The Stories of John Cheever

by John Cheever

  “Isn’t it generous of these children to stop and have a drink with us?” Mrs. Sauer said, when they had been introduced. The old man did not seem surprised at hearing the Mackenzies described as children. “They’ve come from Horsetail Beach and they’re on their way to Quebec.”

  “Mrs. Sauer and I have always detested Horsetail Beach,” the old gentleman said. “When do you plan to reach Quebec?”

  “Tonight,” Victor said.

  “Tonight?” Mrs. Sauer asked.

  “I doubt that you can reach Quebec tonight,” the old gentleman said.

  “I suppose you can do it,” the old lady said, “the way you children drive, but you’ll be more dead than alive. Stay for dinner. Stay the night.”

  “Do stay for dinner,” the old man said.

  “You will, won’t you?” Mrs. Sauer said. “I will not take no for an answer! I am old and privileged, and if you say no, I’ll claim to be deaf and pretend not to hear you. And now that you’ve decided to stay, make another round of these delicious cocktails and tell Agnes that you are to have Talbot’s room. Tell her tactfully. She hates guests. Remember that she’s very old.”

  Victor carried the sailing trophy back into the house, which, in spite of its many large windows, seemed in the early dark like a cave. “Mrs. Mackenzie and I are staying for dinner and the night,” he told Agnes. “She said that we were to have Talbot’s room.”

  “Well, that’s nice. Maybe it will make her happy. She’s had a lot of sorrow in her life. I think it’s affected her mind. I knew she was going to ask you, and I’m glad you can stay. It makes me happy. It’s more dishes to wash and more beds to make, but it’s more—it’s more—”

  “It’s more merrier?”

  “Oh, that’s it, that’s it.” The old servant shook with laughter. “You remind me a little of Mr. Talbot. He was always making jokes with me when he came out here to mix the cocktails. God have mercy on his soul. It’s hard to realize,” she said sadly.

  Walking back through the cave-like living room, Victor could hear Theresa and Mrs. Sauer discussing the night air, and he noticed that the cold air had begun to come down from the mountains. He felt it in the room. There were flowers somewhere in the dark, and the night air had heightened their smell and the smell of the boulders in the chimney, so the room smelled like a cave with flowers in it. “Everyone says that the view looks like Salzburg,” Mrs. Sauer said, “but I’m patriotic and I can’t see that views are improved by such comparisons. They do seem to be improved by good company, however. We used to entertain, but now—”

  “Yes, yes,” the old gentleman said, and sighed. He uncorked a bottle of citronella and rubbed his wrists and the back of his neck.

  “There!” Theresa said. “The cook’s curtains are done!”

  “Oh, how can I thank you!” Mrs. Sauer said. “Now if someone would be kind enough to get my glasses, I could admire your needlework. They’re on the mantelpiece.”

  Victor found her glasses—not on the mantelpiece but on a nearby table. He gave them to her and then walked up and down the porch a few times. He managed to suggest that he was no longer a chance guest but had become a member of the family. He sat down on the steps, and Theresa joined him there. “Look at them,” the old lady said to her husband. “Doesn’t it do you good to see, for a change, young people who love one another?… There goes the sunset gun. My brother George bought that gun for the yacht club. It was his pride and his joy. Isn’t it quiet this evening?”

  But the tender looks and attitudes that Mrs. Sauer took for pure love were only the attitudes of homeless summer children who had found a respite. Oh, how sweet, how precious the hour seemed to them! Lights burned on another island. Stamped on the twilight was the iron lace of a broken greenhouse roof. What poor magpies. Their ways and airs were innocent; their bones were infirm. Indeed, they impersonated the dead. Come away, come away, sang the wind in the trees and the grass, but it did not sing to the Mackenzies. They turned their heads instead to hear old Mrs. Sauer. “I’m going up to put on my green velvet,” she said, “but if you children don’t feel like dressing…”

  Waiting on table that night Agnes thought that she had not seen such a gay dinner in a long time. She heard them go off after dinner to play billiards on the table that had been bought for poor, dead Talbot. A little rain fell, but, unlike the rain at Horsetail Beach, this was a gentle and excursive mountain shower. Mrs. Sauer yawned at eleven, and the game broke up. They said good night in the upstairs hall, by the pictures of Talbot’s crew, Talbot’s pony, and Talbot’s class. “Good night, good night,” Mrs. Sauer exclaimed, and then set her face, determined to overstep her manners, and declared, “I am delighted that you agreed to stay. I can’t tell you how much it means. I’m—” Tears started from her eyes.

