The Deceivers (21 page)

He stopped and looked at her. “What would you have me do and be? Who the hell ever heard of an avant garde accountant? We run off and make beautiful music together, but I think that it would be music as sterile and contrived as Bartok. Thank you, but I’ll stick to my safe, corny, comfortable Strauss waltzes. I can whistle all the melodies.”

Then he saw the glint of the tear tracks down her cheeks and he felt a keen guilt for having spoken so savagely, for having made of it an attack on her immaturity.

“I’m sorry, Cindy,” he said softly.

She said, brokenly, “If … that’s what you think … then why … all this?”

He sat opposite her and took her right hand in both of his. Her hand was cool and without response. “I can’t give you a happy answer. I can try to make it an honest answer. If you’ll accept the possibility of a man loving two women, I love you. I wanted you. I wanted what you represent. A young woman, eager and available. Putting Joan in the hospital made this a sort of time of reappraisal for me. I felt a sort of restless itch. Maybe a feeling that time is going by too damn fast. A sort of disenchantment with the predictability of my life from here on in. But I would never have deliberately tried to create this situation. It just sort of happened. It was, as we said before, a mutual vulnerability, a sort of devilishly exact timing.”

Her lax hand clenched itself into a hard fist and she sobbed audibly.

“We are both, Cindy, in our separate ways, going to regret that this happened to us. And in other ways, I hope we’ll be glad it happened. I’m glad for one thing that has just happened. I had to answer the little speech you made. In answering it, I somehow crystallized my own feelings, Now I think I know where I stand. This is the second time I’ve ever been unfaithful to Joan. And, I’m sure, the last. I don’t want her to know about it. I don’t want her to be hurt that badly. And, in a selfish way, I don’t want our marriage to be less than it has been. And if she finds out, I think it will be less.”

“I’ll never tell anyone,” Cindy whispered.

“In some crazy way, what we’ve done has made me happier. I’m grateful to you for that. And I wish it could work out that way for you too. Maybe it will.”

“Not with Bucky. Not with anyone but you.”

“I wish you hadn’t said that. It isn’t true, you know.”

“It is true.”

“But you accept the way I feel? You do understand why it all has to stop here?”

She nodded with a jerky abruptness, not looking at him. He felt intense relief. She had removed the horrible mental picture he had of her going to Joan to ask her to release him.

“Now there’s something else that came up. I have to go to the Raedeks for drinks and dinner. I have to leave pretty soon. Now that we’ve had this out, Cindy, maybe it would be better for both of us if I took off right now and didn’t come back here from the Raedeks.”

She pulled her hand free then caught both his wrists and squeezed them with surprising force. She shook her bent head so violently that it whipped the dark blond hair against her cheeks.

“No?” he said.

“Stay with me now,” she half whispered, not looking at him, her voice raw with tears, “and we’ll both know it’s the last time, and then just leave me, without saying anything. Just leave me then, when it’s over. I’m sorry I … was such a fool.”

“You weren’t, Cindy.”

She lifted her head and looked directly into his eyes. And made him a twisted smile. And said, “Just don’t let
me think this was cheap. Just don’t let me think it was like … any other two people with a lech.”

“It hasn’t been,” he said as fervently as he could, but in his mind was the awkward question: If not, precisely what is the difference?

Carl arrived at Molly and Ted’s on Governor’s Lane at six-thirty. Molly had seen his car turn into the drive and met him at the door. She was a big-boned, big-bosomed blond woman with a strident and infectious laugh, a generous heart and a touch of genius with all growing things.

“The party has grown, but not much,” she said. “And you are one drink behind everybody and probably two drinks behind my guzzling husband. Jane and Paul Cardamo are here.”

They were drinking on the small screened cage off the west wing of the house. Heavy plantings shielded it from the road and from the neighbors. Ted Raedek had wheeled his small bar out there and was standing behind it, mixing a drink.

Carl said hello to Jane and Paul Cardamo and went over to the bar. “The surgical-type bachelor!” Ted roared. He was a vast, earthy, swarthy man, Production Chief at the Link-Latch Plant. “Boy, you’re hard to get hold of.”

“Just look in all the low dives, Ted. Scotch on the rocks, if available. Hey! Take it easy!”

