Cape May

by Chip Cheek

  Effie laughed. There was no question of refusing—they would come. Only, she wasn’t sure if they had an umbrella. It didn’t matter, Max said, it would be useless in the wind. So they found their shoes—one of Effie’s sandals had been hiding by the stairs—and followed Max out the door.

  By the time they’d made it the short distance to Clara’s, through slashing rain and swift-running, ankle-deep streams of water in the street, they were soaked.

  “Success,” Max called from the foyer, kicking off his shoes.

  The den was aglow. A kerosene lamp stood on the end table by the sofa, candles of different kinds were arrayed here and there, a fire was going in the hearth, and in the wicker armchair beside it, like another source of light, Alma sat reading a magazine and bobbing her legs over the armrest. Her hair had reverted to its natural state, a messy pile atop her head, and she wore the same brown dress she’d been wearing for the past three days. Dripping there in the foyer, Henry smiled at her, and she smiled back at him.

  “Darlings, there you are,” Clara cried, coming in from the kitchen, bearing a tray stacked with bowls and silverware. She set it down on the coffee table beside a large iron pot, which must have been the cassoulet, whatever that was. The air smelled deliciously of pork.

  Max took a votive candle and Henry and Effie followed him up the stairs and across the balcony and down a dark hall, into a large bedroom that faced the back of the house. It was where Clara and Max were staying. Clothes—women’s clothes, mainly, dresses and stockings and underwear—were strewn all over the floor and the unmade bed. Henry recognized the white halter-top dress Clara had been wearing the first day, crumpled now by the nightstand. Max showed them a walk-in closet and told them to take whatever they wanted, though there wasn’t much—sweatpants, pajamas, robes, one dress shirt. He ducked into the attached bathroom and returned with towels, handed Henry the candle, and left them to it.

  They pulled their waterlogged clothes off, even their underwear was wet, and dried themselves off. How strange it was to be in this room, sorting through someone else’s clothes. In the closet Effie found satiny blue pajamas and a bathrobe. Henry found a baggy Princeton sweatshirt and pink swim trunks that were a couple sizes too big, but he pulled the string tight and they held to his hips. They laughed at each other. Effie’s nipples stood up through the pajamas; she wrapped the bathrobe tightly around her. Henry gathered their wet clothes in a bundle, rolling their underwear in his soaked trousers, and they made their way back downstairs.

  “Now you have to stay the night,” Clara said.

  Henry dropped their clothes behind the sofa, and they settled on the floor around the coffee table. Their drinks had been made already, their bowls had been filled—chunks of pork and white beans in a thick broth—and this was exactly where Henry wanted to be, in this circle by the fire, with these strange people, and a drink that would quickly go to his head.

  “You’re going to get sick of us,” Effie said.

  “Impossible,” Clara said. “There are six bedrooms in this house. We could each have our own room if we wanted. Although what would be the fun of that?”

  They ate, and listened to the ceaseless wind and rain outside and the crackling of the fire. The windows had been closed, but drafts stole in and made the candles tremble, and their shadows danced monstrously on the walls. Max and Clara seemed more subdued tonight. It had been a rough morning, Max said. “Especially for this one,” he whispered, as if in secret, indicating Clara, but Clara said that was an exaggeration—anyway, she had always been able to recover quickly. “But what fun last night was,” she said. “It made me feel like I was a little girl again, staying up past my bedtime.”

  “I’m glad to see you made it back,” Effie said to Alma, who was sitting next to her. It was usually Effie who tried to make conversation with Alma (Max never did), though Alma barely acknowledged her. Henry had tried once or twice too, but every time he spoke to her he felt dumb and exposed, as he did now.

  “We lost you there at the end,” he said, and winced at the almost fatherly tone he’d put on it.

  “I was looking at dresses,” she said simply, ladling more cassoulet into her bowl. “I think I found one for the dance Friday.”

  “Dresses,” Max said. “What are you talking about?”

