John D. MacDonald

I Love You (Occasionally)

It started with one of those quizzes in the back of a magazine. Harrison Coombs, riding the commuter train back through the steel-colored dusk of the last working day of the year, sleet whanging away at the window at his elbow, saw the title of the quiz as he leafed by it. “How Good a Husband Are You?”

Three pages beyond, he found that he was feeling mildly defensive and so he turned back to the quiz and took out his pencil. “Show you how good I am,” he muttered.

The first question jolted him a bit. “You take home flowers (often) (seldom) (only on anniversaries).” The testee was to underline the proper word, which carried a point score.

In the brokerage profession Harrison Coombs had learned how to achieve a quite impressive objectivity. He knew at once that to underline (seldom) would be hedging a bit. Hunching over the line. With a quick deft line he underlined the last choice.

“You tell her she looks lovely (once a day) (once a week) (once a month) (once a year) (never).”

“Hmm,” said Harrison Coombs.

He wavered between once a week and once a month, then with an upsurge of honesty, he underscored (once a month). At least it was not as bad as the two remaining choices.

He finished the test feeling more defensive than when he had started it. He toted up his score and turned to the indicated page. The first paragraph, which started: “Your wife is or should be a divinely happy woman...” he skipped rapidly over. That was not for him. His paragraph, for scores of eighteen through twenty-six, was down below the middle.

“You, sir, are not a newlywed. You are complacent. You are taking your wife for granted. Slowly and surely you are starving her for the love and appreciation she needs. It could be that, unless you mend your ways, the marriage you have been accepting so casually may blow up in your face. Whether she admits it to herself or not, she is beginning to resent you. But there is still hope for you. If you change your ways at once, your marriage can be rebuilt.”

Harrison Coombs slapped the magazine down on the empty seat beside him. “Balderdash,” he said. “Scare psychology. Nothing to it.”

There had been a comforting feeling about heading home through this dismal dusk. Now some anonymous quiz-master had robbed him.

“Nothing to it,” he mumbled again. “Laura understands me and she knows I love her.”

The man in front of him turned around and said, “Of course she does, old man.”

Harrison Coombs flushed. “Wise guy,” he said.

The train panted to a stop at his station. Harrison got out onto the exposed platform, his shoulders hunched against the bite of the sleet. He spotted his car a hundred feet away and trotted to it. Laura leaned over from behind the wheel and opened the door for him. He clambered in and shut the door against the horrid night. “Foosh,” he said.

She leaned toward him and he kissed her. A stabbing kiss. Then he remembered the quiz question about pecks instead of kisses and he took a second shot at her, holding this one a bit longer.

A low whistle came from the back seat. Harrison Coombs turned around and glared at the enthralled faces of his two offspring. “Watch your manners,” he growled, scowling fiercely.

“Your father was just trying to get warm,” Laura said.

“Yes,” said Harrison. “Ha ha.”

“Rough day, dear?” Laura asked.

“Average for the end of the year. Everybody trying to get their losses in this year, and push the profits into ’51. Your day go all right?”

“Would have load a canasta prize this afternoon if Betty Hedgins hadn’t fouled me up. Otherwise no change. Steak sound good to you?”

He made certain animal noises that indicated that a steak was a very good choice. She spun the car expertly into the driveway and he jumped out and boosted the door up. She drove in and he pulled the door down. They went on into the house and he went right upstairs.

He washed up and reached into the closet and had his hand on the flannel shirt, the one with the elbows out, when he remembered another part of the quiz. “Do you ever dress up, just for your wife?” (never)

Harrison went to the bureau and dug around until he found the pearl gray wool job. Under dry-cleaner’s paper he found pale gray slacks. He dressed carefully, combed his hair and went down the back stairs.

Laura stared blankly at him. “The flannel shirt is in the closet, dear.”

“I saw it,” he said uncomfortably.

She scowled. “Listen, you! Did you ask anybody to come around tonight?”

He felt obscurely injured. An unjust accusation. “No, I didn’t. And if a man can’t look decent in his own house, I’d like to know...”

She patted his cheek. “You look perfectly sweet. Now go make us a drink. I set out the makings. I’ll be along.”

He made the drink feeling somewhat moody. The quiz had been quite severe about those snappish little losses of temper. He took the tray with shaker and glasses into the living room. The fire crackling cheerfully in the fireplace dissolved his feeling of insufficiency. He poured a drink for himself, sat by the fire and sighed contentedly.

Yes, it was about time he gave some serious thought to his relationship with Laura. Damn lucky in that department. Lovely girl. Figure was better than the day he married her. Whistle-bait, and that’s the truth. Always get a tight feeling in the back of the neck when some joe starts paying her too much attention at a party. Time to give the girl a break. Make her feel wanted and appreciated. The job she’s got is no cinch.

Thus, when Laura came in for her drink, Harrison Coombs was filled to the brim with the warm self-regard that comes of having decided to be a better husband.

He smiled fondly at her and filled her glass and handed it to her. After she sipped he said throatily, “You look lovely tonight, darling.” (once a day)

Laura jumped as though a small firecracker had gone off under the chair cushion. She looked at him. “What did you say?”