“You’ve got some catching up to do, fella.”

Carl carried his big strong drink over and sat on a sun cot beside dark pretty little Jane Cardamo. Paul, her cadaverous bespectacled husband, was draped in a near-by chair. The Raedeks sat on another sun cot at right angles to the one Carl and Jane were on. For a time they talked about Joan and when she would be coming home and how she would probably feel when she got home. It was decided that they would all run over to the hospital in Carl’s wagon after seven-thirty and then come back and eat vast quantities of Molly’s barbecued spare ribs.

Ted said, “Say, I understand from Al Washburn that you’re coming over to the Center on Monday night and give us Board members the word on the school setup, Carl.”

“I’d forgotten all about it. Damn! And Al said he wanted
something in writing I could leave with the secretary. I’ll have to whip something up tomorrow.”

“It isn’t just the Board. It’s an open meeting of the association, with a question and answer period.”

“Al didn’t tell me that.”

“It was only changed the day before yesterday. So there’ll be a couple of hundred people frothing at the mouth over high taxes if we incorporate.”

“Oh, fine!”

And just as he said that he heard Jane Cardamo say, in the middle of a sentence, “Cindy Cable.” Jane had been talking with Molly and he had been paying no attention.

“If you make your report explicit, Carl, there shouldn’t be too many questions. And Al does a good job of running the open meetings.”

“I know.”

Jane said, “You know Eunice Stockland, the way she is. She was practically foaming she was so anxious to tell us about Cindy.”

“Do I hear you using our neighbor’s name in vain?” Carl asked in what he hoped was an indolently casual tone.

Jane turned and made a face at him. “What big ears you have. This is girl talk. In other words, gossip.”

“What happened?”

“I can’t tell you what happened. But I can tell you what Eunice Stockland reported at lunch yesterday. And you know how Eunice gets carried away. Seems that fair Cindy has packed her kids away to stay with Bucky’s people until the end of August. And Bucky is away on a longer trip than usual. So last Thursday night he tried to phone Cindy. No answer. He kept phoning and finally at two in the morning he phoned the Stocklands. Bill put a robe on and went to the house. You can imagine how he was grumbling. No car and no Cindy. Eunice told us it upset her so that she couldn’t sleep, so she went and sat near a window where she could watch Cindy’s house. Just when Eunice was working herself up to report it to the police, at ten-something the next morning, Cindy came driving in. When Eunice tried to phone her her line was busy. Finally, when she did get her, Eunice said that Cindy said thank you, she had already talked to Bucky. Eunice said she tried to find out where Cindy had been, but she practically hung up on her.”

Big Ted Raedek smacked his lips and said, “Any red-blooded
American boy would like to cut himself a slice of that Cable baby.”

“Shut up, you,” Molly said. “All you men are alike.”

“Not this man,” Paul Cardamo said in his lazy voice. “That little lady would be trouble.”

“And just how?” Jane asked coldly.

“She’s a neurotic. I don’t envy old Bucky. She’d want to play for keeps.”

“And how would you know that?” Jane asked even more coldly.

“Don’t sweat, honey baby. I acquire my vast knowledge through observation, not experimentation. To coin an old cliché, I have more than I can handle at home.”

“Then let’s go to your house,” Ted said, and bellowed at the old joke.

“Eunice added one more little morsel,” Jane said. She eyed Carl in a feline way and said, “About you.”

Carl felt chilled and managed to say, “I plead innocent.”

“While watching for Cindy, she saw you drive in after daylight, my good man.”

“Don’t tell Joan, but I got tied up with Gil Sullivan. I’m supposed to have gotten in about two.”

“Wouldn’t it have been just juicy if you and Cindy had driven in at the same time?” Molly said. “Wow! Eunice would have added two and two and gotten eighty-nine.”

Carl did not realize he had emptied his glass until Ted got up and took it out of his hand.

“There must be some explanation other than the obvious one,” Jane said, frowning. “I know that our Cindy is a sort of an odd type, but I can’t see her playing around somehow. She seems to have her own kind of integrity. As witness the episode of Barry Sanson.”

“What about Barry?” Carl asked.

