The Stories of John Cheever

by John Cheever

  Evarts said that he would make his decision in Chicago. He was weary and he fell asleep. Mildred-Rose put her thumb into her mouth, and soon both she and her mother had lost consciousness, too. Mildred-Rose stroked the sere skins of her coat and they told her that all was well, all was well.

  The Malloys may have left the train in Chicago and gone back to Wentworth. It is not hard to imagine their homecoming, for they would be welcomed by their friends and relations, although their stories might not be believed. Or they may have changed, at Chicago, for a train to the West, and this, to tell the truth, is easier to imagine. One can see them playing hearts in the lounge car and eating cheese sandwiches in the railroad stations as they traveled through Kansas and Nebraska—over the mountains and on to the Coast.

  The Hartleys

  Mr. and Mrs. Hartley and their daughter Anne reached the Pemaquoddy Inn, one winter evening, after dinner and just as the bridge games were getting under way. Mr. Hartley carried the bags across the broad porch and into the lobby, and his wife and daughter followed him. They all three seemed very tired, and they looked around them at the bright, homely room with the gratitude of people who have escaped from tension and danger, for they had been driving in a blinding snowstorm since early morning. They had made the trip from New York, and it had snowed all the way, they said. Mr. Hartley put down the bags and returned to the car to get the skis. Mrs. Hartley sat down in one of the lobby chairs, and her daughter, tired and shy, drew close to her. There was a little snow in the girl’s hair, and Mrs. Hartley brushed this away with her fingers. Then Mrs. Butterick, the widow who owned the inn, went out to the porch and called to Mr. Hartley that he needn’t put his car up. One of the men would do it, she said. He came back into the lobby and signed the register.

  He seemed to be a likable man with an edge to his voice and an intense, polite manner. His wife was a handsome, dark-haired woman who was dazed with fatigue, and his daughter was a girl of about seven. Mrs. Butterick asked Mr. Hartley if he had ever stayed at the Pemaquoddy before. “When I got the reservation,” she said, “the name rang a bell.”

  “Mrs. Hartley and I were here eight years ago February,” Mr. Hartley said. “We came on the twenty-third and were here for ten days. I remember the date clearly because we had such a wonderful time.” Then they went upstairs. They came down again long enough to make a supper of some leftovers that had been kept warm on the back of the stove. The child was so tired she nearly fell asleep at the table. After supper, they went upstairs again.

  In the winter, the life of the Pemaquoddy centered entirely on cold sports. Drinkers and malingerers were not encouraged, and most of the people there were earnest about their skiing. In the morning, they would take a bus across the valley to the mountains, and if the weather was good, they would carry a pack lunch and remain on the slopes until late afternoon. They’d vary this occasionally by skating on a rink near the inn, which had been made by flooding a clothes-yard. There was a hill behind the inn that could sometimes be used for skiing when conditions on the mountain were poor. This hill was serviced by a primitive ski tow that had been built by Mrs. Butterick’s son. “He bought that motor that pulls the tow when he was a senior at Harvard,” Mrs. Butterick always said when she spoke of the tow. “It was in an old Mercer auto, and he drove it up here from Cambridge one night without any license plates!” When she said this, she would put her hand over her heart, as if the dangers of the trip were still vivid.

  The Hartleys picked up the Pemaquoddy routine of fresh air and exercise the morning following their arrival.

  Mrs. Hartley was an absent-minded woman. She boarded the bus for the mountain that morning, sat down, and was talking to another passenger when she realized that she had forgotten her skis. Her husband went after them while everyone waited. She wore a bright, fur-trimmed parka that had been cut for someone with a younger face, and it made her look tired. Her husband wore some Navy equipment, which was stenciled with his name and rank. Their daughter, Anne, was pretty. Her hair was braided in tight, neat plaits, there was a saddle of freckles across her small nose, and she looked around her with the bleak, rational scrutiny of her age.

  Mr. Hartley was a good skier. He was up and down the slope, his skis parallel, his knees bent, his shoulders swinging gracefully in a half circle. His wife was not as clever but she knew what she was doing, and she enjoyed the cold air and the snow. She fell now and then, and when someone offered to help her to her feet, when the cold snow that had been pressed against her face had heightened its color, she looked like a much younger woman.

