Cape May

by Chip Cheek

  She set herself up on the sofa, under the afghan, a box of tissues beside her, and he made her buttered toast and coffee. Her fever had come back in the night, she said, but she felt much better now. She was sweating like crazy, which was a good sign.

  He caressed her cheek. “Are you sure you don’t want to go back home? We can still make the train tomorrow. You might be more comfortable in your own bed.”

  “God,” she said, “I don’t want to think about that trip. Eighteen hours, three connections. Trying to sleep in that berth.”

  “Well—if you’re sure.”

  She frowned. “Don’t you want to stay?”

  “Of course I do. If you do.”

  She asked how the party had been and what she’d missed, and he said not much. The band had been there. There’d been some sing-alongs, a little dancing. He’d left early.

  She pouted. “I love sing-alongs.”

  * * *

  Shortly after noon, to Henry’s surprise and alarm, Clara knocked on the door. But she was her usual bright self. “Hello, hello,” she said, and kissed both of his cheeks. He stepped aside to let her in. “How’s my belle?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Effie cried from the couch, covering her face with her hands. “I’m hideous.”

  “Nonsense,” Clara said. “You’re adorable.” She was wearing her shimmering blue robe, and her presence seemed too big for the little den. She took it in and said, “God, I haven’t been in here in years, since before Holly married. I barely recognize it.”

  “Uncle George redecorated,” Henry said.

  “Ah,” she said, and he thought he could detect something faintly cold in her tone. She’d seen him dancing with Alma last night. He’d been fawning over her, right out in the open, like a fool. She asked again how Effie was feeling, and Effie said she’d be fit for public by evening, as long as they weren’t doing anything too exciting. Clara rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be a slow one tonight. Maxie overextended himself—typical. He’s still asleep, if you can believe it. I wish we’d left all those people where we found them last night. A low-rent crowd if I ever saw one.”

  “I heard the band came,” Effie said. “And there was singing.”

  “You were amazing at the piano,” Henry put in. “You should have seen her, Eff. She was the leader of the band.”

  Clara seemed pleased at that, as he’d hoped, and smiled warmly at him. “The musicians were all right,” she said, “but the girls, Jesus. The most boring pack of hangers-on I ever met. I shooed the one named Maggie out of the backyard this morning. She was asleep on the lawn.”

  “No!” Effie said, leaning forward, eager to hear more, and as Clara went on, about the girls, about “those awful Coast Guard boys,” Henry’s nerves calmed. She said nothing about him, or gave him any kind of suspicious look. Of course Alma wouldn’t have said anything. And Clara had been absorbed in her own drama. He remembered how the trumpet player had been kissing her breasts.

  “Anyway,” she said, “assuming Maxie can rouse himself, we were planning to go to this little place in town that’s open on the weekends. The Salty Dog? It’s a bit of a joint, but the food’s good, and our kitchen’s depleted. Want to come? It’ll just be us.”

  Effie said it sounded good to her, and looked at Henry.

  “Sure,” he said. “Of course.”

  * * *

  Maybe she wouldn’t come along. Maybe, knowing Henry would be there, she’d do what she usually did, and slip off somewhere by herself.

  But at some point, if they were staying at Clara’s, he would have to see her. And maybe, he thought, as he and Effie walked to the Western Union office to call their families, it wouldn’t be so bad.

  It was another fine day, sunny and warm, and since it was Saturday, the town wasn’t completely empty. An old couple strolled ahead of them on the promenade. Down on the beach, a family was having a picnic. He and Effie held hands.

  He thought of the days and nights ahead, and as always, the future cheered him. He and Alma would sit up again some night—maybe, probably, tonight—and they’d talk. The moon was already rising, a pale orb, barely visible. He’d tell her he understood, now that he’d had some time to think about it—that he’d reacted like a child, that he’d panicked, that she’d been right to be angry at him. But everything was all right with him now. It was no big deal. They would probably laugh about it. They would probably, in the days to come, exchange glances and smile at each other. Because they had this secret now.

