100 Malicious Little Mysteries

A Night Out with the Boys by Elsin Ann Graffam

The lights were dim, so low I could hardly make out who was in the room with me. Annoyed, I picked my way to the center where the chairs were. The smoky air was as thick as my wife’s perfume, and about as breathable.

I pulled a metal folding chair out and sat next to a man I didn’t know. Squinting, I looked at every face in the room. Not one was familiar.

Adjusting my tie, the stupid, wide, garish tie Georgia had given me for Christmas, I stared at the glass ashtray in the hand of the man sitting next to me. The low-wattage lights were reflected in it, making, I thought, a rather interesting pattern. At least, it was more interesting than anything that had happened yet that evening.

I was a fool to have come, I thought, angry. When the letter came the week before, my wife had opened it.

“Look!” she’d said, handing me my opened mail. It was a small square of neatly printed white paper.

“It’s from that nice man down the block. It’s an invitation to a meeting of some sort. You’ll have to go!”

“Go? Meeting?” I asked, taking off my overcoat and reaching for the letter.

“You are Invited,” the paper read, “to the Annual Meeting of the Brierwood Men’s Club, to be Held at the Ram’s Room at Earle’s Restaurant, Sunday evening, January 8, at Eight o’clock.”

It was signed, “Yours in Brotherhood, Glenn Reynolds.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I hardly know the guy. And I’ve never heard of that club.”

“You’re going!” Georgia rasped. “It’s your chance to get in good with the neighbors. We’ve lived here two whole months and not a soul has dropped in to see us!”

“No wonder,” I thought. “They’ve heard enough of your whining and complaining the times they’ve run into you at the supermarket.”

“Maybe,” I said, “people here are just reserved.”

“Maybe people in the East just aren’t as friendly as the people you knew back home,” she said, sneering.

“Oh, Georgia, don’t start that up again! We left, didn’t we? I pulled up a lifetime of roots for you, didn’t I?”

“Are you trying to tell me it was my fault?! Because if you are, Mr. Forty and Foolish, you’ve got another think coming! It was entirely your fault, and you’re just lucky I didn’t leave you over it!”

“All right, Georgia.”

“Where would you be without Daddy’s money, Mr. Fathead? Where would you be without me?”

“I’m sorry, Georgia. I’m just tired, that’s all.”

She gave a smug little smile and went on. “You are going,” she nodded, making her dyed orange hair shake like an old mop. “Yes indeedly. You can wear your good dark brown suit and that new tie I gave you and...”

And she went on, planning my wardrobe, just as she’d planned every minute of my last fourteen years.

So the night of the eighth I was at the Annual Meeting of the Brierwood Men’s Club. Totally disgusted. What crazy kind of club had a meeting annually? A service club? Fraternal organization? Once a year?

It was almost eight when the men stopped filing into the room. They were, with hardly an exception, a sad-looking lot. I mean, they looked depressed. A gathering of funeral directors? A club for people who had failed at suicide and were contemplating it again?

“I think this is all of us, men,” Reynolds said, standing at the dais. “Yes. We can begin. Alphabetical order, as always. One minute.”

A sad, tired-looking man in his fifties stood up and went to the platform.

“Harry Adams. She, she...”

He wiped his brow nervously and went on.

“This year has been the worst ever for me. You’ve seen her. She’s so beautiful. I know you think I’m lucky. But I’m not, no, no. She’s been after me every minute to buy her this, buy her that, so she can impress all the neighbors. I don’t make enough money to be able to do this! But she threatened to leave me and take all I’ve got, which isn’t all that much any longer, if I don’t give in. So I took out a loan at the bank, told them it was for a new roof, bought her everything she wanted with the money. But it wasn’t enough. She wants more. A full-length mink coat, a two-carat diamond ring. I’ll have to go to another bank, get another loan for my roof. I’m running out of money, I’m running out of roofs...”

“One minute, Harry.”

Dejected, the little man left the platform and another took his place.

