Cancel All Our Vows

by John D. MacDonald

  “Jane!” he said sharply. “Jane! Cut it out!”

  She got worse. He swung onto the shoulder and stopped the car and set the brake. He took her shoulders and she was limp and helpless, making the great raw sounds of tears and laughter. He shook her hard and she did not stop. He held her and, measuring carefully, slapped her hard. The sound stopped abruptly. She lay forward, her head on her knees, crying softly.

  “What in the world did that?” he demanded.

  “I … don’t know.”

  “Lord, I haven’t seen you like that in years. What happened back there today, anyway?”

  “Nothing, Fletch. Nothing at all. It’s just … I was miserable. And imagining you doing … all sorts of things. But … asleep in a movie!” She made another harsh sound.

  “Watch it! Don’t get going again.”

  “I’m … going to be all right now.”

  “Shall I start the car?”

  “Please.” She opened the glove compartment, dug around for Kleenex. She blew her nose lustily.

  “You got pretty emotional about all this,” he said stiffly.

  “It always upsets me when we have a … misunderstanding. You know that.”

  “Not this much, honey.”

  “Oh, I guess it was the heat and all, and working too hard yesterday, and that gruesome evening last night. This sort of … topped it all off.”

  “But the hollering hysterics. That rattled me. I thought you’d had a fight or something back there. All I could think of was that Hank had gotten out of line or something.”

  “No. He wasn’t any more sneaky than usual. I guess that … the time of the month has something to do with it.”

  “Oh.”

  She blew her nose again. She moved over close to him, almost shyly, it seemed to him. He reached down and patted her bare knee. “We’re okay now?” he asked.

  “Sure, darling, Everything is fine.”

  “You’re not sore?”

  “No, darling. Not the least bit.”

  “I think you mean that,” he said wonderingly.

  “Am I usually so nasty about something like this?”

  “No … but …”

  “Hush then,” she said.

  The miles went by, the warm night flowing by the car windows and the city pink on the sky ahead.

  “That Rice boy seems like a pleasant sort.”

  “I suppose he’s all right.”

  “Didn’t you like him?”

  “Yes, I guess so. But he is … a boy. A sort of a mixed-up boy, I guess.”

  “In what way?”

  “Oh, we were talking on the dock this afternoon. He doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. You know what I mean. Sort of restless and discontented. I guess he’ll settle down someday.”

  “Nearly everybody does. It isn’t such a bad fate, is it, darling?”

  “No.”

  As he turned into their street she said suddenly, surprisingly, after a long silence, “I love you, you know. I love you very much, Fletch.”

  “Well! What brought that on?”

  Her laugh sounded a bit nervous. “A statement of fact, I guess. It just seemed like a good time to say it, that’s all.”

  “I give you a bad time, and still you say that out of a clear sky. Lady, your deep and sincere emotion is reciprocated in toto.”

  As he undressed, he was puzzled about her. She was acting quite strange. He tried to relate it back to something that could have happened at the lake, but that didn’t make much sense. He guessed that it was due to the quarrel the night before. Things had gone bad too quickly after a quarrel. And then, as she said, the moon was also involved. A funny kid sometimes. Think you have her cased, and she comes up with a brand-new reaction. What did the man say? Infinite variety. He was about right. Damn hot in this bedroom. Open more windows. In spite of that sleep, I’m still bushed. And she looks weary. Too weary, maybe. And yet I want her. In a funny way. As though she was a stranger, almost. A stranger I saw walking into the Dimbrough’s camp in that skimpy suit, and that tall kid behind her, with the pair of them looking darn near the same age.

