The Wapshot Chronicle

by John Cheever

  This hint or slur at his mother’s veracity made Coverly feel sad and homesick and annoyed with his cousin’s rattling conversational style and the pretentions of simplicity and homeliness in her parlor and he might have said something about this, but the butler refilled his glass again and when he took another gulp of gin the oscillations in his larynx began all over again and he couldn’t speak. Then Mr. Brewer came in—he was much shorter than his wife—a jolly pink-faced man with a quietness that might have been developed to complement the noise she made. “So you’re a Wapshot,” he said to Coverly when they shook hands. “Well, as Mildred may have told you, I’m very much interested in the family. Most of these things come from the homestead in St. Botolphs. That cradle rocked four generations of the Wapshot family. It was made by the village undertaker. That tulip-wood table was made from a tree that stood on the lawn at West Farm. Lafayette rode under this tree in 1815. The portrait over the mantelpiece is of Benjamin Wapshot. This chair belonged to Lorenzo Wapshot. He used it during his two terms in the state legislature.” With this Mr. Brewer sat down in Lorenzo’s chair and at the feel of this relic beneath him a smile of such sensual gratification spread over his face that he might have been squeezed between two pretty women on a sofa. “Coverly has the nose,” Cousin Mildred said. “I’ve told him that I could have picked him out in a crowd. I mean I would have known that he was a Wapshot. It will be so nice having him work for you. I mean it will be so nice having a Wapshot in the firm.”

  It was quite some time before Mr. Brewer replied to this but he smiled broadly at Coverly all during the pause and so it was not an anxious silence and during it Coverly decided that he liked Mr. Brewer tremendously. “Of course, you’ll have to start at the bottom,” Mr. Brewer said.

  “Oh, yes sir,” Coverly exclaimed; his father’s son. “I’ll do anything sir. I’m willing to do anything.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t expect you to do anything,” Mr. Brewer said, tempering Coverly’s earnestness, “but I think we might work out some kind of apprenticeship, so to speak—some arrangement whereby you could decide if you liked the carpet business and the carpet business could decide if it liked you. I think we can work out something. You’ll have to go through personnel research. We do this with everyone. Grafley and Harmer do this for us and I’ll make you an appointment for tomorrow. If they’re done with you on Monday you can report to my office then and go to work.”

  Coverly was not familiar with a correct dinner service, but by watching Cousin Mildred he saw how to serve himself from the dishes that the waitress passed and he only got into trouble when he was about to drop his dessert into his finger bowl, but the waitress, by smiling and signaling, got him to move his finger bowl and everything went off all right. When dinner was finished they went down on the elevator and were driven through the rain to the opera.

  It is perhaps in the size of things that we are most often disappointed and it may be because the mind itself is such a huge and labyrinthine chamber that the Pantheon and the Acropolis turn out to be smaller than we had expected. At any rate, Coverly, who expected to be overwhelmed by the opera house, found it splendid but cozy. Their seats were in the orchestra, well forward. Coverly had no libretto and he could not understand what was going on. Now and then the plot would seem to be revealed to him but he was always mistaken and in the end more confused than ever. He fell asleep twice. When the opera ended he said good night and thank you to Cousin Mildred and her husband in the lobby, feeling that it would be to his disadvantage to have them drive him back to the slum where he lived.

  Early the next morning Coverly reported to Grafley and Harmer, where he was given a common intelligence-quotient test. There were simple arithmetical problems, blocks to count and vocabulary tests, and he completed this without any difficulty although it took him the better part of the morning. He was told to come back at two. He ate a sandwich and wandered around the streets. The window of a shoe-repair place on the East Side was filled with plants and reminded him of Mrs. Pluzinski’s kitchen window. When he returned to Grafley and Harmer he was shown a dozen or so cards with drawings or blots on them—a few of them colored—and asked by a stranger what the pictures reminded him of. This seemed easy, for since he had lived all his life between the river and the sea the drawings reminded him of fish bones, kelp, conch shells and other simples of the flood. The doctor’s face was inexpressive and he couldn’t tell if he had been successful. The doctor’s reserve seemed so impenetrable that it irritated Coverly that two strangers should be closeted in an office to cultivate such an atmosphere of inhumanity. When he left he was told to report in the morning for two more examinations and an interview.

