Cancel All Our Vows (26 page)

She knew that there was one thing in life that was absolutely certain. You pay, in some way, for everything you do. There is no mercy in the court. And it had been absurd to think for one moment that there would be no payment for that nightmare at the lake. She had known that in the shocking instant that it was happening.

There had been a strange pleasure in feeling the hard smash of his open hand against her face. And there would have been more of the same feeling in the hot smash of the bullet. But that was last night. And this was today. And you kept living. You didn’t die because you willed it when you lay there alone in that rubber raft, watching the tremble of his hands as he lit a cigarette. No matter what, you went on living, and if life became pointless then it was something to be endured, and it could best be endured by
rising to it, not sitting like a fat lump on a bed and wailing for what had been, but could never be again.

It was easy enough to say that he was unfair. One slip in fifteen years, and then a very unwilling slip, a slip against which you had fought like an animal. But the real fault had been out there in the lake, just before that. When he had pulled the suit off over your unprotesting legs. So you pay for that.

She remembered the Chicago business. The way her mind had crawled with all sorts of imaginings. His mind, with that special sickness of jealousy, would be doing that now. There was one vague chance, she knew. He might, for the sake of the children, give up the idea of divorce. They would live together like strangers, and that, perhaps, might be worse for the children than any divorce. If he decided that, it would be her chance. And she knew, coldly, how she would handle it. She would determinedly set out to seduce him. If she could manage it, perhaps they might get back a fraction of what they had once had. The magic might be gone forever, but a new relationship of comfortable mutual need would be better than nothing.

She straightened her shoulders. Confession had been made. And she was
not
going to become a mealy thing, whining around for forgiveness. If there could be any forgiveness in his heart, he would forgive a calm woman with some pride left, not a groveling thing. She briskly changed to the most attractive clothes she could think of. She took a lot of time with her hair and with her make-up. She cleaned off her nail polish and replaced it with fresh.

And then she walked out with her head up. The children shouldn’t be around during this, the worst time. She remembered Madge Trumbull’s invitation. Madge had left it open. She asked the children what they thought. It was obvious that Judge and Dink knew something was up. Something that threatened their emotional security. Yet, in the canny way of children, they did not try to find out what it was. The children took their cue from her, and drummed up a proper amount of enthusiasm, and trotted off to pack. She phoned Fletcher and he was in conference and she asked Miss Trevin to tell him to phone her back.

On the phone she managed to keep her voice cool and
polite and formal, though she was perilously close to tears.

After lunch they taxied, with luggage, down to the Forman parking lot and took the Pontiac and headed for the lake a hundred miles away.

Madge Trumbull was alone at the lake with her two kids, and she was delighted that Jane had changed her mind. She said Judge and Dink were most welcome and couldn’t they stay longer than Thursday. She said they were never any trouble, and she would even like to keep them all summer. But Jane explained how excited they were over going to the summer camps that had been picked out way before Christmas. They all swam in the late afternoon, Jane in her old suit, knowing that she would never again be able to wear the new one. It was a much bigger lake than Lake Vernon, and the water was colder. She swam hard, trying to tire herself. Afterward, she and Madge sat on the big porch while the combination maid and cook prepared the dinner. They drank cocktails and talked and once Jane was on the verge of telling Madge the whole thing, and then quickly changed her mind. It wouldn’t do any good. And, if she and Fletcher managed to heal, partially, this most serious of all rifts, it might do harm, as Madge was definitely not noted for her ability to keep secrets.

So she talked and twice she forgot the whole horror for a few minutes at a time, only to have it come flooding in on her, worse than ever.

They stayed up far too late after all the kids were in bed, and after Jane had at last gone to bed she knew that a fresh supply of tears had filled the well, so she turned her face into the pillow and bunched it against her mouth and cried until there was a large damp patch under her eyes. Then, drained and exhausted, she turned the pillow over and tried to pray. It had been too long since she had prayed. It made her feel self-conscious and awkward. She and Fletcher had both drifted away from church, except for Easter and Christmas visits. And lately the children had been permitted to get away with not attending Sunday school.

