My wife and I are going to see our friend Juliet’s one-woman show about divorce. When we get to the theatre, my wife points to the ticket window. “Just say we’re on the guest list,” she says. “I’m going to the loo.”
I approach the ticket window, but there is no one behind the glass, just an empty chair. I stand there stupidly for a few minutes, until someone taps me on the shoulder. “Are you in the queue?” a man asks.
I turn around and see that I am at the back of a queue stretching to the venue door. “I am, yeah,” I say.
The door opens and the queue begins to move. I shuffle forward, looking over my shoulder for my wife. If she doesn’t return before I get to the front, I think, I will have to get out of the queue, which is already lengthening behind me. I have little faith in the idea of a guest list, and even less in the possibility of my name being on it.
My wife arrives at my side as I reach the door, where a young woman is standing with a clipboard.
“Hi,” I say. “We’re um, my name is…”
“I know who you are,” the woman says.
I am thrown by this. “Are you sure?” I ask.
“I’m a big fan!” she says.
Just to give you an idea of how often this sort of thing happens to me: this has never happened to me.
“Really?” I say.
“I’ve been reading your column since I was 12 years old!” she says.
“That’s so nice!” I say. But I think: 12? Did she just say 12?
We have seen our friend Juliet’s one-woman show about divorce once before, but it’s a work in progress and much of tonight’s material is new. My wife finds it not just hilarious, but inspiring.
“I don’t think it was meant to be a manifesto,” I say when we get home. “More a cautionary tale.”
“I’m leaving you,” my wife says. “I’ve had enough.”
“I bet if we’d gone to a one-woman show about pottery, you’d be all like, ‘I’m buying some clay tomorrow!’”
“I’ve felt this way for a very long time,” she says.
“Be grateful for what you have,” I say. “That was the take-home message.”
“No, it wasn’t,” my wife says. “The message was, ‘Be free.’”
“I can’t believe I gave Juliet a quote for her flyer,” I say.
“You do nothing, you give me nothing,” my wife says.
“I said it was blisteringly funny,” I say. “I should have said, ‘This show ended my marriage, and it will end yours.’”
When I wake up the next morning, I decide not to mention our impending divorce, in case my wife has forgotten all about it. By the time I get downstairs I have convinced myself I dreamed it.
“I need you to make cauliflower cheese,” my wife says. An interval of silence follows.
“Before or after you leave me?” I say.
There is another short silence.
“Before,” she says.
“So you remember saying all that?” I say.
“Of course I remember,” she says. “I just texted Juliet to say thank you.”
“Is this because the woman at the door recognised me?” I say.
“You just don’t get it,” she says. Her phone buzzes. The screen says “Juliet”. She picks it up.
“Hello?” she says.
“I’m definitely not making cauliflower cheese, by the way,” I say.
My wife’s back is turned; she is listening to Juliet. “I thought it’s what you would have wanted,” she says.