  He was in bed first and she came in the darkness and sat shyly on the edge of his bed, half facing him. He took her hand and felt her tremble. For some zany reason she seemed to be acting shy as a bride. Her shyness made him more gentle with her than usual. He was gentle with her and it took her much longer than usual to achieve her fulfillment, and when it happened, it was a shy and gentle fury with her. Then she wept almost silently and he did not know why, and did not want to ask. He held her close and kissed her salt eyes and murmured to her, comforting sounds with few words. He held her until she slept, and after she was asleep she sobbed twice more and once seemed to strike out with her hand. As he did not want to disturb her he stood up slowly, spread the light sheet over her, walked around and got into her bed. She had been as passive and humbly eager as in the very first months of their marriage. He lay in the darkness wondering about it, wondering about her. And he felt sleep coming for him, coming like a warm tide that started at his toes. He welcomed it and knew, from his feeling of utter relaxation, that the sleep would be good, and deep, and healing.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jane’s sleep was so deep that when she slowly came awake on Sunday morning it was with an odd disoriented feeling. The sun was bright and even before she looked at the clock, she knew from the slant of the sun that it was midmorning. Sunday morning, she realized. And suddenly she thought of all the things she had to do.

  She swung her legs out of the bed and sat up, suddenly feeling the muscle soreness in her shoulders from holding the tow rope behind the fast boat. The memory of the lake, and of the night, flooded into her mind, the very impact of it making her gasp. She sat on the edge of the bed, shocked, startled, almost terrified. Last night she had been possessed by a man not her husband. It had happened almost without warning. It was something that had never been going to happen to her. Never.

  She put her hands hard against her eyes and relived that shocking moment, that sharp and unbelievable moment of bitter realization that it had happened, that he had incredibly taken from her both the will and the ability to resist. As though, in that sense, the act of union was all of the act itself, a deed accomplished, and the remaining time while she had lain flaccid under his possession had been merely a further affirmation of the conquest he had expressed in that first deep linking.

  She took a deep, shuddering breath and then turned slowly, timidly, to look at Fletcher in her bed, more than half certain that he would be staring back at her, his eyes full of hate and knowing contempt.

  But his back was to her and she saw the slow lift of his breathing. She remembered last night. Remembered her terror as Fletch had possessed her, a fear that somehow he would know. That he would sense the use to which her body had been put, that he would detect some alien motion, some vile residue. And she remembered how his tenderness had made her cry, and how he had held her and kissed her eyes and how terribly close she had come in that moment to telling him. She knew that if he had asked her why she was crying, she would have told him. She would have been unable to stop her own lips. But by some merciful chance he had not asked. She stood up, feeling old and somber and soiled. Her body felt worn and heavy. She went into the bathroom and began her morning routines, finding in their homely necessity the satisfactions and faint forgetfulness of habit. She showered and, standing in the hot water, remembering, she scrubbed her body with dedicated fury.

  When she came out of the bathroom Fletch was sitting up in bed, yawning mightily. He scratched his chest and gave her a sleepy grin. “God, if I’d slept like this Friday night, we’d have had no trouble.”

  “A good sleep? I’m glad.”

  “You look lush and lovely this morning. Either put on some clothes or come back to bed.”

  “Don’t brag, dear,” she said primly, taking comfort in her traditional response. She dug out a blue denim halter and shorts, put
them on and tied her hair with a scrap of matching blue ribbon. Fletch was shuffling into the bathroom as she left for the kitchen.

  Her kitchen was shiny and new and spotless and comforting. She startled herself by humming above the metallic drone of the squeezer as she held the orange halves against it. She was both pleased that she could hum, and guilty about it. Was it going to mean that little, after all? Perhaps that was the best way. It happened to some other woman. To a stranger there in the deep shadow. Yet she could remember the rubbery smell of the yellow raft, the feeling of the cool glass in her hand.

  Forget it, Jane. Put it out of your silly head. It happened to me but it was like … like getting run over. Or drowning. It happened so it happened and there’s no harm done, so skip it. Maybe it did some good. Maybe it taught you that it mustn’t ever happen again. Did it happen because I had some tiny rotten place in me? A sort of curiosity? After all, there never had been anyone else. And you wonder, sometimes. Not seriously. Just idly. Now I know. It’s no good. It’s a snare and a delusion. It makes you feel dirty. It’s … an invasion of privacy.

