The Man Who Loved His Wife

by Vera Caspary

  DR. GENTIAN HAD good news. His next patient had canceled, and he could give Mr. Strode an extra half hour. He drilled and talked, filled and talked, discussed with zest the city’s most recent murder. The case interested Dr. Gentian because the victim was a dentist. Gagged and forced to listen, Fletcher sympathized with the assassin. “Am I hurting you?” asked the dentist. Without the slightest notice of Fletcher’s grunt of assent, he went right on with his devilish work, adding pressure to the pointed instrument piercing his victim’s gums. “Take it easy, Mr. Strode. Won’t be long now.”

  Only longer than a lifetime. The ordeal became doubly excruciating because Fletcher suddenly remembered that he had left his diary exposed. He had been pondering over an entry when Elaine called him to lunch. She had had to shout for him three times, rather sharply, because she had cooked his favorite cheese soufflé, which could not be left standing. It had been careless of him to leave the diary exposed while he ate, unforgivable to have rushed off without locking it away. Oh, God, if she should find it!

  “I’m not hurting you,” Dr. Gentian said reproachfully.

  Fletcher shook his head. He was all nerves and uncertainty. The telephone rang. The nurse hurried to the anteroom and came back to say that Mr. Strode’s daughter had called to say she was shopping in the neighborhood and would meet her father in the parking lot.

  At long last the ordeal was over, a new appointment written in the book, Fletcher free. Cindy was not at the parking lot when he got there. Tardiness was characteristic of his daughter but imprudent at a time when she was begging for favors. He walked up and down the street, wild with impatience, wondering how he would face Elaine if she had found the diary. While he tried to tell himself that it would serve her right for poking into his private papers, he could not accept the transparent excuse. She would consider him insane, consult a doctor; or worse, desert him altogether. He was in a frenzy of impatience. Small beads of cold sweat dotted his face. He returned to the parking lot. Cindy was still not there. To dull his nerves he went into a bar. Bourbon was his drink, but he ordered Scotch because the phonetics required less effort. The bartender was an idiot who asked questions framed so that they could not be answered with a nod or shake of the head. “Soda or water, sir?” “White Rock or Shasta?” “On the rocks or without ice?”

  Fletcher’s voice came out like the roar of a beast. Mangled sounds, exaggerated by an electronic device, caused an instant of shocked silence. At the end of the bar a couple of smart lads turned their heads to look, turned away too hastily. The bartender joined them in a whispered conference. He nodded toward the afflicted customer. Fletcher drank fast and returned to the parking lot. “Can I get your car, sir?” asked the imbecile attendant. “What kind, sir?” Fletcher walked away without bothering to answer.

  Cindy appeared with her hair piled in such a heap that the contents of a pilfered safe might have been hidden beneath the mound of gilded straw. Busy with apologies and parcels, she paid no attention to the parking attendant’s questions, so that Fletcher was forced to expose the crippled voice again.

  His impatience was compounded by the tempo of traffic and Cindy’s flow of talk. She was all afire about the movie premiere and the party at the oil millionaire’s mansion. “With a marquee on the lawn and flaming shish kebab at midnight.” Many of the women at the party would wear gowns that cost more than a thousand dollars. “Imagine, Daddy! Dresses that cost as much as twenty-five hundred. I’ll never be in that class,” she sighed. “Especially if we get the new house. I won’t be able to buy a new dress for years.” This was offered coyly. There was a pause while she waited for her father to say something about the loan. He said nothing. With a giggle Cindy explained that she indulged in the extravagance of new sandals. By shopping around she had saved four dollars.

  An insolent driver tried to cut in ahead of the Lincoln. Fletcher sounded his horn.

  “If you can’t spend money you’ve got to spend time.” Cindy giggled.

  The insolent driver passed on the right and succeeded in sliding into the lane ahead. He turned and offered a triumphant grin. He was about Don’s age, slender, clean-cut, with the same Ivy League complacence. Suddenly Fletcher’s visions returned; the impudent grin over Elaine’s bare shoulder. Fletcher pressed his foot upon the accelerator and all but jammed into the fellow’s car.

  “Daddy, watch it! You may not care about your own life but I’m too young to die.”