  “It’s lovely to be here,” Theresa said.

  “Good night, children,” Mrs. Sauer said.

  “Good night, good night,” Mr. Sauer said.

  “Good night,” Victor said.

  “Good night, good night,” Theresa said.

  “Sleep well,” Mrs. Sauer said. “And pleasant dreams.”

  Ten days later, the Sauers were expecting some other guests—some young cousins named Wycherly. They had never been to the house before, and they came up the path late in the afternoon. Victor opened the door to them. “I’m Victor Mackenzie,” he said cheerfully. He wore tennis shorts and a pullover, but when he bent down to pick up a suitcase, his knees creaked loudly: “The Sauers are out driving with my wife,” he explained. “They’ll be back by six, when the drinking begins.” The cousins followed him across the big living room and up the stairs. “Mrs. Sauer is giving you Uncle George’s room,” he said, “because it has the best view and the most hot water. It’s the only room that’s been added to the house since Mr. Sauer’s father built the place in 1903…”

  The young cousins did not quite know what to make of him. Was he a cousin himself? an uncle, perhaps? a poor relation? But it was a comfortable house and a brilliant day, and in the end they would take Victor for what he appeared to be, and he appeared to be very happy. THE SORROWS OF GIN

  It was Sunday afternoon, and from her bedroom Amy could hear the Beardens coming in, followed a little while later by the Farquarsons and the Parminters. She went on reading Black Beauty until she felt in her bones that they might be eating something good. Then she closed her book and went down the stairs. The living-room door was shut, but through it she could hear the noise of loud talk and laughter. They must have been gossiping or worse, because they all stopped talking when she entered the room.

  “Hi, Amy,” Mr. Farquarson said.

  “Mr. Farquarson spoke to you, Amy,” her father said.

  “Hello, Mr. Farquarson,” she said. By standing outside the group for a minute, until they had resumed their conversation, and then by slipping past Mrs. Farquarson, she was able to swoop down on the nut dish and take a handful.

  “Amy!” Mr. Lawton said.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said, retreating out of the circle, toward the piano.

  “Put those nuts back,” he said.

  “I’ve handled them, Daddy,” she said.

  “Well, pass the nuts, dear,” her mother said sweetly. “Perhaps someone else would like nuts.”

  Amy filled her mouth with the nuts she had taken, returned to the coffee table, and passed the nut dish.

  “Thank you, Amy,” they said, taking a peanut or two.

  “How do you like your new school, Amy?” Mrs. Bearden asked.

  “I like it,” Amy said. “I like private schools better than public schools. It isn’t so much like a factory.”

  “What grade are you in?” Mr. Bearden asked.

  “Fourth,” she said.

  Her father took Mr. Parminter’s glass and his own, and got up to go into the dining room and refill them. She fell into the chair he had left vacant.

  “Don’t sit in your father’s chair, Amy,” her mother said, not realizing that
Amy’s legs were worn out from riding a bicycle, while her father had done nothing but sit down all day.

  As she walked toward the French doors, she heard her mother beginning to talk about the new cook. It was a good example of the interesting things they found to talk about.

  “You’d better put your bicycle in the garage,” her father said, returning with the fresh drinks. “It looks like rain.”

  Amy went out onto the terrace and looked at the sky, but it was not very cloudy, it wouldn’t rain, and his advice, like all the advice he gave her, was superfluous. They were always at her. “Put your bicycle away. Open the door for Grandmother, Amy. Feed the cat, Do your homework.”

  “Pass the nuts.”

  “Help Mrs. Bearden with her parcels.”

  “Amy, please try and take more pains with your appearance.”