There was a pine smell in the night air and she lay on
her back and tried to pray. And then, returning to childhood, returning to a ceremony that she had not used since long before her marriage, she got out of bed and knelt on the rag rug by the bed with the cool night breeze against her body. She folded her hands and knew that it would have to be in words she could say aloud, as in childhood.

“God, I … I have committed a sin of the flesh. I was … weak, and maybe weakness is evil, but it was not … deliberate evil. I don’t think I am a bad woman. I have been … a foolish woman. Maybe we don’t live the way we should. But I have no excuse. I beg Your forgiveness, and I beg of You to return to me the … love and respect of my husband. Amen.”

She climbed back into the bed and pulled the blanket up and shivered for a time until she was warm again. The prayer had left her with a feeling of futility. It had been an empty, theatrical gesture, she felt, and if there was a God, He surely had long since given up listening to the Godless people of Minidoka.

She left the lake a bit later than she had anticipated. She said good-by to the children and hoped that they had not noticed that her farewell had been a bit more fervent than the situation demanded. All the way to Minidoka, down the road that wound down through the hills, she planned the talk she would have to have with Fletcher.

Jane sensed that Fletcher had spent a night as miserable as hers, and perhaps worse. Emotional exhaustion made it impossible to maintain that hard edge of anger. Fletcher would be drained, numb and miserable. Perhaps, after all, this would be the best time to talk, before either of them had achieved any set pattern, any blind spot too pervasive.

She knew what she had to say. I want to be taken back, on your terms. If we can keep just a little of what we had, I want it kept at all costs. I’m no good without you. The thing that hurts the worst is your pride, and your self-respect. But I told you the truth of how it was. Suppose when I was alone, somebody broke into the house and raped me. What would be your reaction to that? Divorce me as unclean? Suppose the man didn’t break in. Suppose I unlocked the door for him, knowing that I was being foolish, but thinking that nothing would happen. Where
does guilt start, Fletcher? If you can think of my reluctance, think that I fought, then can’t you start believing again that this body is yours? I’ve tried to keep myself young for you. And, Fletcher, look into your own heart and see if you can find a memory of a time when you were at fault, and much more willingly, much more the aggressor than I was.

There could not be a calm talk, she knew. There would have to be a scene. But perhaps the scene could end in calmness.

She went slowly down the drive. After the light she had to turn right in the third block, onto Coffeepot Road. Two cars were waiting to turn left on green across the traffic. She went by and caught a glimpse of a green car, a slim arm outstretched in signal, Laura with Fletcher beside her. She drove on and traffic was too heavy for her to look back. She tried to laugh at herself. Diseased imagination. Such a coincidence was just a little too much to expect. The Corbans’ car was green. Of course, but Fletcher would be in the office, and so would Ellis, and if Laura was riding around with a man, which was likely, it could hardly be Fletcher.

She turned up the road and into the drive and parked in front of the garage doors. She took out her small overnight bag and unlocked the front door and went into the house. She smelled coffee at once and went to the kitchen, still carrying her bag. She touched the side of the pot. The gas flame was out, but the pot was very hot, almost hot enough to burn her.

She put the bag down and walked frowning through the house. She knew enough about him and his habits so that she soon found out he had come home drunk. He had slept in his shorts. His pajamas were still neatly folded. She examined the bathroom. He had cleaned up pretty well, but there was still evidence that he had been sick. The clock had stopped. The alarm was still wound tight, so it hadn’t gone off. The hot coffeepot meant he had overslept, and he had not put the aspirin bottle back in the cabinet near the sink. It was still on the linoleum counter top. She began to wonder what clothes he had worn to the office. She went through his wardrobe and could not find
anything missing that he might have worn. The new dacron slacks were gone. She checked his shirts. Suddenly she realized the grey Egyptian cotton shirt was gone. It was hardly an office costume. And didn’t she have the vague impression that the man beside Laura had been dressed in grey? She looked at her watch, the small gold watch he had given her on their tenth wedding anniversary. Twenty-five after ten.

