by Chip Cheek
The days were long. There was little to do. She took naps in the afternoons, and Henry coveted the time alone. He’d been constipated since before their wedding, and only when she was asleep did he feel comfortable enough to try to go to the bathroom—far away from her, in the lavatory off the kitchen. The results were always unsatisfying. Afterward, feeling bloated, he’d sit in the den with the windows open or out on the back porch, where the birch trees made a calming sound.
He was reading Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, which his uncle Carswall had given him as a wedding present. Carswall had read it when he was a young man, and it had been a good guide to him, he said. “You’re always going to be at work on yourself, son, and it’s always going to be a struggle. But it’s the struggle that’ll make you a good man.” Henry liked the ideas; he had a vision of the kind of man he wanted to be—virtuous, humble, strong, and bold, full of good cheer but in healthy moderation—and he was eager to learn. But the book, so far, was a thumping bore, and he couldn’t read more than a few sentences before his mind began to wander.
* * *
Thursday morning they walked out to the marina to look at the boats. At the end of a pier stood an octagonal building with large windows on all sides. Effie thought she remembered going to parties there. The entrance was padlocked, but beside it a fresh-looking poster of a jack-o’-lantern in a sailor’s cap advertised a dance for Friday, October 11. “Is that tomorrow?” Henry asked, but Effie said no, that was next Friday.
“Hey,” he said, “that’s our last night here.” He took her hand. “Our last night, there’s going to be a dance here. How about that?”
She didn’t seem to share his excitement. She touched her fingertips to the poster. “My God,” she said. “I can’t believe we’re going to be here that long.”
They went down to the beach and walked along the edge of the surf with their shoes in their hands.
“You know,” she said after a long silence, “we don’t have to stay the whole two weeks. We could take the train out on Sunday and be home by Monday morning.”
“You want to leave?” he asked.
“Maybe?” she said.
From here Cape May really was beautiful. The edge of the ocean stretched off into the distance ahead of them, on one side the beach and the tall grasses and, farther off, the big Victorian hotels, the columns and striped awnings. Signal Creek seemed so dreary in comparison. Pine woods, fields of cotton and peanuts, the Courthouse Square, the toffee-colored creek itself. Carswall and Henry’s mother were having an annex of the house—what they grandly called “the Old Wing”—remodeled for them. A living room with a potbelly stove, a bedroom, a lavatory, a tiny hopeful room for the future baby. The thought of settling into their lives there—so soon, anyway—depressed him. “I don’t want to leave,” he said. “I could stay here forever.”
Effie smiled at him. “I’m glad you feel that way.” She stopped to pick up a shell from the flat, wet sand at their feet and turned it over in her hand. “It just feels so sad here, Henry. Sad and—I don’t know.” She looked past him. “Dull, I guess.”
It stung, and he opened his mouth to speak, but she kept on, oblivious: “Aunt Lizzie’s dead and gone. None of my old friends are here. Uncle George … Did you know he wanted to charge us for the cottage, and Mama had to talk him out of it? She had to remind him we were still technically his family. She was so embarrassed.” Henry didn’t see what that had to do with anything, but he said nothing. “I don’t know what I was thinking. That boy at the diner was right: we should have gone to Florida.”
“Eff,” he said, collecting himself, “we can’t go home early.”
“Oh, Henry…”
“No, listen,” he said, but he wasn’t sure how to say what he wanted to say. How humiliating it would be. How everyone would detect failure, even if it wasn’t really there: they would think it and it would burrow in and eventually become true. “Think of your mama,” he said. “My mama. What are they going to say?”
It seemed to have an effect on her. She nodded, and tossed the shell away. They continued walking, and Henry thought he had won the point, although what good was it if she was just going to be sad and bored the rest of the time? But after a few minutes she said, “I don’t care what people say, Henry. I just want to go home.”
