the good wife (for britta) peter clarke I have a friend who calls me a shmuck. She just gets cranky because she’s my wife. I sing songs to her with my guitar while she makes my bed and straightens up my shoes by the door. Sometimes I deserve it, the way she calls me a shmuck. I don’t know what a shmuck is, really, but I chase after a lot of other women so I do mostly deserve it. She’s a good wife to me. I’d never have my bed made or my shoes straightened without her. I sing her as pretty of songs as I know. Still, I really am so bad a husband. I took a lover recently. My lover and my wife have become friends. The three of us dine together occasionally. My wife calls her my mistress. When I’m not perfectly civil, my wife will say privately to me, “Muffin, is that really how you should be treating your good mistress?” My wife is so cute like that. She calls me muffin when she isn’t calling me a shmuck. Of course, my wife is only joking when calls me a shmuck. For although I am quite unfaithful to her, it is true that such is my duty. She is unfaithful to me in the same way, for it must be so. My wife does not do the sort of chasing as me, but she does keep a list of ones to have an eye kept watch on. The list is at sixteen, presently. Even I could never chase after so many. Just as I sing songs for fun, so does my wife do things with arts and crafts. She makes wonderful glitter-covered cards of bright colors with nice messages inside them. On holidays and special occasions, she sends out a card to each of her friends and to those lucky enough to be at the top of her romantic-interest list. My wife and I spend many happy hours together. I sit with my guitar and I play her songs while she sits with her craft supplies and lets me see the progress she is making on her newest cards. The songs I sing are mostly written for other women and the cards she makes are mostly for other men. But she is my only good wife, and I am her only husband. One day she said to me, “Muffin, do you remember when you first started calling me your wife?” “Yes,” I said. “We were in a group of people; everyone had a girlfriend or a boyfriend to introduce. It was no fun to be single, so I introduced you as my wife.” She laughed, remembering the humorous occasion. “You were such a shmuck,” she said. “Oh, but you’ll find someone yet.” “I do have my lover to chase after.” “Yes. And I have my list. Someday we won’t be so lonesome.” “No one is lonesome, my dear,” I said to her. “We’ll always have each other, as friends.”