The Man Who Loved His Wife (13 page)

“Then you won't help us?” Don tried to maintain the blandness of an accomplished executive.

“That's not what I said.”

The leaves of the olive tree moved feebly. “Feel, a breeze,” cried Elaine. The light wind drew another breath and died. Heat, victorious, increased its pressure.

They waited again. Fletcher spilled a bit of lemonade upon the ground, creating a second sugary pond for the excited ants. “Damn little fools,” he croaked and tipped his glass again. A few ants drowned in the rain of nectar.

“Oh, Fletch, for heaven's sakes, tell them something,” urged Elaine. “Say yes or no.”

“Why are you so interested?”

Rasping, uninflected tones struck nervous ears with terror. Fletcher was not angry, but merely playing for time to keep hold of his precious power.

“It means so much to them, and so little to you.” Elaine had not kept her promise to plead with Fletcher for the loan. Since the morning he had played golf and lunched with Cindy, he had, in spite of the dry heat and discomfort, been in a mood too rare to be destroyed by argument. She had adored him swaggering about as in the old days, sure of himself and powerful.

Don looked at her plaintively. Cindy sat up at attention. They watched Fletcher like suppliants before an altar. Still he kept them waiting. With decision, his game of power would be over. “Need a little more time to think about it.”

“But, Daddy, we might lose the house. People always buy places on Sunday. We've got to give them some money tomorrow morning.”

Don disapproved the whining tone. He tried to signal Cindy to quit begging. Fletcher scowled and moved his chair out of the glare. Acutely uncomfortable, Don proposed to Cindy that they dress and leave. They had, he said, promised to look in on some friends. “We won't be back for supper, Elaine. Perhaps you'll give us your decision tonight, sir.”

FLETCHER AND ELAINE were left with the rest of the afternoon on their hands. They read the Sunday paper, dozed, got up and walked lethargically around the garden, returned to their chairs like animals trained to repetitive action. This lazy peace would have been disturbed by nothing more than the rising wind if Elaine had not forced herself to plead for Don.

She interrupted a daydream. The small dose of power had intoxicated Fletcher so that at last he permitted himself the luxury of illusion.
I am going back into business.
Here in California glittering opportunities awaited a man of Fletcher Strode's assets, experience, and cunning. As in the past he would buy moribund factories and shops, spend money in restoring them, profit through tax deductions, and sell gainfully.

“Only five thousand dollars,” Elaine argued. “It's impractical for them, of course, but it could change their lives. Don needs an incentive.”

The dream exploded. He returned to the present, looked down upon himself, saw the muscular arms, the powerful thighs of a useless man. The wind ruffled olive and live oak leaves. Insolent birds mocked human vanity. “Why are you so worried about Don?”

“Why, Fletch, he's Cindy's husband.”

The answer had been too vehement.

“Is he your lover?”

The question sprang from sultry depths. Fletcher had seen them through the pantry window as they whispered over a tray of soft drinks; seen them in the pool, young bodies side by side; yesterday he had surprised them in his bedroom. Guilty looks had not gone unnoticed. Elaine always laughed at Don's jokes, admired his ties, offered solace when he doubted himself. Visions spun dizzily, lips locked, arms entwined, loins and bellies enjoyed intimacy. His own bed! The taste of sickness filled Fletcher's mouth, blood beat in his brain.

He barely heard Elaine's shocked responses. “Your son-in-law? Cindy's husband? Do you think I'd let him make love to me?”

The emphasis “Do you think I'd let
him
make love to me?”
scorned incest but condoned infidelity. She had betrayed herself innocently. Locked and naked bodies persisted in their ardors, but Fletcher saw them through a haze. The man's face was unclear.

Elaine fled. In her bedroom he found her standing motionless with drooping shoulders as though she were lost in a strange forest. The walls of her room were green, the curtains pale cream with a design of fruit and flowers, lutes and ribbons. She saw him but remained as motionless as a girl in a painting, big-eyed and vulnerable. He recognized heartbreaking beauty but was shaken by the fear that he was no longer the sole owner.

He seized her shoulders. “Have you cheated on me?”

The shoulders twisted away. As though this question were not worth an answer, she went about the business of selecting an outfit—blue trousers, a plaid blouse. Then the plaid did not please her and she chose stripes.

“Have you been unfaithful?”

On the hill an auto horn, some special imported siren, squawked impatiently, its distortion echo and mockery of Fletcher's voice. Anger mounted.

“Answer me, Elaine. I want the truth.”

“Not with Don.”

“With someone else?” He seized her wrists and jerked her toward him. “Look at me. Have you a lover?”

“Please, Fletch, you're hurting me.”

She did not pull her wrists away, nor did he relax the pressure. So that she would not have to see his face she looked down at her long, pale feet. Knowing herself the betrayer, she felt betrayed, lost, and forlorn as a child. In her father's apartment on Morningside Drive where she had grown up among all the books and copies of famous paintings and omniscient grown people, the blackest sin had been untruth.
Be honest, child, be penitent, take your punishment.

“Just once,” she said.

Fletcher dropped her wrists, took a short step backward, clutched at a chair. The ground had dissolved under his feet. For all of his visions and suspicion, he had never thought . . .
no, no, impossible . . . Elaine! . . . the pure, the lovable . . . he could not, would not, believe it.

“Just once,” she said again, humbly. “No more. And I never will again. Never!”

He had thought about it so much that revelation, the truth of the dream, numbed him. Her infidelity had been his own, exclusive, shaped by his creative mind, his secret work of art. All of those writhing bodies, naked limbs, shimmering breasts had been his indulgence, a collection of images conceived for the protection of his ego. Shaping and arranging them, giving life to monstrous visions, enduring self-made torments, he had been able to believe them untrue. Elaine's confession destroyed all of this. Truth was a shock to his ego. The dream was shattered, the dreamer forced to acknowledge creative forces outside of himself.

