Go Back to Your Precious Wife and Son

"Go Back to Your Precious Wife and Son" is a short story first published in Ladies' Home Journal in July 1962 and reprinted in the collections Welcome to the Monkey House in 1968 and Complete Stories in 2017. It was Vonnegut's third and final publication for that magazine.

Plot Summary

A storm window installer who also does bathtub enclosures has been hired to install both at the newly purchased New Hampshire home of famous Hollywood movie star Gloria Hilton and her fifth husband, George Murra. While installing a hot-air register, he overhears the two arguing and ending their marriage. Catching a glimpse through the register, Gloria is without makeup and totally unglamorous while George seems tired and defeated. Told to leave a few minutes later before finishing the installation, he heads to town in his truck, in back of which is the new door for the bathtub enclosure featuring Gloria Hilton's face at her exact height. Hearing that Gloria has been seen speeding out of town with her maid, he calls George to see if he can return to complete the installation of the windows. George initially mistakes him for someone named John before allowing him to come up to finish his work, although he says he no longer wants the expensive bathtub door with Gloria's face.

While waiting for some glue to dry, George invites the installer into his house for bourbon. George explains to him that he met Gloria while working on a film project and left his first wife and their son to marry her and move to New Hampshire. They would get away from the "phonies" in Los Angeles and he would write for Gloria, although in the last year he's in fact written nothing. He married his first wife when he was 18 and their son, who finds him "contemptible" for leaving his mother, is now 15 and at a private school in Mount Henry, 22 miles away. George tells the installer that most people who marry at 18 end up divorced, but he replies that he married at 18 and has been with his wife for twenty years. It is his son, John, that George initially thought was calling him since he'd called the school saying there had been a family emergency, spurring John to come visit the next day. Now exceptionally drunk, the installer returns home, confusingly tells off his wife, removes their own bathtub enclosure door, and then falls asleep in the bathtub.

Returning the next afternoon to finish his work, the installer finds that John has arrived. George finds his son's hostility unbearable and asks the installer to join them. The three share and brief, tense conversation before John insists on leaving. Uncertain how to get John to listen to him, the installer suggests that George "[k]ick him in the pants," which he does. Shocked and dumbfounded, John stands silently while George admits it was a mistake to leave his family and that he wants to return. John calls his mother and the three reconcile. The installer returns home to find his wife gone, still upset about the night before. He installs the new door with Gloria Hilton's face and makes dinner for himself and his son before his wife returns, calm and relaxed, happy to have had a day for herself. She goes to take a shower and the installer, realizing he forgot to tell her about the new enclosure door, runs to the upstairs bathroom where he sees his wife standing in the shower with Gloria Hilton's face.