Michael Malone - Weebly

intolerableness of his own marriage to find amusing the
buoyancy with which Abernathy watched his be
torpedoed and sunk). Yes, he thought, the Hayeses
kept themselves sensitive to life, and each other, by
continually ripping the bandages off each other's
wounds; they were unhappily married, far more so than
the Abernathys. In fact, Winslow would not admit that
he and Beanie had been unhappily married at all. He
had been too civilized, and Beanie too good-hearted,
for daily misery.
Because, as Beanie had explained, unlike the
Hayeses (who were fiercely monogamous in the
intensity of their hate), she and Winslow had never been
married at all. Yesterday she had sat with him in his
study and had tried to explain to him why he felt less
pain about what was happening than he thought he
ought to feel.
It is not easy, she had said, but it is usually easier,
to do the right thing, though it may seem, even for as
long as thirty years, that it is easier not to. The
Abernathys could have "easily" lived in pleasant accord
until their deaths, except for the inevitable chance of