The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike

by Philip K. Dick

  If I had done my share, she thought, he wouldn’t be so tense and on edge. He wouldn’t have said those things to Paul Wilby, and he wouldn’t have telephoned Walt Dombrosio; at least, not without thinking it out more clearly. It’s my fault. I’m to blame. Whatever Leo may have done wrong, if he did do something wrong, can be traced back to me.

  And so, she realized, if Walt Dombrosio lost his job because he had no driving license, then it’s my fault.

  She thought, If I hadn’t let Leo down in 1958, if I had stayed on at the office and done my work, if I hadn’t been so weak, then Walt Dombrosio would not have suffered what he’s suffered. His terrible sufferings, his having to be arrested and post bail and go to court and watch them take away his license, and then whatever happened between him and his employers—

  It was too much. She could not bear to think about it. Putting her hands to her ears again she ran into the kitchen and shut the door; holding her breath she stood silently, grimacing, feeling the tears well up in her eyes. I’m not fit to be alive on this planet, she said to herself. She said it out loud. “I ought to be dead,” she told herself, and now the tears dripped down her cheeks and onto the front of her shirt. She saw the great dark stains spread out on the white fabric.

  Oh god, she thought. What I’d give for a drink.

  I’ll have to change my shirt, she realized. So she went back to her bedroom. She pulled down the shade, shut the door, and then unbuttoned her shirt and took it off.

  In the half-light of the bedroom she rummaged among the clothes in her dresser drawers. Finally she snapped on the lamp. Mounted in the base of the lamp, under a plastic cover, was a verse that she had clipped out of a magazine years ago. Now, seeing it, she halted and reread it; she had read it thousands of times in her life, and it always had given her a measure of calm.

  And when that one great scorer comes

  To score against your name;

  It won’t be “Whether you won or lost,”

  But HOW YOU PLAYED THE GAME.

  Yes, she thought. It’s how you play the game. And how have I played it? Pretty lousily. Hurting everyone around me, letting them take the burden from me and carry it themselves because I’m too selfish and bad. First my family, then Leo, even my neighbors. It’s spread to the community. Like that time I never showed up at the cake sale, and so there was no white cake with chocolate icing. And they said a lot of people asked for one. They could have sold it easily.

  With another wife, she thought, one with drive and determination, and with ability, Leo might have been able to put into practice some of those fabulous ideals that are tearing him apart inside. That time when he wanted me to run for the school board…how could I have done that? But another woman might have. A better woman.

  First of all, Leo should have had a companion, a woman who could have worked with him, side by side, like those women in Israel. Maybe if he had married a Jewish woman—she had let him down there, too. She had not been Jewish and she had not even become converted. She had clung to her old faith, not because she respected it but because she was afraid to change. She did not know what a new faith might entail.

  Where he needs me, she decided, is not in his home but in his work. Where the battle is.

  Once it gets around town that Leo caused Dombrosio to lose his job, then people will think even worse of him. And, she thought, I know he worries anyhow. I can tell. It’s another cancer eating away inside him. I wonder if he knows about the job, yet. It took him two months to find out about the license…maybe he won’t notice that Dombrosio is home during the day. After all, we don’t speak to the Dombrosios. And Leo is at his office during the day, except when he has to come back to the house for something he’s forgotten.

  How will he feel when he finds out? she asked herself. Will he be able to forgive himself? And then she thought, Maybe he could give Dombrosio a job. At the realty office. But the only job would be a typing job, answering phones and giving out keys. He had an elderly partly-retired woman who did that, the wife of a rancher.

  Sooner or later Leo is going to find out, she said to herself. I won’t tell him, though; I didn’t tell him about the license. But—maybe I’m doing the wrong thing, again. The weak thing.

  Going into the kitchen she put the coffee pot on the stove to reheat. And then she discovered that she did not have her shirt on; she had taken it off, started looking for another, and then forgotten what she was doing. She had gone off into a daydream, again, into her worries. So she returned at once to the bedroom, to the gloom and the one yellow lamp. This time she got out a sweater from the drawer and put it hurriedly on. In the bathroom she stopped long enough to arrange her hair; the sweater had mussed it.

  I could use some make-up, she decided as she studied herself. How dry her skin looked. And under her eyes she saw crow’s feet. She began dabbing powder on, and then eyebrow pencil; without coloring her eyebrows were so faint as to be almost invisible.

  While she stood at the mirror doing that she heard a strange sound. For a time she continued putting on lipstick, and then with a surge of dismay she identified the sound; it was the coffee boiling. She had ruined it. Dropping the lipstick into the bowl she ran into the kitchen and snatched the coffee pot off. The odor of burned coffee filled the kitchen; she threw the coffee into the sink with disgust.

  And, after the disgust, she felt weariness and a growing, all-absorbing despair. Sinking down at the table she put her head on her arms and shut her eyes. The despair, by and by, became depression, the most empty feeling of all.

  Suppose, she thought, it had happened to my husband. Suppose Leo became sick or injured and couldn’t work. I’m a failure even as a housewife; I can’t even fix a pot of coffee in my own kitchen without ruining it. How could I possibly do what Sherry Dombrosio has done, go out into the world and take over the burden as it slides from her husband’s shoulders?

