The Stories of John Cheever (1979 Pulitzer Prize)

by John Cheever

  Mr. Nudd spent two or three days of every week that summer in New York, flying down from Albany. For a change, he was pleased with the way his business was going. He had been made chairman of the board. Pamela had her baby with her, and she complained about the room they were given. Once, Mrs. Nudd overheard her in the kitchen, saying to the cook, "Things will be very different around here when Randy and I run this place, let me tell you..." Mrs. Nudd spoke to her husband about this, and they agreed to leave Whitebeach Camp to Hartley. "That ham only came to the table once," Pamela would say, "and I saw her dumping a dish of good shell beans into the garbage last night. I'm not in a position to correct her, but I hate to see waste. Don't you?"

  Randy worshipped his thin wife, and she took full advantage of his protection. She came out onto the porch one evening when they were drinking before dinner, and sat down beside Mrs. Nudd. She had the baby in her arms.

  "Do you always have supper at seven, Granny?" she asked.

  "I'm afraid I can't get to the table at seven," Pamela said. "I hate to be late for meals, but I have to think of the baby first, don't I?"

  "I'm afraid I can't ask them to hold dinner," Mrs. Nudd said.

  "I don't want you to hold dinner for me," Pamela said, "but that little room we're in is terribly hot, and we're having trouble getting Binxey to sleep. Randy and I love being here, and we want to do everything we can to make it easy for you to have us here, but I do have to think of Binxey, and as long as he finds it hard to get to sleep, I won't be able to be on time for meals. I hope you don't mind. I want to know the truth."

  "If you're late, it won't matter," Mrs. Nudd said.

  "That's a beautiful dress," Pamela said, to end the conversation pleasantly. "Is it new?"

  "Thank you, dear," Mrs. Nudd said. "Yes, it is new."

  "It's a beautiful color," Pamela said, and she got up to feel the material, but some sudden movement made by her or by the baby in her arms or by Mrs. Nudd brought Pamela's cigarette against the new dress and burned a hole in it. Mrs. Nudd caught her breath, smiled awkwardly, and said that it didn't matter.

  "But it does matter!" Pamela exclaimed. "I feel awfully about it. I feel awfully. It's all my fault, and if you'll give me the dress, I'll send it to Worcester and have it rewoven. I know a place in Worcester where they do wonderful reweaving."

  Mrs. Nudd said again that it didn't matter, and tried to change the subject by asking if it hadn't been a beautiful day.

  "I insist that you let me have it rewoven," Pamela said. "I want you to take it off after dinner and give it to me." Then she went to the door and turned and held the baby up. "Wave bye-bye to Granny, Binxey," she said. "Wave bye-bye, Binxey do it. Baby do it. Baby wave bye-bye to Granny. Binxey wave bye-bye. Wave bye-bye to Granny. Baby wave bye-bye..."

  But none of these disturbances changed the rites of summer. Hartley took the maid and the cook to Mass at St. John's early every Sunday morning and waited for them on the front steps of the feed store. Randy froze the ice cream at eleven. It seemed as if the summer were a continent, harmonious and self-sufficient, with a peculiar range of sensation that included the feel of driving the old Cadillac barefoot across a bumpy pasture, and the taste of water that came out of the garden hose near the tennis court, and the pleasure of pulling on a clean woolen sweater in a mountain hut at dawn, and sitting on the porch in the dark, conscious and yet not resentful of a sensation of being caught up in a web of something as tangible and fragile as thread, and the clean feeling after a long swim.

  THE NUDDS didn't ask Russell to Whitebeach Camp that year, and they carried on the narration without his help. After his graduation, Russell had married Myra Hewitt, a local girl. He had given up his plans for getting a Master's degree when Esther refused to marry him. He now worked for his father in the hardware store. The Nudds saw him when they bought a steak grill or some fishing line, and they all agreed that he looked poorly. He was pale. His clothes, Esther noticed, smelled of chicken feed and kerosene. They felt that by working in a store Russell had disqualified himself as a figure in their summers. This feeling was not strong, however, and it was largely through indifference and the lack of time that they did not see him. But the next summer they came to hate Russell; they took Russell off their list.

