Cancel All Our Vows

by John D. MacDonald

  Madge Trumbull was alone at the lake with her two kids, and she was delighted that Jane had changed her mind. She said Judge and Dink were most welcome and couldn’t they stay longer than Thursday. She said they were never any trouble, and she would even like to keep them all summer. But Jane explained how excited they were over going to the summer camps that had been picked out way before Christmas. They all swam in the late afternoon, Jane in her old suit, knowing that she would never again be able to wear the new one. It was a much bigger lake than Lake Vernon, and the water was colder. She swam hard, trying to tire herself. Afterward, she and Madge sat on the big porch while the combination maid and cook prepared the dinner. They drank cocktails and talked and once Jane was on the verge of telling Madge the whole thing, and then quickly changed her mind. It wouldn’t do any good. And, if she and Fletcher managed to heal, partially, this most serious of all rifts, it might do harm, as Madge was definitely not noted for her ability to keep secrets.

  So she talked and twice she forgot the whole horror for a few minutes at a time, only to have it come flooding in on her, worse than ever.

  They stayed up far too late after all the kids were in bed, and after Jane had at last gone to bed she knew that a fresh supply of tears had filled the well, so she turned her face into the pillow and bunched it against her mouth and cried until there was a large damp patch under her eyes. Then, drained and exhausted, she turned the pillow over and tried to pray. It had been too long since she had prayed. It made her feel self-conscious and awkward. She and Fletcher had both drifted away from church, except for Easter and Christmas visits. And lately the children had been permitted to get away with not attending Sunday school.

  There was a pine smell in the night air and she lay on her back and tried to pray. And then, returning to childhood, returning to a ceremony that she had not used since long before her marriage, she got out of bed and knelt on the rag rug by the bed with the cool night breeze against her body. She folded her hands and knew that it would have to be in words she could say aloud, as in childhood.

  “God, I … I have committed a sin of the flesh. I was … weak, and maybe weakness is evil, but it was not … deliberate evil. I don’t think I am a bad woman. I have been … a foolish woman. Maybe we don’t live the way we should. But I have no excuse. I beg Your forgiveness, and I beg of You to return to me the … love and respect of my husband. Amen.”

  She climbed back into the bed and pulled the blanket up and shivered for a time until she was warm again. The prayer had left her with a feeling of futility. It had been an empty, theatrical gesture, she felt, and if there was a God, He surely had long since given up listening to the Godless people of Minidoka.

  She left the lake a bit later than she had anticipated. She said good-by to the children and hoped that they had not noticed that her farewell had been a bit more fervent than the situation demanded. All the way to Minidoka, down the road that wound down through the hills, she planned the talk she would have to have with Fletcher.

  Jane sensed that Fletcher had spent a night as miserable as hers, and perhaps worse. Emotional exhaustion made it impossible to maintain that hard edge of anger. Fletcher would be drained, numb and miserable. Perhaps, after all, this would be the best time to talk, before either of them had achieved any set pattern, any blind spot too pervasive.

  She knew what she had to say. I want to be taken back, on your terms. If we can keep just a little of what we had, I want it kept at all costs. I’m no good without you. The thing that hurts the worst is your pride, and your self-respect. But I told you the truth of how it was. Suppose when I was alone, somebody broke into the house and raped me. What would be your reaction to that? Divorce me as unclean? Suppose the man didn’t break in. Suppose I unlocked the door for him, knowing that I was being foolish, but thinking that nothing would happen. Where does guilt start, Fletcher? If you can think of my reluctance, think that I fought, then can’t you start believing again that this body is yours? I’ve tried to keep myself young for you. And, Fletcher, look into your own heart and see if you can find a memory of a time when you were at fault, and much more willingly, much more the aggressor than I was.

  There could not be a calm talk, she knew. There would have to be a scene. But perhaps the scene could end in calmness.

  She went slowly down the drive. After the light she had to turn right in the third block, onto Coffeepot Road. Two cars were waiting to turn left on green across the traffic. She went by and caught a glimpse of a green car, a slim arm outstretched in signal, Laura with Fletcher beside her. She drove on and traffic was too heavy for her to look back. She tried to laugh at herself. Diseased imagination. Such a coincidence was just a little too much to expect. The Corbans’ car was green. Of course, but Fletcher would be in the office, and so would Ellis, and if Laura was riding around with a man, which was likely, it could hardly be Fletcher.

