The Wapshot Scandal

by John Cheever

  “Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I can’t remember every time.” She fled to her room and shut the door. He was stunned (or would have been stunned if any of this had happened) and it was a minute or two before he realized (or would have realized) that Binxey was crying in terror. He seized the little boy as an object of reason, love, animal warmth. He crushed him in his arms and took him into the kitchen. This was no time, it seemed, for reflection or decision. He cooked some hamburgers and after supper told the boy an asinine story of space travel as he did each night. These stories were no worse than the stories of talking rabbits he had been told as a boy but the talking rabbits had the charm of innocence. He turned off the light, kissed the boy good night and stopped at the bedroom door to ask Betsey if she wanted some dinner. “Let me alone,” she said. He drank a beer, read an old copy of Life, went to the window and looked at the lights on the street.

  Here was (or would have been had he admitted the facts) the forlornness, the pain of an unexampled dilemma. The thief and the murderer all have their brotherhood and their prophets but he had none. Psychiatry, psychiatry, the word came to his mind as we put one foot in front of the other, but if he went to a doctor he would jeopardize his security clearance and his job. Any association with mental instability made a man unemployable in Talifer. The only way he could cling to his conviction that the devastating blows of life fell in some usable sequence was to claim that these especial blows had not fallen; and so making this claim he made a bed on the sofa and went to sleep.

  This curious process of claiming that what had happened had not happened and what was happening was not happening went on in the morning when Coverly went to get a shirt and found that Betsey had cut the buttons off all of his shirts. This was inadmissible. He fastened a shirt with his tie, tucked it into his trousers and went to work but in the middle of the morning he went to the men’s room and wrote Betsey a note:

  “Darling Betsey,” he wrote, “I am going away. I am desperate and I am not interested in desperation, especially quiet desperation. I have no address but I don’t suppose that makes much difference because in all the years we’ve been together you’ve never sent me a postcard and I don’t suppose you’re going to start writing me piles of letters now. I have thought of taking Binxey with me but of course this would be against the law. I love him more than I have ever loved anyone in the world and please be kind to him. You might want to know why I am going away and why I am desperate although I somehow cannot imagine you asking yourself any questions about my disappearance. I don’t know any of your family excepting Caroline and I sometimes wish I knew them better because I sometimes think you’ve got me mixed up with someone who caused you pain long ago. I know that I have a very difficult personality my family always said that Coverly was very odd and perhaps I am much more to be blamed than I will ever know. I do not like to cherish resentments, I do not like to be bitter or resentful and yet I often am. In the mornings of our life together when the alarm wakes me the first thing I want to do is to take you in my arms but if I do I know you will fling yourself away from me and so that is the way the days begin and usually the way they end. I won’t bother about saying anything else. As I said in the beginning I am not interested in desperation, particularly quiet desperation and so I am going away.”

  Coverly mailed the letter, bought some shirts, cleared some annual leave and left for Denver that night, where he checked into a fourth-string hotel. There were cigarette butts on the bathroom floor and a pier glass arranged at the foot of the bed for questionable reasons. He had some drinks and went to a movie. When he came in at about midnight the elevator man asked if he wanted a girl, a boy, some dirty pictures or filthy comics. He said no thanks and went to bed. He went to a museum in the morning, to another movie and was having a drink at dusk in a bar when he felt his spirit genuflect, bend, stoop and kneel before what appeared to be the image of those worn Indian moccasins, ornamented with beads, that Betsey wore around the house. He had another drink and went to another movie. When he came in the elevator operator asked again if he wanted, a girl, a boy, a dirty massage, filthy pictures or obscene comics. He wanted Betsey.

  The secrets of a marriage are most scrupulously guarded. Coverly might speak freely of his infidelities; it was his passion for fidelity that he would hide. It didn’t matter that she had accused him wrongly and cut the buttons off his shirt. It wouldn’t matter if she burned holes in his underpants and served him arsenate of lead. If she locked the door against him he would climb in at the window. If she locked the bedroom door he would break the lock. If she met him with a tirade, a shower of bitter tears, an ax or a meat cleaver it didn’t matter. She was his millstone, his ball and chain, his angel, his fate, and she held in her hands the raw material of his most illustrious dreams. He called her then and said he was coming home. “That’s all right,” Betsey said. “That’s all right.”

