The Stories of John Cheever (34 page)

The next morning, it was still raining. Victor could see by his wife’s face that the house and the weather were a drain on her strength. Most of us are inured to the inconveniences of a summer house in a cold rain, but Theresa was not. The power that the iron bedsteads and the paper window curtains had on her spirit was out of proportion, as if these were not ugly objects in themselves but threatened to overwhelm her common sense. At breakfast, their hostess suggested that they take a drive in the rain. “I know that it’s vile out,” she said, “but you could drive to Camden, and it’s a way of killing time, isn’t it, and you go through a lot of enchanting little villages, and if you did go down to Camden, you could go to the rental library and get
The Silver Chalice
. They’ve been reserving it for days and days, and I never find the time to get it. The rental library is on Estrella Lane.” The Mackenzies drove to Camden and got
The Silver Chalice
. When they returned, there was another chore for Victor. The battery in Helen Jackson’s car was dead. He took it to the garage and got a rental battery and installed it. Then, in spite of the weather, he tried to go swimming, but the waves were high and full of gravel, and after diving once he gave up and went back to the house. When he walked into the guest room in his wet bathing trunks, Theresa raised her face and he saw that it was stained with tears. “Oh, my darling,” she said, “I’m homesick.”

It was, even for Victor, a difficult remark to interpret. Their only home then was a one-room apartment in the city, which, with its kitchenette and studio couch, seemed oddly youthful and transitory for these grandparents. If Theresa was homesick, it could only be for a collection of parts of houses. She must have meant something else.

“Then we’ll go,” he said. “We’ll leave the first thing in the morning.” And then, seeing how happy his words had made her, he went on. “We’ll get into the car and we’ll drive and we’ll drive and we’ll drive. We’ll go to Canada.”

When they told Helen Jackson, at dinner, that they were leaving in the morning, she seemed relieved. She got out a road map and marked with a pencil the best route up through the mountains to Ste. Marie and the border. The Mackenzies packed after dinner and left early in the morning. Helen came out to the driveway to say goodbye. She was wearing her wrapper and carrying a silver coffeepot. “It’s been perfectly lovely to have you,” she said, “even if the weather has been so vile and disagreeable and horrid, and since you’ve decided to go through Ste. Marie, would you mind terribly stopping for a minute and returning Aunt Marly’s silver coffeepot? I borrowed it years ago, and she’s been writing me threatening letters and telephoning, and you can just leave it on the doorstep and run. Her name is Mrs. Sauer. The house is near the main road.” She gave the Mackenzies some sketchy directions, kissed Theresa, and handed her the coffeepot. “It’s been simply wonderful having you,” she called as they drove away.

The waves at Horsetail Beach were still high and the wind was cold when the Mackenzies turned their back on the Atlantic Ocean. The noise and the smell of the sea faded. Inland, the sky seemed to be clearing. The wind was westerly and the overcast began to be displaced with light and motion. The Mackenzies came into hilly farmland. It was country they had never seen before, and as the massive clouds broke and the dilated light poured onto it, Theresa felt her spirits rising. She felt as if she were in a house on the Mediterranean, opening doors and windows. It was a house that she had never been in. She had only seen a picture of it, years ago, on a postcard. The saffron walls of the house continued straight down into the blue water, and all the doors and windows were shut. Now she was opening them. It was at the beginning of summer. She was opening doors and windows, and, leaning into the light from one of the highest, she saw a single sail, disappearing in the direction of Africa, carrying the wicked King away. How else could she account for the feeling of perfect contentment that she felt? She sat in the car with her arm and her shoulder against her husband’s, as she always did. As they came into the mountains, she noticed that the air seemed cooler and lighter, but the image of opening doors and windows—doors that stuck at the sill, shuttered windows, casement windows, windows with sash weights, and all of them opening onto the water—stayed in her mind until they came down, at dusk, into the little river resort of Ste. Marie.

“God damn that woman,” Victor said; Mrs. Sauer’s house was not where Helen Jackson had said it would be. If the coffeepot had not looked valuable, he would have thrown it into a ditch and driven on. They turned up a dirt road that ran parallel to the river, and stopped at a gas station and got out of the car to ask directions. “Sure, sure,” the man said. “I know where the Sauers’ place is. Their landings right across the road, and the boatman was in here a minute ago.” He threw open the screen door and shouted through his hands. “Perley! There’s some people here want to get over to the island.”

“I want to leave something,” Victor said.

