Chad
Ishould have been relieved. Bitsy had smiled so sweetly when I asked for her forgiveness.
However, I still felt uneasy as I showered in her dad’s guest room. And it wasn’t just because I’d packed no clothes so all I had to wear was hand-me-down overalls from Bitsy’s brothers.
There was something in my wife’s manner that I did not like.
Oh, she had said all the right words. But somehow the look in her eyes had been all wrong.
I didn’t like it. Didn’t like it at all.
It was almost as if she didn’t believe me.
I buckled my overalls and headed downstairs to make sure my wife was fully aware of my everlasting devotion. The fact that I’d even forgotten this trip was fucked up. I had to do better.
The entire downstairs was an absolute festival of cuteness and whimsy, but this time everything swamp and bayou, with crocheted crocodiles, herbs that I hoped weren’t going to be used to curse me hanging upside-down, and quilts with fishing poles and garfish.
This was what Bitsy deserved. Full-throated support of her and her passions.
So why the fuck had I ever said anything about our house?
Did I want to live in a sterile, minimalistic condo or did I want a happy wife? It wasn’t even a question. Just because I was raised with a bunch of uptight WASPs didn’t mean I had to pass my neuroses onto my sweet creative wife.
And why the ever-loving fuck had I even brought up Kyle’s wife Jyessica? She was a boring basic status climbing freak, and I wouldn’t have touched her with a ten-foot pole,
But now I had to convince Bitsy that it hadn’t all been bullshit. That I really did love her.
I opened the door to all of my wife’s relatives earnestly imploring her to divorce me.
“Bitsy, what do you want us to do with him?” Hayes asked as I walked out in a T-shirt smelling faintly of crocodile and overalls that were several inches too short.
“Well, what are the options?” Bitsy asked, putting the finishing touches on her Gran’s cake.
“Firstly, we could kill him,” Junior said.
Was that a twinkle in her eye? Or was she seriously considering this?
“And what are the other options?”
By this time there were other relatives around, and her brothers and uncles and great-uncles all leaped in at the same time, detailing what exactly they would like to do to me, and it ranged from feeding me to the crocodiles to leaving me alone in the swamp to find my way out to rolling me up in mud and shoving me into a beehive.
“Sweetheart, look at him!” Third protested. “He’s such a scrawny little thing.”
“I’m taller than you,” I said heatedly, because I knew one thing about Bitsy’s brothers and that’s if they smelled any weakness they’d be on it. “You want to take this outside?”
“Any fighting will be indoors,” Hayes said. “So we can all watch and judge it.”
“Bitsy, there are men out there who would truly appreciate this,” Junior said, pointing at a papier-mache sculpture of a ghost.
“I’m afraid I made a vow,” Bitsy sighed regretfully. “So I must see it through to the bitter end.”
I didn’t like this point of view at all. Surely she wasn’t just staying out of some obligation. Surely I hadn’t fucked up that much.
“I want another chance,” I said hastily. “I want to start fresh and show how much you mean to me. I’m so sorry I said what I did. That was wrong of me.”
“Of course,” Bitsy said, parroting my exact words. “Start afresh, yes.”
“I do like you! Everything about you! I was just an idiot, that’s all. I promise.”
The rest of her family was giving me very unpleasant looks, as if wondering what exactly Bitsy saw in me. At this point, I didn’t know myself.
“All right,” she said sweetly, but there was something in her eyes that made me uneasy.
“It’s really all right?”
“Yes, I perfectly understood you. Much regret.”
Well, those were all the right words, but somehow I hated them anyway.
Because there was something wrong. She didn’t have the same spark in her eyes.
“I was so afraid you were going to leave me.”
She only looked over at me.
“Were you now? That’s nice.”
“Of course I was! I love you very much. Let’s just forget I said anything.”
“This idiot cannot be worth that,” one of her uncles put in, and I had to admit the difference between her family and mine.
For everything that Bitsy did for them, they were absolutely ride or die for her.
What looked like every single thing she’d ever made for them from kindergarten on up was carefully displayed on shelves or on the wall.
The entire house showed how much they loved and supported each other.
If I thought my gut was already as low as it could go, I felt it sink even lower, oozing down my legs and seeping into my ankles.
