Texas by the Tail

'We-ell, maybe. But not entirely. I mean, how am I going to know whether something interests me unless I'm informed on it?'

The man studied him intently; bobbed the bushy mass of his hair. 'We,' he said firmly, 'shall talk again.'

That was Mitch's first meeting with Fritz Steinhopf, M.D., ph.D. (psychiatry), ER.A.S.; Heidelberg, the Sorbonne, University College. It was fairly typical of the psychiatrist's introduction to other members of the hotel's staff. Indiscriminately and without apologetic preliminary he had quizzed the resident manager, the haughty head-housekeeper-very much an executive in the hotel world-the superintendent of service, the head chef (another important executive), and various bellboys and clean-up men.

His attitude was one which, in ordinary cases, would have elicited the chilly suggestion that he would be 'happier' at some other hotel. But Fritz Steinhopf was very far from being an ordinary case. In addition to his living quarters, he maintained an elaborate professional suite on the mezzanine floor. His patients were among the southwest's most prominent and wealthy, including two of the hotel company's major stockholders.

Mitch wondered why a man of Steinhopf's importance didn't concentrate on his practice, instead of prying into the affairs of people like himself. When the answer finally dawned on him, it did much in the shaping of his own character. One could not, he came to realize, approach every person and situation with a view to immediate gain. To be effective subjectively, a broad objectivity was necessary. Interest and curiosity were not traits to be turned off and on at will. Nothing was ever lost. Knowledge gained at one time could be used at another.

With much idle time on his hands, Mitch was more and more the target of the apparently non- sleeping Steinhopf's insatiable curiosity. And the more that curiosity was exercised, the greater it became. The psychiatrist was completely uninhibited; he could not be brushed off. A little irritated with him one night, Mitch declared that he had to go to lunch. Steinhopf said that he would go also, and he trotted along at Mitch's side to the all-night lunch room.

They ate together almost nightly after that, the psychiatrist stuffing himself with whatever was put in front of him, blandly asking the most intimate questions, occasionally making some comment which by turns enlightened, frightened and infuriated Mitch.

'It is a substitute, this gambling,' he said. 'A compensatory drive. You are haunted by your father's impotence. He had no such compensating satisfaction. So you provide yourself with one.'

'Oh, come off it, Doc,' Mitch laughed. 'If I was any better in bed, I'd need a harem.'

'So. Perhaps. But the fear is still present. A man confident of his prowess, that he is a man, is not dominated by his wife. As you are by yours, my dear Mitch.'

'It's not like that at all! I try to be reasonable, of course. She brings most of the money into the family, and she should have something to say about how it's run. But-'

'But she has always earned the major share of the income, has she not? There has been relatively no change. And money is obviously of no importance to her, something to be thrown away. How then does it justify her drive to make you less than a man?'

'Dammit, I told you it wasn't like that! I'm in love with my wife. I want to do everything I can to please her and make her happy.'

'That is as it should be,' Steinhopf purred. 'Assuming, of course, that she does everything she can to please you and make you happy.'

'But-!'

'I understand. Believe me I do,' the doctor said softly. 'I am asking you to accept the unacceptable. You know your wife as no one else can know her. Between you there is something which is singularly your own, a history of troubles shared, of secret words and intimacies; the warm and delightful and always unique treasure which is peculiar to every marriage, no matter how bad that marriage may be. The husband is always the last to know, they say. Of course, he is. How else could it be, since he is closer to his wife than anyone else? But consider, Mitch. It is this very closeness which blinds him to the truth. It is almost impossible for him to be objective. A Negro patient once assured me with great bitterness that I did not know what it was like to be a Negro. I could only point out that he also didn't know what it was like to be a white man.'

Mitch frowned. It seemed to him that the doctor had almost said something decidedly ugly.

Steinhopf smoothly continued. 'Aside from your intensely subjective viewpoint, there is the matter of your childhood; the marriage of your parents. You grew up in circumstances which were anything but normal, so your present home life does not seem as shocking as it essentially is. Nor is your wife too blatant a contrast with your mother. Your mother seems to have been lacking in most of the instincts normal to a mother, while simultaneously possessing an over-supply of certain other womanly instincts. So Teddy, by comparison-'

Mitch got up and stomped out of the place. The doctor caught up with him, trotted along at his side. They would talk again, he said imperturbably. They would talk again, many times, for there was much indeed to be discussed.

At the moment, Mitch had other ideas on the subject. He'd just about had it with Steinhopf. But they did talk again, many times and at length, and at Mitch's own wish. Because he was getting very worried about Teddy himself.

He still loved her, or believed that he did, but their relationship was becoming increasingly unsatisfactory. The more he saw of her the more dismayed he became.

And he was seeing a great deal of her. Literally, constantly. She took him to bed the minute he came home. The normally delightful demands she made upon him had, through excess, become a source of despair and disgust. She couldn't carry on a conversation-not a real honest-to-Hannah conversation. Why hadn't he noticed that before? What he had taken for wit was really the product of ignorance (she didn't realize she was being funny) and the parroted statements of others.

Actually, she was almost completely humorless. Joking with her, laughing in her presence, could induce her to insane fury.

He'd better not laugh at her! Very bad things happened to daddies who laughed at their mamas.

She paid no attention to little Sam, and she was angrily jealous when he did. She wanted one thing of Mitch-over and over and over. And when he could not deliver it, she was peevish, pouting… yet with a kind of smugness, an air of self-satisfaction.

So Mitch's talks with Dr. Steinhopf resumed. In detail, he poured out the story of himself and Teddy from the very beginning.

'I guess I was supposed to be another guy,' he explained, with attempted humor. 'Someone she was engaged to before I came along. I remember she was crying in her sleep the night we were married, mumbling about getting a letter from the general and everyone telling her this other fellow was dead.'

Steinhopf said that he doubted very much that there had been any other fellow, in the context of Mitch's meaning, or any general. The other fellow was a sexual fantasy. The general represented authority trying to destroy the fantasy.

'You mean,' Mitch frowned, 'she's insane?'

'My dear Mitch, please do not use that word in my presence! Let us say she is not normal-in the accepted sense of that misused term.'

'The poor kid,' Mitch said bewilderedly. 'I just can't understand it…'

Steinhopf shrugged. 'She is a classic case, I would say, of a not uncommon disorder among American women. You could find less exaggerated and complex examples all around you. Where are its roots? In a dominant mother, of course, and a defeated but beloved father. Mingle with these the factor of penis-envy-a younger neighbor's boy, perhaps, and the childhood pastime of playing house. Add in large sums of money-the nominal proof, sad to say, of superiority-and the urges normal to woman. This, broadly speaking, would give you your Teddy… I believe. To be conclusive or helpful, I would have to see her over an extended period of time, an