  They crossed Beach Avenue and headed into the town center.

  There was a phone booth at the Western Union office, and Henry waited on the bench beside it while Effie called her folks. An old man sat behind the counter, reading a battered paperback.

  Really, he hadn’t been unfaithful to her, not in any important way. He loved her as much today as he had yesterday, possibly more. It had been a lapse in judgment, that was all. He’d been drunk. It had nothing to do with Effie, and she would never have to know about it. She shouldn’t know about it, because knowing it would only hurt her pointlessly. That God knew was another matter, and when he thought of this, a shadow passed over him. But boys will be boys. Name an upstanding man who had never … Name a faithful husband who had never once … He could square it with his conscience. He could pray.

  Effie was staring into space, holding the phone to her ear, and Henry could tell she was talking to her mother. “Uh-huh,” she said. “Okay. Right. Oh, neat.” And then: “Hi, Daddy!” She told him they were having an amazing time. In an annoying, pouty voice she explained that she’d taken ill. But, brightening, she said they’d met the most interesting people, including a member of the Hewitt family. Didn’t he know? Hewitt-Rowe, the shipping company? Henry stood up and paced to the other side of the room and examined a corkboard filled with out-of-date flyers. He disliked the importance she placed on money. It made their lives seem impoverished. Max and Clara never spoke of money—they never had to. It was the air they breathed.

  When she wrapped up the call at last—“Bye, Daddy. Okay. Bye-bye!”—she seemed refreshed and happy.

  “How’d they take it, about us staying?”

  “Oh, Mama just fretted about Uncle George. Daddy asked if he should wire us some more money, but I told him we were fine.” There was an ice-cream shop across the square, she said, and she thought she’d go there while Henry called his folks. She asked if he wanted anything, and he reminded her he couldn’t take dairy. “Right!” she said.

  In the booth, when the line connected, it was his mother who answered.

  “I don’t believe my ears,” she said. “To tell you the truth, I’d pretty much forgotten about you.”

  He’d never gone two weeks without speaking to her, and the sound of her voice brought him immediately home and made him feel ashamed of himself. But when she asked how he’d been holding up, like Effie, he said they were having an amazing time. They’d gone to a dance last night. They’d gone sailing twice. They’d met lots of interesting people, people from New York, people from California, artists and actresses, writers and intellectuals. He didn’t know why he was going on about it, she wasn’t impressed by such things. He felt low and indulgent and disgusted with himself. If she’d really known what he’d been up to, she’d have been ashamed of him.

  When he was finished, she waited for a respectful beat and said, “Well, we’re about ready to have you back. I’ll tell you the Old Wing won’t be finished. You and Effie are going to have to make do with your old bedroom for the next couple of weeks. Carswall had to fire one of the Fletcher boys. He showed up drunk the other day and couldn’t hit the damn nails with his hammer. But Bo’s going to finish it off, and you could help him when you get here.”

  “Actually, Mama,” he said, “we’re probably going to stay here a few more days.”

  “You’re going to stay there a few more days? You’ve been there for two weeks.”

  He and Effie had worked out earlier wh
at they’d tell their families, but just now it occurred to him that what they’d agreed upon—that an old friend of Effie’s was coming into town to see her, and they wanted to spend a few days together—would seem frivolous to his mother, who already considered Effie a frivolous woman, not because she was, but because she was Daisy Tarleton’s daughter. So he explained that Effie had come down with a bad flu, that she’d been bedridden for two days, that she was feeling a little better now but was in no condition to travel, and his mother agreed. She took illnesses seriously.

  “You take her to a doctor yet?”

  “No, Mama. It seems like it’s running its course at this point.”

  “Take her to a doctor anyway. If it’s strep or something it could lie low and come back as scarlet fever—believe me. I nearly died of it when I was a girl.”

  “I know, Mama,” he said. “Okay, we’ll see a doctor.”

  She said Carswall wouldn’t be happy with their extended vacation, and that piqued him.