  In the morning he found himself in stranger waters. Another gentleman—Coverly guessed they were all doctors—showed him a series of pictures or drawings. If they were like anything they were like the illustrations in a magazine although they were drawn crudely and with no verve or imagination. They presented a problem to Coverly, for when he glanced at the first few they seemed to remind him only of very morbid and unsavory things. He wondered at first if this was a furtive strain of morbidity in himself and if he would damage his chances at a job in the carpet works by speaking frankly. He wondered for only a second. Honesty was the best policy. All the pictures dealt with noisome frustrations and when he was finished he felt irritable and unhappy. In the afternoon he was asked to complete a series of sentences. They all presented a problem or sought an attitude and since Coverly was worried about money—he had nearly run through his twenty-five dollars—he completed most of the sentences with references to money. He would be interviewed by a psychologist on the next afternoon.

  The thought of this interview made him a little nervous. A psychologist seemed as strange and formidable to him as a witch doctor. He felt that some baneful secret in his life might be exposed, but the worst he had ever done was masturbate and looking back over his life and knowing no one of his age who had not joined in on the sport he decided that this did not have the status of a secret. He decided to be as honest with the psychologist as possible. This decision comforted him a little and seemed to abate his nervousness. His appointment was for three o’clock and he was kept waiting in an outer room where many orchids bloomed in pots. He wondered if he was being observed through a peephole. Then the doctor opened a double or soundproof door and invited Coverly in. The doctor was a young man with nothing like the inexpressive manners of the others. He meant to be friendly, although this was a difficult feeling to achieve since Coverly had never seen him before and would never see him again and was only closeted with him because he wanted to work in the carpet factory. It was no climate for friendship. Coverly was given a very comfortable chair to sit in, but he cracked his knuckles nervously. “Now, suppose you tell me a little about yourself,” the doctor said. He was very gentle and had a pad and a pencil for taking notes.

  “Well, my name is Coverly Wapshot,” Coverly said, “and I come from St. Botolphs. I guess you must know where that is. All the Wapshots live there. My great-grandfather was Benjamin Wapshot. My grandfather was Aaron. My mother’s family are Coverlys and …”

  “Well I’m not as interested in your genealogy,” the doctor said, “as I am in your emotional make-up.” It was an interruption, but it was a very courteous and friendly one. “Do you know what is meant by anxiety? Do you have any feelings of anxiety? Is there anything in your family, in your background that would incline you to anxiety?”

  “Yes sir,” Coverly said. “My father’s very anxious about fire. He’s awfully afraid of burning to death.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Well, he’s got this rig up in his room,” Coverly said. “He’s got this suit of clothes—underwear and everything—hanging up beside his bed so in case of fire he can get dressed and out of the house in a minute. And he’s got buckets full of sand and water in all the hallways and the number of the fire department is painted on the wall by the telephone and on rainy days when
he isn’t working—sometimes he doesn’t work on rainy days—he spends most of the day going around the house sniffing. He thinks he smells smoke and sometimes it seems to me that he spends nearly a whole day going from room to room sniffing.”

  “Does your mother share this anxiety?” the doctor asked.

  “No sir,” Coverly said. “My mother loves fires. But she’s anxious about something else. She’s afraid of crowds. I mean she’s afraid of being trapped. Sometimes on the Christmas holidays I’d go into the city with her and when she got into a crowd in one of those big stores she’d nearly have a fit. She’d get pale and gasp for breath. She’d pant. It was terrible. Well then she’d grab hold of my hand and drag me out of there and go up some side street where there wasn’t anybody and sometimes it would be five or ten minutes before she got her breath back. In any place where my mother felt she was confined she’d get very uneasy. In the movies, for instance—if anybody in the movies was sent to jail or locked up in some small place why my mother would grab her hat and her purse and run out of that theater before you could say Jack Robinson. I used to have to sprint to keep up with her.”

