Amie Barrodale - You Are Having a Good Time

“I’ll go and ask.”

I was halfway down the stairs when I stopped. I put my hand on the wall to catch my breath. All of the grievances and burdens of my life overwhelmed me, and I went upstairs and apologized to my wife. I said, “I couldn’t ask.”

“Well, if we’re staying here, we’re staying here,” she said. “Let’s just go downstairs, tell her we’re tired, and ask her where we’re sleeping.”

* * *

My wife and I got in bed and held each other. She said, “Scratch my back.”

I put a hand through the sleeve of her T-shirt.

“No, higher. Higher. There, now over to the middle.”

I scratched with both hands.

“Hey, there’s a wolverine,” she said. “Ow.”

“There’s a wolverine?” I stopped scratching and looked at my nails.

“Yeah.”

“Where?” I held out my left hand.

She touched each of my fingers with her tongue. She said, “I don’t know. I can’t find it now.”

I looked at my pinkie. “I think it’s this one.”

“Maybe so, I didn’t check that one.”

I bit the nail down and said, “Turn over.” I scratched her back again.

She said, “Ow, it’s still there. The wolverine.”

“I had it lifted!” I said.

She turned over and I held up my hand to show her that the pinkie was curled up.

There was a knock at the bedroom door.

“Come in,” I said. “Come in.” I said it a few times. Then I got up and opened the door. I didn’t even bother putting on a shirt. Gwen didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m going to the store,” she said.

“We were just going to sleep.”

“Isn’t your wife hungry?”

I turned. My wife shrugged.

“Let me go,” Gwen said. “I don’t mind. She’s got to eat for two, right? I’ll get some materials for a purification while I’m gone.”

“You told her I’m pregnant?” my wife asked.

I got back in bed beside her. We were both in our underwear. I said, “Let’s cuddle until she gets back. Enfold me in your wax wing.”

She chuckled. I turned my back to her and she put an arm around me.

Gwen was gone for an hour. She came back with takeout: steaks, gumbo, and arugula salad. It was too much food for me — too rich and too late, but my wife ate everything. I was ready to go to bed, but Gwen lit a fire. She read a prayer, and burned food. I kept looking at my wife, to say, “Where are we, this is crazy?” but my wife was watching Gwen intently. Gwen said, “I am offering everything nice in the world to the being — whatever she would like. I’m asking her to go.”

“What being?” my wife asked.

“There’s a ghost living on me,” I told my wife. “Gwen said so.”

Gwen said, “Don’t pin it all on me.”

My wife said, “Actually, right now, that makes a lot of sense.”

When Gwen was finished, we all felt better. I felt better because I could go to sleep, and my wife felt better because she hoped something would change me back to the man I used to be. Gwen said, “The being is still there. She is happy now, but she is strong.”

As we were falling asleep, my wife said, “Why don’t we just live here?”

“In Gwen’s house?”

“No, in a house like it. In the Redwoods.”

* * *

The next afternoon Gwen sent my wife and me to the Kroger’s near the house to get materials for the next ritual, what she called the real purification. I coughed several times each block. My wife said, “Could you not make that last sound?”

“It hurts.”

“I know. Just that last sound.”

“It hurts me.”

“It feels very aggressive.”

I rolled down my window and leaned against my elbow. I coughed more, and hacked. I coughed in the grocery store. People turned to watch, so I did it louder to show them it was up to me whether I coughed. I even considered spitting in the aisle, to show them. The grocery store was much bigger than the kind of grocery store I was accustomed to, but the food was not arranged well at all. My wife said she would get the ritual materials from Gwen’s list. She told me to get food. I was too disoriented to shop. I put ice cream and salt-and-vinegar potato chips into my basket. When my wife found me, she looked at the two items and then at me. I was angry. I didn’t know why I was angry, so I coughed. I said, “We can always come back.”

At the checkout register my wife said, “What about Gwen? She’s hosting us. I bet she’d like a burger.”

“I don’t think so. She strikes me as a vegetarian.”

My wife gave me a funny look I didn’t understand. I understand it now. It was very simple, of course. My wife was hungry. My wife would have liked a burger.

* * *

Gwen performed the big purification when we got home. It took her several hours to prepare. She had to cook an elaborate meal, and she took some time in her bedroom getting dressed in an organza robe and a crown. By this time, I had hope. Maybe, I thought, maybe it will all work out. Maybe it’s true what she says — hadn’t I been acting strangely? Wasn’t jealousy another word for possession? She lit a fire outside and read a long text. The fog lifted during the ceremony — due to the sun, I thought, but Gwen said it was auspicious.

“I’m cured?” I said.

“I don’t know. The being is a bit more powerful than ordinary. If it were me, I would not ever set foot again in your apartment.”

We would stay a second night. She wanted to call another expert. She warned me that the being had her feelings hurt and might get up to mischief.

* * *

That night, my wife and I got a DVD from Gwen’s collection. We chose No Country for Old Men . We were both exhausted. During one of the first scenes, Chigur was handcuffed behind his back. He slipped the handcuffs down his legs and stepped over them, so he could have his arms in front. My wife said, “Why don’t people do that more often?”

“They do. I did it every time I went to jail. It’s just they fuss at you.”

“They fuss at you how?”

“They say, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’”

I was too tired to stay up. I said, “I think I’m going to sleep.”

When I woke up, my wife was sitting cross-legged on the floor. She was in the corner with her phone and the movie had started to replay.

“Who are you texting?” I said.

“My mother.”

“Why is the movie starting over again?”

“I wanted to see something I missed the first time.”

“Why are you on the floor?”

“I was eating pretzels.”

“Let me see the texts.”

She sighed. She stood and handed me the phone. There were two or three recent texts between her and her mother. A text message rolled in from a phone number. I recognized the number. It was an old boyfriend of hers. I felt sick, like I would faint. I didn’t read what it said. I threw the phone across the room.

“You were texting an old boyfriend.”

“I was texting my mother.”

She got the phone from the other side of the room. I tried to take it, but she held it behind her back. I knocked her onto the floor. It happened quickly.

“Show it to me,” I said. “I don’t care if you like him. I want you to go and be with him. You two are a very good match, in my opinion.”

I hit her in the face. She said, “Hit me one more time.”

I said, “Show it to me.”

“No. I won’t put up with this tyranny anymore.”

I stomped my wife’s foot and knocked her over. She tried to fight me. I took her hands and hit myself in the face.

I said, “Why, if you were going to do this, did you marry me? I was perfectly happy to be alone.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I saw the number.”

She gave me the phone and said, “So call it. Go ahead.”