My mother-in-law Mabel

“She broke up with you?” My mother-in-law Mabel asked me, bewildered.

“Yes.”

“You know, Mabel, what makes me so sad? I even let her sleep with Jason, my best friend.”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t remember exactly how it started, if my wife initiated it or if I suggested spicing things up. I do remember that my gut feeling warned me, but I ignored it. I normally invited him over for Saturday night, and as usual, after having a couple of beers, my wife always insisted on him staying the night because of the drinking.”

“Did he drink a lot?” Mabel asked.

“Not really, perhaps one, maybe two beers, the entire evening. I always thought my wife was over-cautious with DUIs because normally he would drink Coke Zero. But she insisted, and I knew better than to argue against it.“

“Plus, the evenings together were very short, both of them always tired real quick and retreating to their respective bedrooms. I was quite the opposite, and she always made sure I had enough hard liquor. Most of the time, I would crash out and fall asleep on the living room couch until noon.“

“So, Jason spent a lot of weekends at your place?”

“Well, he was already spending one or two weekends a month at our place as we were still engaged, but after our honeymoon, it changed, and he was always there at the weekends.”

“Did it influence your relationship?”

“Not really. The only effect was that my wife was always tired the next day, and it often appeared as if she had run a marathon. I once observed her having troubles walking around at breakfast, and as I asked her about it, she said something like, “It is lovely to be well done for on Sundays.”

“I just didn’t understand what she meant with that, but the fact is, she couldn’t even properly sit down and always needed an extra pillow for her seat at Sunday breakfast.”

“Oh, by the way, this issue also happened during our honeymoon, but not one day a week; it was more a permanent thing, having troubles each morning.”

“Where did you guys spend your honeymoon?”

“Well, Jason suggested a Caribbean cruise, and my wife loved the idea right away. So, we did.”

“Let me guess,” my mother-in-law replied. “Jason was on board as well?”

“Yes!” I almost shouted, surprised how she’d know that.

“Did you do a lot of activities together on board?”

“Well, mainly me alone. Your daughter was often seasick and wanted to stay most of the time in our cabin. She emphasised that she didn’t want me to see her puke in the bucket and she always wanted to clean up and air the room before I would come back, so we made the rule that I would call her 30 minutes before returning.”

“That’s so sweet of you!” Mabel chuckled. “Did you have good cell reception at sea?”

“Yes and no. Many times, there was a lot of background noise. Sometimes the same connection frequency was used by other people too, because I could hear a man saying things.”

“What noises did you hear?”

“All kinds. I worried a little bit about it in the beginning, hearing noises such as my wife moaning, she being so ill, for example. Or sometimes her little pain cries. But I quickly realised that the cries were simply a poor connection; we had the entire time weak cellular coverage and technical distortions.”

“Sometimes, a call was simply lost. Not that she would hang up on me, but the call was simply lost. And when I tried to reach her again, she wouldn’t pick up, so I guess she didn’t receive some of my incoming calls.”

“I guess she had other things incoming.” She replied, grinning at me.

“Maybe, but this would normally only happen after she screamed, so perhaps she couldn’t hear me at all? I can truly imagine her screaming; if she couldn’t hear me, she must have thought I couldn’t hear her either. ” Steven added.

“So, then you waited a bit more before joining her?”

“Yes. Perhaps an hour or so. But sometimes I even went to dinner alone, because I couldn’t reach her, and I wanted to stick to our agreement.”

“That’s so considerate of you.” Mabel praised me.

“And after your honeymoon?”

“Well, the cruise had been expensive, so I really needed extra cash to pay off those credit cards. My wife suggested I take a second job on Saturdays.”

“And did you leave your young bride all alone the entire Saturday?”

“I had no choice, so yes, I did.”

“Anything special happening on Saturdays besides working?”

“Not really, but for the neighbourhood complaints about a parked car, which I did not understand, because I used our car on Saturdays.”

To be continued.