No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [124]
44
The marriage was predicated on a lie.
The first marriage, Clayton explained. Well, the second one, too. He’d get to that one soon enough. It was a long drive back to Connecticut. Plenty of time to cover everything.
But he talked about his marriage to Enid first. A girl he’d known in high school, in Tonawanda, a Buffalo suburb. Then he went to Canisius College, the one founded by the Jesuits, took business courses with a sprinkling of philosophy and religious studies. Wasn’t that far away; of course, he could have lived at home and commuted, but he got a cheap room just off campus, figured even if you didn’t go far away for college, you at least had to get out from under your parents’ roof.
When he finished, who was waiting for him in the old neighborhood but Enid. They started dating, and he could see that she was a strong-willed girl, used to getting what she wanted from those around her. She used what she had to her advantage. She was attractive, possessed a terrific body, had a strong sexual appetite, at least during their early courtship.
One night, teary-eyed, she tells him she’s late. “Oh no,” Clayton Sloan says. He thinks first of his own parents, how ashamed they will be of him. So concerned about appearance, and then something like this, their boy getting a girl pregnant, his mother would want to move out so she wouldn’t have to hear the neighbors talking.
So there wasn’t much else to do but get married. And right away.
A couple of months after that, she says she’s not feeling well, says she’s making an appointment to see her physician, Dr. Gibbs was his name. She goes to the doctor alone, comes home, says she lost it. The baby’s gone. Lots of tears. One day, Clayton’s in the diner, sees Dr. Gibbs, goes over to him and says, “I know I shouldn’t be asking you this here, that I should make an appointment, but Enid, losing the baby and all, she’ll still be able to have another one, right?”
And Dr. Gibbs says, “Huh?”
So now he has an idea what he’s dealing with. A woman who’ll say anything, tell any kind of lie, to get what she wants.
He should have left then. But Enid tells him she’s so sorry, that she thought she was pregnant, but was afraid to go to the doctor to have it confirmed, and then she turned out to be wrong. Clayton doesn’t know whether to believe her, and again worries about the shame he will bring on himself and his family by leaving Enid, starting divorce proceedings. And for a while there, Enid takes sick, is bedridden. Real or feigned, he’s not sure, but knows he can’t leave her when she is like this.
The longer he stays, the harder it seems to be to leave. He learns quickly that what Enid wants, Enid gets. When she doesn’t, there’s hell to pay. Screaming fits, smashing things. One time, he’s sitting in the bathtub, Enid’s in there with her electric hair dryer, starts joking around about dropping it into the water. But there’s something in her eyes, something that suggests that she could do it, just like that, wouldn’t have to think twice.
He puts his business education to use, gets a job in sales, supplying machine shops and factories. It’s going to have him driving all over the country, a corridor running between Chicago and New York that skirts past Buffalo. He’s going to be away a lot, his prospective employer warns him. That’s the clincher for Clayton. Time away from the harping, the screaming, the odd looks she sometimes gives him that suggest the gears inside her head aren’t always meshing the way they’re supposed to. He always dreads the drive home after a sales trip, wondering what list of grievances Enid will have prepared for him the moment he walks through the door. How she doesn’t have enough nice clothes, or he’s not working hard enough, or the back door squeaks when you open it, it’s driving her mad. The only thing that makes returning home worthwhile is seeing his Irish setter, Flynn. He always comes running out to greet Clayton’s car, like he’s been sitting on the porch from the moment he left, waiting for the second he returns.
Then she