The Stories of John Cheever (67 page)

Downstairs, Will spoke with his hostess, and she said she was so sorry that Maria hadn’t come. Crossing the living room, he was stopped by Pete Parsons, who drew him over to the fireplace and told him a joke. This was what Will had come for, and his spirits began to improve. But, going from Pete Parsons toward the door of the bar, he found his way blocked by Biff Worden. Ethel’s story of their neediness, her tears, and her trip to the parking lot with Larry Helmsford were still fresh in his mind. He did not want to see Biff Worden. He did not like it that Biff could muster a cheerful and open face after his wife had been seduced in the Helmsfords’ station wagon.

“Did you hear what Mike Reilly found in the parking lot this morning?” Biff asked. “A pair of slippers and a girdle.” Will said that he wanted a drink, and he got past Biff, but the entrance to the passage between the living room and the bar was blocked by the Chesneys.

In almost every suburb there is a charming young couple designated by their gifts to be an ambassadorial pair. They are the ones who meet John Mason Brown at the train and drive him to the auditorium. They are the ones who organize the bumper tennis tournaments, handle the most difficult cases in the fund-raising campaign, and can be counted on by their hostesses to humor the bore, pass the stuffed celery, breathe fire into the dying conversation, and expel the drunk. Their social and family connections are indescribably rich and varied, and physically they are models of attractiveness and fashion—direct, mild, well groomed, their eyes twinkling with trust and friendliness. Such a young couple were the Chesneys.

“So glad to see you,” Mark Chesney said, removing his pipe from his mouth and putting a hand on Will’s shoulder. “Missed you at the dance last night, although I saw Maria enjoying herself. But what I wanted to speak to you about is something of a higher order. Give me a minute? As you may or may not know, I’m in charge of the adult-education program at the high school this year. We’ve had a disappointing attendance, and we have a speaker coming on Thursday for whom I’m anxious to rustle up a sizable audience. Her name is Mary Bickwald, and she’s going to speak on marriage problems—extramarital affairs, that sort of thing. If you and Maria are free on Thursday, I think you’ll find it worth your time.” The Chesneys went on into the living room, and Will continued toward the bar.

The bar was full of a noisy and pleasant company, and Will was glad to join it and get a drink. He had begun to feel like himself when the rector of Christ Church bore down on him, shook his hand, and drew him away from the others.

The rector was a large man and, unlike some of his suburban colleagues, not at all wary of clerical black. When he and Will met at cocktail parties, they usually talked about blankets. Will had given many blankets to the church. He had given blankets to its missions and blankets to its shelters. When the shepherds knelt in the straw at Mary’s knees in the Nativity play, they were clothed in Will’s blankets. Since he expected to be asked for blankets, he was surprised to hear the rector say, “I want you to feel free to come to my study, Will, and talk to me if anything is troubling you.” While Will was thanking the rector for this invitation, they were joined by Herbert McGrath.

Herbert McGrath was a banker, a wealthy, irritable man. At the bottom of his thinking there seemed to be an apprehension—a nightmare—that without the kind of order he represented, the world would fly apart. He despised men who raced to catch the morning train. In the “no smoking” car, it was customary for people to light cigarettes as the train approached Grand Central Station, and this infringement so irritated Herbert that he would tap his neighbors on the shoulder and tell them that the smoker was in the rear. Mixed with his insistence on propriety was a curious strain of superstition. When he walked along the station platform in the morning, he looked around him. If he saw a coin, he would shoulder his way past the other commuters and bend down to get it. “Good luck, you know,” he would explain as he put the coin in his pocket. “You need both luck
and
brains.” Now he wanted to talk about the immorality at the party, and Will decided to go home.

He put his glass on the bar and started thoughtfully through the passage to the living room. His head was down, and he walked straight into Mrs. Walpole, a very plain woman. “I see that your wife hasn’t recovered sufficiently to face the public today,” she said gaily.

A peculiar fate seems to overtake homely women at the ends of parties—and journeys, too. Their curls and their ribbons come undone, particles of food cling to their teeth, their glasses steam, and the wide smile with which they planned to charm the world lapses into a look of habitual discontent and bitterness. Mrs. Walpole had got herself up bravely for the Townsends’ party, but time itself—she was drinking sherry—had destroyed the impression she intended to make. Someone seemed to have sat on her hat, her voice was strident, and the camellia pinned to her shoulder had died.

