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...”

Joanne sat quietly, biting her lip behind the concealment of a brittle formal smile. The Furgesons arrived. Walter was a small-boned man with a narrow mustache and the delicate body-control of one of the carnivore cats. Martha Furgeson always made Joanne think of yodels, yogurt and milking stools. She had a soft blondness, a shy eye, the warm look of the well loved. Walter treated her the way a headwaiter would treat visiting royalty, yet with a lingering personal emphasis that would have resulted in any waiter being fired on the spot. They were, in the language of the group, a special couple.

She saw Barney notice the Furgesons, remember, flash her a look of apology, terminate his conversation and come back to her. She made room for him and he sat near her. He lighted her cigarette, talked to her, saw that she had a fresh drink.

He did a little better the second time. She guessed it was twenty minutes before he was back over by the fireplace in a heated argument about how the Dodgers would shape up next season. And she saw Walter Furgeson sitting beside his Martha on the couch, their fingers interlocked, but not blatantly as their hands were partially concealed by a fold of Martha’s full skirt.

She was saying to herself, rather grimly, “Maybe it’s just because he has more fun talking to them. He can talk to me any time.” Lost in those dismal reflections, responding mechanically to the small talk, Joanne was startled by Martha’s gasp, by her quick voice saying, “Oh, I’m sorry, darling. That was clumsy of me.”

Ruth Shubley had passed some hot little cheese and tomato things and Martha had bitten into one. The tomato, under dental compression, had jetted out onto Walter’s sleeve. Walter was always so immaculate. Joanne suspected that he wouldn’t have been caught dead in one of Barney’s beloved patched shirts.

“Don’t you fret, dear,” Walter said, smiling at her as he dabbed at the stains with a paper napkin.

Martha got up, however, and Joanne heard her talk to Ruth Shubley about a spot remover. Then the three of them went off to the bathroom. Ruth came back alone, smiling, saying, “Aren’t they the sweetest things? She’s in there trying to get those spots out.”

Joanne suddenly recalled an effective home-grown remedy for removing tomato stains while they were fresh, so she got up quickly and went out of the living room and down the carpeted hallway to tell Martha about it. Her steps were quick and light and soundless. She was eight feet from the open bathroom door when she heard Walter’s voice, low and deadly and vicious, saying, “You clumsy fool! Of all the messy, sloppy, careless things you manage to do—”

Martha’s voice rose over his with the same rasp of hate as Joanne stopped abruptly, barely in time. “You incredible louse,” she said. “Always blaming me for your stupidity. Now shut up and hold still.” Joanne turned and fled silently, running from those dreadful voices, running from the destruction of a myth, shocked and oddly embarrassed. People couldn’t talk to each other that way. It was the death of love and the end of all personal dignity.

She returned numbly to her chair, realizing the true and monstrous hoax the Furgesons had perpetrated to advertise their life together as the perfection any marriage could achieve under the wise counseling they were in the business of providing. Joanne felt slightly ill...

Barney managed one more era of attentiveness before it was time to leave. Joanne was not very aware of his attentions. She was too shocked by the Furgesons sitting as before, smiling, warmly solicitous of each other, hands again entwined and half concealed. Joanne was glad to leave...

They walked slowly, and Joanne walked with her head bent, scuffing her heels, thoughtful.

Barney sighed. “I need more practice. I kept forgetting. I’ll do better next time.”

They were in a dark place. Her voice sounded soft and broken as she said his name.

“Hey, I wasn’t that bad, was I?”

“Hold me, Barney. Just hold me tight.” They were near their house. He held her closely, her forehead fitting into its safe and warm place under his chin.

“What’s the matter, darling?” he whispered. It was a sane, known voice. The voice of love and concern.

“I was just... scared of a lot of things all of a sudden. Scared of pretending. Let’s not ever pretend, Barney. Please?”

“Pretend what?”

“Never pretend you love me if you don’t.”

“Jo, you are truly a strange character. I love you.”

She knew she would tell him, some time, about the Furgesons. But not yet. Not while there were things to think out and sort out in her mind.

So she whirled out of his arms and said, “Race you home, Buster.”

And she won, because she had a start and because she was running as fast as she could, and maybe because she had red hair, and probably because she felt, all at once, very much alive and loved.

Content

John D. MacDonald
She Tried to Make Her Man Behave