Cancel All Our Vows

by John D. MacDonald

  “They’ve got all the pockets because they used to be pants until you cut them off.”

  “Say, that’s right. I forgot that.”

  “I’ll mix you a fresh drink later.”

  “No hurry.”

  When she came back he saw she had changed to a black dress with smart plain lines. He always liked her in black. Her hair wasn’t tied back, and the long soft shining blonde waves fell to her shoulder. When she wanted to have it cut, he had said no. Flatly.

  “Going someplace?” he said.

  “I thought that after dinner I might go down to a movie or something. It isn’t definite.”

  She picked up his empty glass and took it out to the kitchen. She was back with his refill in a few minutes. “Am I making them strong enough?”

  “I’m in a weakened condition. These are just right.”

  The rolled paper thumped against the front door and she went and got it, unrolling it as she walked toward him. She looked at the headlines. “No break in sight in record heat. Oh, dear.” She handed him the paper and went back to the kitchen. As he read the paper the house seemed oddly silent. At first he thought it was because of the children being away. And then he analyzed it and remembered that she had a very familiar habit of singing half under her breath while working. Tonight she was silent.

  He read the news. Last night had been a night of Violence in the city. Police answer record number of calls. He grimaced as he remembered one of their calls, while he sat in Laura’s dark living room.

  Jane came in with a big towel and the roll of tape. She knelt in front of him. “Lift out”

  He lifted his foot out of the water. “Here, I can dry it.”

  “I can get at it easier.” She rubbed it dry with the big towel, then clicked the spool of wide tape out of its container. She picked up the edge with her fingernail and ripped out a piece several feet long. “Now just hold it like that.”

  He looked down at her. She was biting her lip in concentration as she started the first wrapping around his ankle. A sheaf of the shining hair swung forward and she tossed it back with a quick movement of her head He wanted to reach forward and put his hands on her shoulders. The impulse was so strong that he clamped his hands hard against the arms of the chair. He felt a stinging in his eyes. He wanted to hold her closely. He wanted things to be as they had been before. And he knew he was so close to breaking down that he forced himself to look at her flanks with the black dress stretched tight because of her posture. At her flanks and at her breasts, and he made himself think of the big brown hands of the college boy, and he thought of them until once more, after many hours, the little doll figures in the back of his mind awakened and began their insensate rhythms, and he could look at her with hate and disgust and rejection.

  “Too tight?”

  “Uh … no, it feels fine. Just right.”

  She worked the tape around his ankle and under the arch of his foot, changing the spool from hand to hand. When she was satisfied she bent forward and nipped the edge of the tape between her teeth and ripped it across, pressed the loose end down neatly.

  “There!”

  “I certainly appreciate this.”

  “Stand on it and see how it feels.” She offered her hand as she stood up. He took it and stood up and stepped tentatively, and then confidently. “That’s swell! Hell, I could walk miles.”

  “I think you better stay off it as much as you can. Sit down and I’ll call you when dinner’s ready. Another drink?”

  “A light one.”

  She went back out with basin and towel and tape. He realized that neither of them had used the other’s name, nor had they used any of the almost automatic words of affection and endearment. He had the sudden fear that he would forget to be on guard for a moment and call her darling, or honey—and she would take that as a gesture of appeasement.

  At six o’clock she came for him. “Do you want to lean on me?”

  He knew that it wasn’t necessary and for one astonishing moment was tempted to say yes just to have an opportunity to touch her. “I can manage.”

  And he made himself walk without the suggestion of a limp. She had set the dining area table with bright grass mats, the gay, crude-looking dishes that had been imported from Guatemala.

  “Looks very festive,” he said as he sat down.

  “Does it? I don’t know. I like hot colors with a cold meal.” She served the salad and they began to eat in silence, in awkward silence.

  “Madge okay?”

  “Fine. Lew expects to get up next week. She was glad to have the kids.”

  “Get back about noon?”

  “A little earlier. I … went out again.”

  “I thought you had. I saw your bag on the bed. And I saw you made up my bed. I was going to do that.”

  “Did you notice the movies in the paper? Is there anything good?”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  The silence settled over them again. Once he glanced at her at the same moment she looked up at him. They both looked down again hurriedly. There were small hot biscuits, and she served hot coffee in squatty orange cups.

  As she stirred her coffee he felt the silence between them stretching itself thin, stretching into a vibrating tension.

  “Have you decided what you want to do, Fletcher?”

  “I haven’t been able to think clearly. I guess it’s a good idea to have the kids away. I think we can be calm about this. I want to be fair. Divorce seems to be a better answer than separation, don’t you think?”

  She looked up sharply. “If it’s going to be that way, I’d rather have it be final.”

  “You can have the house. I can liquidate enough to pay off what we owe on it, so you’ll have it free and clear.”

  She lifted her coffee and sipped, set the cup down. “I don’t think I want to stay here, Fletcher. I’ll go out to my sister. I’m perfectly aware that you can take the children away from me if you want to. I’d rather you didn’t. I think if we could have some plan where you could have them for summers …”

  “You seem damn calm about it!”

