The Stories of John Cheever (1979 Pulitzer Prize)

by John Cheever

  Mr. Bruce told himself that Mrs. Sheridan was wasting her time; Pruitt was a fool and she deserved better. His dislike of Pruitt and his respect for Mrs. Sheridan seemed idle, but he was pleased, one morning, to get to the corner and find that Mrs. Sheridan was there with her two daughters and the dog, and that Pruitt wasn't. He wished her a good morning.

  "Good morning," she said. "We seem to be early."

  Katherine and the older Sheridan girl began to talk together.

  "I think I knew Katherine's mother," Mrs. Sheridan said politely. "Wasn't your first wife Martha Chase?"

  "I knew her in college. I didn't know her well. She was in the class ahead of me. How old is Katherine now?"

  "She was eight last summer," Mr. Bruce said.

  "We have a brother," the younger Sheridan girl said, standing beside her mother. "He's eight."

  "Yes, dear," Mrs. Sheridan said.

  "He was drowned," the little girl said.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," Mr. Bruce said.

  "He was quite a good swimmer," the little girl went on, "but we think that he must have gotten a cramp. You see, there was a thunderstorm, and we all went into the boathouse and we weren't looking and—"

  "That was a long time ago, dear," Mrs. Sheridan said gently.

  "It wasn't so long ago," the little girl said. "It was only last summer."

  "Yes, dear," her mother said. "Yes, yes."

  Mr. Bruce noticed that there was no trace of pain, or of the effort to conceal it, on her face, and her composure seemed to him a feat of intelligence and grace. They continued to stand together, without talking, until the other parents arrived with their children, just as the bus came up the street. Mrs. Sheridan called to the old dog and went down Park Avenue, and Mr. Bruce got into a taxi and went to work.

  Toward the end of October, on a rainy Friday night, Mr. and Mrs. Bruce took a taxi to St. James's School. It was Parents' Night. One of the senior boys ushered them into a pew at the rear of the chapel. The altar was stripped of its mysteries, and the rector stood on the raised floor between the choir stalls, waiting for the laggard parents to be seated. He tucked and pulled nervously at his clericals, and then signaled for silence by clearing his throat.

  "On behalf of the faculty and the board of trustees," he said, "I welcome the parents of St. James's here this evening. I regret that we have such inclement weather, but it doesn't seem to have kept any of you at home." This was said archly, as if the full attendance reflected his powers of intimidation. "Let us begin," he said, "with a prayer for the welfare of our school: Almighty Father, Creator of Heaven and earth!..." Kneeling, and with their heads bowed, the congregation looked indestructible and as if the permanence of society depended and could always depend on them. And when the prayer ended, the rector spoke to them about their durability. "I have some very interesting statistics for you all tonight," he said. "This year we have sixteen children enrolled in the school whose parents and whose grandparents were St. James's children. I think that's a very impressive number. I doubt that any other day school in the city could equal it."

  During the brief speech in defense of conservative education that followed, Mr. Bruce noticed that Mrs. Sheridan was seated a few pews in front of him. With her was a tall man—her husband, presumably—with a straight back and black hair. When the talk ended, the meeting was opened for questions. The first question was from a mother who wanted advice on how to restrict her children's use of television. While the rector was answering this question, Mr. Bruce noticed that the Sheridans were having an argument. They were whispering, and their disagreement seemed intense. Suddenly, Mrs. Sheridan separated herself from the argument. She had nothing further to say. Mr. Sheridan's neck got red. He continued, in a whisper, to press his case, bending toward his wife, and shaking his head. Mrs. Sheridan raised her hand.

  "Yes, Mrs. Sheridan," the rector said.

  Mr. Sheridan picked up his coat and his derby, and, saying "Excuse me, please," "Thank you," "Excuse me," passed in front of the other people in the pew, and left the chapel.

  "Yes, Mrs. Sheridan?" the rector repeated.

  "I wonder, Dr. Frisbee," Mrs. Sheridan said, if you and the board of trustees have ever thought of enrolling Negro children in St. James's?"

  "That question came up three years ago," the rector said impatiently, "and a report was submitted to the board of trustees on the question. There have been very few requests for it, but if you would like a copy, I will have one sent to you."

