Entry #3

I cooked tonight. Bangers and Mash. I'm not English, but my mother is. I'm neither Greek, but so is my father. Then my wife, for future reference let's call her "NM", vomited. I feel awful for NM, the poor woman, was it something I cooked; something she drank? I do not know.

Upon alighting for the market tonight, I went outside, she with a cigarette, and a drink. I asked her if she had any special requests. Her request: come home soon because I've been away all day and I miss you and I want to be with you.

You see, reader, despite my anger and the albatross I throw now and then—anyway too often—she nonetheless returns from work and her days-in-life with a desire to see me, with a desire to be with me. It is an unquestionable fact of my current state that her actions cause or impart to me a modicum of guilt; or at least, my fair share and more of what I undoubtedly deserve. I react, as I mentioned in Entry #1 and Entry #2, without grace.

Perhaps one day, many entries later, you and I will understand why it is that when I alighted for the market she says what she does. (A quick look tells me, and obviously you, that she says what she does because she loves me—but in my insolence I search for the deeper cause.) Upon my return we are each others' best friends. Upon eating, she throws up. She sleeps now. I have trimmed and tucked and made my best show, no performance, but a show—in black and white—where I am the Caretaker and she, the Hotel. Do you, like me, remember the Shining this well? Does anyone?

You see, I love her so desperately, that I can't bear to be burdensome, neither physical nor any other manner. (You will come to understand why.) Later I'll slip in beside her in bed. And tomorrow we'll wake up (mostly) together, my responsibilities including only those agreements for which she has made herself responsible. It seems that these agreements are all of them. . . . My pity, my hurtingest heart, my breasts, hot tears, Jamaicain barbs, and any cancer ever to consume me. These are yours, my dearest most loveliest NM. They are yours, darling.

But now, though, in return I suppose I'll want a magician's elixir; my very own and very personal double double toil and trouble. Were it only that she could stay away.