Free Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates Page B

come out as slowly as possible. First of all, did the Wheelers know the Givingses had a son?
      Certainly they did; and Milly sat nodding wisely, allowing herself to be interrupted, while they reminded each other of the thin sailor whose photograph had grinned from the Givingses' mantelpiece the one time they had gone there for dinner; they remembered Mrs. Givings explaining that this was John, who had loathed the navy, had done marvelously well at M.I.T. and now was doing marvelously well as an instructor of mathematics at some Western university.
      "Well," Milly said. "He isn't teaching any mathematics now, and he isn't out West either. You know where he is? You know where he's been for the past two months? He's over here in Greenacres. You know," she added, when they all looked blank. "The State hospital. The insane asylum."
      They all began chattering at once, drawing close and tense together in the fog of cigarette smoke; it was almost like old times. Wasn't this the damnedest, weirdest, saddest thing? Was Milly absolutely certain of her facts?
      Oh yes, oh yes, she was certain. "And what's more," she went on, "he didn't just go to Greenacres. He was taken in and put there, by the State Police."
      A Mrs. Macready, who worked for the Givingses as a part-time cleaning woman, had told Milly the whole story only yesterday, at the shopping center, unable to believe she hadn't heard it long before. "She said she thought everybody'd heard it by now. Anyway, it seems he's been—you know, mentally disturbed for a long time. She said they practically went broke trying to pay for this private sanatorium out in California; he'd go in there for months at a time and then come out—that's when he'd teach, I guess—and then go back again. Then he seemed all right for a long time, until he suddenly quit his job out there and disappeared. Then he turned up here, without any warning, and came storming into the house and sort of held them captive there for about three days." She giggled uneasily at this, aware that a phrase like "held them captive" might sound too melodramatic to be true. "That's what Mrs. Macready called it anyway. I mean he probably didn't have a gun or a knife or anything, but he must've scared them half to death. Especially with Mr. Givings being so old and all, and his heart trouble. What he did was, he locked them in and cut the telephone wires and said he wasn't going to leave until they gave him what he'd come for, only he wouldn't say what it was he'd come for. One time he said it was his birth certificate, and they looked through all their old papers and stuff until they found it and gave it to him, and he tore it up. The rest of the time he just walked around talking and talking—raving, I guess—and breaking things. Furniture, pictures off the wall, dishes—everything. And in the middle of it all Mrs. Macready came over to go to work and he locked her in too—that's how she found out, you see—and I guess she was there for about ten hours before she got out through the garage. Then she called the State Troopers, and they came and took him to Greenacres."
      "God," April said. "The State Troopers. How awful." And they all shook their heads in solemn agreement.
      Shep was inclined to doubt the cleaning woman's veracity—"After all, the whole thing's just hearsay"— but the others talked him down. Hearsay or not, it had the unmistakable ring of truth to it.
      April pointed out how significant it now seemed that Mrs. Givings had been dropping in so often lately for seemingly aimless little visits: "It's the funniest thing, I've always had the feeling she wanted something here, or wanted to tell us something and couldn't quite get the words out— haven't you felt that?" (Here she turned to her husband, but without quite meeting his eyes and without adding the "darling" or even the "Frank" that would have filled his heart with hope. He muttered that he guessed he had.) "God, isn't that