by John Cheever
Honora turned and stared at Mrs. Kissel, seized with jealousy, her neighbor seemed so simple and good and to have so few problems on her mind. They were at Travertine then and when the bus stopped Honora got off and marched up the street to the sign painter’s.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Early the next morning Leander walked down the fish-smelling path to the wharf where the Topaze lay. A dozen passengers were waiting to buy their tickets and go aboard. Then he noticed that a sign had been hung on his wheelhouse. Then he thought at once of Honora and wondered what she had up her sleeve. The sign was painted on wood and must have cost five dollars. NO TRESPASSING, it said. THIS YACHT FOR SALE. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION SEE HONORA WAPSHOT 27 BOAT STREET. For a second his heart sank; his spirit seemed to wither. Then he was angry. The sign was hung, not nailed, to the wheelhouse, and he seized it and was about to throw it into the river when he realized that it was a good piece of wood and could be used for something else. “There won’t be any voyage today,” he told his passengers. Then he put the sign under his arm and strode through the group to the square. Of course most of the tradespeople in the village knew about the sign and most of them watched Leander. He saw no one and it was a struggle for him to keep from talking loudly to himself. He was, as we know, in his sixties; a little stooped, a little inclined to duck-foot, but a very handsome old man with thick hair and a boyish mien. The sign was heavy and made his arm lame and he had to change it from side to side before he got to Boat Street. His spirits by this time were fulminating. There wasn’t much common sense left in him. He pounded on Honora’s door with the edge of the sign.
Honora was sewing. She took her time getting to the door. First she reached for her stick and went around the parlor gathering up all the photographs of Moses and Coverly. She dumped these onto the floor behind the sofa. The reason she did this was that, although she liked having photographs of the boys around, she never wanted any of the family to catch her in such an open demonstration of affection. Then she straightened her clothes and started for the door. Leander was pounding on it. “If you mar the paint on my door,” she called to him, “you’ll pay for it.” As soon as she opened the door he stormed into the hall and roared, “What in Christ’s name is the meaning of this?”
“You don’t have to be profane,” she said. She put her hands over her ears. “I won’t listen to profanity.”
“What do you want from me, Honora?”
“I can’t hear a word you say,” she said. “I won’t listen to swearing.”
“I’m not swearing,” he shouted. “I’ve stopped swearing.”
“She’s mine,” Honora said, taking her hands down from her ears. “I can do anything I want with her.”
“You can’t sell her.”
“I can too,” Honora said. “The D’Agostino boys want to buy her for a fishing boat.”
“I mean she’s my usefulness, Honora.” There was nothing pleading in his voice. He was still shouting. “You gave her to me. I’m used to her. She’s my boat.”
“I only loaned her to you.”
“Goddamn it, Honora, the members of a family can’t backbite one another like this.”
“I won’t listen to swearing,” Honora said. Up went her hands again.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to stop swearing.”
“Why did you do this? Why did you do this behind my back? Why didn’t you tell me what was on your mind?”
“She belongs to me, I can do anything I want with her.”
“We’ve always shared things, Honora. That rug belongs to me. That rug’s mine.” He meant the long rug in the hall.
“Your dear mother gave that rug to me,” Honora said.
“She loaned it to you.”
“She meant me to have it.”
“That’s my rug.”
“It’s nothing of the kind.”
“Two can play at this game as well as one.” Leander put down the sign and picked up an end of the rug.
“You put down that rug, Leander Wapshot,” Honora shouted.
“It’s my rug.”
“You put down that rug this instant. Do you hear me?”
“It’s mine. It’s my rug.” He pulled the folds of the rug, which was long and so dirty that the dust from its warp made him sneeze, toward the door. Then Honora went to the other end of the rug, seized it and called for Maggie. When Maggie came out of the kitchen she grabbed Honora’s end—they were all sneezing—and they all began to pull. It was a very unpleasant scene, but if we accept the quaintness of St. Botolphs we must also accept the fact that it was the country of spite fences and internecine quarrels and that the Pinchot twins lived until their death in a house divided by a chalk line. Leander lost, of course. How could a man win such a contest? Leaving Honora and Maggie in possession of the rug he stormed out of the house, his feelings in such a turmoil that he did not know where to go, and walking south on Boat Street until he came to a field he sat down in the sweet grass and chewed the succulent ends of a few stalks to take the bitterness out of his mouth.
During his lifetime Leander had seen, in the village, the number of sanctuaries for men reduced to one. The Horse Guards had disbanded; the Atlantic Club was shut; even the boat club had been floated down to Travertine. The only place left was the Niagara Hose Company, and he walked back to the village and climbed the stairs beside the fire engine to the meeting room. The smell of many jolly beefsteak suppers was in the air, but there was no one in the room but old Perley Sturgis and Perley was asleep, On the walls were many photographs of Wapshots: Leander as a young man; Leander and Hamlet; Benjamin, Ebenezer, Lorenzo and Thaddeus. The photographs of himself as a young man made him unhappy and he went and sat in one of the Morris chairs near the window.