  She turned up the road and into the drive and parked in front of the garage doors. She took out her small overnight bag and unlocked the front door and went into the house. She smelled coffee at once and went to the kitchen, still carrying her bag. She touched the side of the pot. The gas flame was out, but the pot was very hot, almost hot enough to burn her.

  She put the bag down and walked frowning through the house. She knew enough about him and his habits so that she soon found out he had come home drunk. He had slept in his shorts. His pajamas were still neatly folded. She examined the bathroom. He had cleaned up pretty well, but there was still evidence that he had been sick. The clock had stopped. The alarm was still wound tight, so it hadn’t gone off. The hot coffeepot meant he had overslept, and he had not put the aspirin bottle back in the cabinet near the sink. It was still on the linoleum counter top. She began to wonder what clothes he had worn to the office. She went through his wardrobe and could not find anything missing that he might have worn. The new dacron slacks were gone. She checked his shirts. Suddenly she realized the grey Egyptian cotton shirt was gone. It was hardly an office costume. And didn’t she have the vague impression that the man beside Laura had been dressed in grey? She looked at her watch, the small gold watch he had given her on their tenth wedding anniversary. Twenty-five after ten.

  She sat by the phone for a time. Miss Trevin would know her voice. She remembered something she had read, and took a Kleenex and put it over the mouthpiece. She consciously made her voice more nasal and faster.

  “Good morning, Mr. Wyant’s office.”

  “Can I speak to him please?”

  “Who is calling, please?”

  “Miss Reilly. It’s a personal matter. I’d like to talk to him.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Reilly, but Mr. Wyant is out sick today. Perhaps you could reach him at his home if it’s important enough to disturb him.” Trevin gave her the number and Jane thanked her and hung up. She phoned the plant number again and asked for Mr. Corban. Sorry, but Mr. Corban is out of town. He isn’t expected back until late Thursday.

  She made one more call, to the Corbans’ house. She sat and listened to the long ringing of the phone in the empty house. After a while she replaced the phone on the cradle.

  He certainly had wasted no time. The minute he got a ready-made excuse he went snuffling off on the hot trail of that little piece. So her self-advertising campaign on Sunday had borne fruit already. Wave it a couple of times and watch the men flock around. With Fletcher at the head of the line. Pack of dogs trotting amiably after a bitch, tongues lolling.

  She was vastly and enormously angry. She took her overnight bag and flung it on her bed. He’d been too drunk to remember he was supposed to be sleeping in the study. She used some of the surplus energy of anger to rip the sheets from his bed and make it up fresh. Suddenly, as she was balling up the sheets, she stopped and stared hard at a small dark red smudge. She smelled it, and caught the faint perfume of lipstick. Not her shade. With her coloring she had to wear something with a good deal of orange in it, or else look like death itself.

 
; Indeed he had wasted no time smuggling the little bitch into my house, into my bedroom to smear her dirty mouth on my sheets. She hasn’t got the moral sense of a mink. Little mare, all aquiver for the stallion. Any stallion. This makes what happened to me look like a Presbyterian kiss. This is revolting. This smells to high heaven.

  She marched to the phone, suddenly aware of exactly what she would do. She phoned the Dimbrough camp at Lake Vernon and once again held the Kleenex over the mouthpiece. She heard Dolly answer the phone. “Hello?”

  “Say,” she said nasally, “could I talk to Sam Rice. Is he around?”

  “Just a moment, please.”

  It was a long time before she heard the thump as he picked the phone off the hall table. “Hello?”

  “Don’t say my name, Sam. It’s Jane. Jane Wyant.”

  “They’re all out on the dock,” he said, lowering his voice. “What’s up, Jane?”

  His voice somehow made him clear again in her mind. Her memory had been smudged. She could remember the tall hard body, and the strong slant of his shoulders, but until he spoke she could not remember his face clearly. A boyish face, and, of course, an evil face. Her resentment came back so strongly that she almost hung up, unable to go through with it.