  Late that next spring, Russell and his father-in-law had begun to cut and sell the timber on Hewitt's Point and to slash a three-acre clearing along the lake front in preparation for a large tourist-camp development, to be called Young's Bungalow City. Hewitt's Point was across the lake and three miles to the south of Whitebeach Camp, and the development would not affect the Nudds' property, but Hewitt's Point was the place where they had always gone for their picnics, and they did not like to see the grove cut and replaced with tourist hutches. They were all bitterly disappointed in Russell. They had thought of him as a native who loved his hills. They had expected him, as a kind of foster son, to share their summery lack of interest in money and it was a double blow to have him appear mercenary and to have the subject of his transactions the grove on Hewitt's Point, where they had enjoyed so many innocent picnics.

  But it is the custom of that country to leave the beauties of nature to women and ministers. The village of Macabit stands on some high land above a pass and looks into the mountains of the north country. The lake is the floor of this pass, and on all but the hottest mornings clouds lie below the front steps of the feed store and the porch of the Federated Church. The weather in the pass is characterized by what is known on the coast as a sea turn. Across the heart of a hot, still day will be drawn a shadow as deep as velvet, and a bitter rain will extinguish the mountains; but this continuous displacement of light and dark, the thunder and the sunsets, the conical lights that sometimes end a storm and that have been linked by religious artists to godly intercession, have only accentuated the indifference of the secular male to his environment. When the Nudds passed Russell on the road without waving to him, he didn't know what he had done that was wrong.

  That year, Esther left in September. She and her husband had moved to a suburb, but they had not been able to swing the house on Cape God, and she had spent most of the summer at Whitebeach Camp without him. Joan, who was going to take a secretarial course, went back to New York with her sister. Mr. and Mrs. Nudd stayed on until the first of November. Mr. Nudd had been deceived about his success in business. His position as chairman of the board, he discovered much too late, amounted to retirement with a small pension. There was no reason for him to go back, and he and Mrs. Nudd spent the fall taking long walks in the woods. Gasoline rationing had made that summer a trying one, and when they closed the house, they felt that it would be a long time before they opened it again. Shortages of building materials had stopped construction on Young's Bungalow City. After the trees had been cut and the concrete posts set for twenty-five tourist cabins, Russell hadn't been able to get nails or lumber or roofing to build with.

  When the war was over, the Nudds returned to Whitebeach Camp for their summers. They had all been active in the war effort; Mrs. Nudd had worked for the Red Cross, Mr. Nudd had been a hospital orderly, Randy had been a mess officer in Georgia, Esther's husband had been a lieutenant in Europe, and Joan had gone to Africa with the Red Cross, but she had quarreled with her superior, and had hastily been sent home on a troopship. But their memories of the war were less lasting than most memories, and, except for Hartley's death (Hartley had drowned in the Pacific), it was easily forgotten. Now Randy took the cook and the maid to Mass at St. John's early on Sunday morning. They played tennis at eleven, went swimming at three, drank gin at six. "The children"—lacking Hartley and Russell—went to Sherill's Falls, climbed Macabit Mountain, fished in Bates's Pond, and drove the old Cadillac barefoot across the pasture.

  The new vicar of the Episcopal chapel in Macabit called on the Nudds the first summer after the war and asked them why they hadn't had services read for Hartley. They couldn't say. The vicar pressed the point. Some nights later, Mrs. Nudd dreamed th
at she saw Hartley as a discontented figure. The vicar stopped her on the street later in the week, and spoke to her again about a memorial service, and this time she agreed to it. Russell was the only person in Macabit she thought she should invite. Russell had also been in the Pacific. When he returned to Macabit, he went back to work in the hardware store. The land on Hewitt's Point had been sold to real-estate developers, who were now putting up one-and two-room summer cottages.

