The Wapshot Chronicle

by John Cheever

  It was the kind of relationship that was useful and peaceable enough until Moses began to lose interest and then Beatrice got ardent and demanding. She couldn’t reach him at his office but she called his apartment, sometimes nightly, and when he went to see her she would cry and tell him about her artificial and socially ambitious mother and the sternness of Clancy. She moved from her apartment to a hotel and he helped carry her bags. She moved from this hotel to another and he helped her again. One early evening when he had just come in from supper she telephoned to say that she had gotten a singing engagement in Cleveland and would Moses put her on the train? He said that he would. She said she was home and gave him another address and he took a taxi.

  The address was a delicatessen. He thought that perhaps her mother, in somewhat reduced circumstances, might have taken an apartment above the store, but there was no apartment entrance and he looked into the delicatessen. There in the back, dressed in a hat and coat and surrounded by suitcases, sat Beatrice. She was crying and her eyes were red. “Oh, thank you for coming, Moses dear,” she said, as daintily as ever. “I’ll be ready to go in just a minute. I want to catch my breath.”

  The room where she sat was the kitchen of the delicatessen. There were two other people there. Beatrice didn’t explain or introduce them but Moses recognized one as Beatrice’s mother. The resemblance was marked, although she was a very stout woman with a florid and handsome face. She wore an apron over her dress and her shoes were broken. The other woman was thin and old. This was Clancy. Here were the origins of Beatrice’s splendid and unhappy memories. Her governess was a delicatessen cook.

  The two women were making sandwiches. Now and then they spoke to Beatrice, but she didn’t reply. They didn’t seem troubled by her tear-stained face or her silence and the atmosphere in the kitchen was of a spent and ancient misunderstanding. The contrast between the stories Beatrice had told him of her unhappy childhood—her elegant and callous mother—and the clear lights of the delicatessen made her dilemma as keen and touching as the troubles of a child.

  It was a fine delicatessen. The acid smell of pickles in brine came from some barrels near the door. Fresh sawdust had been scattered on the floor by Clancy—a little of it still clung to her apron—and from the door to the rear of the place, from the floor to the ceiling, were stacked cans of vegetables and fruit, shrimps, stone crabs, lobster meat, soups and chickens. There were baked turkeys and fowl in the glass cases, hams, turban-shaped rolls in the bread bins, sliced cucumbers in vinegar, creamed cheese, rollmops, smoked salmon, whitefish and sturgeon, and from this abundance of acid and appetizing smells poor Beatrice had invented an unhappy childhood with a hardhearted mother and a stern governess.

  A little sob came from Beatrice. She took a paper napkin from a container on the table and blew her nose into it. “If you could get a taxi and take my suitcases out, Moses dear,” she said. “I’m too weak.” He knew what her suitcases contained—that magpie wardrobe—and when he lifted them they felt like stone. He carried the bags out to the curb and got a cab and Clancy followed with a large paper bag full of sandwiches. “She’ll eat them on the train,” Clancy said to Moses. Beatrice said nothing to either her mother or the cook and in the taxi she sobbed some more and kept blowing her nose into the paper napkin.

  Moses carried her bags through the station and put them on the Cleveland train and then Beatrice kissed him good-by daintily and began to cry in earnest. “Oh dear Moses, I’ve done something awful, and I have to tell you. You know how they always investigate people, I mean they ask everybody you know about you, and a man came to see me one afternoon and I told him this long story about how you took advantage of me and promised to marry me and took all my money but I had to tell them something because they would have thought I was immoral if I didn’t and I’m sorry and I hope nothing bad happens to you.” Then the conductor shouted all aboard and the train pulled out for Cleveland.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  And now we come to the wreck of the Topaze.

  This happened on May 30—her first voyage of the year. For two weeks Leander and the hired hand—Bentley—had been getting her into shape. The lilac was in bloom and in St. Botolphs there were hedges of lilac—there were whole groves and forests of it blooming the length of River Street and growing wild around the cellar holes on the other side of the hill. Going to the wharf in the early mornings Leander saw that the children walking to school all carried branches of lilac. He wondered if they gave it to their teachers, who must have lilac trees themselves, or used it to decorate the classrooms. All that week he saw children carrying lilac branches to school. Early on the morning of the thirtieth he cut some lilac himself and took it to the cemetery and then he went down to the Topaze.

  Bentley had worked as a hired hand for Leander before. He was a young man who had been to sea and who had a bad name. He was known by everyone to be the illegitimate son of Theophilus Gates by a woman who called herself Mrs. Bentley and who lived in a two-family house near the table-silver factory. He was one of those neat, taciturn and competent seamen who tear the world to pieces about once a month. Landladies in many cities had admired him for his cleanliness, sobriety and industry until he would come home some rainy night with three bottles of whisky in a paper bag and drink them, one after the other. Then he would break the windows, piss on the floor and erupt in such a volcano of bitterness and obscenity that the police were usually called and he would start all over again in some other city or furnished room.

