Althea’s Other Man
by Charles C. Cole
Let it be known far and wide: I adore my new wife, Althea. She is as equally comforting on the eyes, the ears, as on the fingertips. She smells like a garden at the seaside. Her voice is like my nanny’s when I was a child sick in bed, soothing and supportive.
Her physical beauty recalls to mind the young lady who once coached me in swimming: tall and sleek and taut, a Greek sculpture to be worshipped, if the ancient Greeks had known about the progressive Western ladies of the Roaring Twenties.
Althea is of Greek heritage, first-generation American, twelve years younger than me, a former college-level teacher’s pet turned teaching assistant turned breath of fresh air. She is too inexperienced to have much emotional baggage. Thankfully, since I have enough unresolved relationship issues semi-tucked away for the both of us. I’m looking at you, brief first wife, and you too, absent stepmother.
Her one failing, if I may be allowed to be honest, confessed from a man who has more failings than I can count on both hands: Althea is a strict adherent to God, the very traditional white-robed old man with long beard and deep voice. He is so present in my home, I have suspected we are secretly participants in a spiritual ménage à trois.
There is an image of Him over the guest bathroom toilet seat, over the oven, in the dining room, hanging from her rearview mirror, on her bedside table. Althea wanted him on the wall over our bed, but that was the one time I put my foot down, that and the times when we are making love, when I must place God facedown for twenty minutes or so, whilst we concentrate.
From an early age, Althea’s older brother, Adonis, was groomed by their parents to be a priest, an offering of deep gratitude for their blessed lives. But then Adonis drowned while swimming far from shore. His parents tried, unsuccessfully, to make another son, but instead were gifted with a lovely daughter of striking grace and intelligence.
Because Althea is a woman dedicated to the Catholic faith, she has always been safe from entering the male-only priesthood, though there were a few visits to beautiful rural convents during her junior high years. Perhaps, though she’d never admit it, Althea’s mother was afraid to commit Althea to God because He might like her so much that He’d take her years before her time, as He had done with her brother.
Growing up, Althea saw God everywhere: on a prayer card in her father’s wallet, above the kitchen sink, high above the bathroom mirror, on the wall at the foot of her bed, so he’d be the last image she saw when sleeping and the first when rising. She was not intimidated, felt more like his admiring favorite granddaughter. God was the role model. God was the yardstick by which to measure oneself.
Benjamin Franklin infamously said that houseguests are like fish; after three days, they begin to smell. In my home, God is a permanent houseguest, a freeloader who spreads his belongings to every room, who has no self-awareness of his intrusiveness, who insists on being the first topic of discussion at every meal.
I married Althea, not in a church, but in a meadow. You see, God was new to me then. But marriage has a price: I promised in my vows to her, and her parents, that God and I would get reacquainted, that I would openly and forever accept him into my house and my life. On your wedding day, when your bride is glowing from head to toe and pouring deep into your soul with more love than you’ve ever experienced from another human being, you’ll agree to anything.
Today. God is in my house. Tomorrow, God will still be in my house. I suspect it is only a matter of time before Althea asks to use the spare bedroom as a shrine for regular worship.
My commute to the college campus takes about thirty minutes. I don’t listen to music or news; I talk to God. Althea calls that praying. I call it ongoing negotiations. I promise Him my eternal life for every other Saturday and Friday nights off. He has not said yes or no. God is a good negotiator. I am convinced if he thinks he is losing ground, He goes to Althea on the sly, and then she comes to me, 100% on God’s side. I am permanently outnumbered.
I love my wife. I like my in-laws. I respect God. I suspect, when he is with his inner circle, reviewing all earthly goings-on, from the distant past to the impending future, if my struggles in my relationship to my beloved Althea come up, you can bet the bank that God smiles. And when Saint So-and-so asks God if I’m close to my final conversion, God laughs so hard that lingering stardust from the days of the Big Bang comes out his nose.
Copyright © 2023 by Charles C. Cole
