Cancel All Our Vows

by John D. MacDonald

  Jane sat down. She knew she should say yes. She knew that it might be terribly important to say yes. She managed a smile. “He’s big enough now to take care of himself, Martha. I like it here, and here I stay.”

  “Smart gal!” Dolly said, peering through her sun glasses at her knitting. She stood up. “You two can soak up that heat all day if you want to. Me for a cool nap with the rest of the young children.”

  Jane spread her towel out, put her cigarettes handy. “I’ll take mine right here,” she said. She rolled onto her face and surrendered herself to the bright hard weight of the sun. The boards under the towel were sun-hot, and she could feel the heat of them against her breasts through the towel and the swim suit. She felt on edge. She felt as though she were trembling inwardly. Why should this feel like such an irrevocable decision? She shut her eyes against the glare. The lake lapped the pilings of the dock. She could almost smell the brassy heat. She made her muscles go flaccid, and she felt as thought, with each exhalation, her body flattened itself a bit more against the heated boards.

  The voice awakened her and she felt bleared by heat, swimming in heat, afloat in tides of hot light. “Wha’?” she said, through thickened lips.

  “I said you might be getting too much, Jane.” She half turned and squinted up into Sam’s face. He was massive against the sun, kneeling beside her. She saw the incredible symmetry of his broad chest, curved hard as a warrior shield. She lay back again, face down, trying to force her way up through the daze of sun and light.

  “Where’s … everybody?”

  “Let’s see. Hank is napping and so is Dolly. The kids are up the mountain. Steve and Dick and Deena are doing some slow trolling in the boat. Jane, your back looks almost crisp. Let me put some oil on it.”

  “Don’t, please,” she said weakly.

  She heard him unscrew the bottle cap. Then she felt the warm slick of oil on her back, felt the gentle pressure of his big hand. He rubbed it up from the small of her back toward her shoulders. The sun and sleep had beaten down the hard wiry edge of desire in her, and now it all came back, but not as before. It came back as a floating warmness, and she abandoned herself to it completely, breathing through her open mouth, and his touch was a caress, and his hand was strong and warm.

  “My darling,” he whispered.

  “No,” she said, her thoughts incoherent, knowing only that she must stop the touch of his hand. “No! Oh, damn you! Oh, God, Sam!” And she rolled away from him, sitting up, her eyes squinched with brightness and with tears, and saying, “Leave me alone. Please leave me alone.”

  He was kneeling, sitting back on his heels. His big hand gleamed with the oil. He stared at her and said quietly, “I know.”

  “You don’t know a damn thing. You’re too young to know anything.”

  He deliberatly capped the bottle, lay face down and washed his hands in the lake, picked up her towel and dried them, without speaking.

  “Okay, Jane. In the lake it was a gag. Hell, you’re female. You’re pretty. You’re stacked. So you’re fair game. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. That’s the way I figure. And, baby, I’m not one of your wet-eared prep-school kids. I’ve picked coal and driven trucks. So it was a standard approach. You see that? If I made out, fine. If I didn’t, better luck next time. But something went wrong.”

  “How?” she whispered.

  “You tell me. That crazy ride with you perched on my shoulders. I don’t know. Like floating. Like dreaming. Like nothing ever. It scared me. In a way that nothing ever has before. I kept thinking it had all happened before, somehow. I don’t expect you to understand what I mean. So I’m sunk. Damn it, I think I’m in love with you.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I don’t see how I could be. What’s the other answer? What is it, then?”

  She squared her shoulders. “Young boys often get crushes on older women.”

  He leaned forward a little. “All right lady. Then tell me what it was that got to you? Tell me.”

  She was gaining control and she knew it. “Sam, I’d like to say it was your sterling character or your big shoulders or something. But it was purely physiological. Nothing more than that. Ask any neurologist, if you don’t understand what I mean.”

  He stared at her and then shocked her with a great brassy bray of laughter. It made the cords in his strong throat stand out. “Now—believe me—I’ve heard everything.”

