A Night Out

It’s my wife’s idea to go to the musical. As a rule, I hate musicals. Why do they have to keep breaking into song? Show, don’t sing. However, Les Mis is her favorite, and as I chose our last date night (which I thought was pretty damn amazing, who doesn’t love trivia nights), I suppose in the interest of fairness, it’s her turn. So, here I am standing in our bedroom in front of the open closet wishing I had a head cold. I check my throat for swollen lymph nodes. Nothing. I rotate my shoulders feeling for a torn rotator cuff. Nil. Apparently, I’m a picture of health. Damn it.

I dutifully take my suit out and shake it, kicking up a cloud of dust that makes me and the cat sneeze. I can hear the clicking of her makeup on the countertop as she sets up in the bathroom, preparing to shellac and smooth and plumpen whatever it is that she needs to shellac and smooth and plumpen. I call to her through the open doorway as I stand with my tie rack in hand.

“Should I wear the blue or the maroon tie?”

“Wear the green one.”

“The green one? I hate the green one. Which green one?”

“The one with the diamond pattern.”

“Oh, that green one. Why can’t I wear the blue one?”

“Because it will clash with my dress.”

“Oh, god, it’s not like we’re going to the Met Gala or anything, it’s a local theatre production. The guy playing Jean Valjean sold me that snowblower last winter, and, remember, it was a piece of shit that stopped working after one storm.”

She peeks her head out of the door and points an eyeliner pencil at me like she is taking aim with a crossbow.

“I wouldn’t care if it was an elementary school production, we’re dressing up, and we’re going out, and you’re going to wear the green tie, and so help me god, if you say one more word about that snowblower, I’m leaving you for the mailman.”

“Gary? Please, he’s as gay as they come.”

She raises a single eyebrow at me and purses her lips in a way that clearly indicates she is about a half-second away from castrating me with her tweezers.

I roll my eyes as far as they can go without causing severe ocular distress, and pluck the green tie from the rack, and proceed to tie it around my collar with great exaggeration.

“There, happy now?”

She smiles sweetly, and shoots back, “Not for years.” Then, she turns on her heel and heads back into the bathroom.

“Not for years,” I mimick back like a four-year-old.

“I heard that.”

After managing to manhandle the tie into place, double Windsor knot thank you very much, and looking as close to presentable as I can only half caring, I settle onto the bed, and glance down at my watch. We still have an hour till the show starts, and I am really regretting my choice to dress so early. The tie is starting to itch my neck, and I pull at my collar uncomfortably.

“Do you have an idea of how much longer you’re going to take?”

“Five more minutes,” comes from the bathroom.

My wife and I have been married for 10 years. We have two beautiful, but really awful children. Both my wife and children live in an alternate reality where time means something completely different than what is generally accepted here on Earth. Five minutes is never five minutes. Five minutes usually means fifteen, twenty, and one time when we were trying to get ready to attend my younger sister’s wedding, 53 minutes. I know this because I’m certain I had a minor aneurysm staring at my watch face, watching the seconds tick by.

This time, five minutes means thirteen, and we somehow manage to get out of the house with only a single bumped shin on a Tonka truck, and an eight-minute delay trying to locate keys and wallet, and yet still enough time to get to the theatre and find suitable parking. Miracles can happen.

I’m wrestling with my overcoat and scarf when I hear a screeching sound coming from the park neighboring the theatre. I stop in my tracks. It’s a terrifying unholy sound. A scream that makes the hair all over my body stand on end. I feel nauseated as my butt cheeks clench, and I begin to weigh the cost of losing the respect of my wife if I high-tail it out of here, against the possibility of dying a slow and gruesome death being mutilated by a possessed rabid werecoyote, when I feel a slight pressure in my hand. I look down and see she has slipped her gloved hand into mine. Suddenly, I inexplicably feel infinitely better and braver.

“Don’t worry, it’s just a barn owl,” she tells me softly.

“A barn owl? Are you sure? Sounds like a zombie cat to me.”

She chuckles up at me, “Nope, just a barn owl.”

“How do you know what a barn owl sounds like?”

“It’s from watching nature documentaries with Nate, when he has those nightmares, and can’t sleep. For some reason, they relax him.”

Once again, we hear the screeching sound come from the park, and I shudder in the chill night air.

“Are you sure it’s not the documentaries giving him the nightmares?”

She just crinkles her eyes at me, and shakes her head with a slight smile on her face, and grips my hand a little tighter. I glance down at our clasped hands and I brush my thumb across her knuckles, even if she can't feel it through her thick gloves. Then, in my best David Attenborough impression, I say, “This brave and fierce mother bear, who not only looks after her cubs but also her inept partner, must continue on her intrepid journey to the local theatre, to engage in the artistic delights of the community’s skillful thespians.”

She laughs and gives me that warm smile, the one that always manages to turn my insides into something gooey, like roasted marshmallow thrown at a wall. I’ve missed that smile. It’s the sort of smile you don’t even realize has been missing until it pops up after an absence, and you find yourself delighted, and so proud that you are the one the smile is meant for.

We walk the rest of the way to the theatre hand-in-hand.