  The coffee began to make a good smell. When she heard the shower stop she put butter in the frying pan and got the eggs out of the refrigerator. She thought of how she had looked in the mirror. Just the same. Like Sam said. It doesn’t show. You don’t have to tell.

  Fletch came out in a startlingly vivid sports shirt and pale grey slacks. He came up behind her and grabbed her around the waist and kissed her behind the ear.

  “No paper yet?”

  “I forgot to look,” she said.

  “What good are you?” he muttered and went off to the front door. She served his juice and bacon and eggs. He came back and they solemnly split the Sunday paper down the middle. She pretended to read and from time to time she glanced over at him. There was a heaviness of flesh under his firm jaw. Where the shirt was opened one button too far she could see the sprinkling of white hairs amid the dark thatch on his chest.

  “They’re getting bids for repaving Lamont Street,” he said. “Oh, fine. They wait until we move off it, then fix it up.”

  “Want to move back, dear?”

  “Not right this minute. Later, maybe, when we can get a sucker to give us our price on this place.”

  “Over my dead body,” she said firmly. “I love every inch of this place.”

  He grunted and they read in silence. She got up and brought the pot and refilled his coffee cup. He smiled up at her. “Know what’s wrong around here?”

  “What’s wrong!”

  “Don’t jump like that. Your nerves are going bad. I mean the great silence. None of your monstrous children clumping around.”

  “Don’t look so happy about it. When they’re gone most of the summer you’re going to miss them. Now why don’t you take your coffee in the other room so I can clean up here? Today is going to be one of the rough ones.”

  His smile faded. “Oh, Lord! I’d forgotten them. Who did you say is coming? Martha and Hud I know about And the Corbans. Who else?”

  “Midge and Harry, Sue and Dick.”

  “Hmm. Ten counting us. Not too bad. Oh, Lord, I forgot to check the liquor.

  “I did that Friday when I decided to ask them. You were short, so I phoned and they delivered it. A mixed case. Gin, rum and bourbon. And I bought some more glasses last week, remember. The only things you have to do are get the chairs out, set up the bar, and then go down and get a bag of cubes before they get here.”

  “We’re eating in?”

  “Just the two of us, so it won’t be much trouble. Martha said the kids would be fed before they drop them off on us. And I noticed that there’s a good movie. You could take them when you get the cubes and that’ll get them out from under foot.”

  “Where is it?”

  “At the Palace. They can come back on the bus.”

  He took all the paper and carried his coffee into the living room. He stretched out on the couch with the coffee on the low table near his elbow. She went in and looked at him and got another pillow and said, “Sit up a minute. This will be better.”

  “Such service, my love.”

  She felt herself blush and she turned away quickly before he could see it and wonder about it. “You go blind and I have to go to work. It’s enlightened self-interest.”

  As she walked back out into the kitchen she wished there was more she could do for him. Some way to make up to him for something he would never know. She would do it in little ways, she decided. There would be a lot of little things she could do. And there were years ahead in which to do them. It made her feel better to decide that, as though she had measured out a portion of the payment for sin. Expiation of guilt. One day, perhaps, when they were both very old, when they were far beyond any physical relationship she could tell him, and tell of how it had changed her, how she had spent all the years trying to make it up to him in a thousand little ways. And perhaps, together, in the wisdom that comes with age, they could laugh softly over the panic and terror of a silly woman who was so unpracticed and so ignorant in her faithfulness to one man that she had been fair game for another, seduced by a college kid twelve years her junior.

  She sang in her small true voice as she packed the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher. Panic and terror were far away. Nothing like that would ever happen again. Indeed, already it had begun to seem as if it had never happened once.

  Midge and Harry Van Wirt were the first ones to arrive at ten after three. She was a birdlike woman, very nervous and jumpy, with a startlingly loud harsh laugh. Her face was seamed and simian. Harry Van Wirt was a big pasty man with a bloated look. He was always short of breath. He made every banal comment sound like confidential information. He was the general agent of one of the largest insurance firms in town, and made a handsome living out of it. In spite of their slightly irritating mannerisms, they were good guests, and good hosts.