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “Let’s go for a walk along one of these trails.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you want to prove you’re stronger than what any neurologist can explain to me?”

  “That’s not the point. I don’t have to prove anything.”

  He sobered at once. “I’m sorry I said that. Jane, I think you’re one damn fine person. I know what I am. I don’t want you to have any part of me.”

  “Never fear.”

  “But I can’t guarantee that I won’t make passes. That’s almost instinctive.”

  “No character?”

  He grinned that small-boy grin. “No training, maybe. So promise I’ll get a cold shoulder every time.”

  “You will. That’s a guarantee.”

  “Because, Jane, I think this could be trouble. I think it … might mean too much.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “We’re a hell of a lot alike, basically. That’s the trouble with us. You could be my sister.”

  “Big sister.”

  “Stop smiling at me like that or I make the next pass right here in front of God and everybody.”

  “Control yourself, sonny. Lie down and tell me your personal history.”

  He rolled onto his back. “Let me see now. Where do I start? The pass I made at the nurse in the maternity ward? I think I was four days old at the time.”

  “That might be interesting.”

  “Well, she leaned over my cradle and you understand I was too young to have developed any taste at that point. She had red hair and teeth like a beaver. And when she saw what was I up to, she was filled with outraged indignation. She told me she was old enough to be my mother, and what was I thinking of, anyhow. God, Jane, you’ve got a lovely laugh. Like bells.”

  “Get back to the nurse.”

  “Well, she reported me to the doctor and he told my mother and she said she wasn’t at all surprised, as that sort of thing seemed to run in the family. From then on I was under a cloud. I was the scourge of the kindergarten, and by the time I got to the first grade, I was a tired old roué, but I still had a fine fond eye for a shapely ankle. Girls used to follow me wherever I went. I made them line up in columns of twos and hired a fife and drum corps. We were quite a sight on the streets of Nanticoke. I insisted on nothing but music from Scheherazade. Now tell me all about yourself.”

  “Dull, sonny. Dull. A housewife. My husband is the treasurer of Forman Furnace. I have those two children you met. We live in a new house. We love each other, and we’re good for each other.”

  “He a nice guy?”

  “Fletch is a honey. He has his gruesome moments, but don’t we all.”

  “The script is wrong, Jane. You’re supposed to be married to some half-dead old crud. And you love life, see. So we get this sequence, see. We make it like a dream, and we put you in something all shimmery and white, coming down these pink marble stairs see. With a full orchestra and heavy on the violins. I come walking out from the side to where the camera can pick me up, and at first I don’t see you. Then suddenly I look up and there you are. Your eyes go wide. We stare at each other. Lots of violins right there. You come down the stairs hesitant-like, your fingers at your throat. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I take a step toward you. We reach out. Our fingertips touch. And we dance. Oh, hell! Cut. I just remember I don’t dance good enough.”

  “Sam you’re a wonderful fool!”

  “Oh, sure. Good old Sam. Tell you what. I’ll be a friend of the family. Raid your icebox on Thursday nights. The three of us,
we’ll sit out in the kitchen and tell lies and laugh like anything.”

  “What are you going to be, Sam?”

  “When I grow up, you mean? It’s like this. That fellow that steers the back end of the hook and ladder, there’s a job!”

  “Seriously.”

  “Hmm, she’s got to be serious,” he said. She was propped on her elbows, looking at him in profile. His eyes were shut against the sun. He said slowly, “This I usually keep to myself. Don’t know why you should all of a sudden seem like … well, like another part of myself. I clown, kid. Strictly for the kicks. When I lock my door, I hit the books. We beef-trusters aren’t supposed to do that, not with the money they pay us to play ball. Honey, I’ve got to find myself something I can believe in. We’ve built a fat shiny world, and we’ve built it so tall, it looks like it wanted to fall on us. I know I could make myself fit my natural environment—which is maybe that good old Community Plate, Rusko Windows and a Forman Furnace in the basement. I have the right touch, somehow, with people. So I can make the living, according to their rules, but believing in it is something else. Mr. W. Chambers, it seems to me, simplified the problem. Be a pinko or a Christer he says, with nobody in the middle. I personally can’t get up a hot sweat over either answer. That Walden gentleman comes close, but I haven’t got a green thumb and I like modern plumbing. You see, I somehow don’t want to live my life with my tongue in my cheek. Corny as it sounds, I want a cause, and some good reasons.”

