Inappropriate Behavior by Murray Farish

Author:Murray Farish [Farish, Murray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781571319029
Publisher: Milkweed Editions

I MARRIED AN OPTIMIST

Which is a hell of a thing to just find out, admittedly, after nearly two years of marriage, not to mention that Heather and I had known each other, off and on, for the better part of ten years. Ours was no whirlwind romance, no Vegas job, no love at first sight. We spent time, much of it alone, living in this dreadful town with few friends save each other, night after night, talking and talking. We ate our meals together, we drank our drink together, we shared our beds and our minds. Both of us wary—or so I thought—we got to know each other—or so I thought. But now it appears that the facts are uncontestable, the truth as plain as rice: my wife is an optimist.

And I want to point out that it’s not merely a few good thoughts about the world, some half-assed, Christmas- and Easter-type optimism. We all fall victim to that sometimes, lose our bearings, briefly apostatize: when the worst possible scenario doesn’t play out; when someone belies our initial underestimation; when we—rarely—make it to the end of a day without seriously contemplating murder. We can all get a little soft now and then.

No, I’m talking a serious conversion here, or—I shudder at the implications—a difference in my wife so profound and debilitating that it must not be a conversion at all, but must be the way she’s always been. I’m talking glass half-full; I’m talking a bowl of pitted cherries; I’m talking Anne Frank here, and I don’t know what to do about it.

Because I’ve grown fond of my wife, even, yes, to love her, over the years we’ve spent living this now obvious lie. I don’t want a divorce. I do not want to simply throw up my hands, abandon her to the dark side. And yet, isn’t it optimistic of me to think I can change her? Or that I can remain unchanged?

Because looking back, I have to admit that there were signs. A year or so ago she came home with a dog, announcing her intention to train the animal. Her quest for the tomatoes of her childhood is relentless, quixotic, Diogenesianly hopeless, and yet every time she bites into one of these measly, pesti-steroided monstrosities of today, she seems surprised and hurt by it. One recent evening, while I was drinking and sulking at the only decent bar left in our suddenly swank Houston neighborhood (the war on terror has been very good for Houston), I happened to scoff at a young woman wearing a Dollywood T-shirt. Heather proffered the opinion that the well-built and well-maintained young woman was probably wearing the T-shirt ironically, stretched tight as it was above a pair of $300 blue jeans. What’s more, she proposed, the woman was wrong to mock Dollywood; Dollywood might be fun; Dolly Parton had given the wretched denizens of the previously wretched burg of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, many opportunities for jobs and cultural exposure. I responded with

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