by Chip Cheek
The Cadillac convertible and the Rolls-Royce were still parked down at Clara’s, and from the open windows came the sound of someone repeating an intricate line of music on the piano—skillfully, Henry thought. He didn’t know the piece, but it was lovely. It reminded him of the stone Jesus in his aunt Lily’s flower garden, the lichen growing in the folds of its robe, which made it look like an ancient ruin.
“It must be awful over there,” Effie said. “I feel for Mrs. Pavich.”
They walked down to the promenade, where the lights had come on. The sea was soft and calm. The gloaming, Henry thought—a word he enjoyed. He took Effie’s hand. There were people out: three or four of them, a family maybe, far ahead of them on the promenade, an old couple down on the beach, a pack of Coast Guard cadets going purposefully down Beach Avenue. Henry had an urge to follow them. Saturday evening: the place was stirring, a little. The storefronts were still dark, but from somewhere deeper in the town came music—jazz, something lively, but very faint, like an echo of the party last night. They came to the end of the promenade, where the horizon was still bright, and Venus hung like a diamond partway up the sky. Henry suggested they sit at one of the benches and watch the light fade, but the wind coming off the water was too chilly, so they turned back.
* * *
For supper she fried up some ham and boiled a few small potatoes, which was the last of their food, aside from what they’d saved for breakfast tomorrow. He tried the radio, but on every station it was the news, something the Soviets were doing. Always there was something about the Soviets. Korea, outer space, the threat of nuclear war. He tended to avoid the news. He put on a Glenn Miller record instead, the best thing he could find in Uncle George’s collection, and sat down to say grace.
“I’ll say it,” Effie said. “You don’t put enough feeling into it.”
“You want me to say it like Uncle Carswall?”
“God no, we don’t need a sermon. It’s just—you have to mean what you say. You have to be conscious of it.”
“It’s grace,” Henry said. “It’s ‘Good bread, good meat; good Lord, let’s eat.’”
But she insisted, and Henry said fine, clasped his hands together, and closed his eyes. “Dear Lord,” she said, “thank you for this food we are about to receive, and thank you for this week that Henry and I have shared together, which is the first week of our marriage.”
He opened his eyes. “Today is our one-week anniversary.”
She smiled at him. “Don’t interrupt me.” He closed his eyes again, and she continued: “Thank you for this week, dear Lord, and thank you for bringing us together, and for sending me such a fine and thoughtful husband, who I know will be a support to his family. Please bless us, dear Lord, with healthy children, and be with us as we raise them to be good and sensible people. Bless us with wealth and happiness, dear Lord, inasmuch as you see fit, and please forgive us for all our sins, for we try to be good, and we ask in your name—amen.”
How he loved her. He took up his fork and knife and told her that was very nice.
“You just have to say things you mean,” she said.
* * *
Effie went up to bed early. Henry poured himself some of Uncle George’s scotch and went out onto the front porch, feeling aroused. It wasn’t yet nine. Down at Clara’s the windows were aglow, and the sky overhead was full of trembling stars. Over there, the night would just be beginning.
Sometime later, when he’d begun to doze off, the sound of breaking glass startled him. It had come from Clara’s. He sat up to look, but couldn’t see anything. Now a car door slammed, an engine started, the red glow of taillights appeared. Then the car swung out of the drive, skidded to a stop, accelerated around the corner, and was gone.
It had been the Rolls-Royce. He’d seen it in a flash, under the streetlights on Madison.
Soon the downstairs lights went out, and a light in a window upstairs appeared. Henry looked at it for a long time until it too went out, and all the house was dark.
* * *
Effie woke the next morning in a playful mood, nuzzling and tickling him, laughing at his morning erection, which tented his pajama bottoms—but she was adamant about going to church. When he reached for her she rolled away and got out of bed, declaring that they would be late if they didn’t hurry.
“The Good Lord gives a pass for holidays, doesn’t he?” he asked.
“If you don’t want to go, don’t go,” she said, pulling her slip off over her head. Her breasts lit the room. “You’re an adult, I can’t force you.”