  Fletcher blew his horn viciously. No one had tried to cut in, but the noise relieved his tension. Traffic moved at an agonizing pace, drivers swore and glared. The road ascended a hill which gave a long view of the dreary line of cars ahead. Afternoon sun assaulted their eyes and miniature suns attacked from the enameled bodies of all the other cars. Gas fumes fouled the air. Eyes burned, noses clogged. Last night for a short time Fletcher had been revived by the lively wind; at the seashore he had enjoyed the simple act of breathing. Now the lack of fresh air brought back the familiar sense of smothering.

  All of the day’s irritations came to a climax in the frustration of a traffic jam. A prisoner confined in a metal box, he saw the waiting agony (motors throbbing, gas fumes, thickening, nerves tightening) as a symbol of his living days. All about him in these polished metal prisons the drivers sweated and cursed. What for? Striving to achieve what Fletcher Strode’s labors had brought; useless leisure, a costly home, a powerful car, financial ease, a daughter he could not love, a young wife too lovable. The men in the other cars had certain consolations, the excitement of work, the enjoyment of small triumphs, the hope of future achievements. The smog brought tears to his eyes.

  In the next lane of traffic the Ivy League fellow tried to flirt with Cindy. She smiled archly and fondled the structure of bright hair. To show disinterest in the stranger, Cindy turned to her father and once more gave voice to her opinions. Wasn’t it a pity that Daddy hadn’t accepted the tickets for tonight’s affair? Really, Nan had offered them with the best of intentions. She was a kindhearted girl, almost too generous. And Daddy would have loved the movie premiere. The picture was supposed to be super, made from a best-selling novel with the most atrocious sex scenes. And afterward that divine party with the flaming shish kebab at midnight. “You ought to go out more, Daddy. Mix with people. They wouldn’t mind your voice if—”

  “Stop chattering.”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy, I didn’t mean . . .” She let the sentence trail off. Her father looked as if he were ready to hit someone or drive his car into a post.

  Traffic had begun to move a bit faster on the clogged road. Fletcher’s hands ached on the wheel. More tears gathered, but his eyeballs were not cooled. “God damned smog.” The climate would have to change drastically, he decided, before he could make a five-thousand-dollar gift to this silly girl and her fool husband.

  RESIDENTS OF LOS ANGELES look curiously at people who walk in the hills. Twice drivers had stopped to ask whether Elaine would like a lift. When she said she wanted to walk, they regarded her as a foreigner or an eccentric. She had grown up in a world where one opened a door and walked on a street, where an errand could become an adventure. Condemned to the motorcar, she often felt herself a prisoner in a cell of metal and glass. Her mood today was wayward. The discovery of the sleeping pills had unnerved her. “Let him! If he’s so crazy to die!”

  The road twisted between shady gardens, but there was little pleasure in walking. She constantly had to jump aside to let a car pass. In the long, costly motors, women were more highly polished than their fenders. In this neighborhood wives lived idly, in suspension, remote from reality. They drove these vast, shining monsters, they wore costly clothes, wrapped themselves in lavish fur coats to shop in supermarkets, spent their days wandering in shops, buying or coveting things they did not need. In the monotonous sunshine they dried up and grew old, well-kept, sheltered, proud of having achieved the status of idleness, the privilege of affluent decay. “Not for me, thank you,” she declared and plunged into another
sinful dream of freedom.

  “I love him.” The words were uttered piously as exorcism against an evil wish. She had thought enough about divorce to know it unthinkable. A marriage begun with all the panache of romantic love, flags flying, bands playing, kisses, flowers, gaiety, and gifts, had become a dreary chore. “I love him.” But love, too stridently asserted, is not love but protest, a seedy thing, an itch too easily irritated, a gaunt skeleton of robust reality. Now that she had betrayed love, there was only duty ahead, the penance of abstinence and devotion.

  Having acknowledged guilt and vowed resignation, she allowed herself to view the dark future; caught glimpses of boredom, contemplated sterility, foresaw a life that was not life at all, but a never-ending rehearsal for death’s arrival. In spite of dutiful vows she fell into another dream of liberty, met old friends, attended parties, laughed, skipped along the city’s crowded sidewalks, saw plays, heard music, knew ardor, flirted with virile young men. A Thunderbird tooted at her. “I hate you,” she informed its shining rear.