His anger at Honora had changed to a pervasive sense of uneasiness. She had something up her sleeve and he wished he knew what it was. He wondered what she could do and then he realized that she could do anything she pleased. The Topaze and the farm were hers. She paid the school bills and the interest on the mortgage. She had even filled the cellar with coal. She had offered to do all this in the kindest imaginable way. I have the wherewithal, Leander, she had said. Why shouldn’t I help my only family? It was his fault—he couldn’t blame her—that he had never expected consequence for this largess. He knew that she was meddlesome but he had overlooked this fact, borne along on his conviction of the abundance of life—carp in the inlet, trout in the streams, grouse in the orchard and money in Honora’s purse—the feeling that the world was contrived to cheer and delight him. A ragged image of his wife and his sons appeared to him then—thinly dressed and standing in a snowstorm—which was, after all, not so outrageous since couldn’t Honora, if she wanted, let them all experience hunger? This image of his family roused in him passionate feelings. He would defend and shelter them. He would defend them with sticks and stones; with his naked fists. But this did not change the facts of possession. Everything belonged to Honora. Even the rocking horse in the attic. He should have led his life differently.
But out of the window he could see the blue sky above the trees of the square and he was easily charmed with the appearance of the world. How could anything go wrong in such a paradise? “Wake up, Perley, wake up and we’ll play some backgammon,” he shouted. Perley woke up and they played backgammon for matchsticks until noon. They had some lunch in the bakery and played backgammon some more. In the middle of the afternoon it suddenly occurred to Leander that all he needed was money. Poor Leander! We cannot endow him with wisdom and powers of invention that he does not have and give him a prime-ministerial breadth of mind. This is what he did.
He crossed the square to the Cartwright Block and climbed the stairs. He said good afternoon to Mrs. Marston in the telephone-company office—a pleasant white-haired widow surrounded by many potted plants that seemed to bloom and flourish in the fertile climate of her disposition. Leander spoke to her about the rain and then went down the hall to the
doctor’s office, where a WALK IN sign hung from the doorknob like a bib. In the waiting room there was a little girl with a bandaged hand, leaning her head against her mother’s breast, and old Billy Tompkins with an empty pill bottle. The furniture seemed to have been brought in from some porch, and the wicker chair in which Leander sat squeaked as loudly as if he had sat down on a nest of mice. The pack, hedges and jumpers of a fox hunt appeared on the wallpaper and in these repeated images Leander saw a reflection on the vitality of the village—a proneness to dwell on strange and different ways of life. The door to the inner office opened and a dark-skinned young woman who was pregnant came out. Then the child with the bandaged hand was led in by her mother. She was not in the office long. Then Billy Tompkins went in with his empty pill bottle. He came out with a prescription and Leander went in.
“What can I do for you, Captain Wapshot?” the doctor asked.
“I was playing backgammon with Perley Sturgis at the fire-house,” Leander said, “and I had an idea. I wondered if you could give me a job.”
“Oh, I’m afraid not,” the doctor said pleasantly enough. “I don’t even have a nurse.”
“That wasn’t the kind of work I had in mind,” Leander said. “Can anyone hear us?”
“I don’t believe so,” the doctor said.
“Take me for an experiment,” Leander said. “Please take me. I’ve decided that’s what I want to do. I’ll sign anything. I won’t tell anyone. Operate on me. Do anything you want. Just give me a little money.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Captain Wapshot.”
“Take me,” Leander said. “I’m a very interesting specimen. Pure Yankee stock. Think of the blood in my veins. State senators. Scholars. Sea captains. Heroes. Schoolmasters. You can make medical history. You can make a name for yourself. You’ll be famous. I’ll give you the family history. I’ll give you a regular pedigree. I don’t care what you do with me. Just give me a little money.”
“Please get out of here, Captain Wapshot.”
“It would help humanity some, wouldn’t it?” Leander asked. “It would help humanity. Nobody has to know. I won’t tell anybody. I promise I won’t tell anybody. I’ll promise on the Bible. You can have a laboratory nobody knows about. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll go there whenever you say. I’ll go there nights if you want me. I’ll tell Mrs. Wapshot I’m traveling.”
“Please get out of here, Captain Wapshot.”
Leander picked up his hat and left. In the square a woman, from the other side of the river, was calling in Italian to her son. “Speak English,” Leander told her. “Speak English. This is the United States.” He drove back to the farm in the old Buick.
He was tired, and happy to see the lights of the farm. He was hungry and thirsty and his appetite seemed to embrace the landscape and the house. Lulu had burned something. There was a smell of burned food in the hall. Sarah was in the back parlor.
“Did you see the sign?” she asked.
“Yes,” Leander said. “Was she here today?”
“Yes. She was here this afternoon.”
“She hung it on the wheelhouse,” Leander said. “I guess she hung it there herself.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The sign.”
“But it’s on the gatepost.”
“What do you mean?”
“The sign’s on the gatepost. She put it there this afternoon.”
“She wants to sell the farm?”
“Oh, no.”
“What is it, what is it then? What in hell is it?”
“Leander. Please.”
“I can’t talk with anyone.”
