Denis Lehane: Dear Denis... Cabin fever and other lockdown problems
I received a curious letter during the week from a concerned West Cork woman whose philandering husband can no longer philander.
The situation is driving her out of her mind.
Her name I cannot divulge, for privacy’s sake, but her problem I will air, for ’tis of the most unusual variety.
Her husband, a philanderer of some renown, has been covering the country with disgrace for many years.
A popular man with the ladies, and propping up a bar when not getting up to high jinks, he’s known far and wide for both pursuits.
But alas, for now, because of Covid-19, his escapades are at an end.
The lockdown impacts the serial philanderer, along with everyone else.
And while this might seem like the ideal solution to his rambling ways, according to his wife, it’s the worst case scenario, and is driving her demented.
“Having him around the house all day, because of having no work. is bad enough,” she writes.
“But having him around the house disturbing me each and every night, hogging the remote, and talking nonsense, is nothing short of a nightmare.
He does nothing more than sit in front of the television, backfiring, and taking note of things that don’t concern him.
“There no good in it” she claims, clearly at her wit’’s end.
And while he does provide the household with a decent enough income in normal times, these are different times, clearly the flame of love died a long time ago.
It’s a marriage of convenience, that is convenient no longer for the long suffering wife.
“The dogs in the street are welcome to him now,” his wife expresses, as her letter drags into a second page of revelation.
With Covid-19 in her life, her peaceful idyllic evenings of watching TV soaps and doing whatever she likes are at an end.
Her long phone conversations with friends no longer are private exchanges, with himself tuning in and commenting on them for want of something better to do.
She doesn’t love him and hasn’t done so for many years, and now just longs for the day when the restrictions are lifted.
“Honestly,” says she, “he’ll be feeling the back end of my frying pan one of these mornings, if the situation doesn’t improve.”
And worse again, he’s now turning to religion in his time of crisis, and insisting that she joins in for the rosary each and every night.
While she expresses the view that he definitely needs saving, after a lifetime of infidelity, her own eternal reward is guaranteed, after decades of putting up with the scoundrel.
So she needs to say the rosary about as much as Pope Francis does.
“I long,” she reveals, “to have the house back to myself and to return to my peaceful evenings of crochet and online gambling.”
I pity her, for she is not asking for too much.
Simply put, her life with himself underfoot morning, noon and night is overwhelming.
There’s one person too many in the house, and it’s the locked down philanderer.
So, in her hour of need, she has turned to me, asking if there is anything I can do, or advice I could give.
But alas, after scratching my head long and hard with regards to the vexing problem, I have failed to come up with a solution.
I’m even caught for words, which is a rarity in itself.
So that is why today I’m making a public appeal, in the hope that a concerned reader with some understanding in such matters might have a solution to a plight that has me, and more importantly still, a West Cork housewife, utterly bamboozled.
