The Man Who Loved His Wife Page 4

  “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.”

  Cindy removed from her mouth the stalk of celery she had been sucking like a stick of candy. “After all, Los Angeles is supposed to be the coming land of opportunity, and with all of Don’s connections out here, we thought . . .” Confused by her father’s frown she giggled again.

  “What connections?” croaked Fletcher.

  “Nan’s father,” Cindy began. Don cut her off with the statement that he had excellent contacts of his own. Cindy interrupted with stubborn authority. “Nan’s father couldn’t have tried harder to help us if Don were his own son-in-law.”

  The fact could be questioned. His own son-in-law had been made executive assistant while the only help the banker had given Don was introductions to certain friends. Before this could be stated, Don told his father-in-law, apologetically, “We know you’re not active now, sir. We didn’t expect anything.” Expectancy shone out of his clear, bright, undergraduate face. At twenty-nine, Don Hustings had the docility and easy charm of a boy who has gone to the correct prep school and college. Spiritually he had never got out of either. He continued to wear the deferential garments of the schoolboy who knows his place in the company of older, wealthier men. Good breeding and background were as obvious as his Maryland accent and fresh complexion. He had many notable ancestors but the family had been impoverished by a series of historical events that had begun with the Civil War and continued through a century of panics and depressions. Don could recite these misfortunes like a catechism.

  He had dark, deep-set eyes and the prominent curling lips of a classical statue. Adoring him, Cindy could never forget that other girls’ fathers poured benefits upon less worthy sons-in-law. Vehemently she declared, “Don isn’t the type to depend on relations. And he’s had a couple of very good offers in case you’re interested.”

  Fletcher rumbled out another question.

  Don understood well enough to answer, “I couldn’t accept that sort of money, sir.”

  The money people offered was never satisfactory to Don and Cindy. The ten thousand dollars that Fletcher had sent his daughter as a wedding present had simply gone with the wind. Don had been deeply in debt when they married, and was now in danger of being engulfed. Both he and Cindy felt it important to keep up appearances.

  “Couldn’t accept that sort of money!” The voice in Fletcher’s mind was clear and scornful. The young man’s lack of humility irritated him. He would have liked to remind the complacent fellow that he had made his money without asking favors of anyone. Aloud, “What the hell do you think you’re worth?” he bellowed. Caught up in anger he forgot the therapist’s instructions for producing sound and controlling breath.

  “What did you say, Daddy?”

  Elaine had understood but did not try to interpret Fletcher’s wrath. She felt sorry for Don and did not wish to see him humiliated again. Her mouth closed stubbornly, and she pressed herself back as if her body were part of the chair. Don caught her eye. A swift glance flashed between them. Fletcher, watching warily, saw these two in the familiar vision, unclothed, embracing. On the table his big hands lay curled in frustration. His skin itched with impotent rage.

  Elaine started collecting plates. Sighing, Cindy followed. The two men sat like strangers on a bus. Fletcher’s silence embarrassed Don, but his conversation would have been harder to take. If it had not taken so much effort, Fletcher would have let him know what he thought about a generation that believed the world owed it a living. Had he succeeded in expressing himself he would not have been so sensitive to a swift exchange of smiles when Elaine returned with the dessert. Again the vision flashed across the screen of consciousness. What Fletcher saw was not a girl in a flowered dress and a young man in a neat summer jacket erect behind his plate, but the guilty pair—faithless wife, worthless son-in-law—naked in a shadowy place.

  “Why are you looking so impatient, dear? You’ve got plenty of time. Didn’t you say you’d put off the barber until four today?”

  Fletcher had told her, but she had apparently forgotten, that he was to see his dentist that afternoon. He spoke angrily, too fast and without giving thought to breathing and the control of abdominal muscles. Sounds like animal grunts struck his ears with fresh agony.

