But early heart attacks run in his family, and I don’t want to be a young widow.

Really, I don’t.

Shoving aside a twinge of guilt, I spoon more baby food into Tyler’s gaping mouth.

The fact that I have found myself fantasizing lately about being single again has nothing to do with wishing my husband dead.

I love Mike. I’ve loved Mike for almost half of my life.

It’s just that I’ve loved him more passionately in the past than I happen to love him right now.

Right now—as in, these days—he gets on my nerves.

Right now—as in, right this second—he’s really getting on my nerves.

“I thought Melina came yesterday,” he says.

Melina is our cleaning woman, and I know where this is headed. Teeth clenched, I scoop more baby food onto the spoon and say tersely, “She did come yesterday.”

“The sink doesn’t look clean.”

“It was clean after she left.”

He bends over to inspect the caulked groove where the white porcelain meets the black granite. “There’s a speck of red gunk that was here yesterday morning. It’s left over from the lasagne pan you washed,” he informs me. “It’s still here.”

“Then why don’t you scrub it off?” I snap.

“Because that’s Melina’s job. That’s why we pay her a hundred bucks a week. Why are we paying her if she’s not doing her job?”

Why, I wonder, are we having this conversation yet again?

“If you don’t want to tell her that she has to shape up, Beau, I will.”

“I’ll tell her,” I say quickly, driven by the inexplicable yet innate need to protect Melina from the Wrath of Mike. “It’s just hard. She doesn’t speak English.”

“Then show her. Bring her over to the sink and point to the gunk. Then bring her to the corner of the upstairs hall and show her the cobwebs that have been there for two weeks. Then bring her to the boys’ bathroom and show her the grunge growing on the tile behind the faucet. Then—”

“Okay! I get it, Mike.”

“Right. So will she, if you show her.”

I sigh. “Yeah, well, I can’t follow her around the house every time she’s here.”

“Then maybe you should fire her and hire somebody who doesn’t need to be shown how to do their job.”

“We can’t fire her. She has two kids to support here and three more in Guatemala. She needs the money.”

Mike shakes his head and mutters something, his back to me.

“What?”

He doesn’t turn around. “I just said, I don’t understand how a mother can leave her kids behind like that.”

I bite back another defense of Melina. I don’t understand it, either. The thought of leaving my babies behind—even when they’re adolescents—to go live and work in another country is as foreign to me as…well, as Guatemala is. Intellectually, I understand her reasons. Maternally, I’m at a loss.

I’d never heard of such a thing until I moved to Westchester and had my first brush with domestic help. In the past seven years, I’ve met countless nannies and housekeepers with children and spouses back in South America or the Caribbean or wherever it is they’re from. I used to find it shocking; now it’s merely unsettling.