In These Times the Home Is a Tired Place: World War II in the Central Pacific

I Now Pronounce You

94 I Now Pronounce You In bed, the wife heard the sports announcer. Heard the cheers and chants while washing her face in the bathroom—she didn’t care. She didn’t care her new husband woke before her, the sneak, and went downstairs to watch early-morning sports television. A good decision to marry him— rushed, frantic even, but the wife was two years post-college and sick-of-it, and the husband was an American flag: starry-eyed and pin-striped, a regal flourisher to those beneath him. Drunk at the Hooters bar, the husband had watched her. He’d spoken loudly about the feminist movement and embracing one’s sexuality. “Nobody has to hide beneath the covers anymore,” he’d said, and she’d believed him. Good to be a wife. Just back from her honeymoon, in the center of the clean-carpeted, big-roomed house—it was his—she adjusted. She had previously rented a gritty-floored apartment above a beauty salon that emitted all sorts of smells and chemicals; she believed she’d become more beautiful walking constantly through them. Sometimes she locked herself in the new husband’s bathroom and hair-sprayed the walls and foamed mousse into the sink. On the toilet , she closed her eyes and remembered fretful, feral nights silkylegged with Hooters friends, and when she emerged steamed in the doorway, riotous and beautiful, she and the new husband gambled. Striptease Poker. Seven-Card Pose. Texas Hold-This. I Now Pronounce You 95 Mornings, if she made enough noise on the stairs, the new husband turned off the television. He smiled from the couch and she, the new wife, said, “I heard something,” and the new husband said, “I didn’t mean to wake you!” Good to be a newly-wed. She didn’t care about the television. Her father too had been a sports fanatic, kept a game on all mealtimes , which he spoke to directly while the rest of them communicated with brief addresses and subtle eye movements. The new husband was content to be a husband. While she cooked, he swiveled on a kitchen stool explaining his spoon and spatula ordering, the gadgets string-strung above the stove. Cooking used to be a hobby belonging to him, but he wished the new wife to feel useful given she’d quit her job, given he was a successful flag and couldn’t be married to a Hooter no matter how much she shocked the system. He ate his scrambled eggs and toast separate. He refused to eat anything burnt even if she cut off the black parts—he could tell and it wasn’t the same. “Take it up with the kitchen,” the new wife told the new husband. They sat in the dining room, which was large and previously empty; the husband had kept many rooms this way, like open terminals scattered through the house, waiting, perhaps, for a pre-packaged family to move in and stuff them with baggage . From her apartment, the new wife had contributed various items that weren’t too torn or beer-stained, such as her folding card table: they sat here now. A pile of red and black chips lay in the middle. “I like this place very much,” said the husband. He brushed some egg from the corner of her mouth. “I’ll come here all the time. But the food sucks.” “Nobody comes for the food,” said the new wife. “This is the twenty-first century.” She pawed his beard as though he had egg on his face too. 96 IN THESE TIMES THE HOME IS A TIRED PLACE “Food is a necessity,” he said. “Kids, television, church, counseling—all the Great American Pastimes. After marriage, there is a husband and a wife.” The new wife had on her plate four slightly burnt pieces of toast. The new husband had the sports page. Chewing her toast, she appreciated his handsomeness. To honor, to cherish. She appreciated the cheers from those side-lined enthusiasts, from her old Hooters friends, from the announcer. And with the true smell of hot dogs and the stickiness of beer born-and-brewed, the American flag waved above the field, and it was saluted. Good to be a newly-wed. The husband and the wife: they were to be successful together. ’Til death. ’Til death. The wife was encouraged to believe it. So she...