Alice Srp  

            Everything was fine before Henry got sick a year ago last April.  We got along pretty well, and he had a good enough job that we were able to have a T.V., a car—oh, you know, a subscription to Life, etc.—no maid, you understand, but we managed.  Besides, I had a job as a receptionist, which paid for the rent.
            But then he got sick and everything changed.  He lost his job and we had to get by on just his sick pay and my salary.  Now there's no more sick pay, and he hasn't got a good disability policy.  But the worst is that for the past year now he's become impossible to live with.  Besides, I have to wait on him hand and foot.  I get no time to eat lunch because I have to go all the way home and fix him his, and then he'll swear at me because the soup is too hot.  When things get so I can't stand it anymore, I go to my sister's, and when I come back he jumps on me for going out with another man, but I never did that.
            I don't know why not, though.  This isn't the man I married.  Sometimes it seems to me that Henry is dead.  I know it's wicked, but I think of him as just a leech.  He never lets me alone.  He likes taking advantage of me because he knows I won't refuse him anything.  Every five minutes he yells for me to do something for him.  He doesn't want me out of his sight.  He's afraid I'll run out on him. I won't ever do that as long as I'm married to him, and I feel insulted that he doesn't trust me.  I can't take his attitude anymore.  He treats me like a slave, and that's just what I am.  I have to earn his bread for him, cook it, bring it to him, and then empty his bedpan!  And for my efforts, he whines at me and calls me dirty names.

Henry Srp

              I shouldn't be such a louse to Alice.  She's all that's keeping me alive.  But all I can do all day is think about the pain in my back, and when she comes home I just take it out on her.  I feel sorry later, because I know I'm a burden to her.
            But at the same time she makes me so damn mad!  She acts like such a martyr and makes such a big production out of every little thing she has to do for me! Duty! It's all duty.  She acts like it'll take her last ounce of strength to bring me a chicken sandwich.  Don't get me wrong; it's not as if I'm ringing for her every single minute.  True, I do have to call for her, but she comes in on her own almost as often.  Why, sometimes she'll even wake me up to plump up my pillows.  And she never lets me forget how much I owe her.  If I don't thank her just exactly right, she calls me an ungrateful bloodsucker.
            I can always tell when we're going to have one of our little go-rounds.  In she'll come, soup in one hand, freshly washed bedpan in the other, and that wounded look on her face, a kind of saintly light in the eyes.  She looks so brave and so put-upon that she makes me want to kick her if I could only move my *__"ܧ legs!  And sure enough, we quarrel and she ends up slamming out of the house.
            She never tells me where she's going; I guess she doesn't even know herself till she gets outside.  But then I don't ever know.  I suppose she thinks she's too noble to be unfaithful; cheating would spoil her image of herself.  But how can I tell?  What can I expect?