Theresa Platt (she had been Terry Sheehan) watched her husband across
the breakfast table with eyes that smoldered. But Orville Platt was
quite unaware of any smoldering in progress. He was occupied with his
eggs. How could he know that these very eggs were feeding the dull red
menace in Terry Platt's eyes?
When Orville Platt ate a soft-boiled egg he concentrated on it. He
treated it as a great adventure. Which, after all, it is. Few adjuncts
of our daily life contain the element of chance that is to be found in
a three-minute breakfast egg.
This was Orville Platt's method of attack: first, he chipped off the
top, neatly. Then he bent forward and subjected it to a passionate and
relentless scrutiny. Straightening--preparatory to plunging his spoon
therein--he flapped his right elbow. It wasn't exactly a flap; it was
a pass between a hitch and a flap, and presented external evidence of a
mental state. Orville Platt always gave that little preliminary jerk
when he was contemplating a serious step, or when he was moved, or
argumentative. It was a trick as innocent as it was maddening.
Terry Platt had learned to look for that flap--they had been married
four years--to look for it, and to hate it with a morbid, unreasoning
hate. That flap of the elbow was tearing Terry Platt's nerves into
raw, bleeding fragments.
Her fingers were clenched tightly under the table, now. She was
breathing unevenly. "If he does that again," she told herself, "if he
flaps again when he opens the second egg, I'll scream. I'll scream.
I'll scream! I'll sc----"
He had scooped the first egg into his cup. Now he picked up the
second, chipped it, concentrated, straightened, then--up went the
elbow, and down, with the accustomed little flap.
The tortured nerves snapped. Through the early-morning quiet of
Wetona, Wisconsin, hurtled the shrill, piercing shriek of Terry Platt's
hysteria.
"Terry! For God's sake! What's the matter!"
Orville Platt dropped the second egg, and his spoon. The egg yolk
trickled down his plate. The spoon made a clatter and flung a gay spot
of yellow on the cloth. He started toward her.
Terry, wild-eyed, pointed a shaking finger at him. She was laughing,
now, uncontrollably. "Your elbow! Your elbow!"
"Elbow?" He looked down at it, bewildered, then up, fright in
his face. "What's the matter with it?"