Cancel All Our Vows (32 page)

He stopped suddenly, stared hard at Stanley. Stanley was leaning back in his chair, looking extremely pleased.

“Just what in the hell are you grinning at?”

“That’s the first sign of life I’ve seen in months, Fletch. You say you can keep him under control. Splendid! He gets your job then.”

“Make sense, for Christ’ sake!”

“And I’m creating a new title for you, Fletch. Executive vice-president. We’ve gotten along without one of those animals for quite a few years. It’s been cleared with the board, including a pay boost that ought to make you happy. Wipe the goofy look off your face and sit down. We’ve got provisional approval from the SEC for a new stock issue. It will be your baby to work out the details. We’re absorbing Correy Heater Corporation in Birmingham. They tried to move into air conditioning and flubbed out. You would have been working on this whole thing with me if you hadn’t been in a fog. I’m going to have to spend a lot of time down there. There’s an executive staff and about half of them are creeps I’ve got to weed out and replace. While I’m commuting, you’re it. This drifting and dreaming you’ve been doing can really hurt us now, if you keep it up. I’m gambling on shocking you the hell out of it. You’re going to find out that you’ll have to be a son of a bitch around here.
The
son of a bitch. Slack up on the reins and it’ll run away with you. And if it does, word will get around. And when I tie the can to you, you’ll have to go work for the government. Industry won’t hire you as a timekeeper.”

The realization of what was happening to him was like a small warm flame that started in his middle and spread out to the tips of his fingers. He felt nine feet tall, and perfectly capable of walking through brick walls. In his mind the entire new range of responsibilities was being sorted out, dropped into numbered slots. Production, Engineering, Design, Sales, Purchasing, Personnel, Accounting, Maintenance. Each function was tied to a man, and each man was well known to him, and he knew precisely how to get the ultimate effort from each man. He could work them as a unity, and apply all the combined and specialized skills of that functioning unit to the big problems as they appeared.

“How far can I go?” he asked.

“That’s the question I wanted to hear, Fletch. You know as well as I do what has to have Board approval. On anything under that top policy level, it is entirely up to you as to whether you make the decision or refer it to me.”

Fletcher nodded. “Good enough.”

Stanley stood up and stuck out his hand. “Congratulations, Fletch. And luck. You’ll need the luck.”

Fletcher started to walk out in a daze. There were a million new things to start thinking about. Stanley said, “Hey, don’t you want to know when the change is effective?”

Fletcher turned and stared at him. “Hell, I’ve already started.”

“Move yourself into that office right across the hall. I’ll leave you the pleasure of telling Corban. And I think that Evans might be a good man to move into Corban’s shoes. He seems to be …”

Fletcher grinned suddenly. “I’ll consider that a suggestion, Stanley.”

The news traveled fast through the office grapevine. They came into his office singly and in twos and threes to congratulate him. He was inwardly amused at the change in their attitude. Harry Bailey was the only one who seemed to have any resentment. They were all slightly more affable than usual, and a bit speculative, a bit uncertain. After they had all been in, he called Miss Trevin in and asked her to close the door.

“Marcia, I’m going to have to depend on you a great deal.”

“It’s so exciting, Mr. Wyant!”

“Mr. Corban will be moving in here. I’m going to have to depend on you to be his right arm, Marcia.”

She looked as though he had slapped her. “But I thought …”

“I know. And believe me, I’d like nothing better. We work well together. But you see, we can’t take both the key people out of this office. It would be poor planning.”

“But … maybe Mr. Corban would rather have somebody else.”

“Marcia, for more reasons than one, and I believe you know what I mean, I am not going to give Mr. Corban any choice. Please understand that I am not asking you to be … an informant. I don’t believe in that sort of thing. I
merely think that your obvious loyalty to me will act as a deterrent should Mr. Corban wish to … extend himself.”

“I … guess I understand.”

“I’m going to have to have a secretary. I thought you might have a suggestion.”

She pursed her lips. “There’s one girl in the pool you might like. She’s green, but she’s very quick and smart. Miss Schmidt.”

“I’ll give her a try, then. You talk to her and … explain all my bad habits, and the way I like things done.”

