Cancel All Our Vows

by John D. MacDonald

  He opened the suitcase on a chair and pulled out the top dresser drawer. He heard the creak as she sat on his bed.

  “I just want you to hear how it happened. At first he was fresh. And then he apologized and I thought we were friends. I was lonesome for you. I drank too much and I was getting sick and he came out and said I should swim. The world was going around and around.”

  “At least spare me the details. I don’t want a play by play.”

  She made no sign that she had heard him. “He swam out into the lake with me. I felt all funny and dreamy and apart from everything, like I didn’t exist. He kissed me. I let him do it because I didn’t think there would be any harm in that, and I was drunk and I was mad at you and I thought by kissing the boy I was getting even with you. But I couldn’t think clearly.”

  “Will you, for God’s sake, shut up!” he said, feeling a crazy anger. He slammed a stack of shirts into the suitcase and saw, under where they had been, in the drawer, the cracked leather of the holster and the blue oiled steel of the ugly and deadly-looking nine millimeter Mauser he had bought from a GI in Antwerp. The two clips lay beside the holster. He stood in a moment frozen in time.

  “He kissed me again and again and he got the top of my suit down around my waist. He had his hands on me and I was scared and in a funny way it made me helpless to have him touching me, and in some funny way in my mind it seemed like it was you, so that I was half scared and half thinking it was all right because I was drunk, very drunk and floaty.”

  The dreadful words and the dreadful flat voice went on and on. He watched his hands slide the automatic out of the holster and take a clip and slip it up until it clicked in place, with a small, evil, oiled sound. He remembered that it was double action and you did not have to work the slide like on the forty-five, but merely pull the trigger. He turned and aimed it at her where she sat there, misty on the bed, hazy in his vision. And he noted with mild wonder that the barrel of the automatic was as steady as if it rested on rock.

  She looked at the gun and looked at him. He knew that she was terrified of guns. It was perhaps the only thing in the world that scared her.

  She looked back at the gun and she licked her lips and said, “Maybe you have to do it. I don’t know. Maybe it is something you have to do and should do, but I’m going to go right on talking until you pull the trigger, Fletcher. Because the only thing I have left is to tell you what happened.”

  “If you keep talking you’ll force me to do it.”

  She looked into his eyes, ignoring the gun. “You have to understand about my having the crazy idea that it was you. Because, you see, nobody else has ever had me but you. You know I was a virgin when we were married. And in fifteen years there was never anybody else but you, which I think you know in your heart if you think for a minute. So, being drunk, I guess that was why anybody touching me had to be you. And yet I had that crazy fear. But I couldn’t do anything. He got my suit all the way off out there in the lake.”

  He knew he was breathing through his open mouth. He could hear the harsh quick sound of it. Everything in the world was blurred but her eyes.

  “He towed me in, swimming along, and he kept his hands on me and it kept me in that funny helpless floaty feeling. If he’d let me alone for a minute I would have come out of it. And in the shallow water he picked me up and took me over to the raft. Then we were in darkness and, oh, my darling, I knew then that it was you as he was against me, and then I touched the back of his head and the hair was all wrong and it brought me out of it. I fought him, Fletcher. He’s terribly strong. I fought hard and I found a heavy glass tumbler I’d dropped off the dock and I hit him with it as hard as I could, twice, and then he threw it away after he twisted it out of my hand. He had my arm pulled across me like this and I hit him with my free hand and he pinned that too, and pinned me with his weight so I couldn’t move. While I was fastened down there, and it was horrible, like animals fighting in the dark, he moved and … I felt it happen. It was a hard pain, and he had done it and I couldn’t fight any more. I lay there like I was dead and he did what he wanted to do to me and went away from me. I wanted to die. I wished I was dead. It was like my whole world had ended. It wasn’t his fault, any more than mine. He thought I … was a different sort of person. And then he was ashamed of doing it. I had to face you and come home with you. And afterward I cried, you remember, and if you had asked me why I was crying then, I would have had to tell you. And this morning I knew that I couldn’t ever tell you, and I knew a thing like that would never happen again, and so I thought I would make it up to you for all the rest of your life. Doing little things for you. And maybe tell you when we were both old. Now I’ve said all of it, and I guess if you have to … do it you better do it quick because I don’t think I can sit here any more without crying again, and I don’t want to be crying when you … do it to me.”