  He had some trouble making connections for the return trip and it was not until ten that he got back the next night. Betsey was in bed, filing her nails. “Hi, sugar,” he said and sat on the bed, making a groaning sound. “Well, all right,” Betsey said, but she flung her nail file onto the table, preserving this much of her sovereignty. She went into the bathroom, closing the door, and Coverly heard the various sounds of running water, diverse and cheerful as the fountains in Tivoli. But she did not return. What had happened? Had she hurt herself? Had she climbed out the window? He threw open the bathroom door and found her sitting naked on the edge of the tub, reading an old copy of Newsweek. “What’s the matter, sugar?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Betsey said. “I was just reading.”

  “But that’s an old copy,” Coverly said. “That’s about a year old.”

  “Well, it’s very interesting,” Betsey said. “I find it very interesting.”

  “But you’re not interested in current events,” Coverly said. “I mean you don’t even know the name of the vice president, do you?”

  “That’s none of your business,” said Betsey.

  “But do you know the name of the vice president?”

  “That’s just none of your business,” Betsey said.

  “Oh, sugar,” groaned Coverly, his feeling swamped with love, and he raised her up in his arms. Then the verdure of venery, that thickest of foliage, filled the room. Sounds of running water. Flights of wild canaries. Lightly, lightly, assisting one another at every turn they began their effortless ascent up the rockwall, the chimney, the flume, the long traverse, up and up and up until over the last ridge one had a view of the whole, wide world and Coverly was the happiest man in it. But according to him none of this had happened. How could it have?

  CHAPTER VIII

  Judge Beasely’s offices were on the second floor of the Trowbridge Block. Enid Moulton, Mabel’s sister, let Honora into the farther room where the judge sat examining or pretending to examine papers. Honora guessed that he had been asleep and she looked at him gloomily. Time, that she had seen turn so many things and men into their opposites, had forced him into the image of a hawk. She did not mean that he seemed predatory—only that the thinness of his face made what had always been a sharp nose hooked like a beak and that his thin gray hair lay on his scalp like moulting feathers. He humped his shoulders like a roosted bird. His voice was cracked but then it always had been. The skin of his nose had peeled here and there, showing a violet-colored underskin. He had been a lady-killer—she remembered that—and at eighty he still seemed proud of his prowess. Above his desk was a large, varnished painting of some antlered deer, leaving a gloomy wood to drink at a pond. The frame of the picture was festooned with Christmas tinsel. Honora gave this a glance. “I see you’re all ready for Christmas,” she said meanly.

  “Hmmm,” he said, uncomprehending.

  Honora told him her problem, trying to estimate its magnitude by the degrees of consternation on his thin face. His memory, his reason, seemed not impaired but retarded. When she was done he made a temple of his finger
s. “County court won’t convene for another five weeks,” he said, “so they can’t indict you until then. Have they put a lien on your accounts?”

  “I don’t believe so,” Honora said.

  “Well, my advice, Honora, is that you go directly to the bank, withdraw a substantial sum of money and leave the country. Extradition proceedings are complicated and prolonged and the tax authorities are not altogether pitiless. They will invite you to return, of course, but I don’t think a lady as venerable as you will be subjected to any unpleasantness.”

  “I am too old to travel,” Honora said.

  “You are too old to go to the poor farm,” he said. The light in his eye seemed as uncomprehending as a bird and he seemed, like a drake, to have to turn his head from side to side to bring her into his vision. She said nothing more, neither thank you nor good-bye, and left the office. She stopped at the hardware store and bought a length of clothesline. When she got back to her own house she climbed directly to the attic.

  Honora admired all sorts of freshness: rain and the cold morning light, all winds, all sounds of running water in which she thought she heard the chain of being, high seas but especially the rain. Liking all of this she felt, stepping into the airless attic holding a length of clothesline with which she meant to hang herself, an alien. The air was so close it would make your head swim; spicy as an oven. Flies and hornets at the single window made the only sounds of life. Calcutta trunks, hatboxes, a helm inlaid with mother-of-pearl (hers), a torn mainsail and a pair of oars stood by the window. She looped the clothesline she carried over a rafter on which was printed: PEREZ WAPSHOT’S GRAND MENAGERIE AND ANIMAL CIRCUS. Red curtains hung from the rafter marking the stage where they had performed on wet days, rain gentling that small, small world. Rodney Townsend had waked her as the sleeping beauty with a kiss. It was her favorite part. She went to the window to see the twilight, wondering why the last light of day demanded from her similes and resolutions. Why, all the days of her life, had she compared its colors to apples, to the sere pages of old books, to lighted tents, to sapphires and ashes? Why had she always stood up to the evening light as if it could instruct her in decency and courage?

