The Man Who Loved His Wife Read Free

swimming for him, nor could he step into the shower carelessly. His loud and boisterous laughter was silenced forever. Every action required adjustment. Encounters with old friends left him morbid. Strangers appalled him. Going out became a nightmare.
    When the voice therapist had been introduced, Fletcher had welcomed an angel. For months this hideously cheerful woman tried to teach him to belch aesthetically, but from the first day, he so loathed the processes of learning to lock in his breath and speak through the esophagus that he became fixed with the ideathat he would never conquer stubborn muscles. Never before had his body failed him. Form and competence had been readily acquired in every sport he had bothered to learn. But the voice exercises were not sport. Repetition bored him. For years in business he had been able to leave petty detail to employees. Patience was not one of Fletcher Strode’s virtues. Wearisome practice drove him to despair. Unable to progress at a satisfying pace, he often lost his temper. Fury and frustration robbed him of what little voice he had acquired. When he forgot himself and tried to shout in the old, authoritative manner, he could utter nothing but a string of unintelligible sounds.
    â€œDon’t listen to yourself,” his teacher said. How could he help it? His ears had not been cut off. It was far worse when he used an electronic device. To his oversensitive ear the tones were like those cute TV characters whose echo-chamber voices extol floor wax, pancake mix, and pet food. With or without the machine, he heard too acutely. Offensive tones echoed in his mental ear until he felt that he would go mad. One day, he smashed the instrument and discharged the therapist (with an unforgivable letter about her ability, her clothes, and complexion).
    The man who had visited him at the hospital, the breezy fellow whose soft, hoarse voice he had sworn to surpass, suggested group therapy. Fletcher and Elaine attended several classes. Advanced students happily conversed, recited poetry, sang huskily. Elaine went about saying that she was thrilled by the indomitable spirit of people who had won the battle against disability. But Fletcher, who had to join a beginners’ group, could not bear his classmates’ squawks and hoots and efforts to sound human. This, too, was abandoned. He said he could do better alone. Elaine worked with him, using the therapist’s manual. At times Fletcher was hopeful and industrious, practiced, noted improvement, but one bad session, one unconquerable sound, and he would quit for days.
    Several new electronic devices were purchased, each hopefully, each a magic machine which would give him a clear, smooth voice. The latest invention, the costliest, was little betterthan the others. At home he never used them, but would never go out alone without the crutch. In time he became better able to communicate, but never without self-consciousness. Lesser men, those who had not made fortunes, learned with patience and humility; economic necessity drove them to speech. Fletcher had no such incentive. He had made himself secure, could give in to impatience and bad temper. His ego had been permanently maimed; there was no cure for lost pride.
    New symptoms developed: spasms, excess mucus, dryness of the mouth, temporary paralysis. He was certain that the cancer had returned. This time I will die, he thought, not unhappily. But the surgeon showed him X-ray plates with a benefactor’s smile. Nothing more, he said, than neurosis and prescribed psychiatry.
    Fletcher was horrified. The wife of one of his business friends, a rich man who could give a woman anything her heart desired, alternated between the analyst’s couch and the booby hatch. No headshrinker could give him back a lost voice, for God’s sake. He retreated farther into himself, fled when visitors came to the apartment, and in public places let Elaine speak for him. She ordered meals in