  “He can be as unhappy as he pleases,” he said. “We can stay as long as we want to—we’re adults now. And I’m not his employee. We talked about this.”

  His mother chuckled. “It’s all right. I’ll talk to him.” And then: “You’re a fine boy, you know that? A fine married man now. I can’t believe it.”

  After he hung up he felt like crying, and he sat in the booth and stared at the floor, until the man behind the counter asked if he needed anything. He shook his head and stood up to go.

  He was a poor excuse for a man.

  He remembered a story his mother had told him, a few weeks before the wedding, about a great-uncle of hers who had tried to desert from Hood’s army after the Battle of Chickamauga. He’d made it all the way home, she said, but at the door his wife had pulled a shotgun on him and told him to go back until they’d won the war, or else she would kill him. He’d rejoined the army and, “obediently,” as his mother put it, died of dysentery soon after the surrender.

  Effie was waiting for him on a bench in the square, holding an ice-cream cone. Sunlight dappled her face. She was immeasurably precious to him.

  “How’s the Angel of Darkness?” she asked, meaning his mother. It always made him laugh.

  * * *

  That evening, Alma stood on the sidewalk in front of Clara’s, in her brown dress with the white polka dots, and the sight of her there in the gloaming burned away every line of reason he’d articulated to himself that day, along with any trace of shame. Clara had come to fetch them, and she and Max were waiting. She glanced in his direction, then away.

  They started toward the town center, down the residential streets on the other side of Madison. The streetlights were out, and the evening was soft and warm. Alma trailed behind. He wished he could fall back and ask how she was, but she would only look at him like he was an idiot. So he listened to Effie telling Max and Clara about her mother, how anxious she could be, how she wished she’d take up drinking, if only to calm herself. The streetlights worked past Ocean Street, and as they neared the town center they saw lighted windows here and there, and people on the sidewalks, as if they’d crossed an enchanted barrier into the living world.

  The Salty Dog, on Decatur Street, was a dilapidated black house with a dim light by the door. It looked forlorn, but inside was a lively murmur, and a fair crowd of weekenders in their linen shirts and V-neck sweaters. There was a bar along one wall, and in a corner a trio of musicians—a guitarist, a violinist, and a man with a ukulele—was playing what sounded like a sea chanty, or an Irish ballad. The air was smoky and smelled of fried fish.

  “This must be everyone in town,” Effie said.

  They were seated at a small bench table near the bar. Henry and Effie took one side, Max and Clara the other. Alma sat beside Max—as far from Henry as possible. The room was warm, so she took the cardigan off. She crossed her arms over her chest, and focused her attention on the trio. Her smooth, bare shoulders, her long neck, the soft line of her jaw, her chin, her lips that he’d kissed only last night. Her features were familiar to him now but she was new enough to him that every time he saw her they took him by surprise, the particular arrangement of forms, suddenly remembered, that made her herself and no one else. Her beauty was startling. He even loved the careless, messy way she tied up her hair. He studied the menu, which was printed on loose, weathered paper, so as not to stare. The choices alarmed him. Squid. Octopus. Swordfish. But also fish and chips, thankfully.

  The conversation was subdued. They mostly watched the musicians. Max seemed distracted. Effie asked if he was all right, and he said he’d been too cavalier with the whiskey. “Also with Maggie,” Clara added pertly, and Max waved her away and said, “Nothing happened. I’d have told you if it did.” Effie made a face to Henry—Okay!—but said nothing. Max held up the mug of beer he’d ordered and said it would restore him to health. Henry had ordered a mug of beer too, and clinked glasses with him. That was a Viking tradition, Max said: you clinked mugs so your drinks would slosh together, and that way you could be sure your host wasn’t trying to poison you.

  Their food came. Alma had ordered the swordfish. It looked like steak. She dug into it, eating steadily and methodically: first a cut of the fish, then half a baby potato, then a piece of asparagus, and then back to the fish again. She always cleaned her plate. That, too, he found charming. Like Effie, who ate as well as any good Southern girl. Clara picked at hers. Max was thorough but slow.

