Cancel All Our Vows (27 page)

“And sandwiches too, if you want to go all out. One hour?”

“Let’s see, that would make it quarter to twelve.”

“Okay, Janey? Good.”

She hung up. She did not let herself think. Assignations were supposed to be tender and haunting and mysterious. This one came with beer and sandwiches. What you might expect of Sam Rice. A casual animal arrogance. Come and get it, and you bring the beer. She worked quickly, and every time her mind veered dangerously away from the routine of getting ready to go, she focused it on the small red stain on the sheet and felt anew the rush of righteous anger. She half ran to the car after changing her clothes, packing the assignation lunch. She yanked the car door shut, backed out into the street too fast, wrenched the car around. On the way north she drove fast and hard, scaring herself on the corners, and then she slowed down to a crawl, realizing she was too early.

She parked by the turnoff onto the dirt road that led to the lake, and sat quite rigid, quite unthinking and unfeeling
while the inevitable minutes went by. She started up again. The hardest part was when she came to the fork he had mentioned. This was the moment of decision, of final decision. It was possible to drive on down to the Dimbrough camp and make some excuse for dropping in. She slowed until the car was barely moving and made the turn to the right. It seemed to take every bit of strength in her arms and back to make the right turn.

He was where he said he would be, and he was sitting on a log on the far side of the ditch. He got up and came striding across the ditch, smiling into the car at her, and she liked no part of his smile or his manner. He was too wise, too knowing, too utterly practiced at all this.

He opened the door on her side and said, “Hi, beautiful lady. Shove over. I know a happy sylvan spot hereabouts.” She moved over and he got in. He put his arm around her and she sat still and silent as he lightly kissed the tip of her nose and said, “You are cute as several bugs, my friend.” She forced a smile.

Sam drove slowly and carefully, turning right onto a lumber road, a bare trace through the woods. Grass grew tall between the wheel marks and brushed the underside of the car. Branches scraped against the sides. The track climbed slowly for nearly a half mile, and ended at a clearing where the pines grew tall and the ground was soft with needles. Jane felt as if her teeth were about to start chattering. She remembered the prayer of the night before. And this was more than weakness; this was cold intent. She made herself think of Fletch, of his body, of the body of Laura Corban.

Sam got out and said, “Like it? Nobody within miles but us chipmunks. Just you and me and some beer and a lazy afternoon. Untense, will you?”

Again she pulled her lips back in a rigid smile. “I’ll try.”

“A blanket is indicated. Anything in the back?”

“I think so. Yes.” Sam found the right key and unlocked the back. He pulled out a grey blanket with a blue stripe, a heavy Navy surplus blanket that Fletch had bought after the war. A picnic blanket that they had often used, the four of them, with the stain where Dink had tipped over the thermos of coffee.

He took the big brown paper bag of beer and sandwiches and stood with the blanket over his arm, looked around, and said, “Over there, I guess. Come on.”

She followed him, rigidly expecting sacrifice. Maybe it would be easier, she thought, if he would at least pretend to tenderness. But he made it so … direct. She detested the young male arrogance of him, but more than that she resented the matter-of-factness of it all.

He handed her the bag and spread the blanket out neatly on the soft bed of pine needles. “The magic carpet, angel. Take a load off.”

Jane sat down awkwardly. Sam sprawled quickly beside her, laced his long fingers across his stomach and squinted up through the pine branches at the sky.

“This,” he said, “is a most pleasant and unexpected bonus. I don’t feel like I want to ask too many questions.”

“Then don’t.”

He glanced sidelong at her. “You’ve got one of those tumbril looks. A sort of head-in-the-basket look, dear.”

“Have I? I’m terribly sorry.”

“Or maybe a preoperative look.”

“Do you have to talk, talk, talk, talk? God!”

She looked quickly away from him and set her teeth in her underlip, biting down until it hurt.