  “Would you say that your parents were happy together?”

  “Well, I really never thought of it that way,” Coverly said. “They’re married and they’re my parents and I guess they take the lean with the fat like everybody else but there’s one thing she used to tell me that left an impression on me.”

  “What was that?”

  “Well, whenever I had a good time with Father—whenever he took me out on the boat or something—she always seemed to be waiting for me when we got home with this story. Well, it was about, it was about how I came to be, I suppose you’d say. My father was working for the table-silver company at the time and they went into the city for some kind of banquet. Well, my mother had some cocktails and it was snowing and they had to spend the night in a hotel and one thing led to another but it seems that after this my father didn’t want me to be born.”

  “Did your mother tell you this?”

  “Oh, yes. She told me lots of times. She told me I shouldn’t trust him because he wanted to kill me. She said he had this abortionist come out to the house and that if it hadn’t been for her courage I’d be dead. She told me that story lots of times.”

  “Do you think this had any effect on your fundamental attitude toward your father?”

  “Well, sir, I never thought about it but I guess maybe it did. I sometimes had a feeling that he might hurt me. I never used to like to wake up and hear him walking around the house late at night. But this was foolish because I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. He never punished me.”

  “Did she punish you?”

  “Well, not very often, but once she just laid my back open. I guess perhaps it was my fault. We went down to Travertine swimming—I was with Pete Meacham—and I decided to climb up on the roof of the bathhouse where we could see the women getting undressed. It was a dirty thing to do but we hadn’t even hardly got started when the caretaker caught us. Well my mother took me home and she told me to get undressed and she took my great-grandfather’s buggy whip—that was Benjamin—and she just laid my back open. There was blood all over the wall. My back was such a mess she got scared, but of course she didn’t dare call a doctor because it would be embarrassing, but the worst thing was I couldn’t go swimming for the rest of that summer. If I went swimming people would see these big sores on my back. I wasn’t able to go swimming all that summer.”

  “Do you think this had any effect on your fundamental attitude toward women?”

  “Well, sir, where I come from, I think it’s hard to take much pride in being a man. I mean the women are very powerful. They are kind and they mean very well, but sometimes they get very oppressive. Sometimes you feel as if it wasn’t right to be a man. Now there’s this story they tell about Howie Pritchard. On his wedding night he’s supposed to have put his foot into the chamber pot and pissed down his leg so his wife wouldn’t hear the noise. I don’t think he should have done that. If you’re a man I think you ought to be proud and happy about it.”

  “Have you ever had any sexual experiences?”

  ‘Twice,” Coverly said. “The first time was with Mrs. Maddern. I don’t suppose I should name her but everybody in the village knew about her and she was a widow.”

  “Your other experience?”

  “That was with Mrs. Maddern too.”

  “Have you ever had any homosexual experiences?”

  “Well, I guess I know what you mean,” Coverly said. “I did plenty of that when I was young but I swore off it a long time ago. But it seems to me that there’s an awful lot of it around. There’s more around anyhow than I expected. There’s one in this place where I’m living now. He’s always asking me to come in and look at his pictures. I wish he’d leave me alone. You see, sir, if there’s one thing in the whole world that I wouldn’t want to be it’s a fruit.”

  “Now would you like to tell me about your dreams?”

  “I dream about all kinds of things,” Coverly said. “I dream about sailing and traveling and fishing but I guess mostly what you’re interested in is bad dreams, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean by bad dreams?”

  “Well, I dream I do it with this woman,” Coverly said. “I never saw this woman in real life. She’s one of those beautiful women you see on calendars in barbershops. And sometimes,” Coverly said, blushing and hanging his head, “I dream that I do it with men. Once I dreamed I did it with a horse.”