  “I’m not going to get into any shouting contest with you, Fletcher. And I’m not going to let us pile more … unpleasant words on top of the unforgettable things we’ve already said to each other. You’ve heard the complete truth. You’re in possession of all the facts. You have a decision to make. I’ll abide by it. But let’s not do any more yammering. I don’t think I could stand it.”

  “It would be better if you stayed right here in this house.”

  She lit a cigarette with great care. “I couldn’t live in this house after last night.”

  “You mean Sunday night, don’t you?”

  “I mean last night. You brought her here to my house, to our bedroom. I can’t forget that, Fletcher. Ever. No matter what happens.”

  He stared at her. “Brought her here? Laura?”

  “Don’t look so stupid and vacant. Her lipstick was on the sheet. I found it when I changed the bed. And I saw you today as you two were leaving … for a picnic, I imagine. On such a lovely day.”

  “Lipstick! I don’t see how … Oh!”

  She showed her teeth as she smiled. “Memory forcing its way through alcoholic fumes, Fletcher?”

  He stared at her. “I’ve got no reason to lie to you. I’d like to be able to say that it happened right here in this house. I’d enjoy saying that, I think.”

  Jane looked steadily at him. “Didn’t it?”

  “No. I got stinking drunk. I took a cab to her house, late, and made such a rumpus the neighbors called the cops. She lied to them to protect me. She drove me back here and got me into the house. Believe me, I was well past the point where I was either willing or able. She got me undressed and dumped me into bed and I grabbed at her and she fell onto me and I guess that’s where the lipstick came from. Actually she did me a favor. I couldn’t have found my way home alone. She was pretty good at it. Said her father used to tie one on every
so often, so she had practice.”

  “So today you took her out in the country and showed her how grateful you can be. Is that it?”

  He looked at Jane and looked through her into a place he had found that day. And again he was watching the world through that slit, looking at the world out of a blackness. “You mentioned last night,” he said. “I told you about last night. Anything else is my business. You’ve got no claim. Remember. You gave away any chance you might have had to do any kind of checking or ask any kind of questions.”

  Yet, even as he spoke to her in that low tone, showing no anger, he was aware that she was, perhaps, the only person in the world to whom he could talk about this thing that had happened to him, this gesture of rebellion that had turned out to be a strange poison.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “What’s the matter, Fletcher?”

  “Skip it, goddamn it!” he yelled. “Drop it, can’t you?”

  She looked at him for long seconds and then got up very quickly, shoving her chair back. She half ran and he heard the soft closing of the bedroom door. He lit a cigarette and sat there for a long time, looking at the empty cups, the gay colors of the dishes.

  A memory came back, vivid, clear. He could not understand why that memory should come back at this time. Summer camp, and the boy named Will who was taming a baby red squirrel. Small red squirrel with bright quick eyes, sitting on the palm of his hand, stuffing the food into its mouth with both tiny paws. And the squirrel had nipped Will, bringing blood. To punish it they tied it in the cabin, using a length of fishline. Then they went loftily out, Will saying, “That’ll teach him,” and the squirrel chittering anxiously at them as they left. They had walked around the ball field and come back, hurrying to release the squirrel from its punishment. But it had evidently slipped while crossing a rafter and the knot in the line had slipped. In the short time of death its bright coat had dulled. With Will holding it they had walked out into the sunlight, and then Will, snuffling, had turned suddenly and hit Fletcher full in the mouth with his knobby fist. They had fought for a long time, crying as they fought. But it hadn’t made friends of them, like the camp director said it would. Instead Fletcher had felt a strange guilt each time he found himself near Will. And he guessed that Will felt the same, because for what was left of the summer they avoided each other. And he hadn’t thought of Will for a long time.

  He poured more coffee and drank it slowly. He carried the dishes over to the sink, scraped the scraps into the disposal, stacked the dishes in the dishwasher. He decided not to turn it on. She might want more in there, and he didn’t know how much soap to use.

  He looked at the paper for a time, then went and tapped on the bedroom door.

  “Jane? You okay?”

  “You can come in,” she said.

  He went in. The room was darkened. She lay on her bed in her black dress with a washcloth folded across her forehead.

  “Headache?”

  “It’s getting better now, thanks.”

  “Want aspirin?”

  “I got up a little while ago and took some. They’re working now, I guess.”

  He sat on the edge of her bed and she moved her legs over a little to give him room. He felt, in some odd way, as though they were the jaded, exhausted survivors of some catastrophe, brought together in a new loneliness. And he felt as though they could talk about the catastrophe calmly.

  “I’ve been thinking, Jane. I think we ought to act as normal as we can and wait until the kids get off to camp. Then I’ll talk to John Barnlee and find out what the state laws are. That make sense to you?”

  “I guess so. I’m … sorry I asked questions. It’s none of my business.”

  “That’s all right. I’m sorry I shouted.”

  “I was just trying to … hurt myself by making you talk about her.”

  “I know. It’s a funny thing. I keep wanting you to talk about that kid at the lake.”

