Cancel All Our Vows (36 page)

On the apron of the pool, near the slim steel of the diving platform, he turned her, roughly, released her. There was no one near them.

“I’ve got to have help,” he said thickly.

“Help?” Her voice was faint.

“I don’t know if I can do it. I got to have help to try to do it. It’s like … being tied up. Knowing how thick the ropes are. You are filth. I’ve got to stop thinking that. I can’t keep on thinking that.”

She made no sound. He saw that she had started to cry. She had her arms folded across her stomach and she was bent forward slightly from the waist, standing there in an ugly, stricken way.

“I’ve got to stop judging you,” he said, with no inflection on any word. “I’m not fit to judge. There were two of them overseas. And that one in Chicago. And Laura. And I still want Laura, but not in any way I’ve ever wanted you.”

She made a small sound. Rocket light was against her face. She had bent further forward. He took her shoulders roughly, straightened her up, backing her against one of the steel uprights.

“Did you hear what I said? Four of them since I married you.”

“Oh yes. I heard you. I heard you.”

“How does it make you feel? What does it do to you?”

“Stop, Fletcher. Please stop. Oh, please.”

He held her shoulders and pulled her forward and banged her back against the upright. “How does it make you feel?”

“Dirty. For … for both of us. Dirty, Fletcher. But … but I want us to … keep anything we can.”

“In spite of it?”

“In spite of it.” She had stopped crying. Her chin was high but her voice was dead. “I’m … not proud any more. I can crawl. I want you back.”

He let go of her. She stood, leaning against the upright. There was a silver waterfall at the foot of the fairway. It made her face silver, and her dress, and made his shadow black across her.

“There’s only one way, only one thing I can do, Jane,” he said, and the words sounded slurred. “Never again anyone but you. Only on that basis. And … you see I can’t promise that, even.”

“Do you want to try to promise?”

He turned and looked at the dark pool. A rocket burst and he saw the reflection in the still surface of the pool.

“I guess I do,” he said quietly.

“Let’s have all we can,” she said.

“It could be everything, the way it was before, if I wasn’t such a … a very little person on the inside, Jane.”

She moved shyly, her hands touching his coat, sliding up, her fingers suddenly chill against the back of his neck, pulling him forward, down.

He took her wrists and pulled her hands away from him, thrust them down at her sides. He said, “It doesn’t go that way.” He had the feeling that he was explaining something very difficult. “It isn’t a fade-out with soft music. We can’t do it that way. I can’t do it that way. I’ve got to do it my way, and all I want is help, but I don’t know exactly what kind of help.”

She made no sound. He walked away from her and walked to the middle of the lawn. He turned and looked back. It was hard to see her in the shadows of the diving platform. He waited and after a little while he could see
her. She was walking toward him. She was walking very slowly in her light dress, and now they were setting the bombs off. The ones you could feel in your belly.

About the Author

John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel
The Executioners
, which was adapted into the film
Cape Fear
. In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980 he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986.