The Man Who Loved His Wife (5 page)

ONE NIGHT IN a dream, a sleep-dream rather than revery contrived as appeasement of an unborn wish, she walked with Ralph Julian on the deck of a ship. A band played, banners fluttered, her hand was locked in a firm warm palm. Suddenly, with the angular movement of nightmare, the mood changed. Shame chilled her like a sharp wind, and she knew she was not properly dressed for the journey. The chiffon nightgown did not half cover her breasts and the flimsy material whirled about her bare legs. Horrified strangers stared. She knew that dozens of lovely dresses, colored slippers, jackets, and sweaters had been packed in her mother's old wardrobe trunk, which she could see clearly on the pier. The ship moved off, faster and faster. She trembled and perspired in the cold wind, cried out, and woke to find herself locked in shivering tension. At once, in another fruitless fantasy conversation, she asked Ralph Julian if the dream had significance. Was there evil in her unconscious mind? “Do I want to be free? Do I, down deep in me, want Fletcher to die?” The question was as shocking as the nightmare.

At once she forced herself out of bed and walked on bare feet to Fletcher's room, saw that the man-made mouth at the base of his neck was uncovered, heard the click of his breathing. Like a criminal reprieved she hurried back to bed. As punishment she gave up the talks with Ralph Julian, vowed to forget him, and
on Thursdays tried not to listen for his car. And from this time on, it became her habit to creep into Fletcher's room once or twice a night to listen to his breathing.

He noted in the diary:

At night she visits my room to watch me sleep. What does she hope to find? How easy it would be to end it all with a man who breathes through a hole in his neck. Is she trying to work up the courage?

And again he wrote:

She is so dreamy nowadays that she does not always know I am in the room with her. When she comes out of it she will look at me in a sly way and wonder who the stranger is. Then she will suddenly smile and kiss me and get all girlish and flattering. I wish I did not enjoy it so much when she is sweet to me. Oh, my God, to love a woman who dreams about being rid of you. I live in hell.

3

SEPTEMBER IS THE INTOLERABLE MONTH. GRAY mornings and cool nights of early summer become memories of the improbable; soothing fogs are burned out by relentless sunshine. Heat as solid as metal strikes like a blunt instrument. Nerves are unsteady, energy unthinkable, lethargy ill-tempered. In the Strode house the tensions were aggravated by the presence of visitors.

Fletcher's daughter and son-in-law had come to spend their summer vacation. This is how they wrote of it when they announced their intentions, and the way they spoke of it when they arrived in the white Jaguar. “
My
vacation,” said Cindy almost daily. Since nursery school she had been taught that special conditions—
my
graduation,
my
school,
my
holidays,
my
debut,
our
neighborhood, people of
our
sort,
my
engagement,
my
wedding,
my
vacation—deserved special privilege. Six years younger than Elaine she seemed, by contrast, a child, for she had never taken responsibility of any sort, never held a job, never even finished college. Before her engagement the great
event of Cynthia Strode's life had been a debut, along with fifty-nine other girls whose parents had contributed to a charity whose board of governors sponsored a dance at the Hotel Plaza in New York.

In her father's house she accepted the double privileges of bride and visitor. “No maid?” she asked when Elaine went into the kitchen to prepare their first meal.

“Your father doesn't like having anyone around. We have a cleaning woman once a week. She's very thorough.”

“Doesn't Daddy object to her?”

“We usually go out that day, drive someplace, or he plays golf. Your father loathes these women chattering at him. Besides,” Elaine hated herself for using the tone of apology, “there's very little to do with only two of us in the house.”

As though bestowing a favor, Cindy offered to make the twin beds in the guest room. Often they were left unmade until late afternoon. Did it matter that she and Don liked to sleep late? After a very few mornings under her father's roof, Cindy learned there was not much to get up for. No parties were given for the visitors, no introductions offered, no invitations sent by people who dutifully entertained friends' houseguests. Instead, the young people endured long drives with Fletcher and Elaine, went on sightseeing trips to the few unexciting places that contrasted so drearily with the glowing advertisements of the California All-Year Club. Over endless dinners in overdecorated, overpriced, high-style restaurants, Fletcher sat dumb while Elaine made conversation, laughed at Don's jokes, hastened to answer when Cindy forgot that she was not to ask Fletcher direct questions in public places.

“I think you're hurting Daddy more than helping him with all this privacy stuff,” Cindy said when she was alone with Elaine. “In my opinion he'd be a lot better off if you'd make an effort to have some kind of social life.”

“He doesn't want it.”

“He may tell you that, but believe me, a man of his sort, always so lively and social, with so many connections, I mean! Not even belonging to a country club.”

“He prefers the public course. He doesn't want a lot of people getting chummy and compassionate.”

“The right sort of people wouldn't make him feel so badly,” Cindy argued. “No wonder he's so desperate, doing nothing but mooning around this gloomy old house. It's not at all healthy, psychologically.”

“It's the way he wants it.” Elaine despised herself for the tone of appeasement.

Cindy would never give up an argument. Even when she was proven wrong she exercised the right of reassertion. Elaine grew more and more strained in conversations, which she tried to keep Fletcher from hearing. Cindy's voice, as modern as her tastes, was hard, emphatic, and loud.

One of the girl's school friends was the daughter of a millionaire whose name was printed in gold on the plate-glass windows of loan and trust banks all over the city. Nan, who was exactly Cindy's age, had been married for three years to Rex Burke, a young man who had become almost as famous as his father-in-law. When Don and Cindy arrived, the young Burkes were away on “a private yacht.” Cindy was sadly disappointed and could not help showing that she considered the first two weeks of the vacation a sad waste. When Nan returned, Cindy and her husband were invited to spend Sunday at her house at Newport Beach. Cindy's rapture at the invitation was trivial in comparison with the ecstasy of her return.

