Cancel All Our Vows (6 page)

“Stop bleating, for God’s sake!”

He pulled himself together quickly, gave her a cold stare and walked into the bathroom carrying his clean clothing. He always changed in there and he always locked the door. He never went swimming, never wore shorts around the yard. His modesty was pristine and unimpaired.

As Laura dressed she thought of Fletcher Wyant. She had an indistinct memory of him. Just another big man with a strong blunt face. One of those ex-athlete types, probably a whizz at a dirty story with a good snapper at the end. A smoking room card. A big clean American boy, walking like a man. A pushover, on business trips, for any twenty-year-old chippy with a lusty walk. A big, dull, simple, decent man, and no match for the subtle ripostes of Ellis Corban.

Ellis, she knew, was motivated by incredible ambition. It was the only forceful thing about him. She had learned enough of his history to understand it. He had been a
weak, sickly, painfully shy child. Always on the outskirts of the games fields, always watching, never a part of life. He had found his outlet in school, in standing at the head of his class, in polishing and burnishing his quick, elusive mind. Laura remembered the odd story that Ellis’ mother had told with such unwholesome pride.

In high school there had been a boy who consistently topped Ellis in the class marks. Ellis lost weight worrying about it, struggling to beat the other boy. It appeared that the other boy would become valedictorian of the graduating class in the senior year. A week before final examinations, Ellis astounded the other boy by asking to study French with him in preparation for the exams. During the French examination one of the proctors picked up a folded sheet of paper from the floor. It contained a list of French verbs, the most difficult irregular verbs and their declensions. It was in the other boy’s handwriting. He could not deny that, but he did deny loudly that he had brought it into the examination room. They compromised by giving him the minimum passing grade, because of his previous record.

Ellis became valedictorian. The other boy did not attend graduation. And Ellis’ mother told the story with a certain unholy glee. Her Ellis was shrewd, all right.

In the business world Ellis had found out, Laura knew, that you don’t get marks. You get position and salary. And if there is a man in the job just over yours who shows no intention of stepping aside, you find some way to move him aside—delicately, subtly, effectively. Yet it had backfired rather badly at Tuplan and Hauser. The wrong man had protected himself by saving a tape recording of a singularly crucial conversation with Ellis. There was no basis on which to fire Ellis. But it had been made quite clear to him that he might be happier in some other firm.

Laura took the new yellow dress out of the closet and laid it carefully on the rumpled bed. She thought of her own childhood and how different it was from what Ellis had experienced. While he had been brought up in the prim, unchanging, middle-class environment of Fall River, Massachusetts, taking his bride back at last to show her off in the same high-shouldered stuccoed house in which
he had been born, she had spent her own childhood in a dozen states of the west and southwest.

Her father, John Raymond, had been a failure of almost classic dimensions. A failure, perhaps, at everything but life itself. Her mother had died when Laura was three and her brother, Joshua, was two. John Raymond had never married again. He had taken the two kids with him on his restless, unending search. He had been a big laughing man with a raw edge to his tongue and an unhappy knack of saying exactly what he thought. Salesman, trucker, hotel clerk, carnival pitchman, restaurant keeper, builder, bulldozer operator. Nevada and Utah, Arizona and San Berdoo, Texas and New Orleans.

Somehow, he had always managed to provide food, and a bed of sorts. When the car broke down and they slept out it became an adventure, and desert sunrises had been golden indeed. They went to over twenty different schools. And life was going to be like that forever. And one evening in July—they had been living in a trailer in a park in San Antonio, and John Raymond and Josh were working on the same road job—and John Raymond came home in time to stop the silent, animal, terrifying struggle. She could remember that the most horrifying part of the struggle was within herself, fear and disgust fighting against the death wish to give in, the wish to surrender to the hard hands, to languid mysteries. And John Raymond had broken the man’s face and comforted her, and sent her east to school in September.

He couldn’t send much, and she had to work for the rest of it. But it was the end of a known world. School meant Tom, and he was killed in North Africa when something went strangely wrong with tank tactics. And later Josh died in Italy. And John Raymond got into a political argument with an Oklahoma Indian and died three days later of the stab wounds. And Andy, who was becoming what Tom had been to her, Andy who comforted her, drowned in the Coral Sea and all of life stopped, the way a clock will stop just before striking the hour. There was numbness, and an automatic cunning. The cunning brought Ellis, who married his deadened bride and took her back to Fall River, to the old house smelling of sachet
and furniture polish. It brought her Ellis, and brought her two children, and brought her here at last to another old house in a strange city, to a time in her life when, after the deadness and the not-caring, life was coming back in a new and painful form, making her want something wild and discordant and sweetly rotten-ripe—before it was much too late.

She put the yellow dress on and settled it properly on her shoulders and the slimness of her hips. She looked in a mirror and was glad she had bought the dress. She did her hair and her nails and her lips, and then Ellis came out of the bathroom, scrubbed and brisk and confident and ready to go. In the car on the way to the club he had tried, again, to get her promise to behave during the evening. She had said, “Yes, dear,” tonelessly, over and over, until he gave up in silent disgust.

She wanted holiday. Ballrooms and wine and a molten moonlight. She wanted around her the witty and incredibly beautiful people of festive cinema. And so she sat with her small hands folded passive in her lap while Ellis drove her toward a tribal conclave, toward thick sweaty bodies and suburban humor.

She saw Ellis become increasingly nervous on the terrace as they awaited the arrival of the Wyants. She sat and sipped her drink and wondered what on earth she was doing here with this man who smiled too broadly and uncertainly at waiters—and at nothing at all.… She rubbed the rim of her glass with one fingertip and played a child’s game. I shall grant your wish, Princess. How would you like him to go, Princess? All at once, with a little puff of evil-smelling smoke? Or just steadily melting, so that at last nothing is left but the Cheshire mustache, and with one final twitch that will go too.

