Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates Page B

a brave smile, trying to think of things to say, he knew only that everything was out of kilter. Whatever you felt on hearing the news of conception, even if it was chagrin instead of joy, wasn't it supposed to be something the two of you shared? Your wife wasn't supposed to turn away from you, was she? You weren't supposed to have to work and wheedle to win her back, with little jokes and hand-holdings, as if you were afraid she might evaporate at the very moment of this first authentic involvement of your lives—that couldn't be right. Then what the hell was the matter?
      It wasn't until a week later that he came home to find her stalking the apartment with folded arms, her eyes remote and her face fixed in the special look that meant she had made up her mind about something and would stand for no nonsense.
      "Frank, listen. Try not to start talking until I finish, and just listen." And in an oddly stifled voice, as if she'd rehearsed her speech several times without allowing for the fact that she'd have to breathe while delivering it, she told him of a girl in dramatic school who knew, from first-hand experience, an absolutely infallible way to induce a miscarriage. It was simplicity itself: you waited until just the right time, the end of the third month; then you took a sterilized rubber syringe and a little bit of sterilized water, and you very carefully . . .
      Even as he filled his lungs for shouting he knew it wasn't the idea itself that repelled him—the idea itself, God knew, was more than a little attractive—it was that she had done all this on her own, in secret, had sought out the girl and obtained the facts and bought the rubber syringe and rehearsed the speech; that if she'd thought about him at all it was only as a possible hitch in the scheme, a source of tiresome objections that would have to be cleared up and disposed of if the thing were to be carried out with maximum efficiency. That was the intolerable part of it; that was what enriched his voice with a tremor of outrage:
      "Christ's sake, don't be an idiot. You want to kill yourself? I don't even want to hear about it."
      She sighed patiently. "All right, Frank. In that case there's certainly no need for you to hear about it. I only told you because I thought you might be willing to help me in this thing. Obviously, I should have known better."
      "Listen. Listen to me. You do this—you do this and I swear to God I'll—"
      "Oh, you'll what? You'll leave me? What's that supposed to be—a threat or a promise?"
      And the fight went on all night. It caused them to hiss and grapple and knock over a chair, it spilled outside and downstairs and into the street ("Get away from me! Get away from me!"); it washed them trembling up against the high wire fence of a waterfront junkyard, until a waterfront drunk came to stare at them and make them waver home, and he could feel the panic and the shame of it even now, leaning here against this tree with these gnats tickling his neck. All that saved him, all that enabled him now to crouch and lift a new stone from its socket and follow its rumbling fall with the steady and dignified tread of self-respect, was that the next day he had won. The next day, weeping in his arms, she had allowed herself to be dissuaded.
      "Oh, I know, I know," she had whispered against his shirt, "I know you're right. I'm sorry. I love you. We'll name it Frank and we'll send it to college and everything. I promise, promise."
      And it seemed to him now that no single moment of his life had ever contained a better proof of manhood than that, if any proof were needed: holding that tamed, submissive girl and saying, "Oh, my lovely; oh, my lovely," while she promised she would bear his child. Lurching and swayng under the weight of the stone in the sun, dropping it at last and wiping his sore hands, he picked up the shovel and went to work again, while the children's voices fluted and chirped around him, as