She sat by the phone for a time. Miss Trevin would know her voice. She remembered something she had read, and took a Kleenex and put it over the mouthpiece. She consciously made her voice more nasal and faster.

“Good morning, Mr. Wyant’s office.”

“Can I speak to him please?”

“Who is calling, please?”

“Miss Reilly. It’s a personal matter. I’d like to talk to him.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Reilly, but Mr. Wyant is out sick today. Perhaps you could reach him at his home if it’s important enough to disturb him.” Trevin gave her the number and Jane thanked her and hung up. She phoned the plant number again and asked for Mr. Corban. Sorry, but Mr. Corban is out of town. He isn’t expected back until late Thursday.

She made one more call, to the Corbans’ house. She sat and listened to the long ringing of the phone in the empty house. After a while she replaced the phone on the cradle.

He certainly had wasted no time. The minute he got a ready-made excuse he went snuffling off on the hot trail of that little piece. So her self-advertising campaign on Sunday had borne fruit already. Wave it a couple of times and watch the men flock around. With Fletcher at the head of the line. Pack of dogs trotting amiably after a bitch, tongues lolling.

She was vastly and enormously angry. She took her overnight bag and flung it on her bed. He’d been too drunk to remember he was supposed to be sleeping in the study. She used some of the surplus energy of anger to rip the sheets from his bed and make it up fresh. Suddenly, as she was balling up the sheets, she stopped and stared hard
at a small dark red smudge. She smelled it, and caught the faint perfume of lipstick. Not her shade. With her coloring she had to wear something with a good deal of orange in it, or else look like death itself.

Indeed he had wasted no time smuggling the little bitch into my house, into my bedroom to smear her dirty mouth on my sheets. She hasn’t got the moral sense of a mink. Little mare, all aquiver for the stallion. Any stallion. This makes what happened to me look like a Presbyterian kiss. This is revolting. This smells to high heaven.

She marched to the phone, suddenly aware of exactly what she would do. She phoned the Dimbrough camp at Lake Vernon and once again held the Kleenex over the mouthpiece. She heard Dolly answer the phone. “Hello?”

“Say,” she said nasally, “could I talk to Sam Rice. Is he around?”

“Just a moment, please.”

It was a long time before she heard the thump as he picked the phone off the hall table. “Hello?”

“Don’t say my name, Sam. It’s Jane. Jane Wyant.”

“They’re all out on the dock,” he said, lowering his voice. “What’s up, Jane?”

His voice somehow made him clear again in her mind. Her memory had been smudged. She could remember the tall hard body, and the strong slant of his shoulders, but until he spoke she could not remember his face clearly. A boyish face, and, of course, an evil face. Her resentment came back so strongly that she almost hung up, unable to go through with it.

“Sam,” she said calmly, “things are in a bit of a mess.”

“How so?” She heard the caution in his tone.

“It seems we were watched.”

There was a silence and then he said, almost tenderly, “The hell you say! The hell you say!”

“Martha Rogers. She came out to enlist us for bridge or something. I guess she arrived at what you’d call a crucial moment.”

“You sound calm as all hell, Janey.”

She resisted the sharp impulse to tell him to stop calling her that. “Oh, I’m very calm. We had a party here Sunday.
Martha got tight. She got mad at me and made a scene in front of Fletch. She was … quite graphic about the whole thing.”

“Jane … I’m terribly sorry. What can I do?”

“Everything has been blown sky-high.
Fini
, or something. So … I find that I’m a lady with a name. And … no game.”

She heard his startled grunt. “I think I see what you mean, my lamb,” he said intimately. His tone was coarser, more insinuating. “You
didn’t
have much fun, did you?”

“Not very much.” She felt quite frozen inside. Quite calm.

“Busy?”

“I thought I could drive up. But not all the way. You know what I mean?”

“Sure. Tell you what. I’ll take a little stroll. Know the fork where you turn left to come to the camp, about a mile and a half from here? Turn right. I’ll be a couple of hundred yards up the road. Got any beer?”

“How utterly romantic! Yes, there’s some cold. I’ll bring it.”