  “Do you dream in color?” the doctor asked.

  “I’ve never noticed,” Coverly said.

  “Well, I think our time is about up,” the doctor said.

  “Well, you see, sir,” Coverly said, “I don’t want you to think that I’ve had an unhappy childhood. I guess what I’ve told you doesn’t give you a true picture but I’ve heard a little about psychology and I guessed what you wanted to know about were things like that. I’ve really had an awfully good time. We live on a farm and have a boat and plenty of hunting and fishing and just about the best food in the world. I’ve had a happy time.”

  “Well, thank you, Mr. Wapshot,” the doctor said, “and good-by.”

  On Monday morning Coverly got up early and had his pants pressed as soon as the tailor shop opened. Then he walked to his cousin’s office in midtown. A receptionist asked if he had an appointment and when he said that he hadn’t she said that she couldn’t arrange one until Thursday. “But I’m Mr. Brewer’s cousin,” Coverly said. “I’m Coverly Wapshot.” The secretary only smiled and told him to come back on Thursday morning. Coverly was not worried. He knew that his cousin was occupied with many details and surrounded by executives and secretaries and that the problems of this distant Wapshot might have slipped his mind. His only problem was one of money. He didn’t have much left. He had a hamburger and a glass of milk for supper and gave the landlady the rent that night when he came in. On Tuesday he ate a box of raisins for breakfast, having heard somewhere that raisins were healthful and filling. For supper he had a bun and a glass of milk. On Wednesday morning he bought a paper, which left him with sixty cents. In the help-wanted advertisements there were some openings for stock clerks and he went to an employment agency and then crossed town to a department store and was told to return at the end of the week. He bought a quart of milk and marking the container off in three sections drank one section for breakfast, one for lunch and one for dinner.

  The hunger pains of a young man are excruciating and when Coverly went to bed on Wednesday night he was doubled up with pain. On Thursday morning he had nothing to eat at all and spent the last of his money having his pants pressed. He walked to his cousin’s office and told the girl he had an appointment. She was cheerful and polite and asked him to sit down and wait. He waited for an hour. He was so hungry by this time that it was nearly impossible for him to sit up straight. Then the receptionist told him that no one in Mr. Brewer’s office knew about his appointme
nt but that if he would return late in the afternoon she might be able to help him. He dozed on a park bench until four and returned to the office and while the receptionist’s manner remained cheerful her refusal this time was final. Mr. Brewer was out of town. From there Coverly went to Cousin Mildred’s apartment house but the doorman stopped him and telephoned upstairs and was told that Mrs. Brewer couldn’t see anyone; she was just leaving to keep an engagement. Coverly went outside the building and waited and in a few minutes Cousin Mildred came out and Coverly went up to her. “Oh yes, yes,” she said, when he told her what had happened. “Yes, of course. I thought Harry’s office must have told you. It’s something about your emotional picture. They think you’re unemployable. I’m so sorry but there’s nothing I can do about it, is there? Of course your grandfather was second crop.” She unfastened her purse and took out a bill and handed it to Coverly and got into a taxi and drove away. Coverly wandered over to the park.

  It was dark then and he was tired, lost and despairing—no one in the city knew his name—and where was his home—the shawls from India and the crows winging their way up the river valley like businessmen with brief cases, off to catch a bus? This was on the Mall, the lights of the city burning through the trees and dimly lighting the air with the colors of reflected fire, and he saw the statues ranged along the broad walk like the tombs of kings—Columbus, Sir Walter Scott, Burns, Halleck and Morse—and he took from these dark shapes a faint comfort and hope. It was not their minds or their works he adored but the kindliness and warmth they must have possessed when they lived and so lonely and so bitter was he then that he would take those brasses and stones for company. Sir Walter Scott would be his friend, his Moses and Leander.