“But I suppose Maria sent you to see what they’re saying about her,” she said.

Will got past Mrs. Walpole and went up the stairs to get his coat. Bridget had gone, and Helen Bulstrode was sitting alone in the hall in a red dress. Helen was a lush. She was treated kindly in Shady Hill. Her husband was pleasant, wealthy, and forbearing. Now Helen was very drunk, and whatever she had meant to forget when she first poured herself a drink that day had long since been lost in the clutter. She rolled a little in her chair while Will was putting on his coat, and suddenly she addressed him copiously in French. Will did not understand. Her voice got louder and angrier, and when he got down to the hall, she went to the head of the stairs to call after him. He went off without saying goodbye to anyone.

MARIA
was in the living room reading a magazine when Will came in. “Look, Mummy,” he said. “Can you tell me this? Did you lose your shoes last night?”

“I lost my pocketbook,” Maria said, “but I don’t think I lost my shoes.”

“Try and remember,” he said. “It isn’t like a raincoat or an umbrella. People usually remember when they lose their shoes.”

“What is the matter with you, Willy?”

“Did you lose your shoes?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you wear a girdle?”

“What are you talking about, Will?”

“By Christ, I’ve got to find out!”

He went upstairs to their room, which was dark. He turned on a light in her closet and opened the chest where she kept her shoes. There were a great many pairs, and among them were gold shoes, silver shoes, bronze shoes, and he was shuffling through the collection when he saw Maria standing in the doorway. “Oh, my God, Mummy, forgive me!” he said. “Forgive me!”

“Oh, Willie!” she exclaimed. “Look what you’ve done to my shoes.”

WILL FELT
all right in the morning, and he had a good day in the city. At five, he made the trip uptown on the subway and crossed the station to his train automatically. In the train, he got an aisle seat and scanned the asininities in the evening paper. An old man was suing his young wife for divorce, on the ground of adultery; the fact that this story had no power to disturb Will not only pleased him but left him feeling exceptionally fit and happy. The train traveled north under a sky that was still spread with light.

A little rain had begun to fall when Will stepped onto the platform at Shady Hill. “Hello, Trace,” he said. “Hello, Pete. Hello, Herb.” Around him, his neighbors were greeting their wives and children. He took the route up Alewives Lane to Shadrock Road, past rows and rows of lighted houses. He put his car in the garage and went around to the front and looked at his tulips, gleaming in the rain and the porch light. He let the fawning cat in out of the wet, and Flora, his youngest daughter, ran through the hall to kiss him. Some deep recess in his spirit seemed to respond to the good child and the light-filled rooms. He had the feeling that there would never be any less to his life than this. Presently, he would be sitting on a folding chair in the June sunlight watching Flora graduate from Smith.

Maria came into the hall wearing a gray silk dress—a cloth and a color that flattered her. Her eyes were bright and wide, and she kissed him tenderly. The telephone began to ring, for it was that hour in the suburbs when the telephone rings steadily with board-meeting announcements, scraps of gossip, fund-raising pleas, and invitations. Maria answered it and he heard her say, “Yes, Edith.”

Will went into the living room to make a cocktail, and a few minutes later the doorbell rang. Edith Hastings, a good neighbor and a friendly woman, preceded Maria into the living room, protesting, “I really shouldn’t break in on you like this.” Still protesting, she sat down and took the glass that Will handed her. He had never seen her color so high or her eyes so bright. “Charlie’s in Oregon,” she said. “He’ll be gone three weeks this trip. He wanted me to speak to you, Will, about some apple trees. He meant to speak to you before he left, but he didn’t have the time. He can get apple trees by the dozen from a nursery in New Jersey, and he wanted to know if you wouldn’t like to buy six.”

Edith Hastings was one of those women—and there were many of them in Shady Hill—whose husbands were away on business from one to three weeks out of every month. They lived—conjugally—the life of a Grand Banks fisherman’s wife, with none of the lore of ships and sailors to draw on. None—or almost none—of these widows could be accused of not having attacked their problems gallantly. They solicited funds for cancer, heart trouble, lameness, deafness, and mental health. They cultivated tropical plants in a capricious climate, wove cloth, made pottery, cared tenderly for their children, and did everything imaginable to make up for the irremediable absence of their men. They remained lonely women with a natural proneness to gossip.

