Cancel All Our Vows

by John D. MacDonald

  He saw her face light up, saw her eyes go pleased and wide. “Darling! How perfectly wonderful!” And he knew that the news was big enough to have made her forget, for just a moment, that their lives had changed.

  His own vivid disappointment made him say quietly, “It could have been perfectly wonderful.”

  She looked down at her hands, flexed her fingers. “Congratulations, anyway,” she said quietly.

  “Thanks. It … it will mean a lot of work until I get my feet under me. I’m grateful for that, at least.”

  “Did you have dinner yet?”

  “I ate in town with Stanley. He’s flying to Birmingham in the morning,” He yawned.

  “You look tired, darl … Fletcher.”

  “I am. All this coming on top of … all the other thing.”

  “I know what you mean.” She gave him a quick shy glance and looked away. “All this trouble, and the heat too. I keep feeling as if I was moving around inside of a big funny glass thing that makes everything look too big or too little, all swarmy like when you think you’re going to faint. Even voices sound funny.”

  “Like in cars,” he said, “when you’re falling asleep.”

  “Yes. Oh, yes,” she said softly.

  “Will you want the car again tomorrow, to get the kids?”

  “If you don’t mind. Yes.”

  “It’s perfectly okay. I can get along.”

  He unknotted his necktie and pulled it off. She said, “I saw Martha today. She came over here just before lunch. Crying. She said she’d been living in hell since Sunday. I’d thought I’d never forgive her. It seemed like such a betrayal. But it was really her perfectly filthy temper that did it, and the drinks and Hud making a fool of himself. I couldn’t stay mad at her, she was so miserable. So we both cried some, and I told her I was even halfway glad it had come out, and even now I don’t know whether I was only saying it to make her feel better.”

  He slowly unbuttoned his shirt to the waist, his back to her. “You’re glad it happened.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. It would be living a lie. Maybe that’s good. I just don’t know.”

  “But it did come out, and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “Am I supposed to enjoy thinking about that Corban person?”

  “We’re going to start going around and around in a minute, and I’m just too damned tired. And there’s nothing new we can say to each other.”

  “We’re both too tired. Good night, Fletcher.”

  “Good night.”

  “I’ll keep the clock. I’ll wake you at the right time.”

  “Thanks.”

  He heard her cross the room behind him, pause in the doorway. “I’m happy you got the promotion, Fletcher.”

  “Thanks.”

  The bedroom door closed softly. He took his shirt off, picked up his suit coat and tie. He went over to turn off the light and saw that she had left her book on the floor. He picked it up and glanced at the title. Sexual Aspects of Modern Marriage.

  It was a book they had bought fifteen years ago and never read. At the time it had been a household joke. They had agreed that the man was silly not to have interviewed them, the real experts, before writing his silly book. Now there was something vastly pathetic about Jane, alone in the house, trying to read that book in the hope that it would contain some formula which could be applied to their problem. Some mystic phrase which, once applied, would fix everything. He tossed it onto the couch and turned out the lamp. He undressed slowly and sat on the made-up studio couch and waited until she was out of the bathroom.

  He sensed that there was, in both of them, a strong desire for things to be as they had been before. And children wish for the moon. And adultery is a high wall, impossible to scale, impossible to ignore.

  Jane went into the bedroom they had once shared in a remote, improbable life, and closed the door behind her. She turned out the light and undressed and sat nude on the side of her bed. She lit a cigarette, found the ash tray and put it close beside her.

  There had been other promotions. She could remember every one of them. The first one had been, perhaps, the best. Five dollars more a week. A desk nearer the windows. Judge had been on the way then. Two months on the way. A winter night so cold that the snow creaked when you walked, and your breath was a plume. A gallon of wine for a dollar nine the sign had said and he had brought home a whole, improbable gallon. Tart red wine to go with the spaghetti she made. Candles on the kitchen table in the two-room apartment, and the table too wide between them, so he had brought his chair around so they sat side by side. Low music on the little ivory kitchen radio. Where had that gone? And the plates for the spaghetti. Afterward he had said he would make a lamp out of the gallon jug, to commemorate the occasion, but he never had, because he wasn’t good at that kind of thing.

