John D. MacDonald
She Tried to Make Her Man Behave
Living with Barney, Joanne had decided, presented many of the same problems and pleasures as living with an affectionate pet moose. During the day the rooms of their pre-fab house seemed large enough. When Barney came home in the evening, the house shuddered and recoiled. He thumped and bellowed — all in perfectly good spirits.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t understand it. He was a vast, big-muscled young man, ex-fullback, ex-Marine and now a promising production engineer. He had led a muscular and expansive life thus far. And now he spent his working days in the huge high buildings where there were mysterious machines perfectly capable of picking up a locomotive and chewing it like so much bubble gum. Spending each day in a place where only those of good lung capacity could make themselves heard at all.
She knew his basic tenderness and the good warmth of his love. But sometimes she wished that he would not cause her to remember the time a neighbor’s St. Bernard puppy, in ponderous affection, had tumbled her over a porch railing.
Barney sloshed through cyclonic showers, ate desperate holes in the food budget, and delighted in swooping her up and lifting her on high until the top of her red head bumped lightly against the ceiling. After one year, four months and three days of marriage she had adjusted to a very happy home life which included bass renditions of the Marine Hymn, the alma mater of Carnegie Tech and Some Enchanted Evening, all with a constant background noise of doors shutting thunderously. Adjustment was only slightly complicated by memory of the house where she had grown up, a happy and restful and quiet house. This one was happy — and anything but quiet.
But on this spring evening Joanne paced the living-room floor, teeth set, scowling, grimacing, making telling gestures at the empty room, practicing up for a marital lecture. Off stage Barney was making those wallowing noises which left the bathroom floor awash with water he managed to bounce over the top of the shower curtain.
The essence of Joanne’s complaint she had summed up thus: It is dandy to live with a pet moose and I love you dearly, but in public, Barney, you must subdue yourself.
He came into the living room buttoning his favorite shredded flannel shirt, water-pasted hair already beginning to spring up, and fell into his chair with an emphasis that would have delighted the upholstery repair place.
“I tried to yell through the door, dear,” Joanne said, “but you were being Pinza. After dinner we go to the Shubleys’.”
He looked at her, stricken. “Oh, no! Not after the day I’ve had. Not after a crane operator drops a five-ton forging. Not after O’Reilly reads a print wrong. Not after Mark loads the new gear job on my back. Do we have to?”
She nodded.
He sighed. “So we have to.”
“But first I want to have a serious word with you, Barney.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Thought you acted funny. Come here, and we’ll talk.”
She took a cautious backward step. “Uh-uh. I’m going to talk from here.”
“Hmmm. Bags packed? Back to momma?”
“Be serious, Barney. Please,” Joanne said.
His expression changed. “I guess you mean this.”
“I do. Remember that the marriage book said a good marriage is a case of both people making adjustments.”
“That sounds as if I’m due to make one.”
“Now I’m going to exaggerate just a little bit, but not very much, Barney, so you can see what I mean. Here is a preview of our evening.
“We’ll walk down the street to the Shubleys’. You’ll let me go through the door first. And after that, brother. I’m on my own. I’ll be left to sit somewhere — anywhere.
“At rare intervals I’ll be able to see you — on the far side of the room. More often I’ll be able to hear you over there, you and Ham and Archie having one of those endless conversations. I could be a widow even.
“Other people light my cigarettes. Other people sit and talk to me. The only time I’ll get any attention from you during the whole evening is when I hear you tell about some dam-fool thing I’ve done, usually in the cooking department, because I’m not so good at it yet. And I have to sit there with my face feeling like it was on fire and trying to laugh it off.
“When it’s time to leave, you’ll collect me, because you’re at least aware that we should leave together, even if I haven’t seen you all evening. I’m just terribly weary, Barney, of being taken out and thoroughly ignored.”
“But Jo—”
“Let me finish. Everything else is fine. How we act here in our own home is our own business. I don’t mind that dreadful snapping thing you do with the end of a towel, and I don’t mind love pats that rattle my teeth, and I like to have you lift me up in the air and it is all right if you drape me over your shoulder like a — well, like a wet towel.
“But you see, here in our own home you’ve been treating me like — like a playmate, I guess. I like that. I think it is fine. But when you take me out — when any woman is taken out in public — she wants the little attentions. She wants to be made to feel — well, precious and fragile and sort of desirable. The way Walter Furgeson treats Martha.”
Barney looked at her solemnly. “I think Walter Furgeson is an incredible little twerp. He treats her that way because they advertise themselves as Marriage Counselors and it’s probably good for business.”
“That’s not fair, Barney,” she said sharply. “I don’t really like him, but he treats Martha the way a girl wants to be treated in public. I love you and I don’t want to hurt you. But we ought to look as if we loved each other and...” The unexpected tears came and she fled to the kitchen.
She stood out there expecting him to follow her, but he didn’t. As she finished preparing dinner she listened to the silence in the living room. There was no customary rattling of the evening paper, no alarmed yapping of the newscaster. Just a deep, almost mournful silence.
She called him and he came out and slid into the booth a bit gingerly, managing for once not to thump the table leg and spill things as he got in. They ate in a strained silence. Every time she looked across at him, she was aware of his having looked away a split second before her eyes met his. There was a frown bunched between his brows.
“It is really that bad?” he asked finally.
“Like I said, I exaggerated a little. I mean sometimes you do come and sit near me for a little while. But—”
“Okay, Mrs. Watson. Tonight I shall make that Furgeson item look like a calloused and indifferent beast. I shall pant beside you, awaiting your slightest—”
“Barney!” she said warningly.
“I mean I’ll do better by you, Jo.”
Then things were fine again, and they beamed at each other. He told her she was especially delightful when she was annoyed. She told him that all he had to do was to see it once from her point of view. When she was ready for more coffee and started to rise, he pressed her firmly back and went and got the pot and filled her cup. She told him the service was wonderful.
When they finally made an entrance into the Shubley living room, Joanne had the momentary fear that he was overdoing it. He managed the entrance with massive care, ushering her into the room in a way that seemed faintly like a caveman leading a minuet. But it made her feel properly flushed and precious and happy and fragile and desirable. She glowed.
He hovered beautifully for all of twelve minutes, and then she missed him. He was over in the comer with Ham and Archie, and over all the conversation she heard his big voice saying, “...so now George tells us we’ve got to do every casting all over again. Just because some linthead of a purchasing agent wants to...”