  The day was gray, it had been gray since morning. It would be gray at sea, gray at the ferry slip where the crowds waited, gray in the cities, gray at the isthmus, gray at the prison and the poor farm. It was a harsh and an ugly light, stretched like some upholstery webbing beneath the damask of the year. Responsive to all lights, the dark left her feeling vague and sad. The rewards of virtue, she knew, are puerile, odorless and mean, but they are none the less rewards and she could not seem to find enough virtue in her conduct to reflect upon. She had meant to bring Mrs. Potter chicken broth when Mrs. Potter was dying. She had meant to attend her funeral when she died. She had meant to spread the fireplace ashes on the lawn. She had meant to return Mrs. Bretaigne’s copy of The Bitter Tea of General Yen. She had counted every stud, nail, pew, light and organ pipe in Christ Church while Mr. Applegate, year after year, had unfolded the word of God. Patroness, Benefactor, Virgin and Saint!

  She had been proud of her ankles, proud of her hair, proud of her hands, proud of her power over men and women although she knew enough about love to know that this impulse has no reflection. Pridefully she had given toys to the poor on Christmas. Pridefully she had smiled at this image of her magnanimity. Pridefully she had invented a whispering chorus of admiration. Glorious Honora, Generous Honora, Peerless Honora Wapshot. One brought energy to life, there was nothing to equal its velocity, its discernment, but could the spirit of an old woman take wing on the rain wind? She had no boisterousness left. Her usefulness was over. She tied a noose in the clothesline and dragged a trunk to beneath the rafter. This would be a trap for her gallows. The trunk lid was ajar and she saw that the papers inside had been rifled. They were family papers, private things. Who would have done this? Maggie. She was into everything: Honora’s desk, Honora’s pockets. She pieced together the torn letters in the fireplace. Why? Was it like the magic that an empty house works on a child? The King and Queen are dead. She roots through Daddy’s stud box, puts on Mummy’s beads, stirs up the humble contents of every drawer. Honora put on her glasses and looked at the disordered papers. “The President and the Board of Trustees of the Hutchins Institute for the Blind request . . .” Beneath this was a letter in faded ink: “Dear Honora, I shall be in Boston for perching cloathing for summer and fawl but will return thursday. I thinch its plaine enof now that Lorenzo wold like to have bought my land when he was theare. I am ankshus to sell. I know thears no prospect of getting a faire prise from him, jidging from the past. Dishonesty is his polesy but if you spoke with him it might affect a saile. . . .” Below this she read: “He who reads me when I am ashes is my son in wishes.”

  It was in Leander’s hand, some pages of that execrable journal or autobiography that had occupied the last months of his life.

  Cousin Honora Wapshot is a skin-flint [he had written]. Head-cheese of every local charity. Dispenser of skinny chickens and pullet’s eggs to the poor. Prays loudly in church for those who travail and are heavy-laden but will not loan one hundred bucks to only, only cousin for safe investment and guaranteed income in local water-powered tack factory. No work in St. Botolphs. No coin. Village dying or dead. Writer at age of nineteen forced by Honora’s parsimony to take job as night desk clerk in Travertine Mansion House ten miles down river.

  Travertine Mansion House ranked with wonders of the ages. Compared in free literature to monuments in Karnak, Acropolis in Greece, Pantheon in Rome. Large, frame, brine-soaked fire-trap with two-story piazzas, palatial public rooms, 80 bedrooms, 8 baths. Wash-basins and chamber-pots still widely in use. Accounted for poignant smell in hallways. Public rooms and some suites lighted by gas but many chambers still dependent on kerosene lamps for illumination. Palm trees in lobby. Music played for all meals, excepting breakfast. American plan. Twelve dollars a day and upwards. Writer worked at desk from 6 P.M. until last gun was fired, usually around midnight. Salary was seventeen dollars including board wages. Wore swallow-tail coat and flower in buttonhole. Speaking tubes but no telephones. Limited bell system connected to dry-cell batteries. Fine view of beach from piazza. Tennis courts and croquet lawn at side of hotel. Some saddle horses brought up from livery stable. Some boating. Principle evening recreation was attendance at lectures. Glories of Rome. Glories of Venice. Glories of Athens. Also some philosophical and religious subjects.

