Cape May

by Chip Cheek

  Max wanted one. Henry, looking at Effie, said he’d have one too, and Effie, forgetting her vow, said sure—sure, why not?

  Alma, who had stepped up onto the deck, said she’d just have ice water, and as Clara went below to fix the drinks, she spread a towel out next to the mast, pulled the green dress off over her head—she wore a white bathing suit underneath—and lay down on her back, away from them.

  They all stripped to their trunks and bathing suits. Unlike Henry, whose skin retained a negative image of his shirt, and Effie, who was so pale she seemed bluish in the sun, Max and his sister were golden brown all over. Alma lay half hidden behind the mast and the bunched-up jib, but he could see the curve of her hips, her long, smooth legs, her feet at the edge of the bulkhead. What lives these people must have led. Effie retrieved the tanning oil from their bag and asked Henry to do the little patch on her back that she couldn’t reach. Her swimsuit was chaste compared to Clara’s and Alma’s, but she was pretty in it. They were all beautiful, Henry thought, and in the fullness of his mood he included himself. He squeezed the oil onto his fingers and rubbed it into Effie’s skin, smelling the warm, summery coconut.

  Clara returned with their drinks and handed them around. Alma sat up to take her ice water.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it, little belle?” Clara said. She sat over by Max, perpendicular to him, and stretched her legs out in front of her, her toes nearly touching him. “Do you feel relaxed now?”

  Effie smiled and nodded. Copying Clara, she stretched her legs out too, laying her feet in Henry’s lap, and looked at the sea around her. She seemed wary of it. “I’ve never done this before.”

  “You can trust me, you see. I’m not such a … what was it? A harpy? A brazen slut?”

  Max laughed. Effie looked mortified. “Did I call you that?”

  “It’s all right, dear.” Clara slipped her sunglasses down and looked at her over the rim, smiling. “You meant it kindly. You meant that I’d changed.”

  Effie seemed flustered and uncertain how to respond. Up on the deck, Alma, who’d been grinning down at them during this exchange, took a sip of her water and resumed gazing at the horizon.

  Henry asked how they all knew one another, and Clara explained that Scott and Max had roomed together their first year at Princeton. For a couple of years, she said, before Scott was drafted, the two of them had been best friends.

  “He invited me to spend Thanksgiving with him in Philadelphia,” Max said. “I’d only known him for a couple of months at that point, but I jumped at it. I was going to spend the weekend on campus, by myself.”

  “Poor Maxie,” Clara said.

  He set his hand on her foot and rubbed his thumb over the tips of her toes. “I fell in love with the Strausses,” he said. “All you big, brash Teutons.”

  Clara drew her knees up to her chest and asked if she could have a cigarette, and while Max retrieved his pack and lighter from his bundled-up shirt, she explained that this was before she’d married Richard and moved to New York, when she was still living with her parents, trying to decide if she should go to secretarial school.

  “Secretarial school?” Max muttered, two cigarettes in his mouth.

  “I was almost a spinster.”

  He lit both cigarettes and handed her one. “I thought you were squarely on the Kirschbaum ticket by then.”

  “We were separated,” she said. “Don’t you remember? That weekend before Christmas, when we were at Sardi’s. We saw Elmer Rice, the playwright, and he complimented my pearls, and you said he looked like a toad.”

  “Ah,” Max said, smiling. “My God, has it really been seven years?”

  He offered cigarettes to Henry and Effie. Effie refused, but Henry reached across to take one and accept a light, and for the next half hour they listened as Max and Clara quibbled over dates, recalled occasions, made references to people they had known in common. They were addressing themselves to Henry and Effie, explaining things to them, making them feel included, but they were talking to each other, Max leaning back, his legs spread, Clara bunched up tight, her attention fixed on him, lips parted, as if he might perform a magic trick. Most of what they were talking about meant nothing to Henry, although the details dazzled him. He caught a few things. That Max had dropped out of Princeton and moved to Hawaii of all places, where he had lived for more than a year, going from island to island—doing what for a living, Henry could only guess. That Clara had gotten pregnant and married Richard, in that order, then lost the baby. (“Oh, Clara, I’m sorry,” Effie said, but Clara waved it away.) That Max had moved back to the mainland after his father died and settled in the East Village, where he’d started writing seriously, at least until his sister had moved in with him. (Up on the deck Alma rolled over onto her stomach and buried her face in the crook of her arm.) That Scott had returned from Korea to finish his degree, go to law school, and get married, and that he no longer took Max seriously.