Outside it was warm, and a few other people were strolling about, including a young couple—like them, but in comfortable linens—who smiled and nodded as they passed. A trio of young boys ran by wearing swim trunks, and Henry desperately wanted to go wherever they were going. Instead, they entered the gloom of Cape May United Methodist Church.
The preacher was already speaking. They took a seat in the last pew, and Henry waited for his eyes to adjust. The congregation consisted of no more than a dozen people, and most of them sat apart from one another, as if they were strangers. On the walls between the stained-glass windows were plaques filled with names—sailors lost at sea, Henry imagined.
The sermon had to do with the woes of the Pharisees. All worldly concerns were worthless. The only thing of value was the soul, which was a candle in a vast dark. The preacher, a slight, balding man in a white alb, was not a gifted speaker. Not like Reverend Miller back home, who preached like he was sharing an amusing story, who made Jesus an amiable friend. This preacher intoned, the sound of his voice like an omen of doom.
“Ye are like unto whited sepulchers,” he read, “which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” Then he stared into the space above the congregation. “Your bodies are naught but walking coffins.”
They bolted as soon as the sermon was over.
“Do you feel better?” Henry asked outside.
“God,” Effie said. “If I had to listen to that man every Sunday, I think I’d slit my wrists.”
They found an ice-cream shop that was open—a miracle—and bought cones of Neapolitan and walked with them through the town, making a lazy circuit past closed storefronts and houses, through deserted but sunny squares. They could go to the grocer’s while they were out, Effie suggested, and stock up on a few provisions, and then they could go to the beach later and try to swim—for once. “Does that mean you want to stay a little longer?” Henry asked, and she looked up at the sky and said, “If it’ll be like this.”
They passed a fence overflowing with bougainvillea, bright pink and violet, and below it fragrant lavender. Reverend Miller had once said that all we see of life on earth is a brief flourish of the elements. God breathes life into the seed and the seed rises, it turns the crude matter of the earth into a flourish of color and shape, scent and sound. How the world flaunted itself. Effie’s skirt swished about her knees. She was wearing her prim white stockings. When they got back to the cottage he would pluck the garter straps off one by one, place his nose and lips to the tender skin there, breathe in the faint scent of talcum powder.
At the grocer’s they bought enough food for two or three meals, plus cuts for sandwiches and a bundle of oranges, and they started back, Henry carrying the bag. They turned down Madison in the direction of the sea—and just before they came to New Hampshire he spotted Clara, down at the house on the corner, sweeping the flagstone patio in a lustrous blue robe, a pattern of giant, overlapping flowers.
“Oh, hell,” Effie said.
Henry laughed. “Do you want to hide?”
Clara saw them, tossed her broom aside, and cried, “Hallo!” They waved back.
“What about your heart-to-heart?” Henry asked. “Aren’t you friends now?”
“I have no idea.”
They crossed the street to meet Clara at the end of the drive. Only the baby-blue Cadillac remained, its top down. “Dear
friends!” she said. “You’re still here.”
“So are you,” Effie said.
“It’s so great to see you again,” Henry said.
She took their shoulders and kissed the air by their cheeks, smelling of coconut. “Look at you two, you’re all dressed up,” she said. “Wait—it’s Sunday, isn’t it? You’ve been to church, haven’t you?” She laughed, and before she could say anything more about it Effie asked if she was still cleaning up from the party. “God!” she cried, looking back at the house and wiping her brow as if she were sweating. It had been a nightmare, she said, but she’d sent the last of the riffraff home last night, thank God. “You should have seen it. I felt like I was running an orphanage.”
“It was some party,” Henry said.
“I hope I didn’t embarrass myself too much,” Effie said.
“Of course not!”
“I never, ever drink like that. I know I said some things…”
“You were a perfect lady,” Clara said. “You didn’t display your tits like Vera Watts, did you? God! Truth or Dare, among adults, really. But you were gone by then. I was sure you’d skipped town. How long are you staying?”
