The Man Who Loved His Wife Read Online Free PDF Page B

certainly not the doctor to attend to her, and while he might have given her the name of a good internist, Fletcher suggested that she call Dr. Julian. Elaine was not so ill that she required that much attention, but Ralph came for daily visits, usually after all his other calls were finished so that he could linger with the patient and her husband. She was a healthy girl and recovered quickly. Nevertheless Ralph suggested a checkup. Fletcher drove her to his office and read magazines in the waiting room while she was with the doctor.
    After her heartbeat and blood pressure had been recorded Ralph said, “I’m not coming to visit you anymore.”
    Elaine hugged the coarse white examination gown tighter around her nakedness. “Oh dear, I’m sorry,” she said.
    â€œSo am I. I’ve enjoyed coming to the house again, but I don’t think it’s good for your husband. Lie down on the table, please.”
    She had thought she would shrink at the exquisitely personal examination. Austere in his white coat, Ralph Julian studied her with the detachment of an engineer concerned with the working of a familiar machine. “Nothing wrong with you except tensions. You must try and relax.”
    â€œDon’t I need vitamins or a tonic or something?”
    He suspected the cause of her nervousness, but was not licensed to ask about her relations with her husband. She would have liked to speak out, but could not say aloud that she lived in the constant dread of her husband’s suicide. In Fletcher’s every sigh and whim, his frequent rages, his sudden bursts of tenderness, she saw the compulsion. When they were alone and Fletcher croaked out his ideas and opinions, she listened for words that might reveal his intentions. It would have relieved her to relate these fears to Dr. Julian. She could not. They shook hands in parting and the doctor came out to the waiting room for a word with Fletcher.
    Months passed before she saw Ralph again. She thought about him endlessly, held long conversations . . . in her bed, in the bathtub, swimming in the pool, digging in the garden, while she tended the kitchen machines . . . poured out a stream of fear and evidence of the increasing danger. In this harmless way a certain portion of her fear was absorbed. A shade, never clearly seen, Ralph became not a lover but a compassionate listener.
    â€œHow Fletch adores that diary of his. Isn’t it awfully good for him to be so interested in something? ” No response, but none was expected. “Don’t you think that means that underneath everything, deeply, he wants to live?” In finding words for the question she had framed her own answer. “He hides the diary like a priceless treasure, a guilty secret. If I come in when he’s writing, he sneaks it into a desk drawer. With a new Yale lock. And the look on his face! An anarchist hiding his bomb.” She laughed at the simile. “Fletch is such a child, really. Have you ever noticed that wide-eyed look? So unexpected in a big, tough, successful business man. I fell in love with that little-boy look.” Facing the absent confessor she dared hope. “I believe, I honestly do, that the fatal mood is dwindling. He can enjoy himself. Did I tell you we went to the movies? It was a good comedy for a change and then we went to a Chinese place to eat. He had such an appetite, like the old days. Almost the same, but . . .” Here she faltered for she could not, even in revery, permit herself to play out another one of those teeth-clenching climaxes,the failure and remorse. She changed the subject. “That doctor! A good man, they say, in his field, but specialists can be too special, People aren’t all bone and flesh. Doesn’t he know what’s underneath? Fifty sleeping pills! Can you believe it for a man in Fletch’s state? I have the prescriptions filled myself and keep the pills hidden. He gets two a night, never more. I