I'm in Such a Hot Pickle! I'm the worst parent in the world! Look at all this mess! I didn't even make that breakfast today! I forgot to buy the groceries! I left my baby in the house all by herself! Let's make some hot pickle juice! This could be a song in the making... Tuesday, November 28, 2017 I took her into my home after it was made clear that there was no place else for her to go. I tried to do the right thing and protect her from all of the violence. And it was violence. We thought it would be a good idea for the two of us to go live in the trailer on the property of a relative of mine. It had no electricity or water, but there were lots of kids, and even more adults, looking after us. My wife was the only caregiver. We shared a small space, slept on the floor. There were three other families living there: two girls who were five and eight, and a young man, about twenty-one, who was my wife’s friend and who stayed there often, because he had a car and a job, and because he was in the process of stealing his girlfriend’s child. The friend slept in a closet in our room, for added protection, for added privacy. The boyfriend was an idiot and a loser, but he was harmless: a nice guy and pretty soft spoken. He came in, said hello to the mom and sister and gave them an odd look. I had no idea what that was about, so I went about my business, as usual. When I came home from work at 4 AM, after drinking myself into oblivion at the local tavern, I found that our friends had been there when I left, and before I fell asleep there was the strong scent of cigarettes on my breath. And they had a big bottle of scotch to share. I was the one who had given it to them, at least that’s what I thought when I saw them again the next day. I didn’t remember how much I had given them, but I knew I was drunk. “Wow! The two of you were wasted. What happened to your breath?” I asked, almost as soon as we met. “You know,” she said. “We were just having fun.” “You were having fun, doing what? And what about the smell of cigarettes? You were smoking, weren’t you?” “Why would I smoke?” he asked. “I know how much you hate it.” “I don’t smoke cigarettes,” I said. “And I’ve never known anybody who smoked except for my father, and he wouldn’t even go into a bar that had an ashtray on the table.” I was so embarrassed that my wife had been smoking that I didn’t care how drunk they were; and so I started asking more questions about how they found cigarettes and alcohol in our house. The boyfriend, who wasn’t supposed to be there, stayed outside. He was drinking tea and didn’t want to get into the action. I noticed that his right hand was bandaged. “What happened to your hand? Did you break your finger?” I asked him. He shrugged his shoulders, and then said that he cut himself on a piece of broken glass while he was cleaning up after a party. “Party? What party? You weren’t even invited.” He didn’t know why I was asking all of these questions, but I wanted to ask him what had been going on. I didn’t know how close the two of them were, but it wasn’t good. My wife was the last person I would expect to take a scotch or smoke cigarettes. It seemed like she was very uncomfortable, and maybe even a little scared. She spoke of her husband with love and admiration. The only other people who she seemed to love was me and her brother, who was like a little brother to me. She mentioned that there was this guy, the brother of her boyfriend, who was really nice to her. He had been coming around and helping her out around the house. She even had feelings for him. But it was clear that this man and her boyfriend did not get along. The boyfriend even hinted at murder on more than one occasion, and even said that he was going to kill me. I didn’t know what to believe, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I started to wonder whether or not I wanted to know the entire story, but the fact that I was her husband made me doubt myself. What if he found out that I was involved with other men? What if he saw me with my arm around another woman? What if he saw me with another man? It was hard for me to imagine that he would not suspect that something was going on. I had more than my own life to worry about. I knew that my wife was not a bad person, but I thought that she might be in some sort of danger. Her brother, who I had met once before, and her boyfriend, who I had seen many times, were in the same room as my wife and I were just having a beer in the kitchen. I couldn’t figure out who to talk to first, to get some straight answers out of. One night I confronted her about it all. “What’s going on here?” I asked. “Why would I want to kill you?” she asked. “What’s going on? What are you talking about?” “You are a bad man,” she said, and gave me a big hug. “And you shouldn’t be here. I mean that you shouldn’t be my husband. Why would I have married you? I love my brother so much more than I love you. Why did I marry you? Why did I marry you? Why did I marry you? I don’t even like you.” I was stunned by this. I had never really understood what love was until now, at least. I tried to talk to her, but she kept saying that she didn’t understand. She was so drunk she couldn’t walk. I had to carry her to the car. She wouldn’t stop her tirade of insults and abuse. When we got to the house, I carried her to the bedroom and lay her on the bed, as she begged me not to leave her there with that bastard, she called her brother. I left the room and called my wife and her brother on the phone and told him what had happened. The next morning my brother-in-law arrived at the house, I carried my wife in to get some water. “I’m the only one who got any water this morning,” he said. “I just don’t know why you are so mad at me,” she said, looking like she wanted to cry, but the tears were not coming. “I didn’t do anything. And I did so much for you. And your friend didn’t help me.” He was standing in the kitchen with the cup of water in his hand. He looked like he was about to throw up from fear, not just from the fact that he had so much to drink, but because the fear was eating at his soul. “Your friend is in the closet. I’ll get him,” he said. He went into the closet, and then he got in front of me and screamed, “Get your wife out of here. Get her out of here! He is an abusive liar. And he hates you.” He looked down at my wife, who was still on the bed, and continued, “She says you hurt her. And she is afraid of you. And you should be afraid of her.” I grabbed a pillow from my bed and a blanket and covered my wife, and took her into my arms. “This is just a phase,” I told her. “It’s not real.” “Yes it is,” she said. “And it will never end.” She just kept crying and crying, so we left that day. The two of them were happy to see us go. They gave me enough money to go to Canada, and when I kissed her goodbye she told me that she had known she was a mistake ever since she first met me. She apologized for all of the hurt she had caused me, and said that she wished that she could undo all of it. I told her that I didn’t believe she had done it deliberately, but that it was sad that she would do what she did when she was that young, in such a desperate situation. And now, whenever I had seen her after that day, I always had this feeling that I had only spent a month with her, and that I could have spent fifty years with her, or maybe ten years, but in fifty years I never expected that my life would have turned out to be like this.