The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [142]
The boys drove over to Christ Church and were let into an office where the rector was trying to work an adding machine. He seemed impatient at the little help Divine Providence gave him in practical matters. He refused Honora’s requests gently and firmly. The chapel was being painted and could not be used and he could not approve introducing Shakespeare into a holy service. Honora was disappointed to hear about the chapel. This anxiety about the empty church was the form her grief seemed to take.
She looked old and bewildered that day, her face haggard and leonine. She got some shears and went into the fields to cut flowers for Leander—loosestrife, cornflowers, buttercups and daises. She worried about the empty church all through lunch. Going up the church steps she took Coverly’s arm—she clutched it as if she was tired or frail—and when the doors were opened and she saw a crowd she stopped short on the threshold and asked in a loud voice, “What are all these people doing here? Who are all these people?”
They were the butcher, the baker, the boy who sold him newspapers and the driver of the Travertine bus. Bentley and Spinet were there, the librarian, the fire chief, the fish warden, the waitress from Grimes’ bakery, the ticket seller from the movie theater in Travertine, the man who ran the merry-go-round in Nangasakit, the postmaster, the milkman, the stationmaster and the old man who filed saws and the one who repaired clocks. All the pews were taken and people were standing at the back. Christ Church had not seen such a crowd since Easter.
Honora raised her voice once during the service when the rector began to read from St. John. “Oh no,” she said loudly. “We’ve always had Corinthians.” The rector changed his place and there seemed to be no discourtesy in this interruption for it was her way and in a sense the way of the family and this was the funeral of a Wapshot. The cemetery adjoined Christ Church and they walked behind Leander, two by two, up the hill to the family lot in that stupefaction of grief with which we follow our dead to their graves. When the prayers were finished and the rector had shut his book Honora gave Coverly a push. “Say the words, Coverly. Say what he wanted.” Then Coverly went to the edge of his father’s grave and although he was crying he spoke clearly. “Our revels now are ended,” he said. “These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
After the service the boys kissed their mother good-by and promised to return soon. It would be the first trip they made and Coverly did return, on the Fourth of July, with Betsey and his son, William, to see the parade. Sarah closed her floating gift shop long enough to appear on the Woman’s Club float once more. Her hair was white and only two of the founding members remained, but her gestures, the sadness of her smile and the air of finding that the glass of water on her lectern tasted of rue were all the same. Many people would remember the Independence Day when some hoodlum had set off a firecracker under Mr. Pincher’s mare.
Honora was not there and after the parade when Coverly telephoned to see if he could bring Betsey and the baby to Boat Street Honora put him off. He was disappointed, but he was not surprised. “Some other time, Coverly dear,” she said. “I’m late now.” A novice at observing her might have guessed that she was late for her piano lessons but as soon as she had mastered “The Jolly Miller” she had shut the lid on her piano and become a baseball fan. What she was late for was the starting pitch at Fenway Park. She had arranged with a cab driver in the village to drive her to and from the games once or twice a week when the Red Sox were in Boston.
She wears her three-cornered hat and her black clothes to the game and climbs up the ramp to her seat in the balcony with the ardor of a pilgrim. The climb