Over and over, looking down at her long toes, she repeated that it had not happened more than once, that she was sick with remorse, that never, never, never again would she allow the man to touch her. Fletcher tried for the sake of self-protection to reshape a vision, to see her and the man (whom she kept insisting was not Don) naked and together. The visions would not come alive. Fletcher's imagination, too, was impotent.

Her rueful voice pursued him down the corridor. He slammed his bedroom door behind him, slapped on trousers and a shirt, hurried to the garage, backed his car toward the road with the motor roaring like the voice of vengeance. He drove down the hill swiftly and without thought of destination.

“Forgive me,” Elaine had begged, and “Please,” and “Never again, believe me,” before she had known he was gone. She had taken a few timid steps toward his bedroom, but when the knob turned, she had fled back to her room and closed her door. She had listened to the sound of the motor, watched the car back out of the driveway recklessly. His face came back to her in all of its sadness, and she knew that the truth had been a tragic mistake.

DON AND CINDY came back to the house reluctantly. Their friends had given them tea and cakes, then cocktails, olives, nuts, bits of cheese, and smoked meats on salted crackers, but had not invited them to stay for supper. They drove around aimlessly for a time and then went to the movies. Torn by hope and, at the same time, afraid to hear that Elaine had not been successful in pleading for the loan, they drove home slowly.

The house was dark. It was not much after ten o'clock, too early for everyone to be in bed. Perhaps Fletcher and Elaine had gone out to eat and see a picture, which, Don observed, was a good sign. Cindy's father never went anywhere unless he was in a generous and confident mood. Upon this assumption Don built a dazzling structure; owned the house, landed the job with Carter Consolidated, achieved promotion, became a member of the executive elite.

The doors were not locked. This was unusual. Cindy's father always checked the doors and windows before he left the house. “Still, if he took her out to dinner he must be feeling pretty good,” reflected Don to reassure himself.

“Well, I'm not going to cook,” announced Cindy and went to the refrigerator in search of something that could be eaten between slices of bread. They were eating when Elaine came into the kitchen. Her feet were bare, her hair untidy, her eyes moist. She said she had gone to bed with a wretched headache.

“Where's Daddy?”

“He went out.”

“Not alone?”

“He didn't want to disturb me.” The lie stood out like a fresh bruise. Elaine did not mind small social fibs. In the apartment on Morningside Drive these had not been considered sinful.

“Did you talk to him?”

“It didn't do much good.”

“Why not? Did he refuse?”

“We got off the subject.”

Don sensed evasion. Bright hopes faded. He saw his future as an unending hell of debt, of seedy jobs alternating with pitiful
months of unemployment in which they would struggle to get along on his wife's income. Unpaid bills and unending worry had been the warp of his boyhood, stinginess and shame its woof. It was the sort of life he had hoped to avoid. Already he sensed in Cindy the middle-class woman's contempt for a husband who could not support her in style.

“We'll lose the house,” she whimpered.

The easy assumption of failure angered Don. “Don't be so sure.”

“But if we can't give them a thousand dollars tomorrow?”

He had to assert himself. “Don't you trust me to raise that kind of money?” He drank ginger ale in condescending sips.

“How?”

“Just leave it to me,” he said haughtily.

Elaine poured a glass of milk but could not drink it. She told them her headache was worse and went off to bed.

“They must have had a terrible fight,” Cindy said, not unhappily.

“Don't smirk. It may be the end for us. We might have to go back to New York.”

“I thought you could raise that money so easily.”

Don tried to recover bravado with lame argument. Cindy answered with the cruel logic of a child. They went on and on until fatigue sent them to their bedroom. Neither could sleep. From the peak of hope Don had sunk to the lowest pit of gloom. In every recollection of the day he found evil omens, and could see nothing ahead but a dismal repetition of his loathed boyhood.

Presently Cindy's voice drifted through the dark. “I wonder how much Daddy's really worth.”

“What difference does it make? He's not going to let go of a nickel.”

“You think he will leave it all to her?”

“Who knows?”

“She's just sitting and waiting. Anyone can see through that devotion act. Even Daddy, I think. Did you notice, Donnie? They're not nearly so lovey-dovey anymore.”

Don had at last grown drowsy. He did not bother to speak. Cindy turned over in bed and gave herself to deeper thought. “At least I'm going to get a hundred thousand dollars. That's the very least.”

Immediately Don was wide awake. “How do you know?”

“Insurance for me. He took out the policy when they got the divorce. A hundred thousand dollars to his daughter, Cynthia Kathryn.” She clapped her hands and giggled with delight.

“You never told me.”

“I didn't know it was that much. Mom wrote it in a letter.”

“She did! When?”

“Just after we got here.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Mom said I shouldn't. She said Daddy wouldn't like you knowing.”

The storm came closer. Wind rattled the Venetian blinds. Don got up to close the windows. “What difference does it make to me?
Daddy
,” he mimicked her tone, “will probably live another thirty years.”

“Mom was sure the cancer would come back,” sighed Cindy. “She's surprised he's lived this long.”

Don returned to his bed. “What's the use of thinking about it? Let's try to sleep.” He was no longer drowsy.

Once more Cindy gave herself to thought. “What good's his life to him? He's living like a dead man. And all that money in the banks and stocks and stuff. When people could really enjoy it!”

Don was asleep in his own speculations. He made a noise that sounded like a snore. “All right, if you're not interested in our future,” Cindy said and turned her back.