  The prayers for Hartley were read on a hot day at the end of the season, three years after he had drowned. To the relatively simple service, the vicar added a verse about death at sea. Mrs. Nudd derived no comfort whatever from the reading of the prayers. She had no more faith in the power of God than she had in the magic of the evening star. Nothing was accomplished by the service so far as she was concerned. When it was over, Mr. Nudd took her arm, and the elderly couple started for the vestry. Mrs. Nudd saw Russell waiting to speak to her outside the church, and thought: Why did it have to be Hartley? Why not Russell?

  She had not seen him for years. He was wearing a suit that was too small for him. His face was red. In her shame at having wished a living man dead (for she had never experienced malevolence or bitterness without hurrying to cover it with love, and, among her friends and her family, those who received her warmest generosity were those who excited her impatience and her shame), she went to Russell impulsively and took his hand. Her face shone with tears. "Oh, it was so good of you to come; you were one of his best friends. We've missed you, Russell. Come see us. Can you come tomorrow? We're leaving on Saturday. Come for supper. It will make it seem like old times. Come for supper. We can't ask Myra and the children because we don't have a maid this year, but we'd love to see you. Please come." Russell said that he would.

  The next day was windy and clear, with a heartening lightness, a multiplicity of changes in its moods and its lights—a day that belonged half to summer, half to autumn, precisely like the day when the pig had drowned. After lunch, Mrs. Nudd and Pamela went to an auction. The two women had reached a reasonable truce, although Pamela still interfered in the kitchen and looked on Whitebeach Camp impatiently as her just inheritance. Randy, with the best will in the world, had begun to find his wife's body meager and familiar, his desires as keen as ever, and so he had been unfaithful to her once or twice. There had been accusations, a confession, and a reconciliation, and Pamela liked to talk all this over with Mrs. Nudd, searching, as she said, for "the truth" about men.

  Randy had been left with the children that afternoon and had taken them to the beach. He was a loving but impatient father, and from the house he could be heard scolding Binxey. "When I speak to you, Binxey, I don't speak to you because I want to hear the sound of my own voice, I speak to you because I want you to do what I say!" As Mrs. Nudd had told Russell, they had no maid that summer. Esther was doing the housework. Whenever anyone suggested getting a cleaning woman, Esther would say, "We can't afford a cleaning woman, and anyhow I don't have anything to do. I don't mind doing the housework, only I just wish you all would remember not to track sand into the living room..." Esther's husband had spent his vacation at Whitebeach Camp, but he had returned to work long since.

  Mr. Nudd was sitting on the porch in the hot sun that afternoon when Joan came out to him with a letter in her hand. She smiled uneasily and began to speak in an affected singsong that always irritated her father. "I've decided that I won't drive down with you tomorrow," she said. "I've decided that I'll stay here for a little while longer, Daddy. After all, there's nothing for me to do in New York. I have no reason to go down, have I? I wrote to Helen Parker, and she's going to come up and stay with me, so that I won't be alone. I have her letter right here. She says that she'd like to come. I thought we would stay here until Christmas. I've never been here in the winter before in all these years. We're going to write a book for children, Helen and I. She's going to draw the pictures, and I'm going to write the story. Her brother knows a publisher, and he said—"

  "Joan, dear, you can't stay here in the winter." Mr. Nudd spoke gently.

  "Oh, yes I can, yes I can, Daddy," Joan said. "Helen understands that it isn't comfortable. I've written her all about that. We're willing to rough it. We can get our own groceries in Macabit. We'll take turns walking into the village. I'm going to buy some firewood and a lot of canned goods and some—"

  "But, Joan, dear, this house wasn't built to be lived in during the winter. The walls are thin. The water will be turned off."

  "Oh, we don't care about the water—we'll get our water out of the lake."

  "Now, Joan, dear, listen to me," Mr. Nudd said firmly. "You cannot stay here in the winter. You would last about a week. I would have to come up here and get you, and I don't want to close this house twice." He had spoken with an edge of impatience, but now reason and affection surged into his voice. "Think of how it would be, dear, with no heat and no water and none of your family."

  "Daddy, I want to stay!" Joan cried. "I want to stay! Please let me stay! I've planned it for so long."

  "You're being ridiculous, Joan," Mr. Nudd cut in. "This is a summer house."