She gave a startled gasp as he grasped her shoulder, pulled her quickly down beside him, turned her into his arms. “Talk, talk, talk,” he said huskily, then found her lips. She made herself put her arms around him. Her arms felt like heavy things filled with wet sand. His mouth worked at hers and she tried to respond, tried to summon up the fluid melting of desire. But it wouldn’t come and she couldn’t lose herself. No matter how she tried, she was Mrs. Fletcher Wyant lying a bit absurdly at noon on a blanket in the woods with a college boy. It was grotesque, undignified, and in poor taste. She tried to simulate excitement, and knew that she was doing it awkwardly. She shut her eyes as he fumbled with the fastenings of her clothing. He took off her blouse and unhooked her bra and slid it down off her arms. He held her tightly again, kissing her lips and her breasts, but she felt nothing but awkwardness and vague alarm. She could no longer pretend. She lay
rigid with her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her hands clenched, and she wished he would just hurry. Just hurry and get it over with so she could know that she had done this to Fletcher coldly and purposefully. She wondered why he was touching her no longer. She warily opened her eyes. Sam was sitting up, looking down at her with a rather odd expression, and she instinctively folded her right arm across her breasts. Sam gave her a tired disgusted smile. He reached over and picked up her blouse and bra and tossed them onto her. “Okay. Cover up.”

“Go ahead, Go ahead with it. What’s wrong with you?”

“Put your clothes back on, Mrs. Wyant.”

“It didn’t seem to bother you the other night. This is your favorite sport, isn’t it?”

He turned his back to her. She heard the snap of his lighter, saw a drift of blue smoke skid away in the warm gentle wind. She sat up at last, dressed quickly, tucking her blouse awkwardly into her skirt.

Sam dug into the bag, took out two cans of beer, found the opener. She heard the beer hiss as he levered holes into the cans. He turned and handed her one can. His expression had changed. He looked amused.

“Skoal, sugar.”

The beer can was chill in her hand. “Why did you stop?” she demanded.

“I didn’t want you to strain yourself.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m stupid, maybe, but not that supid. The other night I was a symbol of … oh, blind fate or something. I was something that happened to you and you didn’t like it, and you weren’t willing to admit it was partly your fault. My name is Sam Rice. I brush my teeth every day. I’m kind to small children and dogs. I’m not some kind of machine you’re going to use to get even with your husband. See?”

She took long swallows of the beer. “You don’t make sense, Sam.”

“Not the kind of sense you want me to make. You’ve got me all established. A rapist of the second degree or something. So you can blame me, not yourself. But it happens I’m not. As I said, I’m Sam Rice, a human being. Sorry to disappoint you, my friend. If you were a pig, fine.
We’d have a nice little picnic. Trouble is, I believed you the other night, afterward. You’re no pig. And I’m no instrument of vengeance, dear. I know how you work. You’re a rarity. With you there has to be love, and with no love, it doesn’t work. I mean, I’m not against it as an operating procedure. It is just a touch on the rare side.”

“Sam, I …”

“Hush up. Not about me. About your guy. Because who else can you talk to?”

She could not look at him any longer. She looked away. The words came, slow, awkward, then faster, more fluently … all of it. The whole mess. The party, the sheet, the coffeepot, all of it right up until the moment of meeting him.

He put his hand on her shoulder. “I don’t mind your being sore at me. I told you that before, Janey.”

She let the can drop. It rolled off the end of the blanket, leaving a trail of wetness where the beer spilled. She hitched closer to him, turning her face against his chest, and it was a painful sort of crying. No gentleness in the tears. They burned. And the sobs hurt her throat. Through tears, as he held her with one big arm, she saw the brown hand close slowly on his empty beer can, flattening it, before he tossed it away to clink against a stone.

“I’m glad I stopped, Janey,” he said. “That’s no way to do. No way to get even with the guy.”

She used a paper napkin from the lunch to dry her tears. She moved away from him, rolling onto her stomach, supporting herself on her elbows. What was left of the sobs made little holes in her sentences.

“Why can’t I get even that way? Why not, Sam?”

“As I said before. You’re not a pig. There has to be love. Emancipated womanhood is a farce, baby. We’re still working on a double standard.”

“He can and I can’t?”

“If you can, it means you’ve stopped loving him. With him it doesn’t mean that at all. That’s where the double stuff comes in.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Try to reason it out, Janey. Evidently he took a quick hack at that Corban dish, and dish she must be, out of
some idea of getting even with you. So you come roaring up here to get even with him for getting even with you. Offhand, it doesn’t sound like there’d be much future in that sort of thing.”

