My Dear Janice

My Dear Janice

by Matthew J. Ocasio

    My precious wife Janice would have regular and dreadful fits, whereupon she would fall to the floor not unlike a fish jerked from the river.  In precisely the same blind, reckless manner, her eyes would bulge from their sockets, her mouth would gasp at the air and she would writhe and twist and just be a horrid sight altogether.  I thought often of a dissolution (or something more sinister), but her hysterics ultimately proved a fantastic boon.

    Once, when guests were over, dear Janice stood to toast and was immediately overcome.  She tossed her drink onto no one less than a sitting Lady, and with her other flailing arm she did strike my own face across the cheeks.  Slack-jawed as I was from the spectacle (and therefore susceptible to a woman’s blow), I was indeed cuffed square.  Insufferable behaviour, that.  I could have cuffed her in return and nobody would have found fault with the decision.  Nevertheless she fell from the table, and with her writhing and twisting, wrapped herself into a bundle of the tablecloth, the dishes, and the drinks.  We left her to her hysterics and retired, knowing full well that she would wear out and fall into a swoon in due time.  

     There was company still over, for God’s sake, yet she came to as a muffled banshee—coughing up wine and brandy, roughed up from the broken dishes and silverware.  At the time I simply thought it dreadful manners, though what I came to realize was that her episodes had the unexampled ability to draw company.  Her antics are nothing less than the talk of the town—we’re even to sit royalty.  (There is talk of the Dutchess supping here next holiday.)  Such fortune, all over my dear, sweet Janice, taken to fits.