“Yes, Mr. Wyant.”

“Thank you very much, Miss Trevin.”

She opened the door and started out and then turned back. “Sir, did you call Mrs. Wyant from some other office to tell her the news? I thought you might have forgotten in the excitement and all.”

He felt his new confidence slowly leaking away. “She’s not home right now,” he lied. “Besides, I think I’d rather tell her in person.”

Miss Trevin blushed. “I see. Of course, Mr. Wyant.”

He found he had no time, however, to think of Jane. The press of new work, new problems, pushed her far enough back in his mind so that she was just a small focal point of despair of which he was barely aware. He had a sandwich and milk shake at his desk for lunch. He spent most of the afternoon going over current planning with Stanley Forman, sorting and filing all manner of facts in his retentive mind. At seven o’clock he rode into town with Stanley and they had dinner at the Downtown Club and then went back to the plant to go over the stock issue and transfer plan in detail. Stanley was flying to Birmingham early in the morning. Fletcher had to be ready, in the morning, to take over the problems of the top management slot. On some points they argued with great heat. On most matters they were in agreement.

At last Stanley stood up, stretched, and began to roll down his shirt sleeves. “Lord! Quarter after ten. How did Jane react to the news, Fletch?”

“She was pleased,” he lied.

Stanley gave him a keen look. “You’re going to be
knocking yourself out regularly, Fletch. A woman like Jane can make the difference between keeping your head above water, or being sunk without a trace.”

“I know.”

“One of the reasons I picked you is because you’ve got yourself a good girl. She knows the score. A lot of men never get around the course in par on account of the nagging, tormenting bitch they’ve got at home.”

“Let’s drop it, shall we?”

“Sore point, eh?”

“Listen.
My
sore point.
My
home life.
My
wife. Aside and apart from the Forman Furnace Corporation.”

“Nuts! You don’t compartment your life, Fletch. You don’t work in an emotional vacuum. Each part is equal to the whole. Whatever it is, straighten it out.”

“Can’t we drop this?”

“Straighten it out, believe me, or this job will sink you. I’ll give you a lift home. Nightcap on the way?”

“Good suggestion.”

At eleven o’clock Stanley dropped him off in front of the house, refused to come in for another nightcap. He watched the tail lights of the big grey Cadillac go back down Coffeepot Road. There was a light on in the big living room. There was an almost continual glow of heat lightning in the east. The door was unlocked and Jane was on the couch asleep, the lamp shining in her eyes, a book on the floor beside the couch. Her head was tilted awkwardly to one side, and she breathed through her open mouth. She was dressed in grey corduroy shorts and a matching halter, and her hair was tied with a piece of blue yarn.

Fletcher walked quietly over to her and stood looking down at her, with that feeling of guilt that comes from studying the face of anyone asleep. In her relaxation he could see that the past week had left its marks. Dark hollows under her eyes, and a deepening of the brackets around her mouth. He looked at the long lovely brown legs, at the slow rise and fall of the flat, tanned diaphragm as she breathed in her sleep, at the warm breasts pouching the grey corduroy of the halter. In the bright lamplight he could see the white hairs that were usually invisible in her
blonde thatch. There was a faint dew of perspiration on her upper lip and on her temple.

He wanted to kneel beside the couch and take her in his arms. And, without willing it, he looked at her body again and began to picture how it must have been with her and the tough-muscled kid. It was torment to think of it. He wanted a knife with which he could cut the imaginings out of his mind the way you cut a rotten spot from an apple. The evil images writhed in his mind, twisting and turning into grotesque depravities of which he knew she was incapable, and yet he could not halt them. It was a sickness in him, and it blinded him.

