#### *Happy the husband of a really good wife;  The number of his days will be doubled. A perfect wife is the joy of her husband, He will live out the years of his life in peace.*   --Ecclesiasticus 26:1-4 
![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSpR7VDMMJcyuA2yXearYJKgFUn1mBYahNpXA7fcNnuNs/image.png)
[source](https://pixabay.com/photos/together-we-are-strong-grandson-4029306/)

#### This is my entry for [A Pop-Up WeWrite Contest!](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@owasco/a-pop-up-wewrite-contest) hosted by @owasco
***
[![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPwiXZSSnfeGvHkGuCeM9W6RqzDxwaKNzgEYBttVJyukG/image.png)](https://steemit.com/freewritehouse/@owasco/a-pop-up-wewrite-contest)
#### The Prompt: The Sandwich
written by @owasco

![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSX8TfxAwYRqieEZvFqD7weZqKRmUGfaVL6WRtth1bPqU/image.png)



"Ugh! The bread is soaking wet! Bread is not supposed to be soaking wet!" he snarled at me as he spit a soggy mouthful of half-chewed peanut butter sandwich into a tissue. I stood at attention next to his bed. He handed the sodden and heavy tissue to me.

He was now vegan, grain free, nightshade free, lectin free, phytic acid free, and deaf to my feeble protestations. He was not free, however, from his acutely tuned palate, which was maddeningly different from mine.

He had requested a peanut butter sandwich. I knew meeting all his new diet criteria would be a bitch, but I rose to the challenge. I had to.

I chose a very small ten dollar loaf of 'bread' and bought it. I bought some raw peanuts. I shelled the peanuts. I soaked, sprouted, and dehydrated the peanuts. After very lightly roasting them, I ground those peanuts into peanut butter. I then very carefully smeared the freshly ground peanut butter onto the somewhat normal looking bread. I made sure to get the peanut butter to the edges just like I had learned in home economics class long, long ago.

I knew how to make a proper tea sandwich.

I now spent my life trying to make this man happy. I signed up for that didn't I? Wasn’t that my reason for being? To make this man happy?

Well, he was not happy with that sandwich.
![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSX8TfxAwYRqieEZvFqD7weZqKRmUGfaVL6WRtth1bPqU/image.png)

![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmV9i1c63emRLLihdqYC17twkpmNkcVD6BjnpGzTKTw8ty/image.png)
[source](https://pixabay.com/illustrations/retro-housewife-family-cooking-1321078/)
#### "To enjoy your work and accept your lot in life--this is indeed 
a gift from God," Mom always reminded me. "Ecclesiastes five-nineteen."  

Aren't gifts returnable if you have a cash register receipt? Is a marriage license refundable?

"In sickness and in health, until death us do part," Mom would say ominously. 

Ah, death. The easy way out. Why did petty,  mean people cling so tenaciously to life? Dale could do the decent thing and die, but no, he had to hang in there regardless of the extraordinary expense and medical interventions. And the demands on my time, my effort.

Every day I envisioned a new way for Dale to die. 

* One push, at the top of the stairs. *What if he didn't die?*

* Oops, there goes the portable radio into the bathtub. *Sizzle!*

* Unwashed lettuce tainted with e coli. *Eww, messy bed linens, prolonged pain, no guarantee of death.*

* Lily of the valley mixed with his dandelion greens...*would the coroner catch me?*

The stain of blood on my hands, or the shame and guilt of abandoning my husband, the peanut-eating invalid who couldn't say please or thank you, who could never say that's all right, you did your best, and it's good enough for me.

Never. Nothing I did for him was ever good enough.

"He's never beat you," Mom would say. "He put a roof over your head. He's neat and clean, conscientious, and highly respected in the community. Why do you need glory and praise?"

I didn't! I just wanted to hear that I was valued, loved, appreciated.  

I wanted my life back. Some sense of agency. A purpose other than being at his disposal, 24-7. I'd tried leaving him for weeks at a time, but Dale always guilt-tripped me into coming back. 

Mom was six feet under now, but I heard her louder than ever: *You reap what you sow.* What bad seed did I sow, to end up with a miserable SOB who was impossible to please and hell-bent on making me share every atom of his pain?

Why shouldn't Dale reap what he'd sown?

A knock came at the screen door, which opened before I could get to the kitchen. Darcy. O Lord God, not Dale's discard, the daughter nobody else would have known about if she hadn't sued for medical records of her birth parents. Of course she was in need of more than information. She required Dale's financial assistance, and he freely gave it--for as long as she would sit at his side sympathizing with his hoard of health problems. Naturally, her visits were short. She always had some new spa to hurry off to, some friends to impose on during her travels, some eco-farm with medicinal herbs to go visit.

"Hi Mom," she greeted me. Inappropriately. Over her shoulder, I caught sight of her SUV in the driveway. "I hope you're taking good care of my daddy."

I'd take care of him, all right, and his little indiscretion of a daughter too.

"How's your Keto diet going?" I said. "You ever get past that Keto flu thing?"

"Oh, I'm going vegan now." She marched right past me, to the living room, where Dale lay on his sick bed. I missed my sofa and coffee table full of books, the time to read them, an inch of my own to breathe in.

"Darcy, honey." Dale lifted his arm and they fist-bumped like old pals. 

Tall, model-thin, with eyes the exact same gray-blue as Dale's and hair and ears that stuck out like everyone else's in his family, Darcy was a ray of sunshine in Dale's miserable life. She only showed up when she wanted something from us. What would it be this time?

"Struts," she was saying. She had driven in peril to get here, but of course she wouldn't feel safe leaving until repairs were made. I listened to the excruciating details of her First-World problems while staring out the window at her red Murano with the multitude of repair bills. The SUV was as sickly and high-maintenance as Darcy and her father.

Darcy wouldn't come right out and ask for money, but she'd flatter Dale and butter his bread just exactly right and pour his tea more perfectly than I possibly could. It takes one obsessive-compulsive hypochondriac to know one. "River people are dirty," Dale always said of my family, but when were we ever bed-ridden or sick? 

One upside to Darcy's visits: she'd fuss over Dale for at least a few minutes, which gave me a chance to slip out to the detached garage and check the contents of my Kia Sorento. Suitcases packed and ready to go at a moment's notice, buried under flats of Dale's empty mineral water bottles. Time to run those to the store and hand-feed them into those awful machines. And add a few boxes of non-perishable grocery items--if I wanted, I could live on processed food full of gluten, sugar, MSG, nitrates, and whatever the hell was banned last week. GMOs? Mixed tocopherols? All mine!

"I'm off to grab some groceries," I announced. "Darcy, you can stay here and enjoy your daddy."

She gave me her beatific smile, the one that had Dale so deceived, he'd probably buy her a whole new SUV before this visit was over.

Not that I'd be here to see. It was my turn to travel.

"Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you," I mumbled for Dale's darling daughter while I backed the Kia out of the garage.

Darcy's days were about to get very, very long, indeed.


![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSX8TfxAwYRqieEZvFqD7weZqKRmUGfaVL6WRtth1bPqU/image.png)

### Thank you for hosting this we-write, @owasco!
I was planning to take a dark turn with it, but you know my m.o. - why put my protagonists up a tree and shoot at 'em, if I can show them the way down the tree and all the way out of town? *I'm boring and predictable, but happy to see these fictional heroines spread their wings and fly away!*

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### Please come join us at @freewritehouse
Where You Do You


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