* * *
So they would leave Sunday afternoon. At least they would have the weekend. Henry felt hurt and angry at first—it was rotten of her to be sad, to say things were dull after what they had shared—but soon he felt as though a pall had risen from them, now that their honeymoon was ruined. After supper—the pork loin, which was delicious—they opened Uncle George’s brandy again and the evening took on a valedictory air. They took the bottle out to the front porch and watched the light fade from the elm trees. They told stories. How Betty Moody wanted Maynard Givens’s babies. How Suzie Blanchard could let the farts rip when it was just the girls. The time Hoke had tried to jump Lord’s Gully on his bike. Henry loved the rare occasions when he could make Effie laugh, when she briefly lost her cool and the whole top half of her body bounced. “Stop it, stop it,” she said, “you’re going to make me wet myself.” They finished the brandy and opened a bottle of scotch. They couldn’t pronounce the name. “I bet it’s expensive,” he said, and they said cheers and clinked their glasses. It was dark out now, and they’d turned the radio on, and soft, airy music was coming out to them on the front porch. They were in a lull—a comfortable silence this time, drunk and content—when Henry noticed the lights down at the end of the street.
He stood up and went to the railing to get a better look. There were lights in the windows of the house on the corner—three houses down, on the other side of the street, where New Hampshire Avenue intersected with Madison Avenue. He called Effie over to see.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” she said.
They weren’t alone anymore.
“You never said anything about that house,” he said. “Do you remember who lived there?”
She thought about it. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s been so long.”
With their drinks in hand they walked down the sidewalk until they stood directly across from the house. Most of it was invisible in the dark, but the downstairs windows were bright. They watched and listened for signs of life, but nothing moved behind the curtains, and all they could hear was the surf and the wind in the trees.
“Should we go say hello?” Henry said.
Effie reached up to pat her hair. “No—Lord, no. It’s late.” She held up her drink. “We’d look like a couple of drunks, wouldn’t we?”
“Maybe tomorrow, then.”
She nodded. They stood watching a few minutes longer, until Effie pointed out that they were acting like creeps, and they turned back to the cottage.
* * *
The next morning, on their way down to the beach—it was a balmy day, finally, and Effie thought they might be able to get into the water—they passed the house on the corner and saw three automobiles crowded in the driveway: a little red sports car, a baby-blue Cadillac convertible, and what looked to Henry like a Rolls-Royce, though he’d never seen one in real life. They were rich, these people. Except that the lawn, more than the others on the street, was overgrown with weeds, and the house, set back in the gloom of the trees, had a condemned look to it.
The water was too rough for swimming, so they climbed up onto one of the tall lifeguards’ chairs and looked out over the surf. Effie was trying to remember who had lived at the house. She held the wide brim of her hat with both hands so it wouldn’t fly off. “It could have been the Richardses, I guess. They had a daughter, Mattie, who was a few years older than me—but they might have lived over on Maryland Avenue, I don’t know. It’s probably no one. A lot of these places turn over.”
When they passed the house again on their way back, two more cars had parked along the curb—a long, shiny Buick and another Cadillac. “It must be a party,” Henry said.
“Or a family thing. It might be rude to crash it.”
“Who said anything about crashing? We can just say hello.”
* * *
They decided they would do it at five, which was early enough, Effie thought, that they wouldn’t interrupt the newcomers’ supper. “We’ll just stop by,” she said. “If they invite us in, fine. If not—well, we’ll just see if there’s any life in this town on a Friday.”
They were nervous, for some reason; he could tell that she was too. Maybe it was the Rolls-Royce in the driveway. Maybe, absurdly, it was that they were expecting some kind of rescue and didn’t want to bungle it. Henry wore his good trousers and shoes and a gray blazer. Effie wore her navy-blue dress with the white collar and white belt cinched tightly around her waist. She’d bundled her hair up and looked pretty, especially in the late-afternoon light, but not as though she’d dressed up for a party, which might come off as presumptuous.
