Something Happened

She wants me to say it precisely that way:

"I love you."

I prefer to sidle into it through methods of my own.

"Oh, Mom!" my daughter exclaimed in the car, pulling close to her in a hug. "I just love her when she kids around this way."

"So do I," I said, edging it in.

There it was. But that isn't good enough. It doesn't do the trick.

(I meant it when I did.)

I've said it to her also the way she wants me to and will again; but I refuse to say it when she is trying to make me. I balk. I have my masculinity and self-esteem to protect against this indecent attack. I resist.

Call it spite. Call it petty spite. But call it highly sensual and gratifying spite.

"Would I be here with you if I didn't?" I have answered.

"Then why don't you ever say so?"

"I love you — there! I did."

"You never tell me."

"I just did."

"But I had to ask you — no, don't smile, don't say anything, don't make a joke out of it," she laments (just as I am about to make a joke out of it). "I guess I expect too much."

My wife not only wants me to say:

"I love you."

She wants me to want to say it!

"I love you."

"Do you?"

"I just said so, didn't I?"

"I had to ask you. I always have to make you say it."

And I might consent to let her make me, out of the hospitable goodness of my heart, if I did not know there was this contest between us that I don't want to lose. I might make a deal with her on it anyway if she'd get me the pillows I want and stop snoring or breathing away indifferently in such slumbering, nasal contentment while I'm still lying awake trying to sleep.

"Get more pillows, for God sakes. We've got more cars and television sets than we have pillows."

We've got four pillows for our king-size bed (which is something of a mocking joke. We could move around it for years and never come in contact with each other if we didn't want to. We do not sleep entwined). And I want her to get at least four more, maybe five. She forgets. I want there to be enough for me, which means at least one or two more than there are for her. (When we do buy light bulbs, we put them in places we can't find when we need one. We run out of toilet paper. The ladies run out of sanitary napkins. The world is ru

"Get up, you, dammit you! Why should you be able to sleep when I can't? And it's all your fault."

She wouldn't know what I was talking about and might think I'd gone mad.

"Do you love me?" she might ask.

She doesn't ask it anymore. She knows we are in a struggle also and has too much pride to fly a white flag of ignominious defeat. (I'm glad she doesn't. I would have to make concessions. I wish it were over.)

I think I know when it will end, how I will be able to disengage us from this stalemate and resolve the conflict in a way rewarding to both: on her deathbed.

"Don't die," I can say then. "I love you."

I will have my honor. She will be appeased. I will be a hundred and eight years old. She will be a few years younger. I will have to start doing my own shopping in supermarkets and groceries to make certain there is coffee and juice in the house for me. I will have to sell the house and move to an apartment. (And then I will miss her.)

She hasn't asked in years. Age and self-respect, I think, have stilled the question every time she wanted to ask:

"Do you still love me?"

It is in her mind, though. I can see it as a verbal sculpture. She fishes, hints. I decline to oblige. Or perhaps she believes I don't love her any longer and fears that if she were to ask:

"Do you love me?" I would answer: "No."

And then we would have to do something. (And wouldn't know what.)

I'm glad she doesn't, although I frequently feel her on the brink. It would be demeaning to have to deal with. I don't want to have fights with her about this. I don't know how I would answer now if she were to ask:

"Do you love me?"

Unresponsively, facetiously, evasively. I would not want to lie and I would not want to tell the truth (no matter how I felt). If she were to ask while we were savaging each other in sex, the answer would be easy.

"Turn over, and I'll show you."

But that would not be what she wanted, and both of us would know. And I am so pleased she doesn't ask, feel so grateful and deeply indebted to her at times, that I want to throw wide my arms in relief and proclaim:

"I love you!"

And after I made that mistake, I might never be able to get my divorce. (I believe I understand now why I get along so well with women when I want to and have so much trouble getting along with my children. I treat my girlfriends like children and expect my children to behave like grown-ups.) Arthur Baron wouldn't want me to.

"Well?" he's asked. His smile was a trace broader than ever before and there was a stronger cordiality in his expression.

"I really have no choice," I surrender with a smile, "have I?"