  Anne didn’t know how to ski. She stood at the foot of the slope watching her parents. They called to her, but she didn’t move, and after a while she began to shiver. Her mother went to her and tried to encourage her, but the child turned away crossly. “I don’t want you to show me,” she said. “I want Daddy to show me.” Mrs. Hartley called her husband.

  As soon as Mr. Hartley turned his attention to Anne, she lost all of her hesitation. She followed him up and down the hill, and as long as he was with her, she seemed confident and happy. Mr. Hartley stayed with Anne until after lunch, when he turned her over to a professional instructor who was taking a class of beginners out to the slope. Mr. and Mrs. Hartley went with the group to the foot of the slope, where Mr. Hartley took his daughter aside. “Your mother and I are going to ski some trails now,” he said, “and I want you to join Mr. Ritter’s class and to learn as much from him as you can. If you’re ever going to learn to ski, Anne, you’ll have to learn without me. We’ll be back at around four, and I want you to show me what you’ve learned when we come back.”

  “Yes, Daddy,” she said.

  “Now you go and join the class.”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Hartley waited until Anne had climbed the slope and joined the class. Then they went away. Anne watched the instructor for a few minutes, but as soon as she noticed that her parents had gone, she broke from the group and coasted down the hill toward the hut. “Miss,” the instructor called after her. “Miss…” She didn’t answer. She went into the hut, took off her parka and her mittens, spread them neatly on a table to dry, and sat beside the fire, holding her head down so that her face could not be seen. She sat there all afternoon. A little before dark, when her parents returned to the hut, stamping the snow off their boots, she ran to her father. Her face was swollen from crying. “Oh, Daddy, I thought you weren’t coming back,” she cried. “I thought you weren’t ever coming back!” She threw her arms around him and buried her face in his clothes.

  “Now, now, now, Anne,” he said, and he patted her back and smiled at the people who happened to notice the scene. Anne sat beside him on the bus ride back, holding his arm.

  At the inn that evening, the Hartleys came into the bar before dinner and sat at a wall table. Mrs. Hartley and her daughter drank tomato juice, and Mr. Hartley had three Old-Fashioneds. He gave Anne the orange slices and the sweet cherries from his drinks. Everything her father did interested her. She lighted his cigarettes and blew out the matches. She examined his watch and laughed at all his jokes. She had a sharp, pleasant laugh.

  The family talked quietly. Mr. and Mrs. Hartley spoke oftener to Anne than to each other, as if they had come to a point in their marriage where there was nothing to say. They discussed haltingly, between themselves, the snow and the mountain, and in the course of this attempt to make conversation Mr. Hartley, for some reason, spoke sharply to his wife. Mrs. Hartley got up from the table quickly. She might have been crying. She hurried through the lobby and went up the stairs.

  Mr. Hartley and Anne stayed in the bar. When the dinner bell rang, he asked the desk clerk to send Mrs. Hartley a tray. He ate dinner with his daughter in the dining room. After dinner, he sat in the parlor reading an old copy of Fortune while Anne played with some other children who were staying at the inn. They were all a little younger than she, and she handled them easily and affectionately, imitating an adult. She taught them
a simple card game and then read them a story. After the younger children were sent to bed, she read a book. Her father took her upstairs at about nine.

  He came down by himself later and went into the bar. He drank alone and talked with the bartender about various brands of bourbon.

  “Dad used to have his bourbon sent up from Kentucky in kegs,” Mr. Hartley said. A slight rasp in his voice, and his intense and polite manner, made what he said seem important. “They were small, as I recall. I don’t suppose they held more than a gallon. Dad used to have them sent to him twice a year. When Grandmother asked him what they were, he always told her they were full of sweet cider.” After discussing bourbons, they discussed the village and the changes in the inn. “We’ve only been here once before,” Mr. Hartley said. “That was eight years ago, eight years ago February.” Then he repeated, word for word, what he had said in the lobby the previous night. “We came on the twenty-third and were here for ten days. I remember the date clearly because we had such a wonderful time.”

