Alternative Facts

(An imaginative work)

The first thing to know about my wife is that she has never hesitated to bust balls. I couldn’t tell you if my wife is smart, necessarily, but she’s clever and quick, and she’s not afraid to fight dirty if that’s what it takes to win. Sometimes I think the thing she likes most about the President is that he’s made it possible to unleash the full arsenal of her weaponry, and as you all know by now, it’s something else.

It is like our madman President’s obsession with nukes, wanting to drop one for spectacle’s sake, just to see what would happen, and because he thinks no one else would have the guts. My wife has spent her career tethered to norms that she now realizes were holding her back from her truest self.

The madman President has liberated her and her abilities. I understand how terrible it sounds to talk about this President and a woman’s “liberation,” but it’s true. Looking at it from my wife’s perspective, I can understand, and even appreciate why that would be intoxicating. She does not want to give that up. I see this now. It is a problem in our marriage, which I am not talking about publicly because it’s none of your business.

In the past, her abilities — and I swear this is true — have been a force for good.

For instance, in high school, she had a cousin who was getting teased by the jocks, towel-snapped, hung in his locker by his tighty-whities, that kind of thing. She told the jocks to knock it off and if they didn’t she’d make sure the whole school believed they were gay for each other, busy sucking each other’s dicks in their spare time.

The jocks knew she would be believed because she was pretty and popular and also that she would not rest until she’d done the job, and so her cousin stopped getting harassed. They also elected her homecoming queen out of fear for what she might do if she wasn’t.

When we first became a Washington D.C. power couple they called us “beauty and the beast” and let’s just say I’m not the beauty. If you were being generous, you’d call me stout. If I suck in the gut I have a passable dad bod, but facing facts, I’m fat. In heels my wife has me by an inch. I am half Filipino, so I look neither white nor ethnic, which makes people uncomfortable, and sometimes I’ve been mistaken for her driver. My hair retreated in my 40’s to a Maginot line drawn well above my forehead.

At least that seems to be holding on for the time being, even with all the stress.

Despite my lack of pulchritude, I’d been something of a ladies man around the city for quite some time before meeting my wife. I was a catch, an Ivy-educated lawyer with a good personality, not to mention an enthusiastic practitioner of cunnilingus, a trait I put to work on my wife’s and my first date in the back of a limousine after a Federalist Society fundraiser, no reciprocation required.

When she finished and I finished she said, “A girl could get used to that” and I said, “Don’t count your chickens, cutie pie.” That was us, playful, fun at the same wavelength.

That’s not us anymore.

Until recently, my wife and I have had a very fine marriage. We have four children, a lovely home. We are wealthy, living the American Dream. But a man has come between us, and that man is the President of the United States. In private I call her boss “Generalisimo Arancia” (orange in Italian) because he’s like a cartoon dictator. For a while she laughed at it until it wasn’t funny for either of us anymore.

It isn’t sexual, thank god, at least I don’t think so. I’m not sure the Generalisimo is capable anymore, if maybe his fast food diet hasn’t hardened all his vessels beyond rousing. And yet, while I’m near certain they’re not having a physical affair, somehow it’s worse. He has colonized her brain and extracted her soul. My soul isn’t feeling so hot either. I’m wondering if this marriage can be saved and thinking at this time, probably not because I may have crossed a line myself just now.

Here’s the thing: At the moment, my wife is bound and gagged in our master bathroom, while I make French toast for the kids who are in the media room watching Minecraft tutorials from YouTube projected on the big screen. My wife being bound and gagged is not a sex ritual, though we do that sometimes, a little light BDSM, a single limb tied to the bedframe with a silk scarf deal. Rather, this is the only thing I could think of to keep her from dragging our kids to the Generalisimo’s 4thof July tribute to himself.

We all have our limits and this is mine.