  "Yes," Mrs. Sheridan said, "I would like to read it."

  The rector nodded and Mrs. Sheridan sat down.

  "Mrs. Townsend?" the rector asked.

  "I have a question about science and religion," Mrs. Townsend said. "It seems to me that the science faculty stresses science to the detriment of religious sentiment, especially concerning the Creation. It seems to me."

  Mrs. Sheridan picked up her gloves and, smiling politely and saying "Excuse me," "Thank you," "Please excuse me," she brushed past the others in the pew. Mr. Bruce heard her heels on the paved floor of the hall and, by craning his neck, was able to see her. The noise of traffic and of the rain grew louder as she pushed open one of the heavy doors, and faded as the door swung to.

  LATE ONE AFTERNOON the following week, Mr. Bruce was called out of a stockholders' meeting to take a telephone call from his wife. She wanted him to stop at the stable where Katherine took riding lessons and bring her home. It exasperated him to have been called from the meeting to take this message, and when he returned, the meeting itself had fallen into the hands of an old man who had brought with him Robert's Rules of Order. Business that should have been handled directly and simply dragged, and the meeting ended in a tedious and heated argument. Immediately afterward, he took a taxi up to the Nineties, and went through the tack room of the riding stable into the ring. Katherine and some other girls, wearing hunting bowlers and dark clothes, were riding. The ring was cold and damp, its overhead lights burned whitely, the mirrors along the wall were fogged and streaked with moisture, and the riding mistress spoke to her pupils with an elaborate courteousness. Mr. Bruce watched his daughter. Katherine wore glasses, her face was plain, and her light hair was long and stringy. She was a receptive and obedient girl, and her exposure to St. James's had begun faintly to show in her face. When the lesson ended, he went back into the tack room. Mrs. Sheridan was there, waiting for her daughters.

  "Can I give you a lift home?" Mr. Bruce said.

  "You most certainly can," Mrs. Sheridan said. "We were going to take a bus."

  The children joined them and they all went out and waited for a cab. It was dark.

  "I was interested in the question you asked at the parents' meeting," Mr. Bruce said. This was untrue. He was not interested in the question, and if Negroes had been enrolled in St. James's, he would have removed Katherine.

  "I'm glad someone was interested," she said. "The Rector was wild."

  "That's principally what interested me," Mr. Bruce said, trying to approach the truth.

  A cab came along, and they got into it. He let Mrs. Sheridan off at the door of her apartment house, and watched her walk with her two daughters into the lighted lobby.

  MRS. SHERIDAN had forgotten her key and a maid let her in. It was late and she had asked people for dinner. The door to her husband's room was shut, and she bathed and dressed without seeing him. While she was combing her hair, she heard him go into the living room and turn on the television set. In company, Charles Sheridan always spoke contemptuously of television. "By Jove," he would say, "I don't see how anyone can look at that trash. It must be a year since I've turned our set on." Now his wife could hear him laughing uproariously.

  She left her room and went down the hall to the dining room to check on everything there. Then she went through the pantry into the kitchen. She sensed trouble as soon as the door closed after her. Helen, the waitress, was sitting at a table near the sink. She had been crying. Anna, the cook, put down the pan she had been was
hing, to be sure of hearing everything that was said.

  "What's the matter, Helen?" Mrs. Sheridan asked.

  "From my pie he took twelif dollars, Mrs. Seridan," Helen said. She was Austrian.

  "What for, Helen?"

  "The day I burn myself. You told me to go to the doctor?"

  "Yes."

  "For that he took from my pie twelif dollars."

  "I'll give you a check tomorrow, Helen," Mrs. Sheridan said. "Don't worry.

  "Yes, ma'am," Helen said. "Thank you."

  Mr. Sheridan came through the pantry into the kitchen. He looked handsome in his dark clothes. "Oh, here you are," he said to his wife. "Let's have a drink before they come." Then, turning to the waitress, he asked, "Have you heard from your family recently?"

  "No, Mr. Seridan," Helen said.

  "Where is it your family lives?" he asked.

  "In Missigan, Mr. Seridan." She giggled, but this joke had been made innumerable times in the past few years and she was tired of it.