“How do you mean?”

“You’re using the fidelity pitch to nibble holes in each other. Maybe fidelity is just some kind of symbol.”

“Oh, it’s a lot more than that. Sam. A lot more.”

“You and this Fletch of yours are regally fouled up, no?”

She felt the tears starting to come back. “And there’s no way out of it. That’s the trouble. No way out at all.”

“Hell, you’re both too tense. Look. Let him have his little roll in the hay, or six. He’ll think he’s gotten even with you. It may make him a little ashamed. You say you gave him the straight story on our little fiasco. He’ll start thinking about that, and because he’s ashamed, he’ll start making excuses for you. Maybe, he’ll say, I was too hasty. Good Lord, fifteen years of learning to live with each other. A nice wife who doesn’t leave hair in the sink, and who does the coffee right and cleans up after the brats. He isn’t going to toss all that over when he gets over his mad.”

“But just living together, Sam. That isn’t enough. It never could be enough. It would be like … cellmates. You have to have magic, Sam.”

“Are you saying that for your own self, you want all or nothing?”

“No. I want him. I want to live with him. I want him around. Where I can look at him. I don’t care how. Just to have him there.”

“Easy, easy. See, if you and I had gone through with this today, it wouldn’t have been any use to you unless you could let him know. Maybe he’d get over that fiasco. Would he get over a deal like this?”

She lowered her head so that her forehead was braced against her fists. “No, Sam. He wouldn’t. But the thought of him and … Laura. It makes me …”

“Okay, it makes you feel bad. Little penalty for shedding your suit the other night. Look at it that way.”

“But if he does come back to me, every time I’ll think of …”

“Why? God, she isn’t going to mark him. A night’s sleep and a hot shower.”

“Don’t be so damn casual!”

“Hell, unwrap the sandwiches. I’m fixing to starve.”

They ate and they finished the beer, and as they ate he talked to her gently, casually, encouragingly. She found herself liking him. She couldn’t help liking him. After he tossed the last can of beer away, he lay back and fell asleep with the astonishing quickness of any husky young animal. She watched the slowly changing patterns of the afternoon sun in the pine boughs. He breathed with the slowness of a trained athlete. Oddly, he looked older when he was asleep. A golden dollar of sunlight moved toward his eyes. When it touched his closed lids he grunted and turned away from it.

She watched him. She sat hugging her knees, watching him sleep, and slowly she forced herself to accept the horror of the realization that he was, after all, a nice person. And accepting that, she knew that she was far more to blame for what had happened between them than he. She relived that first moment he had touched her, after they had fallen from the skis. Perhaps that was the moment of decision, unknown to her at that time. Other men had tried that sort of thing and she had chilled them immediately and effectively. Yet somehow she had failed to do that with Sam.

Hating him, she saw, had been just a defense. The easiest way to keep from taking a slow calm look at herself. A way to keep from admitting that she had, in some obscure way, become restive, become curious.

She thought for a long time, and she began to realize what she must do, what she had to do to cleanse herself. It was nearly three by her watch. She stretched out gingerly beside him, moved her head into the angle of his neck and shoulder, and put one arm across his broad chest.

He awoke at once and said, “Well, hello!”

“Sam. Sam, I’ve been hideous to you. And you’ve been pretty wonderful.”

“Wonderful Sam. They all call me that.”

“Sam, it isn’t love, but it’s almost love. And it wouldn’t be just to get even or anything. It wouldn’t be … something
I’d ever save up to taunt him with, or anything childish like that.”

“Let me catch up. Go slower.”

She turned so that she could speak in a barely audible tone, directly into his ear. “If you’d be … very gentle … and patient with me, Sam, I think that I could … that maybe it would be … I mean, I’ve been so damned unfair to you in every way. And if you still want me …”

He reached over and laid his hand against her cheek. “You are a nice guy, Janey. But don’t spoil my act. I’m full of virtue and manly restraint. The offer is … understood and appreciated. But you’d regret it, and you know it. Now let’s get the hell out of here before it’s too late.”

He stood up lithely and held out his hand and pulled her to her feet. He folded the blanket. They walked to the car with his arm around her waist.