  "But, Daddy, I'm not asking very much!" Joan cried. "I'm not a child any more. I'm nearly forty years old. I've never asked you for anything. You've always been so strict. You never let me do what I want."

  "Joan, dear, please try to be reasonable, please at least try to be reasonable, please try and imagine—"

  "Esther got everything she wanted. She went to Europe twice; she had that car in college; she had that fur coat." Suddenly, Joan got down on her knees, and then sat on the floor. The movement was ugly, and it was meant to enrage her father.

  "I want to stay, I want to stay, I want to stay, I want to stay!" she cried.

  "Joan, you're acting like a child!" he shouted. "Get up."

  "I want to act like a child!" she screamed. "I want to act like a child for a little while! Is there anything so terrible about wanting to act like a child for a little while? I don't have any joy in my life any more. When I'm unhappy, I try to remember a time when I was happy, but I can't remember a time any more."

  "Joan, get up. Get up on your feet. Get up on your two feet."

  "I can't, I can't, I can't," she sobbed. "It hurts me to stand up—it hurts my legs."

  "Get up, Joan." He stooped down, and it was an effort for the old man to raise his daughter, to her feet. "Oh, my baby, oh, my poor baby!" he said, and he put his arm around her. "Come into the bathroom and I'll wash your face, you poor baby." She let him wash her face, and then they had a drink and sat down to a game of checkers.

  RUSSELL got to Whitebeach Camp at half past six, and they drank some gin on the porch. The liquor made him garrulous, and he began to talk about his war experiences, but the atmosphere was elastic and forgiving, and he knew that nothing he did there that night would be considered wrong. They went outside again after supper, although it was cool. The clouds had not colored. In the glancing light, the hillside shone like a bolt of velvet. Mrs. Nudd covered her legs with a blanket and looked at the scene. It was the most enduring pleasure of these years. There had been the boom, the crash, the depression, the recession, the malaise of imminent war, the war itself, the boom, the inflation, the recession, the slump, and now there was the malaise again, but none of this had changed a stone or a leaf in the view she saw from her porch.

  "You know, I'm thirty-seven years old," Randy said. He spoke importantly, as if the passage of time over his head was singular, interesting, and a dirty trick. He cleaned his teeth with his tongue. "If I'd gone back to Cambridge for my reunion this year, it would have been my fifteenth."

  "That's nothing," Esther said.

  "Did you know that the Teeters have bought the old Henderson place?" Mr. Nudd asked. "There's a man who made a fortune in the war." He stood, turned the chair he was sitting in upside down, and pounded at the legs with his fist. His cigarette was wet. When he sat down again, the long ash spilled onto his vest.

  "D
o I look thirty-seven?" Randy asked.

  "Do you know that you've mentioned the fact that you're thirty-seven eight times today?" Esther said. "I've counted them."

  "How much does it cost to go to Europe in an airplane?" Mr. Nudd asked.

  The conversation went from ocean fares to whether it was pleasanter to come into a strange city in the morning or the evening. Then they recalled odd names among the guests who had been at Whitebeach Camp; there had been Mr. and Mrs. Peppercorn, Mr. and Mrs. Starkweather, Mr. and Mrs. Freestone, the Bloods, the Mudds, and the Parsleys.

  That late in the season, the light went quickly. It was sunny one minute and dark the next. Macabit and its mountain range were canted against the afterglow, and for a while it seemed unimaginable that anything could lie beyond the mountains, that this was not the end of the world. The wall of pure and brassy light seemed to beat up from infinity. Then the stars came out, the earth rumbled downward, the illusion of an abyss was lost. Mrs. Nudd looked around her, and the time and the place seemed strangely important. This is not an imitation, she thought, this is not the product of custom, this is the unique place, the unique air, where my children have spent the best of themselves. The realization that none of them had done well made her sink back in her chair. She squinted the tears out of her eyes. What had made the summer always an island, she thought; what had made it such a small island? What mistakes had they made? What had they done wrong? They had loved their neighbors, respected the force of modesty, held honor above gain. Then where had they lost their competence, their freedom, their greatness? Why should these good and gentle people who surrounded her seem like the figures in a tragedy?