Cancel All Our Vows (19 page)

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 something 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?”

“Here. This one goes to Sue Hosking, and this one to her husband.”

She took the glasses dutifully and walked off with them. Fletcher saw Jane give her a rather startled look, and then turn and stare at him. He turned back to his duties as Hud came up. “Something tall and cold and full of gin, Fletch.”

“Sir, keep my wife out of this. By God, I’ve been waiting for a chance to use that line ever since I read it.”

Hud looked at him mournfully. “I was going to stand around and talk to you. Not if you keep up that sort of thing. Martha wants the same thing too. I was going to stand here and help you feel sorry for the pair of us.”

“Why?”

“While we labor in the city, our wives dally with younger men at a woodland lake.”

“We’ve gotten middle-aged and unexciting, Huddleston.”

Hud nodded sadly. “Life goes by. But before the last juices are gone, old boy, I should like a fast hack at the Corban woman. She exudes an aura.”

Fletcher kept his tone casual. “You’ve noticed it too?”

“She has brightened these rheumy old eyes. She has reactivated sagging hormones. Yes, as a man who in years past has made an intensive study of such things, I recognize the type. Wives bristle when she walks by. She has that deceptive tranquillity, like a blast furnace with door closed. A highly specialized organism, I should judge. Do you suspect that yon elderly cub-scout is able to cope? One wonders. She bemused me, my boy. Feature by feature she is almost plain. The little body has all the usual parts and configurations, but not in any particularly startling manner. Yet somehow the whole effect is that of something barely able to contain live steam at a pressure of four thousand pounds per square inch.”

Whenever he was with Hud, Fletch found himself talking in Hud’s florid manner. “Jane expresses that mysterious element by declaring that the woman just doesn’t care. But her analysis stops there.”

“A not inadequate analysis. I suspect that an explosive element has been added to our little sewing circle, Fletcher. Remember Dorry Haines? Lovely little girl. She broke up three marriages before departing for points unknown with one of our most promising young attorneys.”

“Do you really think she’s another Dorry Haines, Hud?”

Hud nodded solemnly. “Note the walk as she approaches. Very indicative, my boy. When they walk as though they were carrying a silver dollar clenched between their dimpled knees, they’re invariably hell on wheels. And note the hands. I haven’t had a look yet, but I would give odds that you will find a pronounced curvature of the nails over the tips of the fingers, plus very plump pads at the base of the fingers. And, should you ever get close
enough, Lord help you, you will detect a slightly heavy personal odor—not at all unpleasant—but a bit on the musky side.”

He dropped his voice on the last few words as Laura approached them. Fletcher squeezed the quarter of lime in on top of the vodka and ginger beer in the copper mug and handed it to her with a slight bow. “Give the ice a chance to work before you start on it, Laura. Hud was just telling me the results of years of research.”

He saw the look that she slanted up at Hud, knowing and speculative. “I didn’t think you were the research type, Mr. Rogers.”

It was one of the few times that Fletcher had seen Hud discomfited. “I … I was giving Fletch the benefit of my vast experience, Mrs. Corban.”

“Do you think I would profit by it, Mr. Rogers?” she asked, wide-eyed. And, as Hud gulped, she turned and gave Fletcher a bawdy wink and said, “You see, I need a lot of practice, Fletch. I’m making a study of innuendoes, Mr. Rogers. I’ve been told they’re the favorite indoor sport in Minidoka. Is that Ellis’ drink? I’ll take it to him, thank you.”

As she reached her hand for the glass, Fletcher looked at it and saw that it was precisely as Hud had said it would be. She walked off with glass and copper mug, turning to smile brightly back over her shoulder.

“That,” said Hud solemnly, “is an infernal machine and it’s set to go off in your face, sir. I hope you brought your Bandaids.”

“I have a strong character.”

Hud waited while Fletcher finished making the two strong Collinses. He took them and started away, then stopped and turned and said, “I don’t think she has any interest in your character, Mr. Wyant. She is in a phase. A female Samson. Somebody cut her curly locks and they have just grown back and you are a temple and she is about to push you down, just to test her strength.”

“Didn’t the temple kill Samson?”

“She’s the type to push and run. Or vice versa, as the case may be.”

Fletcher made his own drink last and then wandered
over and joined the group. Martha was giving a spirited account of the water skiing. Midge Van Wirt was competing with a more spirited account of a bridge hand with eleven hearts in it, and a partner with holes in her head. Ellis was sitting gingerly on the edge of the terrace on the grass, beside Laura’s chair. His sports jacket was vivid and hairy, and his slacks were a peculiarly unpleasant mustard shade. The faint breeze was dying and Fletcher saw the dew of perspiration on all the polite faces and knew that they would have to move out of the sun or melt. Next year, he decided, he would have a lattice roof put over half the terrace, and Jane could train something green to climb and cover it, so that the sun worshipers could at least sit near people who wanted the shade.