  Before Cindy could chirp the usual “What, Daddy?” Elaine translated with her loathsome tact, “Oh, darling, I forgot your dentist appointment. But you’ve got plenty of time still. Look, I’ve made you a chocolate mousse.”

  For no reason Cindy giggled, Don stared at the centerpiece as if he hoped to find some mystic answer among the asters. Elaine set the plate before him. Once more they looked at each other, heat welled up in Fletcher, and he flung the dish of chocolate mousse at his wife.

  “Daddy, what are you doing?”

  Under blond curls Cindy’s face glowed with delight. She had good features and flawless skin, but was too solid to be noticeable among all the pretty girls who did their lips and eyes and hair in the same fashion and wore clothes from the proper stores. She had never been so lovely as at this moment of witnessing her father’s cruelty to the woman who had taken his daughter’s rightful place in his heart.

  AT THE RISK of being late for the dentist’s appointment, Fletcher lingered in the house until Don drove off to meet a fraternity brother who had good contacts. Cindy took one look at the untidy kitchen and decided to drive into the city with her father.

  Elaine set about her chores briskly, eager to be done. Even housework came easier when there was no one to watch, interrupt, demand attention. To save effort she stacked dishes on the tray and carried them to the kitchen. At the threshold she paused, struck anew by the clutter, confusion seemed symbolic, her life a mess of untidiness, disappointment, and futile chores. The tray trembled in her hands. She thought of herself cringing, a victim without dignity or self-respect, while her husband assaulted her with pudding.

  Her tray fell. Porcelain clattered and broke on the kitchen tiles. Plates, cups, saucers, glasses, everything. It was no accident. She had willed the destruction. So many broken dishes! Fletcher would be furious.

  For an instant tears threatened. Elaine thought of excuses, confession, soft appeal. These were immediately rejected. Defiance hardened her. Deliberately and in malice she walked to the counter and, one by one, hurled every dish upon the tiled floor. One plate rebelled, rolled into a corner, remained whole. She picked it up and flung it down with sturdy malevolence. When every soiled dish and glass lay in shards, she collected all the dirty pots and utensils,
carried them to the garbage cans, covered them securely and returned to the kitchen.

  She had no idea that she was being watched.

  Next she set about the task of sweeping up the wreckage, gathering broken bits into the dustpan, emptying it into the garbage tins. On her third trip she saw the man, recoiled and instinctively hid the guilty dustpan behind her back.

  “Didn’t you hear my car? I didn’t see you in the garden so I came to find you here.”

  It was Ralph Julian. After all of her confessions to his invisible shape the solid man seemed unreal. Her hand trembled. He took the dustpan from her.

  “Accident?”

  “I broke them on purpose.” Defiant, as though he had provoked the destruction, she laughed spitefully.

  “So many dishes?”

  “Just the ones we used at lunch, Service for four. We’ve still got eight of everything. Haviland.” She laughed again at the extravagance. “We bought the set, a dozen of each, when we moved in here.”

  Ralph helped her with the rest of the clearing up. “Don’t say anything to your husband until he’s in a better mood.”

  “What makes you think he’s in a bad one?”

  “Something must have caused the havoc. Or do you break dishes just for the hell of it?”

  They stood under the olive tree. Leaf shadows darkened her face. She had changed from the soiled dress, so that there were no visible signs of the assault. For all that she had ached to tell Ralph, she could find nothing to say except that it had been a long time since they had seen each other. Ralph had wanted to visit her, he said, but had kept away because he thought her husband did not approve of him.

  “It’s not you, it’s every man. The way he watches me, you’d think the supermarket was a bordello.” She had learned the word from her father. Once she had said it to Fletcher and he had laughed, telling her that she was too genteel. “In this country we call it a whorehouse.” The recollection brought a faint smile.

  Again there was silence under the olive tree. Hot afternoon sun pierced the shadow. Elaine asked him into the house. He reached ahead to open the screen door. Her body brushed against his, so that she stiffened and hurried ahead. There was still a clutter in the kitchen but she made no apologies.