RMatheson - Mad House (1953) Read Online Free

by further thinking. I’ve done no writing this morning. Like every morning after every other morning as time passes. I do less and less. I write nothing. Or I write worthless material. I could write better when I was twenty than I can now.
    I’ll
never
write anything good!
    He jolted to his feet and his head snapped around as he looked for something to strike at, something to break, something to hate with such hate that it would wither in the blast.
    It seemed as though the room clouded. He felt a throbbing. His left leg banged against a corner of the bed.
    He gasped in fury. He wept. Tears of hate and repentance and self commiseration. I’m lost, he thought. Lost. There is nothing.
     
    He became very calm, icy calm. Drained of pity, of emotion. He put on his suit coat. He put on his hat and got his briefcase off the dresser.
    He stopped before the door to the room where she still fussed with her bag. So she will have something to occupy herself with now, he thought, so she won’t have to look at me. He felt his heart thudding like a heavy drum beat.
    “Have a nice time at your mother’s,” he said dispassionately.
    She looked up and saw the expression on his face. She turned away and put a hand to her eyes. He felt a sudden need to run to her and beg her forgiveness. Make everything right again.
    Then he thought again of papers and years of writing undone. He turned away and walked across the living room. The small rug slipped a little and it helped to focus the strength of anger he needed. He kicked it aside and it fluttered against the wall in a rumpled heap.
    He slammed the door behind him.
    His mind gibbered. Now, soap opera like, she has thrown herself on the coverlet and is weeping tears of martyr-tinged sorrow. Now she is digging nails into the pillow and moaning my name and wishing she were dead.
    His shoes clicked rapidly on the sidewalk. God help me, he thought. God help all us poor wretches who would create and find that we must lose our hearts for it because we cannot afford to spend our time at it.
    It was a beautiful day. His eyes saw that but his mind would not attest to it. The trees were thick with green and the air warm and fresh. Spring breezes flooded down the streets. He felt them brush over him as he walked down the block, crossed Main Street to the bus stop.
    He stood there on the corner looking back at the house.
    She is in there, his mind persisted in analysis. In there, the house in which we’ve lived for more than eight years. She is packing or crying or doing something. And soon she will call the Campus Cab Company. A cab will come driving out. The driver will honk the horn, Sally will put on her light spring coat and take her suitcase out on the porch. She will lock the door behind her for the last time.
    “No—”
    He couldn’t keep the word from strangling in his throat. He kept staring at the house. His head ached. He saw everything weaving. I’m sick, he thought.
    “I’m
sick
!”
    He shouted it. There was no one around to hear. He stood gazing at the house. She is going away forever, said his mind.
    Very well then! I’ll write, write, write. He let the words soak into his mind and displace all else.
    A man had a choice, after all. He devoted his life to his work or to his wife and children and home. It could not be combined; not in this day and age. In this insane world where God was second to income and goodness to wealth.
    He glanced aside as the green-striped bus topped the distant hill and approached. He put the briefcase under his arm and reached into his coat pocket for a token. There was a hole in the pocket. Sally had been meaning to sew it. Well, she would never sew it now. What did it matter anyway?
    I would rather have my soul intact than the suit of clothes I wear.
    Words, words, he thought, as the bus stopped before him. They flood through me now that she is leaving. Is that evidence that it is her presence that clogs the channels of thought?
    He dropped the