The Husbands

by Holly Gramazio

They seem to be taking it in turns to say “okay” and sighing or waiting, which perhaps is what marriage is like; this is the first time she’s tried it.

The thing about having a really judgemental partner, she thinks, is that it’s actually kind of great, as long as they like you. If someone hates the world, and you’re the only exception, then surely that proves something.

What a pleasure it had been to find the things that were wrong with the world and label them together, to pass judgements back and forth like gifts.

All of her husbands are men that some version of herself might have chosen to marry, and who might have chosen to marry her.

Sooner or later, somebody has to want something, and then admit to it.

She wanted to know that if something went wrong her first thought would be How can I fix this? and not Should I leave?

Elena and Rob seem certain and happy and they’re making a decision even though nobody can ever really be sure about anything, and everything in the world is always falling apart.

She has always thought of her willingness to go along with things, her outsourcing of decisions to friends and circumstance, as passivity, not courage. But observed and described by this man she likes so much, she can almost believe in herself as someone with an audacious spirit.

She’s not going to keep him: it’s no start to a relationship, having the husband you really like swapped for some guy with an insufficiently maintained moustache.

She’s vague on the details of duck mating but she knows it’s unpleasant and involves a corkscrew-shaped penis, so arguably things could be worse.

Not that she’s in a time loop exactly. In a time loop, the horror is that there’s no progress, just a constant uncontrollable reset; there’s no point doing anything because its effects will never play out long-term.

the squirrel shooting seems definitely bad. But Felix used to do it and he turned out okay, didn’t he? Other than maybe being evil?

It gets colder and colder but the occasional sunlit hour allows her to believe that there are more warm days to come, and anyway, she’s finding the cold-weather husbands easier to love. She likes cosy. Hot chocolates. Movies on the sofa. Men in cardigans or scarves, like big teddy bears, encumbered, adorable.

Honestly, I should just learn—I did try but every time I change worlds all my Duolingo progress resets.”

Like I said, seeing your life play out four hundred times is a real shortcut to all the ways you might turn out to be a dickhead. Sorry,” he says again, to the same mother, pushing her child back in the opposite direction.

She puts FOREARMS on one. INTERESTING SKILL. KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS. OWNS SCARF.

“Mathematically,” she says, “you should say no to the first thirty-seven per cent of candidates, then yes to the first person you see who’s better than any of them.”

“How old are you?” “None of your business.” “I’m your wife,” she says.

2 a.m. here anyway so I’m off to bed but good luck with michael 2: the return, and then moments later mIIchael and then no michaeII sorry and then, after a two-minute gap, twichael, and she decides to leave it.

There is a time, she thinks, at the start of any relationship, when the process of falling in love softens a personality, like wax in a warm room. And so two people in love change, just a little, pushing their wax figures together, a protuberance here smoothed down but creating a dip there. It doesn’t last long, the time when love can gently change who you are, and in the relationships that she’s visited over the last six months, the moment has long passed. She has been presented with the shape of her new husband, and invited to either contort to fit or reject him wholesale.

“I’m not saying you don’t want someone who’s into Warhammer, but I promise you don’t want someone who’s so into Warhammer that they talk about it on their dating profile.”

Fuck you, she thinks, squinting at her photos, wondering what’s wrong with them; you married me twice, you don’t know what you want.

At home a few days later, she sprays Buddy with the £80 plant mister. “Come on,” she says. “This is expensive. Thrive.”

Anyway, daisies have sex by growing nectar to lure in bees that get rubbed up in pollen and then go rub it off on a different daisy somewhere else, so what do they know about love?

She sends back grumpy husbands, husbands she doesn’t like the look of, husbands who are not hot enough, a husband who is too hot (there must, she thinks, be a catch).

She has a fancy e-reader in this world and he will sometimes pry her hand away from it and put it on himself. “I, too, am waterproof and touch-operated,” he will say.

One husband carries empty cups using his mouth, placing the cup over his mouth in its entirety, using suction to keep it in place, which stresses her out no end.

Soon she’ll find someone she can stay with. Soon she’ll start filling her phone with pictures that won’t vanish overnight. Soon she’ll be able to turn to someone and say Hey, remember that thing we did together, and he will, and she will too.

One time the To Rent sign has vanished and she feels hope; but it turns out that the husband likes to pull down estate agent signs and leave them in dumpsters, which she appreciates in principle but it isn’t going to solve her problem in practice.

This is amazing,” and he gestures at the screen, freeze-framed in the middle of High School Musical 2, dancers on a baseball square.