This next piece isn’t about wolfishness—not in and of itself.

My husband has a habit of putting all his little things in little amounts in little bowls—his peanuts, roasted corn, pepitas, raisins, salty sunflower seeds, walnuts, pecans, almonds. This is when he wants to sit down with some. If he’s snacking on the run, he just grabs a handful.

(Clearly, I have my own behaviors, but they’re not what I’m boring in on, here.)

For a long time, his habitual plate for his habitual breakfasts was a plastic one from Grift and Sift, child size. The sides kept his toast and his nut dish and his cheesy scrambled egg from sliding off. The plate is in the junk now, because it developed a sizable crack, but one morning not so long ago, when it was still part of his routine, I heard him bawling at me from the kitchen. His coffee had gone everywhere. He must’ve misjudged, pouring it from the carafe.

 

“Do you want me to make you more coffee?” I called. He was taking himself and his food to the porch.

“No,” he said. “I’m having it in different form.”

“How?” I asked.

“Soggy toast,” he said. “With raisins and sunflower seeds.”

I had to go see. Sure enough. His condiments lay in a puddle in their little bowl.

This doling out in special dishes—it’s just odd. But the wet toast? Seeds-and-raisins-spiked coffee? That’s the other piece. I’ve long suspected there’s something wrong with his taste buds.

He’ll bring in the last mealy stubs of corn to cook for himself. He keeps growing carrots even though they’re always sour—he says they’re good. He was right about a wrinkly pepper, once, but what does that count?

He leaps for the celery leaves I’m about to pitch. Likewise my failed cookies—to keep him from plucking them from the compost can, I have to pour water over. He finds a shriveled radish, one that fell out of the fridge unnoticed and spent a while on the floor, and declares it tasty. He doesn’t mind Jennifer’s funkier cheeses.

Now, after what happened the other day at lunch, I’m thinking he’s—

Well, you be the judge.

Vegetable kettle emptied, he was having his nuts and raisins. In another bowl he’d blobbed a little yogurt. He’d spiced it up with frozen blueberries and a smattering of granola.

“These blueberries are terrible,” he said.

He’d already told me that. He’d mentioned it the day before. He was taking from a small plastic bag in the fridge freezer.

I’d informed him they were store berries. We had more in the chest freezer. I’d explained they were okay for baking.

“Our blueberries are all from the store,” he’d countered. “No, we have other kinds, too,” I’d said. Besides the shipped ones, the big freezer still held the Dolly Sods huckleberry kind from the other summer and bags of plump organic beauties the boys had picked locally.

“Here,” demanded my husband now, at the table, “taste one.”

“Oh, I know,” I said. “The store ones are bad.”

“Eat one,” he said. “Here.”

I didn’t let him spoon it into my mouth. Instead I pinched one up and popped it between my lips.

It was horrible. Horrible.

I looked in the fridge freezer, found the rest. Also I found the slumped plastic bag with a 2-1 mixture of water and rubbing alcohol I keep handy to use as a cold compress when somebody gets stung by a wasp—the alcohol keeps the ice slushy. Something had leaked.

I have to tell you, he finished the ones left in his bowl, also the granola and yogurt. He said he didn’t want to waste the granola.

The rest of his boozeberries, I pitched into some tall grass near the house. The hens wouldn’t find them there and die by poisoning. I just don’t understand why he kept eating.