  They had too much of the red wine and the kitchen was suddenly stuffy, and they had dressed warmly and quickly and gone out to walk the late streets, snow creaking underfoot, his arm warm and good around her waist, and after a time she could walk right again, and the giggles were over. She remembered a street where the elms were big and street lights made fat shadows, and he kissed her in each shadow and they marveled at their rare good fortune, marveled that they were the happiest, luckiest, most in love people anywhere south of the Yukon.

  Then going home slowly, knowing that this would be one of the best times, knowing that they would be warmth entangled in the big bed. Leaving the dishes, and then the shade up so that they could see the snow coming down again, slanting across the yellow globe of the street light, undressing in the chill room, shaking with the cold, finding each other under the great mound of blankets.…

  “Oh, Jane, dear! I see by the paper that Fletcher has been made vice-president. How fortunate, darling! I’m so happy for both of you.”

  “Yes, we’re very pleased.”

  “Jud, your daddy has been put in charge of the plant.”

  “Hey! Hey, Dink! You hear that, Dink?”

  All this could have been … the very best. Better even than the first promotion. Better than anything that had ever gone before. And destroyed so utterly. By a silly woman at a camp, a vain silly woman who …

  She hit her thigh with her clenched fist. It made a small splatting sound in the silence of the room. All gone. All gone. Every bit gone. She wanted to destroy. Smash her entire world. Leave nothing, not even memory.

  Her head was bent and a tear fell, like a small hot drop of wax, onto her breast, startling her. She hadn’t been aware that she was crying again. There seemed no end of tears. Another fell, hotly, turning cool as it traced its way down her flesh.

  No end to tears. She remembered what her father used to do when she was little, and tears would not stop. Cry into a bottle. Save your tears. And as soon as you tried to cry into the bottle, the tears would go away. No bottle. She leaned forward a bit, so that the next tear that fell from her underlid fell onto the roundness of her thigh. It made a small sound. She held the red coal of the cigarette where she thought the next one would fall. Cry a tear to quench the small red coal. And that would stop them. The next tear missed, and the next, and then one struck the cigarette. The red glow hissed and faded and went out. She sat, holding it, and the tears still fell, touching her thighs with tiny spots of warmth. Touching the unused body.

  In a lost year as Fletcher slept, she had turned her head to watch the slant of snow outside the window. And cried then, too. But it had been in a different manner.

  Chapter Nineteen

  On Thursday the city knew the heat wave was going to break. The sun came up with a sullen look and the sky had a poisonous coppery shade. People stopped and listened, thinking they could hear the welcome thunder. The heat remained intolerable, and the humidity climbed one last incredible notch. From time to time small winds slid down the slopes in the valley of the city, spinning up dust devils, herding papers down the blazing gutters, flipping the tired parched leaves. And then th
e small winds would die again, leaving the city torrid and still.

  Because of the heat many firms closed a day early for the Fourth, and cars moved in slow double lines out of the city, into the hills, toward the lakes.

  HEAT BREAK DUE, the Herald headlined. Overdue, the people muttered. It was a brave man indeed who said to his neighbor, “Hot enough for you?” Tempers were frayed and thin from the long brutal days and the sick still heat of the nights. Slum kids splashed in the industrial scum of the Glass River.

  Fletcher Wyant moved doggedly into his first day as acting head of Forman. Miss Schmidt turned out to be a stringy girl with tiny yellow teeth and a faintly adenoidal look. She was unrelentingly efficient. Fletcher went out of his way to swing Harry Bailey into line. The new problems flooded in on him. Again he had a sandwich at his desk.

  Ellis Corban arrived back at the offices at two o’clock. Fletcher had alerted reception to tip him off and give Corban the message that he wanted to see him at once. Fletcher as yet hadn’t changed offices.