  “Well,” Jane said uncertainly, “I don’t think I know exactly what you mean, but doesn’t everybody feel that way at some time or another?”

  “Could be. How about hubby? Bright guy?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Ever hear the same general thing from him?”

  “A long time ago, I guess. We had some crazy ideas. We were kids. I started going with him when I was fifteen. The depression was a pretty real thing then. We had a vague idea of going someplace in the world that was full of … superstition and poverty and disease and … doing what we could. Changing the world a little as much as we could. But that was a long time ago.”

  “What happened?”

  She laughed and it had a slightly flat sound in the sunlight. “Oh, you have to earn a living. You take a job you don’t really want, and then you have kids and you have to get ahead in the job as best you can.”

  “Is he happy?”

  “Fletch loves his job. And I guess he’s proud of his home and his family. We belong to nice clubs and we have good friends. It’s a good life, Sam.”

  “That’s what I want to know,” he said, turning onto his side, leaning on one elbow. “Is it a good life, or do you get to a point where it turns into just a hell of a lot of compromises, and it doesn’t seem to mean a hell of a lot? It’s this, I guess. Should a man have a real sense of dedication, or can he get along without it, and make his buck with the least possible fuss?”

  “The way you talk you’re trying to make our life sound … oh, sort of silly and pointless. But it isn’t, you see. I can’t talk this way very well. Maybe I don’t think this way often enough. But always there have been men and women and they’ve lived together and they’ve had children. And isn’t that the point of the whole thing? A sort of a unit, and you’re together. And that’s enough. I’ve met some of those people, those strange people with some kind of a mission. They’re always a little weird. And they make me uncomfortable. And don’t try to tell me it’s guilt that makes me uncomfortable, either.”

  “Okay, Jane. Try this for size, then. Five more years, and your kids will be out of the nest. You’ll still be a young woman with a lot of spunk. So what do you do? Bridge? Red Cross Drive? Social work? Friend husband will be plugging away for another twenty years at least.”

  “I’ll find something to keep me busy.”

  “And out of mischief?” Will it be something satisfying? I mean all that is just another phase of the same problem, isn’t it?”

  “Sam, now you’re making me uncomfortable. I just asked you what you were going to do with yourself after you’re through school.”

  “One more thing, honey, and then I’ll shut up. I’m afraid that if I turn into a nice steady insurance agent or something, I’ll stick it out for fifteen years or so and then blow my top. Either that or pop off from a heart attack, or nurse an ulcer, and don’t tell me all the heart jobs and ulcer jobs don’t come from that sort of tension you get when you don’t like your work.”

  “Fletch loves his work. I told you that.”

  “I wasn’t talking about your Fletch. I was talking about me. You know, I think I’ll be a soldier of fortune. I’ll be a general in some banana republic and take the midnight plane out with the Presidente’s daughter and the Inca emeralds. Then I’ll turn up in Persia, only I guess they don’t call it that any more, and I’ll sell the Presidente’s daughter to some roving Bedouin tribe and as they ride off on their camels into the sunset, I’ll chuckle heartily. Later the Presidente’s daughter will turn up in a Paul Bowles novel, and a 20th Century-Fox agent will find her and give her a screen contract, and I’ll turn up again to collect the usual agent’s commission. You know, a guy could make a career out of just turning up at the dramatic moment. I’ll be the poor girl’s Errol Flynn.” He stood up quickly, hooked his toes over the edge of the dock, gave her a broad wink, and went off in a flat racing dive.