Another car had parked by the curb. That made six in all. They walked up the gravel drive and found the path, almost completely obscured by weeds, that led to the front door.
The front door was open, and through the screen door they could see to the back windows, but they couldn’t see anyone inside. Effie pulled a rope hanging by the door and a bell clanged inside. They waited. After a minute she pulled the rope again, and finally a voice came from deep within the house—“Coming!”—and soon a handsome woman with blond, elegantly coiffed hair and a white halter-top dress pushed the screen door open. “Hello!” she cried, looking at Henry, whose eyes dropped involuntarily to her breasts. “You must be…” And she seemed to search for the right name, ready to be utterly delighted, whoever it was.
“We’re just staying down the street,” Effie said. “We were on our way to supper and saw the cars down here and figured we’d introduce ourselves. We don’t want to bother you.”
While Effie spoke, the delight in the woman’s face faded, and she leaned forward to get a closer look. “No,” she said. “No, it can’t be—it just can’t be. Is that my little belle?”
Effie glanced at Henry, as if he would know the answer.
“My God!” the woman cried. “It is you. You’re the little Southern girl from down the street! My God—I could faint!” The woman wrapped her arms around Effie and squeezed her, and Effie tipped her head up as if for air. She seemed alarmed. Finally the woman let her go and said, “Don’t you remember me? You’re going to break my heart if you don’t remember me.”
And now something seemed to dawn on Effie. “Clara?” she said. “Clara Strauss?”
“Yes!” the woman cried, clapping her hands together.
And though Effie was smiling broadly, Henry knew her well enough to know better: she was sorry they had come.
Two
“Come in, come in—Jesus!” the woman demanded, as if to scold them for not arriving sooner, and led them across a wide foyer into a bright living area that looked out through a bank of windows onto a lush patio and swimming pool. The shadowy look of the house from the outside was a disguise for the brightness inside. It seemed to Henry like an enchantment.
“We can only stay a minute,” Effie said. “We were just on our way to dinner.”
“I can’t believe it’s you,” Clara said, stopping to appraise her. “How long has it been? Five, six years? A lifetime? Who is this?” She placed her hand at the small of Henry’s back. When Effie told her he was her husband, the woman gasped—she had never heard of anything so marvelous—and gripped his hand firmly, painfully. “My God, how do you do? I’m Clara—Clara!”
“I’m Henry!”
“Yes!”
Effie explained that Clara had been her older cousin Holly’s friend back in the day. On occasion Effie would have to go along with them to the beach or into town, if there wasn’t anyone else to watch her.
“Holly’s friend.” Clara put her hands on her hips. “What a cold bitch you are. I adored this creature,” she said to Henry, and to Effie: “Don’t you remember how much fun we had? But you were so young and impressionable then. And look at you now: a beauty! Married to William Holden, no less!” She laughed, and took hold of Henry’s forearm, and Henry smiled back at her like a fool. “Oh, my belle,” she said, and in a voice like Scarlett O’Hara: “My Effie Mae. That’s what I called you, do you remember?”
“Yes,” Effie said evenly.
“Those were good times, weren’t they? But the years do pass. Sit, sit!”
She directed them to a sofa that faced the back windows and a large fireplace made of slate and what appeared to be loose rocks. It didn’t look stable. The ceiling was open rafters, very high, and two frosted windows in the roof let in more light, and over the foyer, behind them now, an upstairs balcony ran the length of the living area. It was a much larger house than Aunt Lizzie’s, but it felt scattered and haphazard—and at the moment, empty of people.
“What can I get you to drink?” Clara said.
“Oh, we’re fine,” Effie said. “Really, we can’t stay for long.”
“Nonsense. It is cocktail o’clock. You have to stay for a little while. I haven’t seen you in so long, and here you are, like magic, back in this godforsaken place.” She looked at Henry. “What will you have?”
He waited for a cue from Effie, but she only stared at him helplessly. For his part, he was content to stay. “I’ll take anything,” he said.
