[...] Things like this had been happening nearly every day since he came home from the hospital. First there had been the discovery that he’d left his silver fountain pen behind, in the locker beside his hospital bed, and Jean had to make a special trip back to get it from the nurses. Then on the second or third day, when he’d insisted on helping with the housework, he had shaken the dust mop out the window so hard that the head of the thing fell off, five stories down into the courtyard, and left him absurdly shaking the naked stick over the windowsill. And there was the time he’d let the bathroom sink overflow, and the time he’d split the side of Mike’s wagon wide open trying to nail the wheel back in place, and the terrible morning when he’d not only cut his thumb on the unwinding strip of a coffee can but spilled the coffee all over the floor. At first Jean had laughed about it (“Poor darling, you’re just out of touch with things, aren’t you?”) but lately her reactions had alternated between elaborate kindliness and tight-lipped silence, and he didn’t know which was worse. How, exactly, could he tell her about this? A pleasant little apology was out of the question; he absolutely could not say “Sorry, darling, I broke one of the cups,” and expect to retain a shred of dignity. But what else was there to say?