  “That’s not true,” Clara said. “You were his best man.”

  “He knew I’d give the most colorful speech.”

  Mournfully Clara jiggled the ice in her glass. “Can that really be the last time I saw you? Scott’s wedding? That was two years ago.”

  “So it was,” Max said. He tugged at the hem of his trunks and looked down at his feet.

  They were quiet then. The gin was working. Overhead, the sky remained clear, but the bank of clouds over Delaware no longer seemed benign. The land below it had disappeared in a dark blue band, and the sun was beginning to descend toward the cloud tops. Max offered to make another round of drinks.

  “Shouldn’t we start back?” Effie said. Like Henry, she was looking at the clouds.

  “Those won’t hurt us, dear,” Clara said. “They are moving laterally.” She slurred the last word, and quickly shook her head. “My God! I never ate lunch.”

  Max said he’d bring up the picnic basket, and a minute later he passed around sandwiches made with baguettes, some kind of honey sauce, slices of pear, and ham. They were good, although the baguette was a little tough for Henry’s taste. Alma sat up Indian-style to eat her sandwich. The drinks came next, and when Max had settled himself beside Clara again he said, “I’m sure you’ve heard enough about us. What about you?”

  Effie laughed, and looked at Henry. “What about us?”

  He asked how they’d met, but Effie brushed the question away.

  “We’ve known each other as long as I can remember. We grew up together. It’s not very interesting.”

  “So then how did you…” He brought his palms together, and she smiled in a way that seemed uncharacteristically shy.

  “I don’t know. It was just a gradual thing,” she said. “We weren’t really ever friends or anything. We didn’t run in the same circle. But we were in the same grade, so we were always in the same classroom. And I always thought highly of his family.” She looked at Henry. They had never had to tell their story before. Until now, Henry had never thought of it as a story, it was just things that had happened, things everyone knew already. “He started mooning over my friend Ida June.”

  “Ida June!” Clara said. “What a perfect name!”

  “Ida June Garnett,” Effie went on. “Her family was kind of trash, actually. Her daddy did odd jobs around town; her brothers were in prison for armed robbery. But she and I were friends. She was pretty, I guess, if you didn’t mind the freckles. She wanted to step up in life and I respected that. Henry had a crush on her, it was so obvious.”

  He felt his cheeks growing hot, and looked down at his drink, making an effort to keep a smile on his lips. The last person he wanted to think about right now was Ida June Garnett. He remembered her long hair, the color of cinnamon hard candies, the freckles that covered her nape. He’d had a sexual dream about her one night and woken up in love, simple as that. He’d been fifteen, she’d been thirteen.

  “He worked up the courage, finally, to ask her out to some mixer or other,” Effie was saying, “and th
ey went with each other for a little while, and that’s how I got to know him. I was going with this other boy then, but I thought Henry was sweet. We’d go as a group to the movies every Saturday.”

  “And so you stole him away,” Max said, lighting another cigarette.

  Effie shook her head, taking a swallow of her drink. “No,” she said, “Ida June showed her true colors eventually and got herself knocked up by this man Rupe who worked for the power company, and she dropped out of school and married him. It’s a shame. She wasn’t seventeen. That was just the year before last, wasn’t it?”

  “Tough blow,” Max said. He was holding a cigarette out to Henry, and Henry, affecting nonchalance, shrugged and accepted it. It was all supremely embarrassing. That, not the brief heartbreak, was what remained of Ida June. How he’d hold her hand until their palms were slick with sweat. How they’d kiss in the woods behind her place until his lips and chin were raw. When he’d confronted her, after the news got out, she’d told him he was boring.

  “You should have seen him,” Effie said. “He was a wounded bird.”

  “I was not,” Henry said, low.

  “You came to his rescue,” Clara said.