“Browning. She invited her mother to live with us. The old dame moved in last April. I could hardly put up with my wife, but now I’ve got two of them. Whining, nagging — in stereo, yet. You can’t imagine how it is, guys! I get home from work five minutes late, I’ve got two of them on my back. I forget my wife’s birthday, my mother-in-law lets me have it. I forget my mother-in-law’s birthday, my wife lets me have it.”

He looked over at Reynolds, sitting on the platform.

“More?”

“Ten seconds, Joe.”

“I just want to say I can’t stand it at home any longer! I’m not a young man any longer! I—”

“Minute, Joe.”

And it was another’s turn. I sat there rigid with fascination. What a great idea! Once a year, get together to complain about the wife! Get it out of the system, let it all out! And to think I hadn’t wanted to come!

Some guy named Dorman was on next. His wife had eaten herself up to two hundred and eighty pounds. And Flynn, his wife had gone to thirty doctors for her imagined ills. Herter, his wife refused to wear her false teeth around the house unless they had guests, and Klutz, his wife had wrecked his brand-new sports car three times in the year, down to Morgan, whose wife gave all of his comfortable old clothes to charity.

And then it was my turn. It wasn’t, you understand, that I wanted to impress anybody — but to be able to actually say it, to tell the world what she’d done to me — heaven!

I took my place on the dais and looked at Reynolds.

“You can begin now,” he said kindly.

“Freddie Nerf. Her name was Jennie and she was my secretary and she was twenty-three and I loved her more than anything else on earth and knew I always would and my wife who is cold like you wouldn’t believe found out and told everybody on the west coast what I’d done and said we’d have to move thousands of miles away from ‘that tramp’, only Jennie wasn’t a tramp and I’ll never in my life see her again and I still love her so much and my wife keeps bringing the whole thing up and I try to forget because it hurts so much, but I know I’ll never be able to, especially with my wife reminding me all the time.”

“One minute, Fred.”

“I CAn’t STAND MY WIFE!” I yelled into the microphone as I left the platform.

Never in my thirty-nine and three-quarter years had I felt so good. Almost laughing from the pure pleasure of getting it out of my system, I took my seat and half-listened to the others. Owens, whose wife told his kids he was a dummy, and Quenton, whose wife had gone back to college and thought she was smarter than he was, and Smith, whose wife slept until noon and made him do all the housework, all the way down to Zugay, whose wife made all of his clothes so he went out looking like a hold-over from the Depression. Which he certainly did.

One guy, who hadn’t spoken, interested me. He was smiling. Actually sitting there with a big grin on his face. I was staring at him, wondering if I knew him, when Reynolds spoke.

“All right, men. Time to vote. George, hand out the paper and pencils, okay?”

“Vote?” I asked the man sitting next to me, whose wife hid his hairpiece when she didn’t want him going out.

“Sure. Vote for the one who has the lousiest wife.”

I scribbled down the name Freddie Nerf. After all, I did have the lousiest wife.

Glenn Reynolds collected the slips of paper and sorted them. In a few minutes he turned to face the men.

“For the first time, men” he said, “a new member has won. Fred Nerf. The one with the wife, you remember, who called his nice girlfriend a tramp.”

I half-rose as he congratulated me, feeling somewhat foolish and yet proud. It was indeed an honor.

And then all of them, all the sad-faced, beaten-down men gathered around me and shook my hand. Some of them actually had tears in their eyes as they patted me on the back.

Later, as we all went to the lounge to have a drink before going home, I found Reynolds at the end of the bar and went over to him with my drink.

“This is some deal!” I said. “It really, really felt good to get it out of my system! Whose idea was this club?”

“Mine,” he said. “We’ve met once a year for the last five years. I control the membership and I wanted you to be included this year. That wife of yours is really something, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “She sure is. How come you didn’t speak? Because it’s your club?”

“Oh, no. My wife passed away four years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling suddenly awkward. “That guy sitting over there, the one who’s had the big smile on his face all evening, who the heck is he?”

“Gary McClellan? He’s a plumber.”

“Oh, sure. Say, didn’t my wife tell me that McClellan’s wife died last year in some sort of horrible accident?”

Reynolds smiled broadly and patted me on the arm. “Of course, old man! McClellan was last year’s winner!”