Things had come to a head only recently, he said, when during a pointless midnight quarrel (over a change of analysts and low-fat diets) he explained to his wife his dissatisfaction with their current therapist, who had declared it impossible to help a patient until the latter overcame his "resistances to therapy." It was, Greene had been in the process of telling her, like announcing to a sick man that he must get well in order to take his medicine…
But in the course of his analogy his wife had interrupted him with a scream, and another, and a third, and a fourth, and another and another, beyond his shocked remonstrances to consider the children, to get hold of herself, for Founder's sake to stop. He grew frantic; still she lay in their bed and screamed, her eyes tight shut. At last he called in a neighbor lady and O.B.G.'s daughter. By the time the family doctor arrived to sedate her, her cries had turned to wild weeping; the children were awake and had been told that their mother's nerves were bad from too much work and worry. Did they understand? Solemn-faced, they nodded yes. Next morning it was added that she would be going away to rest, and away she went — to the Faculty Women's Rest House, whose services she was entitled to by virtue of her one-time position as district schoolmistress. Once she was established in that stately, hushed retreat, where so many were of their acquaintance, her spirits lifted; indeed, she was more calm and optimistic when he went to see her than she'd been for a long while, despite her doctor's vagueness about how long she'd have to stay; she quietly apologized for her hysteria, for leaving him in charge of the house and children, for whatever was her share of responsibility in their difficulties…
"I missed her so much and felt so flunking flunkèd I thought I'd die," he said. "First thing I did, I come home and got drunk as a hooty-owl, all by my lonesome. But drunk or sober, sir, it seemed to me one minute there was something awful wrong with the way we lived, trying to be pals and lovers and equals all the same time, and next minute it wasn't our fault at all, we'd come to the right idea, the best idea, but the past was a-gumming us up. Then right in the midst of this pull and haul, who should come into the bar where I went one night but O.B.G.'s daughter — as a customer, mind, and I didn't even know they served darkies in the place! She asked me how Miss Sally Ann was, all the time a-smiling in her mischievous way, like she was daring me to grab ahold of her, and she said she figured I must be awful upset to be out drinking so late all by myself, a big family-man like me. I knew what she was up to, but I didn't bear her no grudge for all the things she'd said about me in the papers, and being so ungrateful I'd treated her so white. I bought her a drink, and we talked about poor Sally Ann and old tunes, and how hard all this was on the kids; and O.B.G.'s daughter said there probably ought to be somebody home with them at night for a while, till they got more used to their mother being gone. All the time she was smiling that smile, that put me in mind how she'd smiled it years ago, when I was just a scaredy-cat kid and her a gosh-durn tease. Her own husband had run off on her a few months before, and their kids were at some sister's place; I knew she'd come on home with me if I asked her, despite all she'd said. And I was so low down, and so durn hot and bothered, I up and asked her, and of course she came, teasing me all the way for treating her like a South-Quad slavey. What you going to do with a gal like that, and such a mess as me?"
I was unaware that his question was of the sort that requires no answer. "Well, now, Mr. Greene — " I began with a frown.
"Pete," he insisted.
"I find your story quite touching, Pete. I hadn't appreciated how curious marriage is, and I'm interested to learn now whether it's that way generally. The only other married folks I've met are Mr. and Mrs. Stoker and a Dr. Sear and his wife, and their attitudes seemed a little different from yours and Mrs. Greene's, at least to me."
"Dr. Sear!" Greene laughed. "You know Kennard Sear? He was my analyst I was telling you about! Heck of a nice fellow, ain't he? Couldn't do a passèd thing with me, but he's a smart one, Sear is."
I agreed that he seemed a most courteous gentleman, and pressed back to the subject: "I think I still don't understand why you're hitchhiking to Great Mall, when you're so wealthy, and what you're going to do when you get there."
Peter Greene was more or less durned if he quite knew either, except about the hitchhiking, which he did purely for the heck of it and to stay "in shape" — the fact being that for all his regimen of calisthenics, vitamin pills, mechanical exercisers, and low-fat diets, he was overweight. The best reason he could offer for placing his children in a boarding-school (though it had "near killed him" to part with them), closing the house, neglecting his business, and taking to the road, was that while he was absolutely sure he was passed, he was certain he was failed. He had betrayed, deceived, and defiled Miss Sally Ann in the wanton arms of O.B.G.'s hot daughter — whom, however, for better or worse, he had once again found himself impotent with and who, ungrateful as always, had laughed at him in the morning when he'd offered to raise her wage. He'd had no choice then but to discipline such uppitiness. And though he loved, honored, and respected his unhappy wife, he was also profoundly troubled by their reciprocal grievances, which he felt sure were justified albeit unjust. In sum, he was so utterly of two minds about himself and his connections with things that he seemed rather a pair of humans in a single skin: the one energetic, breezy, optimistic, self-assured, narrow-minded, hospitable, out-going, quick-thinking, belligerent, and strong; the other apathetic, abject, pessimistic, self-despising, indulgent, rude, introspective, complaisant, uncouth, feckless, and flabby. He had lost faith initially in the Founder and then in himself — in his ability to pass, as it were, with neither syllabus nor Grand Tutor to aid him, and to Commence himself without believing in Commencement. It was presently the season for his annual inventory and report: for paying his debts, collecting his dividends, assessing the solvency of his various concerns, and establishing policy for the year ahead; but he had found himself unable to address the task. Moreover, he was plagued of late by headaches that made his eye water (I'd observed that he dosed himself with pills and liquids as he talked); his own newspapers were critical of his "deteriorating image," as they called it, unaware that he was hampered by his thing about mirrors; his neighbors declared he ought either to marry O.B.G.'s daughter or leave her alone, unaware that she was the best-treated darky in the Quad; his children were embarrassed by him and swore they would make themselves into his opposite, whatever that might be.