  A glance at her watch brought back reality. It was late. Fletcher would be annoyed if he did not find her when he got home. “As if I lived in a harem,” she told a passing truck. “And the rajah is also the eunuch.” The truck driver backed up to ask if she needed a ride. He enjoyed nothing more, he said, than helping a lady. She told him he was gallant, and he tried to prolong gallantry. The man’s crude flattery pleased and troubled her. She scolded herself for the reluctance to return to her husband. Penitently, “I love him,” she told the treetops.

  She came into the house through the back door, walked like a trespasser through the hall. Against the glare of a west window she saw a dark silhouette at Fletcher’s desk. “Oh, darling, you’re back early.” Her laughter, designated to show him that she was glad to find him there, had an artificial ring. “I just went out for a little walk.”

  “Hi, sweet.” It was Don, not Fletcher, at the desk. He seemed put out with her for coming into her own house. His expression was strange, as though he were looking at someone he had never before seen. Nervously he ruffled papers on the desk.

  “Are you looking for something?”

  “Writing paper. I’ve got an important letter to get off and I’ve run out.”

  “In the middle drawer. Didn’t you see it?”

  “How stupid of me. I thought Dad kept private stuff in there and didn’t even look.” He opened the drawer with his right hand while his left lay firm upon the papers he had rearranged.

  Don had been reading Fletcher’s diary.

  He was baffled by the contents. Elaine did not look at all like a woman planning a murder. With sweet concern she asked about Don’s luck at the Carter office. He was so bemused that he forgot what he had told them about the situation. “I only got a few minutes with old Carter.”

  “I didn’t know you expected an interview with him. I thought it was some executive, that bastard you said . . .” Elaine laughed.

  Don echoed the mirth, falsely. “I saw the bastard too. And turned down the job.” He had become so entangled that he could not make a statement without adding a new lie to bolster up the old ones. This morning, after almost an hour on the edge of a chair in an assistant bastard’s outer office, he had been told that the job they had practically offered him had been given to another man.

  “You turned it down? Was that wise? Even if they won’t pay the salary you want, you’ve got to start somewhere.”

  She spoke so gently that Don, his arm still tight upon the papers that covered the diary, wondered if there was any substance to Fletcher’s fears. Could this soft creature actually be contriving, with household implements and garden poisons, the death of her husband?

  “Fletcher thinks so, too. He took all kinds of loathsome jobs to get his start in business. I think he’d be more likely to let you have the money for the house if he were convinced of your”—she sought the right word and used it delicately—“stability.”

  “You don’t think I’m unstable, do you, love?”

  “I’m serious, Don. Maybe you oughtn’t to buy a house now. It’s such a responsibility and if you don’t have a steady income—”

  “We’ve got to live somewhere.” Anger rose. Forgetful, he raised his hand and smote the desk so that the papers were disturbed and a bit of the diary exposed. He covered it hastily. “It’s easy for you to talk. With a setup like this.” He glanced around the room, which was fitted with fine rugs and gleaming wood. As dramatically as hope could raise him to the highest peaks of optimism, he could be sunk to the darkest caverns of despair. The Carter job, which he had affected to scorn, had been his last chance. Now that he had lost it he saw, too clearly, that it could have saved him, convinced Fletcher of his stability, got him the loan and the house, and started him on a new life. He had no more contacts in Los Angeles, no other fraternity brothers to introduce him to important people.

  “You can stay here. We’ve got loads of room,” Elaine said and let a comforting hand fall upon his shoulder.

  “And have Dad act as if he were giving charity to his own daughter?”

  “You’re too sensitive. He only fusses because he’s so miserable. I think he loves Cindy, but he’s been so hurt himself that he’s unable to show affection.”

  Don looked up gratefully and let his free right hand cover hers. She backed away.

  “We’d better not be too friendly.”

  “Why? What’s up?”

  “I told you. He’s jealous.”

  “Of me?”

  “Of everyone.”