Slowly he became aware of a change in her breathing. She looked up at him. “Hello. Is it late?” Her voice was rusty with sleep. She looked at her watch. “Little after eleven. I must have slept almost two hours.” She sat up and yawned and scrubbed her head vigorously with her knuckles. “Just had a crazy dream. I was running and running to catch one of those old-fashioned open streetcars. I’ve never even seen one in the flesh. I was running right down the tracks. And they were all pointing at me from the streetcar and yelling and I didn’t know why. And then I looked down at myself and I had black gloves that came all the way up to my shoulders and black stockings that came halfway up my thighs and I didn’t have another stitch on. I stopped running and I had my big red purse and I knew I had a bed sheet in it. God knows why. I took the bed sheet out and it was all embroidered with great big staring eyes, but I was going to put it on anyway. But I didn’t have time because the streetcar was coming back with all the people on it. I couldn’t get off the track because there were walls. So I was running again, and it was coming fast behind me. And I woke up. Sounds Freudian as anything, doesn’t it?”

“Sounds weird enough.”

“Funny in a dream you can be so terrified of being naked. Say, your eyes look terribly tired.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezed his eyes shut. “It was a bear of a day. I left the office about quarter after ten tonight.”

“Isn’t that awfully late?”

He looked at her, at her slightly puzzled frown, and wished there was some way he could keep from telling her, some way that she would never have to know. “Stanley made some changes. We’re taking over a new plant. I’m going to be in charge of the Minidoka Plant. Ellis takes my job. I’m executive vice-president.”

He saw her face light up, saw her eyes go pleased and wide. “Darling! How perfectly wonderful!” And he knew that the news was big enough to have made her forget, for just a moment, that their lives had changed.

His own vivid disappointment made him say quietly, “It could have been perfectly wonderful.”

She looked down at her hands, flexed her fingers. “Congratulations, anyway,” she said quietly.

“Thanks. It … it will mean a lot of work until I get my feet under me. I’m grateful for that, at least.”

“Did you have dinner yet?”

“I ate in town with Stanley. He’s flying to Birmingham in the morning,” He yawned.

“You look tired, darl … Fletcher.”

“I am. All this coming on top of … all the other thing.”

“I know what you mean.” She gave him a quick shy glance and looked away. “All this trouble, and the heat too. I keep feeling as if I was moving around inside of a big funny glass thing that makes everything look too big or too little, all swarmy like when you think you’re going to faint. Even voices sound funny.”

“Like in cars,” he said, “when you’re falling asleep.”

“Yes. Oh, yes,” she said softly.

“Will you want the car again tomorrow, to get the kids?”

“If you don’t mind. Yes.”

“It’s perfectly okay. I can get along.”

He unknotted his necktie and pulled it off. She said, “I saw Martha today. She came over here just before lunch. Crying. She said she’d been living in hell since Sunday. I’d thought I’d never forgive her. It seemed like such a betrayal. But it was really her perfectly filthy temper that did it, and the drinks and Hud making a fool of himself. I couldn’t stay mad at her, she was so miserable. So we
both cried some, and I told her I was even halfway glad it had come out, and even now I don’t know whether I was only saying it to make her feel better.”

He slowly unbuttoned his shirt to the waist, his back to her. “You’re glad it happened.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. It would be living a lie. Maybe that’s good. I just don’t know.”

“But it did come out, and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Am I supposed to enjoy thinking about that Corban person?”

“We’re going to start going around and around in a minute, and I’m just too damned tired. And there’s nothing new we can say to each other.”

“We’re both too tired. Good night, Fletcher.”

“Good night.”

“I’ll keep the clock. I’ll wake you at the right time.”

“Thanks.”

He heard her cross the room behind him, pause in the doorway. “I’m happy you got the promotion, Fletcher.”

“Thanks.”

The bedroom door closed softly. He took his shirt off, picked up his suit coat and tie. He went over to turn off the light and saw that she had left her book on the floor. He picked it up and glanced at the title.
Sexual Aspects of Modern Marriage.

It was a book they had bought fifteen years ago and never read. At the time it had been a household joke. They had agreed that the man was silly not to have interviewed them, the real experts, before writing his silly book. Now there was something vastly pathetic about Jane, alone in the house, trying to read that book in the hope that it would contain some formula which could be applied to their problem. Some mystic phrase which, once applied, would fix everything. He tossed it onto the couch and turned out the lamp. He undressed slowly and sat on the made-up studio couch and waited until she was out of the bathroom.

He sensed that there was, in both of them, a strong desire for things to be as they had been before. And children wish for the moon. And adultery is a high wall, impossible to scale, impossible to ignore.