“If I ever saw gracious living! Three in help, at the seashore.”

“They've got a honey of a cruiser, eighty feet,” Don reported with slightly less frenzy.

“Two Rollses. She and he both drive them.”

“It's a deduction for Rex,” Don hastened to explain. “He's executive assistant to Nan's father.” Don's eloquent dark eyes fixed themselves on his father-in-law's face.

Cindy's father did not need an executive assistant. She announced, reproachfully, “They've promised to introduce Don to their lawyers.”

“Anderson, Lord & James. You must have heard of them, sir.”

“Never did,” barked Fletcher. Having no business in California he needed no lawyers. Cindy tried to impress him by telling him how famous these attorneys were and how much they would, in Nan's husband's opinion, welcome a bright young man trained in New York. “And besides, Daddy, you owe it to yourself to have a legal representative in the city you live in.”

“Why?” croaked Fletcher.

“Everybody does, and especially a man of your standing. I mean . . . in a city like this there are all sorts of fabulous opportunities. I want you to meet Rex Burke, he's a perfect darling and so successful—”

“Not interested.” Fletcher's rejection came out like a belch.

“It'd be food for you. Psychologically, I mean. And if Don went into that law firm and you'd have a member of the family as a contact, you'd know your interests wouldn't be neglected.”

“Cindy!”

Don Hustings's nod and frown indicated that he and Cindy had an understanding about this subject. He had asked and she had promised not to bring it up crudely. Don did not want to be looked upon as the son-in-law in search of favors.

“My husband's too much of a gentleman for his own good.”

Cindy's laughter reminded Fletcher of his first wife, who had somehow believed that an inappropriate or unwelcome remark could be softened by the appearance of levity. Without bothering to excuse himself, he marched out of the room.

This was by no means the end of Cindy's efforts to promote Don's career. Nothing was said about his getting back to his job in New York. Either he had been given an extraordinary holiday or he had been fired. Fletcher became irritable. Behind closed doors he and Elaine discussed their visitors. The air of the house had become conspiratorial. “Please try to be patient,” begged Elaine. “After all, Fletch, she is your daughter. And it's sort of lonesome here for a young girl without a car of her own.”

Don went off nearly every day in the Jaguar. He spoke mysteriously of “important contacts.” Cindy sulked. She would have enjoyed driving the Lincoln, but Fletcher did not care to
be left without a car. He did not go out a lot, but did not want to be kept at home if he felt the sudden impulse.

“Daddy, just this once,” she begged on a blistering Thursday morning. “I wouldn't take your car away from you if it weren't just too vital. I've got to do some shopping before Saturday—”

“Your father's going to the barber this afternoon. He'll need the car.”

They were in the kitchen, Elaine preparing lunch, Cindy pressing a dress. Fletcher answered, but no one heard. Even a normal voice could not compete with the clamor of household machines. Water splashed over rinds and peels of fruit, which were being sucked into the clashing maws of the garbage disposal, the refrigerator grumbled like an upset stomach, the stove's exhaust roared as if in an airplane engine had been set into the wall.

“What did you say, Daddy?”

“He's using the car this afternoon,” Elaine said for the second time.

Fletcher's throat tightened. Elaine was always too swift and ready to answer for him. Even here at home with only his own daughter to hear his efforts at clear speech. Dependence upon his wife had become for him an abominable need, and for Elaine an important habit, damn her. Of late when she answered for him with her smug tact, he suffered the sense of strangulation.

Elaine looked at the clock nervously. “Do you think Don will be on time for lunch?”

“Don's always on time. Unless people keep him waiting.”

People in California were always keeping Don waiting. He had gone to see another friend of Nan's father, a person whose importance made it unimportant to be prompt with a man in Don's situation. This made Don very late for lunch. As a result the broccoli was overcooked, the hollandaise sauce lumpy. Elaine apologized too extravagantly. Fletcher merely tasted the food and pushed away his plate.

Don praised every mouthful. “You're a lucky man, sir, to have a wife who cooks so magnificently as well as having a
great many other feminine talents.” He offered Elaine a compassionate smile.

She thanked him coolly. Fletcher's scowl warned her that she must not show pleasure in the young man's compliments. She tried to turn their attention to Don's business. “You haven't told us what happened at your meeting this morning. How did it go?”

“It didn't.”

“Didn't you see Mr. Heatherington?” wailed Cindy.

“For five minutes. After he'd kept me waiting all that time, he shook hands with me and said we'd have to arrange another date.”

“People out here are impossible. No manners at all,” Cindy said.

“He had a board meeting. But he made another appointment.”

“How soon?”

“A week from Tuesday.”

“Not till then? He's impossible.”

“He's flying to Hawaii tonight. For a week.”

Cindy looked toward heaven. Fletcher rumbled out a question. This time they all understood and wished they hadn't. The attack was direct. Didn't Don's bosses in New York expect him back on the job?

Cindy answered quickly, “They've given Don a leave of absence. They don't want to let him go permanently, but if he finds something better out here, they won't hold him back.” She tossed an arch smile at her husband, tilted a shoulder, let out a crescendo of laughter.

Fletcher looked grim. At the time of the engagement both Cindy and her mother had assured him that Donald Hustings had brilliant prospects and was considered indispensable by his employers.

“Well, sir,” Don said glibly, “they've been decent enough people to work for, but a man has to consider his future. And, frankly, they've got too much family in the firm. All the important cases go to nephews and grandsons, and if you're not
related you get nothing but minor cases. So I decided to look around out here.”