“He’ll take you over. It makes a pretty ride this time of day. He don’t have nothing to do. He’s in here talking my ear off most of the time. Perley! Perley!”

The Mackenzies crossed the road with him to where a crooked landing reached into the water. An old man was polishing the brass on a launch. “I’ll take you over and bring you right back,” he said.

“I’ll wait here,” Theresa said.

Trees grew down to the banks on both shores; they touched the water in places. The river at this point was wide, and as it curved between the mountains she could see upstream for miles. The breadth of the view pleased her, and she hardly heard Victor and the boatman talking. “Tell the lady to come,” the old man said.

“Theresa?”

She turned, and Victor gave her a hand into the boat. The old man put a dirty yachting cap on his head, and they started upstream. The current was strong, and the boat moved against it slowly, and at first they could not make out any islands, but then they saw water and light separate from the mainland what they had thought was a peninsula. They passed through some narrows and, swinging around abruptly—it was all strange and new to them—came up to a landing in a cove. Victor followed a path that led from the landing up to an old-fashioned frame camp stained the color of molasses. The arbor that joined the house to the garden was made of cedar posts, from which the bark hung in strips among the roses. Victor rang the bell. An old servant opened the door and led him through the house and out to the porch, where Mrs. Sauer was sitting with some sewing in her lap. She thanked him for bringing the coffeepot and, as he was about to leave, asked him if he were alone.

“Mrs. Mackenzie is with me,” Victor said. “We’re driving to Quebec.”

“Well, as Talbot used to say, the time has come for the drinking to begin,” the old lady said. “If you and your wife would stop long enough to have a cocktail with me, you would be doing me a great favor. That’s what it amounts to.”

Victor got Theresa, who was waiting in the arbor, and brought her to the porch.

“I know how rushed you children always are,” the old lady said. “I know what a kindness it is for you to stop, but Mr. Sauer and I’ve been quite lonely up here this season. Here I sit, hemming curtains for the cook’s room. What a bore!” She held up her sewing and let it fall. “And since you’ve been kind enough to stay for a cocktail, I’m going to ask another favor. I’m going to ask you to mix the cocktails. Agnes, who let you in, usually makes them, and she waters the gin. You’ll find everything in the pantry. Go straight through the dining room.”

Navajo rugs covered the floor of the big living room. The fireplace chimney was made of fieldstone, and fixed to it was, of course, a pair of antlers. At the end of a large and cheerless dining room, Victor found the pantry. The old servant brought him the shaker and the bottles.

“Well, I’m glad you’re staying,” she said. “I knew she was going to ask you. She’s been so lonely this season that I’m worried for her. She’s a lovely person—oh, she’s a lovely person—but she hasn’t been like herself. She begins to drink at about eleven in the morning. Sometimes earlier.” The shaker was a sailing trophy. The heavy silver tray had been presented to Mr. Sauer by his business associates.

When Victor returned to the porch, Theresa was hemming the curtains. “How good it is to taste gin again,” old Mrs. Sauer exclaimed. “I don’t know what Agnes thinks she’s accomplishing by watering the cocktails. She’s a most devoted and useful servant, and I would be helpless without her, but she’s growing old, she’s growing old. I sometimes think she’s lost her mind. She hides the soap chips in the icebox and sleeps at night with a hatchet under her pillow.”

“To what good fortune do we owe this charming visitation?” the old gentleman asked when he joined them. He drew off his gardening gloves and slipped his rose shears into the pocket of his checked coat.

“Isn’t it generous of these children to stop and have a drink with us?” Mrs. Sauer said, when they had been introduced. The old man did not seem surprised at hearing the Mackenzies described as children. “They’ve come from Horsetail Beach and they’re on their way to Quebec.”

“Mrs. Sauer and I have always detested Horsetail Beach,” the old gentleman said. “When do you plan to reach Quebec?”

“Tonight,” Victor said.

“Tonight?” Mrs. Sauer asked.

“I doubt that you can reach Quebec tonight,” the old gentleman said.

“I suppose you can do it,” the old lady said, “the way you children drive, but you’ll be more dead than alive. Stay for dinner. Stay the night.”

“Do stay for dinner,” the old man said.

“You will, won’t you?” Mrs. Sauer said. “I will not take no for an answer! I am old and privileged, and if you say no, I’ll claim to be deaf and pretend not to hear you. And now that you’ve decided to stay, make another round of these delicious cocktails and tell Agnes that you are to have Talbot’s room. Tell her tactfully. She hates guests. Remember that she’s very old.”

