Behind the walls of his fortress, he and Ruth fight and cry, but it is not as it was before. There is a predictability to the cycle, and he is weary of it. He no longer wishes to fuck anyone else—not even Alyce Ardell, even if she would have him—but neither does he particularly wish to fuck Ruth. Within a year of remarrying they are separated again, and he is back in court, this time accused of “general cruelty,” whatever that might mean.
I once—Ben Shipman tells him, as they wait for the hearing to begin—represented a man whose wife accused him of general cruelty because this man, her husband, each morning insisted on putting on his right shoe before his left. Her husband kept doing this, she said, even though her husband knew it irritated her. And then her husband would cough. Always the same cough. A little—
And Ben Shipman puts his fist to his mouth and offers a low, polite report, as of one seeking to interrupt a conversation of his betters without appearing presumptuous.
—She pointed out to the judge that no one needs to cough after putting on his shoes, not like that. Maybe once in a while a man might cough after putting on his shoes, because sometimes people just have to cough, whether a shoe is involved or not. She tried to be elsewhere in the house when her husband was putting on his shoes, but then she claimed she’d always be waiting for the cough. Or she’d hear the cough, and would know that her husband had put on his right shoe before his left, even though she wasn’t present to witness the event.
Did she try talking to him about it? he asks.
—Of course she tried, but her husband would tell her that this was just an instance of a man putting on shoes, and a man has to put on shoes or else a man can’t go out to make a living, unless the man is a bum and makes his living by being a bum, which is not much of a living.
—And the coughing?
—Her husband said that a man has to cough, and some men preferred to get their coughing out of the way before they went to work.
—What kind of work did her husband do?
—Her husband was a salesman.
—What did her husband sell?
—Her husband was employed by a pharmaceutical company. Her husband sold cough medicines. Her husband submitted that nobody would buy cough medicines from a salesman who coughed. It stood to reason.
—And how does this help me?
Their case is called. They rise to enter the courtroom.
Because general cruelty is meaningless, says Ben Shipman. General cruelty is the way of the world. It’s specific cruelty that’s the problem.