  What a contrast between her and me, she thought. As soon as he lost his license, Sherry got right in and began driving him to work. Every morning, without fail. And now, a job. A real equal; a companion to her husband, ready to share—capable of sharing.

  That’s the thing, she realized. Capability. I’d be willing to, but I couldn’t. She felt panic now, even at the idea. Going and getting a job, driving into San Francisco each morning…

  That woman, she thought, is so superior to me that it isn’t even funny. Attractive, capable, alert—she dresses so well. Look at her clothes, and then look at mine. Look at the slop all down the front of me…see it. She raised her head and examined the sweater that she had put on. It’s clean now, she thought. But in another hour…stains and mess, dribbling down my front like a baby or a toothless crone.

  But if I had had Sherry’s upbringing, she thought. And, she thought, if I had had her money, the money her family had. To put into me, the way they invested in her…

  She’s a product of well-to-do society, Janet Runcible said to herself. That woman did not create herself; she is not responsible for what she is. Nobody is. A person is a product of their society.

  How could I be like her? I never had her opportunities.

  They train women like that to be executives, she said to herself. That class she comes from: the men are the natural leaders of this country, the ivy-league set. Classmates, all from the same colleges. Harvard, like Franklin Roosevelt. It’s in their language: they practically have an accent. And they go to each other. They’re lawyers for each other, doctors, business acquaintances.

  And you can’t get in, if you’re not born into it. You’re either born into that or you’re not. What can I do? Can I go and learn the speech and dress? It took an entire lifetime to make Sherry what she is. Expensive boarding schools. Even dentists. They have their teeth straightened and worked on as little children. You can tell what sort of background a person has by his teeth, she realized. Look at the farm kid growing up here. If their teeth are crooked, no one even notices, let alone decides to pay out thousands of dollars for
teeth-straightening. They wouldn’t even know that such things are done. So when the girl or boy grows up and leaves this rat hole of a farm area, when he or she gets out into the real world—

  Like me, she thought. Cut off from any hope of success. Of being anything. Doomed to a miserable life on the outside, looking in. What a wicked unfair world, she thought. To start some people with all the advantages…

  And then, as a terrible overwhelming new insight, it came to her that the moral part was not the really important part. It was not a moral issue. It was a practical issue. And as she realized that a wall of fear rose up in her and burst from her; she rocked back and forth, her hands pressed to her ears, squeaking with fright.

  “What does it prove?” she said aloud, in a voice that filled the kitchen. “It proves that I have no chance at all.” No matter how hard she tried, she would not succeed. No matter what the need. No matter how dreadful their financial situation she could not go out into the world and compete because it would take a lifetime to learn to compete; it took a lifetime to get equipped, and this did not so much prove that the world was an evil place but that she, Janet Runcible, would never never in a million years be able to survive in it. Survive economically against women like Sherry Dombrosio—because even if an organization did let down its rules and hire a woman it would not be she who would get hired but Sherry and all the other women of her class, with her looks and speech-mannerisms and clothes.

  So someone like herself would never be safe; she would never be able to sit back in security. She was doomed all her life, until the grave came and got her.

  Getting to her feet she wandered about the house, paying no attention to where she was; she went from one room to the next and back again, scarcely conscious of the furniture—once she stubbed her toe on the leg of the couch, and once she ran head-on into the half-closed bedroom door.

  What has happened, she decided, is that the whole structure of the family has broken down, since World War Two. In World War Two women started welding in war plants. Like men. And Communism has done the same thing as the war. Sherry Dombrosio should not be out earning a living because that is the man’s job. No wonder I’m so anxiety-ridden, she said to herself. I have been let down. Haven’t I stayed home and done my job, by having a child? That’s a woman’s job. Not working side-by-side in a factory, like some big slob of a Russian peasant woman, calling everyone “Comrade.” That’s not the American way.

  In some ways those Dombrosio are Communists, she realized. That Negro that they had visit them; consider that. Interracial marriage is a part of the Communist program for America.

  Sherry should not be out working. She should not have to be. Her place is at home having babies; she’s failed at her real job. And if her husband hadn’t lost his job, she would be home. He let her down. He deprived her of the security of his income-earning capacity.

  It’s the man’s job, she told herself as she wandered frantically around the house. He’s the one who’s supposed to be out facing the world, and if he fails, it’s not up to the woman to take his place. It’s not up to me to take Leo’s place if he’s unable to bring home the bacon, any more than it’s up to Jerome. What a woman must do is face the fact that her husband is a failure. She should do everything she can to get him back on his feet. She should see to it that he is healed and once more restored to the battleground. Once more serving in the lines.

  Why is Sherry out there? she said to herself. Now her mood had ceased to be one of depression; she had become angry, and her entire body vibrated with her agitation. Again and again she clasped her hands together, made fists. Her pace speeded up. A man like that, staying home—how is he different from a bum? How long does he plan to putter around there in his garage, building birdcages or whatever it is?

