My Late Wife Was a Bitch

It's been ten short years now since my wife died in the Bingo accident and one thing I've come to realize is, she wasn't a very nice person. I married her for her body and I stayed with her because she was always a bit of a pervert. Even at my advanced age, I can tell you that you can't underestimate the importance of perversion in holding together a long, otherwise painful marriage.

It started when we bought our first house. She painted the entire house pink. She even wanted to paint the exterior pink. And so it began: I told her that there was a town bylaw against pink houses and coerced a couple of my friends to back me up. From then on, there was no honestly in our marriage, only deception and revenge.

Still in our twenties and only recently married, I asked her not to dye her hair blond every month because she wasn't fooling anyone. I said something like, “The carpet doesn't match the drapes” and for the next six years she dyed her “personal” hair (the carpet) gray!

She really hated me.

But it got worse.

As you know, Gladys was an avid gardener. When I tried to take up the hobby to bring us closer together, she resented me. The garden was cordoned off into his and hers sections. Every year my plants mysteriously died while hers flourished. Once I had a healthy corn plant that somehow was resistant to her nighttime Roundup applications and she ran over it with the lawn mower...by accident, she claimed.

Gladys was full of hate, but like I said, the sex was good.

After a dispute over white meat/dark meat at a Christmas turkey dinner, she would take it upon herself to poison my food at holiday meals. After three hospitalizations, I stopped eating on Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving. You may think fondly of those holidays. I do not.

After some years I gave up and threw in the towel. I adopted a dog so I'd have someone to talk to. But Gladys wouldn't have it. She'd “accidentally” leave the front door open so the dog would escape. A neighbour told me she came home from work once just to forget to shut the front door. But I anticipated such antics. I put a collar with tags on Maggie that couldn't be removed. And I placed a rather large Christmas bell on her neck so I'd could more easily retrieve her around town.

It worked fairly well until it didn't. One day I couldn’t find the dog. For years I thought she killed Maggie. I'd check every mound of disturbed soil within twenty miles of town. And I posted rewards that I stubbornly kept active for two or three years just to guilt Gladys.

Turns out she mailed the dog to an Animal Shelter in Florida. That's right, mailed. The poor dog stayed at the shelter for three years while the authorities investigated. One day they came knocking on our door and after hearing the story, I simply pointed at my wife and they took her away.

Resentful at my victory and her new-found criminal record she sabotaged the speedometer on our car before a regular visit to the city. I got stopped by the police for speeding and when I asked her for the registration out of the glove box, she put a fifty dollar bill in my hand. Rattled by the event, I didn't even look before I handed it to the police officer. A night in jail followed.

You might wonder if the sex was worth all this. I ask myself that question every day as I look back upon my life. Even that part of the relationship had its limitations. Gladys always managed to leave something on the stove during sex so she'd have an out. Even at three in the morning she'd say, “oh, what's that burning? Oh it's my tomato sauce.” I began to check the stove before going into the bedroom. She adapted. She once put the toaster on a thirty minute timer with the element turned up all the way. After thirty minutes, the toaster would turn on and burn the toast causing the smoke detector to go off. And she had her out.

My wife, you see, was a bitch.

(Photo: Michael Melrose)