The Wapshot Scandal

by John Cheever

  The evening paper was in the mailbox. She usually looked at this in the kitchen. The most sensational stories dealt with the covert moral revolution that was being waged by men of Emile’s age. They robbed, they pillaged, they drank, they raped and when they were locked up in jail they ripped out the plumbing. She reasoned that their parents were to blame and she sent up to heaven a completely sincere prayer of thanksgiving over the fact that Emile was such a good boy. In her own youth she had seen some wildness but the world had seemed more commodious and forgiving. She had never been able to settle on who was to blame. She feared that the world might have changed too swiftly for her intelligence and her intuition. She had no one to help her sift out the good from the evil. When she had finished with the paper she usually went into her room and unfastened those gallant bindings that signified that she had known the love of a good man. She was never unready, she was never slovenly. She put on clean slippers and a clean cotton dress and then as a rule she cooked the supper. This night she went directly into her bedroom, lay on her bed in the dark and cried.

  Driving back from the shack Emile felt that he was discovering in himself a new vein of seriousness, a new aspect of maturity. The kitchen was lighted when he came in but his mother was not at the stove and then he heard her crying in her room. He knew at once why she cried but he was completely unprepared. His heart moved him at once into her dark room, where she looked more desolate, more than ever like a child, dumped by her misery onto the bed, utterly mystified and forsaken. He felt crushed with the force of her grief. “I just can’t believe it,” she sobbed. “Just can’t believe it. I thought you were such a good boy, I thanked God night after night for your goodness and all the time right under my nose you were doing that. Mr. Narobi told me. He came to the store today.”

  “It isn’t true, Mother. Whatever Mr. Narobi said isn’t true.”

  She worked her face in the wet pillow like a child and he felt as if she were a child, his daughter, treated cruelly by some stranger.

  “That’s what I prayed you’d say, that’s what I hoped you’d say but I can’t believe anything any more. Mr. Narobi told me all about it and why should he tell me if it wasn’t true? He couldn’t make that all up.”

  “It isn’t true, Mother.”

  “But why did he tell me all this then, why did he tell me all these lies? He said there’s this woman you’ve been going off with. He said she’s always calling the store when she doesn’t need anything and that he knows what’s going on.”

  “It isn’t true.”

  “But why did he tell me these lies then? Perhaps he’s jealous,” she asked in a reckless hopefulness. “You know the year before last he asked me to marry him. Of course I’ll never marry again, but he seemed cross when I said so.” She sat up and dried her tears.

  “Perhaps that’s it.”

  “He came here one night when I was alone. He brought me a box of candy and asked me to marry him. When I said no he was angry, he said I’d be sorry. Do you think that’s what he’s trying to do? Make me sorry?”

  “Yes, that must be it.”

  “Isn’t that funny? To think that someone should want to do me harm. Isn’t that funny? Don’t people do the strangest things?”

  She washed her face and began to cook supper and Emile went to his room, worried about the sapphire ring, hidden in a drawer. He would feel safer if it was in his pocket. He opened the drawer and was taking the ring out of the box when he turned and saw her standing in the doorway. “Give that to me,” she said. “Give that to me, you devil. Whoever put the devil into you, who was it? Give me that ring. Is this how she paid you, you dirty, rotten snake? Don’t think I’m going to cry over you. I cried my last true tears at your father’s grave. I know what it was to be loved by a good man and nobody can take that away from me. You stay in your room until I tell you to come out.”

  Moses answered the door the next evening when Mrs. Cranmer rang. She was wearing a hat, gloves and so forth and he couldn’t imagine what she wanted. She had no car and must have walked over from the bus stop. He thought at first that she had the wrong address. She might have been a cook or a seamstress, looking for work. To speak to him directly, as she did, seemed to drain her courage and self-esteem.

  “You tell your wife to leave my son alone.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You tell your wife to leave my son alone. I don’t know how many other men she’s after but if I catch her near my boy again I’ll scratch her eyes out.”

  “I don’t . . .” She had exhausted her strength and he closed the door calling: “Melissa, Melissa.” Why didn’t she answer? Why didn’t she answer? He heard her climbing the stairs and he followed. The door stood open and she sat at her dressing table with her face in her hands. He felt the blood of murder run in his veins and as, in desire, he sometimes seemed to feel her body beneath his hands before he had touched her, now he seemed to feel her throat, its cords and muscles, as he put out her life. He was shaking. He came up behind her, put his hands around her neck and when she screamed he strangled the scream but then some fear of Hell rose in him and he threw her onto the floor and went out.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  What had happened; what had happened to Moses Wapshot? He was the better-looking, the brighter, the more natural of the two men and yet in his early thirties he had aged as if the crises of his time had been much harsher on a simple and impetuous nature like his than on Coverly, who had that long neck, that disgusting habit of cracking his knuckles and who suffered seizures of melancholy and petulance.