  The Hartleys’ subsequent days were nearly all like the first. Mr. Hartley spent the early hours instructing his daughter. The girl learned rapidly, and when she was with her father, she was daring and graceful, but as soon as he left her, she would go to the hut and sit by the fire. Each day, after lunch, they would reach the point where he gave her a lecture on self-reliance. “Your mother and I are going away now,” he would say, “and I want you to ski by yourself, Anne.” She would nod her head and agree with him, but as soon as he had gone, she would return to the hut and wait there. Once—it was the third day—he lost his temper. “Now, listen, Anne,” he shouted, “if you’re going to learn to ski, you’ve got to learn by yourself.” His loud voice wounded her, but it did not seem to show her the way to independence. She became a familiar figure in the afternoons, sitting beside the fire.

  Sometimes Mr. Hartley would modify his discipline. The three of them would return to the inn on the early bus and he would take his daughter to the skating rink and give her a skating lesson. On these occasions, they stayed out late. Mrs. Hartley watched them sometimes from the parlor window. The rink was at the foot of the primitive ski tow that had been built by Mrs. Butterick’s son. The terminal posts of the tow looked like gibbets in the twilight, and Mr. Hartley and his daughter looked like figures of contrition and patience. Again and again they would circle the little rink, earnest and serious, as if he were explaining to her something more mysterious than a sport.

  Everyone at the inn liked the Hartleys, although they gave the other guests the feeling that they had recently suffered some loss—the loss of money, perhaps, or perhaps Mr. Hartley had lost his job. Mrs. Hartley remained absent-minded, but the other guests got the feeling that this characteristic was the result of some misfortune that had shaken her self-possession. She seemed anxious to be friendly and she plunged, like a lonely woman, into every conversation. Her father had been a doctor, she said. She spoke of him as if he had been a great power, and she spoke with intense pleasure of her childhood. “Mother’s living room in Crafton was forty-five feet long,” she said. “There were fireplaces at both ends. It was one of those marvelous old Victorian houses.” In the china cabinet in the dining room, there was some china like the china Mrs. Hartley’s mother had owned. In the lobby there was a paperweight like a paperweight Mrs. Hartley had been given when she was a girl. Mr. Hartley also spoke of his origins now and then. Mrs. Butterick once asked him to carve a leg of lamb, and as he sharpened the carving knife, he said, “I never do this without thinking of Dad.” Among the collection of canes in the hallway, there was a blackthorn embossed with silver. “That’s exactly like the blackthorn Mr. Wentworth brought Dad from Ireland,” Mr. Hartley said.

  Anne was devoted to her father but she obviously liked her mother, too. In the evenings, when she was tired, she would sit on the sofa beside Mrs. Hartley and rest her head on her mother’s shoulder. It seemed to be only on the mountain, where the environment was strange, that her father would become for her the only person in the world. One evening when the Hartleys were playing bridge—it was quite late and Anne had gone to bed—the child began to call her father, “I’ll go, darling,” Mrs. Hartley said, and she excused herself and went upstairs. “I want my daddy,” those at the bridge table could hear the girl screaming. Mrs. Hartley quieted her and came downstairs again. “Anne had a nightmare,” she explained, and went on playing cards.

  The next day was windy and warm. In the middle of the afternoon, it began to rain, and all but the most intrepid skiers went back to their hotels. The bar at the Pemaquoddy filled up early. The radio was turned on for weather reports, and one earnest guest picked up the telephone in the lobby and called other resorts. Was it raining in Pico? Was it raining in Stowe? Was it raining in Ste. Agathe? Mr. and Mrs. Hartley were in the bar that afternoon. She was having a drink for the first time since they had been there, but she did not seem to enjoy it. Anne was playing in the parlor with the other children. A little before dinner, Mr. Hartley went into the lobby and asked Mrs. Butterick if they could have their dinner upstairs. Mrs. Butterick said that this could be arranged. When the dinner bell rang, the Hartleys went up, and a maid took them trays. After dinner, Anne went back to the parlor to play with the other children, and after the dining room had been cleared, the maid went up to get the Hartleys’ trays.

