Stories of John Cheever (1979 Pulitzer Prize), The - John Cheever [15]
Nils spat in the dirt. "God damn that woman!" he said. "God damn her!" Greta had reminded him of his dead wife and Mrs. Garrison's rich voice had reminded him of that other binding marriage, between mistress and gardener, which would last until death dissolved it. He made no effort to contain his anger, and Jim was caught in the cross fire of his mother-in-law's soliloquy and her gardener's rage. He said he would go and take a look at the traps.
He found the traps in the tool house and a rifle in the cellar. As he was crossing the lawn, he met Mrs. Garrison. She was a thin, white-haired woman, and she was dressed in a torn maid's uniform and a broken straw hat. Her arms were full of flowers. She and her son-in-law wished one another good morning, exclaimed on the beauty of the day, and went on in opposite directions. Jim carried the traps and the rifle behind the house. His son, Timmy, was there, playing hospital with Ingrid, the cook's daughter, a pale, skinny girl of eleven. The children watched him briefly and then went back to their game.
Jim oiled the traps and filed their catches so that they slammed shut at the least touch. While he was testing the traps, Agnes Shay came out, leading Carlotta Bronson, another of Mrs. Garrison's grandchildren. Carlotta was four years old. Her mother had gone West to get a divorce that summer, and Agnes had been elevated from the position of housemaid to that of nurse. She was almost sixty and she made an intense nurse. From morning until dark, she gripped Carlotta's hand in hers.
She peered over Jim's shoulder at the traps and said, "You know you shouldn't put out those traps until after the children have gone to bed, Mr. Brown... Don't you go near those traps, Carlotta. Come here."
"I won't put the traps out until late," Jim said.
"Why, one of the children might get caught in one of those traps and break a leg," Agnes said. "And you'll be careful of that gun, too, won't you, Mr. Brown? Guns are made to kill with. I've never seen one yet where there wasn't an accident... Come along, Carlotta, come along. I'll put on your fresh pinafore and then you can play in the sand before you have your fruit juice and your crackers."
The little girl followed her into the house, and together they climbed the back stairs to the nursery. When they were alone, Agnes kissed the child on the top of the head timidly, as if she were afraid of troubling Carlotta with her affection.
"Don't touch me, Agnes," Carlotta said.
"No, dear, I won't."
Agnes Shay had the true spirit of a maid. Moistened with dishwater and mild eau de cologne, reared in narrow and sunless bedrooms, in back passages, back stairs, laundries, linen closets, and in those servants' halls that remind one of a prison, her soul had grown docile and bleak. The ranks of service appeared to her as just and inflexible as the rings of hell. She would no more have yielded Mrs. Garrison a place at the servants' table in the kitchen than Mrs. Garrison would have yielded her one in the gloomy dining room. Agnes loved the ceremonies of a big house. She drew the curtains in the living room at dark, lighted the candles on the table, and struck the dinner chimes like an eager altar boy. On fine evenings, when she sat on the back porch between the garbage pails and the woodbins, she liked to recall the faces of all the cooks she had known. It made her life seem rich.
Agnes had never been as happy as she was that summer. She loved the mountains, the lake, and the sky, and she had fallen in love with Carlotta as a youth falls in love. She worried about her own appearance. She worried about her fingernails, her handwriting, her education. Am I worthy? she wondered. The irascible and unhappy child was her only link with the morning, with the sun, with everything beautiful and exciting. To touch Carlotta, to lay her cheek against the child's warm hair, overpowered her with a sense