  The fish and chips were delicious. Fresh cod. Henry devoured it.

  Clara asked if they were moving over that night, and Effie said no, they still had the cleaning to do. Though Henry, she said, smiling at him, had gotten a start on it this morning.

  “You’re a better man than some I know,” Clara said.

  “We’ll need to restock,” Max said. “I hope the stores are open tomorrow.”

  “The grocer’s is, I know,” Effie said.

  “But the liquor store,” Clara said.

  “How much longer are we staying here?” Alma said, and everyone stopped to look at her. She held her fork aloft, a chunk of swordfish on it.

  “I don’t know,” Max said. “For as long as we want, I suppose.”

  She nodded, turning back to her plate, and stuffed the swordfish into her mouth.

  “Why?” Max said. “Is something the matter?”

  “No,” she said, cutting into a potato. “I was only asking.”

  “Because if you’re unhappy, or bored…”

  “I’m not,” she said. “I’m perfect.”

  “It’s nice here,” he went on. “I can feel myself think for the first time in ages. I think I might start writing tomorrow.”

  “You know, dear,” Clara said, leaning forward so she could see past Max, “you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. There’s a train straight from here to Penn Station.”

  “Clare,” Max said.

  “I’m only saying, darling,” she said, putting her hand on his forearm. “In case she wants to go home. She can take care of herself.”

  “I appreciate it,” Alma said. “It’s good to know. Maybe I’ll do that.”

  Henry fought the urge to beg her not to go. As it turned out, Effie did it for him: “You can’t leave. It’d be too sad.”

  “No one’s leaving,” Clara said, chuckling, waving her hand, and took a sip of her martini. “You’re all trapped here with me.”

  They finished their dinner, ordered another round—Alma was drinking Coca-Cola—and listened to the music. Max, Clara, and Effie clapped along to a jaunty number. Finally the check came. Max paid, and to Henry’s relief, Effie didn’t protest.

  When they got outside, Alma said she wanted to walk out to the point, and Max said nothing to dissuade her. She put her cardigan on and started away from them, down Decatur Street toward the promenade. Henry wished he could go with her.

  “Poor girl,” Clara said. “My mother taught me that if you can just pretend to be cheerful for a little while, you�
��ll actually turn cheerful. It’s been a great skill for me. I could teach it to her.”

  “You’d better not.” Max laughed wearily. “Maybe she should go. I have to remind myself she’s not my problem.”

  They got back to Clara’s a little after eight. There was enough brandy for each of them, but the gin and the whiskey were all gone. It was all for the best, Max said, tipping his head back in the armchair and closing his eyes: he would be dead to the world soon. Effie said she would too. They’d need to call it an early night.

  “No sleep is better than when you’re sick,” Clara said.

  “The dreams are weird,” Effie said.

  “God yes, the dreams.”

  * * *

  As soon as Effie settled herself under the covers, she was gone—off into her strange dreams. Henry took the lamp and went back downstairs. It wasn’t yet ten o’clock.

  Tomorrow night they’d be settled at Clara’s, and after everyone had gone to sleep, he’d stay up and wait for her, for as long as it took, and they would talk. But that seemed impossibly distant now. He couldn’t bear another day in which she ignored him, in which she hated him. He lay on the sofa and stared at the ceiling. He was done with Boswell. He didn’t feel like reading anything. Restless, he blew the lamp out and stepped out onto the front porch. The moon was out somewhere, low and weak. He could make out the houses across the street. Clara’s place lay hidden in shadow. He was barefoot, but he’d not changed out of his shirt and trousers, and he had a fleeting impulse to go back over there now, crouch in the bushes, and lie in wait for her. Instead, he sat down. If he saw a light over there, maybe he would go. Or he might see her slipping by on the sidewalk, like a black cat in the night.

  That was when it occurred to him. He stood up and stepped down to the sidewalk and looked down the street, toward the big Victorian house. He could make out its sharp tower, the second-floor balcony. And in one of the windows, a dim glow.