  She sat and watched him swim out, thankful that her sense of proportion had returned. He was a spectacular male, but basically just a kid, and of no danger to her. He had stirred her physically, but that was the end of it. The lake was utterly still in the afternoon heat. She sat cross-legged, her elbows on her knees, chin on her hands, watching him swim out. Darn him. First he makes me uncomfortable one way and then another way. Fletch is happy. He gets moody. That’s just the way he is. Maybe he’s seemed a little further away this year, but it’s probably the office. He’s good at his job and he knows it. He’s not a crusader, for goodness sake. And neither is Sam Rice. Sam is just in a phase. It’s part of growing up. God, I was going to be Florence Nightingale, junior. A dim ward, and me rustling in starch, and laying my cool hand on the fevered brows of the wounded, while I could hear cannon in the distance. Kid stuff. Dreams. Self-dramatization. You get over that. I got over that dream fast the time I went with Daddy when he didn’t want me to go. That boy, screaming and screaming, and oh the blood and the smell. I’m where I belong. Wife and mother. It sounds so dull when you fill out a form and have to write housewife. But it’s good. The kids and the love and the fun. It’s what you’re after. A lot of people miss. We didn’t. Those Corbans. They missed. You can see it. Contempt when she looks at him. She doesn’t know how much it shows. Or maybe she doesn’t care. Those hills are the right misty blue. That’s what I wanted, but when I got the drapes home they were just too damn blue. They’ve faded and maybe they’ll fade more and be right for the room. Fletch, we’re being childish today. Our day to be childish. Our year, maybe, to have a little trouble. Like that second year we were married. And the year after the war when he was so irritable. Trouble ends and we’re always closer. God, if this heat doesn’t end my golf is going to be shot. The kids should be back by now. Dink will get tennis at the camp. She needs work on her backhand. She could be good, really good, starting so early. I know she lets Judge beat her every once in a while. Is he going to swim all the way across the lake? No, he’s floating out there. I’m baked. I’ll swim out to him. It doesn’t mean anything now and he knows it. We’re friends now. A grin like a little kid, and then all of a sudden so serious. He’s quick. He picks things up. I wonder what sort of family he came from.

  She dived from the dock and slanted up through the green water, and swam out toward Sam Rice, swam with a slow effortless crawl, gliding like an otter through the clear blue water of Lake Vernon.

  Chapter Nine

  When the moon came up out of the east, full and golden as a lantern, it turned the last of the lingering grey dusk to night. On
ly a few coals were left to glow in the grey bed of ash in the outdoor fireplace. Someone far down the lake was singing. Jane sat alone on the dock, dangling her legs, huddled and miserable. Hank was in his usual form, loud and lewd by turns. She could not hear some whispered comment he made, but she heard Dolly and Martha’s scandalized laughter.

  Martha came down the dock and squatted beside her. “I got hold of Hud all right. Dolly and Hank say there’s plenty of room. And Hank says that Fletch must be coming out or he would have phoned. So let’s do this. It’s after nine and the kids are bushed, so let’s drop them in the sack. If Fletch gets here too late, your kids can stay overnight and Hud and I will bring them down in time tomorrow. We have to be at your place around three, so we’ll drop them off on our way home to change, say about one thirty or two. Of course, if Fletch gets here before they cork off, you can take them back with you. But there is plenty of room.”

  Jane stood up. “Okay, Martha. Let’s put them to bed. Where are they going to be?”

  “Girls in the bunk room and boys upstairs. Your glass empty? So’s mine. Let’s take a break for a refill.”

  They walked up by the big picnic table beside the house and Hank, under the light of the yellow mosquito bulb, jovially mixed them drinks. Every once in a while Jane would listen for the sound of the car, for the sound of Fletch’s arrival. She knew she had drunk more than usual, had drunk enough to, under normal circumstances, give her an infuriating attack of giggles. But Fletch’s continued lateness left her with a hard core of sobriety. All the drinks had done was to make her lips feel numbed, her legs a bit uncertain.

  She helped Martha round up the children and then, with dire threats about going to sleep and not yammering all night, they got them assorted in the proper beds with a single blanket apiece and another handy, and turned out the lights. As they left they could hear the whispering start.