This was what Bitsy was used to. This open love and adoration of everything she did.
And what had I done? I’d made her feel like she needed to change.
“How’s it going, pond scum?” Granny greeted me with an elbow to the gut.
Damn, I thought Granny had been the only person who liked me!
“W-what do you mean?”
“I mean are there any brains in your head or is it just hair there?”
I flattened my curls self-consciously. Without hair gel they had a tendency to stick up all over my head.
“I was willing to accept this marriage,” Granny said. “Because the Lord knows a good girl like her deserves some airhead arm candy, but that’s when I assumed you were smart enough to realize what a prize you had.”
“I do,” I hastened to reassure her. “I know exactly what I’ve got. I messed up, I know I did. But I apologized and I’m making it better.”
She eyed me with loathing.
“Well, see that you do. I’ve a mind to come up there and visit, make sure you’re behaving.”
“You are welcome anytime,” I said miserably.
And then when it came time for dinner, suddenly Bitsy appeared with a bowl in front of me.
In it was Bitsy’s classic thick gumbo with a huge piece of cornbread on the side.
“Here you go, oh most revered and glorious husband. Men must eat first, as they are our betters. Therefore I submit this humble offering to you.”
Well, you would have thought I’d dragged dogshit in the house with the way everyone reacted in horror.
“Wait, I didn’t ask for that—” I started.
It was too late. Her brother Junior already had me under the armpits as Third grabbed me around the legs, and they were hauling me down the stairs.
“Got it, princess. We see the picture. You want him back in how many pieces?”
“No!” I howled. “Bitsy, please! I didn’t ask for that! I don’t know why she said that!”
“Shut up, you misogynistic pig! She’s done with you!”
“Maybe he can be alligator bait.”
“What the hell!” I roared. “This is all a misunderstanding!”
They were about to hog-tie me when Bitsy spoke.
“Maybe we should let him go if he promises to one day do the dishes.”
Well, the whole family exploded in anger, begging Bitsy to leave me, and by the whole I was able to make it back inside the gumbo was cold and everybody blamed me for it.
There was no good family spirit after that and no chance whatsoever of convincing her family I was a good guy.
The birthday festivities were marked with furious glares, and sideways glances, and everyone praising my wife’s cooking made me feel even more like a dumbass.
“You have ruined my birthday with your rampant misogyny,” Granny said angrily, shaking her cane in my face and I was forbidden a piece of birthday cake.
“Bitsy, for god’s sake,” I begged after she had retreated to the guest bedroom. “I never intended you to act like some submissive wife at home! I just meant around my boss.”
“Well, it’s kind of an immersive role,” Bitsy said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to get into it 24-7.”
“Let’s forget the whole thing!” I begged. “It was a stupid idea.”
“Certainly not!” Bitsy said, pulling out her braids so her blue curls bounced around her shoulders. “If you want me to try to be a sweet lil traditional housewife at the dinner, of course I will. No problem at all.”
“Wait, you will?” I asked suspiciously.
“You asked for a traditional wife, and you will get one,” is all she said.
Of course that would be enough! I thought anxiously to myself. I wouldn’t ask her for anything else afterward and Mr. Van Buren could just suck it after the promotion. Bitsy knows I love her. She knows it’s just that I screwed up.
But when I went to kiss her good night, she swerved her head and the kiss landed in her ear.
Which was very nice, but not what I was intending.
“Baby?” I asked. “You do forgive me, don’t you?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Well, aren’t you coming to bed?”
“I will lie at the foot of the bed,” she said docilely. “That way you can have the whole thing, as befits a Man. Men deserve more, for they are our betters.”
My blood ran cold, because not only was it pretty damn clear Bitsy did not in any way forgive me, but also if she spoke loud enough I risked her family coming in, throwing me in a sack, then drowning me in the river.
“You know that’s not what I want!” I whispered in agony.
“Isn’t it?” she asked sweetly.
And she absolutely would not be moved, forcing me to go down to the end of the bed with her, because I’d be damned if my wife was going to lie at the foot of my bed.
Was two hours of playacting at a dinner worth it? Not if I lost my wife. . .