  “Sam,” she said calmly, “things are in a bit of a mess.”

  “How so?” She heard the caution in his tone.

  “It seems we were watched.”

  There was a silence and then he said, almost tenderly, “The hell you say! The hell you say!”

  “Martha Rogers. She came out to enlist us for bridge or something. I guess she arrived at what you’d call a crucial moment.”

  “You sound calm as all hell, Janey.”

  She resisted the sharp impulse to tell him to stop calling her that. “Oh, I’m very calm. We had a party here Sunday. Martha got tight. She got mad at me and made a scene in front of Fletch. She was … quite graphic about the whole thing.”

  “Jane … I’m terribly sorry. What can I do?”

  “Everything has been blown sky-high. Fini, or something. So … I find that I’m a lady with a name. And … no game.”

  She heard his startled grunt. “I think I see what you mean, my lamb,” he said intimately. His tone was coarser, more insinuating. “You didn’t have much fun, did you?”

  “Not very much.” She felt quite frozen inside. Quite calm.

  “Busy?”

  “I thought I could drive up. But not all the way. You know what I mean?”

  “Sure. Tell you what. I’ll take a little stroll. Know the fork where you turn left to come to the camp, about a mile and a half from here? Turn right. I’ll be a couple of hundred yards up the road. Got any beer?”

  “How utterly romantic! Yes, there’s some cold. I’ll bring it.”

  “And sandwiches too, if you want to go all out. One hour?”

  “Let’s see, that would make it quarter to twelve.”

  “Okay, Janey? Good.”

  She hung up. She did not let herself think. Assignations were supposed to be tender and haunting and mysterious. This one came with beer and sandwiches. What you might expect of Sam Rice. A casual animal arrogance. Come and get it, and you bring the beer. She worked quickly, and every time her mind veered dangerously away from the routine of getting ready to go, she focused it on the small red stain on the sheet and felt anew the rush of righteous anger. She half ran to the car after changing her clothes, packing the assignation lunch. She yanked the car door shut, backed out into the street too fast, wrenched the car around. On the way north she drove fast and hard, scaring herself on the corners, and then she slowed down to a crawl, realizing she was too early.

  She parked by the turnoff onto the dirt road that led to the lake, and sat quite rigid, quite unthinking and unfeeling while the inevitable minutes went by. She started up again. The hardest part was when she came to the fork he had mentioned. This was the moment of decision, of final decision. It was possible to drive on down to the Dimbrough camp and make some excuse for dropping in. She slowed until the car was barely moving and made the turn to the right. It seemed to take every bit of strength in her arms and back to make the right turn.

  He was where he said he would be, and he was sitting on a log on the far side of the ditch. He got up and came striding across the ditch, smiling into the car at her, and she liked no part of his smile or his manner. He was too wise, too knowing, too utterly practiced at all this.

  He opened the door on her side and said, “Hi, beautiful lady. Shove over. I know a happy sylvan spot hereabouts.” She moved over and he got in. He put his arm around her and she sat still and silent as he lightly kissed the tip of her nose and said, “You are cute as several bugs, my friend.” She forced a smile.

  Sam drove slowly and carefully, turning right onto a lumber road, a bare trace through the woods. Grass grew tall between the wheel marks and brushed the underside of the car. Branches scraped against the sides. The track climbed slowly for nearly a half mile, and ended at a clearing where the pines grew tall and the ground was soft with needles. Jane felt as if her teeth were about to start chattering. She remembered the prayer of the night before. And this was more than weakness; this was cold intent. She made herself think of Fletch, of his body, of the body of Laura Corban.

  Sam got out and said, “Like it? Nobody within miles but us chipmunks. Just you and me and some beer and a lazy afternoon. Untense, will you?”

  Again she pulled her lips back in a rigid smile. “I’ll try.”

  “A blanket is indicated. Anything in the back?”

  “I think so. Yes.” Sam found the right key and unlocked the back. He pulled out a grey blanket with a blue stripe, a heavy Navy surplus blanket that Fletch had bought after the war. A picnic blanket that they had often used, the four of them, with the stain where Dink had tipped over the thermos of coffee.

