Mouse

Where have you gone, my dear Ada, apple of my eye, mother of my child, keeper of my love?

Tonight, I returned home to inhuman stillness and silence. When I unlocked the front door and stepped inside, I immediately noticed the house was missing your quiet presence, absent your soulful essence.

My heart missed a beat then started thumping loudly as if there was a musician drumming beside me. I know my new cardiac arrhythmia has been causing consternation, but this was more than that.

As I quickly surveyed the interiors, everything was where it should be.

Except for you. You were not at your usual place for my homecoming, fragrantly cooking my dinner.

Instead, I saw the devastating note in the kitchen, your crisply crumpled cursive message to me, notification you have gone away for the night to an ostrich farm.

Countless questions.

I will sit and attend to my racing mind.

Ostrich riding? How absurd. Is that code? A place? A person?

Why did you crush this short injurious memo? Did you try to discard it?

It upsets me to waste my time with these whirling and swirling thoughts.

Now I am beset by dizziness, palpitations, and a nauseous bulging belly. Is that because of you or my old ailing heart?

When I couldn’t find you at home tonight, I patrolled our neighborhood, scrutinizing cafes, corners, crevices. It’s difficult to peer and drive at the same time, especially in the dark.

I drove to the police station and reported you missing. I explained to a fresh-faced uniformed girl who looked like a teenager that your silly running away adventure is so fantastically foreign, so out of character, something is amiss or there must be foul play. In our years together, you have never behaved this way before, you haven’t left my side even for an evening. My complaining and clomping around the police station didn’t yield results. I was simply instructed to wait until tomorrow when your note indicates you’ll be back. They don’t know you as I do, my mild-mannered church-mousey wife.

I called Leo but he didn’t answer. I haven’t tried to contact him at university before. Perhaps I don’t possess our son’s current phone number.

Oh, my aching heart.

More questions.

Where are you tonight? You don’t have money or friends, where could you go?

Why won’t the GPS tracker work? Did you buy a new bag especially for this trip?

Were you kidnapped? Did someone force you to write this note? Will I receive a ransom call tomorrow? No, surely not, why would anyone kidnap you?

I really don’t feel well, I’m off-color, queasy. Look what you’ve done to me. That quack doctor upped my tablets recently, maybe I will feel better if I take the medications you dispensed into my pillbox.

I heated and ate the dinner you prepared and left in the fridge, then put the dishes in the dishwasher. So thoughtful, as always.

In our dim living room, I sat in my usual chair and tried to read a book, a nonfiction tome, but it was impossible to concentrate. You are not sitting on the sofa next to me, your sighs are inaudible, your knitting needles are not clacking.

You are coming home, aren’t you, Ada? I won’t be angry. I don’t know what my life would be without you.

I know I’m a man of few words and I haven’t been an especially romantic husband, but I have loved you. No, not the past tense, I still love you. I love how you complete me. I have tried to impress upon you how lucky you are to live here, with me. Who else would have you, my timid shadow?

I remember when we met, you were only eighteen years old, and I was a little older. You were a quiet one, a sweet young thing, and you seemed to appreciate I could rescue you from your appalling alcoholic mother. I would take care of you.

You knew I expected a traditional homemaker wife. I didn’t hide from you that I’m an old-fashioned pipe-and-slippers kind of guy. I wanted a simple homely life, an obsequious spouse, someone to look after me. Nothing wrong with that.

We’ve had a good marriage, haven’t we? I’ve provided for you, for us. You didn’t need to get an education or job. My job at the bank is solid, the house mortgage is paid, and I’ve been a good investor over the years. We’ve lived quietly in this humble home during our halcyon married life. You don’t need your own accounts as I give you money if you ask for it. You haven’t wanted for anything. Have you?

When Leo left for college, you asked to work at the school library. I considered it for a while then I reluctantly agreed, as long as you gave me your meager salary. I thought I could share you with the world a little, although you belong to me.

The time when you slit your wrists scared me. The doctors said you were depressed and lonely and it was a cry for help. I didn’t understand why you did that, what were you trying to say? I agreed not to raise my voice anymore but that’s all I could promise. I would never go to therapy with you.

But maybe what eased your mind more was having our son. He completed our Christian family, gave you purpose. I wanted additional children, but one is better than none. I always wondered why we didn’t have more. It would be scandalous to tell anything about our intimate relations. Let me say it doesn’t matter if I feel amorous or not, I know my duty to procreate.

So, our son Leo, he is an odd one, almost as introverted as you. I know you are close to him, but I’ve always felt distant from that boy. There’s no deep connection, just as I am worlds apart from my father. I taught Leo to behave respectfully from a young age, and he was a quick learner, nothing a good beating couldn’t fix. My serious father utilized the rod, but I preferred the ever-available belt. And sometimes, when I was instructing Leo, and you for that matter, I could hear my father’s words flowing out of my mouth. He impressed upon me not to settle for anything short of excellence, and I concurred, imparting this wisdom at every opportunity. If you hear an idiom regularly, it sinks in, it’s hypnotic, becomes embedded in one’s consciousness.

Leo boarding at my old Catholic high school meant we didn’t see him frequently once he was a scraggy teenager. No need to ask him if he was bullied at the school. I was; it made me the strong confident man I am today. When Leo was here, you correctly kept him active and occupied with sports. I wasn’t a fan of the myriad music activities you planned together. I didn’t want a musical prodigy, music is no career. Abundant sports knocked the sissiness out of him. He did well to get a college scholarship and New York University business school will toughen him up, prepare him to be a manly master of the universe.

Ada, you know I don’t like reminiscing. What’s the point?

It’s getting darker as the night slows and our street goes to sleep. Some headlights peek into the living room through the front window as a car drives past, dappling the far wall, highlighting the hole you’ve left on the sofa.

Ugh, I’m starting to get mad now. As I sit here, burning with disappointment of what you’ve done, that you’re not here, I can feel heat slowly rising from the top of my bald head. My nasal breathing is loud, like a snorting beast; I can’t catch my breath.

Your absence is pissing me off. You are pissing me off.

Where the hell are you?

Why would you go? What are you playing at?

Ha, it just crossed my mind, could you be with another man? But I know that’s impossible; who else would want you?

ADA! You don’t deserve me. After all I’ve done for you, I even took you in when you were abandoned. You don’t realize how lucky you are. Just wait ‘till you get home.

A drink, I need a drink.

I can feel myself getting extremely angry.

My blood is boiling; what a crazy expression, how can blood really boil? It’s like my body is on fire as I deal with you, your absence, your ridiculous capricious “adventure,” a demonstration of what?

I’m going to snap…

Bam! Bam!

I just punched the wall again, goddamnit, put a hole in it. Right next to the painting hiding the other one from last time I fought with the wall. I hate it when you make me feel I need to punch something, someone. I broke the skin on my hand and now my knuckles will be bruised tomorrow, thanks to you.

The pulsations in my fifty-year-old heart are becoming more ferocious and irregular, thrumming louder and louder, accompanied by a sheen of sweat on my skin and erratic breathing.

It’s all your fault.

Waiting for you is killing me. I need to lie down. Catch my breath. Try to rest.

Come back to me soon and fill my life, you unworthy scrawny little mouse.