  Clara laughed. “She’s going to steal a dress for the dance. From the thespians.”

  “I’m going to borrow a dress.”

  Max seemed exasperated. She couldn’t steal a dress, he told her. Alma repeated that she was only borrowing it, and pointed out—reasonably—that it was all of them who had done the stealing, by drinking half a bottle of bourbon.

  “For all we know,” Max said, “the people who own that house could be there at the dance on Friday. What happens if they recognize it?”

  Alma brightened. “That would be funny.”

  Max gave up, waving her off. Clara said she hoped she had a dress herself, or she might have to steal one too—and then, changing tack, she said, “My angels, you’re not really leaving Saturday, are you?”

  Effie said they were, regrettably. She looked at Henry. “I guess it’ll be good to get back and settle into the new place.” She began to tell them how Henry’s uncle was having a new wing built onto the house, but Clara interrupted her.

  “How can I convince you to stay? Just one more week.”

  Henry smiled. She really wanted them to stay. He wondered why—then batted the thought away. Why not? He and Effie were good company.

  “Maybe we could stay another day,” Effie said, “but we’ve got to be out of that house this weekend. It was a whole ordeal getting the two weeks we had.”

  “Well, if that’s all there is to it,” Clara said, “then it’s settled. You’ll stay here. I told you, we’ve got a million rooms.”

  “That’s a fine idea,” Max said.

  Effie laughed. “We can’t just bum around up here forever.”

  “Not forever,” Clara said. “Just a few more days. You’ve got your whole lives ahead of you, you darlings—but trust me. This is your honeymoon. Make it last.”

  Effie looked at Henry and said, “I mean, maybe.”

  * * *

  It would be an early night. Alma took a candle and went up to her room. The rest of them, after they’d cleared the coffee table, made drinks and played a game of dice that Max had learned in Montreal, but he had trouble remembering the rules, and soon Clara couldn’t control her yawning. It spread to Effie. “I’m depleted,” she said finally. They blew the candles out, saving one for Henry and Effie, and Clara led them upstairs, bearing the kerosene lamp, to the most comfortable guest room—where Scott and Betsy stayed, she said. There was a tall bed with a thick quilt, varnished wood walls, and a deep bay window. They should make themselves perfectly at home. She kissed their cheeks—Henry loved that gesture, so European—and said good night.

  Effie cracked a window open, and the rain—its scent, its damp, its chill—was suddenly present in the room. She blew the candle out and they got in under the quilt. “Oh, this bed is exquisite,” she said. “I think I might have outgrown that little box spring over there.” It was nice, he agreed, and he pulled her to him and kissed the back of her neck, held her breast through the silk pajamas, coming alive, but in a few moments he could hear her little snores. She was fast asleep. She hadn’t even said her prayers.

  He lay wide-awake, watching the panes of the bay window separate themselves from the dark. It excited him to lie in this house overnight, Clara and Max at the opposite end of the hallway, Alma even closer, in the room that opened onto the balcony. He would never be able to sleep. What he needed, he thought, was another drink.

  He rose as quietly as he could, the floorboards creaking under his feet, found the Princeton sweatshirt on the floor, and crept out of the room, feeling his way down the hallway to the stairs and down into the den.

  The coals glowed in the fireplace. He put another log on, found what he thought was his glass o
n the coffee table, poured himself some whiskey this time—it would take the chill away—and sat on the sofa. No one else stirred in the house. He had the whole place to himself. Softly, aloud, he said, “What a week,” and the sound of his own voice comforted him. “What an amazing week.”

  The whiskey opened and relaxed him. The night and the days ahead felt warm with promise. He thought of how he and Effie had walked naked under the moon, and, glancing around the den, assuring himself that no one was there, he pulled the sweatshirt off and pushed the loose trunks down to his knees. He wanted to be out in the open. As nature intended, Clara had said. Lightly he caressed himself, until his penis stood rigid, angling up to the balcony behind him, the skin drawn taut and shiny in the firelight.