  “I hated him. I guess I didn’t make that clear to you. I wanted to kill him for … ruining everything for me.”

  “It takes two,” he said coldly.

  “I know. I found that out today. When I came back here and found that lipstick stain I called him up, still hating him. I met him today, in the woods near the camp.”

  He turned to look hard at the half-seen paleness of her face. He felt neither shock nor anger. Just a sickness. “You did it again?”

  “I wanted to. I wanted to do anything to get even with you. I told him I had the name and I might as well have the game. There certainly hadn’t been any pleasure in it. I …wasn’t any good. He sensed right away that I was forcing myself. And he wouldn’t do it.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “It doesn’t make much difference whether you believe it or not, does it? I wish he’d done it. Then I could keep on hating him. I could have kept on thinking that he was all bastard. But he isn’t. And that was a terrible thing to find out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It means that I’ve had to face something. I was building up a little dream for myself. Every time I remembered the lake, it was more like rape. Poor innocent little drunken Janey, taken advantage of, in a classic manner. But today I found out it wasn’t like that.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That first I have to be honest with myself. I know I fought at the last possible moment. Fought as hard as I could. But that was pure … animal fear. I led him on. All day. So I can’t blame him. There was a rotten spot in me. Something that wanted another man, and wanted to know what another man would be like.”

  He sat still for a long time. He twisted his hand and a knuckle cracked loudly in the silence.

  “Wasn’t I enough?”

  “Yes. It isn’t that. It’s … wondering, I guess. And the days going, and the years going, and the kids getting big, getting ready to go away. It’s fighting your waistline and watching what’s happening to the skin under your eyes, and thinking of being young again, and maybe trying to find out how to be young again with a young person, like he is. And I guess he sensed that, and he was right. I don’t hate him. You know, I don’t even hate myself any more. I feel a sort of … far-away pity for myself. A woman growing older. A silly damn-fool woman, as if I were … somebody else I was watching.…” She stopped, turned restlessly on the bed, turned half away from him. He thought she was through speaking. She said, slowly, as though it was something painfully learned, “A person like me … maybe thinking of getting old is harder. Somehow. Because, except for my body maybe there isn’t … too much to me. I like being quick and strong and good at things.”

  For a moment the urge was strong in him to lie down beside her, to gather her close against him, hold her tight so that the years could not get her, could not get either of them.

  Each of them, he knew, had come to a new dark place. She to a place of self-understanding, and bleakness. He to a place of evil spasm, to a golden body that was like a drug.

  “Please go,” she said. “I’m going to cry. It’s going to be messy. I don’t want you sitting there listening.”

  He shut the door soundlessly behind him. For a time he roamed through the house, ignoring the dulled pain in his ankle. He thought of Laura, alone in the big, old-fashioned house. Her sleep, too, would be like a death. Used body slack on the big bed, like one of those dolls they used to put on beds, with boneless legs which could be tied into absurd knots.

  Together they had entered a strange land. Yet the new land had not been as strange to her as to him. They had walked a dark path where fleshy flowers grew tall and still around them, petals open to show the membranous depths. She had said he would come back to her. Said it with deadly confidence. The taste of wild honey, unforgettable.

  To get her out of his mind as he prepared for bed, he tried to summon up fury at the thought of Jane riding out to meet her juvenile lover. It didn’t work. He thought of Jane and felt only a protective sadness. Lost wife—something of gold seen f
rom far away—seen, perhaps, through a cleverly concealed slit, where he could crouch in the naked darkness and watch—and not care.

  Chapter Eighteen

  On Wednesday morning they breakfasted together like strangers who, resenting being seated together in a crowded restaurant, overdo the small polite formalities.

  “The paper says there may be thundershowers this evening, or they may hold off until tomorrow,” he said.

  “I can’t remember a July that started like this one has.”

  “When do you get the kids?”

  “I thought I’d drive up tomorrow. Get there after lunch and have a swim and bring them back. Then they’ll be here for Friday, the Fourth, and we planned to drive them to camp Saturday. They’re all packed.”

  “I suppose we ought to both go when we take them.”

  “I think it would be best.”

  “You haven’t said anything to them?”

  She looked at him with a touch of anger in her eyes. “Of course not! When it comes time to tell them, we both better do it, together.”

  “A hard thing to do.”

  “It’s better now than it would have been three or four years ago. They’re old enough to understand better.”

  “This wouldn’t have happened three or four years ago.”

  “I was thinking that too, Fletcher.”

  “A different crowd then than we travel with now. Fewer drinks. More fun, somehow.”

  “I know.”

  “If people were only smart enough to get out before it all blows up in their faces …”

  “I was thinking that. You better hurry. You’ll be late.”

  “Will you be needing the car?”

  “I’d like to have it, if it won’t inconvenience you.”

  “Not at all. You set now?”

  He backed the car out and she hurried across the yard and got in. As he turned toward the city she said, “I forgot to ask you. How does your ankle feel?”

  “Better. That soaking helped, I think.”

  “Try to stay off it today as much as you can.”

  As they neared the plant she said, “Do you think you’ll want to come home for dinner?”