“You don’t have to talk like that.”
“Well, what is it? Tell me, Sarah, what is it?”
“She thinks that we ought to take in tourists. She’s spoken to the Pattersons and they make enough money taking in tourists to go to Daytona every year.”
“I don’t want to go to Daytona.”
“We have three extra bedrooms,” Sarah said. “She thinks we ought to let them.”
“That old woman has not got a scrap of the sense of the fitness of things left in her head,” Leander shouted. “She’ll sell my boat to foreigners and fill my house with strangers. She has no sense of fitness.”
“She only wants…”
“She only wants to drive me out of my head. I can’t make head nor tail of what she’s doing. I don’t want to go to Daytona. What makes her think I want to go to Daytona?”
“Leander. Please. Shhh…” In the dusk she saw the headlights of a car come up the drive. She went down the hall to the side door and onto the stoop.
“Can you put us up?” a man called cheerfully.
“Well, I believe so,” Sarah said. Leander followed her down the hall but when he heard the stranger, veiled by the dark, close the door of his car, he stepped back from the door.
“What do you charge?” the man asked.
“Whatever’s customary,” Sarah said. “Perhaps you’d like to look at the rooms?” A man and a woman came up the stairs.
“All we want are comfortable beds and a bathroom,” the man said.
“Well, the bed has a nice hair mattress,” Sarah said thoughtfully, “but there’s some rust in the hot-water tank and we’ve had an awful time with the water pump this month, but I’d like you to see the rooms.”
She opened the screen door and stepped into the hall to be followed by the strangers and Leander, standing there and trapped, opened the hall closet and crashed into the dark with its collection of old coats and athletic equipment. He heard the strangers enter his house and follow Sarah up the stairs. Just then the old water closet sounded the opening notes of a performance of unusual vehemence. As this noise abated Leander heard the stranger ask, “Then you don’t have a room with a private bath?”
“Oh no,” Sarah said, “I’m sorry,” and there was sorrow in her voice. “You see this is one of the oldest houses in St. Botolphs and our bathroom is the oldest in the county.”
“Well, what we were looking for was a place with a private bathroom,” the stranger said, “and…”
“We always like to have a private bathroom,” his wife said gently. “Even when we travel on trains we like to have one of those compartments.”
“De gustibus non est disputandum,” Sarah said sweetly, but her sweetness was forced.
“Thank you for showing us the rooms.”
“You’re quite welcome.”
The screen door slammed and when the car had gone down the drive Leander came out of the closet. He strode down the drive to where a sign, TOURIST HOME, was hung on his gatepost. It was about the size and quality of the sign on the Topaze and raising it in the air with all his might he brought it down on the stones, splitting the sign in two and jarring his own bones. Later that night he walked over to Boat Street.
Honora’s house was dark but Leander stood squarely in front of it and called her name. He gave her a chance to put on a wrapper and then shouted her name again.
“What is it, Leander?” she asked. He couldn’t see her, but her voice was clear enough and he knew she had come to the window. “What do you want?”
“Oh you’re so high and mighty these last days, Honora. Don’t forget that I know who you are. I can remember you feeding swill to the pigs and coming back from Waylands’ with the milk pails. I have something to tell you, Honora. I have something important to tell you. It was a long time ago. It was right after you came back from Spain. I was standing in front of Moodys’ with Mitch Emerson. When you walked through the square Mitch said something about you. I couldn’t repeat what he said. Well, I took him out behind the lumberyard, Honora, and I walloped him until he cried. He weighed fifty pounds more than me and all the Emersons were hardy, but I made him cry. I never told you that.”
“Thank you, Leander.”
“And other things, too. I’ve always been dutiful towards you. I would have gone to Spain and killed Sastago i
f you’d asked me. There’s not a hair on my body that has not turned white in your service. So why do you devil me?”
“Moses has to go,” Honora said.
“What?”
“Moses has to go out in the world and prove himself. Oh, it’s hard for me to say this, Leander, but I think it’s right. He hasn’t raised a finger all summer except to indulge himself, and all the men of our family went out into the world when they were young; all the Wapshots. I’ve thought it over and I think he’ll want to go but I’m afraid he’ll be homesick. Oh, I was so homesick in Spain, Leander. I’ll never forget it.”
“Moses is a good boy,” Leander said. “He’ll do well anywhere.” He straightened up, thinking proudly of his son. “What did you have in mind?”
“I thought he might go to someplace like New York or Washington, someplace strange and distant.”
“That’s a bully idea, Honora. Is that what all the trouble’s been about?”
“What trouble?”
“Are you going to sell the Topaze?”
“The D’Agostino boys have changed their minds.”
“I’ll talk it over with Sarah.”
“It won’t be easy for any of us,” Honora said, and then she sighed. Leander heard the tremulous sound, shaken and breaking like smoke and seeming to arise from such a deep base of the old lady’s spirit that age had not changed its tenderness or its purity, and it affected him like the sigh of a child.
“Good night, Honora dear,” he said.
“Feel that lovely breeze.”
“Yes. Good night.”
“Good night, Leander.”