  He liked the look of it when it was up, like some kind of tall mushroom. The goose-fleshed testicles sagging below it pleased him too. He’d learned from the dictionary that testicles shared the same root as testify, and it meant “witness”—as in, to bear witness to a man’s virility—and when he’d shared this with Hoke—they’d been in the tenth grade—they’d fallen over laughing and made grandiose claims about the size of their balls. Dick, balls, those few cubic inches of flesh: how many hours of concentration had he put into them over the years? In the locker room at school, or during the couple of times he and Hoke and Maynard had skinny-dipped at the bend in the creek, he’d compare himself to the other boys, all of them looking without appearing to look at one another’s endowments, and though he’d fretted about size—Hoke’s was in fact larger, Ned Connor’s was larger still, Maynard’s was a button in a nest—he’d always come to the conclusion that his was respectable. He would pause sometimes before his dresser mirror to admire it. When he was twelve or thirteen, he would occasionally lock himself in the bathroom, sit down on the floor with his legs spread wide, and using an old hand mirror of his mother’s, watch himself masturbate, angling the mirror this way and that. By that point he’d made peace with himself and with God about doing it in bed, in the dark of night, but after the mirror he’d feel sick of himself, and hide the mirror in the back of his closet so he wouldn’t have to consider the possibility that his mother might use it again. But now he thought, So what? There was no need for shame. He thought of Effie bent over in the grass, unembarrassed.

  He spread his legs, the trunks falling to his ankles, made a fist around it, and stroked it steadily, feeling the satisfying bounce of his testicles. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back—until the wire went hot and he left it off. He couldn’t finish himself off on the sofa. He reached for his whiskey and took the last sip, sat back and looked at it throbbing there in his lap. He would slip into the downstairs bathroom, do it into the toilet, and pour another drink. He was setting his glass back on the table, about to get up, when one of the patio doors opened—the sound of rain rushed into the room—and he yanked his trunks back up and sat forward, elbows on his knees.

  It was Alma, coming inside, shutting the door behind her. He could just see her in the firelight. He said hello, too loudly, but she didn’t seem startled by his voice.

  She wasn’t startled, he thought with horror, because she’d known he was there.

  “I was just sneaking one of Maximilian’s smokes,” she said. “Don’t tell. Or do tell, I don’t care.” She walked over to the fireplace, rubbing her arms. She had her cardigan on but her feet were bare.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Henry said. “I thought I’d just come down and have a nightcap.”

  She looked across at him sitting there bare-chested, wearing only the borrowed swim trunks. “Should I leave you alone?” she asked.

  “Not at all,” he said.

  She took up the poker and stoked the fire. She’d come in through the door that led to the covered part of the patio, where they’d sat outside for dinner during the party, and there was a line of sight, he knew, from the outside table to the sofa. She must have seen him. She must have walked in on him on purpose. “A nightcap sounds nice,” she said. “Do you mind if I join you?”

  “Of course not.”

  She asked what he was having and he told her, and she told him not to get up, she’d fix them both a round. She took his glass, her fingertips grazing his, and crossed over to the bar. He pulled the afghan over his lap.

  “I didn’t think you drank,” he said. “Or does your brother not let you?”

  “He’s not my guardian,” she said. She flicked open a Zippo and lighted it so she could see the shelf of bottles. “I just don’t care to be drunk all day, like they do.”

  Maybe she hadn’t seen him. It would be too horrible if she had. And if she had, she wouldn’t be sitting down for a drink with him.

  She came back with the glasses, handed him his, and sat in the armchair at the end of the sofa, the one Clara usually took, close enough that their toes would touch if they both rested their feet on the coffee table. He kept his feet planted on the ground. She turned in the chair to face the fire, away from him, her back against the armrest, her legs dangling over the other side. She took a sip of whiskey, and shuddered. “This does warm the soul,” she said.

  “You must be cold,” he said. “How long were you out there?”