  They all stood, and her father came to the door and called her. “We’re going over to the Parminters’ for supper,” he said. “Cook’s here, so you won’t be alone. Be sure and go to bed at eight like a good girl. And come and kiss me good night.”

  After their cars had driven off, Amy wandered through the kitchen to the cook’s bedroom beyond it and knocked on the door. “Come in,” a voice said, and when Amy entered, she found the cook, whose name was Rosemary, in her bathrobe, reading the Bible. Rosemary smiled at Amy. Her smile was sweet and her old eyes were blue. “Your parents have gone out again?” she asked. Amy said that they had, and the old woman invited her to sit down. “They do seem to enjoy themselves, don’t they? During the four days I’ve been here, they’ve been out every night, or had people in.” She put the Bible face down on her lap and smiled, but not at Amy. “Of course, the drinking that goes on here is all sociable, and what your parents do is none of my business, is it? I worry about drink more than most people, because of my poor sister. My poor sister drank too much. For ten years, I went to visit her on Sunday afternoons, and most of the time she was non compos mentis. Sometimes I’d find her huddled up on the floor with one or two sherry bottles empty beside her. Sometimes she’d seem sober enough to a stranger, but I could tell in a second by the way she spoke her words that she’d drunk enough not to be herself any more. Now my poor sister is gone, I don’t have anyone to visit at all.”

  “What happened to your sister?” Amy asked.

  “She was a lovely person, with a peaches-and-cream complexion and fair hair,” Rosemary said. “Gin makes some people gay—it makes them laugh and cry—but with my sister it only made her sullen and withdrawn. When she was drinking, she would retreat into herself. Drink made her contrary. If I’d say the weather was fine, she’d tell me I was wrong. If I’d say it was raining, she’d say it was clearing. She’d correct me about everything I said, however small it was. She died in Bellevue Hospital one summer while I was working in Maine. She was the only family I had.”

  The directness with which Rosemary spoke had the effect on Amy of making her feel grown, and for once politeness came to her easily. “You must miss your sister a great deal,” she said.

  “I was just sitting here now thinking about her. She was in service, like me, and it’s lonely work. You’re always surrounded by a family, and yet you’re never a part of it. Your pride is often hurt. The Madams seem condescending and inconsiderate. I’m not blaming the ladies I’ve worked for. It’s just the nature of the relationship. They order chicken salad, and you get up before dawn to get ahead of yourself, and just as you’ve finished the chicken salad, they change their minds and want crab-meat soup.”

  “My mother changes her mind all the time,” Amy said.

  “Sometimes you’re in a country place with nobody else in help. You’re tired, but not too tired to feel lonely. You go out onto the servants’ porch when the pots and pans are done, planning to enjoy God’s creation, and although the front of the house may have a fine view of the lake or the mountains, the view from the back is never much. But there is the sky and the trees and the stars and the birds singing and the pleasure of resting your feet. But then you hear them in the front of the house, laughing and talking with their guests and their sons and daughters. If you’re new and they whisper, you can be sure they’re talking about you. That takes all the pleasure out of the evening.”

  “Oh,” Amy said.

  “I’ve worked all kinds of places—places where there were eight or nine in help and places where I was expected to burn the rubbish myself, on winter nights, and shovel the snow. In a house where there’s a lot of help, there’s usually some devil among them—some old butler or parlor maid—who tries to make your life miserable from the beginning. ‘The Madam doesn’t like it this way,’ and ‘The Madam doesn’t like it that way,’ and ‘I’ve been with the Madam for twenty years,’ they tell you. It takes a diplomat to get along. Then there is the rooms they give you, and every one of them I’ve ever seen is cheerless. If you have a bottle in your suitcase, it’s a terrible temptation in the beginning not to take a drink to raise your spirits. But I have a strong character. It was different with my poor sister. She used to complain about nervousness, but, sitting here thinking about her tonight, I wonder if she suffered from nervousness at all. I wonder if she didn’t make it all up. I wonder if she just wasn’t meant to be in service. Toward the end, the only work she could get was out in the country, where nobody else would go, and she never lasted much more than a week or two. She’d take a little gin for her nervousness, then a little for her tiredness, and when she’d drunk her own bottle and everything she could steal, they’d hear about it in the front part of the house. There was usually a scene, and my poor sister always liked to have the last word. Oh, if I had had my way, they’d be a law against it! It’s not my business to advise you to take anything from your father, but I’d be proud of you if you’d empty his gin bottle into the sink now and then—the filthy stuff! But it’s made me feel better to talk with you, sweetheart. It’s made me not miss my poor sister so much. Now I’ll read a little more in my Bible, and then I’ll get you some supper.”

