Thursday 3rd July –
Aren’t Amanita muscaria mushrooms deceptively pretty? my husband asked. We were relaxing on the couch in the living room, watching a botany documentary. His eyes were like light sabres reflecting the glare from the TV and illuminating his brain with a wealth of knowledge. His fixation with the programme was probably because he was looking to appropriate phrases to use to liken me to mushrooms.
Oh. I don’t rate myself in the looks department. I shot back defensively. At fifty-eight I’ve allowed my once-toned arms to grow what he calls bingo wings, while the skinny woman I was is now hiding in secret compartments of belly fat.
And aren’t some people men find attractive like slow poison? Think how many beautiful women have killed their spouses.
I mumbled an Okay into my mug of coffee. A burnt tongue prevented me from revealing how many times I’d felt like ending his life when I found his odd socks and filthy pants littering the bedroom floor.
And pretty wild mushrooms aren’t law-abiding either. On the news they teamed up with a lady to kill her guests at a dinner party in Australia; he’d continued liking fungi to women while the adverts interrupted the programme.
Thursday 10th July –
After watching another episode, he called me a mushroom with a poisonous tongue. I’d told him off for forgetting to put out our blue-lidded bin on collection day. Even with a digital calendar by his bedside showing days of the week, he never seems to differentiate between them, since retiring from his day job.
But isn’t the same flaky fungus, a flavoursome addition to stir fry dishes depending on which chef cooked it? had been my comeback. And If I were one, I’d be greener. I’ll recycle your rubbish comments into useful nitrogen and carbon.
Thursday 17th July –
(Note to self, use in a future argument: And I’m not quite a mushroom anyway. I never hear the ones in the documentary complaining about inclement weather, shaped like umbrellas they’re born ready for rain.)
Have you seen the flipping downpour? I asked him. A deluge had started after I’d hung out my husband’s jogging bottoms on the clothes line outside.
His constant whinging had been the reason why our autistic son ended up in a care home. His dad had provoked what Gerald’s psychologist called, emotional storms. My husband didn’t know how to rephrase his words to avoid upsetting a neurodiverse fourteen-year-old. When Gerald had thrown hot tea in his dad’s face and scalded him, my husband had rung social services straightaway and said, He’s not sleeping in my house tonight.
Perhaps I should’ve turned down the placement offered us after a family assessment deemed my son too volatile to remain with parents approaching old age. But instead, a coward, I’d retreated behind a mushroom cell wall.
Thursday 24th July –
And if I were a good mushroom, I’d be its mycelium. On the TV the botanist explained that it’s the part of the organism which ensures reproduction occurs. It’s underrated because it’s underground. Often despised, it’s the fungus’s lifeblood and its fibers spread out in search of life-sustaining nutrients. It’s affected by fungi misogyny, I thought as I darted around the open plan living room making my husband’s favourite tuna and sweetcorn sandwich.
I’d lost four foetuses in my thirties but had kept going with the IVF. I wanted my own spores even if they came out like Gerald and exhibited challenging behaviours. Wasn’t I an African woman raised to believe my sole purpose in life was to procreate? To my big sister’s repeated inquiry, Still trying Eunice? I used to go, Yeah.
Before I birthed a son at forty-one, I’d been the only childless sibling in a family of four women. I’d even been screened for my suitability as a prospective adoptive mum. My husband’s mean remarks about a toddler with Downs Syndrome in a local residential home during a bonding visit had resulted in our names being struck off their register.
I’d already had the study repurposed as a nursery in readiness for the adoption. When it fell through my husband ordered a treadmill and dumbbells online and it became his never-used gym.
Thursday 31st July –
On the screen the botanist was showing how mushrooms embrace diversity. Unrestricted, perhaps I’ll grow in the wild or flourish on our weed-infested lawn. My husband had not got round to unpacking the new lawnmower yet. All throughout June, we hadn’t sat out in the garden once due to his procrastination.
On the TV the mushroom’s mycelium was being slagged off again. It was unequal to the luminescent sporophore that some fungi possessed. No wonder it belonged beneath the soil.
Well, I’ll show him, if I were reincarnated as one, I tell a husband going, Shush. Listen Eunice.
(Note to self, use in a future argument: A confident mushroom-woman I’ll glow without luminous anti-aging cremes. I’ll light up our dark front lawn until you eventually change the fused bulb in the porch. You won’t trip over taking the bin out – if you bothered to at last. I’ll have a mushroom-survival instinct. I’ll book a free flight to the moon in that David Wolf’s space station, explore a galaxy where a new husband won’t label me or put me into boxes. Because fresh mushrooms wither and die in unventilated boxes. Like George Floyd I’ll shout, I can’t breathe, causing massive riots in cities in the milky way.)
Oh, shut up woman. My husband was used to a prolonged argument – but one – with a poet which had lasted the entire TV series had begun to grate on him. I’d stunned him with, If I were a champignon I’ll divorce you. Because the botanist says you should never dismiss even the tiniest button ones. When infused with honey-blood, a mushroom outgrew a gigantic Oregon forest.