"That is as it should be," Steinhopf purred. "Assuming, of course, that she does everything she can to please you and make you happy."
"But-!"
"I understand. Believe me I do," the doctor said softly. "I am asking you to accept the unacceptable. You know your wife as no one else can know her. Between you there is something which is singularly your own, a history of troubles shared, of secret words and intimacies; the warm and delightful and always unique treasure which is peculiar to every marriage, no matter how bad that marriage may be. The husband is always the last to know, they say. Of course, he is. How else could it be, since he is closer to his wife than anyone else? But consider, Mitch. It is this very closeness which blinds him to the truth. It is almost impossible for him to be objective. A Negro patient once assured me with great bitterness that I did not know what it was like to be a Negro. I could only point out that he also didn't know what it was like to be a white man."
Mitch frowned. It seemed to him that the doctor had almost said something decidedly ugly.
Steinhopf smoothly continued. "Aside from your intensely subjective viewpoint, there is the matter of your childhood; the marriage of your parents. You grew up in circumstances which were anything but normal, so your present home life does not seem as shocking as it essentially is. Nor is your wife too blatant a contrast with your mother. Your mother seems to have been lacking in most of the instincts normal to a mother, while simultaneously possessing an over-supply of certain other womanly instincts. So Teddy, by comparison-"
Mitch got up and stomped out of the place. The doctor caught up with him, trotted along at his side. They would talk again, he said imperturbably. They would talk again, many times, for there was much indeed to be discussed.
At the moment, Mitch had other ideas on the subject. He'd just about had it with Steinhopf. But they did talk again, many times and at length, and at Mitch's own wish. Because he was getting very worried about Teddy himself.
He still loved her, or believed that he did, but their relationship was becoming increasingly unsatisfactory. The more he saw of her the more dismayed he became.
And he was seeing a great deal of her. Literally, constantly. She took him to bed the minute he came home. The normally delightful demands she made upon him had, through excess, become a source of despair and disgust. She couldn't carry on a conversation-not a real honest-to-Hannah conversation. Why hadn't he noticed that before? What he had taken for wit was really the product of ignorance (she didn't realize she was being funny) and the parroted statements of others.
Actually, she was almost completely humorless. Joking with her, laughing in her presence, could induce her to insane fury.
He'd better not laugh at her! Very bad things happened to daddies who laughed at their mamas.
She paid no attention to little Sam, and she was angrily jealous when he did. She wanted one thing of Mitch-over and over and over. And when he could not deliver it, she was peevish, pouting… yet with a kind of smugness, an air of self-satisfaction.
So Mitch's talks with Dr. Steinhopf resumed. In detail, he poured out the story of himself and Teddy from the very beginning.
"I guess I was supposed to be another guy," he explained, with attempted humor. "Someone she was engaged to before I came along. I remember she was crying in her sleep the night we were married, mumbling about getting a letter from the general and everyone telling her this other fellow was dead."
Steinhopf said that he doubted very much that there had been any other fellow, in the context of Mitch's meaning, or any general. The other fellow was a sexual fantasy. The general represented authority trying to destroy the fantasy.
"You mean," Mitch frowned, "she's insane?"
"My dear Mitch, please do not use that word in my presence! Let us say she is not normal-in the accepted sense of that misused term."
"The poor kid," Mitch said bewilderedly. "I just can't understand it…"
Steinhopf shrugged. "She is a classic case, I would say, of a not uncommon disorder among American women. You could find less exaggerated and complex examples all around you. Where are its roots? In a dominant mother, of course, and a defeated but beloved father. Mingle with these the factor of penis-envy-a younger neighbor's boy, perhaps, and the childhood pastime of playing house. Add in large sums of money-the nominal proof, sad to say, of superiority-and the urges normal to woman. This, broadly speaking, would give you your Teddy… I believe. To be conclusive or helpful, I would have to see her over an extended period of time, an obvious impossibility." "Well," Mitch hesitated. "If it was just a matter of money…" "Always," the psychiatrist said gravely, "a fee of some kind is necessary. What is given for nothing, I find, is usually valued at that.
But it would be no problem, I assure you. Five dollars, say, for what I would ordinarily charge a hundred. The problem is that your wife would not see me. She would become very angry at the suggestion that there was a problem. Or do you say otherwise?" Steinhopf waited a moment, then continued. "Sexual degeneracy is a way of life with her. The right way. She has no desire to change it. The tendency,"-another delicate pause-"has always been to expand it."
Mitch felt himself reddening, as the doctor's words slowly sank in on him. Steinhopf spread his hands apologetically.
"Is not the evidence all around you, Mitch? A woman of Patently limited mentality, who allegedly earns an extravagant salary? The peculiar working conditions? The voracious demands upon you? The constant-"
"Thank you, Doctor," Mitch said coldly. "Thank you, very much."
"Please, Mitch. For your own sake…"
Mitch turned his back on him. He kept it turned.
But he could not forget what the doctor had said. He could not allay the suspicions which, as Steinhopf had guessed, were already in his mind. He was very wrong to have them, he knew. It was hateful and ungrateful to think such terrible things about the mother of his son. Finally, he persuaded himself that he owed it to Teddy to find out the truth.
Mitch took his days off from work in the ordinary way, during the week in which they occurred. Teddy allowed hers to accumulate, taking them during the five days of the month which menstruation made difficult for her. Thus, he had the opportunity to follow her, and since she was not looking to be followed it was shamefully easy.
He knew the place she went to, not from personal experience but from informed hearsay. Still, however, he would not believe what was obviously a fact. There had to be some innocent explanation. Teddy would have gone there on some entirely honest errand, and she would not go back again.
He waited outside; waited for hours. She did not come out. So he followed her again the next night-still stubbornly resisting the truth-and that time he went in.
It was a well-run place. A partitioned tunnel extended a few feet inside the door, and an ape-like figure, with a sawed-off ball bat under his arm, stood at its end.
"No booze, no rough stuff," he recited, giving Mitch a quick frisk. "Okay, you're welcome."
He stood aside to let Mitch enter. In the hallway, seated at a desk which guarded without blocking the stairs to the second floor-for this was a well-run place, you know-was a polite, pudgy little man in a neat serge suit.