  She looked at him steadily and gravely. He looked down at the gun, turned and released the clip and dropped it in the drawer, put the gun back in the holster and snapped the strap.

  He finished packing the suitcase, closed it and snapped the locks. She was lying back across the bed, looking up at the ceiling.

  “Are … you still going to … divorce me, Fletch?”

  He paused in the doorway. “What else can I do? I can’t live with you. I can’t look at you without remembering that little scene. I can’t ever touch you again. I get sick at the idea.”

  She neither looked at him nor answered. He went into the study and stripped the cover off the studio couch and made it up. There was no need of a blanket. The still night had folded warmly and wetly around the house. He undressed and went to bed with the study door closed. The moon made a pattern on the rug. She could have screamed, couldn’t she? No, that story was full of holes. She’d wanted it, and maybe she’d put up a little scrap for the sake of appearances. But not much of a scrap. Roosters chase chickens who never seem to be running as fast as they can. Once rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it. Hell, she knew which side of the bread they put the butter on. Make him think it was a form of rape, and you can go right on having your cake and eating it too. Take your pick of all the strong, eager young men. And let the gullible husband keep you in pretty clothes and pay for your nice house. What kind of a fool was he supposed to be?

  The liquor surged around in his head. Oh, a dandy party! The finest of the social season. Sunday afternoon the Wyants entertained a small group at their new home on Coffeepot Road. During the evening the Wyants made plans for their pending divorce.

  The memory of the Chicago redhead drifted back across his mind. He forced it away quickly. Not the same sort of thing at all.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Fletcher drove to the office through the first glaring, blinding heat of a new day. This heat wave was never going to break. The world was going to be like this from now on.

  Breakfast had been particularly hideous. Awakening to the realization of what had happened the night before had been bad enough. But breakfast had been enormously worse. She had tried to cover the discoloration of her face with powder. When he had come out to breakfast she had said, “Good morning.”

  He had merely glanced at her, making no response, feeling a vague shame not only for his own reluctance to respond, but also because of the memory of melodrama, that incredible scene, both passionate and ridiculous. And he knew that he had come perilously close, in his hurt and disappointment, to pulling the trigger. Had he done it, it would have been in the spirit of a child smashing a favorite toy because it had pinched his finger.

  The half-drunk melodrama of the night before now seemed ludicrous in the hot bright light of the new morning. He had no idea of what to say to her, and so he said nothing. When her back was turned he looked cautiously at her. She wore a faded cotton dress and her hair was not as neat as it usually was in the morning. As she took the few steps between stove and sink she moved heavily. Watching her, he had the weird feeling that there were two women invol
ved, two Janes. And he should hold this one close and they could comfort each other, and both despise the evil the other one had done.

  When Judge and Dink came to breakfast he tried to simulate a touch of morning cheer. He saw that Jane was doing the same thing, and from the reaction of the children, their quick puzzled glances, he knew that they were both overdoing it.

  “Gee, what happened to your face, Mom?” Judge asked.

  “I tripped over one of the deck chairs in the dark last night, dear.” Her voice was quick and gay and her eyes were dead.

  “What was all that yelling?” Dink demanded. “You and those people were making an awful lot of noise.”

  “I guess everybody was just having a good time,” Fletcher said.

  Dink gave him a quick sharp look. “They sounded mad to me.”

  The children ate with unfamiliar solemnity. Whenever Fletcher was looking down at his plate, he could feel them looking at him. When he looked up, though, they would be busy with their food.