  Ellis came in, wearing his smile. Fletcher glanced at him and knew that Ellis hadn’t heard yet.

  “Shut the door, please.”

  “Sure, Fletch. God what a day out there! Hell of a thing coming down out of the air into heat like this.” He slouched in the chair beside Fletcher’s desk.

  “How did you make out?” Fletcher asked.

  “It’s this way, old man. I tried to get you to report progress over the phone and ask some advice, but you weren’t in the office. That was Tuesday. I talked to Stanley. So actually, you see, since Stanley got in the middle of all of it, I think it would make a little more sense if I gave him the detailed report. Actually, Fletch, for your information, we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “Good of you to tell me.”

  “Oh, hell. Don’t take that attitude, Fletch. You agreed that this was my baby, and I battled it out right down the line. You understand that.”

  “Yes, I understand, Ellis.”

  “Good! That’s what I wanted to hear.” He stood up. “I better contact Stanley right away so we can get this thing set up.”

  “Sit down, Ellis.”

  “Don’t you think I ought to …”

  “Sit down!”

  “You’re in a bad mood today, Fletch.”

  Fletcher turned and reached down on the floor behind him and picked up the cardboard carton Miss Schmidt had found for him. He opened his top desk drawer and began to take out his personal belongings and put them in the carton. He was aware that Ellis had begun to watch him, tense and wondering.

  “What’s this all about, Fletch? Changing desks?”

  Fletcher let the silence grow. He found a half pack of stale cigarettes and threw them in the wastebasket. “Ellis, Stanley is promoting you to treasurer.”

  He sat and watched Ellis’ face. He saw the look of triumph, of cold-eyed satisfaction, before Ellis brought it under control. “My God, Fletch, I wouldn’t have this happen for the world!”

  “Have what happen?”

  “Just because I happened to jump the gun there in the meeting Monday. What in hell is Stanley thinking about? I’m going to go to him and object to this, Fletch. After all, you brought me in here. I can’t let this happen.”

  “I don’t know what you think you’re talking about, Ellis.”

  He watched the sudden puzzlement, then the faint look of consternation, as quickly concealed as his previous look of triumph. “Say! Are you getting a promotion? That’s the best news I …”

  “Oh, shut up, for God’s sake!”

  “I was only …”

  “You haven’t got any secrets, Ellis. You’re a sharpie. Forman knows that and I know it.”

  “I definitely resent that!”

  “I have no interest in whether you resent it or not. Stanley is in Birmingham. We’re taking over another firm. I’m in charge here.”

  “In charge of … everything?” Ellis licked his lips.

  “Does that seem incomprehensible to you? You’re getting this slot I’m vacating only because I promised Stanley I could keep you in line. If that hurts your feelings, you can march right the hell out the front door.”

  “Just what do you mean? In line?”

  “Don’t be dense. This is what I mean. You are going to confine your activities, all of them, Ellis, to the responsibilities of this office. You were delighted when you thought for a minute that you’d knifed your way into my job and I was out in the cold. You were crying crocodile tears. That’s something I won’t forget. You’re in here because we hired your brains, and they’re good brains. But we’re very wary of your ambitions, Ellis. And a certain streak of unscrupulousness. I repeat, I’m in charge here. You can have the job. The first time you stick your nose into some other department, you’re out. I’ll handle my job and yours until I can find another man. Is that quite clear?”

  “You don’t have to talk to me like that.”

  “I’m talking to you just like that and you’ll take it, won’t you, because it’s a nice boost, a nice promotion. Say yes or no. Will you take the job?”

  “Yes,” Ellis said in a low tone.

  “Will you keep yourself in line?”

  “Yes.”

  Fletcher put some more items in the carton. Some you had to bully, some you could kid along. He waited until he knew his timing was right, and then smiled broadly and stuck his hand out. “Congratulations, Ellis. I know you’ll do a hell of a job here.”

  Ellis took his hand a bit weakly. “Well … thanks, Fletch.”

