Hill Street Blues

My wife and I were walking down Hill Street near the Jewelry Mart when she stopped dead in her tracks and looked at me.

“Do you realize,” she said, “how often you hum?”

“What?”

“You hum.”

“I do?”

She nodded, trying to smile, though I could see it was difficult for her.

“You hum these tuneless things whenever you’re walking or driving. Sometimes you even hum when you read.”

“I hadn’t realized that,” I said. “I’m a happy person, I guess.”

“No,” she said thoughtfully, “you’re not. You’ve never been a happy person. The kind of humming you do has nothing to do with happiness. It’s really sort of . . . you know . . . pointless, like a dog barking at the wind.”

Having gotten that off her chest, she said cheerfully, “Well, shall we go into the Jewelry Mart?”

“Wait a minute,” I said, following her inside. “Like a dog barking at the wind?”

“I meant it constructively,” she said, trying on a ring. “Sometimes if we realize what our annoying habits are, we can correct them.” Then she added, “Before it’s too late.”

It hit me like a bolt of lightning. “The War of the Roses.” We had seen the movie the night before and she had been acting funny ever since.

I stood back slightly. Her next move might be to smash me in the face.

For those who have missed the film, it’s about a marriage that spirals from sweetness to divorce. Everyone in L.A. is talking about it. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner are Oliver and Barbara Rose, the happy couple who end up destroying each other.

Their acrimony evolves in stages. Barbara, for instance, becomes slowly aware of Oliver’s annoying mannerisms. One is that he bobs his head happily when he eats and chews to a silent rhythm.

Oliver, of course, is unaware of this harmless trait, but it doesn’t escape his increasingly hostile wife. She sits across the table and glares at him.

Later, at a dinner party, she is offended by his laugh and that night calls him a name I have never before heard a woman call a man.

From then on, it’s Katie bar the door.

“Roses” is a marvelous movie, but I am worried about its impact on my wife and on the relationships of other couples who comprise our small but genial social circle. It seems to say that husbands are boorish and it is therefore OK to attack them.

We were at a party the other night talking about “Roses,” for example, when midway through the conversation, our good friend Eva leaned over to our other good friend Fred, her husband, and said, “You’re slurping, dear.”

Fred’s reaction was similar to mine when I was told I hummed. He said, “Huh?” I didn’t say huh, but Fred is an actor and an actor’s grip on culture and unscripted conversation is tenuous at best.

“Try not to slurp when you drink,” Eva said, patting him gently on the arm. Fred shrugged and went right on drinking, and slurping.

A few minutes later, he interrupted Eva’s monologue and said, “Maybe someone else would like to get a word in edgewise.”

She said, “I beg your pardon?” Eva is a teacher and understands the value of manners, but is inclined toward verbosity.

“It’s just that you tend to dominate the conversation,” Fred said pleasantly. “You’re a strong person, Evie.”

Eva smiled, but there was murder in her eyes. “I’ve asked you not to call me Evie,” she said.

Back to Hill Street. My wife and I were there in the first place so I could research a column on the changing face of downtown. The new high-rises, the new restaurants, the remodeled and elegant old Biltmore, the expanded and enticing Jewelry Mart.

Downtown is becoming a place to go, from the Garment District to Olvera Street. Even Pic ‘n’ Save is appearing more colorful than sleazy.

But after being compared to a dog barking at the wind, I was naturally more interested in vengeance than in researching a column.

I was grumbling and hurrying to catch up with my wife when it occurred to me that she never waited for me when we shopped.

“Why is it,” I demanded triumphantly, “you surge ahead without regard to my whereabouts when we are in crowds?”

“I knew you’d come back with something,” she said. “I could hear you grumbling. Well, not grumbling exactly, but muttering. You have this way of muttering to yourself. It’s almost a growl.”

“A growl?”

“It’s all right, dear,” she said, kissing my cheek. “I love you anyhow. Come along.”

She took off through the crowds. I shrugged and followed, humming and muttering and realizing I had lost the war a long time ago, and we are very happy, thank you.