Madame Bovary 2022

My name is Emma.  I changed my name from Elsie after I married Chuck.  

For some reason, he wouldn't change his to Charles.

I was bored to tears working as a cashier in my father’s gas station, only meeting trashy people who were  going nowhere. So when Daddy broke his leg  it was sweet Dr. Chuck who treated him. 

Chuck had us come in for a lot of what seemed to me unnecessary office visits. And he also bought a lot of gas.

So when he asked me to marry him, I said yes. What girl doesn't want to marry a doctor?

What I didn't bargain for was just how nice he was. He was so nice he was just plain boring. No good in the sack either. Okay, I told myself, he can make a name for himself as a doctor and I'll  at least have a nice house and great clothes and maybe even status, but he blew that  by bungling the first important surgery he attempted. It was so bad he gave up climbing the ladder  and managed to descend a rung or two by moving to a less demanding practice. 

Then we had the kid. Barbie is okay but  not particularly pretty, and even with a full time nanny, she’s always in the way, climbing on me, wanting something.  I just don't feel that old maternal pull, you know?

By then I was totally stuck with him, so I dedicated myself to making our home a show place. Chuck didn't mind the expense. “Credit is easy. Go for whatever you want, darling,” he said. 

Then I met Leon, a young law intern, who was really turned on to me and I have to say was a cutie. He wanted to move to New York and take me with him. But he had scruples about breaking up a family. So he went off on his own. 

I was totally depressed until I met Rudy. We had a really terrific run before the bastard got tired of me. Me! I couldn't believe it.  I was so down I demanded Chuck buy me  a bigger house and pay for a private boarding school to get the kid out of my hair.

By now  we were in debt up to our ears. In addition, I discovered that my so-called  ‘better than thou’ attitude and ‘sleazy’ affairs were all over Facebook.  I was pretty upset  but good old Chucky said it was a just bunch of lies. He kept taking out loans and telling me everything would be alright as long as we were together. 

I was so miserable, I decided to leave. Take off. Go to New York. Look for Leon. I had to have some sort of life.   

But the debts were so immense I couldn't pull it off. I was considering suicide when it came to me, why should I commit suicide?  I know whose fault it really is and it isn't me. It's Chuck. He trapped me with his selfless lovey dovey crap. He was such a lousy lover, of course I strayed. And don’t forget he’s the one who insisted on taking out all those loans. 

He has insurance out the kazoo! Plus, he  works with chemicals and is such an idiot it should be easy to make it  look like an accident. 

Yep, that’ll be my happy ending.

Take A Cab

 

Way back in my thirties, I was living in New York with my husband, our two children and a really great dog named Mandy. The husband and children were great too, but they were driving me to despair. Amy aged eight and Tony aged seven and Jim aged a bit older seemed to ignore any suggestion, hint, or screaming fit about helping me with household chores. Unmade beds, dirty dishes, dust, or debris never seemed to faze them. 

Jim wrote for a television show. He had glamour. I had laundry. He would help but he was very busy writing  and he loved to play the piano. The kids just loved to play. Mandy just wanted us all together in the same room, clean or otherwise.

I began to doubt the whole idea of being a working mother. I wasn't making much money as an anthropology librarian. The library was lovely, but I was completely bored with cataloging treatises on matrilinear family structures. 

It  just seemed like I was running around all day, rushing to meet  the kids at school, rushing to work, rushing to walk the dog, rushing to make dinner, rushing to drag gargantuan loads of laundry up to the laundromat.  

The apartment was beyond messy. It was downright  disgusting. But apparently only in my eyes. The rest of them didn't seem to mind at all.

I began having dreams.  I would be riding the bus and it would skip my stop and take me to some strange neighborhood and leave me there to find my way home. Over and over, I would be abandoned in the Bronx or Queens, where I would wander around looking for a bus or even a subway home . 

This went on night after night until I dreamed I was plunked down somewhere in Staten Island. I couldn’t find a bus or a train or even the ferry, so although I knew it would cost a fortune, I hailed a cab. And who was driving the cab? Well I don’t know who he was but he wore a cap labeled Psychotherapist.

I had been spoken to. How could I ignore  such a blatant message? I found a therapist  who suggested I make a big chart of the chores that had to be done and show who was doing them. Me.

And just like in fairy tales, it worked!  Maybe the three of them were tired of being yelled at, but the kids and Jim each agreed to do  their own laundry, cook a meal a week and do the  dishes too. The kids learned how to operate the laundromat machines. They did dishes - maybe 24 hours late. They just threw their toys and stuff in a closet. And maybe we ate too many dinners of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. But they were doing it. 

So was Jim. He did his own laundry, cooked Sunday brunch and cleaned when we had company coming. 

I became a school librarian. I tripled my salary, kept  the same schedule as my kids and learned that I really enjoyed working with teenagers.

Anyway, the moral is: when you are in the middle of a dark wood or even Staten Island, hail a cab. It’s worth the expense.