  “While I’m sorting this stuff, give me your report.”

  “Oh! Sure. I found out that K.C.I. were negotiating for an advance payment, and they were reluctant to have us in on it because they thought it would weaken their case. I was able to show them that it would strengthen their case rather than weaken it, and Tuesday afternoon we had a conference with the contracting officer, a Colonel Fine. He got on the phone to the Pentagon and …”

  Tuesday afternoon, Fletcher thought, while the silken egocentric body lay on the maroon wool in the dusty stillness of the barn. Tuesday afternoon, while that body, lost and blind in its own sensations, accepted him not as an individual, but merely as Man, as an organism capable of a function that was desirable and necessary to the satin body. And he knew, suddenly, that Ellis would find out. She would tell him, because it was necessary to her to tell him. And Ellis would never make the slightest objection because, in the distortion of his own ambition, he would relate that to his sudden elevation in the company, and in his own twisted way would, even while he pretended to her that she had broken his heart, be grateful to her. All things in the life of Ellis Corban had importance only in the way they related, or could be related, to his ambitions and his progress. And the pitiful knowledge, which Ellis would never realize, was that the very extent of his ambition was a self-limiting factor and that he had, very probably, reached the highest point he would ever reach. They would use him until he could no longer be controlled, and then discard him with the same calculation that any machine tool was scrapped once it became obsolescent. In a sense it was another facet of what Stanley had tried to tell him. If your marriage was right, other things being equal, you would succeed. And each part of your life was somehow equal to the whole.

  After Ellis had left to turn over the routines of his job to Evans, Fletcher changed offices and continued to slog his way through the unfamiliar aspects of the job. And, as he labored, it became increasingly and bitterly obvious to him that he was going to fold up under the pressure. Not today, not next week, not next month. But fold, inevitably, because his motivations were no longer clean cut. Triumph was something you carried home in your two hands so that it could be properly admired. The job was within his reach with full utilization of all his resources, and he had not truly realized before how much of his basic strength was dependent on Jane, on her admiration, approval and her love.

  He quit at five. He left the desk piled high and quit,
knowing he should stay on, knowing that it would make the following Monday increasingly difficult. He walked out with the clerks, sensing remotely their feeling of holiday at the long weekend ahead.

  He walked woodenly toward the parking lot and then looked at the empty slot and remembered Jane had taken the car to go get the kids. He turned and walked toward the heart of the city, a mile and a half away. There was no longer sunshine. The sun had disappeared in a bright haze. The wind came oftener, stirring the oven heat of the city. Thunder boomed far away.

  The knowledge of his inevitable defeat in the job was clear and bitter in his mind. It was the first time in his life that anything had been too big for him.

  He walked into town and up the long slope toward the Downtown Club. He stood silent and remote at the bar, with the noisy after-work drinkers around him, and he drank slowly and methodically, realizing how neatly he had been trapped. He couldn’t go backward into the job he could handle. He drank for a long time and discouraged those who wanted to congratulate him on the new job. The liquor seemed to be having little effect on him. He ate dutifully, and drank some more and walked out into the dusk that had come earlier on this night. After he had walked two aimless blocks the first fat drops splatted into the dust. They came faster, harder. Lightning broke the sky and thunder banged across the city, echoed off the hills. The hard rain soaked him as he walked slowly. People, huddled in doorways, stared curiously at him. The rain came in sheets, wind driven, and bounced high in the street, making a silver fringe to the grey curtain of dusk and rain. Cars crept, and running water spread outward from the curbs, and debris blocked the corner sewers.

  The thunder was almost constant, and the city power flickered, went off. Each dip in a street became a lake. Water streamed into the Glass River and slowly the level began to rise. He walked and felt the good coldness of the rain trickling down his body under his sodden clothing. He had cashed a check and he had nearly a hundred dollars in his billfold. The city lights came back on, suddenly, just as he was passing a bus terminal. Sell me a ticket to anywhere. Give me forty dollars’ worth of distance, please.