  By the time Fletch had made them their drinks, Sue and Dick Hosking arrived. Neither he nor Jane cared much for Dick, Sue’s second husband, but they were fond of Sue. Sue’s first husband had died, leaving her a large wholesale grocery firm. They had been childless. She had tried to learn the business, and in the process had fallen in love with Dick Hosking, who was twenty-four to her thirty-seven. Dick had been working as an order clerk in the firm. It took Sue three months to promote him to general manager and marry him. To the surprise of everyone in Minidoka who knew the score, Dick took hold of the job well. He was a rather pretty young man, a bit on the frail side. Sue adored him, and was most pathetically anxious to equalize as nearly as possible the difference in their ages. She made Dick grow a rather discouraged-looking mustache, and she dressed far younger than her years. She became a bit kittenish, which did not become her, as she was a rather raw-boned woman with a slightly somber expression. Dick had appeared to be wilting under the force of her determination and her love, and then, in March, she had discovered she was pregnant.

  This fact had eased their relationship entirely. Sue gave up her kittenish mannerisms, dressed more sedately. Dick acquired a manly strut, and spent most of his time at parties seeing that she was comfortable. She followed him with her eyes whenever he was within sight, no matter whom she was talking to. Pregnancy had ripened her rather spare figure and given her a blooming look. Everyone in Minidoka said it was just dandy, even if it was perhaps a little dangerous for a woman her age to have a first baby, and who would have thought that prissy little citizen would have turned the trick when big, booming, jovial Carl, her first husband, had labored strenuously and to the limit of his resources for fifteen years without a single jackpot. They said you never could tell about these little fellows, could you, but then remember Papa Dionne.

  Jane kissed Sue and told her how well she looked while Fletcher shook Dick’s rather limp hand and took the drink order.

  The Corbans arrived bare minutes after the Hoskings. Fletcher looked over Dick’s shoulder and saw them coming across the yard. Laura wore somet
hing strapless in a pale blue-green. It fitted tightly to the slim waist then flared out into yards of skirt He saw her and magically all his good spirits of the morning and of the day thus far ran quickly out of a ragged hole in the bottom of his soul. The wind ruffled her no-color cobwebby hair, and she walked with the stride of a trained model, and she looked directly at him across forty feet of green lawn and smiled in a way that made them both alone with all these people, both strangers and aware.

  Fletcher turned gratefully back to the outdoor bar and let Jane handle the introductions. She was very good and quick and easy with introductions and he was most likely to foul them up, forgetting a well-known name at the crucial moment. Martha and Hud Rogers arrived just in time to be included in the introductions and to remind Jane that they were the only ones who had met the Corbans the previous evening. Hud Rogers was a big tow-headed man with the ineradicable look of a dirt farmer, though he was at least four generations removed from the land.

  Harry, Ellis and Hud stood and talked together. Dick hovered protectively around his aging bride. The women made a small group of the terrace chairs.

  Laura appeared at Fletcher’s elbow. “Greetings, sahib. What comes in those copper mugs? I can’t remember the name, but I want one. And Ellis will have his usual bourbon and water. He doesn’t like it at all, but he likes the sound of it when he orders it.”

  “A Moscow Mule comes encased in copper. I was just about to make one for myself. You recovered from Friday night?”

  She gave him a prim look. “What part of Friday night?”

  “Wasn’t it you who resented my suburban innuendoes?”

  “That was Friday. I’ve decided to conform, now. A nice little lecherous corporation wife. I’m supposed to entice you, to help Ellis get ahead at the office.”

  He looked at her, slightly startled. Her face was calm and her smile was measured and careful, but the clear hazel eyes looked bright with malice.

  “But you aren’t supposed to tell me, are you?”

  “Who wants to be sneaky?”