  When he got up to go the children were still there, so he went around to Jane’s chair, bent and kissed her cheek and said, “Good-by, dear. ’By, kids.”

  Jane got up quickly and almost ran out of the kitchen, making a thick strangled noise in her throat as she left the room. It reminded him of Dink on Saturday morning.

  “What’s wrong with Mom?” Judge demanded.

  “She … just doesn’t feel very good today. I want you both to be good. Be quiet and don’t nag her. It won’t hurt you to spend a quiet day, both of you.”

  Strangely, there was no objection. He kissed Dink, rumpled Judge’s hair and glanced back at them as he left the kitchen. They both sat there looking at him, and he thought he saw the light of accusation in their eyes.

  He was enormously relieved to get out of the house. There had been other mornings, other hangovers, other stirrings of shame and remorse. You waited and it all went away. But not this time. It wasn’t going to go away. In the back of his mind was a tiny cardboard stage bathed in moonlight where the doll figures of Jane and Sam Rice moved endlessly. No matter where he looked or what he thought of, he was aware of the doll figures back there, aware of their endless, blinded spasm.

  He was aware of parking the car, and then he was suddenly aware of being in the office, behind his desk, with the squat, blushing Marcia Trevin standing in front of him. He had no memory of the walk from car to office, or of the usual morning greetings to the people he had seen.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Trevin. I was thinking of something else. What did you say?”

  “Mr. Forman’s secretary just phoned and said the meeting would be at ten instead of nine thirty. Maybe you’d like me to type your notes.”

  “That would be nice, if you can read them.”

  “Oh, I’m used to your writing, Mr. Wyant. Mr. Wyant …”

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “Mr. Wyant, do you feel all right? I mean … you don’t look as if you felt very good this morning.” She was blushing furiously.

  “Just type the notes, will you? I’m perfectly all right.”

  He saw the quick suggestion of tears in her eyes as she turned and fled to her desk. It was a tone of voice he had never used with her before. He turned and looked out across the landscaped lawn toward the low modern plant buildings, and the glint and flicker of the neat lines of cars in the plant parking lot. Beyond the parking lot he saw the tiny doll figures, straining in the moonlight. He pushed his knuckles hard against his eyes and still saw them, beyond the darting colored spots that pressure made. And then they had walked in, and in the Dimbrough living room she had been sweetly casual, and the boy had been smiling and deferential.

  The muted thump and murmur of the production floors came into the office building, providing a bass background for the thinner, sharper noises of administration. Thin clack of Miss Trevin’s electric typewriter. Distant obbligato on a calculator. A girl’s sharp heels ticking down the corridor.

  Marcia Trevin came in and mutely laid the typed notes on the edge of his desk and turned, not looking at him, to leave.

  “Miss Trevin.”

  “Yes sir?” Poised, still not turning.

  “I’m sorry I snarled. Maybe I am a little … out of sorts.”

  He saw then the blushing, sunrise smile. “That’s all right, Mr. Wyant. Which do you want me to do first? That cost of sales analysis or the inventory level thing?”

  “Use your own judgment.”

  “Well …” she said uncertainly, “I guess I can finish the sales one today. Mr. Corban said maybe there was one part of it you wanted to change, though.”

  “I haven’t heard anything about that. Type it up the way I prepared it. If Mr. Corban wants it changed, he can make out his own report.”

  “Yes sir. Uh … Mr. Wyant …”

  “What is it, Miss Trevin?”

  “Mr. Corban is … very clever, isn’t he?”

  “A very bright young man I should say.”

  “When he mentions you to anybody, Mr. Wyant, he sounds funny.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I shouldn’t say it. I don’t know how to say it, I guess. As though you were, well, sort of old-fashioned in your ideas. He’s sort of … patronizing. It makes me wonder if … he’s really your friend, Mr. Wyant.”