  "Where?" Mr. Sheridan asked.

  "In Missigan, Mr. Seridan," she repeated.

  He burst out laughing. "By Jove, I think that's funny!" he said. He put his arm around his wife's waist and they went in to have a drink.

  MR. BRUCE returned to a much pleasanter home. His wife, Lois, was a pretty woman, and she greeted him affectionately. He sat down with her for a cocktail. "Marguerite called me this morning," she said, "and told me that Charlie's lost his job. When I heard the phone ring, I sensed trouble; I sensed it. Even before I picked up the receiver, I knew that something was wrong. At first, I thought it was going to be poor Helen Luckman. She's had so many misfortunes recently that she's been on my mind a lot of the time. Then I heard Marguerite's voice. She said that poor Charlie had been a wonderful sport about the whole thing and that he was determined to get an even better job. He's traveled all over the United States for that firm and now they're just letting him go. She called while I was in bed, and the reason I stayed in bed this morning is because my back's been giving me a little trouble again. It's nothing serious—it's nothing serious at all—but the pain's excruciating and I'm going to Dr. Parminter tomorrow and see if he can help me."

  Lois had been frail when Mr. Bruce first met her. It had been one of her great charms. The extreme pallor and delicacy of her skin could be accounted for partly by a year of her life when, as she said, the doctors had given her up for dead. Her frailness was a fact, a mixture of chance and inheritance, and she could not be blamed for her susceptibility to poison oak, cold germs, and fatigue.

  "I'm very sorry to hear about your back, dear," Mr. Bruce said.

  "Well, I didn't spend the whole day in bed," she said. "I got up around eleven and had lunch with Betty and then went shopping."

  Lois Bruce, like a great many women in New York, spent a formidable amount of time shopping along Fifth Avenue. She read the advertisements in the newspapers more intently than her husband read the financial section. Shopping was her principal occupation. She would get up from a sickbed to go shopping. The atmosphere of the department stores had a restorative effect on her disposition. She would begin her afternoon at Altman's—buy a pair of gloves on the first floor, and then travel up on the escalator and look at andirons. She would buy a purse and some face cream at Lord & Taylor's, and price coffee tables, upholstery fabrics, and cocktail glasses. "Down?" she would ask the elevator operator when the doors rolled open, and if the operator said "Up," Lois would board the car anyhow, deciding suddenly that whatever it was that she wanted might be in the furniture or the linen department. She would buy a pair of shoes and a slip at Saks, send her mother some napkins from Mosse's, buy a bunch of cloth flowers at De Pinna's, some hand lotion at Bonwit's, and a dress at Bendel's. By then, her feet and her head would be pleasantly tired, the porter at Tiffany's would be taking in the flag, the lamps on the carriages by the Plaza would be lighted. She would buy a cake at Dean's, her last stop, and walk home through the early dark like an honest workman, contented and weary.

  When they sat down to dinner, Lois watched her husband taste his soup and smiled when she saw that he was pleased. "It is good, isn't it?" she said. "I can't taste it myself—I haven't been able to taste anything for a week—but I don't want to tell Katie, bless her, because it would hurt her feelings, and I didn't want to compliment her if it wasn't right. Katie," she called, through the pantry, "your soup is delicious."

  MRS. SHERIDAN did not come to the corner all the next week. On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Bruce stopped by for Katherine at her dancing class, on the way home from his office. The Sheridan girls were in the same class, and he looked for Mrs. Sheridan in the lobby of the Chardin Club, but she wasn't there. He didn't see her again, actually, until he went, on Sunday afternoon, to bring Katherine home from a birthday party.

  Because Lois sometimes played cards until seven o'clock, it often fell to Mr. Bruce to call for Katherine at some address at the end of the day, to see her through the stiff thanks and goodbyes that end a children's party. The streets were cold and dark; the hot rooms where the parties were smelled of candy and flowers. Among the friends and relatives there he was often pleased to meet people with whom he had summered or been to school. Some of these parties were elaborate, and he had once gone to get Katherine at an apartment in the Waldorf Towers where six little girls were being entertained by a glass blower.

