Tiare in Bloom by Célestine Vaite Read Free Book Online Page B

name.” But right now, the colleagues, Pito included, are thinking, Take your time, kid, if
     we ever came back from holiday and the wife said, “I want a separation,” we would . . . Well,
purée de bonsoir,
there would be holes in the walls.
    Anyway, Heifara continues, she told him that she’d been unhappy for the past two years and has tried to tell him about it
     but he didn’t listen. “She’s talking
conneries,
” Heifara spits. For instance, his wife said that she’d tried — millions of times — to make him understand that she needed
     help around the house. But when Heifara did help with the housework on the weekend, his wife would always get cranky. “Get
     out of my way!” she’d growl. “You’re only making things more difficult for me. I have other cats to whip.”
    Heifara used to help his wife doing the shopping too but everything he’d put in the cart was the wrong thing. “I never buy
     that brand!” she’d snap, putting whatever he’d picked back on the shelf. She said that she’d tried — millions of times — to
     tell Heifara that she needed him to spend more time at home. But when Heifara would make an effort, sitting on the couch with
     his wife to watch TV instead of going out drinking with his
copains,
she’d say, “Stop touching me! I’m watching a movie! If you think it’s easy looking after two small children all day, you
     have nothing in the head!”
    Anyway, the wife told Heifara all of this the day he came home from his wonderful surfing holiday. She also criticized his
     hair (not combed), his breath (foul), his table manners (worse), his dressing style (
zéro
), his snoring, and the way he listens to her with only one ear . . . She called him selfish and then hit him with the news
     of the century: “I want a separation. Read my lips. It’s finished. I don’t want to be jam given to pigs anymore.”
    “What am I supposed to do, eh?” young Heifara asks his colleagues. But the older men have nothing to say, not even Pito, the
     colleague who has been with the same woman the longest. But they’re all thinking the same thing: Is this what my woman thinks
     about me?
    “How come you didn’t ask your wife to go with you on your holiday?” This question just popped into Pito’s head. He doesn’t
     know why, especially when he already knows the reason why Heifara went on his holiday alone, and presently the colleagues
     are giving Pito strange looks, meaning, What? Are you insane? If the wife comes, the holiday isn’t a holiday anymore!
    “My wife coming with me?” Heifara laughs a faint laugh. “Are you insane?” He explains that firstly, his wife would have commanded
     him to leave his surfboards at home, and secondly, she would have changed the holiday destination to a place like Hawaii because
     of the shopping. And then Heifara would have had to spend his hard-earned holiday following his wife from one shop to the
     next, carrying shopping bags filled with cheap
conneries.
    “She loves cheap
conneries,
” Heifara says. “She’s always buying cheap
conneries,
like plastic baskets, there are plastic baskets all over the house, and they are filled with cheap
conneries
like plastic fruit. Who keeps plastic fruit in plastic baskets? Plastic apples? Plastic bananas? She loves plastic containers
     too, but how many plastic containers does someone need, eh? I don’t think hundreds. She’s obsessed with plastic things.”
    The colleagues nod, but it’s time to get back to work. They don’t get paid to listen to complicated stories.
    Half an hour later, Heifara is still talking about his wife to Pito, the colleague nearest to him, but the sad voice is now
     bitter.
    “And then she said,” Heifara spits, sweating away over a plank of wood, “ ‘Smile! Stop doing that sad face. When I look at
     you, I want to give you slaps!’ And then I said, ‘What’s there to be happy about? You ruined my life, you
salope.
You’ve got the house, you’ve got the