Jeremy gazed down at the shapely pale nude woman on the queen bed, her eyes closed, and her long auburn hair spread about on the flowered pillowcase like a Playboy centerfold.  What’s going on, he wondered.  Just yesterday he and his wife had fought about the two of them not having sex and here she was stark naked before him, rather than fast asleep in her usual overlarge white t-shirt that hung far below her plain white cotton panties.

“So, are you trying to tell me something?”  Jeremy asked, with a slight smirk on his face.

Catherine, his wife of 14 years, opened her eyes and with a blank bland expression said, “No, I’m just hot.  It’s hot tonight.”

“I see,” he responded, as he stormed out of the bedroom and bolted back downstairs in such a rage that to have remained would have meant an involuntary manslaughter or temporary insanity plea in court.

This is what it’s like to be married to a mad woman, he told himself.  But how long would he continue with this?  He couldn’t help but ask himself, as he sat downstairs watching TV alone at night in the dark, again.

While watching a re-run of Gilligan’s Island, he couldn’t help but compare the castaways’ situation to his own.  There they were stranded with each other on a deserted island, and here he was stranded with a crazy woman and a disabled child.  He knew his daughter couldn’t help the situation.  None of this was her fault.  They shouldn’t have had a child this late in life, but Catherine had insisted everything would be fine.

Then once their child was born and she realized their daughter wasn’t perfect, she did everything she could to distance herself from her, even going so far as to not breast feed her, as if she were diseased.  He then realized just how high an expectation she had placed on their newborn child, and that it was an expectation, that more than likely, their daughter could never meet.

With Catherine pulling away from their daughter, Julia, it had fallen on him alone to care for her, and he discovered that he loved this fragile little girl more and more every day.  For the most part, he hadn’t worried too much about the situation, and he had even been coping with the lack of sex until last night when he discovered just how insane and frightening his wife was becoming.

*****

The night before, his wife had come home a bit earlier than he expected and caught him in the act.  Not an act of betrayal, like sleeping with another woman, which often crossed his mind, but instead, an act of desperation.  He could still see her face when she looked at the new twin bed he’d just set up in the spare bedroom that had previously been used for storage of tidbits of memories from more pleasant days gone past.

“What are you doing?” She asked.

“I’m going to sleep in here.  If we’re not going to have sex anymore then I really don’t want to sleep together every night, it’s just too difficult to continue being rejected.”

Catherine’s reaction was intense and terrifying, as she immediately started screaming and banging her head hard against the wall.  Jeremy could see the dazed look in her blue-green eyes with every strike.  This wasn’t an act.  Any minute now he was certain she might knock herself unconscious and he’d need to dial 911.

A muffled cry caught him, and he turned to see their young daughter, Julia, watching with a terrified look on her face.  She immediately started crying out loud and Jeremy was mixed as to which traumatized person to deal with first.  He quickly ran to Julia and caught her up in his arms and carried her from the room.

“It’s okay” he cooed.  “Mommy’s okay.  Stay here in your room and I’ll come to get you in a minute.”

Rushing back to the bedroom, he quickly grabbed Catherine by the arms and pulled her to him and held her.  “It’s okay.  I won’t sleep here.  Let’s forget all this.” 

He gazed into his wife’s empty eyes staring back at him, seemingly in a daze, as he guided her to their bedroom and helped lay her down upon the empty bed.  He walked back into the previous room, and glanced down at the twin bed, realizing now that any form of freedom, even just a mental one, was impossible.

After having also calmed Julia and put her to bed, he walked downstairs to watch TV.  Catherine had repeatedly warned him that she would place their daughter in a home or halfway house if he ever left her, and he believed her.  After having worked in several group homes, he knew what it was like in those places and that once there, Julia would probably never leave until the money ran out and she was thrown out onto the street.

As for his getting sole custody, that would be impossible.  He’d been unable to hold down a full-time job because he’d been too busy caring for their daughter and the house.  Catherine often took joy in reminding him that she was the bread winner of the family and he better not forget it.

He realized now what a mistake it had been to leave his full-time job to care for Julia because it then made him totally dependent on Catherine.  For him, Julia had always come first.

*****

As Jeremy stared at the assorted characters on Gilligan’s Island, he wondered if there ever was an episode in which they got rescued off the island, or had they stayed there and eventually died, the world unaware of their lonely plight.

He switched off the TV and crept back up to the bedroom to sleep next to a woman he occasionally loved, but now often feared, loathed, and maybe even hated.

The End

– Carl Chapman