  In the hallway that Sunday afternoon, an Irish maid was taking up peanut shells with a carpet sweeper, lost balloons were bunched on the ceiling above her white head, and Mr. Bruce met a dwarf, dressed as a clown, who had entertained at parties in his own childhood. The old man had not changed his stock of tricks or his patter, and he was proud that he was able to remember the names and faces of most of the generations of children he had entertained. He held Mr. Bruce in the hall until, after several wrong guesses, he came up with his name. In the living room a dozen friends and relatives were drinking cocktails. Now and then, a weary child, holding a candy basket or a balloon, would wander through the crowd of grown people. At the end of the living room, a couple who worked a marionette show were dismantling their stage. The woman's hair was dyed, and she smiled and gesticulated broadly while she worked, like a circus performer, though no one was watching her.

  While Mr. Bruce was waiting for Katherine to put her coat on, Mrs. Sheridan came in from the foyer. They shook hands. "Can I take you home?" he asked.

  She said, "Yes, yes," and went in search of her older daughter.

  Katherine went up to her hostess and dropped a curtsy. "It was nice of you to ask me to your party, Mrs. Howells," she said, without mumbling. "And thank you very much."

  "She's such a dear. It's such a joy to have her!" Mrs. Howells said to Mr. Bruce, and laid a hand absent-mindedly on Katherine's head.

  Mrs. Sheridan reappeared with her daughter. Louise Sheridan curtsied and recited her thanks, but Mrs. Howells was thinking about something else and did not hear. The little girl repeated her thanks, in a louder voice.

  "Why, thank you for coming!" Mrs. Howells exclaimed abruptly.

  Mr. Bruce and Mrs. Sheridan and the two children went down in the elevator. It was still light when they came out of the building onto Fifth Avenue.

  "Let's walk," Mrs. Sheridan said. "It's only a few blocks."

  The children went on ahead. They were in the lower Eighties and their view was broad; it took in the avenue, the Museum, and the Park. As they walked, the double track of lights along the avenue went on with a faint click. There was a haze in the air that made the lamps give off a yellow light, and the colonnades of the Museum, the mansard roof of the Plaza above the trees, and the multitude of yellow lights reminded Stephen Bruce of many pictures of Paris and London ("Winter Afternoon") that had been painted at the turn of the century. This deceptive resemblance pleased him, and his pleasure in what he could see was heightened by the woman he was with. He felt that she saw it all very clearly. They walked along without speaking most of the way. A block or two
from the building where she lived, she took her arm out of his.

  "I'd like to talk with you someday about St. James's School," Mr. Bruce said. "Won't you have lunch with me? Could you have lunch with me on Tuesday?"

  "I'd love to have lunch with you," Mrs. Sheridan said.

  THE RESTAURANT WHERE Mrs. Sheridan and Mr. Bruce met for lunch on Tuesday was the kind of place where they were not likely to see anyone they knew. The menu was soiled, and so was the waiter's tuxedo. There are a thousand places like it in the city. When they greeted one another, they could have passed for a couple that had been married fifteen years. She was carrying bundles and an umbrella. She might have come in from the suburbs to get some clothes for the children. She said she had been shopping, she had taken a taxi, she had been rushed, she was hungry. She took off her gloves, rattled the menu, and looked around. He had a whiskey and she asked for a glass of sherry.

  "I want to know what you really think about St. James's School," he said, and she began, animatedly, to talk.

  They had moved a year earlier from New York to Long Island, she said, because she wanted to send her children to a country school. She had been to country schools herself. The Long Island school had been unsatisfactory, and they had moved back to New York in September. Her husband had gone to St. James's, and that had determined their choice. She spoke excitedly, as Mr. Bruce had known she would, about the education of her daughters, and he guessed that this was something she couldn't discuss with the same satisfaction with her husband. She was excited at finding someone who seemed interested in her opinions, and she put herself at a disadvantage, as he intended she should, by talking too much. The deep joy we take in the company of people with whom we have just recently fallen in love is undisguisable, even to a purblind waiter, and they both looked wonderful. He got her a taxi at the corner. They said goodbye.

  "You'll have lunch with me again?"

  "Of course," she said, "of course."