  He was tempted to tell her to keep her nose at her typewriter and stop indulging her taste for intrigue. But she had such a serious, eager, adoring look. And she had let him know of other things which had been shaping up to his disadvantage, so that he had been able to prepare himself in time.

  He made himself say, smiling, “I think we better both keep a weather eye on our bright young friend, Marcia.”

  “It’s three minutes of ten, Mr. Wyant.”

  He stood up and started to head for the door. “Thanks, Miss Trevin.”

  “Mr. Wyant! Your notes!”

  “Oh … thanks. That was stupid, wasn’t it?”

  He walked through her small office to the corridor door, aware that she was looking at him with puzzled concern. His mind veered back to Jane and suddenly he found himself in the small conference room without any memory of walking there. Stanley Forman was at the head of the table, carefully cutting the end from a cigar.

  “ ’Morning, Fletch. All present and accounted for. This time, Miss Townsend, see if you can keep track of who said what. All right, Harry. This morning we’re discussing whether we can take on the big subcontract, or whether, in fact, we can afford not to. Let’s hear the production angle.”

  Morose Harry Bailey began to read his notes in a dead flat monotone. Fletcher made himself listen for a time and then his thoughts drifted away, drifted back to the self-torture of his imaginings of Jane and Sam Rice and how they had been together. Harry’s voice droned on about percentages of capacity, and increased maintenance staff for two-shift operation and extension of gravity conveyors.

  Fletcher saw Ellis Corban sitting on the far side of the table, several places away. His face was a model of junior executive attention.

  Harry finished and Stanley Forman said, “To sum up then, this stuff is enough like our usual line so that we can take it on without too much expense in tooling and rearrangement of floor space. Vogaler, what’s the purchasing picture?”

  Vogaler gave a brief crisp analysis of the tightening materials situation and how their normal line would inevitably be cramped.

  There was a report from personnel on the labor supply picture. Fletcher was once again lost in his self-torment.

  He woke up suddenly. “What?”

  Stanley frowned at him. “If it isn’t too much trouble, Fletch, give us the financial picture.”

  It was a bad start. He began to improvise from his notes, read the wrong figures twice and finally, ineptly, managed to get it straightened out. He leaned back with a sigh. They were all looking at him and the room was silent. He had the idea that they all knew about Jane. The idea was absurd, but he couldn’t get it out of his head.


  “That isn’t as bright a picture as I’d hoped,” Stanley said. “Any comments.”

  Ellis Corban coughed politely. “Mr. Forman, I shouldn’t bring this up because I haven’t had an opportunity to discuss it with Mr. Wyant. In fact, the idea came to me just as the meeting was getting under way, and I don’t feel I have it very well organized, but I think it might be worked out if we … ah … kick it around here a bit.”

  Fletcher stared down the table at Ellis. The man was doing it just right. With the proper mixture of humility and concern. Fletcher thought hard, trying to imagine what Ellis had dreamed up. And he knew it hadn’t been anything evolved in the last few minutes.

  “Let’s hear it, Corban,” Stanley said quietly.

  “I guess you could say my plan has two phases. As to the first phase, it is costing us money to warehouse our trade units pending the availability of the thermostats. There is, of course, not only the cost of the floor space involved, but also the interest on the money involved. Why couldn’t we do this? Contact the largest dealers. Offer them the units at a price a bit lower than our usual price provided they will accept immediate delivery and hold the units in stock until we can ship the thermostats. Every big dealer has a repair department capable of assembling the thermostats to the units. There is no good reason why that has to be done here. And we can make the price attractive without hurting ourselves because the cost of maintaining the inventory will be as great as the discount, and we can get immediate use of the funds. That, of course, would be subject to approval of Sales.”

  They all looked at Homer Hatton. He took a tug at his underlip, frowning. Finally he said, “In normal times they wouldn’t stand still for it. But there isn’t enough floor stock to keep up with new construction. So I think it will be okay. But the discount shouldn’t be big enough to make the smaller dealers yammer about preferential treatment.”