She sits on the couch watching her murder shows. Her favorite is “Snapped,” in which women who kill their mates are profiled lovingly. By the end of the show you’re usually rooting for the murderer to get away. Some do.
I ask her why she watches these shows. “To get tips,” she says.
My wife. Or, at least, she used to be my wife.
Usually in this blog I don’t like to bring in personal stuff, but I’ve put my second wife into so many of my stories, perhaps I should explain.
My second wife was once a stripper. I never knew her during those days in which she was hot as hell and didn’t have a care in the world. When I met her–at a poetry reading–she was chubby and had a gargoyle face and a 2-year-old boy. Still, we ended up having a relationship that now has spanned 20 years.
Thing about my second wife, she is a brilliant poet. When she got her MFA at Cal State Long Beach, they called her “the female Bukowski.” And she was, writing poems about her former life as a stripper and gritty poems about the disappointment of life in the inner city. One poem she wrote about two teenage lesbians who jumped off the San Pedro Bridge to their deaths ends with the lines: “If there is a God/He’s a real son of a bitch.”
That’s the sort of line I would never have the sand to write. It’s bold, it’s brilliant, it challenges the reader.
Problem with my second wife is that she is a dragon. Often she would get into a raging fight with me, then fly out of our cave, go set fire to a local town, then come back somewhat apologetic.
“Did you set fire to another town?” I’d ask sternly. She’d look at the floor and nod her head.
When I divorced her in 2015, it was due to a serious disagreement we were having. I wanted to continue living and drawing breath. She disagreed.
We have gone in and out of being friends ever since. Just a few months ago, she asked if she could stay with me a few weeks in Southern California while she was getting her teeth fixed. I said yes. We are no longer intimate but when we are on good terms we are very good friends.
The problem–and there’s always a problem with dragons, isn’t there?–is that the visit went too long. Had it stopped at 3 weeks we would have parted as friends.
But she once again began breathing fire at me, accusing me of things she knows I never did. I think she does this when we’re getting too emotionally close. She’s writing a book that will (I hope) make her reputation in the literary world. She’s tried writing novels before but this one is the most promising. It has her sarcasm, her wit, but also her ability to look into the heart of the down-and-out, to depict the demimonde in a sympathetic way.
So she got angry at me and flew out of my apartment. The place is quiet now. No murder shows on TV–I watched Rachel Maddow last night. No angry grumblings from the kitchen table about what an asshole I am. No longing looks from my ex at the array of knives displayed in the kitchen.
No, she’s gone. She’s going to fly to France to be with her French publisher.
I hope France is ready.
Mark Bruce, Writer 