  Another passenger or crew member that day was Lester Spinet, a blind man who had learned to play the accordion at the Hutchens Institute. It was Honora’s idea that he should work on the Topaze, and she planned to pay him a salary herself. Leander was naturally pleased to have music on his boat and displeased at himself that he disliked the sound of the blind man’s cane and the way he looked. Spinet was a heavy man with a massive head and face canted upward, as if some traces of light still reached his eyes. Spinet and Bentley were waiting for Leander that morning when he got to the wharf and they took on some passengers including an old lady with some lilac branches wrapped in a newspaper. The sky and the river were blue and it was everything, or almost everything, that a holiday should be, although it was a little close or humid and mixed with the smell of lilacs that came down from the river banks was a sour smell like the smell of wet paper. It might storm.

  At Travertine he took on more passengers. Dick Hammersmith and his brother were on the wharf in bathing trunks, diving for coins, but there wasn’t much business. As he headed for the channel he saw that the beach in front of the Mansion House was crowded and heard the shrieks of a child who was being ducked by her father. “Daddy isn’t going to hurt you, Daddy only wants you to see how nice the water feels,” the man said while the child’s cries grew higher and more desperate. He passed through the channel between Hale and Gull rocks into the lovely bay, green inshore, blue in the deeper water and as purple as wine at forty fathoms. The sun shone and the air was warm and fragrant. From the wheelhouse he could see the passengers settling themselves on the forward deck with the charm and innocence of all holiday crowds. They would be dispersed, he knew, once he headed up into the wind, and he took a wide tack after the channel so that he would have their company for as long as possible. There were families with children and families without but very few old people had bought tickets that day. Bucks were photographing their girls and fathers were photographing their wives and children and although Leander had never taken a picture in his life he felt kindly toward these cameramen or anyone else who made a record of such a lighthearted thing as the crossing to Nangasakit. There was among the passengers, he guessed, a man with a wig or toupee, and turning the boat up into the wind he watched the stranger grab for his hairpiece and secure it to his head with a cap. At the same time many women grabbed for their skirts and hats, but the damage was done. The fresh breeze scattered them all. They gathered up their papers and their comic books and carrying deck ch
airs went over to the leeward side or back to the stern and Leander was alone.

  The fact of his aloneness reminded Leander of Helen Rutherford, whom he had seen the night before. He had worked late on the boat and had gone into Grimes’ bakery to get his supper. While he was eating he looked up and saw her standing at the window, reading the menu that was posted there. He got up from the table and went out to speak with her—he didn’t know what he would say—but as soon as she recognized him she backed away from him in fear, saying, “Get away from me, get away from me.”

  In the spring dusk the square was deserted. They were alone. “I only want to …” Leander began.

  “You want to hurt me, you want to hurt me.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you do. You want to harm me. Daddy said you would. Daddy said for me to be careful.”

  “Please listen to me.”

  “Don’t you move. Don’t you come near me or I’ll call the police officer.”

  Then she turned and walked up the Cartwright Block as if the soft air of evening were full of flints and missiles—a queer, frightened limp—and when she had turned up a side street Leander went back to the bakery to pay for his supper.

  “Who’s the nut?” the waitress asked. “She’s been around here telling everybody she’s got this secret that will set the river on fire. Oh, I hate nuts.”

  When Bentley came up to the wheelhouse, Leander saw that he had been drinking. Considering his own habits he had a long nose for the smell of rotted fruit that clung to the lips of someone else. Bentley still preserved the preternatural neatness of a man who is often tempted and deeply familiar with sloth. His curly hair shone with grease, his pale face was clean shaven with razor nicks on his neck and he had washed and scrubbed his denims until they were threadbare and smelled nicely of soap, but mixed with the smell of soap was the smell of whisky and Leander wondered if he would have to make the return voyage alone.

  He could see the white walls of Nangasakit then and hear the music of the merry-go-round. On the wharf there was an old man with a card in his hat advertising the four-, five- and six-course shore dinners at the Nangasakit House. Leander stepped out of the wheelhouse and shouted his own refrain. “Return voyage at three thirty. Return voyage at three thirty. Please give yourself plenty of time to get back to the boat. Return voyage at three thirty. Please give yourself plenty of time to get back to the boat.…” The last to leave the boat was Spinet, who tapped his way down the wharf with a stick. Leander went to his cabin, ate a sandwich and fell sound asleep.

