Jeffery

We used to fuck nearly three times a week. Sometimes. It was four. I was lucky. Until I wasn’t. Until he confused fucking me with fucking someone else.  

My name is Marjorie booker. I’m 72 years old and I’ve only ever slept with one man, Jeffery. He was six foot tall with olive skin and blue eyes. Quite a looker he was. I knew what people thought when they’d see us together. Yes, he was so much better looking than I was. But he was terrible at everything else. He couldn’t cook, he couldn’t clean, he couldn’t hold a decent conversation after 10pm and he’d have sex dreams about other woman - for a whole year straight after we got married, he moaned the name Suzanne in his dreams. I slapped him on his face multiple times during the night. But I never brought it up with him. 

He was a fart. A potato. At times, he would walk around with one hand in his pants. He couldn’t use the computer and he’d talk down to every bit of new technology or social media platform that came out. When facebook got introduced, he laughed at the tv. “What kind of rubbish is this, who needs to socialise this much, huh, Marjorie, are you hearing this?” he was stuffing his face with butter and toast whilst holding an English breakfast tea in the other hand. I was in the kitchen, preparing dinner for the both of us. I knew he didn’t have anything substantial to say, but I came out anyways. “huh” I replied. “Facebook, are you hearing this”. “Yes Jefferey, I think it's great, get with the time, things are changing”. He laughed quite loudly. I heard him all the way in the kitchen. I knew what he thought of me. That I was a typical woman, always whining, always wanting more, never happy. “Oh, Marjorie” he said. I waited for a while to see what he was going to say next. It never came. 

I know how it sounds. That I was miserable. That I didn’t love my husband. Partly true, I was miserable and at times, id question why I shouldn’t walk away and it were at those times, I’d look over at him and catch him smiling at me as if he was falling in love with me all over again. Those were the nights - we would have the best sex. He wouldn’t even dream of Suzanne. He wouldn’t even mention her name. I'd wake up in his arms and the next morning I'd make him his favourite French toast with a cup of tea whilst he'd play Elvis on the vinyl. “Oh Jeffery” id look him in the eyes whilst he’d twirl me around. 

In the sixty years we were married, I only considered leaving him once. You won’t believe me when I tell you. It was forty years into our marriage. We were waiting for the train at Wynyard station to get to circular quay and I really wanted to go to the bathroom. I said “Jeff, here, hold my bag, there’s a train coming in 15 minutes, I’m going to go to the restroom, don’t get on this train, we are going to get on the next one”. I gave him my red cardigan, a bag of fruit I was holding and my thrifted vintage Ferragamo hand bag. I went to the toilet, came out and looked all around the station, I couldn’t find him. I didn’t have my phone with me, it was in my bag and so I couldn’t call him. I didn’t know what to do. I looked everywhere. I even asked the people standing at the platform, describing him to them, they just looked at me blankly, confused. Yes I lost my husband, or my husband suddenly disappeared into thin air, who the fuck knows. Twenty minutes later and after two trains passing by, I didn’t know what to do. I stood there, helpless. I couldn’t cry and I couldn’t scream. Everyone at the station was just going about their day. 

But then, an officer working at the station started to walk in my direction. I thought, oh he’s going to tell me something about my husband, he’s going to tell me that something happened to him and that he found him somewhere. But he walked straight past me. I huffed. I couldn’t believe this. The station seemed calm, which meant he didn’t fall off the platform and on to the tracks. So where could he be I thought. I went to the officer working at the station and poked his left shoulder. “Excuse me”. He turned around “Yes, ma’am” he said to me. “I lost my husband” I told him. “You lost your husband”. I know how ridiculous, I sounded, I sounded crazy, you lose your bag, you lose your Ralph Lauren ring, you lose your bananas, but you don’t lose your husband. “Well have you tried calling him”. He said almost sarcastically. “No, I haven’t, sir”. I replied mockingly. “My phone is in my bag, which he has”. “Right” he said, looking up at the seagulls that flew by. “Well, here, have my phone, you can call him, using my cell”. I took his phone from his hand and walked to the right side of the platform. I called his cell and after one ring, he answered. It sounded like he was chewing on something.

“Where the hell are you” I sheepishly yelled at him. “Im at circular quay, eating ice cream, where are you”. I questioned if he had amnesia, or if it were even possible to have amnesia. “I told you, to wait for me and once I'd come back from the bathroom, we’d hop on the train together and go there together”.

“Oh honey, I thought, why wait, you could just meet me there”. I was so mad. I hung up on him, I gave the phone to the officer and waited for the train to arrive. That night at dinner, I didn’t speak to him. I roasted him a potato, seasoned the steak with salt and pepper, and put it on a sad plate in front of him. I didn’t even eat that night. We didn’t cuddle in bed and I went straight to sleep not saying a word to him. The next morning, he got up and made me a coffee whilst I stayed in bed, not having moved an itch all night. It was the first time in 40 years of us being married, that my jeffery made me a coffee. I took the coffee from his hand and had it in bed whilst I read Jane Austen. I only ever read Jane Austen when I was sad. He knew this. “Whats wrong, honey, when are you going to stop with the sour face and just talk to me”. I sat my book on my lap, put my coffee on my side table and I looked him in the eyes. “In the forty years that we’ve been married, I never thought, i’d become forgetful to you”. He looked confused, as if he were about to say something back. “No, wait, let me finish" I continued. "We had a plan yesterday, that we would go to Circular Quay together. You would read your dumb newspaper in the train whilst I ate my fruit and then we would go sit by the water and watch the seagulls fly and I don’t know how from when I told you I was going to go to the bathroom, you heard that you should go to the Quay without me and then when I called you and you said you went without me. I thought, this man, doesn’t love me and who cares even if he does, because it seems like he can live without me, that he doesn’t need me by his side. I thought what use am I to him". Tears started to fall down my cheeks. “Oh honey” he always called me honey when he was trying to reach out to me. he started to wipe my tears off with his bare fingers. “I didn’t forget about you, I just wasn’t thinking and besides, we had our cell phones, cell phones that you bought for us, so I thought, you could just call me”. 

I didn’t agree with him, but I knew that was Jeffery. He wasn’t much of a thinker, I didn’t marry him for his brains, I married him for his looks, for his charm and for his sick sense of humour. 

That night, we made love three times. We laughed during the night and he whispered one liners in my ear. My god, how much I loved him. I loved him so much that I was not willing to be the thing he needed after his phone. I wanted him to need me above everything and everyone else. He married me first and that’s how things were going to stay. We never charged our phones after that night, we figured, what was the point. They were not much use to us anyways.