“Gin and tonic it is!” she cried. “The only suitable drink before dinner.” She swept over to the minibar, and Effie closed her eyes and laid her head back on the sofa. “My God! Effie Moore, right here in Cape May, after all these years.”
“Effie Tarleton,” Effie said.
“That’s right! Oh, it’s all coming back to me now.”
She was a whirlwind, this woman. Henry had never met anyone like her. She was in her early thirties, he guessed, and big, not just physically big but aura big, the way Jayne Mansfield would be big if she could step out of the screen at the drive-in. She was at least as tall as he was, with a strong jaw and broad shoulders, and her breasts seemed always on the verge of falling out of her top. It was an effort not to stare at them.
“But what are you doing here this time of year?” she asked, taking two tall glasses down from a shelf behind the minibar.
Effie lifted her head and reported, as if with regret, that they were on their honeymoon.
“No!” Clara slammed the glasses down, and for a moment Henry thought she was actually angry at them. “You mean you’re newlyweds? You mean you’re on your honeymoon right now?” She turned away from them and shouted, “Mrs. Pavich!”
From an archway that led off the den a voice came back to them, thickly accented and dripping with ennui: “Yes, Mrs. Kirschbaum.”
“I have changed my mind. We will have the carrot cake.” She turned back to Henry and Effie. “But of course you’re newlyweds. You’re glowing—I can see it now.”
Henry smiled at Effie, but Effie kept her eyes fixed on Clara, a taut, neutral expression on her face.
“Well, that settles it: you’re staying for dinner. I can’t imagine where you were thinking of going; it can’t be better than what old Mrs. Pavich is cooking up. Everyone’s down at the beach right now—well, not Richard, of course—but we’re having a party, and you two are going to stay and celebrate with us.”
In his confusion Henry said, “You’re throwing us a party?” and Effie looked at him like he was an idiot indeed.
“Oh, I love him!” Clara said.
“I wish we could stay,” Effie said. “But we’re not here much longer, and we really wanted to see a little more of the town, you know—have dinner, see a movie…”
But Clara was rummaging behind the bar. “I hope Mrs. Pavich hasn’t forgotten the ice. We will need a lot of ice.” She stood up straight. “You two just sit there and look perfect and I’ll be back in thirty seconds. I can’t wait to catch up.” She dashed off toward the archway, shouting “Mrs. Pavich!” again.
<
br /> “Wow,” Henry said. “She’s something else, isn’t she?”
“We’re leaving,” Effie said.
She stood up from the sofa, but Henry took hold of her wrist. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“The one person we run into, and it’s got to be Clara Strauss. Or whatever her name is. She must have snagged a husband.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
She brushed his hand away and looked toward the archway, from which they could hear Clara gleefully lecturing Mrs. Pavich: “This one is for the hollandaise, dear, and this one is for the pepper sauce. Do you see the difference in the spouts?”
“She’s a snot-nosed bully and a harlot,” Effie said. “She’s not a good person.”
Henry laughed. “Come on. Sit down. We’re not just going to walk out on her, I don’t care who she is.”
Effie sat down. “Of all the people—I mean, really. It never occurred to me. She wasn’t here the past couple of times, not since Holly married.” Clara was her cousin Holly’s friend, she explained again. Holly was Uncle George’s eldest daughter from a previous marriage. She was more than a dozen years older than Effie and never took to Aunt Lizzie or to the rest of her new family from Georgia, who were nothing but rubes, as far as she was concerned. The two of them, Holly and Clara, teased and tormented Effie, made fun of her accent, asked where her mammy was, made references to things she couldn’t possibly have understood—she was, what, eight years old?—and laughed at her ignorance.…
“What kinds of things?” Henry asked.
She seemed to struggle to find the words. “Like—I don’t know. Like they’d always be drinking and smoking around me, or they’d take boys under the promenade and leave me there on the beach to play with myself.”