I have made my objections to the Generalisimo clear both privately and publicly, which is why my wife and I are such objects of fascination and speculation. How could the man who thinks the President is a menace live with a woman who is his staunchest public defender? Many wonder if it’s a game, my objections to the Generalismo’s assaults on the rule of law a performance to preserve a place in respectable company once he’s gone, but I promise, every bad word is 100% sincere, the man is a threat to everything I hold dear, including my own family, which is why my wife is bound and gagged in our master bathroom on the morning of our nation’s anniversary.

Technically, my wife is hogtied, a technique I learned during my years in my Harvard secret society that I can’t say much more about lest I betray the brotherhood I’ve sworn an oath to. These oaths are meaningful. One’s word is his bond. We did not swear on the Bible — I cannot actually disclose what we swore on — but the object isn’t the point. It’s about the underlying meaning. For instance, “love, honor, and cherish” were the vows my wife and I shared on our wedding day.

(She joked that maybe I should substitute in “obey.” Like I said, same wavelength.)

I’ve tried to live that oath every moment since that day, and because I am an excellent lawyer I could even make an argument as to how hogtieing my wife and leaving her in our master bathroom is consistent with that oath. I am trying to cherish the person she once was by preventing her from moving even further away.

Oaths matter, which something I’ve been telling my wife ever since the Generalisimo took office, but she doesn’t want to hear it, and I’ve given up on trying to make her listen.

I have her in the bathroom so the kids won’t stumble upon her. I covered her in her robe so she doesn’t get cold. I’m not sure how long I have to keep her there to prevent her from taking our young, impressionable children to the obscene 4thof July event of tanks and demagoguery, but I told my wife that I was standing firm on this one and I meant it.

We started the holiday breakfast ritual as usual, where we have the kids pretend they’re at a restaurant and my wife is the waitress while I’m the short order cook. It’s harder to go to restaurants for real now — you can never be sure if that mayonnaise on your sandwich is necessarily mayonnaise anymore — so we do this instead. She has an order pad and pulls a pen from behind her ear, and pretends to be smacking her gum, “Whaddya havin’?” she says to the kids. I wear an apron and hair net and make a bunch of noise clacking spatulas around the kitchen island.

When the kids order she translates it into diner lingo remembered from her first job, “Two dots and a dash, coming right up!” While I cook, she hustles out juice and chats the kids up about how their work weeks have been, “Nose to the grindstone, there ma’am?” she says to the littlest one, Suze, our trailer who just got out of the high chair. Two boys and two girls, boys first, girls later, 12, 10, 8, 3. The boys look like my wife, the girls like me, God’s sense of humor.

We would kill for our kids. We have that in common. As I started the breakfasts, my wife told the kids how they’d need to go get ready right away afterwards so they could go to the parade. We’d already had it out once that morning. My first move was to invoke the weather, the terrible heat, threat of storms, et al., but she knew that wasn’t my main concern. Eventually, I put it plain. I wasn’t having our kids used as props for that fascist maniac’s ego trip. Halloween at the White House? Fine. That’s a thing, a tradition, but like a lot of other things, this was unprecedented, and goddamit, I wasn’t going to allow it.

She didn’t respond, saying it was time for breakfast, so I’d thought I’d won, but there she was talking about how much fun they were going to have, and Jilly, our older girl, asking if Daddy was coming and Daddy saying he wouldn’t go even he was dragged behind a tank, and would Mommy care to join him upstairs for just a minute?

We had a standing rule to argue out of earshot of the kids, which meant we’d been spending a lot of time in our bathroom, so I had no need to lure her into a confined space. I didn’t want to hurt my wife. She doesn’t carry a lot of bodyfat, so she’s quick to bruise, which is why I used her taser on her. She’d gotten it after a lady had spit on her in a restaurant. (Not really, just a little extra inadvertent spittle when she was calling my wife a soulless monster. Charges were dropped after an apology.)

I’ll never forget the look in my wife’s eye when I touched the electrodes to her hip and sent 50,000 volts through her body. It was a mix of admiration and betrayal. Some part of her respected the ruthlessness, but she couldn’t imagine it coming from me. This is what happens when we’re pushed to our limits. Choices must be made, things broken that cannot be mended.