“I said you look lovely,” he said.

She looked at him somewhat blankly. “Gee, thanks!”

“Is there anything wrong with my saying that?” he asked stiffly.

“No. No. You can say it if you want to.” She stared at him a bit oddly and finished her drink with a great deal more speed than usual.

“You’re pretty, too. That shirt and the fire and the drink and that gray at the temples. They’ll be after you to go around huckstering whisky.”

The children charged in and skidded to a stop. Meg pointed a thumb at Harrison. “Where’s he going?” she demanded.

“If it’s the movies can we come, can we?” Derek demanded.

“No one is going anywhere,” Harrison said, accenting each word.

Their faces fell. Things seemed a bit strained during dinner. Each time Harrison looked up he found the three of them staring at him. It was disconcerting.

After dinner he read the paper, but he had to read some paragraphs quite a few times to get the meaning. The quiz was severe with husbands who hid behind the paper. When Laura came down from putting the children to bed, and after the dishwasher had churned to a damp stop, he put the paper aside and beamed across at her... She looked up from a lapful of socks. “Finish the paper that quick?”

“Well, I just thought we might talk,” he said, “or something.”

“Harrison Coombs, are you in some kind of trouble?”

“I am not in any kind of trouble, and if a man can’t come home and talk to his own wife I don’t know what...” He stopped and manufactured a warm smile. “Would you like to have me read to you, darling?”

Do you share your evening with her? (often) (occasionally) (seldom) (never)

“Well,” she said uneasily, “if you really want to take the trouble...”

He dug around in the bookshelves and found something that looked all right. An historical romance. He read until his voice was hoarse. Then he smiled over at her. “There. I’ll read it to you bit by bit until we’ve finished it. Why on earth are you wearing that glazed look?”

She yawned. “Goodness! It’s sort of hypnotic, isn’t it?”

“Now we can talk,” he said jovially. “Just think. Good old nineteen-fifty is about gone.”

“And next year is nineteen fifty-one,” she said.

“We’ve had a good time this year in spite of... in spite of the international tension, haven’t we, darling? Hasn’t it been fun?”

“Dear, are you positive you feel all right?”

“I feel fine!” he snapped.

They went up to bed. He was first in. He lay in his bed with his fingers laced at the nape of his neck and watched her at the dressing table brushing her hair. Lovely girl. None better. Time to appreciate her.

He cleared his throat. “I love you, darling,” he said, proud of having achieved what sounded like a Boyer-esque intensity.

She twitched violently. She stood up and came over to his bed and put her hands on her hips and glared down at him. “I’m getting to the bottom of this right now.”

“But I—”

“Have you gone and gotten yourself all wound up in some tawdry little office affair? Have you? Have you? Who is she?”

He sat up, righteously indignant. “If you have no more faith in me than that—”

“What am I supposed to think when you come prancing home and posturing around and acting like somebody in the senior play at Jefferson High?”

“Now you listen to me, my dear!”

“I will not listen to you! Why didn’t you do it up brown? Why didn’t you come smirking home with flowers or candy or jewelry or something else to—”

“Laura, I—”

“And if you think that by imitating a garden variety Gregory Peck you can take my mind off what you’ve been doing... and... and... oh, oh, oh...”

The brush thudded to the floor and she crumpled on her bed. He reached out and patted her gingerly and ineffectually on the shoulder.

Laura wrenched away from his touch and increased the tortured tempo of her sobs.

And then he knew how he had to do it. He forgot his slippers. He padded down in his bare feet, turned on the lights, found the magazine on the table where he had put it when they had come back from the station.

He trudged upstairs with it, opened it to the proper page, shoved it under her arm. He stalked petulantly into the bathroom and slammed the door. After a time the sobbing stopped abruptly. There was a long period of silence and then a sound as if she were being slowly strangled. Then that, too, stopped.

She tapped on the door. Her tone was properly abject. “Harrison?”

“Go away. Go to bed. Go to sleep.”

“Please, Harrison!”

He unlocked the door and opened it cautiously, stared at her. “Whuff!” he said.

She pirouetted so that the black lace hem swirled around her ankles. “Remember it? Christmas. Four years ago.”

“What were you saving it for?”

“For a time like this, I guess.”

“Listen, Laura. If you ever, ever try to kid me about taking that quiz—”

She touched his lips with her finger tips. She looked oddly solemn, and very young. “I couldn’t. That would be like laughing at what you were trying to do.”

He put his arms around her. “Trying, and not much of a try.”

She pushed back and looked up at him. “Don’t think I’m not appreciative, now that I know. I’m a woman and I guess some part of me likes all those things they said in the test. But I know you, dear. You can’t put on an act. You have your own ways of telling me, and one of them is that look in your eye right this minute. When you lose that, I’ll really start fretting.”

He frowned. “That quiz didn’t give me any grade on a look.” Laura’s nose wrinkled enchantingly as she smiled. “Of course not, silly! Anybody can see that the person who wrote that quiz has never been married.”

Content

John D. MacDonald
I Love You (Occasionally)