The failure of the remedy: "The Home Visit" by Morris Collins

In the 2020 O.Henry anthology, one of my favorite stories was "Lagomorph" by Alexander Macleod, which I wrote about here. It was the story about a man and the family pet rabbit, which he still keeps with him after an amicable divorce. The rabbit is both a comfort to him and a source of bewilderment. Rabbits are hard to read, and in a sense, the rabbit becomes something of a symbol of the mystery of life itself. But a comforting mystery that likes its ears scratched. 

"The Home Visit" by Morris Collins has some overlaps with "Lagomorph." (If you're a student stuck with writing a paper, a compare/contrast of these two stories would be a great idea that, once you've read the two stories, almost writes itself.) In "The Home Visit," we have a couple that seems like it's headed toward divorce, rather than already being there. Their cat, Derek, which was a symbol of the togetherness of the narrator and his wife Alex way back when they got him, is now on the brink of death. In fact, the couple really probably should have put him down already, but then they'd have to deal with their own problems. Perhaps to prepare for the moment when it can't be put off any longer, they go to get a new cat, one that will allow them to continue avoiding their problems by focusing on the cat, and that's where they meet Sarah. Sarah is an eccentric shelter manager who thinks animals are naturally attracted to her and who can't quite remember the made-up Buddhist bullshit wisdom she tries to quote. 

Sarah is judgmental of the narrator and Alex during her home visit, obviously relishing her power. She also get progressively weirder. After taking Alex up on the offer to get drunk, they all head off together to put Derek down at a lovely country location Sarah says she knows about. Sarah calls a friend to drive them there, and when they arrive, we find out that the lovely spot in the country is her ex-father-in-law's ski lodge. The narrator decides he wants to call it all off, partly because he figures that once the cat leaves, Alex won't be far behind. 

In a lot of ways, it's familiar territory. "Detailed dissection of a slowly deteriorating marriage" is maybe the most oft-trodden path of 21st-Century literary fiction. But the story doesn't feel worn-out, because in the hands of an observant and wry author, you can make just about anything feel new. Part of the observation, in fact, is the circular nature of relationships, which somehow makes the frequent appearance of this type of story seem justified: it has to keep reoccurring, because the weaknesses of the characters are so baked into most humans, this story can't help but show up over and over. As a matter of fact, we kind of get a hint of recurrence, since Sarah, who judges the couple for their weaknesses, is herself divorced. Alex once tried to make a predilection for hats a distraction from her real issues, and we later see Sarah's ex-father-in-law and a boy who is with him both wearing porkpie hats, perhaps their own version of this same idiosyncrasy. 

What are the human weaknesses the narrator and Alex suffer from that doom their hopes and happiness? Things like a refusal to move past the way things were and be decisive about the future (narrator), the inability to pinpoint one's own restlessness and sense of unhappiness (Alex), and most importantly the way both parts of a couple look to one another to fix what's wrong with them and get disappointed when it doesn't work (both narrator and Alex). When they can't fill up what's missing for one another, they get a cat. When the cat is about to die, they get another. It repeats within marriages, and it repeats across marriages.