  When he woke it was a little before three. The air was quite dark and he saw that it would storm. He poured some water into a basin and splashed his face. Going out onto the deck he saw a fog bank a mile or so out to sea. He wanted a hand on the return voyage and he put on his cap and walked up to Ray’s Café, where Bentley usually did his drinking. Bentley was in no shape at all. He was not even in the bar but was sitting in a small back room with a bottle and a glass. “I guess you muss think I’m drunk,” he began, but Leander only sat down wearily, wondering where he could get a deck hand in fifteen minutes. “You think I’m no good, but I got this girl out in Fort Sill, Oklahoma,” Bentley said. “She thinks I’m good. I call her parrot. She’s got this big nose. I’m going back to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and love my parrot. She’s got this two thousand dollars in the bank she wants to give me. You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m no good. You think I’m drunk, but I got this girl out in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. She loves me. She wants to give me this two thousand dollars. I call her parrot. She’s got this big nose. …” It was not his fault, Leander knew, that he was a bastard, and it might not even be his fault that he was a cheerless bastard, but Leander needed a deck hand and he went out to the bar and asked Marylyn if her kid brother would want to pick up a dollar for the return voyage. She said sure, sure the kid was crazy to make a nickel, and she telephoned her mother and her mother opened the kitchen door and shouted for the boy but he couldn’t be found and Leander walked back to his ship.

  He watched his passengers come aboard with interest and some tenderness. They carried trophies—things they had won—thin blankets that would not keep the autumn cold from your bones; glass dishes for peanuts and jelly; and animals made out of oilcloth and paper, some of them with diamond eyes. There was a pretty girl with a rose in her hair and a man and his wife and three children, all of them wearing shirts made of the same flowered cloth. Helen Rutherford was the last to come aboard, but he was in the wheelhouse and didn’t see her. She wore the same pot-shaped hat, ornamented with shuttlecock feathers, had the same seashell pinned to her breast and carried the old brief case.

  Helen Rutherford had been trying to sell Dr. Bartholomew’s wisdom in the cottages of Nangasakit for a week. On the morning of this, her last day, she had wandered into a neighborhood that seemed more substantial than anything else in the little resort. The houses were small—no bigger than bungalows—and yet all of them declaring by their mansards and spool railings and their porch latticework arched like the vents to a donjon that these were not summerhouses; these were places where men and women centered their lives and where children were conceived and reared. The sight might have cheered her if it hadn’t been for the dogs. The place was full of dogs; and it had begun to seem to Helen that her life was a martyrdom to dogs. As soon as her footsteps were heard the dogs began to bark, filling her with timidity and self-pity. From morning until night dogs sniffed at her heels, snapped at her ankles, bit the skirts of her best gray coat and tried to run off with her brief case. As soon as she entered a strange neighborhood dogs that had been sunning themselves peacefully in clothesyards or sleeping by stoves, dogs who had been chewing bones or daydreaming or sporting with one another would give up their peaceful occupations and sound the alarm. She had dreamed many times that she was torn to pieces by dogs. It seemed to her that she was a pilgrim and the soles of her shoes were so thin that she was virtually barefoot. She was surrounded, day after day, by strange houses and people and hostile beasts, and like a pilgrim she was now and then given a cup of tea and a piece of stale cake. Her lot was worse than a pilgrim’s for God alone knew in which direction her Rome, her Vatican would appear.

  The first dog to come at her that day was a collie who snarled at her heels, a sound that frightened her more than a loud, straight-forward bark. The collie was joined by a small dog who seemed friendly, but you could never tell. It was a friendly-seeming dog who had torn her coat. A black dog joined these two and then a police dog, woofing and belling like a hound from hell. She walked half a block, trailed by four dogs, and then all but the collie went back to their occupations. The collie was still a little behind, snarling at her heels. She hoped, she prayed, that someone would open a door and call him home. She turned to speak to him. “Go home, doggie,” she said. “Go home, good doggie, go home, nice doggie.” Then he sprang at her coat sleeve and she struck at him with her brief case. Her heart was beating so that she thought she would die. The collie sank his teeth into the old leather of the brief case and began a tug of war. “Leave that poor lady alone, you nasty cur,” Helen heard someone say. A stranger appeared at her right with a kettle of water and let the dog have it. The dog went howling up the street. “Now you come into the house for a few minutes,” the stranger said. “You come in and tell me what you’re selling and rest your feet.”

  Helen thanked the stranger and followed her into one of the little houses. Her savior was a short woman with eyes of a fine, pale blue and a very red face. She introduced herself as Mrs. Brown and in order to receive Helen she took off an apron and hung it over the back of a chair. She was a little woman with an extravagantly curved figure. Her breasts and buttocks stretched the cloth of her house dress. “Now tell me what it is that you’re selling,” she said, “and I’ll see if I want any.”

  “I’m an accredited representative for Dr. Bartholomew’s Institute for Self-Improvement,” Helen said. “There are still a few subscriptions open
for eligible men and women. Dr. Bartholomew feels that a college education is not a requirement. He feels …”

  “Well, that’s good,” Mrs. Brown said, “because I’m not what you would call an educated woman. I graduated from the Nangasakit High School, which is one of the best high schools in the world—known all over the world—but the amount of education I got through learning is nothing to the amount of education that runs in my blood. I’m directly descended from Madame de Staël and many other well-educated and distinguished men and women. I suppose you don’t believe me, I suppose you think I’m crazy, but if you’ll notice that picture on the wall—it’s a picture post card of Madame de Staël—and then notice my own profile you’ll see the resemblance, no doubt.”

  “There are many four-colored portraits of famous historical men and women,” Helen said.