“What are you grinning at?” Ellis demanded crossly.

“I’m practicing my best smile, darling. And you better put yours on too, and tie the ends neatly. Because here they come. Like a refrigerator ad, with automatic defroster. The new lumpen-proletariat of the preferred stock issue. A Viking virgin dressed by Saks, escorted by her big brother-husband, smelling of Russian leather that comes in manly bottles. And …”

Ellis had bounded up, welcoming smile in place, and out of the corner of his mouth he said, “Stop babbling, dammit!”

They came and the usual words were said and she sat there pretending she was a robot. Very cleverly designed. The Rent-a-Wife service. Replace in Kompact Kontainer when not in use. Plug into any AC outlet. It walks, it talks, it moves its eyes. Take one home tonight. Go to your nearest …

And she turned her head and looked squarely into the sharply inquisitive pale grey eyes of a stranger who was calling himself Fletcher Wyant. And those eyes, which had a tantalizing familiarity, seemed to look down into hers and see a little shadow box where a woman stood nude in a flood of sonorous music. The eyes saw too much and knew too much.

And suddenly good intentions were forgotten and she became a slat-thin kid again, climbing to the tallest branch of the live oak to sway there in the wind, to impress the boy who had moved into the tourist cabin next door. She said things she knew were inane, and from far back in her mind she watched the effect of her words and actions on the three of them.

She watched Jane bristle, and stake out her claim.

And yet, it made little difference. The directionless tendrils of the green vine had found target. She knew he was brutal, and sensitive, and inquisitive, and that he felt that same oddness of being out of the proper time and place as she did.

It had been inevitable that it would happen, somewhere, somehow, soon.

Having it happen this way merely made it more complicated. More improbable, and, strangely, more inevitable.

In some half-understood way, she knew that she and Fletcher Wyant sat with two strangers—two remarkably unimportant strangers.

Chapter Four

Fletcher was quite aware of how Laura Corban, after her brief flash of life, retreated into an odd passivity during the next two rounds of drinks. Ellis talked about its being a vacation for them with the kids off at the Cape for the summer.

“Healthiest place in the world for them,” he said proudly.

The last of the sun was gone and the long June twilight stretched across the fairway. The dogged players were trickling in, adding up the scores, bickering about the bets as they headed for the locker rooms.

The women excused themselves and went off. Ellis hitched his chair closer to Fletcher and said, “Look, old man, I hope you won’t think I’m sounding disloyal to Laura if I tell you something I think you ought to understand.”

“Go right ahead,” Fletcher said, hoping his pained embarrassment didn’t show.

“Well … she
is
odd in a lot of ways. Reads a lot. Likes to be alone. Gets a lot of weird ideas. And she doesn’t mind saying them right out Really, underneath, she’s damn grateful that you put us up for membership here.” He laughed a bit too jovially. “I’m always trying to soothe the feelings that Laura goes around ruffling up. Odd girl. Just don’t pay too much attention to her notions, old man.”

“I think she’s a charming woman,” Fletcher said, a little too coldly.

Ellis Corban’s eyebrows slid up and froze in position. “Eh! Oh … well, that’s fine. That’s wonderful. Good God, it wasn’t like this over at Tuplan and Hauser. Maybe
I didn’t give you the whole story on why I wasn’t happy there. I know we men don’t like to admit it, but the little woman has a lot of influence on how well you get along in a firm. I mean there’s a lot of little ways she can help. Well, I’m not saying this against Laura, you understand, because she’s one in a million, but she just doesn’t seem to be interested in doing those little things. She says they bore her. She says it’s all a lot of nonsense, and they hire me, not her. But the really progressive firms feel that they’re hiring the wife as well. Hiring a partnership, you might say. The beginning of the end at Tuplan and Hauser was when I finally got Laura to go to a party of just company people. I never should have risked it. She monopolized the dinner conversation. Lot of damn lies about her background. Kept talking through her nose. Do you know, Fletch, she actually convinced those people that she has two brothers with pinheads who travel with a side show. Got her home and she rolled around on the floor, just yelping with laughter. The next day in the office I could actually
feel
the tension. If I’d been a different sort of man I’d have thrashed her within an inch of her life when I got her home. But … I suppose I shouldn’t sound as if I were complaining. She doesn’t do that sort of thing anywhere near as much as she used to a few years ago. She’s a lot quieter now. But I just thought you ought to know, and ought to tell Jane, that Laura makes absolutely no effort to … to be liked.”

“It’s refreshing, Ellis, in a way.”

“Well, of course, you’re looking at it from a different angle. Jane is a big help to you, I know. She tries, you see. But understand, I’m not talking Laura down. I wouldn’t trade her for anything in the world. She keeps life pretty … interesting.” Corban dabbed at his forehead with his handkerchief and smiled a bit wanly in the fading light.

When Laura and Jane came back Fletcher was pleased to see them talking and smiling at each other, and he was glad to see Jane pause by one table and introduce Laura to old friends.

As Laura sat down she smiled sweetly at Ellis and said, “Get your apologies all made, dear?”

“What does he have to apologize for?” Jane asked.

“For me. He always does. It seems to make him feel better. As though he were expiating some sin. Ellis, my boy, we’ll have to go into that some day. Or right now. Lie down on the floor and relax and tell us all about your sins. I bet they’re all tired little grey sins.”

“Please, darling,” he said.

“Oh oh,” said Jane in a low voice. “Comes slow death. Don’t look at him and maybe he’ll go away. He’s a dentist. Dr. Frike. Premium bore of the club. And a fondler. I went to him once. Never again. Even while filling a tooth he managed to take a reading in Braille.”