  He took the big brown paper bag of beer and sandwiches and stood with the blanket over his arm, looked around, and said, “Over there, I guess. Come on.”

  She followed him, rigidly expecting sacrifice. Maybe it would be easier, she thought, if he would at least pretend to tenderness. But he made it so … direct. She detested the young male arrogance of him, but more than that she resented the matter-of-factness of it all.

  He handed her the bag and spread the blanket out neatly on the soft bed of pine needles. “The magic carpet, angel. Take a load off.”

  Jane sat down awkwardly. Sam sprawled quickly beside her, laced his long fingers across his stomach and squinted up through the pine branches at the sky.

  “This,” he said, “is a most pleasant and unexpected bonus. I don’t feel like I want to ask too many questions.”

  “Then don’t.”

  He glanced sidelong at her. “You’ve got one of those tumbril looks. A sort of head-in-the-basket look, dear.”

  “Have I? I’m terribly sorry.”

  “Or maybe a preoperative look.”

  “Do you have to talk, talk, talk, talk? God!”

  She looked quickly away from him and set her teeth in her underlip, biting down until it hurt.

  She gave a startled gasp as he grasped her shoulder, pulled her quickly down beside him, turned her into his arms. “Talk, talk, talk,” he said huskily, then found her lips. She made herself put her arms around him. Her arms felt like heavy things filled with wet sand. His mouth worked at hers and she tried to respond, tried to summon up the fluid melting of desire. But it wouldn’t come and she couldn’t lose herself. No matter how she tried, she was Mrs. Fletcher Wyant lying a bit absurdly at noon on a blanket in the woods with a college boy. It was grotesque, undignified, and in poor taste. She tried to simulate excitement, and knew that she was doing it awkwardly. She shut her eyes as he fumbled with the fastenings of her clothing. He took off her blouse and unhooked her bra and slid it down off her arms. He held her tightly again, kissing her lips and her breasts, but she felt nothing but awkwardness and vague alarm. She could no longer pretend. She la
y rigid with her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her hands clenched, and she wished he would just hurry. Just hurry and get it over with so she could know that she had done this to Fletcher coldly and purposefully. She wondered why he was touching her no longer. She warily opened her eyes. Sam was sitting up, looking down at her with a rather odd expression, and she instinctively folded her right arm across her breasts. Sam gave her a tired disgusted smile. He reached over and picked up her blouse and bra and tossed them onto her. “Okay. Cover up.”

  “Go ahead, Go ahead with it. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Put your clothes back on, Mrs. Wyant.”

  “It didn’t seem to bother you the other night. This is your favorite sport, isn’t it?”

  He turned his back to her. She heard the snap of his lighter, saw a drift of blue smoke skid away in the warm gentle wind. She sat up at last, dressed quickly, tucking her blouse awkwardly into her skirt.

  Sam dug into the bag, took out two cans of beer, found the opener. She heard the beer hiss as he levered holes into the cans. He turned and handed her one can. His expression had changed. He looked amused.

  “Skoal, sugar.”

  The beer can was chill in her hand. “Why did you stop?” she demanded.

  “I didn’t want you to strain yourself.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I’m stupid, maybe, but not that supid. The other night I was a symbol of … oh, blind fate or something. I was something that happened to you and you didn’t like it, and you weren’t willing to admit it was partly your fault. My name is Sam Rice. I brush my teeth every day. I’m kind to small children and dogs. I’m not some kind of machine you’re going to use to get even with your husband. See?”

  She took long swallows of the beer. “You don’t make sense, Sam.”

  “Not the kind of sense you want me to make. You’ve got me all established. A rapist of the second degree or something. So you can blame me, not yourself. But it happens I’m not. As I said, I’m Sam Rice, a human being. Sorry to disappoint you, my friend. If you were a pig, fine. We’d have a nice little picnic. Trouble is, I believed you the other night, afterward. You’re no pig. And I’m no instrument of vengeance, dear. I know how you work. You’re a rarity. With you there has to be love, and with no love, it doesn’t work. I mean, I’m not against it as an operating procedure. It is just a touch on the rare side.”