  Don sprang up with only a quick glance to see that the diary was properly shielded. “Has he any cause to be jealous of me?”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re his daughter’s husband.”

  “And if I weren’t?”

  “I love my husband. Other men don’t interest me.” Immediately her mind was filled with the image of Ralph Julian. With the excuse that she had to prepare dinner, she hurried to the kitchen.

  Don left the desk just as he had found it, with the papers in place and the diary uncovered. For no reason at all he felt better. At the bar he helped himself to a slug of Fletcher’s twelve-year-old Bourbon. With a final glance at the desk to be sure he had left the diary open at the proper page, he returned to his room to dress for the gala evening.

  In the kitchen Elaine beat eggs and cut up vegetables, but her mind was not on the chores and when sirens shrieked on the hill, she stabbed a paring knife into her thumb. Before she had gone out for her walk she had twice found new hiding places for the sleeping pills. Now the vial lay at the bottom of her jewel case.

  Blood from her thumb stained the cucumber. “Damn you, damn, damn, damn!” she shouted at the retreating sirens and beat her heels upon the tiled floor. Don raced into the kitchen in a robe of Paisley silk. He made much of the cut finger, washed and bandaged it. Fletcher and Cindy walked in while he was fastening the adhesive tape. Elaine pulled away too quickly.

  Don took a cautious step backward. “She’s cut her finger.”

  “Don’s been giving me first aid.”

  Fletcher hurried to the den. Cindy went away, pulling at her zipper and begging Don to hurry so that they would be at the theater early enough for her to enjoy the arrival of celebrities. Don lingered to ask whether Elaine thought Fletcher was angry.

  “He obviously didn’t like finding us together. You’d better not stay here.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I was just bandaging your finger. You don’t think that would keep him from lending us the money?”

  “Better not ask any favors tonight. I’ve forgotten the ice again. He’ll be furious.” She filled the ice bucket awkwardly. Her thumb throbbed. She would have liked to send Don into the den with the ice, but it would not do with his robe flying open and his loins exposed. She hoped Fletcher would not make an issue of Don’s having been only half-dressed when he found them in the kitchen. At lunch there had been a kind of armistice. Fletcher had been awkwardly tender. Pe
rhaps he did not know how to act the betrayed husband any more than she knew the proper behavior of an unfaithful wife. After Don and Cindy were out of the house, she and Fletcher might talk over the situation and come to terms.

  She carried the ice bucket, announcing herself with little noises, coughing lightly, rattling the ice, swishing the petticoat under her skirt. If only she could please Fletcher, belong to him again. She had committed the unholiest sin, not with the act of infidelity, but with the act of confession. Absolution could be gained only by making sure of her love.

  He was writing in the diary and did not look up when she crossed the room. She set the ice bucket down upon the bar and walked out quietly, like a servant.

  THE DIARY HAD been on the desk, open and in plain sight, but did not look as if anyone had touched it. Fletcher was relieved, for he had seen himself unmasked, shamed, and confronted with all sorts of questions and accusations. In his anxiety he had known the diary for what it was, the pitiful plaything of a man bereft of physical and moral power. Belief had been shattered. He had vowed to destroy the wretched book. Once he had found it, apparently untouched, relief turned to irritation. His wife did not care enough to examine his diary and learn his secret thoughts. She had given it to him, often teased him for being so secretive about his diary, put on an act of interest. That’s all it was, a pretty feminine act. She cared more about that half-naked fellow in the kitchen. How had those two spent the afternoon?

  He brought out his best twelve-year-old Bourbon. The act of pouring brought back the searing memory of the latest humiliation, the bartender’s masked curiosity, the whispering group at the end of the bar. He turned to the diary, read and relished an item written that morning:

  Yesterday she hit me with the news she had a lover. How much can a man take? No matter what schemes are in her mind she ought to be loyal while I am alive. Maybe she is too passionate to control herself. But what a shock to a loving husband. I drove to the ocean and stood on those steep rocks and looked down at the water and was tempted. Then a terrible thought came to my mind. I saw through her devious plans. She may not be brave enough to strike the blow herself so she is trying to provoke me to do it myself. This thought saved my life. I refuse to make it easy for her.