An Absent Mind(14)



I have always been faithful to Monique—except for one affair with Gisele at the paper company. I already was the owner by that time, and she was my secretary. She didn’t have knockers like Monique, but she had legs like that actress—what’s her name … yeah, Marilyn Monroe—and she showed them off, especially when she bent over the file cabinet. She was young, real young. I don’t mean young enough for me to get in trouble with the police.

I would always close up the office. She generally stayed late, and one night things just happened. I never felt particularly guilty about it because I didn’t love Gisele, but she did do things to me Monique never had.

I asked Monique one day, after Gisele showed me some of her tricks, if she would, well, you know …

Monique told me I was a disgusting pig, or words to that effect. My father was right: you don’t marry Jewish women for sex. I guess that includes converted Catholics. Not that we didn’t have sex, but let’s just say they should have named the missionary position the rabbi position.





Monique





The Ultimate Consumer


Typically, I don’t leave Saul alone in a room for more than a few minutes at a time, and that’s usually when I’m doing my housework or calling the store to deliver groceries.

Now I have come to realize that a lot can happen in just a few minutes. It started with subscriptions to Time magazine and Newsweek. And then there was the aluminum siding. It seems that a telemarketer had called and convinced Saul that new siding would enhance the appearance of the house. When the installation people called to make an appointment, I had to inform them that since the house was brick, it wouldn’t be a good idea to put aluminum siding over it. He laughed, thinking I was joking, but when I insisted, he said he had a contract guaranteed by a credit card and would have someone from accounting call me to straighten things out.

But the best was yet to come. Last Tuesday afternoon, the doorbell rang. I looked through the front window and saw a Fournier Carpets truck. When I opened the door, two men stood there with a work order to clean the wall-to-wall carpet in the living room. That would have been fine, except we have oak floors and antique Oriental rugs.

I talked my way out of all of those, and the people were very nice. One who wasn’t so nice was the life insurance salesman who arrived at seven o’clock two weeks ago, having made an appointment with Saul. I explained that my husband has Alzheimer’s and that we wouldn’t be needing his help. He said that was even more reason I should buy a policy on my life, since he obviously figured out he couldn’t sell one on what was left of Saul’s days on this earth. When I apologized for the third time and started to close the door, he stuck his foot between the door and the frame long enough to give me a piece of his mind. Saul heard the commotion and came out from the living room. Even after I had explained Saul’s situation, the man started in on him. What kind of horrible person would do that?

I slammed the door, and the man’s foot in the process. It took only three days to receive a letter from his lawyer. That’s another thing I’ll have to deal with, on top of everything else.





Saul





A Solid Left Hook


When I went into the kitchen, Monique’s mascara was running, as usual. Her head was tucked into her knockers and her whole body was heaving. I asked her what had happened.

She looked up and pointed her finger at me. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she shouted, “or I’ll have you put away!”

“Do what?” I asked. It wasn’t her mascara running—I mean, yes, it was running, but she had an ugly bruise under her right eye. I asked her what had happened, and she glared at me. She has learned over the years to copy my Reimer stare. I say copy, because it doesn’t have the same intensity as mine, but it’s a pretty good imitation, nonetheless.

She claimed that I’d slugged her. Now one thing I would never do is hit a woman. Not that some of them didn’t deserve it at times, including Monique and that holier-than-thou mother of mine. My mother would never punish me; she would just advise me that Larry would take care of all that stuff when he got home from work. She was like the announcer on television who would tell the viewers that so-and-so would be on next—so stay tuned! And the first thing she would say to my father when he walked through the door was, “Do you know what your son did today?”

That was all Larry needed. Frankly, he didn’t need her help. He could have found something I did wrong all by himself, and generally did, even before his first scotch, at least the first scotch he drank at home. My father always reeked of liquor when he arrived home from work. Maybe he really was an accountant; but, if so, his biggest client must have been Johnnie Walker!

Anyway, regardless of whether or not a woman deserves a beating, Saul Reimer is not the one to administer it. So, no, I didn’t hit Monique. I may be getting … no, I know I am getting worse, but that isn’t something I would ever do, no matter how bad I get.

“So who did it?” I asked her. Was she fooling around, and her lover belted her because she wouldn’t do those tricks he liked? When I said that, she pushed me aside and ran into her bedroom, sobbing. I say her bedroom, because even though we share a bed in there, everything else is hers, and everything is pink or yellow.

She slammed the door so hard, it made my head hurt. My head seems to hurt quite a bit lately. I can’t stand the noise of the vacuum cleaner or the washing machine. Monique says the house has to function and that I need fresh clothes. When I have an accident, I throw my underwear into the trash by the back door. Somehow it reappears in my drawer, clean and neatly folded, but we never talk about it.

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