🎧 402: Martha was waiting ...

     Martha was waiting for Mark when he returned. She met him at the door, looking impish. She gave him a hug and the quickest of kisses. She had a Scotch and soda ready for him, she made poached salmon for dinner, and after dinner she made love to him with the reckless passion he had expected from Margot a week earlier. In time, a little more than six months’ time, Martha had had enough. She came out of the bathroom after her shower one Saturday morning, still working at her hair with a towel, and stopped in her tracks when she saw Mark sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette, worrying, and making a list of topics that he thought required Martha’s worrying as well as his own. Martha watched him add items to the list for a couple of moments and then went on into the bedroom and in a very short time came back out, dressed, striding toward the door.
     “Where are you going?” Mark asked.
     “Shopping!” she shouted.
     “With your hair wet?” he asked. She slammed the door on his question.
     A couple of hours later Mark was sitting on the kitchen floor, painting a metal cabinet that he had picked up at a used-furniture store. He heard the door open. He heard footsteps. He made a point of not turning from his work. If Martha was not going to share his depression, well, then he had nothing else to share with her for the time being. He heard the usual sounds of unpacking groceries, and then he heard an unaccustomed one: the pop of a champagne cork. He couldn’t have hidden his surprise if he had tried. He laid his brush across the paint can, stood, and said, before he even turned to look at her, “Welcome back, Margot.”
     A pattern was established that was, probably, beneficial for all of them during a difficult time. They discovered, in a roundabout and difficult way, a means to two qualities that most marriages need to be successful: stability and change. Because Margot and Martha have since childhood called each other “Mar,” a change from Margot to Martha or from Martha to Margot was known among the trio as a changing of the Mars. Like a change in the weather, a change of Mars had its front, and the front brought confusion, unsettled emotional weather. When the Mars changed, the returning one was refreshed, a little coy, and had a voracious sexual appetite and a conversational urge that filled the house with ardor and chatter for a week or more. Then a new front would arrive, and all of them were buffeted again by shifting gusts. They longed for gentler weather.

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