Wife Under Quarantine

Somewhat unexpectedly and not too long ago, I became a wife. I always assumed that if I ever did get married it would be at age 70 for tax purposes, or one day in a fit of mania I’d tie the knot with my dog and ruin marriage equality for everyone. But matrimony seemed unlikely. I was too independent/stubborn/unattractive/disdainful of men/busy to even consider wifeliness.

And yet here I am, not just married to a man but indefinitely stuck inside with him, with little to do all day except vacuum, bitch, organize our bedroom closet, shell shrimp for lunch and then make stock out of the shells. I’ve started wearing an apron. I spend afternoons wandering around the apartment gripping a mug of tea. Tonight I’ll drink half a bottle of Pinot Grigio while watching Friday Night Lights, googling recipes involving the shrimp stock that I’ll cook with tomorrow, a day which will be just like the one we’re having now only with worse headlines and slightly different food. 

Is anyone else feeling like their domestic anxieties have become horrifically manifested? The subtext is now text, breaking through the bathroom door with an axe, the Anti-Christ pulled from my womb, forcing me to confront my new social status — wife, hausfrau, one half of a whole, like a lung, perpetually making myself useful. 

When the time came, marriage felt like the right thing to do. I loved him, he moved to Los Angeles for me, we had been together for three years, cohabited, adopted a cat, and his mom had just gotten diagnosed with terminal cancer. Chris quit his job and moved back to the Garden State to care for her, and Life having just cracked my skull like a penny thrown off the Empire State Building, I proposed. 

I don’t remember exactly how I put it. We were on the phone, I stepped away from my desk and stood on the balcony at my office overlooking the parking lot. The news from New Jersey got worse with each call—a clot, a stroke, some tests, a diagnosis, months (maybe a year but probably months) to live. Chris was 26 and had just gotten power of attorney. I was 27 and powerless. When I said proposing felt like the right thing to do, what I meant was, I was drowning in feelings, mostly of sorrow and grief, but also an overwhelming intensity of love for Chris, the kind of love that Christian mothers use to lift cars off their children. What had been impossible became inevitable. “I feel like we should get married,” is how I probably put it to him. I couldn’t lift the car of pancreatic cancer, but I felt I could give myself to a family, and put on a really great party at an urban farm in Clifton, New Jersey. 

When we told Chris’ mom we were engaged, she said thank god and started to cry. (And I return to that overwhelming feeling that proposing was the right thing to do.) A month and a half later and on the morning Epstein killed himself, we got married. The bride wore purple and yellow. 

It all happened so fast, but now life is nothing but slow. Quarantine can make anyone feel like a kept woman. It’s true that I wash and fold underwear belonging to the oppressor, and I now spend more time cooking for two than is good for my career. But I’m actually pretty excited about that shrimp stock. And as I write this, Chris is listening to one of his movie-ranking podcasts and doing the dishes, our cat is stretched across my feet in bed, and I’m reminded that for us, getting married in a crisis was an opportunity to promise to take care of each other. It still feels right.