Henry felt a pang. He didn’t know who Vera Watts was, but he wished he’d seen her tits.
“I don’t know,” Effie said. She looked at Henry. “A couple more days?”
“Me too!” Clara said.
It had been a last-minute decision, she explained. Her old friend Max—they remembered Max, didn’t they?—he’d proposed the idea of staying on for a few days, when everyone else was leaving, because what was the rush? He was a writer, and Cape May seemed conducive to productivity. And Clara had thought, why not? The city was so depressing in the fall. The ocean air agreed with her. She hadn’t seen Max in ages.
“Is your husband staying too?” Effie asked.
“Richard?” Clara laughed. “Oh no, darling, Richard was the first to leave, thank God. It’s just us kids now.” Effie laughed uncertainly, glancing at Henry, and Clara rushed to continue: “I only mean, the poor man. He’s such an introvert, you know, and so devoted to his work…” She stopped herself. “But what are you doing today?”
Henry shifted the grocery bag in his arms, and Effie looked at him and said, “We were just coming back from the store. We thought we might go to the beach later, or…”
“We’re taking Papa’s boat out today,” Clara said. “Do you want to come?”
She must have seen the joy light up in Henry’s face, because she made a little hop and continued: “Please come. It’s a perfect day for sailing. It’s just Maxie and me. And his little sister, Alma, sadly. A dear girl, but useless. We could use the extra crew.”
“Do you want to?” he said to Effie, and Effie, looking cornered, said, “I mean…”
* * *
Now their honeymoon had begun, Henry thought. Now the clouds had parted and the bright days were upon them.
Back at the cottage they put the groceries away and went up into the attic room to change into their bathing suits. He had an erection again, and when he was naked he put his hands on his hips and waited for Effie to admire it. “Jesus!” she cried. She stood by the vanity table in her underwear. “On the Lord’s day?”
“The Lord is pleased with us,” he said, and dragged her down onto the bed.
She made a show of giving in—sighing, lying flat on her back, arms flung out: “Just do what you got to do, heathen, I won’t help you”—and so he pulled her underwear off her hips and pressed his nose in, breathed in deeply the close, pleasant smell of her hair. He gave it a lingering kiss. She got up on her elbows then, alert, as if to say, What do you think you’re doing, sir? And in answer he freed her from her underwear, spread her legs, and opened her with his tongue: a soft, soft bursting, warm and smoothly wet, like olive oil. The baffling folds of skin. A scent, mostly, of Dial soap.
“Hello,” she said, and held very still, until a car horn down in the street interrupted them, and they leapt out of bed—flushed, laughing, saying nothing—and hurried into their clothes.
Four
The baby-blue Cadillac idled at the curb. Max was behind the wheel, Clara was in the passenger seat in a headscarf and sunglasses, and in the back sat a girl in a light-green dress.
“Katie Scarlett, Hank,” Max called to them as they came down the porch steps. “We meet again.” He leapt out and pulled the seat forward to let them in, bowing grandly, wearing the same red trunks and Oxford shirt he’d been wearing Friday night. Like a gentleman, he took Effie’s bag, where she’d stuffed their towels and tanning oil, and Henry remembered he didn’t particularly like this man.
“You know Max,” Clara said. “And this is Alma. You met her the other night.”
The girl gave them the thinnest of smiles and moved over to make room for them. She was the one Max had pulled away from the Coast Guard cadet—his sister. She had long, light-brown hair bundled carelessly on her head, and a scatter of freckles on either side of her nose. If Max was in his twenties, she might have been eighteen—Effie’s age, maybe younger. She sank low in her seat, impenetrable behind her sunglasses, and looked away from them.
Max tossed their bag into the trunk, and with no further preliminaries he got back in the car and put it in gear, and they lurched forward and flew down New Hampshire Avenue. Clara whooped and raised her hands. In a few minutes they pulled into the empty parking lot by the marina and got out at the gate. Henry helped Max unload a large cooler and picnic basket from the trunk. Clara unlocked the gate, and they followed her down a dock crowded on both sides with sailboats, their masts gently bobbing and clinking.