  Moses arrived suddenly in Talifer one Saturday morning, unannounced. He found his brother washing windows. A mythology that would penetrate with some light the density of the relationship between brothers seems to stop with Cain and Abel and perhaps this is as it should be. The utter delight with which Coverly and Moses greeted one another was seasoned unselfconsciously with mayhem. Moses smiled scornfully at his brother’s window-washing rags. Coverly noticed that Moses’ face was red and swollen. Moses carried a walking stick with a silver handle. As soon as he got into the house he unscrewed the handle and poured himself a martini from the stock. “It holds a pint,” he said calmly. “Wouldn’t Father have liked one?” He drank his gin that early in the day as if the memory of his father and so many other stalwarts had exempted him, as a Wapshot, from the problems of abstemiousness and self-discipline. “I’m on my way to San Francisco,” he explained. “I thought I’d drop in. There’s a plane out at five. Melissa and the boy are fine. They’re just bully.”

  He said this boisterously and with force for like Coverly—like Melissa—he had developed an adroitness at believing that what had happened had not happened, that what was happening was not happening and that which might happen was impossible. The mystery of Honora was their first concern. Coverly had telphoned St. Botolphs but no one had answered. His letters to Honora had been returned. Moses had felt that her letters about the holly tree might have concealed the fact that she was sick but how could this fit in with the fact that she had broken some law? Coverly might have shown his brother the computation center or let him see the gantry line through his binoculars but instead he drove Moses to the ruined farm and they walked there in the woods. It was a fine winter’s day in that part of the world and Coverly brought to its brightness and space considerable moodiness. The orchard still bore some crooked fruit and the sound and fragrance of windfalls seemed to him as ancient a piece of the world as its oceans. Paradise must (he thought) have smelled of windfalls. A few dead leaves coursed along the wind, reminding Coverly of the energies that drive the seasons. Watching the leaves drawn down and along he felt in himself an arousal of aspiration and misgiving. Moses appeared to be concerned principally with his thirst. When they had walked for a little while he suggested that they find a liquor store. As they were going back to the car there seemed to be an abort on the gantry line. There was a loud explosion from that direction and then there were signs that an air
alert had been sounded. No planes could be seen in the blue sky but they could be heard roaring like that most innocent of roarings when a sea shell is held by some old man to the ear of a child.

  They went back to the car and drove to a liquor store in the outskirts but the place was shut. A sign hung in the glass window: “This store is closed so that our employees can be with their families.” Now sporadic and senseless panic sometimes swept Talifer. A handful of men and women would lose their hopefulness and retire to their shelters to pray and get drunk; but this seemed no more significant to Coverly than the Adventists of his childhood who would now and then dress in sheets, climb Parson’s Hill and wait for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Total disaster seemed to be some part of the universal imagination. They drove on toward the shopping center and found a liquor store that was open. Moses said that he needed cash and the proprietor of the store, on Coverly’s endorsement, cashed a check for a hundred dollars. When they got back to the house Moses filled up his walking stick and settled down for some serious drinking. At four Coverly drove his brother to the commercial airport and said good-bye to him at the main entrance; a farewell that seemed to be for both of them a violent mixture of love and combativeness.

  Three days later the liquor store called to say that Moses’ check had bounced. Coverly stopped there and covered it with a check of his own. On Thursday a motel near the airport called. “I saw your name in the phone book,” the stranger said, “and it’s such a funny name I thought you might be related. There’s a man out here named Moses Wapshot. He’s been here since Saturday and just by counting the empties I would guess he’s drinking about two quarts a day. He hasn’t made a nuisance of himself or nothing but unless he’s pouring the stuff down the sink he’s heading for trouble. I thought you ought to know if he was a member of your family.” Coverly said he would be right out and he drove to the motel but when he got there Moses had gone.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  It is doubtful that Emile had ever loved Melissa, had ever experienced a genuine impulse of love for anyone but himself and the ghost of his father. He thought now and then of Melissa, always concluding that he was blameless; that whatever suffering she endured was no responsibility of his. He killed some time after he was fired from Narobi’s and presently went to work at the new supermarket on the hill—the one with a steeple. He was employed nominally as a stock boy but when Mr. Freeley, the manager, took him on, he explained that he would have another mission. The market had then been open two months but business was poor and the housewives of the village, like indulged children, were capricious and sometimes ill-tempered from the lack in their lives of the tonic forces of longing and need. Mr. Freeley had seen them storm his doors on opening day and take away the fresh orchid corsage that was given to each customer, but when the flowers were all gone he had seen them return with something like heartlessness to their old friends, the Grand Union and the A & P. They swarmed like locusts, exhausting his below-cost specials and buying the rest of their groceries somewhere else. His market, he thought, was a thing of splendor. The broad glass doors opened at a beam of light onto a museum of victuals—galleries and galleries of canned goods, heaps of frozen poultry and, over by the fish department, a little lighthouse above a tank of sea water in which lobsters swam. The air was full of music and soft lights. There were diversions for the children and delicacies for the gourmet but nobody—almost nobody—ever came his way.

