Read The Changed Man for Free Online Page A

couldn’t, at least didn’t tell her about the strange memory lapses at the office, even though this was even more proof that something was wrong. He had never had any children in his home, their brothers and sisters had all been discreetly warned not to bring children around poor
MaryJo, who was quite distraught to be—the Old Testament word?—barren.
    And he had talked about having children all evening.
    â€œHoney, I’m sorry,” he said, trying to put his whole heart into the apology.
    â€œSo am I,” she answered, and went upstairs.
    Surely she isn’t angry at me, Mark thought. Surely she realizes something is wrong. Surely she’ll forgive me.
    But as he climbed the stairs after her, taking off his shirt as he did, he again heard the voice of a child.
    â€œI want a drink, Mommy.” The voice was plaintive, with the sort of whine only possible to a child who is comfortable and sure of love. Mark turned at the landing in time to see MaryJo passing the top of the stairs on the way to the children’s bedroom, a glass of water in her hand. He thought nothing of it. The children always wanted extra attention at bedtime.
    The children. The children, of course there were children. This was the urgency he had felt in the office, the reason he had to get home. They had always wanted children and so there were children. C. Mark Tapworth always got what he set his heart on.
    â€œAsleep at last,” MaryJo said wearily when she came into the room.
    Despite her weariness, however, she kissed him good night in the way that told him she wanted to make love. He had never worried much about sex. Let the readers of Reader’s Digest worry about how to make their sex lives fuller and richer, he always said. As for him, sex was good, but not the best thing in his life; just one of the ways that he and MaryJo responded to each other. Yet tonight he was disturbed, worried. Not because he could not perform, for he had never been troubled by even temporary impotence except when he had a fever and didn’t feel like sex anyway. What bothered him was that he didn’t exactly care.

    He didn’t not care, either. He was just going through the motions as he had a thousand times before, and this time, suddenly, it all seemed so silly, so redolent of petting in the backseat of a car. He felt embarrassed that he should get so excited over a little stroking. So he was almost relieved when one of the children cried out. Usually he would say to ignore the cry, would insist on continuing the lovemaking. But this time he pulled away, put on a robe, went into the other room to quiet the child down.
    There was no other room.
    Not in this house. He had, in his mind, been heading for their hopeful room filled with crib, changing table, dresser, mobiles, cheerful wallpaper—but that room had been years ago, in the small house in Sandy, not here in the home in Federal Heights with its magnificent view of Salt Lake City, its beautiful shape and decoration that spoke of taste and shouted of wealth and whispered faintly of loneliness and grief. He leaned against a wall. There were no children. There were no children. He could still hear the child’s cry ringing in his mind.
    MaryJo stood in the doorway to their bedroom, naked but holding her nightgown in front of her. “Mark,” she said. “I’m afraid.”
    â€œSo am I,” he answered.
    But she asked him no questions, and he put on his pajamas and they went to bed and as he lay there in darkness listening to his wife’s faintly rasping breath he realized that it didn’t really matter as much as it ought. He was losing his mind, but he didn’t much care. He thought of praying about it, but he had given up praying years ago, though of course it wouldn’t do to let anyone else know about his loss of faith, not in a city where it’s good business to be an active Mormon. There’d be no help from God on this