Excerpt from "Sleeping with Ward Cleaver" by Jenny Gardiner

From a purely anthropological viewpoint, it’s fascinating to see this dark light side of Jack. Jack Doolittle in chiaroscuro. I mean, he hasn’t been able to be jovial and light about trivial nonsense in so long that I just would never expect it from him.

But from an on-the-verge-of-jilted-wife standpoint, this is all quite disturbing.

“So, is your wife staying home with the kids this weekend, then?” Suzy-innocent asks. Like she cares. Well, I’m sure she does, to the extent that she wants to be sure I don’t show up surreptitiously and put an end to her fun and frivolity.

“Who, Claire?”

Who, Claire? Me, the wife? The mother of your children. The one who scrapes the bird crap off the floor with regularity.

“Is she staying home with the kids or is she coming along?” she asks him again, with clarification, in case you hadn’t noticed.

“Oh, Claire really hates to travel,” Jack lies. “She’s happy to stay home with the kids. She understands that this is all about work for me.”

My blood pressure instantly skyrockets and I think I need an infusion of some sort of ACE inhibitor before I suffer a coronary right here on my living room floor. I wonder how long it would take before anyone noticed. My best bet is at least seven to ten splotches of bird poo would have to accrue on the hardwoods before anyone would even notice me missing. In fact, people would probably just step over me, like they do the myriad of other stuff piled up on the floors around here.

Amazing the amount of denial in that statement he just made. Claire--former flight attendant and professional traveler--really hates to travel, he says. Claire’s happy to stay home; she understands that this is all about work for me.

Yeah, right. It’s about working it, all right. Or getting a workout, of sorts. Working some kind of angle on this willingly adulterous participant who obviously reveres the man.

If I didn’t have an outright game plan, why, I’d, I’d, I’d make one, that’s what I’d do. But I’m going to keep my cool, because I’ve got it all under control, and Claire Doolittle is going to snare this Spanish fly in her sticky web. And the black widow in me is going to swallow that SOB whole, the minute I can prove anything is going on.

For a minute there I think I am beginning to hyperventilate into the phone, what with my heart rate high enough to rupture a sphygmometer. I take a deep breath to calm myself and listen on.

“I am so excited to be working with you on the group conference, Jacks,” Jules the wonder dog says. “I will learn so much from you, I just know it. I’ve admired your work from afar for so long.”

Sweet Jesus in Heaven. I didn’t know one could even admire the man’s work from any position. I just thought he was an architect. You know, decent enough, but not particularly outstanding in his field. But then again, I guess Jack was considered a real up-and-comer back when we were young. And in love. It’s been a long time since I even paid attention to Jack’s career. Well, it’s not as if he actually shares it with me, though. I mean, Jack does his thing and I do mine. We don’t exactly compare notes regularly. Who’s got time for it, with the lives we lead? Then why do I feel so guilty just thinking that thought, I wonder.

My mind is snapped back to the immediacy of Julia’s and Jack’s scheming by this line, uttered with gusto by my spouse:

“Oh, and don’t forget to pack your bikini!”

“You too! I can’t wait to see that cute bum of yours in a swim suit!” she giggles schoolgirl-like into the phone.

I damn near drop the phone. Or birth a cow.

Don’t you worry, honey. Jack ain’t packing a suit, or anything else that will be hidden from your view, either, if I have anything to say about it. The only suit Jacks might just be packing soon is a lawsuit. Jack’s going to Miami to work, or so he says.

If I were a really malicious woman, I’d do something cruel, like go to the joke shop and buy itching powder and coat the lining of Jack’s swim trunks with the stuff. After all, he’d have a hell of a time getting it on with Julia with his crotch on fire from having to scratch so much. Maybe I should instead douse the crotch of his suit with some sort of scent that would attract sharks. That would teach him, one swift chomp in the groin from a carnivorous hot-Miami-water-loving shark ought to show him.

“Well, I’d better get back to packing and get caught up on my beauty sleep,” Julia sighs.

I haven’t had beauty sleep in about fifteen years. In fact, I was under the impression that it was one of those urban legends, that there’s no such thing as beauty sleep anyhow. Like Santa Claus, or crocodiles in the sewers in Manhattan. But judging by the looks of Julia Julliard, maybe there really is such a thing. The bitch. Jack dope-slaps me back to his conversation.

“You couldn’t get any more gorgeous, Julia,” he says. “You’re as beautiful as they come, on the inside and out.”

I’m not much of a church-goer, but being Catholic, it’s hard to shake some of those prayers that were figuratively beaten into my memory as a child, and right now, all I can think of, on Jack’s behalf, is this:

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, prayer for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

Because I think that is the prayer that my husband needs to get him through this night and prevent me from throttling the last gasp of breath from his dying body. For his sake, he’d better hope he’s got Holy Mary Mother of God in his corner at this point.