  Effie laid her hand on his leg. She could tell he was suffering. “No, it wasn’t like that. Henry and I just started hanging around together, just the two of us. He asked me to homecoming, and we kissed out by the baseball diamond, down in the dugout. Remember?” She looked at him fondly, and he put his hand over hers. He remembered the dark dugout, how she’d pressed his hand to her breast. Only then had he understood that she liked him, and what he’d felt in the moment was the thrill of an open door, an invitation he hadn’t expected. “I told you it wasn’t interesting,” she said, “but then a big thing like that ought not to be too interesting. He asked me to marry him at Mrs. Pritchett’s New Year’s Eve party. I nearly cried, it was so sweet. He had his grandmother’s sapphire ring. I asked him if he’d talked with my daddy yet, and he hadn’t, so I said, ‘You clear it with him first,’ and he did, the very next day. He promised Daddy he’d provide for me. And when he asked me again, I said yes.”

  Max and Clara laughed, but kindly. “How sweet,” Clara said. Henry cleared his throat and said, “Felt like a stroke of genius or something. There she was in front of me the whole time,” and Clara pouted.

  “So what is it you do, Hank?” Max said. A folksy drawl had entered his voice, lifted, probably, from Effie. “Now you’ve got a wife to provide for.”

  “He helps his uncle manage his properties,” Effie said.

  “His land, yes,” Henry said. “For the time being.”

  “What kind of properties?” Max asked.

  “Cotton, peanuts, grain,” Henry said. “Some orchards too, depending on the season.”

  “Ah—farming,” Max said.

  “Honest work,” Clara said to Max, as if to explain it to him.

  “And soon, a great deal of development,” Effie said. “That’s the important thing. The city of Macon’s going to swallow us up soon, and that land’s going to be worth a fortune.”

  This was one of Effie’s favorite subjects, and before she could get too warmed up to it, he said, “I’m hoping to go to school, at Emory next fall.” He didn’t have to look at Effie to know her eyes had glazed over. Max asked what he wanted to study, and Henry blushed. He’d never been certain of the answer, and he had the faint suspicion that Max understood this somehow and was amused. “History, maybe,” he said. “Or English literature.”

  Clara nodded eagerly, as if to encourage him to go on, but Effie said, “Those clouds are getting closer, aren’t they?”

  They all turned to look. She was right: the dark blue band over Delaware was larger, it had moved out into the bay, and the white tops of the clouds were on the verge of covering the sun. The wind had picked up.

  “We’ll be fine,” Clara said. “But we should start back.”

  For a time it seemed the rain would certainly envelop them, but it stayed behind and to the side of them. Overhead the sky turned gray, and the day took on a twilight gloom. The temperature was dropping. It was just after five. Henry made out the flash of the lighthouse. Soon they passed it, and turned up the coast, and there again were the hotels and storefronts of Beach Avenue. At last they entered the little cove. Henry and Max lowered the sails, and Clara motored them into the marina.

  On land, when the wind wasn’t blowing, the air wasn’t so cold, but a chill had entered their bones and they were all shivering. Max put the top of the Cadillac up—he’d left it down the whole time—and they climbed inside.

  “Lord, turn on the heat,” Effie said.

  “How does whiskey and a fire sound to everyone?” Max said, cranking the engine.

  “Divine,” Clara said.

  “Katie Scarlett? Hank? You’ll join us, I hope?”

  To Henry’s surprise, Effie, rubbing her hands together for warmth, said without pause, “We would love to.”

  * * *

  Max built up the fire and Clara made whiskey sodas. She asked for Effie’s help ransacking the kitchen. Mrs. Pavich was gone, she said, but there was plenty to eat, and they returned a few minutes later with a platter of sliced sausages, cheeses, bread and olives, and dips of various kinds: olive oil mixed with pepper and Parmesan, something like honey but with flecks of red pepper in it, a green paste Henry couldn’t identify. Clara put the platter on the coffee table and they settled around it, Henry and Effie on the couch, Clara in the armchair beside it, Max in a straight-back chair next to hers, his feet up on the coffee table. They were castaways, Henry imagined—they had that look about them: windblown and sun-kissed, in their bathing suits and loose linens. Effie and Henry shared an afghan; Clara spread a sweater over her legs.

  Only Alma had changed out of her bathing suit. She’d put on a brown dress with little white polka dots, and she lay apart from them, on the rug near the fire, reading a book, her bare feet bobbing in the air.

