Cancel All Our Vows (3 page)

His street turned left off Dillon. The street sign was rather disturbingly rustic. It said Coffeepot Road. When they had looked at the lot he had told Jane that the name of the road “is just too goddamn quaint.” But Jane loved the hill, the name of the street, the lot, and, after far too much money had been spent, the completed ranch-type house.

Fletcher didn’t know whether the name of the street had marked him, or whether it had been the very impressive sketch the architect had made, or whether it had been the final contractor’s bills, but in the year since they had taken occupancy, he hadn’t quite been able to accept the house as home. It was still all house, and very little home. What the architect and the contractor hadn’t done to make it on the austere side, the decorator had added. Fletcher found himself living with a great deal of glass and wrought iron and ceramic tile. He could take a great deal of pride and pleasure in looking at the house, or in looking down the really impressive expanse of the thirty-five-foot living room. But when he came to sit down, either inside or outside, he had the odd and uncomfortable feeling that he was taking his place in a picture that was just about to be snapped for an article in
House Beautiful
or
House and Garden.
His standard gesture of protest was to take off his shoes and tie at every opportunity—though always with a slight feeling of guilt. As though he were spoiling the picture.

He parked in the drive and got out and looked at the lawn and the plantings. The grass had a parched look, and the plantings weren’t living up to the landscape gardener’s promises. He shrugged and went into the house.

Jane came through into the big living room, moving fast. She slowed down when she saw him. “Hey, I wondered who was barging in. Plant burn down?”

He tossed his coat on a chair. “Air conditioner stopped. Stanley shooed everybody out.”

“Big of him. Oh, Jesus, what a day I’ve had!” She wore a wilted halter and shorts. She was a big smooth-limbed
blonde woman with a round face, pretty blue eyes, a generous mouth. She moved, always, with the beautiful economy of a natural athlete. She played a man’s game of golf, was a sought-after mixed doubles partner, and was more seal than woman in the water.

“Troubles?”

“That wretch, Anise. She’s supposed to get here at nine on Fridays. So at ten she calls and says she’s got the “arthuritis something miserable.” It’s only two days a week that she’s supposed to come here, and this is the fourth day she’s missed since the first of the year. Every darn time I want to entertain on the weekend she has to miss Friday. Now she won’t come until next Tuesday, and with the kids home from school you have no idea what a shambles this house turns into in nothing flat.”

“Where are the kids?”

“They went off on their bikes to the pool. They took a lunch.”

Fletcher frowned at her. “Damn it, I thought we agreed they wouldn’t go in the public pool. Polio season is starting. It seems to me that you could at least …”

“Honey, it’s just too damn hot and I’m too tired to squabble about this. They teased and teased. I would have taken them out to the pool at the club, but you had the car. They promised to be careful. Besides, that article said that you shouldn’t let them get overtired and chilled. Who is going to get chilled on a day like this? And they promised faithfully to be back here by five.”

“And spend half the night while we’re out looking bug-eyed at that television screen.”

“That was part of the promise too. Bed at nine thirty for both of them.”

He looked at her hard. “I suppose it’s okay. But backtrack a little. You said something about entertaining this weekend. It sort of got lost in the rush. What about that? Are we, for God’s sake?”

“I thought it would be nice if tonight we ask just a few people to come around Sunday for drinks. There’d have to be the Corbans of course. And then Midge and Harry, and Sue and Dick, and maybe Martha and Hud.”

“Lord help us,” he said softly.

“Now, you know you always have a good time once it gets going, Fletcher.”

He decided that was one statement he was remarkably weary of. He picked up his coat. “Guess I’ll take my shower first. Okay?”

“Of course, darling. I’m not quite ready yet.”

He went down the hallway. The house was built in the shape of a T, with the crossbar toward the road. On the breezeway end of the crossbar were the children’s rooms. On the other end was the master bedroom, and Fletcher’s “study,” designed so that it was readily convertible into a guest bedroom. The living room took up most of the upright of the T, with the kitchen, dining area, and utility room furthest from the road. This design permitted one portion of the bisected back yard to be used as a terrace, and the other half as a utility yard invisible from the terrace. Fletcher knew, by painful count, that there were nine view windows in the house, each, oddly enough, with a view to go with it. And he also knew that it had been a mistake, at the last minute, to change from duotherm glass to plain plate glass. In winter each view window radiated a vast patch of chill into the house, and it was this tiny change which made the heating system inadequate.

As he went down the hall Jane called, “Your good tropical came back. It’s in your closet.”

“Good,” he said without spirit.

But his spirits came back after he stripped and went into the pristine bathroom. Whenever they had to go out for cocktails, Jane always seemed to be showering when he arrived home. Though he had never mentioned it to her, it always annoyed him to have to shower after her. She was a fervent shower taker. She liked her showers long, hot, steamy and soapy. She left the bathroom as dripping and sodden as the headwaters of the Amazon.

The needle spray was delicious. He stepped out and toweled himself briskly, noting smugly that he had made only small patches of steam on the mirrors of the two medicine cabinets. He plugged in his razor and shaved quickly. Just as he was finishing, Jane banged on the door and said, “Hey, next!”

“Comee ri’ ou’,” he said, his voice distorted by the delicate
procedure of finishing the upper lip. He racked the razor, promising himself to clean it later, pulled on fresh shorts, snapped the two buttons and went into the bedroom. Jane smiled at him and patted his bare shoulder as she went by.

The shower had left him a little sweaty and he decided he’d better wait until he dried off before dressing. He scuffed into his slippers and went to the kitchen. He found the Collins mix and the gin and made himself a drink that was mostly gin and ice. He looked cautiously out the front door, and saw that the paper was within reach. He snatched it and went back to the bedroom and stretched out on his bed with the paper, and with his drink on the night stand at his elbow.