Victor carried the sailing trophy back into the house, which, in spite of its many large windows, seemed in the early dark like a cave. “Mrs. Mackenzie and I are staying for dinner and the night,” he told Agnes. “She said that we were to have Talbot’s room.”

“Well, that’s nice. Maybe it will make her happy. She’s had a lot of sorrow in her life. I think it’s affected her mind. I knew she was going to ask you, and I’m glad you can stay. It makes me happy. It’s more dishes to wash and more beds to make, but it’s more—it’s more—”

“It’s more merrier?”

“Oh, that’s it, that’s it.” The old servant shook with laughter. “You remind me a little of Mr. Talbot. He was always making jokes with me when he came out here to mix the cocktails. God have mercy on his soul. It’s hard to realize,” she said sadly.

Walking back through the cavelike living room, Victor could hear Theresa and Mrs. Sauer discussing the night air, and he noticed that the cold air had begun to come down from the mountains. He felt it in the room. There were flowers somewhere in the dark, and the night air had heightened their smell and the smell of the boulders in the chimney, so the room smelled like a cave with flowers in it. “Everyone says that the view looks like Salzburg,” Mrs. Sauer said, “but I’m patriotic and I can’t see that views are improved by such comparisons. They do seem to be improved by good company, however. We used to entertain, but now—”

“Yes, yes,” the old gentleman said, and sighed. He uncorked a bottle of citronella and rubbed his wrists and the back of his neck.

“There!” Theresa said. “The cook’s curtains are done!”

“Oh, how can I thank you!” Mrs. Sauer said. “Now if someone would be kind enough to get my glasses, I could admire your needlework. They’re on the mantelpiece.”

Victor found her glasses—not on the mantelpiece but on a nearby table. He gave them to her and then walked up and down the porch a few times. He managed to suggest that he was no longer a chance guest but had become a member of the family. He sat down on the steps, and Theresa joined him there. “Look at them,” the old lady said to her husband. “Doesn’t it do you good to see, for a change, young people who love one another? … There goes the sunset gun. My brother George bought that gun for the yacht club. It was his pride and his joy. Isn’t it quiet this evening?”

But the tender looks and attitudes that Mrs. Sauer took for pure love were only the attitudes of homeless summer children who had found a respite. Oh, how sweet, how precious the hour seemed to them! Lights burned on another island. Stamped on the twilight was the iron lace of a broken greenhouse roof. What poor magpies. Their ways and airs were innocent; their bones were infirm. Indeed, they impersonated the dead. Come away, come away, sang the wind in the trees and the grass, but it did not sing to the Mackenzies. They turned their heads instead to hear old Mrs. Sauer. “I’m going up to put on my green velvet,” she said, “but if you children don’t feel like dressing …”

Waiting on table that night Agnes thought that she had not seen such a gay dinner in a long time. She heard them go off after dinner to play billiards on the table that had been bought for poor, dead Talbot. A little rain fell, but, unlike the rain at Horsetail Beach, this was a gentle and excursive mountain shower. Mrs. Sauer yawned at eleven, and the game broke up. They said good night in the upstairs hall, by the pictures of Talbot’s crew, Talbot’s pony, and Talbot’s class. “Good night, good night,” Mrs. Sauer exclaimed, and then set her face, determined to overstep her manners, and declared, “I am delighted that you agreed to stay. I can’t tell you how much it means. I’m—” Tears started from her eyes.

“It’s lovely to be here,” Theresa said.

“Good night, children,” Mrs. Sauer said.

“Good night, good night,” Mr. Sauer said.

“Good night,” Victor said.

“Good night, good night,” Theresa said.

“Sleep well,” Mrs. Sauer said. “And pleasant dreams.”

Ten days later, the Sauers were expecting some other guests—some young cousins named Wycherly. They had never been to the house before, and they came up the path late in the afternoon. Victor opened the door to them. “I’m Victor Mackenzie,” he said cheerfully. He wore tennis shorts and a pullover, but when he bent down to pick up a suitcase, his knees creaked loudly: “The Sauers are out driving with my wife,” he explained. “They’ll be back by six, when the drinking begins.” The cousins followed him across the big living room and up the stairs. “Mrs. Sauer is giving you Uncle George’s room,” he said, “because it has the best view and the most hot water. It’s the only room that’s been added to the house since Mr. Sauer’s father built the place in 1903….”