“Didn’t you hear about that? I thought everybody knew that one. It happened last summer. I guess you must have been on your vacation. Anyway, there was a dance at the Timberlane and Barry managed to maneuver Cindy Cable outside to look at the moon or something. You know how he thinks he’s the smoothest operator in the state, and God’s perfect gift to discontented wives. Cindy came striding back in, pale as water, and Barry didn’t come back at all. Turned out she didn’t slap him or kick him; she busted him smack in the eye with her fist. He wore dark glasses for more than a week. But to get back to Eunice, it was Wednesday
night Bucky called. She got back late on Thursday morning and later still yesterday morning. And Eunice will have a complete report on this morning too. That woman has eyes like an eagle. Carl, why don’t you brief us on Cindy? You and Joan know Cindy and Bucky better than anybody. And I don’t
think
Eunice Stockland is crouched out there in the brush taking notes. Do you think anything is going on?”

“I … I really couldn’t make any guess.”

“They haven’t seemed as happy as they used to,” Molly said. “Is the marriage all right?”

“They may be having a little trouble. I wouldn’t know what about. Cindy isn’t the sort of person who would find housekeeping and taking care of two little kids very … rewarding.”

Jane laughed and said, “I went to see her one morning quite a while back. That little girl, Bitsy, was about eleven months old, I think. The house was a shambles and Cindy didn’t seem the least bit apologetic about it. She was in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading. Bitsy was in her play pen. Cindy had strewn a double handful of puffed wheat or something in the play pen, and Bitsy was crawling around doggedly eating it grain by grain. Cindy said it would keep her quiet for over an hour.”

“I still say,” Ted said lasciviously, “that if a cleancut American boy could get close to that, he’d have himself something.”

“Cut that out!” Molly said. “You sound like such a lecher. My God, if anybody ever met one of those clumsy passes of yours more than halfway, you’d run like an overweight rabbit.”

“Something like a rabbit, anyway,” he said comfortably.

“Why would a woman send her kids away for so long?” Jane asked. She looked inquiringly at Carl.

“I don’t know. Maybe she wanted some time to herself. You know. To sort of rest up.”

“I know one thing,” Paul Cardamo said. “If I was away and phoned Jane and there was no answer by two in the morning, and if I owned a little green airplane as Bucky does, I would be in my little green plane heading for home.”

“And,” Jane said, “you’d pull out your little ole thirty-two and go rooty toot toot and me and my lover would fall dead, dead, dead.”

“Damn well told,” Paul said contentedly.

“Let’s start to think of putting this here now show on the road,” Molly said.

“One more for the road,” Ted said. “Let me sweeten that up, Carlos.”

As they drove into the western sun toward the hospital, Carl realized that the drinks were hitting him. The last of the daylight had an unreal look of clarity. His lips felt slightly numbed. He wondered how it would be if he wedged his way into the next gap in the conversation and said, “About Cindy Cable, I left her in room twenty of the Traveler Motel about thirty miles up the pike, just a little over two hours ago. While I dressed she cried without making a sound, and her long hair was all tangly on the pillow, and she had covered herself with the sheet, and her robe was on the floor beside the bed where I had dropped it. I picked it up and laid it across the footboard of the bed and then I kissed her eyes and her lips and left. When I was driving out I could taste the salt on my lips, and then I had tears in my eyes and I really couldn’t say why. But it blurred the road, and I turned on the car radio and found that the Cincinnati Reds and the Dodgers were all tied up at five and five in the bottom half of the eleventh. But then somebody got on on an error and Hodges doubled him home for the ball game, and by then the tears were gone and the girl back in the room was like something that had happened to me a long time ago, like something nestling way back in your memories, fragile and scented and very touching when it happened, but something to take out rarely and look at and wonder about.”

And he felt as if he had come close to blurting that out to them, dangerously close, but knowing all the time that he had never been in the slightest danger of saying it, or anything that would provide the slightest hint to it.

The Gray Lady on duty let him go up with Molly and Ted, while Jane and Paul waited in the lounge off the lobby. Eunice Stockland was with Joan, her chair pulled close to the bed, muttering intently. She seemed put out at being interrupted. She was a small woman with a curiously large head, mousy hair, and pinched gray features. She had a knack of licking her lips in punctuation of nearly every sentence.