  Among guests was Shakespearean actress. Lottie Beauchamp. Pronounced Beecham. Played supporting roles with Farquarson Grant Stratford and Avon Shakespearean Co. Traveled with own bed-linen, silver, jams and jellies. Mlle. Beauchamp as she was then known to writer appeared at desk late in evening with sad tale. Had lost pearl necklace on beach. Remembered where she had left it but was reluctant to venture on dark shore alone. Writer accompanied star-boarder on search. Mild night. Moon, stars, etc. Gentle swell. Found necklace on stone in sheltered cove. Admired scenery, warmth of night air, moon riding in west. Mlle. Beauchamp breathing heavily. Pleasant hour ensued. Writer dozed off. Woke to find famous Thespian jumping up and down in moonlight, holding breasts to keep from jouncing. Moon madness? What are you doing? Well, you don’t want me to have a child do you? says she. Jumped up and down. Never experienced such behavior before or since. Seemed to work.

  Lottie Beauchamp was 5'6". 117 lbs. Age unknown. Paine’s Celery Compound Complexion. Light brown hair. Would be called blonde nowadays. Excellent shape but excessive topside structure by modern standards. Golden voice. Could raise your hackles, also bring tears to every eye. Noticeable English accent but not foreign sounding or in any other way unpleasant. Fastidious nature. Traveled with own bed-linen as noted above. Hot house flowers in bedroom. Spoke however of humble beginnings. Daughter of a Leeds mill worker. Mother was drunkard. Familiar with cold, hunger, poverty, destitution, etc., in childhood. A dungheap rose. Enjoyed ample stock of artistic temperament. Very volatile. Complained l
iberally to management about lack of hot water and lumpiness of bed but was always gracious to servants. Sometimes repented of life as actress. All mummery and sham. Needed tenderness. Writer happy to accommodate. No question of wrong-doing or so it seemed.

  End of September business at Mansion House slow as cold molasses. Some northerly winds. Also fine weather. Bright sun. Warm air. Breeze up and down the mast. Wouldn’t blow a butterfly off your mainsail. Walked often on beach with Thespian before commencing tour of duty. Delightful company. Lingered in various coves, nooks, also aboard catboat. Property of hotel. Tern. Fifteen foot. Marconi rig. Wide waisted. Sailed like a butter-tub. Small cabin with no amenities. So the days passed.

  Maiden ladies composed majority of clientele at season’s end. Some dear old ladies; some lemons. Front-porch committee commanded by Dr. Helen Archibald. Famous dietician. Also hygienist. Led daily course in calisthenics in music saloon For Women Only. Never privileged to see same but expect consisted of knee bends performed to old music box tunes. Big music box. Called Regina. Music produced by flat metal disks, two feet in diameter. Wide selection. Opera. Marches. Songs of love.

  Front-porch committee bored with counting whitecaps. Got wind of romance. Famous dietician evinced sudden interest in sea-shells. Shells of no particular interest on Travertine beach. Sand dollars. Starfish. Usual produce of cold northern waters. Few colored stones gleaming like jewels when wet. Colorless when dry. Purpose of famous dietician’s seaside excursions was to spy. Shadowed Lottie and me like moral gumshoe. Pretending to look for shells. Upsoaring of self. Tramped the beach for hours. Got sand in shoes. Ruined several costumes. Vigilance was rewarded. Writer, rising from recumbent position in sheltered cove, saw famous dietician scurrying back to Mansion House in full possession of damaging facts. All interest in sea-shells forgotten. Was unable to pursue same, being clad only in birthday suit. Lottie very calm. Planned campaign. She would return to Mansion House alone. Gallant. Unafraid to beard front-porch committee. Writer would travel cross-country and approach hostelry from opposite direction. Did so. Walked through scrub pine woods to village of Travertine and then down dirt road to shore via so-called Great Western. Changed clothes and took up position behind desk at 6 P.M. with fresh flower in button-hole. String trio tuning instruments in Grand Dining Salon. Handyman lighting gas chandeliers. (No daylight saving time. September dusk fell swiftly.) All h——l broke loose.