Free Magnolia Wednesdays by Wendy Wax Page A

proud. But for once my husband is right. This is a waste of time and money.”
    One of Ira’s bushy gray eyebrows sketched upward. She absolutely hated it when he did that.
    “Mrs. Melnick,” the psychologist said. “What exactly do you want from your husband? Maybe if you offer a specific thing you want him to do we could start from there.”
    “What do I want?” she asked. “I want some attention and some of his time. I want him to at least pretend that he wants to be with me. Not act as if I’m the lucky winner in the stayed-married sweepstakes.”
    “But specifically, what can he do to demonstrate these things to you?”
    Ruth thought about this one. There was no one thing she wanted. How did you quantify an amount of attention, a level of interest? She had filled her days with volunteer work, mah-jongg, and ballroom-dance classes, which she loved and which made her feel almost like a young girl again. Next week she’d start belly dancing! She’d spent so much time at the Magnolia Ballroom that she’d come to think of Melanie Jackson as another daughter; it broke her heart how hard the poor thing was trying to put on a brave front.
    Ruth looked at the psychologist and then turned to really look at her husband. Ira didn’t look bad for seventy-five. He’d thickened through the middle like she had, and had lost several inches from his once-towering frame. His shoulders were no longer quite so massive, and his hair, which had once been a thick, wavy black, was now a much sparser iron gray. But he had a vitality about him still; the air of confidence that had initially attracted Ruth to him was still intact.
    “He can come to some sessions at the Magnolia Ballroom with me. They have practice parties every Friday and Saturday night and there’s a lesson for the first hour. He could at least try one of them.”
    The doctor’s eyes widened in surprise. Ira’s closed in exasperation.
    “Do you see what I’m dealing with here?” he said to Dr. Guttman. He turned to her. “When have you ever seen me dance, Ruth? You knew from the day you met me I wasn’t a dancer. And I don’t see any reason to start now.”
    Ruth was tired of begging for scraps of attention, tired of being made to feel that everything else in his world was more important than her. “I’m the reason, Ira,” she said. “Me. And I don’t see why this should be a problem now that you’re forty again. Are you too old to learn a new trick?”
    “You see?” Ira railed, looking for backup from the other male in the room. “You see how unreasonable she is. What does the fox-trot have to do with love? How will learning to . . . cha-cha improve our marriage?”
    “Well, it’s obviously . . .” Dr. Guttman began.
    “It’s a symbol of your interest in me, you schmo,” Ruth interrupted. “A way to spend time together. And if you can’t be bothered to do that, then the specific thing I want from you is a divorce!”
    A dead silence followed her pronouncement. Ira looked completely nonplussed. Dr. Guttman looked like he might want to call his mother. Ruth was more than a little surprised herself.
    “You can’t be serious,” Ira said.
    “Mrs. Melnick, you can’t possibly want to throw away a half a century of marriage? Why don’t we . . .” the doctor began again.
    “No,” she said, unwilling to take anything back. No amount of talking, nagging, or counseling had made the slightest bit of difference and wasn’t likely to. She wanted tangible proof of Ira’s love for her. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask. “If my husband can’t find the time to take an occasional dance class with me, then I don’t want to be married to him anymore.”
    She turned to look Ira in the eye. For the first time she didn’t see the man she’d fallen in love with over brisket at his mother’s house, or the father of her children, or the years working side by side with him to build the bagel business that had taken him away from her.
    Ruth stood