  The store was one of a chain and the capriciousness of the spoiled housewives had been calculated by the statisticians in the central office. The ladies were incapable of fidelity and could be counted upon, sooner or later, to find their idle way into Mr. Freeley’s museum. One only had to wait and keep the place resplendent. But the ladies delayed longer than the statisticians had expected and Mr. Freeley was finally given an exploitation package. On Easter Eve a thousand plastic eggs were to be hidden in the grass of the village. All of them contained certificates redeemable at the store for a dozen country-fresh eggs. Twenty of them contained certificates redeemable for a two-ounce bottle of costly French perfume. Ten of them contained certificates redeemable for an outboard motor and five of them—golden ones—were good for a three-week, all-expense vacation for two at a luxury hotel in Madrid, Paris, London, Venice or Rome. The response was terrific and the store filled up with customers. They reasoned that the eggs would be hidden by someone who worked at the store and they intended to find out which clerk it was. “It has been our experience,” Mr. Freeley read in the explanatory literature, “that there is among the housewives in any community a large number who will stop at nothing to ascertain the identity of the egg-hiders and the probable position of the eggs. This has led in some instances to an astonishing display of immorality.” It was Emile that Mr. Freeley hired to hide the eggs. Had he checked with Narobi’s he wouldn’t have hired Emile at all but he thought the boy’s face clear and even virtuous. He told Emile the details in his office. He had been given a chart explaining where the eggs were to be hidden. They were to be hidden between two and three on the morning of Easter. Emile would be paid above his salary a stipend of twenty-five dollars and in order to insure secrecy Mr. Freeley would not speak to him again until Easter Eve. In the meantime Emile would stamp cans.

  The store closed at six on Easter Eve. The last potted lily had been sold, but some housewives still lingered in the museum galleries, trying to tempt from the stock boys the secret of the eggs. At quarter after six the doors were locked. At half-past six the lights were turned off and Mr. Freeley was alone in the office with the eggs. He took the chart out of the safe and studied it. A few minutes later Emile came up the stairs. Everyone else had gone home. Mr. Freeley showed him the treasure and gave him the chart. His plan was to store the eggs in the back of Emile’s car. He would be waiting on the sidewalk in front of Emile’s house at two in the morning and they would begin their mission from there. Before they took the crates of eggs down from Mr. Freeley’s office they made a careful examination of the waste bins and empty cartons at the back of the store to make sure that no housewife had concealed herself there. The eggs filled the luggage compartment and back seat of Emile’s car. It was dusk when they began their work and dark when they had finished. They shook hands in a pleasant atmosphere of conspiracy and parted. Emile drove home cautiously as if the eggs at his back were fragile as well as valuable. The power of felicity and excitement they contained seemed palpable. There was an old garage behind the house and he put the car in here and padlocked the door. He was excited and a little oppressed by the fear that something might go wrong. The secret was not out but neither was it perfectly concealed. He knew that there were at least ten people at the store who, through a process of elimination, had come to suspect that he might be in charge of the treasure and he had had to deal with their questioning.

  Mrs. Cranmer, having decided that Melissa had preyed on her son’s innocence, had resumed her peaceable life with Emile. In spite of her age and the sorrows she had borne Mrs. Cranmer was still able to engage herself in friendship as passionately as a schoolgirl. She was easily slighted and easily elated by the neglect or attention of her neighbors. She had recently made a new friend in Remsen Park—the low-cost development—and talked with her on the telephone much of the time. She was talking on the telephone when Emile came in. Emile read the paper while he waited for his mother to finish her conversation. Mr. Freeley’s exploitation specialists had taken the back page of the paper and the copy was inflammatory. There were pictures of the five European cities and an assurance that all you had to do was to look in your grass in the morning and you would be on your way.

  They ate supper in the kitchen. When the dishes were washed Mrs. Cranmer got back on the telephone. Now she was talking about the eggs and Emile guessed that many conversations in the village that night would be on this subject. It had not occurred to Mrs. Cranmer that her son might be chosen and he was grateful for this. After supper he watched telev
ision. At about nine o’clock he heard a dog barking. He went across the hall to his room and looked out of the window but there was no one by the garage. At half-past ten he went to bed.

  Mr. Freeley felt very happy that evening. The store had begun to prosper and he felt that the trips to Madrid, Paris, London, Rome and Venice that would soon be hidden in the dewy grass were the result of his own generosity, his own abundant good nature. Kissing his wife in the kitchen he thought that she was as desirable as she had been when he married her many years ago; or if she was not that, she had at least kept abreast of the changes time and age had worked in him. He desired her ardently and happily and looked at the clock to see how long he must wait before they would be alone. There was a roast in the oven and she moved out of his embrace to baste it and then again to set the table, draw the baby’s bath and pick up the toys, and as he watched her go about these necessary tasks he saw the wanness of fatigue come into her face and realized that by the time she had washed the dishes, ironed the pajamas, sung the lullabies and heard the prayers she might not have the strength to respond to his passionate caresses. This conflict in generative energies left him uncomfortable and after supper he took a walk.