  The warmth was rejuvenating. The big open room, where they’d danced on Friday, felt close now, and as the evening darkened outside, the fire and the two lamps on either end of the couch made a circle that separated them from the rest of the world, and most of the living room—the foyer, the staircase, the little bar, the archway that led back to the kitchen—lay in shadow.

  As on the boat, Max and Clara led the conversation. They seemed used to being in charge of a social setting, though Clara was prone to defer to Max, and when he cut her off, as he did fairly often, rather than get annoyed she’d look at him with a kind of delighted shock and then slowly her mouth would close and she’d seem to be lost in whatever he was saying, until she caught an edge and jumped back in. She was dramatic but gullible—or pretended to be, Henry suspected, for Max’s sake.

  Max was also dramatic, but everything he said was laced with irony. He was good at imitations. He told stories about his old friends at Exeter, the prep school he’d attended in New Hampshire; about bar fights he’d gotten into in the Village; about girls who wore knee-length skirts without underwear. The stories were long and skillfully told—rehearsed, Henry thought—and Clara and Effie and even Henry laughed until their stomachs hurt.

  “You haven’t heard this one, I know you haven’t,” he said to Clara at one point, and launched into a story about an old prep-school teacher of his, whom he and his friend Oliver had run into in New York, and the long night that followed, which had ended in a whorehouse in Little Italy. It was a shockingly vulgar story, involving the teacher’s “cock” and a dessert called “tres leches,” but something about Max’s charm made it not entirely distasteful, and soon the four of them were doubling over with laughter, holding their stomachs—especially Effie, who seemed to have lost control of herself, until everyone began to laugh anew, now at her. Even Alma looked over her shoulder, amused.

  “I’m sorry,” Effie cried, wiping the tears from her face. “I’m sorry, y’all. That is just so awful. That is the most awful story I have ever h
eard.”

  They refreshed their drinks. In the harsh light of the downstairs bathroom Henry saw his face in the oval mirror over the toilet. His eyes were dilated; he was smiling broadly. He looked strange to himself, and was glad to return to the relative dimness of the living room, their little circle by the fire.

  Occasionally Clara made the mistake of trying to tell a story of her own in Max’s way, about her old girlfriends in Philadelphia, or her failure to impress Richard’s business partners, and the laughter would be forced, but then Max always came to her rescue, making a joke of it that was his own triumph but that also saved Clara’s story. She was her best with a bon mot, her quick asides to Henry and Effie, or else when she was passionately, self-consciously earnest—when she described a book she’d read or a movie she admired or music she’d heard for the first time. “My God, Iris Murdoch makes me mad with joy. She’s just so—potent!” She was a writer herself, she admitted. She’d published a few stories in little magazines (“You’re joking,” Effie said flatly), and she was at work on a play. She wouldn’t discuss what it was about, not even a hint, and she wasn’t being coy: when Effie pressed, Clara cried “No!” and laughed almost hysterically, shooting a glance at Max, and got up to fix herself another drink.

  On the few occasions when Effie told a story, the room quieted—the fire popped, the trees outside the windows sighed—and Max and Clara listened carefully. She told the story about their fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Hughes, and the bottle of Elmer’s glue, and when she got to the part where the cap popped open, Max clapped his hands together, fell back in his chair, and laughed in an exaggerated way that bothered Henry—as if Max felt the need to bestow his approval. The story wasn’t that funny. But most of the time Effie was just an audience, as Henry was, an audience Max clearly relished, which Effie satisfied by sitting on the edge of the couch cushion, smiling, her cheeks flushed bright red.

  Henry himself had little to say. The few times he was asked a question, or when Effie asked him to fill in some little detail of a story, he replied with a curt bashfulness that pleased his own ears. Without quite realizing it, he was conjuring his uncle Red, the old Southern Railway engineer who in retirement sat permanently perched on his armchair with a slightly ironic grin on his face while the ladies chattered. He seemed to amuse Clara and Max. He could say something as simple as “Yep,” or, “Hell, I don’t know, Effie,” and both of them would laugh. But it pleased him; it wasn’t like they were making fun of him. He would be a man of few words.