  THE LAWTONS had had a bad year with cooks—there had been five of them. The arrival of Rosemary had made Marcia Lawton think back to a vague theory of dispensations; she had suffered, and now she was being rewarded. Rosemary was clean, industrious, and cheerful, and her table—as the Lawtons said—was just like the Chambord. On Wednesday night after dinner, she took the train to New York, promising to return on the evening train Thursday. Thursday morning, Marcia went into the cook’s room. It was a distasteful but a habitual precaution. The absence of anything personal in the room—a package of cigarettes, a fountain pen, an alarm clock, a radio, or anything else that could tie the old woman to the place—gave her the uneasy feeling that she was being deceived, as she had so often been deceived by cooks in the past. She opened the closet door and saw a single uniform hanging there and, on the closet floor, Rosemary’s old suitcase and the white shoes she wore in the kitchen. The suitcase was locked, but when Marcia lifted it, it seemed to be nearly empty.

  Mr. Lawton and Amy drove to the station after dinner on Thursday to meet the eight-sixteen train. The top of the car was down, and the brisk air, the starlight, and the company of her father made the little girl feel kindly toward the world. The railroad station in Shady Hill resembled the railroad stations in old movies she had seen on television, where detectives and spies, bluebeards and their trusting victims, were met to be driven off to remote country estates. Amy liked the station, particularly toward dark. She imagined that the people who traveled on the locals were engaged on errands that were more urgent and sinister than commuting. Except when there was a heavy fog or a snowstorm, the club car that her father traveled on seemed to have the gloss and the monotony of the rest of his life. The locals that ran at odd hours belonged to a world of deeper contrasts, where she would like to live.

  They were a few minutes early, and Amy got out of the car and stood on the platform. She wondered what the fringe of string that hung above the tracks at either end of the station was for, b
ut she knew enough not to ask her father, because he wouldn’t be able to tell her. She could hear the train before it came into view, and the noise excited her and made her happy. When the train drew in to the station and stopped, she looked in the lighted windows for Rosemary and didn’t see her. Mr. Lawton got out of the car and joined Amy on the platform. They could see the conductor bending over someone in a seat, and finally the cook arose. She clung to the conductor as he led her out to the platform of the car, and she was crying. “Like peaches and cream,” Amy heard her sob. “A lovely, lovely person.” The conductor spoke to her kindly, put his arm around her shoulders, and eased her down the steps. Then the train pulled out, and she stood there drying her tears. “Don’t say a word, Mr. Lawton,” she said, “and I won’t say anything.” She held out a small paper bag. “Here’s a present for you, little girl.”

  “Thank you, Rosemary,” Amy said. She looked into the paper bag and saw that it contained several packets of Japanese water flowers.

  Rosemary walked toward the car with the caution of someone who can hardly find her way in the dim light. A sour smell came from her. Her best coat was spotted with mud and ripped in the back. Mr. Lawton told Amy to get in the back seat of the car, and made the cook sit in front, beside him. He slammed the car door shut after her angrily, and then went around to the driver’s seat and drove home. Rosemary reached into her handbag and took out a Coca-Cola bottle with a cork stopper and took a drink. Amy could tell by the smell that the Coca-Cola bottle was filled with gin.

  “Rosemary!” Mr. Lawton said.

  “I’m lonely,” the cook said. “I’m lonely, and I’m afraid, and it’s all I’ve got.”

  He said nothing more until he had turned into their drive and brought the car around to the back door. “Go and get your suitcase, Rosemary,” he said. “I’ll wait here in the car.”

  As soon as the cook had staggered into the house, he told Amy to go in by the front door. “Go upstairs to your room and get ready for bed.”