“But of course you don’t have to decide this minute,” Edith went on when he didn’t answer her question. “I don’t suppose you really have to decide until Charlie comes back from Oregon. I mean, there isn’t any special time for planting apple trees, is there? And, speaking of apple trees, how was the fete?”

Will turned his back and opened a window. Outside, the rain fell steadily, but he doubted then that it was the rain that had heightened Edith’s color and made her eyes shine. He heard Maria reply, and then he heard Edith ask, “When did you people leave?” She could not keep the excitement out of her voice. “And I understand that a pair of slippers and a girdle—”

Will swung around. “Is that what you came here to talk about?” he asked sharply.

“What?”

“Is that what you came here to talk about?”

“I really came here to talk about apple trees.”

“I gave Charlie a check for those apple trees six months ago.”

“Charlie didn’t tell me.”

“Why should he? It was all settled.”

“Well, I guess I’d better go.”

“Please do,” Will said. “Please go. And if anyone asks how we are, tell them we’re getting along fine.”

“Oh, Will, Will, Will!” Maria said.

“I seem to have come at the wrong time,” Edith said.

“And when you call the Trenchers and the Farquarsons and the Abbotts and the Beardens, tell them that I don’t give a good goddamn what happened at the party. Tell them to think up some gossip about someone else. Tell them to imagine some filth about the Fuller Brush man or the chump who delivers eggs on Friday or the Slaters’ gardener, but tell them to leave us alone.”

She was gone. Maria, crying, looked at him so wantonly that he nearly choked. Then she climbed the stairs in her gray silk dress and shut the door to their room. He followed her and found her lying on their bed in the dark. “Who was it, Mummy?” he asked. “Just tell me who it was and I’ll forget about it.”

“It wasn’t anybody,” she said. “There wasn’t anybody.”

“Now, Mummy,” he said heavily. “I know better than that. I don’t want to reproach you. That isn’t why I ask. I just want to know so I can forget about it.”

“Please let me alone!” she cried. “Please let me alone for a little while.”

* * *

WAKING AT DAWN
in the guest room, Will saw the whole thing clearly. He was astonished to realize how the strength of his feeling had obstructed his vision. The villain was Henry Bulstrode. It was Henry who had been with her on the train when she returned that rainy night at two. It was Henry who had whistled when she did her dance at the Women’s Club. It was Henry’s head and shoulders he had seen on Madison Avenue when he recognized Maria ahead of him. And now he remembered poor Helen Bulstrode’s haggard face at the Townsends’ party—the face of a woman who was married to a libertine. It was her husband’s unregeneracy that she had been trying to forget. The spate of drunken French she had aimed at him must have been about Maria and Henry. Henry Bulstrode’s face, grinning with naked and lascivious mockery, appeared in the middle of the guest room. There was only one thing to do.

Will bathed, dressed, and ate his breakfast. Maria slept on. It was still early when he finished his coffee, and he decided to walk to the train. He strode down Shadrock Road with the peculiar briskness of the aging. Only a few people had gathered on the platform for the eight-nineteen when he reached the station. Trace Bearden joined him, and then Biff Worden. And then Henry Bulstrode stepped out of the waiting room, showed his white teeth in a smile, and frowned at his newspaper. Without any warning at all, Will walked over to him and knocked him down. Women screamed, and the scuffle that followed was very confusing. Herbert McGrath, who had missed the action, assumed that Henry had started it and stood over him saying, “No more of this, young man! No more of this!” Trace and Biff pinned Will’s arms to his sides and quick-stepped him down to the far end of the platform, asking, “You crazy, Will? Have you gone crazy?” Then the eight-nineteen came around the bend, the fracas was suspended by the search for seats, and when the stationmaster rushed out onto the platform to see what was happening, the train had departed and they were all gone.

The amazing thing was how well Will felt when he boarded the train. Now his fruitful life with Maria would be resumed. They would walk on Sunday afternoons again, and play word games by the open fire again, and weed the roses again, and love one another under the sounds of the rain again, and hear the singing of the crows; and he would buy her a present that afternoon as a signal of love and forgiveness. He would buy her pearls or gold or sapphires—something expensive; emeralds maybe; something no young man could afford.