  “Just a little while,” she said. He waited for her to say more, but that was all.

  They gazed at the fire and sipped their drinks. Her presence electrified him. He was overly conscious of himself, of how he rested his arms on his lap, of whether or not he should cross his legs. The whiskey helped. After a while he cleared his throat and asked if she had any more of her brother’s cigarettes, and she said of course, and reached into the pocket of her cardigan. She handed him one, took one for herself, and lit them both with the Zippo. He moved the ashtray to the edge of the coffee table, where they could both reach.

  “How long do you think the lights are going to be out?” she asked.

  “Who knows,” he said. “Some poor fellow’s probably out there now trying to fix it.”

  “I bet no one is. I bet no one even realizes what’s happened until the spring.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  She took a drag from her cigarette and for a while seemed mesmerized by the fire.

  “I can tell you’re not having a lot of fun here,” he said.

  She looked over her shoulder at him, frowning. “Are you telling me I’m a drag?”

  He hastened to say no, that wasn’t what he meant, but she was only kidding. She had to stretch her arm out and roll to her side to reach the ashtray, and as she did so she struck a flamboyant pose: one leg extended straight over the armrest, toes pointed toward the fire, the other bent in front of her, heel tucked into her groin.

  “You must be enjoying yourself,” she said. “You’re on your honeymoon.”

  She was bobbing her leg and smiling at him. He couldn’t look her in the eyes for very long. “We’re having a great time.”

  “You look nice together,” she said. “You and your wife.”

  “We make a pair.”

  “I loved what you said the other day, on the boat—what was it?” She looked up to the rafters as if to find it written there, and a little ember came alight inside of him.

  “What did I say?”

  “You said it was like a stroke of genius, when you realized you had feelings for her. Because you’d known her all your life.”

  He was astonished that she’d been paying attention to him at all, even more that she’d loved something he’d said, and the fond way she was looking at him made him shiver. He thanked her, and she laughed at that, and then she started saying something about music—it was related, somehow, to what he’d said—but he was only partially listening. He nodded agreeably. She was sitting up straight now, facing him, her legs tucked underneath her, and when the topic seemed to have run its course, and her attention began to drift back to the fire, he said, “Truth be told, I didn’t really care for Effie growing up.”

  She laughed, stabbing out her cigarette, and asked what for.r />
  “I used to think she was snotty. She was always popular and well-to-do. She wasn’t always kind to people when we were in grammar school.”

  “I know her well,” Alma said.

  “I never hated her or anything,” he said, worrying he’d been disloyal. “She’s always been pretty. I was probably just intimidated.” He explained that Effie was a town girl, and more than that, her father had been the mayor for many years. “The mayor, wow,” Alma said, though she didn’t sound very impressed. It was a small town, he said, but still. The Tarletons were a big deal. He explained how Effie’s father owned a farm-supply store and café, how it had always been a gathering spot for the town, and how he’d recently acquired a license to sell John Deere tractors and opened a new showroom, and now people came from all over middle Georgia. She asked if Henry lived in the country, since he’d said Effie was a town girl, and he said yes, he lived about three miles from the high school, on about a thousand acres of land, where his uncle Carswall grew cotton and grain and peanuts. “You live with your uncle?” she asked, and he said, “Well, he’s my stepfather,” and when she looked confused, he realized that what was a given back home might seem strange elsewhere.

  “My daddy died when I was four years old,” he said. “He was a brakeman on the Southern Railway, and he was in a head-on collision outside of Hazlehurst, Georgia.”

  “Wow.” Now she did seem interested.

  “It was a mixed-up train order—one going north and another going south on the same track. It was in all the newspapers, apparently. I was too young to know what was going on. I remember Mama pacing the house and crying, and I remember crying because she was crying. But I don’t remember very much of him. The clearest thing is the day he shaved his mustache off, and I wouldn’t let him near me because he didn’t look familiar.”

  She smiled. She was resting her head on her hand, her eyes fixed on him.