‘I think it’s gone too far now’. He said.

‘I agree!” I said. I thought he was talking about the mice. I’d been sniffing out and binning about one dead mouse a week, for months. Before that we’d had three separate pest control companies in who, when the demented gnawing in the night persisted beyond their call of duty, had advised us to simply ‘mouse-proof’ the gaff. Did you know that mice have collapsible rib cages, that they can basically make like invertebrates and squeeze their freaky little bodies into holes the size of five cent coins?

Well, they can and they have. Because I’ve wired and filled every crack in the place. I’m going straight to Amazon for bait now too. The exterminators were so big man casual about solving nothing I decided to promote myself and save the €200. But I’m so tired. They just keep on coming, a slow, steady queue of them. It’s like they’re in a holding area somewhere, waiting to be waved in by a stage manager mouse with a head set and a clipboard; the marsupial Hunger Games, one doomed contestant at a time.

‘I agree,’ I said, holding up a small bag, barely weighted with the corpse of my latest boiler room victim.

‘You agree with what?’

‘That it’s gone it too far. We might have to move out for a while and smoke the bastards out. Or sell up.’

‘I’m talking about what you’re wearing.’ He said, the disappointed Dad shtick in full play.

I’ll tell you what I was wearing. A pair of grey track bottoms with holes at both hips where I’d cut out the elastic; dog-eaten Ugg boots; an old striped t-shirt of his that I’d shrunk in the dryer and a Great Barrier Reef hoody I’d picked up in Cairns about twenty years ago.

‘I’ve just got out of bed.’ I said. ‘And I’m comfortable.’

‘You’re too comfortable.’ He said. ‘I didn’t sign up to this.’

He didn’t usually push it that far, he knew it would have the opposite effect, that my oldest, most shapeless wear would be on a solid bedtime rotation for weeks. He also knew that making comments on how I looked never led to more sex. In fact, it usually marked the beginning of another, long dry patch. And the beauty in those dry patches was I could tip back and watch my shows in peace, smug in the glow of his self-inflicted ban.

Was it healthy? Fuck, no.

‘So what did you sign up to then?’ I asked.

It stung, the bluntness of his disgust. I guess I thought I was still rocking an aura, that I could relax into myself and still be attractive to someone.
‘Someone who doesn’t just surrender to the next life stage like we’re all going to start playing fucking golf next year.’ He said. ‘I’m never going to play golf.’ I said quietly, starkly aware of my rankness under his gaze.

I question now what currency I thought I had before he set my market worth. Was I desirable? I never even thought about desire then.

‘Mom, I know it’s harsh,’ Suzy said, skipping down the stairs. ‘But Dad’s right. You need to massively up your game.’ A guilty someone had to say it pat on the head from my sixteen year old as she headed for the door. ‘Oh, and I’m staying in Ciara’s tonight, see you in the morning.’

‘No drinking.’ He said.

‘Duh.’ She said, cans swilling in her bag.

I handed him the mouse.

‘What’s that for?’

‘Put it in your porridge.’ I said.

I didn’t know what to think. I was tearing up, which never happened. I didn’t want to get all righteous about it because he had a point. I’d stopped thinking about how I looked. I didn’t covet nice things or curate any kind of aesthetic beyond comfort. I liked that about me.

I wondered if I was upset because until he fire-bombed the carefully woven veil of civility between us, it was unconscionable to me that anyone with a pulse would not rate me a solid seven out of ten. Did that make me a narcissist, that I was so cosy in my genetics that I exempted myself from any kind of glow-up? Or was I just being supremely myself? And if that was it, was it possible to be entirely myself and attract a mate? Did I even want a mate?

As a couple,I liked to think that we were past aesthetics but I knew we weren’t. And even if he did focus on what was inside, that wasn’t much better. My heart wasn’t in the right place, it hadn’t been for a long time.

I wanted to be angry but I understood. That happened to me a lot, not being able to sustain rage, boxing it off so quickly I’d often forget the cause.

I asked Google what I should be feeling. I typed ‘man not attracted to wife anymore’. And despite knowing that this was a simplification of our story I got stuck into a Quora thread which seemed to be mainly aggrieved men whose arranged marriages were on the turn.
One wrote: ‘My wife has grown frumpy with age and is a bore. I have made some money now and when we are out I notice beautiful women look at me with lust in their eyes. I know I could leave my wife for a younger woman and be very happy. I cannot see that I would be doing wrong?’

Oh, there was rage, about 200 pages of it. Women begging him to leave his wife immediately to free her of his hideousness; CAPS spelling out the beauty of meaningful relationships, of which HE WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND; pity for his hollow, entitled soul; pity for her wasted life; reminders that women are not disposable hoover bags, filled full of your sour cum and discarded. (I’m paraphrasing here).

But pinned right at the top of the feed was a cautionary tale for husbands who might be thinking of ‘straying.’ Read this, my friend, it said, before you do anything.

The story was about a man, his wife and his mistress, ‘Dew.’ Dew – moist, wet, lusty – was the only person named in the story and there was definitely a bang of Mary Magdalene off her. The man is rich, his wife is old and Dew is hopping mad for it. The man sets Dew up with a brand new pad overlooking the city, with the promise that he will join her once he leaves his wife. (It turns out his wife is fifty tops as they have a young son together).

Anyway, one evening when he can’t stand to be in her company for a minute longer, he tells her he doesn’t love her anymore and is leaving her to be with his mistress. She gets upset, begs him to stay but he heads off back to Dew, not a bother on him and in fact probably a big old boner in his pants.

Okay, the wife says, a few days later, I’ll let you go. But first, you must sleep in this house for one more month and every morning you must carry me over the threshold of our front door, as you did when we entered the house 20 years ago. He agrees and starts counting down the days. Each morning he waits for her to get up and he carries her out of the house. His son is heartened by this affectionate ritual and cheers them on every morning. Each day, the man fondly remembers something about their early life together as he nuzzles into the crook of her neck or sees the crinkles at the corner of her eyes for the first time.

He notices that his wife has lost weight in the month that he has been carrying her and feels responsible as presumes that she is suffering with stress. As his final day in the house approaches, the man realises that he is still in love with his wife and cannot leave her. He goes to tell Dew, who is disgusted (I’m sure she negotiated the apartment as a parting gift) and he rushes home to share this joyful news with his wife. When he gets home, however, his wife is dead. It turns out she had been silently suffering with cancer and died on the exact day that their 4-week pact expired. What are the chances? (Yes, I didn’t realise it was an urban myth either).

The wife, it turns out, knowing she was dying, wanted to save her husband from a lifetime of crippling guilt and show her son the love and intimacy his parents still shared, so that would be his enduring memory.

It was a patriarchal stew – the old martyr wife (she was fifty!), the young, sexy gold digger and the noble man who could have had it all but succeeded in finally ramming his dick back into his pants.

For a second, in the fury, I knew exactly what to think.

‘I didn’t sign up for this either. I’m done’. I texted him.

Rhona McAuliffe, May 2020.

*chapter two, next Saturday…