Effie’s hair was wild; she’d neglected to bring a scarf. “It’s awfully windy today, isn’t it?” Out in the cove beyond the marina the water was choppy. “You’re sure it’s safe?”
“Of course it’s safe,” Clara said. “I told you, it’s a perfect day.”
Theirs was a large boat—a sloop, Clara called it—near the end, with a white hull, a deck of stained wood, and a single mast. It was named The Mistral, after a Mediterranean wind, but Clara’s papa called it his mistress. She wasn’t technically allowed to sail it, but not to worry: she’d done so many times and was an expert. She gave orders, and Henry leapt aboard after Max to remove the canvas shroud over the cockpit while Effie and Alma waited on the dock. Clara opened the hatch, releasing a musty odor from within, and Henry followed her below, where there was a galley, a head, and a stateroom. On a sailboat, Clara said, everyday things had new and interesting names. He helped her bring up the jib sail, as she called it, and he and Max, who had made it known that he was an expert sailor himself, started hooking it up while Clara busied herself back at the wheel. Effie stepped gingerly aboard and stood as if uncertain what to do. Alma got in, dropped her bag to the floor, lay back by the stern, and tilted her face up to the sun.
“I used to race boats with my grandfather when I was a boy,” Max explained to Henry up at the bow as they clipped the jib to the front stay. Up close Henry noticed his delicate fingers—he was no boxer—and his face, with its bright blue eyes, could almost be called pretty, except for the long scar on his chin. “Catamarans mostly, nothing like this old clunker. But I know my way around any boat. You ever sail?”
“My friend Hoke’s got a bass boat,” Henry said, and Max laughed.
They finished with the sail, and after some effort Clara got the engine going. A cloud of pungent smoke rose from the stern. Max jumped out to untie the ropes and give them a push, and soon they were motoring slowly across the cove, bobbing over the wavelets, toward a point of land beyond which lay the open sea. In her blue robe Clara stood at the wheel, their captain. At the mouth of the cove she cut the engine, and together Henry and Max hoisted the sails, which flapped violently in the wind until Clara turned the wheel and they caught and went silent and ballooned out, and the boat suddenly pitched to the side. Effie shrieked and held on to a stay. Something tumbled and banged below, but Clara said not to
worry, she’d secured the gin.
They cleared the point and angled toward the open horizon, cutting through the water. All around them the sea shimmered. A couple hundred yards to their right—to starboard, as Clara had taught them—lay the promenade. Henry picked out the pink motel that stood at the end of Madison Avenue, and the stretch of beach where he and Effie had walked only three days ago, when she had told him she wanted to go home. They would have been on a train by now, making their way back to their familiar lives.
Clara offered him the wheel. He declined adamantly. She insisted, and so he made his way over to her and she gave him a quick lesson—pointed out the wind vane at the top of the mast, assured him they wouldn’t capsize, warned him about the boom, said she and Max would take care of the jib (“Right, Maxie? If you do know what you’re doing”)—and with that, left him to it.
The wheel tugged against his grip. A few yards to port, a seagull hovered over the water, following along with them. Ahead, nothing but the horizon and a bank of clouds like chalky cliffs suspended in the sky. This, he thought, may have been the happiest moment in his life thus far. Clara told him when it was time to tack, and he turned the wheel and the boom swung smoothly over, and the boat tilted to the other side. They sailed on, and no one spoke, except to comment on the splendor of the day, the wind, the condition of the water, until gradually Cape May turned gauzy behind them, and in front of them, clearly visible now, was land—the coast of Delaware, just as Effie had said.
Clara took the wheel back and turned the boat to. The sails flapped angrily again. Henry and Max let loose the halyards and lowered them, and everything went quiet. The waves that had struck the bow now gently patted the hull, and the boat lazily bobbed and pitched.
“Who wants a gin and tonic?” Clara said. She’d slipped her robe off. Beneath it she wore a blue bathing suit, and her hips were bare and generous. You could sink in between them and disappear.