He could see through the bedroom view window, see across the terrace and out toward the summer hills, see a dull red barn that he was fond of.

And, as he was looking, it happened again to him. It was something that had started with the first warm days of spring. All colors seemed suddenly brighter, and with his heightened perception, there came also a deep, almost frightening sadness. It was a sadness that made him conscious of the slow beat of his heart, of the roar of blood in his ears. And it was a sadness that made him search for identity, made him try to re-establish himself in his frame of reference in time and in space. Fletcher Wyant. He of the blonde wife and the kids and the house and the good job. It was like an incantation, or the saying of beads. But the sadness seemed to come from a feeling of being lost. Of having lost out, somehow. He could not translate it into the triteness of saying that his existence was without satisfaction. He was engrossed in his work and loved it. He could not visualize any existence without Jane and the kids. Yet, during these moments that seemed to be coming more frequently these last few weeks, he had the dull feeling that somehow time was eluding him, that there was not enough of life packed into the time he had. The red barn and the hill had something to do with it. As though the window showed him a place where he had never been, and a place he could never reach.

It almost seemed that if he could tell Jane, if he could
find the words to describe just how it was, maybe she would understand, and maybe she was feeling the same way this year. Maybe this was the year for feeling this way. Thirty-six. And twice thirty-six is seventy-two. Perhaps, at mid-point, there is a nostalgia for things that never were. Or a greed for more lives than one.

But there were no words to tell Jane. And if he tried to fumble it through, she would have a pat remedy. You need a vacation, darling. You don’t get enough exercise, dear. Don’t you think you ought to get another checkup? Nothing against her, of course. Rather, the fault would lie with him for not being able to express it.

He took two large swallows of his drink, turned resolutely to Pogo, and then to the financial news.

He glanced at his watch. Five twenty. The kids were overdue. The sadness was lost and annoyance took its place.

Chapter Two

By the time Jane came out of the bathroom, Fletcher’s drink was gone and he was into the baseball results.

She came hurrying out of the bathroom, stopped dead and said, “You aren’t dressed!”

The look of her pleased him. Ever since the weather had turned warm, she had been taking sun baths on the terrace. She had a pleasant, honey-toned tan, overlaid by the rosy flush of her shower. The ends of her hair were damp. She wore a pair of panties of filmy blue nylon and that was all.

She pleased him, so he looked down at himself with a look of mock astonishment and said, “Why so I’m not!”

“Oaf!” she said, and hurried to the built-in drawers under the windows and dug into the top drawer looking for the proper bra.

He was braced on his elbows, and he looked at her approvingly. If you wanted to be a hair-splitter, you could detect the slightest thickening of her waist, a faint sag of breast, just the merest puckered areas of flesh on the insides of her thighs, but all in all, she was a very exciting-looking woman to be married to, tautly and warmly constructed. He always felt proud of her when, at a party, he saw her on the other side of the room. As she dug in the drawer the smooth muscles moved under the honey skin of her shoulders. He felt the arch and tremor of desire, the suddenly dry mouth. The sex they made together had always been good. They were mated perfectly. He thought that so long as that aspect is under control, nothing can go really wrong. And, as he reached for her, he wondered why in the world he should suddenly be thinking in terms of things going wrong. He thrust the thought aside.

“Hey, you!” she said, immediately aware of intention.

“So we’re a shade late,” he said huskily.

“No, Fletch honey. Please! We’ll be too late. And the kids will be coming any minute. Let’s not start anything we can’t finish. I don’t want to be a spoil-sport.”

“The lady is filled with indifference.”

“You
know
better than that, darling. But honestly. There isn’t time. And besides, I don’t want to wear that darn thing around all evening.”

“Do you think I want to wear this around all evening?”

She gave him the grin he loved. Lopsided, lewd and urchin. “Go ahead, my pet. Maybe they’ll give you a door prize.”

But he saw that her eyes were beginning to get heavy in a familiar way. He pulled her toward him. Just then the bicycles were racked against the house. Dink was yammering at Judge about going too fast. The screen door hissed. Jane bounded off the bed.

“Just one big happy family,” Fletcher said wearily.

She turned from where she was putting the bra on, her arms craned awkardly up behind her. “We might just possibly come home just a little bit early.”

“It’s a thought,” he said. He went to the closet and got his suit out, stripping the brown paper off it. He looked for the spot. They’d gotten it out all right.

Jane’s voice was muffled as she slid the dinner dress down over her head. “That Mobren woman called me up again today. Oh, darling, that’s a dingy shirt. Take one of those with the French cuffs. Those collars look so well on you. And a dark knit tie will look good with that suit.”

“Uh huh,” he said, refolding the shirt he had taken out.

“Anyway, she keeps after me to be on the committee to pick out the prizes for the women’s matches. They decided not to give cups, you know. Useful things this year. Well, I know just how it will be. Nobody has the same taste. If I pick out things, you can be darn well sure that the women that win them won’t like them. And that Mobren woman is just trying to pass the buck to me. That shirt is better, dear. Why don’t you stand on that paper to put the trousers on. That color soils so easily.”

“Okay,” he said.

She sat at the dressing table, taking great care with her lips. Fletcher could hear the kids whispering in the living room.

“I couldn’t be rude to the woman, but really, she’s so persistent. And she goes on and on and on. I keep telling her that I’m spending too much time on the Red Cross Drive and the League of Women Voters. And I haven’t been to a League meeting since we had that dreadful fight with those garbage collection people. I’ve never had anybody call me that word to my face before in my life. Have you thought about Mexico, dear?”