  If I were his wife, she decided, I would not tolerate that; I would stand for it possibly for a day, and then I would see an end to it. I’d have him back at the job; I’d make him wish he were out of the house and working. I’d make him so glad to get back to work—

  Now, all at once, her emotions turned to the wife, to Sherry; she ceased being angry, and a tide of warm, soft commiseration flowed up in her, almost choking her. Her eyes burned with tears and she said in a low, unsteady voice,

  “That poor woman. That poor, poor woman.”

  I ought to go and support her, Janet thought. Tell her how I feel, how well I understand. He made me go and work; he tried to make me take over for him. But I wouldn’t. No, I told him. It’s up to you, Leo. It’s your responsibility. You can’t expect me to run your real estate business, any more than I can expect you to bear babies if I fail you there.

  That woman has been thoroughly, wholly let down by her husband. As much as if he had run off with another woman. The sacred trust has been broken, and the irony of it is that when they do that to their wives they always have a convincing story. There’s always some rationalization to make the wife feel bad, so she thinks it’s her “duty” to do something. Like go and work as Sherry has done. If Leo had lost his job, he’d start putting the pressure on me the same way; he’d endeavor to make me feel bad. Yes, they create guilt. They have plenty of ways. What you have to do is fight back; you have to not acknowledge the guilt.

  She thought, You have to throw it back to them, where it belongs. It’s their world, their man’s world. Let them compete in it and leave the wives to do what the good Lord intended them to do: stay home and bear babies.

  Oh yes, she thought in anguish. I’ve been through all this. I know all this so well. How the pressure is put on, in a thousand tiny ways. Such skillful ways. Does she know? In the world she came from there probably weren’t such things. Everything was aboveboard. Does she recognize what has happened? I can see it so clearly; I can look down on their marriage—an outsider—and see.

  If she doesn’t know. Janet thought, she certainly should. And he should, too. He shouldn’t be allowed to go on deceiving himself and her as to the true state of affairs.

  Going to the cupboard in the kitchen she got up on the little step ladder and, reaching up to the top shelf, pushed aside large cans of apricots and tomato juice until she found the bottle of bad Tokay that they had put aside in disgust the month before. Here it was, bad as ever, but at least it was something.

  With a tumbler from the sink she carried the Tokay bottle to the kitchen table and reseated herself. It was really terrible stuff; it tasted like cough syrup. And much too sweet. She knew it would make her sick; in all her life she had never got so sick as she had, one time, on bad Tokay. Taking her glass to the sink she diluted the wine with tap water. That made it better.

  Now she found it drinkable. And an ice cube made it taste almost pleasant.

  Sawing away in his workshop, Walter Dombrosio heard only the saw. All at once he sensed someone; he glanced up and jumped with surprise. In the doorway—evidently she had gone through the house, finding no one—stood Janet Runcible.

  Her lips moved. Against the scream of the saw she was saying hello. But he could not hear her. He shut the saw off; the blade slowed and finally ceased turning.

  On her face was a smile, a rigid widening of her mouth, as if she had kept that one expression throughout her journey down the hill and into his house, through each room, until now she had found him; now the smile came into use. She wore a red sweater and cotton pants; many times he had seen her dressed in exactly that way on her trips into town to shop. Her long colorless hair hung down, unbrushed. He could not help noticing how gaunt she was. How tall and fleshless; her arms showed tendons, and the skin had a flabby look. On the backs of her hands he saw freckles against the white skin.

  “Hi,” he said warily, not pleased to see her. He had been deeply involved in cutting off the bottom of a door.

  Still smiling at him, Janet said, “I don’t want to bother you.” Her words came out separately, carefully spoken. As if, he thought, she was being very sure not to say the wrong thing.

  “That’s okay,” he said, i
n a noncommittal tone. He had had almost nothing to do with the Runcibles since the incident about Charley; in fact he had done his best to put them out of his mind. With everything else that he had had to worry about, he did not have any time in which to dwell on the Runcibles.

  Her eyes, red-rimmed, fixed themselves on him. They contained a luster that he could not classify. It was not amusement. Some emotion was busy inside her; something shone out as she gazed at him.

  “Well?” she said.

  To that, he could think of nothing to say.

  After a long pause she again started to speak. The alive element in her eyes had grown in brilliance. Was it vexation? “Well?” she repeated. “What about it?”

  “What about what?” he said.

  With great deliberateness she said, “How about a cup of coffee?”

  “You want a cup of coffee?” he said.

  The brilliance in her eyes danced at him. As if she were burning to tell him something; as if she could hardly keep it back. And yet she did not seem able to say it. The words did not come forth.

  “I’d like one very much,” Janet said.

  With great reluctance he shut off his equipment. “Okay,” he said. “But I have to get back to work.” He did not even particularly care why she had dropped by; he was only interested in resuming his work. He tolerated her, and that was all; people did come by, and there was no getting out from the burden of entertaining them. “I hope there’s a pot made,” he said as he walked past her and up the three stairs into the house. I hope to god I don’t have to stand around while a fresh pot gets made, he thought. He could so easily imagine her in the kitchen, with her cigarette going, her purse beside her, prepared to spend the entire day. Talking on and on about nothing.