I caught her before she hit the ground. I used the cord from her hair dryer to lash her hands and feet behind her because it was the closest thing and she can’t chew through it.

For the gag, I used a sock, fresh and clean out of the drawer.

—

I have never settled on the best metaphor for what the Generalisimo is to our marriage. Is he poison? A cancer? Does one voluntarily poison oneself? Does one think that you can get just a little bit of cancer and then move on, no problem?

“Three months” she told me when she went to work for the campaign. “Six tops.” The idea in my wife’s head was that if she could get him home inside the margin of error and make it respectable, it’d be a coup, a calling card for future work. “Besides, he’s the only game in town, and it’s the only game I know how to play.”

She promised she would never take a job in the White House, swore on our children’s children she would not work for that man. She turned him down twice, but in bed, she would stare at the ceiling and ask the air if she just wasn’t supposed to work for four years, or even eight. “He’s the fucking President,” she’d say, “And he’s a fucking vindictive motherfucker. If I turn him down, I’m done until he’s gone.”

“Then let’s get rid of him,” I said. “He’s a goddamn criminal. It can’t be that hard.”

She took the job. The rationales changed. First she said it was important for smart people to be an influence on him. That morphed to the need for a check on his worst impulses. (“We have a Constitution for that!” I cried.) Over time, though, the grievances set in. He’s being wronged. They never recognize the good things. We’ve accomplished a lot. Why do you never hear about that?

Witch hunt.I’m worried she believes it now.

It’s been a nightmare. He’s ruined the country. He’s ruined our lives, and we let him do it.

This is the hardest part; that we did it to ourselves. Even I thought he was containable.

The Minecraft videos have reached their limit for pacification. I can hear the fights over what clip to watch next brewing. Cries of “Mom! Mom!” shriek out of the media room and I rush in with the French toast, shushing them.

“Quiet, Mom has a headache,” I hiss. “She had to go lie down.”

“I wanted eggs,” Jilly says.

“Sometimes you can’t always get what you want,” I reply, harsher than I mean to, so I ruffle her hair to let her know I’m kidding.

Georgie, our oldest, asks about the parade. I know he doesn’t want to go. That’s kid’s stuff and he’s almost not a kid. He’s got his own phone, so he likely knows far too much about what’s going on.

“That’s not happening,” I say.

“You sure about that?” he says, rolling his eyes. He is well aware his mother is usually in charge. I do not mind this because young men should know that women are their equals, but they should also know that sometimes men must be men.

I tell them I have to go upstairs and leave Georgie in charge, tapping him on each shoulder with the remote control as though I’m dubbing him a knight.

—

When I re-enter the master bathroom, my wife is not struggling, but I can tell she has been. Her pale hair is lank across her forehead from sweat, and her wrists red and chafed behind her back. I cringe at the sight, but resist the urge to free her. We must settle things first.

On Twitter, when I criticize the President and everyone wails back at me asking me what I’m going to do about it other than tweet, I wonder if this is the kind of thing they had in mind.

I gesture at the gag. “Are you going to scream if I remove that?” She shakes her head, no.

People find this hard to believe, but she’s never lied to me. Lying is her public face, not her private one. Because of this she has hurt my feelings many times, but each of those times is like a gift if you think about it, a faith in the strength of our bond.

I remove the gag. “Water,” she croaks. I fill the cup she uses to rinse after brushing her teeth and hold it to her lips. I do my best, but the water dribbles down her chest. I can count the ribs of her breastbone down the front of her PJ’s. She’s always been thin, but has gone sinewy because of age and stress. I tell her she needs to eat, I cook excellent meals, ready for her when she arrives home. She drinks a large glass of red while forking the tortellini around the plate as we talk about the kids before pouring a second glass of red and heading up to the bath.

“So what’s your plan here?” she says.

“Can’t say I have one.”