  The transom above the Hartleys’ bedroom door was open, and as the maid went down the hall, she could hear Mrs. Hartley’s voice, a voice so uncontrolled, so guttural and full of suffering, that she stopped and listened as if the woman’s life were in danger. “Why do we have to come back?” Mrs. Hartley was crying. “Why do we have to come back? Why do we have to make these trips back to the places where we thought we were happy? What good is it going to do? What good has it ever done? We go through the telephone book looking for the names of people we knew ten years ago, and we ask them for dinner, and what good does it do? What good has it ever done? We go back to the restaurants, the mountains, we go back to the houses, even the neighborhoods, we walk in the slums, thinking that this will make us happy, and it never does. Why in Christ’s name did we ever begin such a wretched thing? Why isn’t there an end to it? Why can’t we separate again? It was better that way. Wasn’t it better that way? It was better for Anne—I don’t care what you say, it was better for her than this. I’ll take Anne again and you can live in town. Why can’t I do that, why can’t I, why can’t I, why can’t I…” The frightened maid went back along the corridor. Anne was sitting in the parlor reading to the younger children when the maid went downstairs.

  It cleared up that night and turned cold. Everything froze. In the morning, Mrs. Butterick announced that all the trails on the mountain were closed and that the tramway would not run. Mr. Hartley and some other guests broke the crust on the hill behind the inn, and one of the hired hands started the primitive tow. “My son bought the motor that pulls the tow when he was a senior at Harvard,” Mrs. Butterick said when she heard its humble explosions. “It was in an old Mercer auto, and he drove it up here from Cambridge one night without any license plates!” The slope offered the only skiing in the neighborhood, and after lunch a lot of people came here from other hotels. They wore the snow away under the tow to a surface of rough stone, and snow had to be shoveled onto the tracks. The rope was frayed, and Mrs. Butterick’s son had planned the tow so poorly that it gave the skiers a strenuous and uneven ride. Mrs. Hartley tried to get Anne to use the tow, but she would not ride it until her father led the way. He showed her how to stand, how to hold the rope, bend her knees, and drag her poles. As soon as he was carried up the hill, she gladly followed. She followed him up and down the hill all afternoon, delighted that for once he was remaining in her sight. When the crust on the slope was broken and packed, it made good running, and that odd, nearly compulsive rhythm of riding and skiing, riding and skiing, established itself.

  It was a fine afternoon. There were snow clouds, but a bright and cheerful light beat th
rough them. The country, seen from the top of the hill, was black and white. Its only colors were the colors of spent fire, and this impressed itself upon one—as if the desolation were something more than winter, as if it were the work of a great conflagration. People talk, of course, while they ski, while they wait for their turn to seize the rope, but they can hardly be heard. There is the exhaust of the tow motor and the creak of the iron wheel upon which the tow rope turns, but the skiers themselves seem stricken dumb, lost in the rhythm of riding and coasting. That afternoon was a continuous cycle of movement. There was a single file to the left of the slope, holding the frayed rope and breaking from it, one by one, at the crown of the hill to choose their way down, going again and again over the same surface, like people who, having lost a ring or a key on the beach, search again and again in the same sand. In the stillness, the child Anne began to shriek. Her arm had got caught in the frayed rope; she had been thrown to the ground and was being dragged brutally up the hill toward the iron wheel. “Stop the tow!” her father roared. “Stop the tow! Stop the tow!” And everyone else on the hill began to shout, “Stop the tow! Stop the tow! Stop the tow!” But there was no one there to stop it. Her screams were hoarse and terrible, and the more she struggled to free herself from the rope, the more violently it threw her to the ground. Space and the cold seemed to reduce the voices—even the anguish in the voices—of the people who were calling to stop the tow, but the girl’s cries were piercing until her neck was broken on the iron wheel.

  The Hartleys left for New York that night after dark. They were going to drive all night behind the local hearse. Several people offered to drive the car down for them, but Mr. Hartley said that he wanted to drive, and his wife seemed to want him to. When everything was ready, the stricken couple walked across the porch, looking around them at the bewildering beauty of the night, for it was very cold and clear and the constellations seemed brighter than the lights of the inn or the village. He helped his wife into the car, and after arranging a blanket over her legs, they started the long, long drive. THE SUTTON PLACE STORY