“That’s not like you.”

“True.”

Like my wife, I am also extraordinarily good at my job, mine as a corporate litigator. My skill is in looking at all of the possibilities down the road following a particular strategic decision, boxing my adversaries into the actions I want and need them to take. Unlike my wife, I am deliberate and slow. I am working on an article about the Generalisimo’s malignant narcissism that will be published in several months, and when I am done, the case will be airtight. Even she will have to agree, and maybe then we can be rid of him.

But here, I have no plan. There is no plan in which someone would taser his wife and hogtie her with the cord from her hair dryer.

“The kids are not going to that abomination. That’s all I know right now,” I say.

“I suppose you want a divorce,” she says.

“Never,” I reply, “And not just because we’re Catholic.”

“You’re nothing without me, you know that, right?” she says.

“I agree,” I say.

She is thinking of my career, clearly enhanced by her connections and power, but this is not what is on my mind. On my mind is only her and our children, only love.

My wife wiggles herself upright, back against the vanity so I can’t see her hands behind her. I take the taser out of my pocket. Blue veins trace up her shin, visible beneath her spray tan. Every year it gets harder and harder to look like herself, and when I tell her she doesn’t have to do it for me she says, “No shit, Sherlock.”

“They’d have fun,” she says. “Why are you such a spoilsport? When do they have a chance to see a tank close-up? They’ll even be able to climb on them!”

“Not happening,” I say. “You’ll have to kill me first.”

“Don’t say things you don’t mean.”

This is what she said to me when I proposed. When I produced the rock from my coat pocket, all 2.85 carats, she knew how much I meant it. The ring sits in our safe now, too big for her desiccated fingers.

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” I say.

She had not wanted to do a first dance on our wedding night, where they announce us as husband and wife as we enter the room. She didn’t want to be looked at that way she said. I told her we would do it to “I Only Have Eyes for You,” and we could just look at each other the whole time. To convince her, I sang a couple of bars, gazing deep into her eyes and she blushed and that time she told me we could do whatever I wanted.

“This really hurts,” she says, squirming more. Her eyes fill, but she does not cry. I have only seen her cry three times, when her father died, when Georgie was just a month old and had a fever that seemed like it would never break, and then election night, November 2016.

When Georgie had that fever we spent all night hovering over this crib, awake, holding each other like me might drown if we let go.

“I wish I knew what else to do,” I tell her.

The night of the wedding, as we spun across the dance floor, I looked at my wife, but instead of looking back at me, her eyes roved around the room, at the representatives and senators and lobbyists and pollsters, at the bankers and financiers and fixers, at the world we both inhabited, the most powerful people on the planet, and she smiled at all of them, and winked and waved as we turned and twirled, and she had never looked more alive, more beautiful, and she never looked at me.

I learned something in that moment. I learned that I would always love her more than she loved me, and while you’re thinking this would be a painful realization, I am telling you it is very much the opposite. I had always known it to some degree. As eligible a bachelor as I was, I knew that more than anything she was worried about getting going having kids. She was not old, but neither was she young. I was both Mr. Right and Mr. Right Now.

Don’t get me wrong. She loved me. She loves me. She liked by solidity, my probity, all the things that made me good husband and father material, the things that are now driving her crazy, that have driven me to do what I’ve done today. These are the things she loved.

She loves me, but I love her more. Our first dance, I watched her look at the guests who were not exactly our friends as we swayed and she worked the room, and I sang softly near her ear, and I was fulfilled in ways I could not have previously imagined.

My love is bottomless. You all should envy me this, at least.

I bend down, hold my wife’s face in my hands and kiss her damp forehead.

“When this is over, we should get away somewhere, just us.”

“What makes you think it’s ever going to be over?” she replies.

I do not know what is going to happen if, or when my wife gets free, if she will lunge for my throat or fall into my arms, if I will let her strangle the life from me, or if I will taser her to the ground.

Whatever happens, though, it will be because of love.